21. Friendship Among Equals and the Problem of Inequality

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Lecture Notes

Main Topics #

Habit, Choice, and the Formation of Friendship #

• Friendship is both a habit and an act, produced by choice
• Choice itself arises from habits: one does not choose a way of life (such as becoming a philosopher) through sudden emotion, but through pre-existing habits
• The example of a child learning to share: parents repeatedly habituate children through acts to think of others’ enjoyment, gradually forming the virtue of generosity
• Friendship requires wishing well to the other for their own sake, not something natural to children but developed through habituation

Who Can Be Friends? The Problem of Realization #

• The lecture shifts from theory (what is friendship?) to practice (who can actually be friends?)
• Analogy to political philosophy: it is one thing to define government; it is another to realize a given form of government in a particular people
• Harsh or severe people are poor soil for friendship, as friendship requires enjoyment of company
• The old are less suitable for friendship than the young: the elderly suffer ailments and discontentment, enjoy company less, and find it harder to make new friends
• The young make friends more swiftly and easily, forming their closest friendships in youth or early adulthood

The Act vs. The Habit of Friendship #

• Friendship consists fundamentally in living together and enjoying each other’s company
• One can wish well to another (the habit) without being fully friends (the act)
• Those who do not spend time together or enjoy each other’s conversation are not friends “altogether in the fullest sense”
• Just as courage requires acting courageously, friendship requires the act of living and associating together

Why Perfect Friendship Cannot Be Multiplied #

First Reason: Intensity

• Perfect friendship is compared to romantic/sexual love in terms of its intensity
• One cannot have romantic passion for multiple people simultaneously (Romeo forgets Rosalind for Juliet)
• Similarly, the perfect friendship of virtue has an intensity that seems to be one-to-one
• Famous examples: Achilles and Patroclus, Hamlet and Horatio, Bassanio and the Merchant of Venice
• These intense friendships are not divisible among many people

Second Reason: The Difficulty of Mutual Pleasing

• It is not easy for many to be pleasing to the same person at the same time
• Pleasure and enjoyment depend on countless small habits and customs: eating habits, music preferences, sleeping schedules, use of garlic, wine vs. beer, time of day for various activities
• Personal examples: East Coast seafood vs. Midwestern freshwater fish; the preference for walleye pike vs. lobster
• Even when nothing is morally wrong with different habits, they create friction in close living
• One must have many small things in common with someone to truly enjoy constant companionship with them

Third Reason: The Need for Intimate Experience

• Perfect friendship requires long experience and intimate acquaintance with another person
• One must have conversation and extended association to truly know whether the other is trustworthy and genuinely virtuous
• The saying: “you cannot know another before ’taking salt together’” (sharing meals and time)
• Circumstance must bring people together; meeting someone briefly at a wedding, even if pleasantly, does not provide the opportunity for this development
• This practical difficulty limits the number of perfect friendships one can have even if intensity did not

The Lesser Friendships and Their Nature #

Friendships of Pleasure and Utility

• These friendships are easier to have with many people
• Useful friendships: politicians and statesmen accumulate many useful friends (example of Lincoln building relationships throughout Illinois circuits)
• Pleasant friendships: social friendships based on shared enjoyment
• The useful friendship “seems more like business, commerce” (ἐμπορικός)
• The pleasant friendship is more akin to true friendship than the useful one
• These friendships are less lasting because pleasure and utility change and diminish

The Blessed (Happy) and Their Friendships

• Those blessed or fortunate have no need of useful friends (they lack nothing materially)
• They seek pleasant friends to live together with
• One can tolerate disagreeable people for a short time, but not continuously
• The blessed seek friends who are both pleasant and good, thus having the qualities that ought to belong to friends

Those in Power and Friendship #

• Those in power typically maintain separate friends: some for pleasure, others for utility, but rarely the same people
• They seek the witty for pleasure (not necessarily virtuous)
• They seek the efficient for command (not necessarily noble in character)
• A virtuous person cannot easily be a friend to one in power unless the superior is also greater in virtue
• Without equality (even proportional equality), friendship cannot be stable
• The implication: power tends to corrupt the possibility of genuine friendship

The Equality Inherent in Equal Friendships #

• Perfect friendships are called “equal friendships” because the same things come to be from both parties
• In lesser friendships, equality may be achieved by exchange (pleasure for utility) or mutual benefit
• These friendships seem both to be and not to be friendships through their likeness and unlikeness to perfect friendship
• True love seems eternal; this permanence distinguishes it from fleeting pleasure or utility-based bonds

Key Arguments #

The Connection Between Habit and Choice in Friendship #

• One becomes a friend through choice, but choice itself flows from established habits
• Therefore, the formation of friendship begins not in the moment of choosing a friend, but in the long cultivation of virtuous habits before that choice
• Habituation precedes and enables the choice to be a friend

The Practical Limits on Perfect Friendship #

• Aristotle provides three interdependent reasons why perfect friendship cannot be extensive:
  1. Its intensity prevents division of the perfected act among multiple objects
  2. The multiplicity of small habits required for mutual enjoyment cannot align in many cases
  3. The circumstantial requirement of long association and intimate knowledge cannot practically be fulfilled with many people
• Together, these make perfect friendship rare and limited to few people, typically formed in youth

The Distinction Between the Habit and the Act #

• One can have the disposition (wish well to another) without the perfected act (living together, enjoying each other)
• Full friendship requires both the habit and its actualization in living together
• This parallels the distinction in virtue: courage is both a habit and its exercise

