Aristotle's Incomplete Worldview

Introduction
The word friendship as it is used today carries a broad semantic range with dozens of definitions. C.S. Lewis coined the term “verbicide” to define the degradation of word meaning over time. The term friendship is no stranger to verbicide. Today, it can mean anything from a Facebook friend that one barely knows to the friendship between two inseparable companions. So what exactly is friendship? In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle attempts to construct working definition of three types of friendship, the most important being the Friendship based on goodness. In this Friendship, the individuals put the other’s needs before their own. He describes this Friendship as having the greatest potential for longevity and Happiness. C.S. Lewis has also developed a working definition of Friendship in his book The Four Loves, in which true Friendship is equally selfless and puts the other’s needs first. Lewis, however, makes Friendship one of four categories of love.
Aristotle and Lewis have many similarities in their definition of Friendship. However, there are several critical differences that are rooted in two separate worldviews. It is necessary to determine which of the two views on Friendship is the most accurate. Through analyzing their respective philosophies, it becomes apparent that Aristotle’s view of Friendship lacks a key eternal element that Lewis includes: God, the ultimate love. Lewis describes the ultimate love as Charity, which God has allowed us to experience, mainly through the cross. Charity then is both the origin of Friendship and its ultimate goal. Aristotle’s understanding of Friendship lacks proper definition due to his understanding of the highest good, or self-actualization. He relies on man and his ability to reason in order to find the highest good. True Friendship, therefore, cannot be found in Aristotle’s definition, for it lacks the foundational eternal God and His ultimate love. In order to better grasp the importance of Aristotle’s need for God and Charity in his argument, he and C.S. Lewis need to be placed in side-by-side comparison. First, Both men recognize an innate need for companionship within the human race, but their means to that end are different. Second, Friendship allows additional opportunity for virtuous actions, and Friends will aid each other in growth towards a common goal. However, the two men differ on what the common goal is. Third, a selfless friendship is the only type of relationship that can ultimately be considered Friendship. However, while Aristotle refers to the other types as failures and not good things, Lewis argues that the other types of friendship or love can be used to boost the Friendship. Finally, the main difference between the two views is the aforementioned Charity, introduced by Lewis. This concept causes both men to come to two very different conclusions on the origin and purpose of Friendship.

The Need For Friendship
Can Man Be Alone? Within man, there is an innate need for friendship. In Genesis 2:18, God states “It is not good for man to be alone.” Both Lewis and Aristotle felt the same way. Aristotle argues, “having Friends seems to be the greatest external good.” He further asserts that even the good man would not choose to live in solitude, because it is in human nature to congregate with others. Lewis supports the statement that man should not live alone, but his approach is slightly different. In The Four Loves, he quotes the aforesaid Scripture and claims that for man to desire to be alone is a bad spiritual symptom. Lewis compares this bad spiritual symptom to a medical one in which a person does not ever feel hunger. This is problematic because man must eat to live. His lack of hunger points to a deeper, internal problem. Lewis claims then that man needs Friendship, and if he says that he does not, there is an underlying spiritual problem causing him to operate against Scripture.
Both Lewis and Aristotle use the word “necessary” to describe man’s need for Friendship. Aristotle arrives at this conclusion by logically deducing that man cannot pursue Happiness without Friendship. Conversely, Lewis uses Scripture as the authority for his statement. Lewis therefore is not arguing that man needs Friendship in order to achieve Happiness. On the contrary, he is arguing that man needs friendship because Scripture ordains it. His view is like that of St. Thomas Aquinas, who argued that true Happiness is found in God and God alone, and Friendship is not an absolute necessity for Happiness. After all, “if there were but one soul enjoying God, it would be happy, though having no neighbor to love.” Since there is more than one soul, however, God has made us social beings with an innate desire to communicate with others on varying levels. So our necessity for Friendship stems from God and not from logical deduction. True Friendship cannot be found in Aristotle’s definition, for he lacks a proper understanding of the necessity of friendship due to his internal observations and disregard of eternal authority.

