Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics › Friendship and the Social Nature of Flourishing

A striking feature of the _Nicomachean Ethics_ is how much space Aristotle devotes to friendship, fully two of the ten books. This is not incidental. > No one would choose to live without friends, even if they had all other goods. Humans are social beings, and friendship is essential to flourishing. Aristotle distinguishes three types of friendship. Friendships of utility are based on mutual benefit: business partnerships, political alliances, networking connections. When the benefit ends, so typically does the friendship. Friendships of pleasure are based on mutual enjoyment. We like each other's company, share hobbies, have fun together. These can be deep and lasting, but they depend on continued enjoyment. The highest form is what Aristotle calls "perfect friendship" or "virtue friendship." Here, each party loves the other for their character, for who they truly are. Such friends wish good for each other because they genuinely care about the other person's flourishing, independent of what they get in return. These friendships are necessarily rare. Excellent character is rare, and the mutual recognition required takes time to develop. But they are also the most stable and the most enriching. Aristotle's analysis reveals something important about modern anxieties around relationships. In an age of social media "friends" and professional "networking," we have vastly expanded our connections of utility and superficial pleasure while often starving for deeper virtue-based friendships. The remedy, on Aristotle's view, is not more connections but better ones. That requires both developing our own character and investing the time needed for genuine mutual understanding.