Aristotle's Philosophy of Friendship

Friendship is foundational for social beings such as ourselves. According to Aristotle humans are naturally social beings and in hindsight, since we’re naturally social we naturally have the ability and want to meet and make new friendship’s. Aristotle doesn’t stop there though he explains that there are different types of friendships ones of pleasure, utility and those of the good. We can categorize these friendships into two categories that include perfect and imperfect friendships. As humans, we're always trying to be perfect whether or not anything can truly be perfect or not it's what we strive for and with Aristotle's philosophy on friendships, it's no different the perfect friendship is the best one we can aspire to have.

The first type of friendship is one of pleasure this is a friendship in which the people partaking in the friendship get enjoyment through a mutual interest like sports or tv shows etc. This type of friendship is common in younger people because it's common to meet and become friends with someone at a younger age if you both enjoy the same thing. It's prevalent that these friendships have an emotional source as all friendships do in one way or another, but the emotional source found in this specific type of friendship is often short-lived. A friendship made through pleasure is often short-lived because our preferences change and the things we enjoy in life aren't always the same so if you're friends with someone only because you both enjoy the same thing it probably won't last long and in Aristotle's case, this shouldn’t be a surprise that a friendship of pleasure is an imperfect friendship.

The next friendship on the list is one of utility. In this friendship, the two people who are partaking in the friendship receives some sort of benefit. This type of friendship is much more common in older folk especially those who are trying to climb to success in their career. These friendships would benefit both because if two people were business partners, they could climb to success together. Although these friendships normally aren't permanent in nature, they have the potential to be unlikely as that is. This utility-based friendship is an imperfect one because the virtues aren't necessarily good since these friendships can be often one-sided.

The perfect friendship is one of the good. This “good” is being virtuous when it comes to your friendship. The people involved in the friendship are building each other up throughout the time of them being friends. These people partaking are friends for the sake of being friends and since they build each other up they have mutual respect for each other, and this makes this a friendship of the good because they are friends for all the right virtues and reasons. In all your endeavors with people, this is the most quality friendship to have yourself in and one you should be striving for at all times. This friendship if made properly will last until the end even if it takes time to grow it depends on mutual growth and as you both grow as people you'll see the bond not being capable of being broken.

In Aristotle's philosophy, however, he notes it's very important to have self-love before you can get yourself involved in friendships, to begin with. This self-love is the basis of friendship because the perfect friendship is one based on virtue. If you love yourself, you will be able to display the virtues, you believe are important and then will be able to pursue and make a perfect friendship with people of the same virtues.

Throughout Aristotle's philosophy of friendship, we can see how he sees that friendships are important and useful for leading and living a happy life. But he even goes on to state that friendship is the greatest external good therefore happiness is obtaining true friendship. Friendship not being the only thing that attributes to one's happiness but the most powerful external good that attributes itself to happiness. This happiness to Aristotle consists of achieving through the course of a whole lifetime all the goods health, wealth, knowledge, friends, etc that lead to the perfection of human nature and to the enrichment of human life.

Now that you’ve probably analyzed your current friendships to see where they lie in comparison to Aristotle's types of friendships it's important to note that Aristotle would want you to be enriched in your friendships and see why it’s the best external good and why we as humans are such social creatures that have these friendships gratify us and make us so happy to live our lives with those specific people.