Aristotle asks good human beings to be lovers of themselves, paying special attention to the most fundamental foundations of virtue. In all individual actions, it is the intellect that must determine the course of right morality and strength of character; the path of right action clarified in the Nicomachean Ethics is therefore based on that personal goal for moral excellence. Since one's basic self-esteem inevitably precludes any concern for another, ideal friendship (friendship in its most perfect form) displays the broadest activation of the most notable qualities of self-love. Friendship on this basis then provides an excellent arena for right action and good works. Aristotle's analysis of this apparently poorly united couple - love for oneself and love for the other - rather substantiates the intrinsic alliance of these two functions, further posing the impossibility of extrapolating friendship from love of self or self-love from friendship. Through an in-depth investigation of the capacity of self-love to cultivate a just civilization, Aristotle reveals the fundamentally private origin of civil justice and social interest. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle states that "friends improve our ability to think and act" (Book VIII, 1155a). Friends, since they motivate and receive good works, are, in this sense, "indispensable for life" (VIII, 1155a). However, although Aristotle holds that friendship is ideal for the practice of habitual virtue, the allure of camaraderie inevitably attracts both the wicked and the good. Aristotle in turn prescribes neither friendship nor self-love for the wicked individual, lest that degenerate use friends simply to escape the burden of his own corruption - an act that would threaten to "harm both himself and his his neighbors in following his base emotions" (IX, 1169a). Ethics therefore holds that only the good man deserves the guidance of self-love, because only he deliberates respectably (with rightly ordered desires) and discerns his environment through the scope of his own intelligence, the most sovereign faculty of being . An evil man's unbridled self-love easily gains influence, fueling his depravity and jeopardizing the moral stature of civilized society in one fell swoop. According to Aristotelian ethics, although self-love and love of others complement each other in making virtue a habit, self-love must be of primary importance in light of its extensive benefits. In section four of Book IX, Aristotle establishes that self-love is "the basis of friendship" (1166a), and expands on this in section eight, stating that "all friendly feelings towards others are an extension of the feelings friendliness you feel for others." themselves" (1168b). In this way, friendship and self-love are complementary but not equivalent; perfect friendship must broaden and realize the incomparable friendliness that an individual feels towards himself. Aristotle designates the self-love of the virtuous person as a starting point par excellence for any society that seeks to be just. The good man operates according to such a pattern of habitual concern and care for the soul: it is in the works of this solitary but lovable individual that Aristotle finds the seed from which perfect friendships and, therefore, a rightly ordered society can arise. While it is troubling that Aristotle's virtuous egoists may pale in the shadow of society's highest figures - the spontaneously just, the noble in virtue, the friends.