Professor Sudduth

Philosophy 110

Aristotle: Handout #3

Aristotle: Stability of Friendship and Virtue Friendship

1. The Unstable Nature of Friendships of Utility and Pleasure

Friendships of utility and pleasure are UNSTABLE because they each involve loving a person on the basis of qualities or attributes which are not enduring.

The instability of friendships of utility:

Premise 1: A friendship of utility involves a person S loving a person P because P is useful to S.

Premise 2: If some person S loves person P because P is useful to S, then S will cease to love P when P ceases to be useful to S.

Premise 3: Utility is relative to circumstances.

Premise 4: Circumstances easily change with time.

Therefore, friendships of utility are fundamentally unstable.

The instability of friendships of pleasure:

Premise 1: A friendship of pleasure involves a person S loving a person P because P is pleasant to S.

Premise 2: If a person S loves some other person P because P is pleasant to S, then S will cease to love P when P ceases to be pleasant to S.

Premise 3: Pleasure is relative to feelings.

Premise 4: Feelings easily change with time.

Therefore, friendships of pleasure are fundamentally unstable.

2. Friendships of Virtue: Perfect Friendship

(a) The chief characteristic of friendships of virtue is that they involve reciprocal well wishing between people who are good and who thus share practical and intellectual virtues, and each wishes the good for each other for the sake of the other person.

(b) In friendships of virtue we are motivated by (a) what the person is, nature or essence and (b) the attributes a person OUGHT to have (by virtue of what he is). The person is not loved for any incidental quality he has, but is loved for WHAT the person is (essentially) and loved on account of what he OUGHT to possess for his OWN good (though he may yet lack it to some degree).

(c) Friendships of virtue are also perfect in their duration since they are more permanent than friendships of pleasure and utility. The permanence of virtue friendships is based on three closely related claims. Such friendships are grounded in (i) what a person IS in his/her essential nature (i.e., a rational, social animal), (ii) what attributes a person OUGHT to have by virtue of his essential nature, and (iii) goodness, when actual, is enduring.

3. Other Claims about Virtue Friendships

(a) Only friendships of those who are good and similar in goodness are perfect.

(b) Friendships of virtue are both pleasant and useful, but they are not motivated by advantage or pleasure.

(c) Time and intimacy is needed for shared virtue friendships.

(a) Only good people can have shared virtue friendships, though bad people can have friendships of utility and pleasure.

(b) It is difficult to have many friendships of virtue because (i) there are few people who are genuinely good, (ii) love is a kind of excess which is naturally directed toward one person, and (iii) such friendships take time and that doesn’t happen often. Shared advantage and pleasure friendships, on the other hand, do not take much time and many people operate for the sake of pleasure and utility.