Aristotle was a Greek philosopher who theorized on different categories of friendship and the ideal form of friendship. This paper will explain the Aristotelian conception of friendship and offer this paper’s own comments on relevant issues stemming from this topic.
Aristotle believes that a discussion of friendship is important in philosophy because humans would not want to live without friends. The underlying assumption of this claim is that human relationships are the basis of one’s psychological wellbeing, similar to food and shelter for one’s physical health. Without any relationships and interactions, a person has no identity and will starve spiritually because he has nobody to protect him, build and share something with, and exchange and develop his thoughts and feelings with. His world becomes a lonely, empty, and unsafe place. One’s happiness and peace are unsustainable without friends.
Aristotle further proposes that there are three types of friendship. He believes goodwill gives rise to friendships and what gives rise to the goodwill determines the nature of friendship. There are three causes of goodwill: usefulness, pleasure, and virtue. To use one another for mutual gains is the basis of the friendship of utility, such as a business relationship. People form pleasure-based friendships out of their mutual abilities to generate pleasure for each other, such as drinking buddies that keep each other entertained and distracted from loneliness. Aristotle characterizes these two types of friendship as incidental and impermanent. What sustains these friendships is good the participants provide for each other, which is either utility or pleasure, not the quality of character of the participants. Such friendships are a byproduct of these goods, like how some merchants interact with each other more often because they are able to reliably supply these goods for each other. Once the supply ends on at least one end, the friendship ends inevitably.
Aristotle then introduces the third form of friendship, which he considers to be perfect. The first condition of a perfect friendship is that all parties must be qualified as virtuous characters. Such friends choose to love and wish the best for each other because good men naturally find each other’s innate good qualities pleasant. Their state of being a good character, rather than the goods directly produced by their state of being any character, is the foundation of such friendships. Such friendships thus remain healthy and sustainable as long as the participants maintain their good characters. However, such friendships actually become perfect only when the participants fulfill the final condition—the shared pursuit of noble ends that produce positive impacts on their society. When good people pursue similar goals, they can use each other as mirrors for self-reflection to allow their characters to co-evolve, help each other achieve their aims, and advance their society.
I personally do believe character-based friendship is the best. It is built on a strong foundation, the virtuous character of the participants, and has the potential for long-term growth. I like long-lasting things with growth potential. One benefit of character-based friendship is its simplicity. There is a Chinese proverb that captures this characteristic succinctly: “君子之交淡如水” (Baike). The translation of the phrase means the friendly interaction between two junzi (i.e. virtuous characters) is as light as water. “Water” here serves as a metaphor that implies purity and the lack of unnecessary complexity during friendly interactions among virtuous individuals. This quality of simplicity is possible because virtuous people already accept each other for the way they are. Effectively, engaging in such friendships based on a mutual admiration of character is relaxed, does not require constant interaction or formality, and thus unvarnished; the participants can express how they really feel and be themselves. In addition, there is significantly less upkeep cost in character-based friendships in which friends do not participate in shared pursuits. Even if virtuous friends meet again after a long time of no interaction, the friendship will not change in nature as long as the participants remain virtuous. Nevertheless, the perfect form of character-based friendship requires friends to pursue common ends and help each other grow, so significant time investments are still necessary. But the quality of simplicity continues to benefit virtuous friends who are collaborating to achieve common ends. They can communicate straightforwardly and transparently and sacrifice for each other and their objectives because they have no doubts about each other’s good intentions to improve their society. This minimization of information asymmetry and an increase in mutual dedication to advance each other’s interests are valuable to effective teamwork.
Another benefit of character-based friendships is that one feels the need to maintain a virtuous character to keep the friend. If any participant in the friendship loses his virtues, the friendship will dissolve. Because nobody wants to lose a virtuous friend, people have this incentive to live up to their mutual ethical standards.
Although the ideal character-based friendships are appealing, it has potential issues. Since the establishment of character-based friendship requires the initial measurement of character, there is a reasonable concern that one is ready to love someone else with a better character. This paper will present two constrained scenarios to shed light on what people want from love. Let’s imagine Person A, Person B, and Person C who are all virtuous characters and friends.
The first scenario is 1) C is a more virtuous character than B, A has begun his friendship with B first, and A is equally close to B and C. A common intuition is that A cannot choose who to love based on how well B and C live up to or exceed certain standards. Therefore, A must choose B over C. There are two reasons behind this intuition. The first reason is that friends’ duties to each other not only depend on each other’s character but also the history of the relationship, including when the friendship begins. The second reason is that B and C should have the same moral status in A’s mind because as a virtuous person, A should uphold loyalty and attitudinal impartiality towards friends. Once B and C’s characters have both hit the threshold that makes A consider them virtuous, whether C is a better character is an irrelevant factor in A’s consideration. Person A owes loyalty to B because of its long history of friendship with B, which is the only remaining valid factor that dictates A’s decision. Person A thus should choose B. With similar logic, for the edge case where B and C have become friends with A at the same time, A needs to flip a coin to choose a friend because B and C should carry completely the same weight in A’s mind.
