Aristotle Friendships

In Aristotle’s book, he talks a lot about the individual person. However, in one chapter, he switches gears to talk about friends. Aristotle gives his opinions on friendship and major themes like the three kinds of friendships. For Aristotle, there are three kinds of friendships that a person can experience and have. The first one is the useful friend. Here Aristotle is talking about a friend who you are friends with because they are useful. He gives the example of a funny/witty person. He says that in this type of friendship, “the partners do not feel affection for one another per se but in terms of the good accruing to each other from the other (Nicomachean Ethics, 218). What he is trying to get at here is that we enjoy people who make

This type of friendship is also usually are short lived because they are based mainly on something they receive. These type of friendships are common with old people and young people. Young people tend to guide their lives by emotion and enjoy pleasures in the moment. Because our pleasures change, we can become friends very quickly and just as quickly not be friends. Aristotle also believes that young people are prone to fall in love because this is based on pleasure and emotion, something that is very important to young people. “But they do wish to be together all day and to live together, because it is in this way that they get what they want out of their friends (Ethics, 219).” Neither of these first two friendships are ideal because they do not last long and change based on our needs. The third one Aristotle offers will change

I agree that humans tend to have these three kind of friendships in their lives and that we all have been these kind of friends to others. I also really agree with Aristotle about when he says that emotions tend to guide young people’s lives. I see this a lot when people are discussing their vocation. They say things like “well what feels right to you?” or others. These are not bad, it is just the way young people process and make choices. One critique of Aristotle I have is that I wish he focused more on the venerability of having a close friend. It takes work to keep up a close friendship and can be hard sometimes to let people into your life. There is always the fear of being rejected or hurt. I do not think he emphasized this enough. This also translates to our relationship with God as it can be very hard to let him into certain areas of our