Lecture 10 Notes

Aristotle on Friendship

I.    Philosophical Problems and Puzzles
II.   A First Crack at Some Answers
III.  Types of Friendship
IV.  Equality and Friendship

I.    Philosophical Problems and Puzzles

II.   A First Crack at Some Answers

1. Love essential to friendship.  to learn the nature of friendship, we must look at objects of love and the reasons for love Three reasons for loving something/someone include: good, pleasurable, and useful.
2. Friends want good things for each other.
3. Friendship is found only when it is mutual and mutually known that A wishes B well and B wishes A well, and A knows that B wishes her well and B knows that A wishes her well.
   

III.   Types of Friendship (Chapters 3 and 4)

A.   Love is the Essential Motive for Friendship

• There are three reasons for loving. 
  
• There are, therefore, three corresponding types of friendship:
  

1. Friendships of utility. In this case, friends love one another for sake of what is good for themselves.  What do you think this means, exactly?  Can you think of any examples?
2. Friendships based on what is pleasurable.  What do you think Aristotle has in mind here?
3. Friendships in which friends love each other for their virtue, their good character.
   

B.    An Important Qualification

• Few friendships are exclusively one or another.
• Most contain elements of each.  But having these distinctions helps us sort out the elements of the friendships we actually have.
  

C.    Type (3) is the Best Kind of Friendship

• Good people are pleasurable company to one another.
• This kind of friendship lasts as long as character does and is therefore stable.
• This kind of friendship ought to be the most enriching, as it provides an opportunity to help one another grow.
• The good that we wish for each other in type (3) friendships is really good.  There is none of the ambivalence of wishing something for a friend that friend shouldn’t have.
  

D.    Implications

• The best form of friendship takes a long time to develop: "such friendship requires time and familiarity" (VIII.3).
• Real friendship is rare, and with few people "one cannot be a friend to many people in the sense of having friendship of the perfect type with them." (VIII.6)

E.  A Few Important Questions:

• Is Aristotle right in thinking this is best?
• Is this what we want in our friends?
• Who has time for friendships like this?

F.   A Few Important Notes:

• The bad can’t really be friends: "Wicked men have no steadfastness but become friends for a short time because they delight in each other’s wickedness." (VIII.8)
• It is all too easy for us to confuse sorts of friendship.  What is the shared intimacy of drinking companions? What is infatuation?
• If want best sort of friendship, know yourself, tendency to enter into friendships of other sorts
  

"On the other hand the friendship of young people seems to aim at pleasure; for they live under the guidance of emotion, and pursue above all what is pleasant to themselves and what is immediately before them .. This is why they quickly become friends and quickly cease to be so; their friendship changes with the object that is found pleasant, and such pleasure alters quickly. Young people are amorous, too; for the greater part of the friendship depends on emotion and aims at pleasure; this is why they fall in love and quickly fall out of love, changing often within a single day." (VIII.3)

• Does this ring any bells?
  

IV.   Equality and Friendship

A.   Recall the question raised at the outset.

• To what extent, if at all, must friends be alike?
• Opinion seems to be divided.
  

B.   Features of False Friendship

• In friendships of utility or pleasure, friendship based on “friends” each providing what other needs:

1. In friendships based on pleasure, friends seek relaxation, a good time, or excitement in each other.
   
2. In friendships based on utility, friends seek whatever else they seek through their friendship.  In the modern idiom, friends are merely means and not ends.

• Notice that in each case, there is no obvious way in which the people need to be alike.

C.   Features of True Friendship

• Friends must be alike in being lovers of good character.
• Friendship depends on equality of moral development.  This is a necessary condition of sharing and mutual appreciation.