The Classic Statement: Aristotle
The word philia is made to do express duty for the sentiment of friendship in Plato’s Lysis, but it also – as noted in passing in the Introduction – meant much more, embracing family ties and even socio-political ones. Plato’s usage seems to have secured it to friendship for the philosophical debate, however, for in the eighth and ninth books of the Nicomachean Ethics it is philia – and along with it an identification of the qualities that attract people into friendship with each other, ‘lovables’ or phileta – which is used to denote the sentiment of friendship. But in passing Aristotle applies it in the conventional way not just to family members but to travellers from foreign parts, and says that it exists even among the birds and beasts.1 Convergence in attitudes and aims of the kind that keeps cities together ‘seems to be similar, in a way, to friendship’, he says, which is why political action is aimed at achieving it.2
This was no idle remark. The Nicomachean Ethics precedes the Politics for good reason. ‘Society depends on friendship,’ Aristotle says there; ‘after all, people will not even take a journey in common with their enemies.’3 He says ‘philia is the motive of society’,4 and that it is even more important than justice because it is what promotes concord in the city.5
Aristotle describes friendship as an ‘excellence’, and essential to the living of a good and worthwhile life. Even those – indeed, perhaps especially those – who have wealth or power need friends, he says, for how otherwise would they be able to show beneficence, or protect their wealth and position, which are more at risk the greater they are? Moreover, ‘in poverty and all other kinds of misfortune people think of their friends as their only refuge’.6 And friends help each other; they help the young to learn, they care for the old, and encourage those in their prime to behave finely.
So far these remarks imply that friendship is useful and, correlatively, an acknowledgement of deficiencies in need of being supplied. But although these commonplaces are true, they do not get to the nub of the matter. What is the nature of the friendship that serves these purposes, and are these purposes all that there is to friendship? And what is or could be the highest, best or most distinctive aspect of it? Aristotle mentions the ‘disputes’ that arise in efforts to answer these questions, with some saying that friendship is a matter of like attracting like, while others argue that it arises in the mutual attraction of opposites – both of them familiar and conventional views in competition with each other, and which Aristotle’s own succinct definition – ‘a man becomes a friend when he is loved and returns that love and this is recognised by both men in question’ – by itself leaves open.7 To clarify matters, Aristotle says, we should instead begin by asking ‘what is it that is loved?’ What are the phileta or ‘lovables’?
There are three phileta, he says, and they are what is useful, what is pleasing, and what is excellent. These correlate to three kinds of friends: those who are friends with each other because of the advantages gained by being so, those who are friends with each other because of the pleasure it brings them to be so, and those who are friends with each other because they ‘resemble each other in excellence’ and love each other because of ‘what the other is’.8 This last, he says, is the truest and highest kind of friendship.
The friendships of utility and pleasure are incidental affairs, easily ended when the utility or pleasure evaporates, as in their nature they are all too prone to do.9 This is clear in the case of the pleasure-based friendships of the young, who live by emotion and seek immediate gratification in what lies close to hand; and they are erotically inclined, says Aristotle, which adds to the propensity for quick beginnings and endings, especially in those youthful friendships.10
Friendship between virtuous people – people who are good without qualification; good in themselves – is lasting and complete. Utility and pleasure are comprehended in this friendship, but they are not constitutive of it; its constitutive aspects lie in the fact that it is the friendship of people who are alike in virtue, and who wish good things for each other both because these things are good in themselves and because each is recognised by the other as good in himself. The friendship between them ‘lasts so long as they are good, and excellence is something lasting’.11 Desiring the good for the other is eunoia, ‘goodwill’ (the English term ‘benevolence’ derives from the Latin cognate).
A problem implicit in the nature of friendship thus conceived, from Aristotle’s own point of view, is that it is not going to be achieved by many, for there are too few people with a sufficient degree of virtue and eunoia to make it general.12 At one point, indeed, Aristotle seems to think that his account offers such an idealised and demanding portrait of friendship that it could never be realised in practice: ‘Friends! there is no friend!’ he despairingly says. If it were thought that goodwill is sufficient for friendship, not merely necessary, the problem would be resolved; but goodwill is not itself friendship, since people can have good will towards those who are not friends; rather, it is the starting point of friendship and, as with like-mindedness, a concomitant of it.13
Aristotle famously then says that ‘[a person] is to his friend as he is to himself, for his friend is another self’.14 We can therefore read off the attributes of friendship from the concern that an individual has for himself. The self-respecting person
wishes for what is good for himself, and what appears good, and he does it (for it is a mark of a good person to work hard at what is good), and for his own sake (he does it for the sake of the thinking element of himself, which is what each of us is thought to be). He also wishes himself to live and be kept safe, and most of all that with which he understands, since to the good person existing is something good, and each of us wishes good things for himself.15
The typical features of friendship derived from these ways that people relate to themselves include, he says, the following: we wish good to ourselves, to be safe, to spend time with ourselves, to have pleasant memories, to have good hopes for the future, to have materials for thoughtful reflection, and to ‘share his grief and his pleasures with himself’.16 Because a friend is another self, we wish all these things for him too.
