0. The Experience Machine: What we most deeply want is something real. This is true in a particularly strong way in the case of love. We do not just want the person we love to pretend to love us, even if she can pretend in an utterly convincing way. Thus, the purpose of love is not just to have certain feelings or to experience certain things.
1. Interesting texts
· Friends don’t need justice
· …love is a passion, friendship a state… Mutual love involves choice and choice springs from a state… 1157b25-30
2. Friendship is a kind of love. Now, one doesn’t love just anything. —Try to get yourself to love some pond scum: you will only succeed if you find something beautiful, good, or otherwise valuable about pond scum, such as that it is ecologically useful or that it is created by God.— One loves something that is lovable. In the Lysis, Socrates argued that the lovable is the same as the good. Aristotle recognizes that there are more causes of lovability. Something could be loved because it is good; it could be loved because it is pleasant to the lover; and it could be loved because it is useful to the lover. —Or, more precisely because it is believed to be good, pleasant or useful.—
· We can love something for what it is or for what it can do. When we love it for what it is, we love it for being good. When we love it for what it can do, either we love it for the kind of feeling it gives us, namely pleasure, or for something external to our feelings which it achieves, namely because it is useful.
· Aristotle says that the friendships of usefulness or pleasure are incidental, in the sense that the other person, the friend, is actually incidental to the relationship. The other person only matters insofar as she is useful or pleasant. Following the argument in the Lysis, Socrates would say that in those cases what we really love is not the other person, but the useful thing she accomplishes or the pleasure that she gives us—Aristotle explicitly agrees (1165b1-5). It is in this sense that the beloved is incidental to the relationship. We might also note that she is fungible: she could be exchanged for another person who is useful in the same way or who gives us the same pleasure, and we would not mind.
· Both the friendships of usefulness and pleasure are short-lived, because the reasons for the friendship pass away. She who is useful one day will no longer be useful on another. She who gives pleasure one day will no longer be useful on another when what we take pleasure in has changed. Our commitment to the friendship in both cases, we might say, is contingent on various things that we recognize might well change, perhaps even if everything goes well (for we would not want our business or pleasures to remain static, mayhep). This is the interesting thing: Without any change in our friend, the friendship can pass in these cases.
· In all forms of friendship, we wish the friend well. Our initial motive—perhaps lasting—may only be that because if the friend is in good shape, she will be more useful and pleasant to us.
· But the truest friendship is one where we wish the other well for her own sake. In such a case, the friendship can last much longer. The other person is not incidental to this friendship.
· Such friendships are based on virtue or excellence of character. For it is when we appreciate the value of the other’s virtue or excellence of character that we appreciate the other for being who she is, rather than for what she does for us. Since virtue is more constant than utility or pleasure, the friendships are indeed longer lasting. But they are also rarer: there are but few truly virtuous people. Such a “character-friendship” is found between two people who are both virtuous. After all, one needs to be virtuous oneself to appreciate virtue. Because of this, these friendships are indeed between people who are alike.
· The other friendships are not “friendships” in this central sense of the word. We call them “friendships” because they resemble character-friendship: in the friendships other than character-friendships, one still wishes good things to the other person, cooperates with her, etc.
· Contemporary philosophers will say that Aristotle says that we love people under a description. If I have a utility-friendship with my business partner, I do not love her as herself but I love her as my business partner, or insofar as she is my business partner or qua business partner. In English we usually would not even call this “love”, but Aristotle is willing to. After all, there is a desire to do good to one’s business partner, and this is a kind of love and friendship when reciprocated in a warm relationship. Many philosophers love the Latin word “qua” which just means “as”, though it can be abused. It is useful for things other than love. If you become a commanding officer in the army and your father enlists and is in your unit, then he will obey you qua commanding officer, but he will not obey you qua son. There will be strict limits to what he will have to obey you in: only when you issue orders qua commanding officer will he have any obligation to obey. If you are a good commanding officer, he will love you qua officer. He will, hopefully, all along love you qua son. When I love someone qua, say, useful, then the fact that I believe her to be useful enters into the explanation of why I love her. There is a description of her under which I love her: “Someone who is useful to me.”
· Utility-friendships are under the description “Someone useful to me now.” Pleasure-friendships are under the description “Someone pleasant to me now.” Character-friendships are under the description “Someone virtuous.” Note a crucial difference between these descriptions. The first two have a “to me now.” This is why the friend may stop fitting the description without her ever changing—for the description does not deal solely with her, but also with me and with my circumstances now.
2. Questions on the three forms of friendship.
· Do all friendships fall in these categories?
