|
|
Article: Truth & friendship: reflections on a paradox of academic community.(Perspectives)
- Article from:
- Liberal Education
- Article date:
- January 1, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Association of American Colleges and Universities. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
If we look deeper into the nature of things, a virtuous friend seems
to be naturally desirable for a virtuous man.--ARISTOTLE
AMONG THE VARIOUS OBJECTS Aristotle identifies in his Nicomachean Ethics as goods associated with the most virtuous and therefore the happiest and most successful human existence are friendship and contemplation. For Aristotle, the contemplative life is the most pleasant and most humanly fulfilling imaginable, but even such an intrinsically satisfying existence would be incomplete, he says, in the absence of virtuous friends. Assuming that he is not far from the mark, it is only a small jump to imagine that an academic community--more ...