Comparison On Friendship Between Aristotle, Epicurus And Martin Luther King Jr.
...happenstance that occurs in varying levels of intensity between two people. Aristotle and Epicurus believe friendship is a rare commodity as friendship is a treasured bond of trust that has been proven throughout trials which create and strengthen those bonds. However Martin Luther King Jr. believes that everybody should treat everybody and anybody in a neighbourly fashion, a neighbour not only being one who lives near or next to another, but a fellow human. King claims a person should not merely care about one person, or a dozen people, but every person, for humans as a whole are neighbours to one another in this shrinking world. King uses the Bible and the parable Jesus tells of the Good Samaritan as an example of his idea of being a good neighbour. After examination of these articles one needs to ask the questions: How is the view on friendship of Aristotle and Epicurus different from neighbourliness as shown in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s article? Should we, as responsible moral agents, focus our energies on a few good friends, or be neighbours to all in need that we encounter? What then, is the moral difference in how we should treat friends and strangers?
The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.) who studied with Plato wrote a series of books he titled Nicomachean Ethics. From these, the subject of Book VIII is Friendship. Aristotle believes that friends are a necessity of life. People need to have friends. A person with power and wealth needs friends in order to use his wealth for benevolent means. Even so, one needs friends in order to keep them in power. In contrast, a poor person needs a friend to give them a helping hand. When one is young, a friend will keep one from making mistakes, and when old, friends will be there to lend aid when one cannot even perform the most mundane of tasks, and when one is at the pinnacle of...
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