Love & Friendship
18. Aristotle on Friendship: Lesser Friendships, Habit vs. Act, and Choice
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/018-aristotle-on-friendship-lesser-friendships-habit-vs-act-and/

[0:00] one of the one of the things for the major. So I make these puns, you know. I say this is, you know, I say this is a major accomplishment

[0:13] Responsibility. but then, meet two weeks from now, I'll start with the fourth reading here, right? Okay. order and illumine our minds images. And arouse us to consider more correctly, Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor, and help us to understand all the truth of it. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the, Holy Spirit, Amen.

[0:39] So the first reading was on the reasons, right, for considering friendship in this part of philosophy. And the second reading was working out the definition of friendship, right, which involves love, but love that is mutual, right, and mutual love that is known to the partners, and because of something lovable, either the good in the full sense, virtue, or because of the pleasant, right, or because of the utility or usefulness.

[1:21] Okay. And then the basis of those three kinds of lovables, and therefore three different loves, right, and therefore three different friendships. In the third reading, he distinguished the three kinds of friendships among what equals, right? Okay. Now, in the fourth reading, he's going to compare a bit the lesser friendships, based upon pleasure or based upon usefulness, with the highest and the fullest kind.

[2:00] So friendship is not said equally of these three, but said completely or fully or perfectly only of the friendship based on virtue. But the other associations can be called friendship, not purely equivocally, because they have a certain likeness to that. Full and perfect friendship, and he's going to talk about that, huh? So he says the one through the pleasant, the friendship that is to say, through pleasure, has a likeness, huh, to that highest kind of friendship, for the good, meaning the virtuous, are also pleasant to one another, huh?

[2:47] So there's a likeness in the two, isn't there? It's not purely equivocal that the word friendship would be said of this based on pleasure. Likewise, he says that through the useful, for the good or the virtuous are also such to each other. So a courageous man is a useful man to have, and the just man and the wise man, right? Give you good advice and so on, right?

[3:15] He's useful, right? Okay. So even this useful friendship has a likeness to the full and perfect kind of friendship, okay? And now, in terms of what about being long lasting, right? Well, sometimes these lesser friendships resemble the greatest friendship, right? In being not completely transitory, right? Okay. And he says in friendships, in these especially last, when the same comes to be from each, such as pleasure,

[4:01] and not only thus that they get pleasure from each other, but also the pleasure is caused by the same thing, huh? Such as in the what? Witty, right, huh? You tell good jokes, and I tell good jokes, right? Oh yeah. Okay. And so even in the U. S. Congress, they have you know these kind of informal clubs where even Republicans and Democrats are friendly with each other, you know, and they get along because they're both got a sense of humor and they tell good stories and jokes and so on, huh?

[4:34] The way Abe Lincoln, right, could tell these funny stories, huh? He was known for this, huh? Okay. He says when the pleasure is taken in the same sort of thing, right, huh? Okay. And not as in the lover and the beloved, huh? And he's talking here about the case where the one person is attracted to the beauty of the other person, and the reverse is not true, but there's some other reason why they associate, huh?

[5:05] For these do not take pleasure in the same things, but the one in seeing that person. So the one who is not particularly good looking or whatever, right, rejoices, right, in the beauty of the other person. And the other one rejoices in being served by the lover, right? And being flattered and all this sort of thing, right? Okay.

[5:35] But the beauty of the one person ending. Sometimes the friendship comes to an end. For the seeing is no longer pleasant to this one, right? No longer pleasant to see. And to that one, service is no longer paid, tribute, worship, right?

[6:03] But now another way that they can be long-lasting, not only if they take pleasure in the very same thing, but many again last, he says, because they have the same what customs, right? And so we think of Shakespeare's play, there, Anthony and Cleopatra, where they're kind of attached to each other, right? Even though it's a friendship of pleasure, right? But Anthony and Cleopatra have somewhat the same customs, right?

[6:30] They like to live it up, both of them, right? And so on. And if they have, you know, habits that are similar, but they're familiar with.

[6:44] But the other ones, he says, are not so stable, right? Those exchanging not the pleasant. But the useful and amorous matters are less friends, and their friendship less lasting.

[7:04] Now there, I guess he's talking about the the mixed friendship again, right? I remember years ago a famous incident of this sort of thing. You know, you might have a wealthy man who's older, right, and not particularly handsome, right, and he's got some young, beautiful girl, right. So he's taking delight in her beauty, and she's what attached to him because of his what money, money or usefulness. And I remember this example of this years ago in the newspaper, and kind of a fact, in a rich man and a young beautiful thing, and he's renting an airplane, right, to fly through the sky for their marriage ceremony.

