Ten un‐Aristotelian reasons for the instability of Aristotelian character friendships
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8975721 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kristján Kristjánsson (0000-0002-8584-4178, Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, School of Education University of Birmingham Birmingham UK, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 49 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 40-58 |
| Publication date | 2018-12-07 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8308 • E-ISSN: 1468-5914 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/jtsb.12190 |
| OpenAlex | W2904302371 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 7 |
| References cited | 13 |
Aristotle claims that friendship of the highest kind – ‘character friendship’ – is stable and enduring, once established. He is sensitive to one limitation placed upon such friendships: that, owing to their extreme closeness, devotion and intimacy, they can only be actualised with a small number of people. However, Aristotle is otherwise surprisingly cavalier about the formation and sustaining of character friendship, as if those are relatively unproblematic from psycho‐moral and psycho‐social perspectives. The main aim of this article is to repair the dearth of attention paid to these problematic areas. More specifically, after a brief rehearsal of some Aristotelian essentials in Section 2 , I address five potential problems attached to character friendships between ‘equals’ in Section 3 (of substitutability, self‐verification, mismatched developmental levels, divergent developmental paths, initiation and trust) and five problems between ‘unequals’ in Section 4 (of proportionality, the disciple's and the guru's conflicting motivations, paternalism, role inertia), closing with some summarising remarks in Section 5 . My conclusion is that despite the attractiveness and plausibility of much of what Aristotle says, his account of character friendships cannot be endorsed without various caveats and qualifications
Character (mathematics · Closeness · Epistemology · Friendship · Happiness · Knight · Section (typography · Sociology · Computer Science · Medieval Philosophy and Theology · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy · Psychology · Religion, Gender, and Enlightenment · Social Psychology
Diseño y validación de una Escala de Amistad de Carácter para jóvenes
Mentorship programs in schools
Online Aristotelian Character Friendship as an Augmented Form of Penpalship
Aristotle on the role of cross-generational friendship in young adult moral development
Aristotelian Character Friendship as a ‘Method’ of Moral Education
The emotions behind character friendship
Amistad, hiperconexión y educación
| Unique citing works | 7 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,17 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2025 (6) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 7 |