“The Cultivation of Virtue” Both Aristotle and Lewis conclude that Friendship is useful in growth towards the highest good. Aristotle states, “The excellent person is related to his friend in the same way as he relates to himself, since a friend is another himself.” Aristotle argues that Friendship is when two or more come together with the same goal: to pursue Happiness through self-actualization. The Friend then is a mirror in which the other Friend can examine himself. Further, Aristotle asserts a utility of Friendship that assists in the cultivation of virtue. Through this utility, Friends can get their basic needs met without having to do all the work themselves. A man by himself has to spend the majority of his time surviving, but a man with Friends has time to contemplate the highest good because there is communal cooperation. When Lewis argues for the benefits of Friendship, he refers to Aristotle as a starting point for his discourse. He agrees with Aristotle concerning the communal cooperation; that is, multiple Friends have more time to grow spiritually than a man by himself, because they are not always working to meet their basic needs. The goal of Lewis’ Friends is to build each other up in sanctification and help each other pursue God, the ultimate good. Lewis’ description of Friendship’s cultivation of virtue is most like Christian discipleship, not self-actualization. Where Aristotle looks within his own ability to reason, Lewis seeks God, and ultimately we will proves that Aristotle has an insufficient definition of Friendship because he does not know God.

The Types of Friendship Aristotle refers to three different types of friendship: those of utility, of pleasure, and of goodness. The majority of his discourse on friendship focuses on that of goodness, which he regards as the highest Friendship one can have. The other two are loosely referred to as friendship, because they are likewise loosely held in real life. He argues that once the utility or pleasure is gone, the relationship terminates because there was no other connection. Though Aristotle allows for these two friendships to exist during true Friendship, he has a relatively sour attitude towards them. To Aristotle, these friendships are carnal, temporal, and contribute nothing to virtue or knowledge of the good. He argues that most people only have these relationships, and have never experience true Friendship. Aristotle argues that true Friendship is selfless, “someone who loves or likes another person for the sake of that other person.” Lewis approaches Friendship with different language, but similar meanings. He describes four loves: Affection, Friendship, Eros (Romantic Love), and most importantly, Charity. Lewis’ Friendship closely parallels Aristotle’s Friendship; and he calls Aristotelian friends of utility “companions” and friends of pleasure “Venus,” which is a sub-category of Eros. Lewis varies from Aristotle in his treatment of the companions and Venus relationships. In both cases, he refers to their ability to greatly help in Friendship. He also treats them as gifts from God, not inherently evil, but good. He does however acknowledge the danger of the abuse of these, repeatedly warning that they could become idols.
Another critical variance from Aristotle is Lewis’ conclusion of Friendship. Where Aristotle labels Friendship as the best of his three and the most virtuous, Lewis agrees only to a certain extent. He states that Affection, Friendship, and Eros are earthly loves. Friendship is noble, practical, and good, but according to Lewis it is not the best of the three, nor the conclusive relationship. More than that, Friendship is dependent on Charity, which is the highest love. Where Aristotle stops with friendship, Lewis has only just begun. Without deriving his authority from God, Aristotle is unable to reach beyond friendship to find the greatest love of all, what Lewis calls Charity. Charity is a necessary component of Friendship; it defines the origin and purpose, two things Aristotle could not achieve.

On The Origin and Purpose of Friendship Aristotle argues that friendship originates from the reasoning of good men who saw that Friends are necessary in order to pursue the highest good. Its purpose is for men to advance in virtue towards the pursuit of Happiness. Happiness is coming to self-actualization, or the realization and application of one’s true nature. In order to achieve this, man must look within himself and rationalize his way to Happiness. Friendship is but a necessary step in that process.
Lewis asserts that Friendship originates from Charity, and by extension God Himself. He describes Charity as the ultimate love and good because it is God, for “God is love.” It is then Friendships purpose to lean towards Charity. In that sense, the ultimate Friendship is one that reflects Christ’s love towards us. Perhaps the writer Hannah Jung puts it best when she states,
Jesus tells his disciples, “You did not choose me but I chose you.” We do not choose our friends, but friendship itself is chosen for us. Hence friendship is selflessly theocentric: God allows us to cross paths with those whom we think we ourselves chose as friends, but whom in reality were chosen for us by God.