The Hierarchy of Friendships #

• Perfect friendship (based on virtue) includes the pleasant and useful qualities within it
• Lesser friendships contain likeness to perfect friendship but lack its stability and depth
• The pleasant friendship is closer to perfect friendship than the useful one
• Only the virtuous can be friends based on virtue; the bad can only maintain friendships of pleasure or utility

Important Definitions #

Perfect Friendship (Φιλία ἁπλῶς) #

• Friendship based on mutual appreciation of virtue, where each wishes well to the other for the other’s own sake
• Mutual, known, and chosen
• Stable because virtue is stable
• Contains within it both pleasant and useful dimensions
• Exists primarily among equals in virtue

Friendship as Habit vs. Act #

• As Habit: The disposition to wish well to another; can exist in someone without the full actualization of friendship
• As Act: Living together, enjoying each other’s conversation and company; the perfected realization of friendship
• Full friendship requires both

Intense Friendship (Ἡ Τέλεια Φιλία) #

• The closest, most complete form of perfect friendship
• Characterized by intensity similar to romantic love
• Appears to be essentially one-to-one in its most perfect form
• Examples: Achilles and Patroclus, Hamlet and Horatio

Friendships of Utility and Pleasure #

• Utility: Based on mutual benefit or usefulness; dissolves when usefulness ends; “like commerce”
• Pleasure: Based on shared enjoyment; less transient than utility but still depends on continuing sources of pleasure
• Both are friendships “by happening” rather than “simply”

Examples & Illustrations #

Personal Anecdotes #

• The boy with the baseball bat: When the game didn’t go his way, he took the bat and ball inside. His mother reinforced the lesson by retrieving them and returning them to the other children, teaching him through repeated habituation to share
• Children fighting over toys: Children naturally want what another is enjoying, not through malice but natural selfishness. Parents habituate them to think of others’ enjoyment through repeated acts of adjudication
• Separation as punishment: When Berquist fought with his brother, his mother separated them. The boredom of playing alone motivated reconciliation—a natural way of teaching the need for friendship
• Dietary differences: Examples of how small differences in habit prevent close companionship:
  • East Coast seafood (lobster, shrimp) vs. Midwestern freshwater fish (walleye pike with almond sauce)
  • Irish eating habits vs. Jewish eating habits (worked as maids in Jewish households)
  • Beer drinker vs. wine drinker
  • Morning music vs. evening music (Karl Barth and Mozart)
• The sophomore with a slave: At St. Mary’s College in the early 1960s, a sophomore had a freshman carrying his books like a slave. This illustrated the motto “power corrupts”—hinting at how power corrupts the possibility of friendship

Literary Examples #

• Romeo and Juliet: Romeo’s intense romantic love for Juliet causes him to forget Rosalind (“takes a nail to try a lot of nails”), illustrating that intense love is one-to-one
• Hamlet and Horatio: Hamlet’s perfect friendship with Horatio, based on Horatio’s virtue; the closeness shows the intensity that cannot be divided
• The Merchant of Venice: Bassanio and the Merchant have an intense friendship; the Merchant willing to lay down his life for Bassanio. Other friends in the play are nothing compared to this bond
• Achilles and Patroclus (Homer’s Iliad): The tragedy of Patroclus’s death shows the intensity of the friendship. Achilles says he will never have a friend like this again—a one-to-one intensity
• Lincoln’s useful friendships: Lincoln’s biography shows how he built many useful friendships traveling the Illinois circuits, knowing everyone by name—necessary for his political rise

Notable Quotes #

“Love is eternal” (from Shakespeare’s sonnets, contrasting with friendships based on pleasure or utility that “quickly change”)

“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (Scripture, applied to the Merchant of Venice’s willingness to die for Bassanio)

“Power corrupts” (Latin adage illustrated by the sophomore example)

“You cannot know another before ’taking salt together’” (saying about the necessity of time and shared meals for intimate knowledge)

Questions Addressed #

Why is perfect friendship so rare? #

• Virtuous people are few
• Time and circumstance are required to know another’s virtue and trustworthiness
• The intensity of perfect friendship limits it to one or very few people
• All the small habits of life must align for daily companionship to be enjoyable

How does habituation relate to the choice to be a friend? #

• Choice of a way of life (including friendship) flows from pre-existing habits
• One becomes a philosopher through studying habits, not through a sudden emotional choice
• The formation of friendship begins in childhood through parents’ habituation of generosity and care for others

Can those in power have perfect friendships? #

• Those in power tend to separate pleasure-friends from useful-friends
• A virtuous person cannot easily friend someone in power unless the superior is also greater in virtue
• The inequality created by power makes proportional equality (necessary for friendship) difficult to maintain
• This suggests power corrupts the conditions necessary for friendship

What role does the act of living together play in friendship? #

• Perfect friendship requires not just the disposition (wishing well) but the act (living together, enjoying conversation)
• Without living together and constant association, one has only the habit of friendship, not its full realization
• This is why brief pleasant encounters, even with good people, do not create perfect friendship

How do lesser friendships relate to perfect friendship? #

• Friendships of pleasure and utility “seem both to be and not to be friendships”
• They have likeness to perfect friendship but differ fundamentally in stability and depth
• Perfect friendship includes pleasant and useful aspects within itself, but is not based on these

Why does the transcription end with a reference to friendship among unequals? #

• The lecture concludes by summarizing the discussion of equal friendships and noting that the next topic (Reading 7) will address friendship among unequals: father-son, husband-wife, ruler-ruled, etc.
• This transitions from the theoretical account of perfect friendship among equals to the practical problem of friendship where inequality exists