Aristotelian and Epicurean philosophy hold much in common. Epicurus was a student to the Peripatetic Praxiphanes. The influence is clearly shown in his philosophy, and the similarities are striking. Of course there are many sharp differences as well. On the subject of friendship, Aristotle and Epicurus held strikingly similar, but at the same time distinctly (change word) different views. In this essay I will attempt to make the similarities and differences clear by presenting reconstructed Aristotelian and Epicurean answers to four questions. What is friendship? What are its benefits? What are its obligations? And what role does it play in the good life?
Question One: What is Friendship?
Aristotle –
In Books 7 and 9 of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle is demonstrating how a virtuous life means in many ways a life with good friends. There are three reasons why we like particular people. We like that they are good people, we like that they are beautiful (rather shallow, but I suppose you could read it as deep beauty), or they are pleasant to be around. Of course there will be much overlap of these categories for liking someone, and we are likely to think of our friends in all of these terms if they are true friends.
Aristotle says that the three ways of liking someone correspond to three types of friendships. The 'perfect' friendship for Aristotle is when you like someone for being good, then you hang out and do good things together, and you yourself are good.
So when good people are doing good things together, and they like each other for it, this Aristotle calls a 'perfect' friendship.
Imperfect friendship on the other hand is much more common, and much more complicated. The imperfect friendships Aristotle deals with are those where neither person is perfectly good or virtuous, and where they are in a position of mutual gain. Thus, Aristotle sees the imperfect friendship as based ultimately on egoistic grounds. He notes though that such imperfect friendships can engender a lack of trust, envy, and often end badly in some kind of fight or falling out. Such friendships are in this way, According to Aristotle, defective.
So friends are only true friends in the fullest sense of the term when they genuinely want to do things together. But this is only perfect when each is at an equal stage in moral development.
A friend is someone who loves the other person for that person's own sake, and not merely for their own ego. This kind of desire for the sake of another not oneself he calls Good Will. Friendship is a relationship where each has good will for the other. The feeling is mutual and reciprocal. He says friends need to have good will for each other, and they each have to know that the other has the same feelings. For Aristotle it seems that only a friendship based on virtue, that is based on liking someone for being good as opposed to liking them for being pleasant or beautiful or conferring upon us some other form of advantage (egoistic). Friendships must be based on reciprocal good will, and this can only truly be expressed if the good will is based on wanting that person to be good for their own sake. In true friendship, there is not only good will, but also advantage and pleasure.
Friends are never treated as mere-means, but neither are they for us merely ends in the selves. They are both, and this is a consistent and compatible attitude.
We can only realistically have a small number of true friends. He says that this would be true even if we lived in a big city filled with virtuous people. You can only truly be friends with someone by spending a lot of time with them and doing a lot of things with them.
Thus time is a limiting factor. There are only so many hours in the day. Sure, in a city filled with virtuous people we could have good will toward everyone, and in all our interactions with them. But it would still be true that friends, since they know each other so well and each other's individual circumstances, that they would know better just how to help. But this only shows that it is advantageous to have friends because they can help better help you than can anonymous good will (because they know you better). But that can't be the reason for having friends, according to Aristotle, because that reason is in terms of personal advantage, which is egoistic and NOT based on good will to another. So why, for Aristotle, is it good to be on the giving end of a true friendship, as opposed to an anonymous good will relationship? Aristotle's answer is that we are able to perceive true friends more closely than anonymous virtuous people who are not our friends. And it is good to perceive virtue in friends closely because they are like our other selves. Close perception of virtue in another is better than not as close perception of virtue in strangers or fellow citizens or mere acquaintances. Why does closeness of perception matter so much?
Aristotle might have said that one couldn't be as virtuous or have occasion for as many virtuous activities if one had few or no friends. But then he says that it is better to be able to help a whole anonymously populated city than to help just one person (needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few). He does not believe that the best place for virtuous activity is in the home or in ones small community of close friends. He says that losing family and the small community of close friends would be tragic. This might be defended from ideas he brings out in the Politics (book 2) where he talks about the tragedy of the commons, and that when everyone cares for something, no one really cares for it. But when one person owns and cares for something, it is usually better cared for because they take personal responsibility for it, because they know that if they don't, then no one will.
Epicurus might have an answer here in his recommendation to forgo the public life. He simply would assert a different answer to Sartre's question, and say that it is better to help one person that to vaguely help an anonymous group. This is borne out in his philosophy, which comes to us not from Epicurus himself, but rather through to us from his friends who he helped live their lives (the letters, the garden, etc).
