It
may not be exciting to hear that a philosopher has decided to boil
down friendship to virtue. We conceive of friendship as a set of rich
and diverse experiences, as different as the friends that accompany
us throughout the course of our lifetime. But then again, to delve
into Aristotle's theory of friendship is to discover how deep and
meaningful those bonds can be. It is no surprise that Aristotle's
treatment of friendship in Nicomachean Ethics subordinates this
relationship to the great goal at the heart of the book: the
development of a valuable capable human being in possession of a full
set of virtues. The purpose that friends serve is to develop,
reinforce virtues in their companions as well as to support the
practice of already acquired virtues.
What Qualifies as a Genuine Friendship
The downside of Aristotle's
seeing such enormous value in terms of what friends can offer to each
other is that relationships that do not fulfill these high standards are
viewed as substandard. Let's imagine the situation of a person who
regularly meets with his friend to hear the latter engage in humorous
discussion about his
family and the various conflicts and dilemmas he
faces in his interactions with it. Now suppose this person finds all
of the stories regarding his friend's family entertaining, funny, or
just interesting for whatever reason. Despite listening to these
stories on a repeated basis, the person does not offer his friend any
advice on how to deal with his family. Aristotle would conceive of
this relationship as an unsatisfying friendship. The listening friend
in this case is simply deriving pleasure from his friend's presence;
however, he is not doing anything to help his friend develop or
exercise virtue. The friend receives no advice as to how best handle
or resolve a conflict in a virtuous way so that he can become a more
virtuous person.
In
fact, Aristotle defines a genuine friendship in terms of the very
factor missing in the case described above: loving the person for
their own sake and acting to promote their good. Promoting someone's
good and well-being regardless of the benefits accrued to oneself is
the true test of a friendship. This is of course has the side effect
of excluding very casual friendships/acquaintances. The two buddies
that always go bowling together and share that as their most frequent
common activity are as far from Aristotle's criterion of friendship
as possible. Because, if one of the two was acting as a true friend,
he would have been able to have enough insight into his companion's
needs and wants to propose other activities that would be of more
benefit to him. Perhaps he would accompany his friend to the mall to
help him pick out a birthday present for his wife when her birthday
was coming up. Of course, one other case that doesn't qualify is
two acquaintances that do mutual favors for each other. One does
small repairs for the other one, while the other one may invite him
to a party or bring some valuable presents to compensate him for his
labor. Aristotle would say that the relationship above is based on
considerations of usefulness. It is perhaps even more of a limited
friendship than the one based on pleasure/entertainment. In the case
of the listening friend, at least he had enough sense of his
companion's issues in life that he could have potentially taken the
steps to help his friend deal with them in a virtuous way. In
this case, no such possibility exists as the friends have only a
vague sense of what they could do to advance each other’s good.
Friendship with Yourself as a Model for Friendship with Others
According to Aristotle, in order for a genuine friendship to take
place, where each person loves the other for the other's sake and is
willing to promote the other person's good, four conditions must be
satisfied: assistance, joy, association, and sympathy. When
combined with his idea that friendship is essentially derived from
self-love that is applied to another whom we treat as valuable as
ourselves, we begin to understand what he takes to be an authentic friendship. It
is simply the work of self-development and self-reflection extended
to another person. Nowadays, many of us would be able to validate
this claim for the parent-child or teacher-student relationship, but
Aristotle's application of it to the domain of friendship may seem
out of place for some. (Parents and closely-involved teachers or
mentors are often intimately involved in the lives of children and
offer guidance to the younger ones with the view of fostering their
personal growth and coping skills.)
