Friendship In Plato And Aristotle's Idea Of Friendship

Friendship is an integral part of who we are as human beings, and ancient Greek philosophers attempted to understand why we need or want friendships. The basic ideas we have of friendship are based on the ideas that have been implemented by philosophers like Plato and Aristotle. However, some of these same ideas have been misinterpreted into modern culture. Even the ideas Plato and Aristotle discussed were not fulling practiced in truth. This essay will discuss the idea of friendship according to both Plato and Aristotle focusing on friendships impact on the Psyche, discussing the similarities and differences between the two philosophers, and how these have affected modern society’s idea of friendship. In order to look at the development of friendship, we first have to look at Plato’s …show more content…
Plato talks about friendship directly in Lysis, however, Eros is a big part of how love and affection are shared in Plato’s ideology. Eros is translated as erotic love, and this is a range of how love is shown. While never directly stated in any of his dialogs, it can be interpreted that Eros includes friendship. Plato through Socrates discusses in a couple of dialogs (Symposium and Phaedrus) the ideas of beauty, sexual attraction, and love as a part of Eros. For Plato, these concepts are all connected to friendship. In order to look at Plato’s concept of friendship, we have to examine the dialog of Lysis.
While Lysis is not a very common dialog of Plato, it does examine the idea of friendship between two potential lovers. The entire dialog is questioning the nature of friendship and how it starts. Socrates goes on to discuss four hypotheses; you cannot prove friendship with your love, the good can only be friends with the good, a good friend is neutral and supports other good people