The second scenario, with everything else being the same as the first scenario, has a new condition—A and C must have their friendship to complete a noble cause everyone considers to be of utmost importance (e.g. finding the cure to a deadly disease). Here, A should choose C. The potential positive impact of the sacred mission has placed the friendship between A and C above that between A and B. This choice is aligned with Aristotle’s view that “it is true of the good man too that he does many acts for the sake of his friends and his country, and if necessary dies for them” (8, Book VIII Aristotle). A sufficiently noble end can arguably justify many compromises, including sacrificing one’s personal duties and loyalty to one’s friends.
These two cases reveal that although one may choose who to love based on one’s loyalty and duties towards one’s friends who are already considered virtuous, one may not choose based on their quality of character. Furthermore, one’s devotion to worthy ends may outweigh one’s friendships if not doing so stops one from achieving these ends. Loving a virtuous friend is not the most important among all of one’s noble creative activities. What people want the most from engaging in a relationship of love is not only happiness and personal growth from a good company, but also great creations and legacies that manifest and spread their noble spiritual values.
This is also part of the reason that Aristotle believes it is better to love than to be loved because love is to create, making the lover happier. To love someone makes one feel friendship and love to this person naturally, generating happiness for the lover regardless of whether the loved person reciprocates. The underlying assumption is that humans have a stronger penchant for participating in the activity of creating noble things than for being the recipient of some creation from others; to produce goodness is more enjoyable than to consume goodness. Through various means of loving, one proactively engages in this naturally enjoyable human activity by making someone else’s life better. To love is nobler because one becomes the proactive producer of goodness who takes delight in one’s own productive actions and positive impact on others than a passive consumer who takes delight in merely taking advantage of others. Thus, to merely consume goodness from others is less noble and memorable and thus has less long-lasting enjoyment than creating advantages for others. In other words, to love is to do something noble and virtuous, so it is a more sublime human experience that usually becomes more cherished and enduring.
I agree that love is superior to receive love. Another reason that supports his perspective is that studies have shown that the human brain has evolved to mirror other people’s emotions (Pfeifer). This is why we feel what others feel by observing their behaviors. The studies are strong evidence for Aristotle’s belief that loving creates happiness for the lover too. After helping someone else feel happy through loving action, one also feels happy vicariously, a physiological response that encourages one to keep loving.
Aristotle asserts that friendship is not only important among a few people, but also within an entire community because it is the basis of justice. Friendship fosters the unity of one’s society and reduces the need for a robust criminal justice system. If people are friendly towards each other, there is less need for a third-party system to uphold justice. When people have an incentive to be friendly towards each other because their interests are tied together, they practice justice on each other. Aristotle has pointed out this motivation: “the proverb ‘what friends have is common property’ expresses the truth; for friendship depends on the community” (9, Book VIII Aristotle). If people are good to each other, everyone can cooperate and benefit by enlarging the “common property” (e.g. reclaiming a wasteland). With this goal in mind, people form friendships and naturally follow rules and practice justice on each other. Thus, justice needs friendship to generate order and cohesiveness in society.
I do not believe friendship is a necessary condition for justice in society. Today people are outsourcing many tasks to technology, including enforcing justice. China has a large surveillance system, which identifies citizens who violate the law, provides evidence, and punishes them accordingly. Because modern surveillance and forensic technology can give very thorough evidence on crimes, a powerful criminal justice system can simply carry out the punishment based on factual and scientific data. China has an artificial intelligence program that identifies corrupt government officials and works so well that it is turned off (Chen). It is simple to imagine a more advanced society where justice is enforced, but everyone is a cog in the machine that holds no friendly feelings towards each other. This is achieved with more sophisticated AIs that identify and reward the most productive and law-abiding cogs and correct or discard the “bad” cogs. The citizens will tolerate this system because the AIs serve as a reliable middleman that directs people to promote the “common good.” Justice is enforced for everyone except the controllers of the AIs, who may reward people related to them unjustly. However, the controllers cannot be too corrupt because the more corrupt they are, the more inaccurate the AI algorithms become. To serve their own needs, the controllers will need to alter the AI algorithms, whose ability to judge objectively and reliably are crucial to maintaining the stability of the society.
Citations
Pfeifer, Jennifer H et al. “Mirroring others’ emotions relates to empathy and interpersonal competence in children” NeuroImage vol. 39,4 (2007): 2076-85.
“The Nicomachean Ethics Of Aristotle: David Ross: Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming.” Internet Archive, 1 Jan. 1970, archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.264227/page/n2.
“Is Fraud-Busting AI System Being Turned off for Being Too Efficient?” South China Morning Post, 4 Feb. 2019, www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/2184857/chinas-corruption-busting-ai-system-zero-trust-being-turned-being.
“君子之交淡如水.” 百度百科, 百度, baike.baidu.com/item/君子之交淡如水.
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