Friendship as a political bond
Aristotle devotes two of the ten books of the Nicomachean Ethics to friendship (philia) — more than to any other single topic — and the platform reads this as a sign of how central he takes it to be, not only to the good life of the individual but to the life of the city. His striking claim is that friendship is a political force: "friendship seems to hold cities together, and lawgivers seem to care more about it than about justice." The platform reads this as one of his most distinctive and underappreciated political insights — that the bonds of affection and shared life, not only the structures of law and justice, are what make a community cohere.
The kinds of friendship
The platform reads Aristotle's analysis of the three kinds of friendship as the foundation. Friendships of utility (based on mutual advantage) and of pleasure (based on enjoyment) are real but unstable, lasting only as long as the benefit or the pleasure; the highest friendship, of virtue (or character), is the bond between good people who wish each other well for their own sake, and it is rare, lasting and the truest form. The platform reads the lower forms as nonetheless politically important: a city is held together by countless friendships of utility and pleasure — the working relationships, shared enjoyments and reciprocal goodwill of fellow citizens — that bind people who will never be virtue-friends into a common life.
Civic friendship
The platform reads Aristotle's concept of civic friendship (homonoia, "concord" or "like-mindedness") as his deepest political application of the theme. A well-functioning city is bound not only by justice and law but by a kind of friendship among its citizens — a shared commitment to the common good, a willingness to cooperate, a mutual goodwill that makes them treat one another as partners rather than rivals. The platform reads this under citizenship in Aristotle: the reciprocity of ruling and being ruled rests on civic friendship, and its breakdown into faction is the death of the city. Where there is genuine concord, Aristotle holds, the city hardly needs justice at all.
Why it matters for Virtue & Power
Friendship and politics is one of Aristotle's most original contributions to political thought — the recognition that the affective bonds of community are as load-bearing as its institutions, a truth that purely structural and legal accounts of politics tend to miss. The platform reads it alongside Xenophon's friendship and loyalty and develops it in friendship as political force.