Number and Freedom in Friendship, then Aristotle's Ethics: What Is Friendship? The Three Lovables and Perfect Friendship

Orientation #

He refers back to “the first reading, where Aristotle was giving about six reasons why we should take this up” and to the study of the soul (powers known by acts, acts by objects) (prev. lecture, as he says "we saw something like that"). At the end: no class next week, he will be at Fort Knox; the “reading before” [i.e. next] will compare the lesser friendships to the highest. The previous class prepared for Aristotle with Shakespeare, Johnson, Irving and Austen; the next works through readings four and five.

The class, in order #

1. One friend only: “He had friends, but no friend” #

Point: the highest kind of friendship tends to be for one person only (topic “the number of friendships” on the handout).

• Aristotle will give reasons why the highest friendship is between two; lesser friendship can be with many. His examples of one-to-one: Hamlet and Horatio; Bassanio and Antonio (they have other friends, “but not on the same level”); Achilles and Patroclus (“you never have a friend like Patroclus”). Aristotle compares it to sexual love, which when intense is for one; he thinks the reason is the intensity of this friendship. Even among saints: Basil and one of the Gregories.
• Boswell, dinner at Beauclerk’s (Reynolds, Jones, Langton, Stevens, Paradise, Higgins): Wilkes attacked Garrick (famous 18th-c. actor, originally Johnson’s pupil) as a man with no friends; Johnson: “He had friends, but no friend” — the Greek proverb philoi ou philos (left out of the printed text “because of the printer”). Meaning: no bosom friend, one “into the secrets”; cf. Scripture, the Son “in the bosom of the Father” — the intimacy. Garrick was “so diffused,” always applauded for the same thing, saw life with uniformity; Johnson then plays the sophist “with Goliath’s weapons”: a friend supports and comforts, a “cordial drop to make the nauseous draught of life go down”; if all is sweet no drop is needed. The company objected: they would want an intimate friend to “compare minds and cherish private virtues.”
• Aside: the Garrick and Lyceum theatres of his St. Paul childhood; Lyceum was Aristotle’s school (French lycées).

2. Friend, free, familiar: “a hot friend cooling” #

Point: “friend” is etymologically kin to “freedom”; a friend is someone you can be free with; strangeness and ceremony are signs of love decaying.

• Julius Caesar: Cassius complains Brutus bears “too stubborn and too strange a hand” — strange is the opposite of familiar. Brutus on Cassius’s reception of Lucilius: courtesy and respect, “but not with such familiar instances, nor with such free and friendly conference” — the three words of the topic. “When love begins to sicken and decay it uses an enforced ceremony”; “no tricks in plain and simple faith”; hollow men like hot horses fail at the spur — hence “a friend indeed.”
• Timon of Athens (extremely generous, taken advantage of): refuses Ventidius’s repayment — “I gave it freely ever”; “none can truly say he gives if he receives”; ceremony was devised for “hollow welcomes,” but “where there is true friendship there needs none.” When ruined, his friends put him off with excuses and he becomes a misanthrope (in Plutarch’s Lives; Molière’s The Misanthrope). Timon to the weeping steward Flavius: “canst thou the conscience lack to think I shall lack friends?” — “I am wealthy in my friends”; he is about to find he is very poor in them.
• “Frankly” = freely; Franklin/Freeman = free man; “I’ll be frank with you” = speak freely.
• Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy: a consolation of misfortune is that you learn who your true friends are; in prosperity you are not sure. Reason sees something good even here: the misfortune is more than compensated by seeing that the friend loves you, not only by the help.

3. Friendship among unequals: “Let still the woman take an elder” #

Point: one division of friendship is equals vs. unequals — father and son, master and servant, and for Aristotle even husband and wife (or “the pope and his servant”).

• Twelfth Night, the Duke to Viola: the woman should take a husband older than herself, since men’s fancies are “more giddy and unfirm” and women are as roses that fall once displayed. He endorses it as a rule, not without exception (his father five years older than his mother; he five years older than his wife). Boarding-house anecdote from Worcester: a divorced man who had first married an older woman saw it as a mistake and next married a younger; the comic figure of the old man with a young wife.

4. Reading two: the lovable must be known first (“Perhaps these things will become clear if the lovable is known”) #

Point: since philia involves love, and love is of the lovable, the kinds of friendship must be reached by way of the kinds of lovable.

