Aristotle on Knowing What We Are Doing Together: An Interpretation of NE 1169b f

According to most authors, collective moral responsibility involves collective agency, the nature and structure of which are subject to intense scrutiny in contemporary philosophical research. This paper argues that Aristotle’s theory of friendship includes an important insight into how it is that agency can be shared among us. The activities into which we are jointly engaged are ours, collectively (rather than yours and mine, distributively), through our being plurally self-aware of them as ours, collectively. While the Aristotelian account suggests that this awareness is pre-reflective, Aristotle also has an account of the value of becoming reflectively clear about what it is we are doing together and about how it is that we are doing it.