Aristotle’s Concept of Friendship
Virtuous or Virtual?

Abstract

Aristotle places friendship squarely within the field of the political. True friendship like a political alliance, requires committed reciprocity and is an activity that operates in the polis. Because friendship occurs in a community of men, it is part of virtuous behaviour, whose end are happiness and the good. Despite the community of men, friendship is only possible with a few others. However, on another level the texts of the Nichomachean and the Eudemian Ethics operate on a dynamic of contrasting and opposite terms such as true friendship and lesser friendship, difference and sameness, form and matter, soul (mind) and body, active and passive, and excellence and nature. These opposites reveal a privileging of one term over the other. This privileging is a triumph of sameness over difference and grounded on assumptions which Aristotle himself thought incontestable.

Some points

When Aristotle begins his discussion on friendship he is working in a certain tradition. This heritage included Homer, the Pre-Socratics, and Plato. The friendship between Achilles and Patroclus in the Iliad is the most famous example in classical literature. Homer does not reflect upon this relationship, nor does he develop it to any great extent.  We are left in abeyance as to its nature; suffice to say that we are compelled to observe how the existence and the destruction of this friendship forcefully and dramatically affect the course of the remaining narrative. The Pre-Socratics tended to see friendship in terms of physical forces. In Empedocles for example, like attracts like, and this operation in the universe is true of all things, including the attraction between two human beings.  In the dialogue Lysis, Plato explores the nature of friendship, and as in many of his earlier dialogues, the question as to what friendship is, is left unresolved. We discover only what it is not. In Plato’s Lysis if someone is good then there is no need of friendships, because the good man is independent of this need. If he needs friendship it is in order to dispel the evil that is obstructing his attainment of the good. Friendship is a means through which to become good. Hence having become good, friendship is no longer needed. This circular argument leads the dialogue into a negative conclusion. Nevertheless we have proceeded from a description of an unconscious activity, which people call friendship, to a theorising of this activity. Aristotle continues along this path, but he grounds his discussion in praxis; friendship belongs to practical reason, which allows us to see it in a more flexible light than had Plato. 

In modern times we speak about and debate ethical issues. Unlike these modern discussions, which focus on issues such as abortion, euthanasia, the death penalty etc., the Greeks related ethics to the good, to happiness (which an American academic more aptly translates as a flourishing), and to a virtuous way of life.  

The word in Greek for friendship is philia (filia), and it covers a greater area than our term. There is philia between mother and baby or ruler and subject. This extensive area may include natural phenomena, or a social and financial contract such as that between a creditor and a debtor. However, the word for friend,  philos (filia) is more restrictive in its application and is roughly equivalent to our term. This creates some anomaly and confusion in Aristotle’s discussion as he crosses from one term to another, and it betrays a weakness in his argument. 

Lastly, the discussion proceeds from an investigation into the nature of friendship to an investigation into the formation of the self.  I will examine Aristotle’s thoughts on the kinds of friendships that exist, the characteristics of these friendships, and how he views a friend as a second self.  Such a view I will argue is an attempt to neutralise an irreducible difference in the text that may have been a blind spot for Aristotle. This incorporation of other into sameness sets up a particular hierarchy. This hierarchy privileges a certain type of subjectivity, which opens the conditions and possibilities of our tradition of the subject. Though locating this subjectivity within the field of activity, and hence praxis, Aristotle defeats his own purpose by constructing a certain kind of primary friendship which paradoxically begins with the virtuous but ends up with the virtual.

Discussion

Aristotle believes that in their activities people can have three aims in mind: pleasure, utility or the good. In the beginning of Book 8 of the Nichomachean Ethics, he claims that friendship is an activity with these same three aims. People are friends because they find his/her friends useful, pleasant or good and virtuous. In the case of utility, friends are made on the basis of a real or perceived advantage to one or both of the friends. Aristotle gives the example of two people involved in commercial exchanges, or between two old men who provide one another with mutual support in coping with their old age. With pleasure on the other hand, friends seek and/or attain pleasure from one another. This time the example is of two lovers, but a friendship based on pleasure is by no means restricted to an erotic relationship. Such a friendship covers a wide area, and can simply include, the pleasure of conversing with one another. If friendship is based on the good, each friend likes/loves the other for the other’s sake, given that the other is a virtuous man. In this relationship it is the essential person who is liked. This love of virtue is natural and is an end in itself. Virtue itself is a disposition to act rightly, and the friendship between two people enhances such a disposition.

