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Friendships

-- By TonyWang - 24 Feb 2024

Ancient Wisdom

Aristotle’s Three Bases of Friendships

In books VIII and IX of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, he posited there are three bases of friendship - pleasure, strategic advantage, and goodwill. Friendships based on pleasure are conditioned on each party’s derivation of pleasure from the other party’s company; however, should that derivation stop, the friendship begins to diminish. This is structurally parallel to friendships based on strategic advantage, which can refer to money, power, and gains from trade and cooperation, etc. Different, however, are friendships based on goodwill - these friendships are conditioned on each party’s care and interest in the well-being on the other party, being personally interested in the other’s downfalls and good times, not out of selfish motivations to derive pleasure or advantage, but simply to the benefit of the other party. Aristotle believes this is motivated by goodwill, but there can be other motivations — love, respect, virtue, but certainly not pleasure or advantage. The ultimate goal of friendship, set forth by Aristotle and upon which I guide my friendships, are true friends. He defines true friends as friends about whom you care similar to how you care about yourself. I believe this can be achieved once you view your friends as an extension of yourself — their fortunes become your fortunes, their downfalls your downfalls, but you effectively operate as a collective.

Chinese Philosophy

Across Eurasia, in ancient China, its philosophy also attempted to theorize friendship. However, because Chinese philosophy lacked the Socratic approach, it instead came up with guidelines that lacked an explanation like the one mentioned above. Surprisingly, it came to similar results: its guidelines for true friends (referred to as “brothers with different blood”) are congruent with Aristotle’s meaning of true friends. One guideline states thalllll: “brothers are your hands and feet”, implying you think of what happens to your brothers as what happens to you. If they suffer, it is your suffering by extension. This is another way of Aristotle’s assertion that true friends are those about whom you care similar to how you care about yourself.

Operationalizing Wisdom

Ancient wisdom around friendship can help us orient our relationships today, but how to operationalize that in modern times is unclear. I will do so below.

Commonality in Character

We live in a world of division. Differences exist between peoples — culture, language, habits, religions, and views. However, we are all humans, so we must share some common values irrespective of differences in origin — for example, humans dislike betrayal and treachery and like loyalty, we dislike those who never reciprocate what we give but conversely are attracted to generosity… So while differences between people’s cultures, religions, and habits could potentially make or break a friendship based on pleasure or advantage, a true friendship can exist despite these differences, because a true friendship necessitates something else — character. Commonality in character is necessary in a true friendship. It will not be sufficient, however, as people will need to go through what I call “character-revealing events” to correctly assess each other’s character, and these events do not occur frequently, the infrequency of which results in missed opportunities for true friendship. Timing, luck, and other conditions need to happen to create the conditions for true friendship, but what is clear is that commonality in character is a necessary condition.

Modern Woes With Friendship

Many friendships result in heartbreak for two reasons: for one, people mis-group their friends, not understanding the basis of their relationship and accordingly having expectations inconsistent with the nature of their friendships. Secondly, they incorrectly assess the other party’s character, giving them the access to one’s true friendship when they only deserve to be friends of pleasure or advantage. This latter tragedy can be avoided with good judgement of character, which can be gained through experiences, but the first tragedy can be avoided upon rationalizing friendships the way I have described.

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