Why does Aristotle think that the virtuous person needs friends? What makes friendship valuable to them?
According to Aristotle, virtue friendship is the ‘fullest’ type of friendship but also the least common: both partners feel affection towards the other based on the character, friends resemble each other in virtue, wish the other person good on account of their goodness, requires both time and familiarity, most lasting and not liable to breakups, friends attempt to do each other more good. With these qualities, this becomes the primary type and it provides us a model of what friendship should look like. The most expensive and the one that fits the name friendship is the least often found. The fullest or most complete friendship is characterized by moral excellence. Aristotle explains that it is not easy to have this type of relationship with a person you will encounter; they have to be engaged in moral development on their part. This friendship is based on one’s character or who the other person is and the concern is noble. There is reciprocal loving in return, one is seen as worthy of love; there is also resemblance (homilia), that is, the speech is aligned in the same direction. Friends in this category wish the other good for the sake of their person – on the account of their goodness and wish that a person should continue in goodness.
Aristotle says that this friendship is characterized by intimacy, meaning that these friends may have spent enough time together and then be able to determine whether they act virtuously or not. Someone can act courageously in order to impress somebody or acts justly because of fear of punishment but as time goes on they reveal motivation or priorities they set, commitments they follow or choices they make not the structure of their actions or patterns of what they say. A virtuous person will talk differently than a self-controlled person or that of reward and punishment. Due to credibility of time and attention that is why it is not possible to have a lot of friends like this (virtuous friends); it requires sometime and it also stands the test of time better than any other friendship. It is not liable to break up because a virtuous person is not going to be oriented in the same way towards typical coerces of breakup of friendship they way that other people having other kinds of friendship will. The virtuous person wants the other person to be virtuous “friends try to do each other more good than the other person does”, they try to increase goodness in the relationship. This is a true friendship par excellence according to Aristotle and this does not happen often and sticks around the entire life of friends.
“Without friends, no one would want to live, even if they had all other worldly things” (N. Ethics 1155a). This implies that Aristotle regards human friendship intrinsically valuable, the good of friendship is in some sort of activity of self-realization rather than in the return of love and honor one receives. Aristotle contends that intimate relationships are necessary for one to flourish in human life, that is, taking interest in the other person merely for their own sake. Friendship is seen as essential for human life. The friend does not need to be pleasant and advantageous in all contexts but only in some for friendship to exist. He is aware of various friendships but according to him friendship of character is the best (1157a11). “Character friends are both pleasant and beneficial to one another, and pleasure friends, though not necessarily beneficial, are of course pleasant to one another, while advantage friends derive benefits, though perhaps not pleasure, from their association.” (1156b35). Character friendships are much more permanent than pleasure and advantage friendships are. In general Aristotle claims that friendship is “life enhancing” in that it makes us “feel more alive”—it enhances our activities by intensifying our absorption in them and hence the pleasure we get out of them.
Aristotle and some other thinkers believe that friendship is an essential ingredient of human happiness. Aristotle claims that “friendship seems to hold cities together and lawmakers seem to take it more seriously than justice” (1155a23). Not only did Aristotle argue that friendship was higher than justice; Aristotle emphasizes that the love in friendship is more than honour. In honour, persons value being loved rather than loving. Persons who value honour will likely seek out either flattery or those who have more power than they do, in order that they may gain through these relationships. Aristotle believes that love is greater than this because it can be enjoyed as it is. “Being loved, however, people enjoy for its own sake, and for