[7:49] Oh, I remember just looking at just a young, very young at the time. I said, but gee, that's not going to last. I said, and sure enough, you know, in a few months the whole thing is over with, right? And I mean, she's getting all the money, so that's got what she wants. And but

[8:07] my brother, my brother tells me a long time of being in Chicago, coming back and just eating in a restaurant, in come these businessmen with their good-looking secretaries, right? So the secretaries are there just you know to make the the meeting more pleasant and so on. But my brother happened to be close enough. to be over here as this conversation at the end, and the businessman is being about the secretary says, now we'll go shopping afterwards.

[8:32] You know, that's a payoff, right? So she's there to please him, and maybe please other businessmen too. And she does. He doesn't please her, but he's going to you know take her out shopping and buy a few dresses or whatever it is that she wants to buy. Okay, those things are not as what long lasting. He says.

[8:59] But those who are friends because of the useful, right, cease to be together when the useful what ceases, right? For they are not friends of each other, but only of what the profit. and what they're going to get out of the other person. And so you see that, especially for example, in the friendships among politicians, right? You know, I need you to balance the ticket, right? Or I need you to to appeal to the segment of the population there so I can get elected, right?

[9:34] But then very soon the times will happen to be not useful to me anymore, right? And so they compare that to the friendships among nations, huh? Oh. Where England is the France are friends in the wars with Germany, right? But in the Napoleonic Wars, it's England and Germany are friends against France, right? So some English statesmen said, "We have no permanent friends; we have merely permanent interests."

[10:06] And now it may be useful, like if it's useful to England to keep a balance of power in Europe, right? At one time it may be opposed to France and allied with Germany or Austria wants to help her fight France. Another time, when Germany is getting out of hand. Then she's allied with France, right? So those things can change quite quickly, right?

[10:31] And so the useful friendship is probably the least persistent, right? Okay. Now, in the next to last paragraph, he's coming to this question that we had raised before: Can the bad be friends of the bad, right? Or can only the good be friends of the good? Well, Aristotle is going to say you have to distinguish, right? Because there are three kinds of friendship.

[11:05] Is possible, then he says, for the bad to be friends of each other on account of pleasure, right? Or on account of usefulness. In that sense, there can be friendship among the what bad, right? In those two kinds of friendship, and even the good can be friends of the bad in the sense of what useful friendship, right? And even in terms of pleasure, right? Okay.

[11:35] But it is clear that only the good can be friends on account of themselves. This is the friendship that was highest, right? Where the friend is loved as such, right? And not because simply of the pleasure he gives you or the usefulness that he has for you. For the bad, do not rejoice in themselves if some utility, usefulness, does not come about. So you what you get the car out there and you get the motor running, right?

[12:05] And then I'll come out, right? With the money. I need somebody, you know, they're ready to zoom off, right? So you're useful to me and I'm useful to you, right? So get your cut of the the bank robbery and so on, okay? So I'm not attached to you because. of. You, and which you are yourself, or even because you're pleasant to me, right? But because you're useful to have somebody out there.

[12:29] Okay. Was down Kentucky. I visited this little automobile place. You know the little museum of automobiles there. And Bonnie and Clyde, I guess, huh? Clyde, of that, had written to the the uh uh automobile people, saying that he liked their car, gave them a good getaway, you know. Okay. So they had this message for him. Look like a PT Cruiser, right?

[13:10] Now, in the bottom paragraph, he talks a little bit about trust, right? And when I teach this course and I ask students, is a friend someone you can trust? Huh? They usually say what? Yes, right. If you can't trust somebody, is he really a friend? No. Say, I think kind of spontaneously people will see that point, right? Well,

[13:40] in the highest kind of friendship, you can trust the other person because of his virtue, and you have some experience of the person that he really is virtuous, huh? But if the friendship is based merely upon pleasure or merely upon usefulness, right? Well, then somebody might say, well, I think she's seeing somebody else on the side, right? Or I think he's seeing somebody else on the side, right?

[14:06] And I might say, well, I don't know. Maybe maybe this is so, right? Huh? You tend to what? Be concerned. You hear these things, right? And and don't know what to believe them, or maybe you believe them a little bit. You're not, you know, kind suspicious, right? You see that in Shakespeare's play there at the end, you know, when Anthony and Cleopatra, you know, are allied against Octavius Caesar, and Caesar defeats them, right?

[14:32] And then of course, Anthony's not sure that Cleopatra might not what set him aside and now go with the winner, right? Oh. She's done that before. But he's not the first lover she's had, right? Now, so there's a little lack of what trust there, you see? Okay. And again, Cleopatra, you know, when earlier in the play when Anthony and Octavius are kind of you know trying to get along and so on, and as a marriage of convenience or a marriage of to cement them, he's going to Anthony's going to marry the sister of Octavius, right?

[15:11] Well, Cleopatra, I mean, you see, you know, there can't be a complete trust between the two of them, huh? Because their friendship is based merely on pleasure. In the same way, with what? Usefulness, right? And so, a politician, you know, is you know promising. You know, I've been thinking about you for the vice presidency. I've been thinking about you for the vice presidency, and he tells it to several people, right?

