Using Aristotle's classifications of friends, I will attest that many of my Facebook "friends" were friendships of utility or pleasure at one time, but perhaps social media can assist in allowing those friendships to develop into ones based on virtue and character, which Aristotle insists takes time and trust and love and mutual sharing.
To the Editor: While I agree with Richard D. Kahlenberg's essay opposing legacy preferences at colleges, and appreciate his reference to Thomas Jefferson's belief that college admission should be based on "virtue and talent," I wish Mr. Kahlenberg had gone one step further.
As if in response, "Draft Day" offers a way of judging draft choices based on virtue.
Montesquieu also produced an innovative analysis of governance that assigned to each form of government an animating principle for example, republics are based on virtue, monarchies on honour, and despotisms on fear.
The paradox is that while they are an American contrivance, they are also un-American, standing in direct contradiction to Thomas Jefferson's famous call to promote a "natural aristocracy" based on "virtue and talent".
Abandoning the classical divisions of his predecessors into monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, Montesquieu produced his own analysis and assigned to each form of government an animating principle: the republic, based on virtue; the monarchy, based on honour; and despotism, based on fear.
Does such good will exist in all three kinds of friendship, or is it confined to relationships based on virtue?
Evidence of its earlier purpose is still visible in the final text, beginning as it does with the discussion of a moral issue, namely, whether morality is to be based on virtue alone, or on natural happiness, or a combination of both.
But if they wait until there are adults they will have the inner strength to choose a man based on virtue rather than desperation.
As the preceding considerations reveal, all main ethical theories (based on virtue, equality, overall preferences, and equality) reject allowing avoidable DT, but on different grounds and with different degrees of stringency.
