Ethics

As the motives to Friendship differ in kind so do the respective feelings and Friendships.  The species then of Friendship are three, in number equal to the objects of it, since in the line of each there may be “mutual affection mutually known.”

Now they who have Friendship for one another desire one another’s good according to the motive of their Friendship; accordingly they whose motive is utility have no Friendship for one another really, but only in so far as some good arises to them from one another.

And they whose motive is pleasure are in like case:  I mean, they have Friendship for men of easy pleasantry, not because they are of a given character but because they are pleasant to themselves.  So then they whose motive to Friendship is utility love their friends for what is good to themselves; they whose motive is pleasure do so for what is pleasurable to themselves; that is to say, not in so far as the friend beloved is but in so far as he is useful or pleasurable.  These Friendships then are a matter of result:  since the object is not beloved in that he is the man he is but in that he furnishes advantage or pleasure as the case may be.  Such Friendships are of course very liable to dissolution if the parties do not continue alike:  I mean, that the others cease to have any Friendship for them when they are no longer pleasurable or useful.  Now it is the nature of utility not to be permanent but constantly varying:  so, of course, when the motive which made them friends is vanished, the Friendship likewise dissolves; since it existed only relatively to those circumstances.

Friendship of this kind is thought to exist principally among the old (because men at that time of life pursue not what is pleasurable but what is profitable); and in such, of men in their prime and of the young, as are given to the pursuit of profit.  They that are such have no intimate intercourse with one another; for sometimes they are not even pleasurable to one another; nor, in fact, do they desire such intercourse unless their friends are profitable to them, because they are pleasurable only in so far as they have hopes of advantage.  With these Friendships is commonly ranked that of hospitality.

But the Friendship of the young is thought to be based on the motive of pleasure:  because they live at the beck and call of passion and generally pursue what is pleasurable to themselves and the object of the present moment:  and as their age changes so likewise do their pleasures.

This is the reason why they form and dissolve Friendships rapidly:  since the Friendship changes with the pleasurable object and such pleasure changes quickly.

[Sidenote:  1156b] The young are also much given up to Love; this passion being, in great measure, a matter of impulse and based on pleasure:  for which cause they conceive Friendships and quickly drop them, changing often in the same day:  but these wish for society and intimate intercourse with their friends, since they thus attain the object of their Friendship.

That then is perfect Friendship which subsists between those who are good and whose similarity consists in their goodness:  for these men wish one another’s good in similar ways; in so far as they are good (and good they are in themselves); and those are specially friends who wish good to their friends for their sakes, because they feel thus towards them on their own account and not as a mere matter of result; so the Friendship between these men continues to subsist so long as they are good; and goodness, we know, has in it a principle of permanence.

Moreover, each party is good abstractedly and also relatively to his friend, for all good men are not only abstractedly good but also useful to one another.  Such friends are also mutually pleasurable because all good men are so abstractedly, and also relatively to one another, inasmuch as to each individual those actions are pleasurable which correspond to his nature, and all such as are like them.  Now when men are good these will be always the same, or at least similar.

Friendship then under these circumstances is permanent, as we should reasonably expect, since it combines in itself all the requisite qualifications of friends.  I mean, that Friendship of whatever kind is based upon good or pleasure (either abstractedly or relatively to the person entertaining the sentiment of Friendship), and results from a similarity of some sort; and to this kind belong all the aforementioned requisites in the parties themselves, because in this the parties are similar, and so on:  moreover, in it there is the abstractedly good and the abstractedly pleasant, and as these are specially the object-matter of Friendship so the feeling and the state of Friendship is found most intense and most excellent in men thus qualified.

Rare it is probable Friendships of this kind will be, because men of this kind are rare.  Besides, all requisite qualifications being presupposed, there is further required time and intimacy:  for, as the proverb says, men cannot know one another “till they have eaten the requisite quantity of salt together;” nor can they in fact admit one another to intimacy, much less be friends, till each has appeared to the other and been proved to be a fit object of Friendship.  They who speedily commence an interchange of friendly actions may be said to wish to be friends, but they are not so unless they are also proper objects of Friendship and mutually known to be such:  that is to say, a desire for Friendship may arise quickly but not Friendship itself.