• Greek philia shows the tie of friendship and love: Philadelphia (adelphos, brother), philosopher (lover of wisdom). C. S. Lewis’s The Four Loves uses other Greek words (eros, agape).
• Argument by analogy with the soul: (1) the ability to see and hear are distinguished by seeing and hearing; (2) seeing and hearing, both sensing, are distinguished by their objects, colour and sound; so (3) friendship, being habitual love, is distinguished by the kind of loving, and loving by the lovable — “you have to go down all the way to lovable.” “Very thoughtful man, this guy Aristotle.”
• The lovable: the good (in the full sense, virtue — Hamlet’s “man that is not passion’s slave”), the pleasant (to body, senses, imagination), the useful. The useful is that “to which some good or pleasure comes to be”: good and pleasant are lovable as ends, the useful as means — so useful friendship will be the lowest.
• Good simply vs. good for me: what is good but not for you, you do not tend to love. Each loves what is good for himself, or rather what appears so; “this makes no difference; the lovable will be apparent” — even the truly good is not loved unless it appears good, and what appears good may not be.

5. Four things in the definition of friendship (“friendship is not spoken of in the love of inanimate things”) #

Point: friendship is goodwill, mutual, known, on account of something lovable.

• We “love” wine, a child loves candy, but neither is a friend: no loving in return, and wishing the wine well is laughable — at most one wishes it to keep well so one may have it (and consume it). Aside: beware the man who says “you look so good I could eat you.”
• One wishes good to a friend for his sake; those who wish good without return are only well-wishers (benevolent); friendship is goodwill in return. Then he adds “not hidden”: many wish well to those they have never seen, thinking them good or useful, and the other may do the same — but how call friends those ignorant of how they stand to each other?
• Gathered: goodwill (not to candy or steak — there I wish good to myself), mutual, known, on account of the good, pleasant or useful. As a definition: “known mutual goodwill because of something lovable.” A definition has the precision of spelling: leave out a letter, add one, or disorder them and it is misspelled (though spelling is arbitrary — Shakespeare spelled his own name variously); leave out an essential part, add a non-essential, or disorder, and you fail to define. Can any part be left out? No.
• The three lovables give Aristotle’s fundamental division of friendship among equals: I love you because you are good, because you please me (good jokes), or because you are useful (recommendation, vote, campaign money, a good deal on a car).
• Aside: the bright blue PT Cruiser from Enterprise that surprised a woman in his parish; he took it because the woman before him had waited half an hour and chose the Toyota.

6. Reading three: friendships of use and pleasure are by accident (“those loving on account of the useful”) #

Point: three lovables, three loves, three friendships; useful and pleasant friendship love the other not in himself but as he happens to be useful or pleasant, and so dissolve.

• “All very logical”: objects differ in form, so the loves differ, so the friendships (the habit of loving thus) differ — same pattern as the soul. According to each there can be a return of love: the stock-market man passing favours back and forth with a contact — a kind of friendship. The Senate joke club where Republicans and Democrats gather; Dole and Gore joking together on TV about their old debates.
• Those loving for the useful “do not love each other in themselves” but insofar as good comes to them; likewise pleasure — they love the witty not for the sort of man he is but because he is pleasant to them (the man who told jokes for half a year and then repeated them ceased to be pleasant). “You’re my friend so long as you’re useful / please me.”
• These are by accident, by happening (Greek symbebēkos): balancing the ticket — Eisenhower (Eastern establishment) took Nixon (West Coast), Kennedy (strong North, weak South) took LBJ; useful to each other, not friends in the highest sense; after the election perhaps no longer useful. Contrast Hamlet and Horatio: chosen “because of what Horatio is in himself,” not because amusing (though he may be) or useful (though he is, watching the king).
• Easily loosened when the ground ceases: Washington Irving’s “The Wife” — a well-to-do man promises his bride a fairy-tale life, suffers reverses, fears to tell her; Irving tells him better she hear it from him than a stranger; in the humble cottage she is cheerful, singing — she loved him for his own sake (a beautiful story; “many other cases” go otherwise). Comic movies where each marries the other for money and both discover neither has any. Children: “did you have a good time?” — you play with the kid who is into the same game; lose the game (baseball, video games, the St. Paul chess-club boys who then got interested in girls) and the friend goes. The student pleasant to the professor until the recommendation is written, and later needing someone else. Nations: a British statesman, “no permanent friends but permanent interests” — England friend of France against Germany, earlier of Austria against Napoleonic France; not friend of France because it is France. Contrast “love that alters not when alteration finds” — the highest love.
• Useful friendship especially among the old: old ladies phoning each other daily to check the other is all right, “going to the store, can I get you anything?” Also some in the prime and young. His politician friend Roy’s cynical line: a man sees his wife first as mistress, then friend, last as nurse — the three friendships in order; the old custom of a wife ten years younger (Henry Clay nursed back to health by his wife). The old do not live together: not pleasant to each other, no need of association unless useful.
• The young: friendship for pleasure; they live by emotion, seek the pleasant in the present; as age changes so does the pleasant (bike, then car; this sport, then that game); they become friends and cease quickly. The young are amorous, loving and ceasing “many times the same day” — almost an exaggeration, but Romeo mourning Rosaline then Juliet, to Friar Laurence’s astonishment; those in love wish to live together.