Aristotle defines the work of
self-development and self-reflection within the self so as to show
that the four ways that one can be a friend to others are dependent
on the four ways one can be a friend to oneself. Self-assistance is
the work of the practical reason part of our personality guiding the
irrational/animal-like part so that its actions are wise. Think here of an
athlete or a warrior whose competitive and warlike instinct and
desire is shaped by the strategy he has learned over the years so
that above and beyond his physical prowess and superb intuition, he
is also equipped with techniques and principles to channel his more
primitive side to employ tactics and maneuvers. Self-joy is the pleasure
that the self takes in its own existence with the self being identified with its
rational part. It is the affirmation
of the self as the good self, a self that exerts control over its
animal/irrational part. Self-association is one's ability to
identify with his earlier self's thoughts and therefore analyze the
previous self's perceptions, motivations, and ideas. Self-sympathy is the primive/animal part of the self's ability to feel the same pleasures and pains that his rational
part does. This ability cannot be taken for granted; in giving a
present to someone or preparing someone his or her favorite dish, you
cannot assume that the irrational/emotional part will respond with
joy at the rational/practical reason's idea of being generous.
(That's why it's not unusual to see a kid angry at sharing a toy
even if he has a huge collection of them.)
How Self-Love is Extended to a Friend
You
also cannot take for granted that any of these four features present
in self-love can be equally offered to our "other self" in
a commitment of friendship. However, self-love as defined above is an
important requirement in order to be able to be a good friend. For
one, the ability to identify your own needs and to promote them will
allow you to take this skill practiced on the self and extend it to
the other by perceiving his or her needs and helping him or her to reflect
and act upon them. So to be a good friend requires spending time with
another person to be able to identify their developmental needs
(association1), to genuinely care about their emotional travails and
tribulations (sympathy) to be therefore motivated enough to take
actions to help them achieve a virtuous life (assistance - wishing
and helping the accomplishment of the good.) Watching the friend
shape his life according to the principles of wisdom should equally
inspire enormous satisfaction at an accomplished being in the full
possession of his powers, at his developmental peak, much like one
would be proud to see a sapling become a towering full-grown tree.
(Aristotle is a teleological philosopher who was fascinated by
biology and the way it assured the development of life. He marveled
at how the whole blueprint for a plant is contained in its seed, its fully developed form already given to it at the very beginning. He saw life as a
progression of a frail and limited biological entity towards a mature
one with more functions and powers.)
But
the most interesting implication of extending your self-love to other
people, making them a recipient of as much love and care as the self,
is that the beneficiary of this act of apparently selfless generosity
is as much the giver as the receiver. Why would the elderly former
athlete, far from the peak of his career, analyze a younger athlete's
game and give him tips on how to play better? Why would a scientist,
many years after the discoveries that brought him into the spotlight,
help out graduate students with their research projects that will
bring them credit and renown but not him? Why would a grandmother,
visiting a young mother, talk with her about her routine and give her
the benefit of her own experience? Because, as Aristotle says,
personal development is satisfying even beyond the self. After years
of joys and sorrows at developing our own coping skills and
strategies, we take pleasure in tuning into the joys and sorrows of
others and helping them develop their coping strategies. We feel joys
at their victories and sadness at their defeats. We are at the
sidelines but we cheer them on and give them pointers. It's quite
selfish after all. We perceive situations and circumstances, reflect
upon strategies, and care about the developments. The self lives
through the other. That very phrase reveals the paradox at the heart
of friendship. The commitment to the other is both a self-sacrifice
and a self-expansion. Through his generosity to a friend, a person
redirects a part of his time and soul to tending to the interests of
a third party. However, this strong identification and involvement
with the third party turns it into "an other self" so that the
developmental accomplishments, emotional experiences, and joys of the
original self come to encompass those of the friend.
1.) The point of association is to spend time with the other person in order to be able to get an insight into how he or she perceives and thinks about life. Whatever you do with a friend at any moment is accompanied by his or her perception that is articulated by actions or words.
Works Cited:
Pakaluk, Michael. Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Cambridge Introductions to Key Philosophical Texts Ser.
Note: Given that the source cited is but one of many interpretations of Aristotle, it is expected that other scholars would advance diverging opinions.