Hello Jack, great article! On the discussion of lesser known virtues, curious if you agree that the Epicureans considered friendship a virtue as well, as Vatican Saying 23 seems to say? Some translate it as "choice worthy in of itself". Or should it be translated to something more tied to personality, like "love" (I think DeWitt supports this), or Friendliness.
Hi William, glad you enjoyed the article. VS 23 has been the subject of a fair amount of dispute. While the manuscript does say ἀρετή (virtue), the majority of scholars follow Usener's old emendation to αἱρετή (choiceworthy), and I'm inclined to agree. The main stumbling block is that keeping "arete" just makes for an unusual phrase: διʼ ἑαυτὴν αἱρετή requires only a tiny correction to the text and is fairly natural for "choiceworthy for its own sake" while "a virtue for its own sake" seems like rather unnatural Greek and unclear as to its meaning. (I'm fine with "friendship" as a translation for φιλία; though it's true that the Greek word is a bit broader and includes other kinds of love, both "love" and "friendliness" have their own idiosyncratic connotations in English.)
That said, even if we accept "choiceworthy for its own sake," people still argue about how to square that with the usual hedonic calculus that emphasizes how friendship is good *for* various other purposes (material benefits, mental security, etc.). There's a good extended discussion of this dilemma in Tim O'Keefe's "Is Epicurean Friendship Altruistic?" (https://philpapers.org/archive/OKEIEF.pdf). At some point I'll probably write about that myself.
So: the Epicureans certainly valued friendship enormously, but I don't think they'd call it a "virtue," for which I like Rider's definition that I quoted above: "an enduring character trait, developed through repeated practice and reinforcement..." That seems to be how the Greeks generally thought of the word, which I don't think really fits for friendship.
Hello Jack, great article! On the discussion of lesser known virtues, curious if you agree that the Epicureans considered friendship a virtue as well, as Vatican Saying 23 seems to say? Some translate it as "choice worthy in of itself". Or should it be translated to something more tied to personality, like "love" (I think DeWitt supports this), or Friendliness.
Curious for your thoughts. Great article!
Hi William, glad you enjoyed the article. VS 23 has been the subject of a fair amount of dispute. While the manuscript does say ἀρετή (virtue), the majority of scholars follow Usener's old emendation to αἱρετή (choiceworthy), and I'm inclined to agree. The main stumbling block is that keeping "arete" just makes for an unusual phrase: διʼ ἑαυτὴν αἱρετή requires only a tiny correction to the text and is fairly natural for "choiceworthy for its own sake" while "a virtue for its own sake" seems like rather unnatural Greek and unclear as to its meaning. (I'm fine with "friendship" as a translation for φιλία; though it's true that the Greek word is a bit broader and includes other kinds of love, both "love" and "friendliness" have their own idiosyncratic connotations in English.)
That said, even if we accept "choiceworthy for its own sake," people still argue about how to square that with the usual hedonic calculus that emphasizes how friendship is good *for* various other purposes (material benefits, mental security, etc.). There's a good extended discussion of this dilemma in Tim O'Keefe's "Is Epicurean Friendship Altruistic?" (https://philpapers.org/archive/OKEIEF.pdf). At some point I'll probably write about that myself.
So: the Epicureans certainly valued friendship enormously, but I don't think they'd call it a "virtue," for which I like Rider's definition that I quoted above: "an enduring character trait, developed through repeated practice and reinforcement..." That seems to be how the Greeks generally thought of the word, which I don't think really fits for friendship.