This analysis shows how self-awareness links to friendship, suggesting even self-sufficient individuals need friends.
Aristotle tells us that engaging in shared activity with friends involves ‘co-perception’ (συναίσθησις). On my reading, such co-perception is valuable because it enables an agent to perceive her own being or activity more fully. Since self-awareness is an essential dimension of living well as a rational creature but is only possible in its ideal form through friendship, Aristotle can, on this basis, show why even the self-sufficient person needs friends.
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Nicholas Gooding (2025) studied this question.
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