Friendship then has a much more meaningful purpose and origin than Aristotle ever could have conceived. It is a part of a revelation that God has given His creation. Friendship is a gift that points us to the ultimate Charity, God Himself.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics. 2nd Ed. Trans. by Terence Irwin. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1999.

Kraut, Richard, "Aristotle 's Ethics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2012 Edition). Ed. by Edward N. Zalta. <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2012/entries/ aristotle-ethics/>. (Accessed 2/3/13).

Kreeft, Peter. Summa of the Summa: The Essential Philosophical Passages of St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica Edited and Explained for Beginners. San Fransisco: Ignatius Press, 1990.

Jung, Hannah. The Augustine Collective: The Dartmouth Apologia. “Whom Are We Friends With and Why?” http://augustinecollective.org/augustine/whom-are-we-friends-with-and-why. (Accessed 2/2/2013)

Lewis, C.S. The Four Loves. New York: First Mariner Books, 2012.

Lewis, C.S. Studies in Words. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, London: Duckworth, 1985.

Pahl, R. On Friendship, Cambridge: Polity, 2000.

Thesis: True Friendship, therefore, cannot be found in Aristotle’s definition, for it lacks the foundational eternal God and His ultimate love.

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[ 1 ]. NASB
[ 2 ]. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 2nd Ed., Trans. by Terence Irwin (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1999) 1169b.
[ 3 ]. C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves, (New York: First Mariner Books, 2012) 3.
[ 4 ]. Aristotle, 1169b
[ 5 ]. Peter Kreeft, Summa of the Summa: The Essential Philosophical Passages of St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica Edited and Explained for Beginners, (San Fransisco: Ignatius Press, 1990) 391.
[ 6 ]. Aristotle, 1170a.
[ 7 ]. Aristotle, 1170b
[ 8 ]. Ray Pahl, On Friendship (Cambridge: Polity, 2000) 22.
[ 9 ]. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (London: Duckworth, 1985) 156.
[ 10 ]. Lewis, The Four Loves, 68.
[ 11 ]. Aristotle, 1156a-1157a
[ 12 ]. Richard Kraut, "Aristotle 's Ethics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2012 Edition). Ed. by Edward N. Zalta. . (Accessed 2/3/13).
[ 13 ]. Lewis, The Four Loves, 63
[ 14 ]. Ibid., 91.
[ 15 ]. Aristotle, 1169b-1170b.19.
[ 16 ]. Lewis, The Four Loves, 89, 116, 133.
[ 17 ]. Hannah Jung, The Augustine Collective: The Dartmouth Apologia, “Whom Are We Friends With and Why?” http://augustinecollective.org/augustine/whom-are-we-friends-with-and-why. (Accessed 2/2/2013).

Bibliography: Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics. 2nd Ed. Trans. by Terence Irwin. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1999. Kreeft, Peter. Summa of the Summa: The Essential Philosophical Passages of St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica Edited and Explained for Beginners. San Fransisco: Ignatius Press, 1990. Jung, Hannah. The Augustine Collective: The Dartmouth Apologia. “Whom Are We Friends With and Why?” http://augustinecollective.org/augustine/whom-are-we-friends-with-and-why. (Accessed 2/2/2013) Lewis, C.S Lewis, C.S. Studies in Words. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, London: Duckworth, 1985. Pahl, R. On Friendship, Cambridge: Polity, 2000. [ 2 ]. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 2nd Ed., Trans. by Terence Irwin (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1999) 1169b. [ 3 ]. C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves, (New York: First Mariner Books, 2012) 3. [ 4 ]. Aristotle, 1169b [ 5 ] [ 6 ]. Aristotle, 1170a. [ 7 ]. Aristotle, 1170b [ 8 ] [ 9 ]. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (London: Duckworth, 1985) 156. [ 11 ]. Aristotle, 1156a-1157a [ 12 ] [ 15 ]. Aristotle, 1169b-1170b.19. [ 17 ]. Hannah Jung, The Augustine Collective: The Dartmouth Apologia, “Whom Are We Friends With and Why?” http://augustinecollective.org/augustine/whom-are-we-friends-with-and-why. (Accessed 2/2/2013).