Thinking about Friendship

Historical and Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives

Damian Caluori

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781349434473, 9781137003980
• eBook ISBN: 9781137003997
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

It's hard to imagine a good life without friends. But why is friendship so valuable? What is friendship at all? What unites friends and distinguishes them from others? Is the preference given to friends rationally and morally justifiable? This collection examines answers given by classic philosophers and offers new answers by contemporary thinkers.

Part I

The Nature of Friendship

1

Aristotle’s Notion of Friendship

Spyros Benetatos

Philia, the Greek word for friendship, characterizes a wide field of human relationships (much broader than the field designated by the corresponding terms of modern European languages), including family bonds and even political relationships. In fact, Aristotle, whose inquiries into friendship are probably the best known in the history of Western philosophy, maintains that friendship characterizes every human association. In the two long essays dealing with friendship (Nicomachean Ethics Books VIII and IX and Eudemian Ethics Book VII), Aristotle attempts to support this thesis by claiming that, while there are various cases of friendship based on a variety of human relationships, all of them should still be understood in relation to a primary or central form of friendship: the intimate relationship between two (or very few) virtuous men, in which each one constitutes a good per se for the other – a case akin to our own current idea of friendship.¹ But what is the specific conception of friendship that supports this idea? Moreover, why does Aristotle decide that the study of an intimate personal relationship and the study of a feature which (in a variety of forms) characterizes every human association belong to the very same inquiry? It seems to me that an answer to these questions would also explain one further issue, namely that of the philosophical importance that Aristotle attributes to friendship. In what follows, I will deal with these questions, focusing mainly on the initial chapters of the two essays that present a general theory of friendship.²

As both the Nicomachean and the Eudemian essays attest, the issue of the nature of friendship is closely related to that of its scope. For Aristotle’s conception is based on the claim that friendship is not of one form but that there are rather three forms of friendship that do not belong to a common genus. Instead, they are related to one another in a rather complicated way, which is why the investigation into the nature of friendship has to account for this diversity at a rather early stage.

In both writings, Aristotle deals with this complexity by proceeding in three steps:³ In a first step (1) he claims that objects of love are goods in three different ways: an object of love is loved as a good per se, as useful or as pleasant. Subsequently, (2) he proposes a basic account of friendship and, claiming that this account holds for all three kinds of objects of love, (3) he concludes that there are three corresponding kinds of friendship. In a fourth step, (4) he distinguishes a primary⁴ kind of friendship, where friends constitute goods per se, from imperfect kinds and focuses on its essential features. Finally, (5) he discusses the relation that links the three kinds of friendship to one another.

Although the same logical procedure is followed in both essays, the two expositions differ significantly in regard to three basic issues, namely the basic account of friendship (step 2), the theory of the primary kind of friendship (step 4) and the kind of link that relates the three kinds of friendship to one another (step 5). These are the three crucial issues on which I will focus in what follows.

1 The basic account of friendship

1.1 The Nicomachean approach

I shall first discuss the Nicomachean version of the basic account of friendship because I believe that the problems inherent in that version will help us realize the challenge that Aristotle’s approach provides.

This account is preceded by a discussion of the three sorts of good (the good per se, the useful and the pleasant) (EN 1155b17–27). It consists of three features and is developed in a diaeretic way (EN 1155b27–56a5). The first feature is disinterested well-wishing: a friend wishes the other well for the other’s sake and not for his own. Second, in friendship both persons involved have this attitude towards each other. Finally, among the relationships of mutual disinterested well-wishing, friendship is the one in which each person is aware of the other’s disinterested attitude towards him. Thus, two persons are friends when they both express disinterested well-wishing towards each other and when they are aware of each other’s attitude.

Since in the preceding discussion on the objects of love Aristotle repeatedly referred to the friend’s ‘loving’ (philein), it has been correctly remarked that, according to Aristotle, disinterested well-wishing is the particular sort of loving that characterizes friendship (Cooper 1976/7, p. 621). This idea seems less striking if we consider the fact that philein is a loose term as compared to the English term ‘loving’; very often it can be simply translated as ‘liking’. It is important to observe that in this context Aristotle focuses on the friend as someone who loves: the essential property of the friend is thus his attitude and not, as at the beginning of the discussion, the fact that he constitutes some sort of good for his friend.

It is reasonable to expect that the two aspects of the friend, his loving attitude and the good that he constitutes for his friend, should be somehow related. Indeed, the presentation of this account is followed by the remark that the cause of the attitude of the friends towards each other is the sort of good that the friend constitutes as an object of love, whether he constitutes a good per se, or something pleasant or useful (EN 1156a4–5). Obviously, Aristotle aims at establishing a link between the account just presented and the initial step of the inquiry. However, his attempt to relate disinterested well-wishing to the good that the friend constitutes causes a serious difficulty, which is most evident in the secondary kinds of friendship: how can we claim that one’s attitude towards someone else consists in disinterested well-wishing, while, at the same time, we claim that a friend of this sort has this attitude in view of the utility or the pleasure that he derives from the other?