7. The perfect friendship of the good (“through themselves and not by happening”) #

Point: the friendship of the good and alike in virtue is perfect because it is per se and contains what the lower ones have.

• Argument: they wish good to each other insofar as they are good, and they are good in themselves; wishing good for the friend’s own sake, they are friends through themselves; hence it lasts as long as they are good, and virtue is stable.
• Cicero’s little work on friendship gives the name “friendship” only to this; Aristotle keeps the word for the others, since we use it so in daily life (Garrick’s many friends). Stalin (“the Red Czar,” a new biography) liked literary people around him and read much fiction — a friendship of pleasure, not virtue; presidents’ golf partners and good conversationalists likewise.
• Second reason: the good are simply good and also useful and pleasant to each other. If I chose you as friend because courageous, wise, moderate, you are still more useful to me than a fool (a sober man can drive me, a courageous one is worth more on the battlefield, a wise one gives good advice — “with friends like that you don’t need enemies”). And more pleasant: not just because you are like me, but like me in something naturally pleasing; likeness in cowardice or folly is a basis of friendship but not likable in itself. The modest young woman vs. the prostitute: qualities pleasing in themselves give more reason to be pleased. So the highest friendship “has what the lower kinds have, but much that they don’t.” Aristotle: it is “with reason stable,” joining all that ought to belong to friends; in it the good simply is also pleasant simply; these are most lovable, so love and friendship here are greatest and best.

8. Rare, and needing time (“taken the required amount of salt together”) #

Point: such friendship is rare because good men are few, and even among the good it needs time for trust.

• The seven wise men (7th–6th c. B.C.: Thales of Miletus, the first philosopher; Pittacus, Bias, Solon): Pittacus, “difficult to be good”; Bias of Priene, “few are good, many are bad.” Christ: many called, few chosen; broad the road to destruction. Aristotle in Book I: the mass of men prefer a life suitable to beasts; Heraclitus said something similar.
• Further, need of time and being accustomed: the proverb about eating the required salt together. One cannot be friends before each appears lovable to the other and is trusted; the wish for friendship comes quickly, friendship cannot. So even with a Horatio it takes time.
• Two Gentlemen of Verona: Proteus (named for the shape-changing god of the Odyssey; “false as water,” water changing shape with every container) weeps goodbye to Julia and the same day loves Sylvia, betraying Valentine to the Duke; at the end asks and gets forgiveness — young and passionate. His own youth: seeing a girl at daily Mass, his best friend phoned her house pretending to do “the parish survey” and got all the information.
• Stops at the top of page five: “This then is perfect both according to time and according to the rest.”

9. Looking ahead: equals and unequals, Homer, and charity (“whether caritas is a friendship”) #

Point: the lesser friendships will be called friendships only insofar as they resemble the highest; and beyond friendship among equals comes friendship among unequals, which is where charity belongs.