[15:37] And the you know somebody else might be more useful to you, right? And so, I can't compete the what trust you know, and I might give some belief to these rumors I hear that you are, you know, been talking to so and so maybe about being his vice presidential candidate or throwing your support to him and so on.

[16:01] So he says, "the friendship of the good, meaning the virtuous, is alone without slander. " huh? For one does not quickly believe that someone tested by oneself over a long time. One doesn't necessarily doesn't quickly believe something bad about that person? right? Okay?

[16:25] Once in a while, you know, as professor, you get these students playing these jokes on you. You know, so one time somebody called the house, and I had a young girl talking on the phone and wanted to speak to me. And my wife says, "And she says, Who are you? my wife? It's just his wife, you know. " And she says, The phone, couldn't, you know. It was some kind of a joke to kids, you know.

[16:48] see? But my wife, my wife says it's a joke, right? " Because she trusts me completely, you know. But I mean, if we didn't have that trust, right? Then you know, who was that? You know, they'd be right away, you know. Okay. Wicked. Yeah, that's really wicked. I know. Says, "Or for a long time, because even if you have two men who are virtuous, it takes time for them to become friends, right?

[17:14] " Because I can't know that you are virtuous, right, or have this certainty that you are virtuous without having seen the way you act. Over the course of time, right? Okay, I made the wrong impression of you, right? Okay. For there is trust in these, huh, and never to have been unjust, whatever else is deemed worthy of true friendship, huh?

[17:42] I was reading there in the life of Abraham Lincoln. You know that at that time, at least in Illinois, legal things, if the chief, if the justice was what incapacitated or not incapacitated, but unable to be there this particular time for some reason or other, right? They would select a lawyer to what step into the yeah. Later on, they made this against the law, but I mean that's and the guy they would choose would be Abraham Lincoln, right?

[18:14] Oh, because he was what trusted, right? For his, you know, they'd seen him, you know, over and over again in the courtroom and how honest a guy he was, huh? And so they would trust him. For there's trust in these, and never to have been unjust, and whatever else is deemed worthy to friendship, but nothing prevents such things coming to be in others. That is, say, in the friendships based merely on pleasure, or those based on what usefulness, right?

[18:47] Huh? Okay. So these Hollywood actors and actresses, you know, that are just getting married because of pleasure, right? They and going out of these marriages all the time, right? Okay, so they can easily believe that so and so is getting interested in somebody else. You know, he's playing opposite in the movie or something, right?

[19:12] Now, on the top of page six, come back to something I mentioned. I think before, if you look at Cicero's little work on friendship, right, he wants to limit the word friendship only to that between the what virtuous, right? And Aristotle, of course, would agree that that's the only full and complete and perfect friendship, right? But in some lesser sense, we can call these other associations friendship too, and they do have some likeness, right?

[19:44] More or less to the true and perfect friendship, huh? Okay. Aristotle doesn't depart entirely from the what custom that we do in daily life call these people friends, right? Okay. So if you're a little boy or girl who's playing with another boy or girl that they have good time with, right? Like I mentioned, how parents very often say to the kids when they come back, you know, from playing with so and so across the street, did you have a good time?

[20:15] Okay, but it's really a friendship of what. Of pleasure, right now, okay. They enjoy playing together, right? Doing this game or building together, whatever they do together, right? Okay. But since men call friends, right? Meaning men in general, right? But since men call friends, also those on account of usefulness, just as cities, right? Huh? So we speak of friendship between what? Different nations, even though, right? Even though it's based upon what?

[20:46] Usefulness. This is that comparison I was saying before, right? The likeness of the friendships between nations, which are based on usefulness, and some and many friendships among human beings that are based on usefulness. So just as in cities we speak of, you know, we are friendly relations with England, right? Not so friendly with France, right now. Um.

[21:17] So likewise, we could use the word friendship, right, for these associations whose basis is mere usefulness, right? For alliances seem to come to be in cities on account of useful. And also those loving each other on account of pleasure, just as children. My example, right? Perhaps, huh? Just look carefully, right? Perhaps we also ought to call those such friends, right? Huh? Okay. But the only friendship in a what?

[21:49] Weaker, diminished, much less, or what? Sense? Sense. Yeah. Okay. But he goes back then to the point that we made in the third reading that there are many forms of friendship, right? And only one of them is friendship in the full and perfect sense. And notice those terms that that we have in Thomas's treatise. We're original with Thomas, right? But he distinguished two kinds of love: the love of wanting. Right, and the love of friendship it was called right, and that was the name given to the love of wishing well right, okay.

[22:38] But the fact that they called that the love of what friendship right meant that they were thinking of friendship in the full sense, where the two friends wish well to each other, in themselves right, as opposed to the friendships based on pleasure or usefulness. That I'm your friend because I would, I want to get pleasure from you, or I want to get some utility from you. And so that's the love of wanting right, the love of wanting rather than the love of friendship, huh?

