The Theme Of Friendship In Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics

In Aristotle’s book, The Nicomachean Ethics he discusses a variety of subjects that are mostly based upon finding your virtuous and moral character. One of the virtues that really stood out to me was his examination of friendship. Although Aristotle seems to be more interested in distinguishing the various forms that friendships have , his main theme in Books VIII and IX is to show the compatibility of the relationships between virtuous activities and friendship. He breaks down the different types of friendship into three categories: utility, friendship of pleasure, and a virtuous friendship. When two people realizes that the other person has a good character, and spends time with one another, engaging in the same activities that illustrates
He says that all are not unequal relationships that are based on good character but rather they are relationships that are built together because each one sees the other person as a some sort of source of advantage to themselves or some pleasure that they can receive. When Aristotle calls these relationships as “imperfect,” he is focusing on the big accepted assumptions about what makes a relationship good. These friendships can be very defective, and have a smaller chance to be considered as real “friendships,” because the individuals that are involved have little to no type of trust in each other and will eventually break off their friendship immediately. As sad as it is, that’s how most of our friendship in today’s society. I have friends but I can honestly say that out of all those friendships, I can count on only two to be considered as a “perfect” friendship. Although, I disagree with Aristotle on this because I believe that there is no such thing as a perfect friendship because to me a friendship shouldn’t be based upon one's perfection, it should be based upon the loyalty, love, trust and compassion for one another and each one of those qualities has hardships within them which can never be
Because of these three different kinds of love, human beings are shown to be a little political in nature. This can be shown in the first two; love of utility and love of pleasure as Aristotle argues that humans set up relationships for each other’s personal gain. In his defense of self-love makes it very clear that he is not willing to defend the idea that a person can love themselves or above others. He defends self-love only when the emotion is tied to the theory of a person’s good nature, since this is the only way that he can show that self-love is not a “destructive passion”. However, Aristotle takes it for granted that self-love is properly expressed whenever it can be shown to be harmful to others. It is only appreciated when the self-lover is shown to be a good person