Much is made of the ‘another self’ claim in subsequent treatments of friendship, and indeed most of the discussions, all the way to Montaigne, appear to concentrate on this remark above all the other things Aristotle says in a long and complex discussion of the varieties of friendship and why the friendship of virtuous equals is best. Yet the remark is almost parenthetical, and the context of discussion has as much to do with the appropriateness of proper self-love as it does with defining the meaning of ‘friend’. In my view the overemphasis on Aristotle’s ‘another self’ phrase in all the subsequent history of discussion about friendship has been the single most distorting aspect in our understanding of it, for the very good reason that it has to be part of the voluntary obligations attached to being a good friend to accept the differences between oneself and one’s friend – which involves giving one’s friend space to have some interests and tastes different from one’s own, and to agree to disagree about some things.
The point about self-love is a significant one, for it is obvious that if the highest form of friendship is mutuality between people of excellent character, then the self-cultivation and self-mastery required for excellence of character require, just as they lead to, self-respect. When both parties to a friendship have this attitude to themselves, and regard the other as entitled to the same consideration as they give themselves, then the relationship is, as it should be, complete.
The point is therefore no different, except in expression, from saying that a real friend is one who feels what she does for her friend for her friend’s own sake. She does not like or love her because of what she can get from the relationship or because it happens for the time being to be enjoyable; these are the incomplete or imperfect friendships which are not destined to last. Reciprocity is another feature: true friends think and feel the same way about each other, something made possible by the fact that their relationships are based on virtue – each party to the relationship is a virtuous person, and each recognises and loves this fact about the other. And this is further to say that the best kind of friendship is based on character, and moreover the best kind of character, which is the reason – in Aristotle’s view – for its relative rarity.
As mentioned, Aristotle does not restrict the use of ‘friendship’ to denote only those relationships where mutual benevolence felt for the other’s intrinsic sake is its basis, because he is practical enough to recognise that relationships based on utility and pleasure are types of friendship too, just as are kin relations and amicable transactions with foreigners. But they are not ‘complete’ – that is the point; and in not being so, they are far less likely to endure, and are of lower intrinsic value.
Recall that Aristotle thinks that friendship is an essential constituent of the good life and the happiness that characterises it – eudaimonia.The question therefore arises whether only the highest kind of friendship is such a constituent, or can the incomplete kinds also serve? It is clear from Aristotle’s opening discussion about how we need friends in order to exercise our beneficence and secure help in times of need that friendship as such, not necessarily or only the highest form of it, is a desideratum.
The characteristic streak of pragmatism in Aristotle is at work here. Earlier in the Nicomachean Ethics he remarks that making a contribution to society is of as much importance to being virtuous as anything we do or achieve in the private realm: at one point he says it is finer to benefit the city at large than to make one other person happy.17 This thought does not quite contradict, but nevertheless sits at an angle to, the idea that friendship is ‘necessary to life’ for the reasons given at the outset of his discussion of the subject. But because the quest of the good is an overriding one, it would surely seem that anything that conduces to eudaimonia has equal value to anything else thus conducive. The resounding claim at the outset of Aristotle’s writing on ethics is that the good is that at which all things aim, the thing which is intrinsically desirable and to which all other positive things aim.18 If friendship is integral to the good life, and the good is the ultimate aim, then friendship – an individual and private thing – has at least as great a significance as civic contribution; and that really does seem to resist the claim that it is ‘finer and more godlike’ to advance the interests of one’s city than to make another person happy.
The point can be differently made. By eudaimonia Aristotle meant an activity, not a state or quality. In the first book of the Nicomachean Ethics he defines it as ‘the activity of the mind deriving from virtue,’ remembering that ‘virtue’ means ‘excellence’.19 The activity in question is what expresses and fulfils the highest and most distinctive attribute of human beings, which is their capacity to be rational. Rationality enables them to work out what the courageous, temperate, generous, modest or (generally) right thing is to do in a given circumstance, by identifying the middle course between extremes constituting the vices opposite to those virtues: for example, rashness or cowardice on either side of courage, meanness or profligacy on either side of generosity. The development and application of practical wisdom – phronesis – enable one to steer that middle path, thus to be virtuous, and thus to live a life of eudaimonia.
