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Friendship and Self-Love Paul Boaheng

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Friendship and Self-Love Paul Boaheng Friendship and Self-Love Paul Boaheng Three Forms of Friendship: based on and aiming at (a) Immediate Pleasure. E.g. Romantic love (b) Utility/Commercial friendship: a kind of instrumental friendship (c) Perfect or complete friendship: exists among the good/virtuous. Why C is the highest form of friendship 1) It is based on excellence/virtue. 2) They are loved for their own sake. 3) It incorporates the other two kinds of friendship. 4) It is lasting and enduring. Summary: A true friend is one who: (1) Wishes and does good things for a friend, for the friend’s sake (2) Wishes the friend to exist and live, for his own sake (3) Spends time with his friend. They want to be in each other’s company. (4) Makes the same choices as his friend. They share the same values (5) Share his friend’s distresses and pleasures (NE 1165b35) Friendship of the virtuous is the most stable and enduring, why? Virtuous people aim at the same thing-the highest good-have the same values. Q: Does friendships based on utility or pleasure qualify as friendship at all? They are “friendship by similarity” or analogy (1157a, p. 124) Objections (a) Can’t a mother love the most loathsome child or/and the most loathsome spouse? (b) So don’t true friends stick by their friends in adversity despite their moral failings? Surely then (i) True friendship is based on shared history of living together not shared values (ii) Thus, it is virtuous to love friends despite their moral failings. How would Aristotle respond to this? • If you stick to a person who repeatedly commits vicious acts with the aim of reforming him, the friendship would degenerate into friendship of unequals • If your friend lost his moral virtue, you don’t owe him any affection. • Thus, a virtuous person can give up on his adamant child or incurably vicious husband. Aristotle: To love a person (1) We love him/her because of shared history, living together (IX, 11) but (2) We love others for apparent virtues, not vices (3) So, concern for non-virtuous is either i) Self-deceptive love (vice) ii) Or, merely pleasure/utility friendship iii) Or restorative (rule of superior over inferior, a ruled relationship not friendship) iv) Or kindness for past friendship If you stick to an incurably vicious person, it is a vice on your part. Why? The Friend is Another Self (IX 9). What does Aristotle mean by this? (1) We love friend in the way we love ourselves, aiming at his and our good for its own sake (2) We can’t be loveable to friends unless we are loveable to ourselves (IX, 4, 143). • Aristotle’s view implies that if you don’t love yourself, others can’t love you. Is this correct? Q: Can there be lovable people who hate themselves or feel self-contempt? Aristotle vs. Two Kinds of Self-Love Q: Should one most love oneself or someone else? (1168a, p. 146) 1. One ought not to love oneself most because virtuous person loves his friends more than himself. 2. One ought to love oneself most because concern for friends is just an extension of self-love. Aristotle rejects both 1 and 2 Aristotle: It is by loving oneself most of all, that one is best able to benefit one’s friend. A virtuous person is self-lover; self-love requires loving others--others are your “other self” Discussion and Reflection Questions 1. Why should or would an already ethically virtuous person need virtuous friends in order to be happy if virtue and happiness are inextricably linked? ? 2. Does Aristotle’s claim that one should love oneself more than anyone else commit him to egoism? 3. Aristotle famously contends that friendship involves wishing good for one’s friends for their sake (1155b29-31). However, he equally and famously avers that an ethically virtuous person needs friends in order to be happy because such friends are instrumental to the achievement of his own ends. (1170a) Can he, in all consistency, subscribe to both claims? In other words, does Aristotle‘s discussion of friendship commit him to both egoism and altruism? .
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