The difficulty that academics have faced in resolving the tensions between competing interpretations of Aristotelian political friendship can be traced to a lack of attention paid to Aristotle’s understanding of the self. The friend, Aristotle tells us, is a “second self,” but it is not clear what he means by this phrase. One group of contemporary commentators (to whom I give the name Strong Integrationists) suggests that Aristotle calls for an intimate connection between moral and political forms of friendship. Strong Integrationists, in making their arguments, tacitly assume a more-or-less Cartesian understanding of the self. I suggest that this assumption is in error. The Aristotelian self is generally unstable, fractured, and only rarely capable of the sustained virtue that characterizes the highest form of friendship. By reexamining the nature of the Aristotelian self I hope to provide a reading of political friendship that is more faithful to Aristotle’s text, and more in line with his own philosophical assumptions.
After centuries of relative neglect, friendship has emerged in the academy as an area of renewed interest. Moral philosophers see in friendship interesting questions regarding duty, and responsibility,1 while political philosophers are often interested in questions of order, obligation, and justice.2 A certain species of friendship, namely, its political variety, seems to bring together several of these concerns.3 A central question recurs in much of the literature about friendship: “To what extent can Aristotle’s ideas about friendship be pressed into useful service by modern political theorists?”4 Aristotle’s discussion of friendship stands as one of the most thoughtful, penetrating, and enduring treatments we have available. It has the added bonus, for political theorists, of explicitly addressing the political dimensions of friendship. I will argue, however, that in a rush to enlist the name and authority of Aristotle, a number of contemporary theorists have made important assumptions about the nature of Aristotelian friendship that are not supported by the texts.
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The aim of this paper is to study how financial structures and monetary policy regimes (including exchange rate regimes) affect the pattern of business cycle correlation across countries. More specifically, I propose a unitary framework in which international business cycle co-movements are explained jointly by the differences between the financial systems and by the monetary policy regime adopted by the countries concerned.
The European Union is a prime example where my analysis is likely to be relevant. The 12 countries of the euro area have adopted a single currency but are still characterized by different financial structures, as a result of history, legal frameworks, collective preferences and politics. Financial regulations, legislation and bank supervisory policies of these countries have not been unified but remain largely under national control — though pressures towards harmonization and the adoption of common standards, partly as a result of the single currency, are mounting. Of the remaining EU members, many (including several new entrants from Central and Eastern Europe) will adopt the euro before or around the end of this decade, and also in preparation for that are introducing financial market reforms. This process of currency unification and financial reform taking place at continental level provides an ideal testing ground for my theory. Examining the implications of this for business cycles is clearly important for many reasons, e.g. to determine the optimal monetary policy and to study the welfare properties of the currency area.