If all activities aim at pleasure, utility or the good, friendship as an activity also has these same three aims. Hence we have three different kinds of friendships. Every effort is taken to make the friendships of pleasure and utility different in kind from that of the good, but Aristotle also admits that such differences are differences of degree. Otherwise, why call all three relationships friendships. Aristotle argues that the friendships of pleasure and utility resemble that of the good. The real difference is that pleasure and utility are incidental and extrinsic, by which Aristotle means that they are not sought for their own sake, but for an ulterior end. On the other hand, we desire the good for its own sake. This does not mean that use, pleasure and the good are mutually exclusive. If one like/loves a friend for his own sake, one can and supposedly should find the friendship pleasurable and useful. But if the good is the true end of the friendship, then there is more chance for a lasting friendship to develop. Aristotle calls the friendship based on the good primary friendship. The other two kinds of friendships are mere approximations of this primary friendship. 

It will suffice at this point to list what is required to form a primary friendship:

•	Time: true friends must have spent a considerable amount of time being together.
•	Habituation: in being together, friends must be used to one another’s company. Only thus can true intimacy be found.
•	Trust.
•	Justice: Aristotle argues that friendship is prior to justice, for true friends would not need justice. Nevertheless he includes it as a requirement supposedly, because when any kind of exchange takes place, fairness is important.  
•	Choice: people must of their own accord choose their friends.
•	Good will.
•	Reciprocity: this ties in with good will. The friend must be able to return in kind what one gives or feels for the other.
•	Equality: Aristotle is at great pain to stress that in primary friendships, equality or an attempt to create equality is necessary. In fact, the three kinds of friendships can each be subdivided into two: the equal and the unequal ones. Aristotle devotes much space in his discussion to unequal relationships, and how it is the duty of the friend who is in an inferior state to make up the difference. For example, a subject must make sure he gives more to his ruler, or a son his father.

But the exploration on the nature of true friendship is not left at that. The two friends who have established a true friendship like one another qua virtuous people, both seeking the good for each other. But before such a friendship can succeed, the formation of character is necessary. Virtue is essential in this formation. The word for character in Greek is hexis, and it has the meaning of a unified entity. From its primary meaning of a having, it came to mean a being in a certain state, a permanent condition, and for our purposes an acquired habit of acting. A true self is formed by such a habit. A wicked person does not have a true self because there is no hexis. Therefore, the possession of a self depends on how one behaves morally. The discussion of friendship in Aristotle has this formation of the true self as its end. And we come to realise why virtue is so important, it is through virtue that we establish a practice or habit, which harmonises our self. Where do we locate this self? It was a common Greek idea that the soul was tripartite. It was the nature of the rational part of the soul to control the other two irrational parts. This is the noetic element that allows us to perform intellectual activities. And we can see why hexis as a permanent condition of integration is so vital. It means that the rational part of the soul maintains its control by its deliberate function. In the formation of friendship a good self will seek another good self exactly like it, in other words it will seek the same. This is what may be behind the mysterious phrase in Book 9 that a true friend is another self. The Greek word autos translated as self has the connotation of sameness. At this point Aristotle does not mean by the phrase … a self as one self or like one self, but a self exactly like oneself so as to be indistinguishable and the same entity. It is the actualisation of that essential nature through the practice of moral virtue that in the main prepares individuals for primary friendship and enables them to become the other selves of virtuous partners. (Stern-Gillet 73). If two friends have perfectly integrated selves, their shared friendship will make them the same. And this indeed seems to be the goal of a true friendship. Today we may admire friends for their unique characteristics, not Aristotle. But there is a last step that we must consider: consciousness.

True friends who participate in primary friendship not only associate with one another as friends, but they must have a perception of their active friendship, and they must reflect on what is good for their partners. There is no primary friendship without an awareness of that very friendship, and true friends being aware (aesthesis) of such an activity, think it desirable and able to be chosen (hairete). 

