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The Role Of Friendship In Plato's Symposium

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Friendship is an important part of the human life that guides human existence that guides how two humans in mutual understanding and relationship relate to each other. Nehamas and Woodruff (1989) provide Aristotle's description of friendship; that is goodwill that is reciprocated. Friendship is a phenomenon that happens every day in life amongst human beings with people falling in and out of friendship. There exist various kinds of friendships that are founded upon various needs, relations, and reasons. The source of the reciprocated goodwill brings the difference between perfect or complete friendships and imperfect or incomplete friendships. This paper uses the text 'Plato Symposium' in the discussion of the Aristotelian notion of friendship, exploration of the different types of friendship, exploration of complete and incomplete friendship and insight on how virtuous actions and …show more content…

This is the type of friendship that occurs only amongst people of exceptional virtues and who love and wish each other good and is based on the mutual good that each of the friends admires from the other. Aristotle describes moral virtues as a character to act appropriately, and a means between the extents of imperfection and vices. Complete friendships are also referred to as perfect friendships or Virtuous friendships. The emphasis or foundation of a complete friendship is the good virtue in the other partner in the friendship. Each sees and admires the good virtues in the other thus loves them for who they are and wishes them good. Friendship based goodwill is an example of perfect or rather complete friendship. An example of this kind of friendship is two friends who admire each other for their abilities and talents and want goodness in the form of success for each other to an extent where they can go out of their way for the benefit of the

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