Friendship in Aristotle: Politics, III, 9 and Nicomachean Ethics, VIII

Abstract

In the Politics III, 9, Aristotle disapproves the power distribution in
democratic constitutions, saying that it serves to the end of friendship, namely,
living together, but not to the political end. Our purpose was to clarify why
a political community is not just a community of friends, through the Aristotelian
definition and analysis of friendship in the Nicomachean Ethics VIII.
The emerged result was that every association, including the political one, has
a kind of friendship relative to it, determined by its end and by the distribution
of functions and benefits, which is necessary to constitute the association.
The political community has as its end something different from living
together. So, it is insofar as the distribution is made to obtain this end that
some kind of friendship exists between the members of the political community
and not insofar as they want merely to live together, as it is implicitly
supposed in the democratic distribution.