This awareness (or this perception, a closer translation of the Greek word aesthesis) is a necessary condition for the activity of perfect friendship and happiness. Here in the text we see the opening of a subjectivity that has arisen from the dynamics of opposites, in Wittgenstein’s term, a language game. This awareness favours the sense of sight. It is the major sense through which we perceive and experience the object of our love. These conditions of the gazer and the gazed foreshadow to a great extent the history of the subject. For the subject to be a fulfilled subject it must see its object within its orbit and its range, it must perhaps capture what is desirable, preferable and chosen through the will. This configuration of a strict dualism leads to a determination of friendship into a two-way relationship between subject and object. Under Aristotle’s scheme, multiple friendships must be sequential, you must take one friendship at a time, and each friendship must have its determined space. Thus subject and object as they have been configured contain a gap, and it is this gap that is the condition from which to launch a discussion on friendship, its friendship-ability so to speak. Aristotle proceeds to privilege active friendship. Since the subject is identified with the active, and the subject is aware, then awareness is active participation. And since in this scheme the subject in a sense is prior to its object, it is in a superior position to it, and the relationship between a true subject and a true object is unequal. True friendship cannot tolerate such inequality. In primary friendship in fact, both friends must be aware, both friends must be active, and both friends must be manifestations of subjectivity. In this equal, perfect and primary friendship, each friend is the mirror image of the other, each is turned into a simulacrum, in which objectivity is effaced by an act of assimilation and appropriation into the same. This presentation of a pure reflectivity in turn, functions as an attempt to close the very gap, which the text has opened, and to counter the operation of difference. The prejudice toward the same, which in reality is a prejudice toward the rational part of the soul, is a desire to bring regulation into chaos and to reduce everything into one order, into one unmoved mover. But once the breach has occurred, it can never again be closed. The breach is the medium of the text itself, and the words in this medium, which bind and separate the subject from the object. Language itself operates by means of this breach; it is indeed how it means. Language itself as difference creates the possibilities (or the illusion) of an achievable perfect friendship. However, it is ironic that such an operation of language never allows the same to be brought into our presence. In primary friendship the two friends are insubstantial, they are shadows cast by an irreducible difference that can never be neutralised. They are an absent present.

Aristotle wants primary friendship to be both an activity undertaken for its own sake, but also an end that fulfils that activity. That is why primary friendship as the perfect friendship must be atemporal in that it is a concept and a blueprint, and temporal in that it takes time to form. It must also last a lifetime. The activity that is the good for humanity and constitutes happiness is not an isolated moment but extend over a lifetime. It also contains its end (unlike the end of a craftsman’s activity) internally: it is an activity in accordance with virtue and thus needs no external justification. Once we conquer time through the establishment of a primary friendship in time, why do we need friendship at all? And let us remember that friendship is a need. The outside, the other as other, who is our dear friend, must be like us in order to be assimilated to our internal self. The outside as with difference must be neutralised. This paradox of opposites cannot be overcome. Here we are taken aback by the necessity that language imposes on Aristotle, how it determines and delimits subjectivity as the inside, as a controlling and authoritative principle that is however constantly in danger of being undermined by the outside. The pair internal/external is one in a series of a number of pairs that metaphorically configure human life by privileging one activity over another, and then regarding the one as more virtuous. For example, by the inner self is meant the rational part of the soul, by the rational part of the soul is meant habit, and by habit is meant virtuous activity as defined by a certain value system. This sets up a contradiction in the argument, or at the least another pair of opposites. Although friendship is natural, it can only be acquired through conditioning.

However, Aristotle is never able to do away with the external world because the internal operates within it, and reaches outside toward the object of its desire. The active reaches the passive, the what-is-to-be-acted upon, but only so as to master the other. Hence the active (to philein) is always preferred to, and is placed in a superior vantage point from the passive (to phileisthai). The most significant consequence of such a pairing of opposites is that the soul (the intellectual activities) is seen as active, as spirit enlivening the inert and passive mass, which is in fact the body. This division will have a long history that chooses to schematise the world in terms of force and matter.

End Remarks

Aristotle’s discussion of friendship ends by defeating its own purpose. Although he places the activity of friendship well within the bounds of practical reason, and inside the broader framework of the political, the insistence on a perfect friendship as true friendship produces an unachievable goal. The process of assimilation into the same falls into a kind of barrenness. One is reminded of Ovid’s Narcissus in the Metamorphoses, who fell in love with his own image. With his eyes fixed on this image, Narcissus is paralysed. Love in sameness is inactive and unproductive. The same can never be reached or touched. Meanwhile he rejects the surrounding world of the nymph Echo, a world enriched by the interplay of the different senses. Ironically Aristotle thought of friendship as an activity, but it ends up being a non-activity. His virtuous friendship, like the barren love of Narcissus, is transformed into a virtual friendship. 

But I also want to give the text its full due. It has opened the possibility of the self to reflect upon itself in a certain way. This reflection indicates that the self can be seen both as subject and object, and that the self has a certain relationship to itself. This relationship between the self as subject and the self as object can become a source of intentionality for consciousness. Hence Aristotle’s discussion has deepened the idea of the self.