• Against Cicero, Aristotle allows the useful friend to be called friend “in some imperfect and diminished sense,” insofar as he resembles the highest kind distantly. All three are among equals, as opposed to father/son, master/servant, husband/wife.
• Homer anticipates Aristotle: the Iliad celebrates friendship among equals (Achilles and Patroclus, alike in courage, the virtue most known to us); the Odyssey friendship among unequals (Odysseus with Penelope, Telemachus, the swineherd Eumaeus). Courage most stands out: the Medal of Honor (soldiers do not say “Congressional”) is given for one glorious afternoon, never for a life of moderate eating or paying one’s debts; aretē and virtus translate etymologically as “manhood” (vir), first meaning courage, in Shakespeare sometimes broader (justice, what fits a man); Aristotle begins the moral virtues (Books III–V) with courage, then moderation, ending with justice. Socrates: the poets are the fathers of wisdom for us — imperfect wisdom (Odysseus’s affairs on the way home; philosophers criticise poets for attributing adultery and robbery to the gods).
• Summa Theologiae: one of Thomas’s first questions on charity is whether caritas is a friendship; the objections make sense to one who knows the Ethics — charity loves enemies, but friendship is mutual; charity loves the sinner, but the highest friendship is of the virtuous. Charity is primarily between God and man, a friendship of very unequal parties, like father and son (St. John: “we are called the sons of God, and we are”), husband and wife, master and servant — all human unequal friendships have a likeness to it; Christ: “I no longer call you servants, but friends.” In his old course he gave the objections one day and the answers the next, so students would wrestle with the problem — replies left for later.
• No class next week (Fort Knox, October 7).

His words #

• Number of friendships — the highest kind tends to be for one person only.
• Bosom friend — one “into the secrets”; cf. the Son in the bosom of the Father.
• Friend / free / familiar — etymologically friend is kin to freedom; a friend is one you can be free with.
• Frankly — freely (Franklin = free man).
• Misanthrope — hater of mankind (Timon).
• Friendship among equals vs. unequals — the three kinds vs. father/son, master/servant, husband/wife.
• Philia — Greek for friendship, tied to loving (Philadelphia, philosopher).
• The lovable — the good, the pleasant, the useful; good and pleasant as ends, useful as means.
• Well-wishers / benevolent — goodwill without return.
• Friendship — “known mutual goodwill because of something lovable” (his definition from Aristotle’s four things).
• By accident, by happening — symbebēkos [ed.: per accidens]; opposed to “per se, through itself.”
• Reading — his term for Thomas’s lectio [ed.: lecture].
• Arete / virtus — “manhood” etymologically; first sense courage.
• Caritas — charity, a friendship between unequals (God and man).

Texts #

Read in class

• Boswell, Life of Johnson: dinner at Beauclerk’s, Wilkes on Garrick, “friends but no friend.”
• Shakespeare, Julius Caesar: Cassius’s complaint; Brutus and Lucilius on the “hot friend cooling.”
• Shakespeare, Timon of Athens: Ventidius; the ceremony speech; Timon and Flavius.
• Shakespeare, Twelfth Night: the Duke’s advice to Viola.
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book VIII (inferred), readings 2–3, handout pp. 2–5: the lovable; the definition of friendship; three friendships; the perfect friendship; rarity and time.
• Handout “Effects of Love,” p. 10 (verified source; topics: number of friendships, friend/free/familiar, unequals).

Mentioned

• Shakespeare, Hamlet (“not passion’s slave”); Merchant of Venice; Romeo and Juliet; Two Gentlemen of Verona; “love that alters not.”
• Homer, Iliad and Odyssey; Plutarch’s Lives; Molière, The Misanthrope; Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy; C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves; Cicero on friendship; Washington Irving, “The Wife” (Sketch Book); a Stalin biography (“the Red Czar”).
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I (mass of men prefer a life of beasts), III–V (courage first among moral virtues); De Anima (powers, acts, objects) (inferred).
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, on whether charity is a friendship (locus not stated); St. John on the sons of God; “I no longer call you servants, but friends.”
• DHB Vol III, p. 1180 (verified source).

His questions #

• Is a bottle of wine a friend, or candy to the child? No: no loving in return, and wishing good to the wine is laughable.
• Is mutual goodwill enough for friendship? No: it must also be known, not hidden.
• Can any of the four parts be left out of the definition? No; like spelling, omit, add or disorder and you fail to define.
• Why are useful and pleasant friendships “by accident”? You are loved not for what you are in yourself but because you happen to be useful or pleasant.
• Why is the friendship of the good the perfect one? It is per se and stable, and the good are also more truly useful and pleasant to each other.
• Why is such friendship rare? Good men are few, and even among them friendship needs time and trust.
• Should the useful friend be called a friend at all? Aristotle: yes, in a diminished sense insofar as he resembles the highest; Cicero would not.
• How can charity be friendship if it loves enemies and sinners? Left open — Thomas’s distinctions reserved for later.