· What of the friendship of three Nazis working together to produces a purer race? They are not doing this for the sake of utility or pleasure—they are working together out of a deep conviction that they are doing the right thing. Are they character friends?
o Or are they? Can it be that if they sincerely believe what they are doing is good, then they are good people, though sadly mistaken?
o Assuming they are vicious, in what sense are they friends? Remember that Aristotle thinks that a prerequisite for friendship is good-will. What do these Nazis wish to one another? Surely that they hunt down the Jews. But is this is a good thing for them? Does one become a better person through this? So perhaps the Nazis wish bad things to each other, and hence not only are not friends, but in fact are enemies.
· What about us? We are not virtuous. Can we have character-friendship?
o Aristotle says that only a good person can appreciate another person for the other’s own sake (VIII.4). Does this mean that if we are not fully virtuous we cannot appreciate the virtuous person? But surely we can have some appreciation of the virtues we lack. Admittedly, to do that we already have to have some virtue ourselves. For to appreciate a virtue is itself virtuous.
o But Aristotle seems to think you need to actually have a lot of virtue to be appreciative of the person who has a lot of virtue. Why? Well, suppose I am a lazy person and admire Thomas Edison’s hard work. Can this not happen? But perhaps: If I really admired his hard work, I would work hard. Recall how Aristotle’s theory of mind and action works. The mind is divided into the intellect and the emotions. Actions come from emotions. The emotions are supposed to obey the intellect, and in the virtuous person they are. The intellect can only cause action by causing us to have certain emotions. Now, if I am actually lazy, then it follows that I do not have an emotional desire to be hard-working. But if I emotionally admired Edison’s hard work, I would have a desire for it. For this admiration would involve my feeling Edison’s hard work to be good, and hence feeling that it would be good to have it in me. Hence, I would desire it. But if I truly desired it, I would do it, since action flows from desire. Otherwise, my appreciation of the virtue is not heartfelt.
o So on Aristotle’s model, if you truly appreciate a virtue for its own sake, then you have the virtue. But to love someone for her own sake involves loving their virtue, appreciating their virtue, admiring it, etc. Thus, it involves having this virtue.
o We may want to insert somewhere in the model a place for radical free will: a place for choosing whether to follow one’s emotions or not. If so, then we will see as possible something Aristotle does not: Someone who truly and sincerely admires virtue but lacks it.
o In any case, Aristotle can allow those of us who do not have all of virtue to love one another for the virtues we already have. But note that if the above argument—which I admit I have made up myself and not found in Aristotle’s texts—shows that we can only love one another for virtues we share. But this isn’t quite satisfactory: Surely we would be best at helping each other grow in virtue if we could be friends while having different virtues, so that, e.g., I might learn from my friend’s hard work and she might learn from my honesty
o This idea is something that Aristotle should respect. After all, he talks in chapter 10 of Book VIII of the association of husband and wife, since human beings naturally divide into couples, and although he thinks that the husband should hold pride of place, he thinks that the man should hand over to the wife the things that the wife is particularly good at. Thus, the man should be able to recognize that the wife is better than he at certain things, and that he is better than she at others. Indeed, “this friendship may be based also on excellence/virtue, if the parties are good; for each has its own excellence/virtue and they will delight in the fact. And children seem to be a bond of union (which is the reason why childless people part more easily); for children are a good common to both and what is common holds them together.” — An interesting idea: There are different virtues in husband and wife, but they have something in common—children—and the children bind them together.
· Indeed, Aristotle discusses a whole slew of unequal friendships. The friendship between parents and children, for instance. He says that the better party should be loved more. Thus, the parents deserve more love from their children than the children deserve from the parents. The parents are better in that they have given the children the greatest good possible—existence—and thereby imposed on the children a debt of gratitude that the children cannot ever pay back. (Even if the child saves the parent’s life, the parent still has given more. For the child has then given the parent a part of her life; but the parent has given her all of it.)
· Aristotle thus sees that love differs depending on the relationship. While there is one general thing, love, there are differences: the parent-child friendship differs from that of ruler-and-subject which differs from that of husband-and-wife. The idea of different sorts of love, all of which articulate one thing—love—will recur. And different forms of love impose different duties.
· But perhaps he thinks that all of these friendships are friendships of utility or pleasure? But surely that is not so. The parents may derive pleasure or utility from their children, but surely that need not be the fullness of their friendship. The children certainly derive pleasure and utility from their parents, but surely should love their parents not just qua pleasure-givers and helpers. So these may have to be character friendships, albeit imperfect ones. So there is hope for us imperfect people: Aristotle does think that some kind of a love is possible from someone who lacks a virtue, since presumably the child lacks the virtues of his parents.
· So the argument I sketched above only applies to perfect love. If I love someone virtuous perfectly, then I have her virtues, since I emotionally appreciate them completely. But surely a lower degree of appreciation is also possible.
· Can one love a bad person? Surely not qua bad. But maybe qua potentially good? Aristotle doesn’t allow for this. Why not?
· Discuss the three loves. The limitations, advantages, etc., of Aristotle’s theory.