The Ethics of Friendship

“What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.” 
― Aristotle

In the VIII and IX books of Nicomachean ethics , Aristotle develops  a rational and concise case, concerning the several types of friendships and their ethical classification.  Being a treaty on ethics,this requires discussion, friendship is needed, therefore it is a virtue  or it implies virtue. One of the pillars of his assertion is that "No one would choose to live without friends, even if he had all the riches in the world , we can think that the rich and those who occupy the most important places and hold power are the ones that need friends the most; indeed, what would be the usefulness  of such prosperity without the opportunity to do  good, since it manifests itself in it's  most praiseworthy form when regarding friends?".

The disciple  of Plato created three different categories  for friendships, each of them is formed according to the qualities that  serve for their very own formation.  So, we have friendship according to pleasure, friendship  according to utility, and   friendship according to virtue, or, the perfect friendship. 

"Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit." 
— Aristotle

The first two, friendships derived from pleasure or utility, are ephemeral, a passing phenomenon that eventually shatters. This happens because one of the parties has ceased to be the same, since this particular friendship was only the means to access a  certain end.

We  face these friendships in several  stages of our life,  if  we remember the mundane school time we had, it is easy to identify which were and were not the friendships that we  established according to pleasure, the so called spirituous people, full  of life, are very often the ones that maintain a broad circle of friendships, not because of their virtue but because of their joviality, this happens not because of their character  or what they are within themselves, but of the amount of pleasure that such people can induce in others. Summing it up, these  people compensate their lack of qualities with an excess of joviality.

"A friend to all is a friend to none."

— Aristotle

Friendships according to utility are also from a similar nature. We  can identify them at  workplaces, imagining the relations between the workers of an office, or when we have a team or a group that works towards a common goal. In this specific case, these  people are focused not on a selfless friendship but they maintain their friendship because it will turn into something prosperous for each one of them, their desires and whims are ultimately selfish.

Friendships according to virtue, or perfect  friendships, are, as Aristotle says "perfect in the sense of the duration and every other aspect, and in it one receives, in a similar or different way, the same that one gives."

Aristotle also draws the line between "good men" and "bad men",  only good men are able to possess perfect or virtuous friendships,even if they can also have friendships by utility or pleasure, whereas bad men cannot aspire to perfect friendships and are confined to friendships by utility or pleasure,  the correspondence between Ethics and Friendship becomes clear.

"For Aristotle, friendship in its highest form has a political or civic dimension. We love our friends not just because we like each other or are useful to each other, but because we share the same values and ideals for our society, and come together to advance those ideals." 

— Jules Evans (Philosophy for Life)