Abstract

The last chapter of _Eudemian Ethics_ book 7 is difficult and possibly fragmented, raising a question about whether the virtuous person needs friends. The account Aristotle gives of why there can be ‘virtue-friends’, however, reveals a complex and well-constructed argument, dialectically structured to allow reflection on other views (including those of Plato and Aristotle). The argument focuses on the puzzles of ‘self-perception’, how we should understand the subjective dimension of self-perception, and how this might be, or perhaps should _not_ be, an objective for friendship. How should we understand Aristotle’s claim that the virtue-friend is ‘another self’? In the _Nicomachean Ethics_ and the _Eudemian Ethics_ Aristotle suggests that ‘virtue-friends’ will be involved in some version of self-perception. But only in the _Eudemian Ethics_ does he make the radical proposal that virtuous friends, inevitably falling short of being gods, need friends for joint perception; for actualizing their full perceptual capacity together.