[23:15] But it's the kind of the names they're given to those two loves, huh? One love is more characteristic of the lesser friendships, the love of wanting, right?

[23:27] I want a recommendation from you, right? So you're useful to me. You can recommend me, and I need the recommendation, right? Okay, so I have the love of wanting for you, huh? See, or I like to hear your jokes, right? Huh? Okay. Um, I like to drive, ride in your fast car, you know, with you, you know, because it's such a good-looking car, you know. So I have the love of wanting, you know, huh?

[23:54] And when my brother Mark and I were teaching out St. Mary's College, it's kind of funny. We both looked very young for our age, right? So you could almost, you know, think we were a student, right? And when we came out this one one year, my brother Mark had a car. I didn't have a car yet, and Marcus's car really broke down, and we had to get a car kind of quickly before we left.

[24:25] And the gasoline station, filling station, call in the west, um, that we did regular business with, a guy working there we knew pretty well. He was going to go work for Ford Company, huh? And so he had to get rid of his Oldsmobile because that was what Ford makes. And he wanted to sell the Oldsmobile. We needed a car, so it was just a convenient thing, right?

[24:49] Was a kind of a flashy, you know, car, red and this and so. And so we drove on campus with this car. We looked like a couple real hot, you know, college students. And some guy comes up, you know, starts being really friendly with us, you know. My brother let him know pretty quickly he was professor, not a fellow student. But this is a love of what of wanting, you know?

[25:09] It's getting with these guys, you know. We'll be driving on campus. They may be noticing us, and the girls will be noticing us, and all this stuff. With the new philosophy.

[25:21] Oh, Epicurean. Yeah. Used to nickname us the pale face twins, right? Because we probably were in the house studying too much in the California sun. Okay.

[25:44] So Aristotle says, but there are many forms of friendship, right? Huh? And first and chiefly is that of the good as good, right? Okay, that's friendship in the first sense, right? And in the full sense, right? As I said, that's the one, the only one that Cicero wants to call friendship, right? The rest, however, can be called friendship by kind of likeness. Insofar as there is something good and something like in this way, they are friends.

[26:15] Okay. Because pleasure, in some way, sees you something good, right? And and usefulness is something good, huh? And insofar as in some way resemble that first and chief friendship, they are not purely by chance called friends, right?

[26:35] For the pleasant is good to those who love pleasure, but these are not all joined together, nor do the same become friends on account of useful and account of the pleasant. For things by accident are not all joined together. Friendship, then, being divided into these forms, the bad will be friends through pleasure or the useful, being alike in the same. But the good will be friends through themselves, insofar as they are good.

[27:02] Well, we saw that back in the earlier reading. These then will be friends simply or without qualification, but those by happening and insofar they are alike in some way, right? Like he was pointing out earlier, right? That the virtuous are pleasant to each other, right, and are also useful to each other, right. So. There's some likeness of the friendship of pleasure and the friendship of likeness to the friendship based on virtue, right?

[27:29] And so it's not purely by chance that they are called friends, but they're not friends simply without qualification, but by happening, he says, huh? Okay, because you happen to please me today, right? I mean, not tomorrow, but today you happen to do so, right? I'm going to get tired of you tomorrow, right? Or you happen to be useful to me, right? Today, right? Okay. If you're an auto mechanic, you might be useful to me someday, right?

[27:59] Other day, I have nothing to do with you, really. You see? Okay. Or you happen to be useful to recommend me? In a position to recommend me, right? Or to say a word for me, right? Okay.

[28:18] Okay. Now let's turn to reading five. Now this is a little different topic. Okay. Just keep in mind now the topics he's covered so far. First reading, he talked about what?

[28:38] The reasons for considering friendship in this part of philosophy, why we should consider it, such an important thing. And then in the second reading, he had worked out a definition of friendship, right? And then in the third reading, he had what? The three three divisions. He distinguished down the three kinds of friendship among equals, right? In the fourth one, he compared, yeah, huh? Especially comparing the lower ones to the higher one, right?

[29:07] And pointing out that the highest one is the only one that's simply friendship, right? But the others by happening are friendship, and they have a certain, they can be called friendship by certain likeness to the the perfect friendship. Big one, huh? Okay. Now he's going to compare friendship with its act, and also you might say a little bit with its habit, huh? Okay.

[29:38] And of course, he recalls something that would be familiar to you if you had studied the earlier parts of Nicomachean Ethics. Just as in the virtues, some are called good according to habit, and some according to act, right? So we might say a man is just, meaning that he has the habit of justice, right? Or you might say that what a man does is just, right? I say you're just when you pay what you owe and so on, right?

