Corinne A. Gartner, Wellesley, Greek Philosophy

"Nicomachean Ethics IX, Chapter 9"I examine two parallel passages in NE IX 9 in some detail, in conjunction with analogous excerpts from Magna Moralia II 15 and from Eudemian Ethics VII 12, in order to make sense of the relationship between friendship and self-knowledge for Aristotle. I argue that friends do uniquely facilitate self-knowledge, but not¿or, at least, not primarily¿in the sense that they facilitate the acquisition of a state in our soul (knowledge) in relation to, or as a component of, other states in our soul (virtues). Rather, what friends facilitate is more fully realized awareness of virtuous activity that is most nearly our own, and our activity¿and, in the case of the virtuous agent, virtuous and so happiness-constituting activity¿is what we are most fully. It turns out, then, that self-knowledge is much more precarious than one might envision: self-knowing is necessarily ephemeral for creatures like us, for both the self and our knowing are activities¿indeed, they are the very same activity.