Flourishing online friends: A defense of the Aristotelian approach to social media friendship

• Main Author: Jose, Joseph Martin M.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2022
• Subjects: Online social networks; Friendship; Social media
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etdd_philo/9; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/context/etdd_philo/article/1008/viewcontent/2022_Jose_Joseph_Flourishing_online_friends_Full_text.pdf
• Institution: De La Salle University

There is an on-going philosophical debate about the possibility of social media friendship to count as an Aristotelian virtue friendship. The number of philosophers that participated in the debate and the various positions proffered propelled some to observe that the debate may have already reached a saturation point rendering future positions redundant. Informed by such, efforts to question the debate itself in the form of metacritiques emerged. One metacritique inquires if social media friendship ought to be really approached through Aristotle’s theory of friendship. Some philosophers, of which Michael-John Turp is a representative, argue that the Aristotelian approach to social media friendship is problematic. Turp observes that such approach merely focused on the positive features of social media while neglecting the harmful ones. The problems that the Aristotelian approach faces are presented by Turp in his two-fold argument, namely: argument from naivety towards online objectification and argument from rich-get-richer hypothesis. In light of the above, this study shall defend the Aristotelian approach to social media friendship from criticisms raised against it by Michel-John Turp. It shall accomplish such aim in a three-fold manner. First, it shall argue that there is no plausibility in the criticism of Turp that the Aristotelian approach to social media friendship merely picked out and focused on the positive features of social media; thereby, leading such approach to fail to take into account the negative aspects. Second, it shall demonstrate that the Aristotelian approach to social media friendship have ways to address Turp’s two arguments against such approach. Finally, it shall show that there are areas that the Aristotelian approach to social media friendship can improve and work on that will render such an approach more robust not just in terms of being able to address external criticisms but also possible internal confusions.