[30:10] Okay. So sometimes it's said to be just because of a habit, other times because of a what? An act, right? Okay. And there's of course a connection between that habit and that act, right? Because in the case of the moral virtues, the habit is acquired by repeated acts. So it's by doing just things that we become a just man, and by doing courageous things that we become courageous.

[30:42] We acquire the habit, in other words, of the moral virtues by repeated acts. But vice versa, once one has acquired the habit, one can do those same acts better and more firmly and more more pleasure, right? So there's a connection there between the habit and the what act, but they're not the same thing, right? And maybe if I start, you know, eating and drinking a little bit more than I should, and then tomorrow I eat a little more than I should, and so on, I could lose my temperance, right?

[31:18] Okay. And the same way, if I start to, you know, choose a little bit here and a little bit there, and go on, right? I might lose my habit, right? So there's a connection between the habit and the act, okay? And a somewhat different connection between the habit and the act when you're acquiring the habit, right? And after you've acquired the habit, right? Okay. Because it's more difficult, and there's a certain instability in my doing the just thing before I've acquired the virtue of justice, huh?

[31:58] But once I've acquired the virtue, then I can do that act with a certain stability and with more pleasure and more more perfectly, huh? Okay.

[32:14] So Aristotle's recalling that, right? He said we're going to make a similar distinction, right? We can distinguish between The habit of friendship, right? And then the what? The act of friendship, huh? And they're not the same thing, right? And then what's the connection between the two, right?

[32:38] Just as in the virtues, some are called good according to habit, and some according to act, right? Okay. So I could speak of a courageous man, right? Mean that he has a habit of courage, right? He has a virtue of courage, or I could say he's courageous because he's doing something courageous, right? Okay. So also in friendship, right? For those living together, right? Enjoy each other and bring about good things for each other.

[33:11] But those sleeping or separated in places do not act, right? Okay. However, they are disposed to act friendly in that way, and habit is a what? Firm disposition, right? Okay. For the places do not destroy the friendship simply, but the what? Act, right? So if I'm separated from you in place, I'm down in Kentucky, and you people are up here, you see, then I can't talk to you and be friendly with you in the terms of the act, right?

[33:50] But do I cease to be your friend? No, no. Although as you go on to say later on, if there are no friendly acts being performed between us, right? Then the friendship could what? The habit could be weakened and even what? Disappear, right? Okay.

[34:14] So he says, however, if the absence comes to be for a long time, it seems to make the friendship what? Forgotten, right? Okay. You see, there's a young people sometimes, you know, where they're friends in high school, but they go to different colleges, let's say, right? And then they kind of maybe drift apart, you know, because they don't have any what? Of the acts of friendship, right?

[34:39] Okay. So we often hear people say, "Well, we've kind of drifted apart, you know, over the years, now because you haven't seen them, you know."

[34:50] Once it has been said, the lack of conversation, right? And conversation maybe could be taken a broader sense and just speaking together, but lack of being together and so on destroys many what? Friendships, right? Okay. That's true of a lot of habits.

[35:10] Someone told me this guy he knew. I guess he in the seminary, I think he taught Greek, but he didn't teach it very often. Oh yeah. He said every time he taught Greek, he had learned it. again. Oh, right, right, yeah. And sometimes, you know, you find out when people are taking, say, a language, a foreign language, in college. You know, if they take it to the first year, they they should take the second year right away.

[35:33] You know, rather than you know wait until the first year has disappeared. Now, what's the next paragraph, and how does it fit into there? Well, he's talking about those who, speaking roughly,

[35:57] are not well disposed or are not capable too much of the acts of friendship, right? Okay. So he says neither the old nor the harsh, right, seem to be fitted for friendship, for there is little that is pleasant in these. Okay, the old man has all kinds of aches and pains, and is complaining about things and so on. Right. Other people are kind of what severe and harsh in their character, right?

[36:28] And so it's not pleasant to be with these people, right? And no one is able to pass a day together with one painful or what not pleasant, right? For nature seems especially to feel to flee the painful and to desire the pleasant. Okay.

[36:49] He says those approving of each other, but not living together, maybe not even wanting to live together, right, seem more to wish well to each other than to be friends. And here he seems to be almost what touching upon something more required for friendship than was brought out in the definition, right? Yeah. You see, if you and I wish well to each other, that would seem to be friendship in the in the first chapter. Right huh so if you and I wish well to each other, but we'd rather not live together, right?

[37:28] Spend time together, we might still wish well to each other, but are we really friends, fully, you say? Well, thus the insistence he gives here upon living together. For nothing belongs more to friends than living together, right? Okay.

[37:53] For those in need, want usefulness, huh? But even the blessed to spend the day together, right? Now, what about the day of eternity? What about heaven? There, right? Is that True. Even there, right? Huh? The blessed need nothing, right? And yet they what? Are going to be looking at God together, right? And praising God together, right? Okay.