Aristotle is egoistic (maximize self-love) but only when it is seen to be egoism in service of the greater good (paradox?), Epicurus is Altruistic, but this necessarily begins in egoism (opposite paradox?).
Aristotle places the community ahead of the individual. The political community is prior to the individual.
Epicurus – A special relationship between two persons such that each shares in the joys and sufferings of the other, each is loyal to the other, they help each other (etymology of compassion – to suffer with).
Friendship is an immortal good. It is good above and beyond any practical benefits it may afford us. The gods have friendships with each other, but they do not need their friends for any practical reason, being as they are above and beyond practical necessities. The gods don't need their friends to protect them, to make them feel safe. The gods, by virtue of being gods, are perfectly secure. Yet it is still a pleasure for them to have and be friends. The pleasure of godly friendship is in contemplating the good of the friend and in conversation. It is this 'extra' good that makes friendship an immortal good, for it is a good even to an immortal god.
But, while the gods do not need friends for any practical purpose, Philodomus tells us that without friendship their happiness would nevertheless be less complete. Not incomplete, but less complete.
Friendship is one of the ways we can be like gods, because we can participate in the same kind of pleasure that they do. The gods have friends and so can we, we are alike in that manner. This also helps us relieve some measure of anxiety toward our fellows.
But for Epicurus, friendship begins in a desire on the part of both parties to fulfill certain needs, in particular the need to have security. Having a certain amount of personal safety is an essential part of the good life, because a feeling of safety helps in cultivating a tranquil state of mind.
Question Two: What are the benefits of friendship?
Aristotle – Aristotle says that Friends are good, because as a matter of brute fact, no one would want to live without friends.
Epicurus – Most direct route to ataraxia. Tranquility of mind. Pleasure of being secure in the hope you have for the future which is engendered by your trust in your friend such that you have faith in the knowledge of their loyalty, you know you can rely on them in the future if you need to. This makes you calm. In the present, friends are pleasant to share experiences with, conversation, eating, celebrating, etc. More important to have someone to eat with than to have something to eat. Of greatest value at the end of life because of the ability to be grateful for the memories of the good times with friends. Thus friendship is a virtue that cultivates the virtues of hope, patience and gratitude with respect to the future, present, and past. Security is the immediate good of friendship. But the immortal good of friendship is in the community of love that it helps to cultivate.
Question Three: What are the obligations of friendship?
Aristotle – True friends, for Aristotle, are obligated to help each other pursue virtuous activity. They are moreover obligated to help each other in their moral development. A friend helps a friend in the same way that he or she would help him or herself. This is why the key to understanding Aristotelian friendship is in its relation to self-love and self-care. It is a practical necessity for the achievement of eudemonia that we care for ourselves enough to overcome our bad habits and strive to be better persons. We are not perfect, but we can work towards perfection, and this working toward presupposes that we care about making ourselves better. Care is essential. Thus, when we extend our form of self-care to include another self/subject, i.e. a friend, we take an active interest in their moral development. So the brave man helps his witty, but cowardly friend improve by showing him how to be brave; and the witty, cowardly friend helps his brave but boorish friend by showing him how to be witty.
Epicurus – Complete loyalty. This means you will suffer when your friend suffers. Be willing to give things up for their benefit. Epicurus himself was said to be ready to die for his friends. This is the fully cultivated meaning of friendship in the epicurean
Question Four: What role does friendship play in the good life?
Aristotle – Friendship is the relationship you have with other people such that you can pursue virtuous activities together. They are a form of pseudo-self-love, insofar as a friend is another subject, they become identified with you to a certain extent so that you come to appreciate their subjectivity (awkward wording).
Epicurus – Essential ingredient. Friendship is one of the three. The other two are Freedom and Philosophy.
Conclusion:
The essential difference between Epicurus and Aristotle on this topic seems to be this: what exactly they take to be the summum bonum. Aristotle thinks it is the activity of virtue is the summum bonum, and that while such virtuous activity is accompanied by pleasure, the pleasure is merely a happy accident or bonus. Epicurus on the other hand takes the pleasure of virtuous activity to be the whole point of doing the activity in the first place. Pleasure, for him, is not merely a happy accident; it is the highest good itself. For Epicurus there just is no point to virtuous activity if it did not engender the pleasure that accompanies it. They both agree that in a sense, virtuous activity is coextensive with pleasure, and that it is inconceivable that a person could be virtuous and take no pleasure from his/her virtuous activity, nor that a person could take pleasure in vice.
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