Pyak Anatoliy

ID2019105719
Topic: On Friendship

Aristotle explains three types of friendships:

friendship of utility
friendship of pleasure
perfect friendship 

Given that generosity, courage, and selflessness manifest themselves mostly in the context of
friendship, it is tempting from an Aristotelian perspective to believe that friendship can teach us
something significant about moral virtue. It is tempting to believe that by studying friendship we
can see how the life of moral virtue and happiness come together since friendship is also where
people feel most fulfilled.

The reason people are connected in a friendship of utility is because they can benefit from one
another. As soon as you take away what they both want, their friendship ends. For example,
business friendship one supplies, and the other sells the product if for some reason the supply
stops their friendship will end. (It can’t be a one-sided benefit, otherwise, it’s not a friendship it’s
taking advantage of someone).

In a friendship of pleasure, the only thing that binds the parties together is some form of
enjoyment that both parties can derive from the other. When you remove that, the friendship
ends. For example, people can have similar hobbies or values, when one person stops doing that
the friendship will end. (People can mature/evolve during that time and their values may change,
they don't find pleasure in what they used to do before).

Aristotle says, “Those who love for the sake of utility love for the sake of what is good for
themselves”, and “Friendship seems to hold states together”. 
Also says that perfect friendship is “made up of men who are good and alike in virtue; for each
alike wish well to each other… they are good in themselves”. 

This kind of (perfect) friendship resembles friendship for the sake of pleasure because good
people enjoy being pleasant to one another. The same is true of friendship for mutual benefit and
mutual usefulness. When each friend receives the same benefit, such as pleasure, from the other
and not only that, but also receives it from the same source, the friendship is most likely to last in
these circumstances. To explain it simply Aristotle says that to have a perfect friendship and
maintain/sustain it for a long time (hopefully till the end), you need to have a little bit of
everything: friendship of utility, friendship of pleasure and I also think that you need to
compromise/sacrifice some things from both sides, mutual understanding and respect.

We must understand that Aristotle does not consider friendships based on utility and pleasure to
be bad. In fact, Perfect friendship will be uncommon because we cannot love someone's
character until we know it and because we only get to know someone's character after getting to
know them for a long time. Therefore, it seems like all friendships even friendships between
virtuous people would have to start as friendships of pleasure and utility, even though we might
hope that our enjoyable and useful relationships will develop into true/perfect friendships.

Aristotle is trying to demonstrate how these types of friendships are the foundation of a society.
He is also attempting to make us understand that friendships are formed and broken naturally,
and that this is a normal aspect of being human.