[38:23] For it is suitable least of all to these to be solitary, huh? But it is not possible to live together if they are not pleasant or do not enjoy the same things which companionship seems to have, right? Huh? So if you want to listen to rock and roll, and I want to listen to Mozart, we could wish well to each other, but don't want to live together, huh?

[38:52] You know, you'd be playing that junk every day. When I worked in the package store, you know, sometimes on a Saturday afternoon, I get the Metropolitan Opera, right? Not that I cared too much, but it was Mozart I wanted to hear it, right? Oh. Well, we are friendly with the policeman who worked in the in the plaza there in Worcester. So the cop would come in, but what he wants to hear is what the baseball game is doing, right?

[39:22] And that Mozart would be up. He said, I'm going to shoot that radio out," he'd say. You know, his joke. So how can we live together if I want to listen to the Mozart opera and you want to listen to the baseball game, right? See, like

[39:43] last night, there they had the Yankee Red Sox game on at the same time that the debate was on, right? Oh, that's funny. So making fun about people switching back and forth, you know. And they were playing like a little bit of the debate and a little bit of the announcer of the baseball game, and summing up to give you what the impression was of people last night.

[40:04] Just like the famous Bambi game, football. Huh? What is that? You ever heard of that one? No. The Bambi game. They had a they had a very big important football game on. Yeah. It went overtime. Yeah. At eight o'clock, Bambi was supposed to come on television, so the network switched to Bambi. Yeah. And NBC's the switchboard looked like a Christmas tree. You had so many people calling, cursing them out because of had to cut the football game off for Bambi.

[40:31] Oh, I remember that. So they came up with all these movies like Bambi, Bambi meets Godzilla. I watched that game. Time. Good coffee. John Carey. Okay. Now it

[41:00] says the friendship then of the good is the greatest, as has been said by said many times. Page seven here. For the good or pleasant, simply seems to be loved and chosen, but by each what is such to him? But the good by the good through both of these, right? Huh? And we've talked about that before, right? Huh?

[41:24] Um. If you and I are alike in enjoying bad things, right? Huh? We have some reason to enjoy each other's company, right? Because we enjoy the same things, right? But the things that we're enjoying together are not really very enjoyable. Well, if you and I rejoice in good things, right? Then we have a double reason for liking each other, right? Because the things that we rejoice in are really good for us, right?

[41:54] And we enjoy them, right? So we have a double reason, huh? Okay. Now, what's the next part here of the um text here? We're gonna point out something kind of subtle, huh? This connection between friendship and habit, huh? Okay. And loving there is probably like in Greek there more the physical loving, eros. It seems to be like a passion, an emotion, a feeling, right? But friendship is like a what?

[42:40] A habit, right? For loving or wanting is just as much towards inanimate things, but in friendship they love in return with choice. Choice, however, is from habit.

[43:08] That's kind of interesting, right? And again, go back to to Shakespeare there, right? And that passage we gave you there in the friendly topics, huh? Where Hamlet says, "Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice,

[43:28] and could have been distinguished, right? Her election, which is another word for choice, right, has sealed thee for herself, right? But he's a friend of Horatio by what? Feeling? By emotion? By passion? No. He's a friend by choice, right? Okay.

[43:56] Um. Now, is there a connection between choice and habit? Now, can there be love at first sight? This passionate love at first sight. Yeah. At least the great poets represent the great lovers in this sense, right? As having love, As having love, this passion, this feeling, this emotion, at first sight, right? Okay.

[44:42] President Bush said last night in the debate, he asked about his his womanfolk, right? And so he said that it was love at first sight with his wife, huh? Okay. But can there be friendship at first sight? There can be a desire for friendship, right? Okay. But I can't really choose you as my friend without what? No, I'm seeing your habits. Yeah. But again, on my side, huh?

[45:20] The choices you make in life. Do they proceed more from your habit than anything else? See, Aristotle defines moral virtue. In the second book,

[45:40] he puts choice in the definition of moral virtue, and sometimes they translate the definition like this: they'll say moral virtue is a habit with choice, right? Existing in the middle towards us is determined by right reason,

[46:03] and maybe you could almost define it as a habit of choosing, right? What is in the middle? In the middle towards us is determined by right reason. So if I'm a temperate man, if I'm a moderate man, right?

[46:25] Then I'm habitually inclined, right? To choose to eat and to drink, neither too much nor too little for me, as right reason sees the amount I should have at this particular time, right? Okay. Because sometimes you need more or less because of the circumstances, right?

[47:07] It's going to be a long time before we eat now, so get a good breakfast dinner or something, right? huh? Okay. So there's a connection there between choice and what habit, right?

[47:13] So it's interesting that Aristotle. It's a little bit brief here what he says, right? Maybe he needs some more unfolding than I'm. Giving it here,

[47:26] but he's seeing a connection between friendship and choice, and between choice and what habit, right? And I suppose those that you choose as your friends, right? Those you choose to be close to, right? Well, those may just happen to be, you know, brought in a close association, but those you choose to be friends with or to be close to

[48:00] says something about your habits, right? You see? If I'm not habituated to listening to rock and roll, which I'm not, I'm not going to be choosing as a close friend someone whose meat is that kind of music, right? You see? Okay.

