Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics VII-VIII

Philosophy of Love and Sex

Exhaustiveness?

• Do all kinds of friendship fall into this?

• What about a friendship between three Nazis, dedicated to the purity of the Aryan race? What kind of friendship is it?

Imperfect cases?

• We are not virtuous. Can we have character friendship?

• Without virtue, can we recognize virtue?• Maybe it does take virtue to recognize

virtue, but it doesn’t take the same virtue. • A lazy person can recognize the value of

Thomas Edison’s hard work—but only because she has some virtues (practical wisdom — “prudence”?)

Equality• Friendship involves equality• Justice requires proportionality to merit• If too much inequality, friendship is impossible

(humans and gods?)• There can be unequal friendships:

– Parents and children– Spouses (unequal but complementary according to

Aristotle)• These don’t seem to be friendships of utility and

pleasure, so they are friendships of character. • So there seems to be hope for us imperfect

people

Self-love

• Vicious people don’t agree with themselves—conflicting desires

• Good person satisfies all the conditions for friendship:– she lives with herself– she appreciates her own virtue– she is in agreement with herself– she acts in ways that benefit her (by acting

virtuously)

What can someone who has everything else get out of

friendship? (IX.9)• The person who has it all may not need friendships of pleasure and

utility—but needs friendship of character• Happiness is an activity—need opportunities to exercise virtues like

generosity– Why is this better with friends?

• It’s our nature to live in community, to “live together”• Happiness includes enjoyment and study of virtuous actions that

belong to one—but it’s easier to see them in someone else, and a friend is “another self”

• Cooperation: doing things through another self• Furthering our own virtue• Happiness includes appreciation of good things, including living—

living in an orderly, well-defined way. Perceiving the life of a friend—the good life of a friend—is pleasant.

Differences from Plato

• Ultimate object of friendship: persons, not Forms

• Interpersonal friendship is not a means to anything further—it is a constitutive part of happiness

Miscellaneous questions

• How many friends should we have?• Only so many as we can “live with” (share

lives with).• When should we spend time with our

friends?• Mainly when we can do good for them.

But…• …we should not be kill-joys and deprive

them of opportunities to help us.