Abstract

Modern moral philosophy looks to egoism to explain vice in interpersonal relations, while Aristotle focuses on misoriented interest. This emphasis on misorientation rather than egoism as the primary obstacle to community explains many otherwise puzzling features of Aristotle's accounts of justice and friendship . This dissertation's primary aim is to show how Aristotle's conception of the ideal human life structures his account of how we should live in community with others, and especially to show why living in justice and friendship with one's neighbors is an indispensable contribution to a life of virtuous action. The secondary aim is to demonstrate that Aristotle's approach to virtue in interpersonal relations is a coherent and powerful alternative to the modern emphasis on egoism and altruism. ;The first part of the dissertation considers Aristotle's claim that universal justice is the same as the sum of the particular virtues but differs from them in being. It is the same because the psychic dispositions that make a person virtuous also guarantee that he will treat others justly. It is different because justice focuses on the interpersonal manifestations of virtue rather than on the quality of the disposition itself. I show that particular justice is similarly related to the virtues concerned with honor and wealth. In general, injustice is related to psychic misorientation in the way that the symptoms of a disease are related to an underlying aetiology. I conclude this part by contrasting this conception of justice with the typical modern emphasis on impartiality. ;In the second part, I consider Aristotle's approach to friendship. From his perspective, the limits of friendship also depend on misorientation rather than egoism. First I show that Aristotle puts shared activity rather than intimacy at the heart of friendship. Then I conclude with a discussion of how psychic orientation structures shared activity. Good people are good friends of one another because the virtuous actions at which they aim are best pursued in partnership with others. The ends of inferior people do not allow for sharing to the same extent, and so their partnerships are correspondingly imperfect