Nicomachean Ethics IX

1. Friendship according to Aristotle involves equality.  Justice requires proportionality: each gets in proportion to her merits.  However, friendship involves a more numerical equality, though not quite.  If there is too much inequality, as between humans and gods, friendship is impossible.  (What about adults and babies?  A. thinks that friendship there is possible.  But surely there is great inequality.  But maybe the friendship depends on the hope of future equality?)

·        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.

2. Helpful remark: IX.2.  Cannot be completely precise in these matters.  One’s precision should match the subject matter, and relationships are something one can only speak about with imprecision.

3. Good-will vs. friendship.  Good-will is an emotional attitude of wishing well to another.  We need more than that for friendship.  We need:

· mutual recognition of the good will.

· the good will to be active.

4. Self-love.  The virtuous person, and the virtuous person, should love herself.  There isn’t even self-agreement, since the vicious person has various conflicting desires, such as the desire to smoke and the desire not to have lung cancer, or the desire to rob banks and the desire to have a good reputation.  Thus they hate themselves.  IX.4.  But the good person satisfies all the conditions for friendship with respect to herself.   We can thus give credit to both common sense and philosophy in respect of self-love.  Common sense says it is the bad person who loves herself above all, who seeks good things for herself.  Philosophy shows that the virtuous person loves herself above all—she is in perfect agreement with herself and has much to admire in herself.  Reconciliation: The bad person gives herself things like money and makes herself worse.  The good person gives herself virtue and nobility of action, while giving things like money to others.  She is thus generous with others, even though she loves herself more than she loves others, since she has more in common with herself and lives with herself for all her time.

5. How can Aristotle solve the problems that plague the good-loves-good theory in the Lysis?  Aristotle explicitly endorses the good-loves-good theory.  The main problem is something like this.  To the extent that you are in a good state, you are not lacking anything.  Thus you need nothing, and in particular do not need friends.

·        Aristotle thinks that happiness is the exercise of virtue.  Thus, if you practice perfect virtue, you have perfect happiness, and so you don’t need friends: since your happiness is already perfect, friends will not add anything to it.

· Discussion.

·        A.’s answer to this question is found in IX.9.  A. gives us a number of reasons why the perfectly virtuous person benefits from friendship and why the happy (eudaimonic) or blessed person will need friends.  Think of A. as arguing against an opponent who thinks that a friendless hermit who is full of virtue is going to be the happiest person, the one most truly living a flourishing human life.  Here is how he argues against this person:

·        (I) Happiness is not the same thing as virtue according to Aristotle.  Rather, happiness is an activity.  It isn’t just passively sitting back and enjoying your virtue.  Aristotle has a lovely observation elsewhere: Olympic medals are not given for the strongest or the fastest—but for the winner.  Being the strongest or the fastest will not gain you any medals—if you don’t enter.  In the Games, we are rewarded for running the fastest and exhibiting the greatest strength: i.e., for activities.  Now, the happy person is one who exercises her virtue—the exercise of virtue is the main part of her happiness.  For instance, she has the virtue of generosity.  So she actively gives, and enjoys giving, and this giving and its enjoyment is a part of her own happiness.  But to give someone needs to receive.  Thus, she needs people whom she can love, so that she can lavish her generosity on them.

o       This is an interesting reversal of what we had in the Lysis.  Here we have the person who possesses all good giving to others.  She needs others to be fully happy—she needs them as recipients of her love’s gifts.

·        (II) It is a part of the nature of the human being to live in a community with other human beings.  Aristotle expresses this by saying that the human being is a political animal.  But living together in community is a form of friendship: one is a friend of one’s fellow citizens.  The word “friend” here is weaker than it is in English, perhaps.  But some fellow feeling towards one’s fellow countrymen is something we do understand.  If you’ve ever been in a foreign country and met people from back home, you may know what I mean.  Aristotle does not, however, at this point explain why we are political animals.  He just says that this is part of our nature.