[48:31] But now, if someone comes along and they're they're very much into Mozart, well, I'd be more inclined to choose to associate with this sort of person, huh? Okay. Because I'm in the habit of listening to Mozart or the other composer, right? More than Bach or Handel or maybe else.

[48:59] Or I'm a man who's habituated to to philosophizing and theological thinking and so on, right? Huh? So I begin to a conversation with somebody, and he seems to be interested in these things, right? Huh? Okay. Then I'm more disposed to choose this person as a what friend, huh? Okay.

[49:32] So, is there truth in what Aristotle is saying here, right? Okay. This is an interesting connection between habit and friendship, right? Not just that friendship itself can be said to be a habit, right? But that our friendships come not so much from feeling or emotion, like romantic love can be, you know, at once like that because it's a feeling, right? But it comes from choice, and the choice comes from what our habits are,

[50:06] okay? Again, you know, Shakespeare kind of helps us to see that in those passages, right? Um. Something of the character of Hamlet is revealed to us by the fact that he chose Horatio as his friend. Right? Give me that man that is not passion's slave. Right? And I will wear him in my heart my heart of hearts. Right? Or if I had to get drunk every weekend or something, I'm looking for someone else who wants to get drunk every weekend too.

[50:45] Right? You see what I mean? Okay. Now, in the next to the last paragraph in this fifth reading, again, a very subtle thing Aristotle is saying.

[51:07] That in the highest kind of friendship, especially, they wish good things to the beloved for their sake, not by passion, but by what habit? Huh? Now, what does that mean? See?

[51:26] Well, what does the emotions? What are the emotions? We talked a little bit about this before, right? What are the emotions or feelings as opposed to choice?

[51:54] But choice is found really only in man among the animals, right? Because choice requires some kind of reason, right? Huh? And the reason why Hamlet chose Horatio rather than other men, right? He saw that other men were the slaves of some passion, right? And that Horatio was not a slave of some passion, right? So he had a reason for choosing Horatio rather than some other men right? Okay.

[52:28] Or this man loves Mozart, and this man doesn't rock and roll. So I have a reason for choosing this man as a friend rather than that man, right? You see. So there is a connection here, right? Choice is an act of the will, right? But the will is the desire following upon reason. Emotions or the feelings are something we have in common with the other animals, right?

[53:02] And this follows upon sense, right? Okay. Now, how does sense know the good? How do the senses know what is good and bad? Well, they're very limited in knowing the good or the bad, right? The senses by themselves they know good only by as what is pleasing to the senses, right? And they know bad only in the way of what is displeasing or painful to the senses, huh?

[53:40] And whose good is the pleasure of the senses? It's the good of the one. The senses. Yeah. Who has the senses, right? Huh? Okay. So by the emotions or the feelings, am I really what wishing well to another person? See. If my notion of good is what is pleasing to my senses, I'm seeking in some sense my own, right? Okay. But friendship requires, right, that you love another person, right, for their own sake, right.

[54:24] So you can say a child is almost naturally what selfish, we'd say, right? Huh? When you follow just your senses, you're just trying to please your yourself, right? So you're not really concerned with the good of another, right? You're seeking the other because they please you, what they do for you. And it's hard for us to get over that original condition, and that's where Aristotle's saying that you have to be habituated to this, huh?

[54:56] Now he's saying, huh, for loving, excuse me, next to the last, and they wish good things beloved for their sake, not by passion but by habit. Well, if you have experience as a parent, or your own parents brought you up right, the parents. Part of the education, the moral education of the child, is to get the child to not be selfish, but to think of what? Yeah, see.

[55:28] And I always take a simple example, you know, where the kid has some candy, right? And you say, "Can I have some?" You know, and maybe his first you know thing is doesn't want to share his candy, right? Please, you know. And so on. And and and then the kid, you know, gives you some, right? Huh? Okay. Maybe you have some candy, share it with him, right?

[55:50] Give him this good example, right? And so he kind of builds up a habit of what? Generosity. Yeah, or sharing with another, right? Huh? Now he doesn't consider. Maybe he got a box of candy from Aunt So and So for his birthday, right? Go take to his room and keep it all by himself. No, see, but he's being habituated, right? And these habits are by repeated acts, right?

[56:16] He's become accustomed to sharing the good things that he has, right? Huh? Okay. Well, then he's what? Becom habituated to wish well to others, and not just to himself, right? And that's necessary in order to be a true friend, huh? That you wish well to another, not because of what you get from them, right? But for their own sake, right? But how can this little boy or girl get from the selfishness they were kind of subject to because the fact we follow our senses as a child?

