Friendship with oneself and the Virtues of Giving in Aristotle’s Ethics

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Zurück zum Heft: Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte. Band 58
DOI: 10.28937/9783787333721_1

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I will discuss Aristotle’s phenomenology of giving. I try to point out the relations between virtues such as liberality, magnificence and magnanimity. These virtues deal with different domains, i. e. with the right flow ofmoney, with expenditure and finally with political and spiritual greatness. I argue, however, that they share a common structure, the friendship with oneself.Aristotle’s concept of friendship with oneself means a personal integration, an achieved harmony of individual faculties, which represents the core of the different virtues. It can be recognized in its most accomplished form in the case of magnanimity, a secondlevel virtue that is not primarily about economic goods and deals rather with self-knowledge and self-realization. Friendship with oneself is actually the result of a long process of maturation, made possible by practice, imitation of good models, teachings and personal reflection. During this process the natural individuality, with its attachments and cravings, is regenerated and adjusted to higher goals: the ethical and political life. Accordingly, I try to make clear that both the liberal and the magnificent man have gone through this long and challenging path. Both the liberal and the magnificent citizen can give to others in the right way as they do not rob themselves of the good they deserve. The consequence of Aristotle’s theory of virtuous giving is intriguing: one can give to other people in a virtuous way only if one is friend of himself and recognizes himself the right to the goods he is truly worth of.