Aristotle asks good human beings to love themselves, paying particular attention to the most fundamental foundations of virtue. In all individual actions, it is the intellect which must determine the course of good morality and strength of character; the path of right action set out in the Nicomachean Ethics is therefore based on this personal objective of moral excellence. Since one's basic self-esteem inevitably excludes any concern for others, ideal friendship (friendship in its most perfect form) exhibits the greatest activation of the most remarkable qualities of self-esteem. Friendship on these bases then constitutes an excellent ground for just action and good works. Aristotle's analysis of this apparently poorly united couple – self-love and love of others – rather justifies the intrinsic alliance of these two functions, further posing the impossibility of extrapolating the friendship of self-love or the self-love of friendship. Through an in-depth study of the capacity of self-love to cultivate a just civilization, Aristotle reveals the fundamentally private origin of civil justice and social concerns. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essay In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle states that “friends enhance our ability to think and act” (Book VIII, 1155a). As friends provide motivation and purpose for good works, they are, in this sense, “indispensable to life” (VIII, 1155a). Yet although Aristotle claims that friendship is ideal for the practice of habitual virtue, the allure of companionship inevitably draws the bad along with the good. Aristotle, in turn, prescribes neither friendship nor self-love to the wicked individual, lest this degenerate use his friends simply to escape the burden of his own corruption - an act which would threaten to " harming himself and his neighbors by following his base emotions.” (IX, 1169a). Ethics therefore asserts that only the good man deserves the guidance of self-love, because he alone deliberates respectably (with well-ordered desires) and discerns his environment through the scope of his own intelligence - the faculty the most sovereign of a being. A wicked man's unbridled self-esteem easily becomes a burden, fueling his depravity and endangering the moral stature of civil society in one fell swoop. According to Aristotelian ethics, although self-love and love of others complement each other in making a habit of virtue, love should be a primary concern in light of its many benefits. In the fourth section of Book IX, Aristotle dictates that self-love is "the basis of friendship" (1166a), and expands on this point in the eighth section, stating that "all friendly feelings toward others are a extension of the friendly feelings that we feel towards others. oneself” (1168b). In this way, friendship and self-love are complementary but not equivalent; perfect friendship must develop and realize the incomparable friendship that an individual feels towards himself. Aristotle designates the self-esteem of the virtuous person as the starting point par excellence of any society that aims to be just. The good man operates from such a mold of habitual concern and concern for the soul - it is in the functioning of this solitary but kind man that Aristotle finds the seed from which perfect friendships, and therefore a justly ordered society can come into being. Although it is worrying that Aristotle's virtuous lovers may disappear into the shadows of society's highest figures - the spontaneously righteous, the noble in virtue, the perfect friends with their.