·        (III) A. notes that the reason people think the happy person doesn’t need friends is that they forget that pleasure-friendship and utility-friendship are not the only kinds of friendships.  The fully happy person has all she needs for happiness: she does not need another’s help.   She doesn’t need to get any worldly goods from anybody.  And she enjoys her own life to the full: for she is virtuous, acts virtuously, and enjoys acting virtuously.  Thus, she doesn’t need pleasure-friendship.  But it does not follow, Aristotle observes, that she doesn’t need friendship at all.  This argument doesn’t try to prove that A. is right, but does attempt to show that the most likely argument for his opponent’s position is wrong.

·        (IV) We now get into the deeper arguments.  It is a part of happiness to observe, study and think about virtuous actions that belong to one.  But it is easier to see the actions of others than of oneself.  (Why?)  Now, the virtuous actions of a friend can be observed, studied and thought about quite well.  Moreover, these actions belong to one.  For, everything friends have, they have in common, and the friend is another self.  This looks forward to the next argument. 

        (V) Cooperation…

·        (VI) Living with a virtuous person helps to further our own virtue.  (But if one is perfectly happy, does one need this?)  Aristotle at one point clarifies that “living together” doesn’t mean the same thing as it does for animals, such as eating from the same trough (or having sex, one might add).  Rather, it means acting together, cooperatively—see above.  For Aristotle, life is a form of activity.

·        (VII) A good person appreciates things that are of their nature good.  Life is of its nature good and pleasant.  We are, of course, talking of a life not like that of the vicious person, Aristotle notes, but of a well-defined life, an orderly life.  Such a life is objectively good and pleasant.  Now, the virtuous person appreciates and enjoys things that are objectively good and pleasant.  Thus, she appreciates life.  The life talked about is a life of perception and thought.  To perceive someone as perceiving and thinking is to perceive them as alive: for that is human life.  When we live, we perceive that we live, since when we think, we perceive that we think.  This is pleasant.  But likewise it is pleasant to perceive the life of a friend, the thoughts of a friend.  This we will do if we live together with the friend.  Again, this living together is a form of activity—Aristotle is not talking about roommates, but about people who share their lives actively.  And the kind of activity at issue here is the activity of perception and thought, not eating together as pigs do (or even having sex together, as pigs also do, one might add).  The friend is “another self.”  Thus, her life will be as pleasant to you as yours is.

·        All of these arguments attempt to show that even a fully happy person who has everything else—virtue, wealth, pleasure—needs to have friends.

·        All of the arguments, not counting (II) and (III) which are not really full arguments, except perhaps for the last, have a certain feature: They depend on human weakness, imperfection or limitation, either in the happy person or in the friend.  Argument (I) depends on weakness, imperfection or limitation in the friend.  Argument (IV) depends on the fact that we cannot observe ourselves that well.  Argument (V) depends on the fact that we cannot be continuously active.  Argument (VI) depends on our need for further virtue. 

·        Argument (VII) suggests that it’s not enough just to appreciate our own life.  We need to appreciate the life of another human being.  Why?  Is it that our own life is not pleasant enough?  Or is it that it is easier to observe the life of another?  Or is there something deeper at work?  Could we know that we are thinking without knowing that others are thinking?  Or is it just that the more lives we appreciate, the better things are.

·        It seems, thus, that most if not all the reasons we need friendship are due to our human limitedness.  Thus, the gods would not require friendship.  Is this right?  Is friendship a concession to human weakness?

·        But note the shift from Plato.  In Plato, friendship was ultimately towards the Forms.  People were needed to get to see the Forms, but it is the Forms that mattered.  In Aristotle, interpersonal friendship is not just a means, but an end in itself.  It is a part of the happy life, and not just a means to it.

o       This is an important distinction.  For instance, having money is a means to happiness.  It is not itself a part of happiness.  But if you go to a good movie, watching the movie is not just a means to happiness: it is not that there is something separate from watching the movie that the movie will help you get.  Rather, watching the movie is a part of happiness.  Of course if the movie is truly good, watching it will be both a part of happiness and a means to happiness: for it will show you the way to living a more meaningful life.  But it won’t be just a means to happiness, the way money and broccoli (assuming you don’t like it) are.  Friendship is like that.  It is a part of happiness, but it also leads to greater happiness by helping you to grow in virtue.

6. At IX.11, we get a good discussion of when we should spend time with our friends.  Answer: Mainly when we can do good to them, though we must not be kill-joys—we must not utterly avoid letting our friends help us.