This assignment is a final paper in conclusion of the Classical Political Thought class, which is an interdiscplinary class taught by a politics professor. Our main focus of the class was on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and we closely analyzed this text. This paper is a close analysis of how Aristotle treats friendship and its connection to the overall themes of happiness and virtue. We had to choose between different over-arching qualities that Aristotle analyzes. I think this is a successful item in my portfolio because it involves close and critical analysis of a primary Ancient Greek text and also discusses the historical and societal context with which Aristotle was writing. This was an interesting item to contribute to my Classics career at Skidmore as it was approaching Classics from a political angle, which enabled me to see Ancient Greek texts and ideas from a different perspective. Having said that, if I redid this paper, I would add more of my recently gained knowledge of the historical context of Aristotle and his connections with Socrates and Plato.

The PDF version of this paper in it’s entirety is linked here. The prompt was “Discuss Aristotle’s treatment of friendship. Why is this relevant to a discussion of human excellence and happiness?”.