It seems to me that the only possible way to avoid a contradiction is to adopt a well-known interpretation that has been proposed by John Cooper (Cooper 1976/7). According to Cooper, the goodness, the pleasantness or the usefulness of the friend should be understood simply as the psychological causes that create the positive disinterested attitude towards him and crucially not as a goal pursued. Thus, the three sorts of good that friends constitute function as efficient and not as final causes.⁵

Cooper’s proposal avoids a contradiction and seems to me to be the only reasonable way to associate the above account of friendship with the three sorts of good that friends constitute for one another. However, this interpretation turns out to be quite alien to an Aristotelian understanding of the good. There are two reasons for this.

First, the interpretation of the good as an efficient cause contradicts not only basic tenets of Aristotle’s practical philosophy, but also of his overall philosophic conception. For, according to Aristotle, the final cause is the only sort of cause that the good can constitute.⁶

Secondly, Aristotle believes that human activities must be understood as necessarily having some goal, which must be conceived of as some sort of good, as we already know from the initial lines of the Nicomachean Ethics.⁷ Thus, once the good that the friend constitutes is interpreted not as a final but as an efficient cause, we still need to find the good that constitutes the goal of the friend’s attitude. Although no alternative good is suggested in the text or by Cooper’s interpretation, we may attempt to examine two possible candidates.

First, we could assume that the final cause of the disinterested attitude is its object, namely the friend. In this case the final good he constitutes should not be considered in the light of the threefold division of the good (the good per se, the pleasant and the useful) but rather as the object of disinterested well-wishing: one wishes good things for the other considering this person as a final end. But in an Aristotelian perspective, this can only mean that he is regarded as something good per se. Thus, in friendships based on utility or pleasantness, the friend would be appreciated not as useful or pleasant but as someone good in himself. This conclusion is quite paradoxical and in tension with both the overall spirit and several passages of the text.⁸ Hence, it seems wise to abandon the attempt to relate the good to the object of love.

Second, we could try to dissociate the good pursued from the object of love and associate it with the activity of love. Thus, as in the cases of virtuous actions, we could assume that the activity of disinterested well-wishing is something good in itself, independently of the sort of good that the object of love constitutes. This, again, is a far-fetched assumption: there is not the slightest suggestion in that direction in the text; instead, there are a number of negative indications (see EN 1158a5–8; 1167a2–3). Thus, attempts to provide an alternative final cause for the friend’s love have to be abandoned as unsustainable.

Summing up, if the three sorts of good that friends constitute are considered as final causes of the friend’s attitude, the account of friendship given in EN 1155b27–56a5 is self-contradictory. If, instead, we consider them as efficient causes, we are in serious trouble both with the overall Aristotelian philosophical framework and with the initial presentation of the sorts of good that objects of love constitute (EN 1155b17–27), for they are clearly considered in terms of finality (EN 1155b20–21). Hence, this account of friendship fails to relate its basic notion, the loving attitude of the friend, with the good that a friend constitutes.

Moreover, there is a further problem with the above account: does the attitude of the friend, as presented in this account, differ in any significant way from the attitude of other disinterested well-wishers? In other words, is the attitude of the friend the same as the attitude in any other case of disinterested well-wishing?

Surprisingly, a careful look at the text reveals that the two features of friendship accompanying disinterested well-wishing (namely the requirement that both friends have this attitude and the awareness of each other’s attitude) neither specify disinterested well-wishing nor, as we shall see, add some independent features of the friend’s attitude. In the case of the requirement that both friends have this attitude, this is obvious, since here the initial attitude is attributed to the other friend. The second feature, the awareness of each other’s attitude, does not in its own right constitute a further characteristic of the attitudes of the friends. My awareness of your attitude towards me may or may not affect my own attitude towards you. Of course, though it is not a characteristic of one’s attitude, it could nonetheless cause a change of one’s initial attitude. But if so, then this additional feature (the one that would be caused by the awareness of the other’s similar attitude), which would differentiate the friend’s attitude from all other cases of disinterested well-wishing, is the one that should be mentioned in the account of friendship. But it is not. Moreover, what would be the mark of such a differentiation? Our text does not offer any hint in that direction. In fact, it is quite difficult to imagine how disinterested well-wishing could be affected by the awareness that my friend has a similar attitude towards me.

Thus, we should conclude that, according to this account, the attitude of friends towards each other is not exclusive to friendship. Rather, it could as well be exhibited towards people who are not friends. Friendship thus amounts to nothing more than a coincidence of two cases of disinterested well-wishing – a coincidence of two cases of love. If so, then the reasonable object of our investigation should be disinterested well-wishing (i.e. love) and not friendship because friendship is nothing more than an accident occurring by the co-presence of two cases of love.

The above account of friendship covers only a very short part of the Nicomachean initial approach to friendship (about 10–11 lines). Its importance lies mainly in the fact that it is the only account of friendship presented more or less explicitly as such in the Nicomachean treatise. Most of the initial approach is based on the observation that the friend is an object of love (philêton) and that an object of love is necessarily recognized as some sort of good. This is the basis for the distinction between the three forms of friendship; indeed, it is the only basis on which the similarities, the differences and the overall relationship between the three forms are investigated in the concluding part of this initial approach.⁹

Thus, there is hardly any mention either of disinterested well-wishing or of any other n...

Table of contents

• Cover
• TitlePage
• Introduction
• Part I   The Nature of Friendship
• Part II   The Unity of Friendship
• Part III   Friendship and Reason
• Part IV   Friendship and Morality
• Part V   Friendship in a Good Life
• Index