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Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics VII-VIII

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?.

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Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics VII-VIII

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  1. Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics VII-VIII Philosophy of Love and Sex

  2. 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?

  3. 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”?)

  4. 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

  5. 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)

  6. 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.

  7. 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

  8. 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.

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