In Book Eight of Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle mainly examines the issue of friendship. Specifically, Aristotle argues in Chapter Three that there are three motives for a person to like someone else: one might like someone because he is useful, because he is pleasant, or because he is good. It thus follows that there are three types of friendship, depending on which of these three motives connects people together: friendship based upon usefulness, friendship based upon pleasure, and friendship based upon excellence or virtue. According to Aristotle, although the first two types of friendship are the most common among people, “[t]he perfect form of friendship is that between good men who are alike in excellence or virtue” (Aristotle 219).

As for friendship based on pleasure, Aristotle argues that it is most common among young people because “their lives are guided by emotion, and they pursue most intensely what they find pleasant” (219). Accordingly, friendship based on usefulness is most common among old people because “at that age men do not pursue the pleasant but the beneficial” (219). However, because these two types of friendship are not friendship for its own sake, that is to say, friends do not wish for their friends’ good for their friends’ sake, “the affection ceases as soon as one partner is no longer pleasant or useful to the other” (219). On the other hand, friendship between good men who are alike in excellence or virtue is precisely a friendship for its own sake, which is why it is the perfect form of friendship just like an action that is done for the sake of the action itself is the noblest of all actions.

Questions can be raised in terms of the dynamic aspect of Aristotle’s account as well as the relationship among the three kinds of friendship. First of all, from an overall perspective, if friendship based on pleasure is most common among young people, and friendship based on benefits is most common among old people, then it seems to imply a gradual transformation of friendship from pleasure-based to benefits-based during a man’s lifetime. If that were the case, where does the perfect form of friendship fit in? Aristotle argues that “time and familiarity are required” to form the perfect friendship, and two questions can follow from this assertion. On the one hand, does it imply that friendship based upon excellence or virtue is exclusively for those who are neither too young nor too old to avoid the attraction of pleasure and practical benefits? On the other hand, can people build up the perfect form of friendship without experiencing at all the other two types of friendship in the first place? If the answer to the latter question is negative, then it must imply some sort of transformation from the less perfect forms to the perfect form of friendship, which Aristotle does not seem to have discussed.

Furthermore, Aristotle says that friendship based on excellence or virtue “lasts as long as they are good and goodness or virtue is a thing that lasts” (220). Nonetheless, “a thing that lasts” is not equal to “a thing that is eternal”; thus, even the perfect type of friendship could dissolve if any party of the friendship becomes no longer virtuous or much more virtuous. The question is, therefore, whether people who used to share the perfect type of friendship are still friends in an Aristotelian sense. In other words, does the inequality in virtue simply terminate their friendship, or does it somehow transform their perfect friendship into a less perfect one? If the former is the case, then it implies that different types of friendship exclude one another, and that Aristotle does not seem to stress enough on the detrimental effect of inequality among friends. If the latter is the case, then it implies that either one type of friendship can be transformed into another, or the three types of motives for affection actually exist simultaneously among people and manifest themselves under different circumstances. Therefore, Aristotle does not seem to have given an adequate discussion of the relationship among the three types of friendship.

Works Cited

Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Trans. Martin Ostwald. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1999.