But for all that Aristotle’s pragmatism and common sense are here fully on display, this view does not represent the terminus of his case. In the first pages of the Nicomachean Ethics he identifies three kinds of life: the life of pleasure, the life of virtuous activity on behalf of one’s community (the political life), and the contemplative philosophical life, devoted to grasping the ultimate nature of things.20 From what he says of the highest and most distinctive thing about human beings, namely their possession of rationality, one can readily infer which of these lives is in his view best, and which therefore is most fully eudaimonic. And although such a life might be enhanced by having friends with whom to exchange ideas about supreme and final questions, the clear implication is that philosophical contemplation is a solitary and detached activity.
The observation that the best is the enemy of the good might seem to apply rather squarely to Aristotle’s account. He is surely right to say that a life without friends would, at very least, be an impoverished one, and for the reasons that he begins by noting: that without friends we have no field for the exercise of beneficence, no helpers and supporters in times of need, no bond that keeps communities together, no teachers of the young or carers of the old, no encouragers to virtue for those in the prime of life. Yet there is more to the matter: if friendly sentiments can be felt towards strangers as well as kin, and if even animals can be friends to their own kind, then friendship has a strong claim to being essential simpliciter, not ‘essential for’ something else – intrinsic as a value, not instrumental. This is expressly what Aristotle’s best kind of friendship is intended to be.
However, although this view is consistent with the idea that there are ‘lower’ forms of friendship predicated on mutual pleasure or usefulness, a question arises whether the fact that a friend is a ‘good in itself’ for the other friend (this being mutual) is consistent with the ‘good for oneself’ of loving that friend. Since the latter is instrumental in conducing to one’s own good, it is inconsistent with the austere conception of treating the other as a good in himself without any instrumental benefit to oneself. Is this a problem? It would be the most strained kind of purism to argue that the best kind of friendship must be such that its defining features are irrelevant to the welfare of the parties to it considered individually, not least because this would require us to regard a friendship as an independently existing abstraction. But as an important component of the good life it is, obviously, good for the friend that he is a friend, not merely in being the object of the disinterested love of his friend, but in himself loving his friend disinterestedly likewise. If the relationship is mutual, each party is both an agent and a patient of the process; so there can be no inconsistency between treating the other as a good in himself and one’s loving him as a good for oneself as well as him.
There is room in Aristotle’s conception of eudaimonia for regarding the activity of being a friend not merely as a conductor to the highest good but as part of what is constitutive of the highest good. That is surely what ‘being essential’ is. But if so there is a different tension in Aristotle’s view, one that serves as a ground for rejecting the idea that contemplation is exclusively the highest good. If eudaimonia is an activity, and if the highest quality of such activity consists in solitary contemplation of ultimate things, friendship would not be essential to it; but friendship is essential to the good life. Aristotle cannot have it both ways. The ‘solitary contemplation of the highest good’ is reminiscent of the impractical ideality of Plato’s views, with which Aristotle’s more pragmatic temper is so often at odds. Here therefore we see a residue of Plato’s influence on his former pupil, creating an inconsistency.
But the active sense of friendship as an essential feature of eudaimonia seems to me to trump Aristotle’s add-on view of the highest good as the solitary contemplation of abstractions. Moreover if we were to accept his own view that promoting concord in the city is a ‘finer and more godlike thing’ than personal friendship, then given that this is an even more practical and social activity, yet further removed from the anchoritic distance of contemplation, we see that the tension between these two aspects of his view is unsustainable.
Aristotle’s immediate successors in the debate were unsurprisingly more taken by the significance of the personal bond than any suggestion of its subordination to a putatively higher ethereal end, for after all the realities and practicalities of life make friendship a down-to-earth business, with laughter and food and wine, and activities like helping each other move furniture when necessary, as ordinary accompaniments. It was the Christian thinkers who reverted to a more ethereal aspect of the view, for like Aristotle in his metaphysical mood they had transcendental fish to fry.
In fastening on Aristotle’s ‘another self’ remark as his defining view of what is meant by ‘friend’, almost all later contributors to the discussion found themselves in considerable agreement about the nature of friendship. As already noted, this in my view is a mistake. But Aristotle himself was not as wedded to the ‘another self’ notion as his successors made him seem. The idea of seeing friendship as a relationship in important part predicated on wishing the good, and promoting the good, for one’s friend, and of this itself contributing to the good of one’s own life, is surely part of what we have to mean by friendship, and although it seems, once it is explicitly stated, an obvious enough insight, it is too central to be treated as merely implicit.