[56:57] How can they get out of that selfishness to the point of actually wishing well to others? Well, they have to be accustomed to think of others, huh? Ah, when I was down the when I was a little boy, there we used to you know get together a bunch of kids in the neighborhood and play a game of softball or something, right? Huh? So there's one kid down the block.

[57:25] He had a ball and a bat, you know. So we're playing down there, playing. And if the game didn't go the way he liked, right, he'd take the bat and the ball and go to the house with it. Well, his mother saw this selfishness, right? So she took the bat and the ball and brought out again for us to play with, right? But he's in the house now.

[57:50] You see? Well, in a sense, this is you know reinforcing in another way, right? But the idea that he should be what to share his baseball bat and ball, right? You know, and not be selfish like he's doing. Things don't go. The game doesn't go the way he wants it to go, or something, right? But that's in a sense a little example of a mother trying to what punish a sense a child, right?

[58:15] But trying to get them to what eventually be open to sharing their baseball bat as well as their candy, right? With the other person, right? You see that? Okay.

[58:35] So that shows a real connection of another kind, again, between habit and what friendship, right? In other words, friendship is a habit. Although it can also refer to the act, right? In itself, is a habit, but also it's produced by what choice, right? And choice comes from really our habits, right? Okay. Did I choose to be a philosopher? Aristotle says the philosopher and the sophist differ by their choice of life.

[59:12] Did I choose to be a philosopher with some sudden feeling I had one day or emotion? I suddenly got an emotional attachment to the. Yeah. See. No, no. It it arose, I suppose, from my somewhat studious habits, right? Huh? Okay. Even before I I met philosophy, you might say, had certain you know studious habits. I like to read and study things and think about and so on, right?

[59:44] So in a sense, my habits, right, which are not friendship, right, but my habits were what going to determine or at least great influence the choices I was going to make. Okay. And so if I become your friend by choice, and my choice is from my habits, then that's another connection between friendship and habits, right? Okay. And then to really become your friend, he says, he gives another reason.

[1:00:14] I have to wish well to you, huh? But you don't do that as more naturally as a child, right? As a child, you're kind of naturally selfish, huh? You see? And you kind of see this with little children, you know how it's kind of kind of perverse in a way. But one kid has a bunch of toys there, right, to play with, right? And one kid starts playing with one toy.

[1:00:37] The minute one kid starts playing with one toy, another kid wants to play with that same toy. Yeah, you didn't want to play with it beforehand, but because that kid's playing with it, he wants it, right? And and then there's a little fight or something, you know. And you see that kind of selfishness now, you know. And and mothers are always, you know, trying to to adjudicate these matters and say, well, now you know, let him play with it for a while.

[1:00:59] Now you play with it for a while, and now let him play with it, you know. But that's a form of more education, right? You're customing the child to think a little bit of the other's enjoyment of that toy as well, right? Now, see, but the child's first reactions, he sees you playing with the toy and you enjoying that toy, and now I'd rather be enjoying the toy than you know I see you enjoying the toy.

[1:01:21] I want to enjoy the toy myself, and then I've got to take it away from you, and then I've got to, you know have a little struggle with you, you know. And you see this little children, it just it just you know human perversity, but original sin or whatever it is, but that's what it is, right? And so the the attempt of the mother or the father to remedy that situation, right, is an attempt by the father and mother by repeated acts to what?

[1:01:49] Acustom them, right, to taking thought about the other, right? Yeah. My mother used to separate me and my brother, one of my brothers, when I got in a fight, you know. Of course, after a while, you know, you're separated. It's no fun playing by yourself. So you have to make up. It was kind of a good a good way of doing it, I thought. Right, in retrospect, right, you see, because you just get bored, you know, being all by yourself.

[1:02:15] And if you go to your room, and you go to your room, you go to your corner, you go to your corner, and you want to play together, and you know, you got to make up before. you do it so. Okay.

[1:02:35] Now, in loving the friend, he says the last paragraph. Now, they love what is good for themselves, for the good becoming a friend becomes good to whom he is a friend. Reminds me of, that quote in scripture, right? God is good to those who what? Love him, right? On seeking him, for each loves what is good for himself, and they give back the equal in wish and in kind.

[1:03:08] For friendship is called equality, right? That's interesting, huh? And shows the likeness between friendship again and what virtue, Namely justice, right? That's why you have courts of equity, right? To make equal, right? Okay. Um.

[1:03:30] These things belong most of all to that of the good. But notice that shows the difficulty of friendship between God and man. Let's say, right? Huh? Okay. Because the great inequality, and one of the reasons given for the incarnation is that God's coming down more to our level, right? To make love more easily between us and God, right? Okay. But even in human society, now between those that are far apart, right?

[1:04:07] Love or friendship seems very difficult, right? Okay. He's going to come back again to this idea of equality later on in friendship and develop a little bit more, but touches upon it here.

[1:04:23] Okay.