Do you have a friend in me?

Aristotle turns his philosophy towards the subject of friendship in book VIII of Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle says friendship is “not only a necessary thing, but a noble one” and is capable of “hold[ing] cities together” (1155a).

But not all friendship is virtuous? Some friendships are of utility; “the person is loved not in so far as he is who he is, but in so far as he provides some good or pleasure” (1156a). These friendships dissolve quickly and change with what is useful.

Very incidental friendship at first

“Complete friendship is that of good people, those who are alike in their virtue; they each alike wish good things to each other in so far as they are good”, says Aristotle about the other form of friendship (1156b). This friendship is long-lasting in duration.

Aristotle claims that each friendship will last as long as beach party receives the same benefit – the complete friendship always gives both parties the same benefit. He then states, “it is bad people who will tend to be friends for pleasure or utility [. . .] but good people will be friends for each other’s sake, because they are friends in so far as they are good”.

I’m not sure when Aristotle last made a new friend (probably a while since he has been dead for centuries), but that’s not how friendships are made.

*I’ll pause while the proverbial glass of water is dropped and shattered by the awestruck observer*

How do we form a bond with someone? We enjoy their company. We find pleasure in their presence. As long as we enjoy their accompaniment, we consider them a friend. This relationship must last for months or years before we genuinely care about someone else for their own sake. Bob Brewton, chairman of the Baylor Angel Network, recently said, “once you get old, you don’t make anymore old friends. Your old friends come from the friends you make now”.

“Friends” helping each other out

My point (I know you’ve been waiting for it) is this – complete friendships comes from the maturing of an “incidental” friendship. To say one is better than the other ignores this. The effort put into creating a complete friendship, now that’s virtuous.

What type of friends are these?

Justice, meet justice

Many years ago, it was a different time, and I was in a different philosophy class. Sitting there, I noticed that many of classmates used the words “justice” and “morality” interchangeably. I casually joined the conversation and pointed out their oversight. The entire class, except one of my friends next to me, stared at me blank-faced.

“What do you mean they are different? Both are doing what’s right.”

I decided to illustrate with an example. Suppose that every college student needed to build their own desk to bring to class. The person next to me spent weeks crafting, and came to class everyday with a beautiful desk. I, on the other hand, was too lazy and wrote without a desk. One day, I really needed a desk to write on, so I asked the person next to me to break off a piece of his desk so I could have it.

A desk is also useful for table-flipping

Pop quiz! Would it be just or moral for my fellow classmate to share? It would be unjust, I argued, for him to share. There is no obligation for him to share, like the law, and I do not have any claim to his work. It would be unfair to him. However, sensing that I could benefit from his desk, sharing it may be a moral action.

Slowly the class began to realize the distinction I was making – while justice and morality are both doing what is “right”, how we define “right” changes between contexts. For justice, what is “right” is what is “fair, dutiful, or lawful”. For morality, what is “right” is….a question philosophers have argued over for centuries. Moving on…

Probably like this

I noticed that Aristotle seems to not accept this distinction. He defines justice as “the lawful and the fair” (Nicomachean Ethics 1129b). But he uses justice’s relation with the law to argue, “we call anything just that tends to produce or to preserve happiness and its constituents for the community of a city” (1129b).

Furthermore, he incorporates justice with his other we-will-call-moral virtues. According to Aristotle, “justice is the greatest of the virtues” (1129b). He breaks justice down into “what is proportionate” and what is “rectificatory” (1131b) – “distribution of common property” and “just in transactions” (1131b).

But now we get into the fun part. Aristotle isn’t clear (at least not clear to me) in his description of proportionate equality. He even recognizes that different political affiliations will disagree on the fair proportions. Which proportion is the correct one? It seems to me that the level of intertwining morality with justice is dependent on the level of fair proportion.

And then I realized, thinking back to my philosophy class, that maybe morality is the same as justice for some people. If we all have different fair proportions we see justice as adhering to, some levels may appear more of less moral.

Sorry buddy, blame Aristotle

Of Amiability and Humor

Chapter 6

In private relations with others – both in living together and in participating in discussions and actions – some people seem obsequious; in an attempt to please us, they praise everything and are never obstructive, thinking that they must not cause any pain to those they meet. At the opposite extreme, people who obstruct everything and think nothing of causing pain are called bad-tempered and belligerent.

Aristotle defines this “unnamed” virtue thus; it “seems most like friendship”, but “does not imply affection”. I would define it as amiability. Amiable people are polite, and are free with their compliments of others. However, they are not overly flattering to a fault.

The too “obsequious”

Being too “obsequious”, or too “bad-tempered and belligerent”, is not virtuous.

The “bad-tempered and belligerent”

My examples? Butters and Cartman from South Park. If you haven’t seen South Park, these clips may help.

Chapter 8

Since relaxation is a part of life, and one element of this is amusing diversion, here too it seems that there is a form of tasteful social conduct, namely, saying, and similarly listening to, the right thing in the right way.

Aristotle mentions another social virtue, that of humor. The mean is “those who joke in a tasteful way” who are “quick-witted”. Furthermore, “seemliness is proper to the mean state”. The virtuous humorist will know what is appropriate to say and laugh at.

The extreme includes the buffoon, one who “cannot resist a joke”, and the boor, one who “contributes nothing and takes objection to everything”. Once again…

The buffoon and the boor.

How to reach Nirvana?

“And I forget just why I taste. Oh yeah, I guess it makes me smile”

What is happiness? That’s my initial question after reading Books I and II of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. However, that’s not the appropriate question to ask. The best way to define Aristotle’s happiness is by looking at how we achieve happiness.

The aim “of all good things to be done”, “people call happiness” (5). So using the logic of Socrates in the Phaedo (in describing why Anaxagoras’ philosophy could be so valuable), we can look no further than what is and determine that it is in accords with our subject-matter (in this case, happiness).

But Plato gives us further direction. “Happiness in particular is believed to be complete without qualification, since we always choose it for itself and never for the sake of anything else”. (10-11). Furthermore, “the complete good is thought to be self-sufficient” (11).

So here’s what we know. The aim of people is happiness. Happiness is all we need. We do not require anyone else to be happy.

“I’m so happy, ’cause I found my friends; they’re in my head”

Great, what’s next? We achieve happiness by acting virtuously, apparently. “Virtue, then, is a state involving [1.] rational choice, [2.] consisting in a mean relative to us and [3.] determined by reason – the reason, that is, by reference to [4.] which the practically wise person would determine it”.

Well that answers my next question of what reason is. So how does this all fit? A reasonable person will determine how to act rationally , which in turns leads to virtue, which also leads to happiness. Borrowing the transitive property from intro to logic, reason will lead to happiness.

“I think I’m dumb, maybe just happy”