Benefits Before Buddies or Buddies Before Benefits?

    Who doesn’t love going out and hanging out on a Friday night with their buddies? A majority of high schoolers will most likely agree that Friday night is their favorite night to go out and have fun whether it’s going to the movies, bowling, a football game, or just hanging out around a campfire. Aristotle has a great deal to say about friendships in his book Nicomachean Ethics and how to determine if the friendships are genuine, utilitarian or based around pleasures. He argues that it is more beneficial for people to be friends because they care about one another than to be friends based merely on the pleasures or the benefits that are available.

    Aristotle opens his argument in Book 8 where he states, “Without friends no one would choose to live, even if he possessed all other goods…” (1155a5-6). Aristotle ensures that it’s clear to the reader that having friendships is essential in life like oxygen is for breathing. He stresses the importance of it by saying one would not “choose to live” without friends because loneliness will kill a person’s soul and drive to live. Mutuality is key in a real friendship too. Aristotle adds, “For a wish for friendship arises swiftly, but friendship itself does not” (1156b32-33). He warns readers that you may think you are friends with a person, but it may not be a mutual desire. In order to form a friendship both people need be realize that is what the other wants to do. He also insists that one should consider the distance one lives from the other because, “Location dissolves not friendship in the unqualified sense but rather its activity,” because the person may not have the required time and effort to devote to the other (1157b10-11). It’s important for people to realize that distance and a mutual understanding is key in determining if a friendship is going to flourish or die. He explicitly proclaims that, “What is common holds things together,” meaning common interests are important along with morals and goals in life (1162a29). They are the glue that makes a friendship real and not the material things or things of ephemeral nature.

    As Aristotle continues in Book 8, he touches on how some people make buddies with, “Those who are witty, not because they are of a certain sort, but because they are pleasant to them” (1156a13-14). He recognizes that there is more than one kind of friendship that can be formed. Friendships based on pleasure quickly fade, especially ones founded on beauty which fades with time. It’s not bad to be comrades with “witty” people because they make time spent with them enjoyable, but their humor can’t be the sole building block of one’s comradery. Furthermore, Aristotle stresses that, “The young swiftly become friends and cease being so: the friendship changes together with what they find pleasant, and change in this sort of pleasure is swift” (1156a34-1156b1). Hence, people change at a drastic rate due to curiosity and maturity. As people grow up, they get curious and find new interests and loss others as they mature. This means friends won’t always have the same interests as the other person as when their friendship ages. The point he is making is friendships built on the pleasures one receives from being in the company of another can’t glue a relationship together like compassion and commitment bonds do in a true friendship.

    Lastly, Aristotle informs his readers that there are some people who act like friends in order to receive some benefit. He claims that, “Those who are friends on account of utility dissolve the friendship at the same time as that advantage ceases, for they were friends not to each other but to the profit involved” (1157a14-16). So not only does he say one person can be guilty of being in a friendship for “profit”, but both people can be guilty at the same time for using the other for some benefit like a ride, money, a cool gaming console, or anything else they are lacking. He adds more to his argument by saying, “Their services are rendered in a short time” 1158a17-18). Which means their friendship will only last as long as the supplies last, which might be a few months or only a few weeks and sometimes even just days. Soon after this, he blatantly remarks, “It is impossible for [base people] to be friends: their aim is to grasp for more of what is beneficial to them” (1167b11-12). So if one was thinking that the friendship could still work out, Aristotle says no it will not happen because base people can’t get along with one another when there is a lack of benefit being provided to them. It’s the basic definition of the friendship of a selfish person who ends up with no friends after a period of time.
    Aristotle wraps up his discussion in Book 9 where he basically sums up his philosophy of friendship and how it affects a person’s life. He illustrates that to be virtuous and to live well, one must have good friends. By good friends he means ones who have discussed with one another their goals, common interests, and pleasures that through all of this they might form a real foundation for their friendship that will be glued together with their same mindset of aiding each other along in life while enjoying the other aspects they may possess. To simply state Aristotle’s view of how friends should base their relationships, he would probably agree that it should be buddies before benefits who genuinely care about one another as he cared about other philosophers.

Work Cited

Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins,            University of Chicago Press, Reprint edition, 2012.