Law, Friendship and Political Participation in Aristotle after the Biological Turn: Preliminary Considerations about a New Hermeneutical Paradigm

Abstract

This article has four goals. The first is to show that two contemporary debates of great importance for Aristotle’s political philosophy – the debate about the kind of bond that connects or should connect the individuals of a given political community and the debate about the value of political participation in what concerns the achievement of happiness – should be understood together with the her-meneutical movement we now call the biological turn. As we shall see, the way we answer these two questions influences a third questions: the question about the importance and the function of law in the political community as it is thought of by Aristotle. The second goal is to present a summary of the main arguments presented so far in these debates together with an evaluation of their strengths and weaknesses. The third is to highlight a point of considerable importance for both debates that has gone unnoticed by the commentators. Since it would be impossible to reach any sort of definitive answer the questions raised in these debates in the short space that we have, the last goal of this article is to indicate a possible path for future investigations.