Aristotle's Nature Of Friendship

In this paper, I defend social media’s potential to facilitate Aristotelian virtue friendship. I begin with a brief overview of Aristotle’s discussion of the nature of virtue friendship and then apply his concept of the shared life to the new frontier of social media. I will argue that virtue friendships can be found and maintained using social media, considering the mechanisms through which social media preserves the valuable portions of friendship: conversation and shared experience. Followers of Aristote should therefore conclude that this highest tier of friendship is attainable through the use of social media. Aristotle separates friendship into three distinct categories: those based on use, those based on pleasure in each other’s company, …show more content…
(1171b32-34), This expansion of oneself allows an individual to experience more good life than is attainable on one’s own. (1170a) The concept of shared life is therefore crucial to an Aristotelian understanding of the highest form of friendship. At first glance, social media may seem to stand in opposition to the concept of the shared life. It seems by definition to be solitary, two-dimensional. A screen separates you from your friend, you cannot touch or hold them. Yet a deeper understanding of the friendship connection embraced by Aristotle’s definition quickly reveals the ways in which social media actually facilitates the value friendship.
First, Aristotle’s definition of value friendship is not dependent upon physical proximity. True, in defining his concept of the “shared life,” Aristotle specifies that living together. Yet proximity is merely the vehicle for sharing “conversation and thought.” Indeed, he specifically distinguishes the goal of connecting from mere proximity, which he calls “grazing in the same field.” (1170b11-14) By this logic, any media which promotes conversation and engagement in furtherance of shared experiences should be congruent with this excellent …show more content…
It can also be established through engagement in a variety of other valued activities that shift, subjectively, depending on the specific group of friends. “Whatever each group of people loves most in life,” Aristotle states, “in that activity they spend their days together. For since they wish to live together with their friends, they follow and share in those pursuits which, they think, constitute their life together.” (1172a4-7) The shared life therefore admits of a nuanced form of sharing. One need not share everything. Rather, it’s only the pursuits one finds worthwhile, the things one most loves, that one shares with a friend. Individuals share lives with friends by eating together, by playing together, by conversing with one another. In assessing social media’s potential for facilitating virtue friendship, we must consider the types of activities and goods which could be conceivably shared online. For Aristotelians, sharing a conversation of any sort with a friend should count towards the shared life. Social media facilitates such conversations, and we should therefore conclude that social media can contribute to the shared