Like few philosophers before or since, Aristotle is a keen taxonomist.  He orders and arranges things, ideas and arguments into various categories, some of which are very helpful.  Others seem bizarre or quaint to the modern reader.

In the Nichomachean Ethics Aristotle devotes an entire chapter to discussing friendship.  Aristotle divides friendships into three categories: the perfect, the pleasurable, and the useful.  As one could guess, you can do no better than a perfect friendship.  As Aristotle launches upon one of his characteristic asides he discusses the origin of friendship in general.

The marks of friendship with respect to the relationships of our intimates, and by which friendships themselves are defined, appear to come from our relationship with ourselves.  For they define the friend as someone who wishes or does the good, or what appears good, on account of the other, or as someone who wishes his friend to exist and to live for his own sake.  This is the same thing mothers feel toward their children, or friends who have come into conflict.  Others define the friend as someone who spends time and chooses the same things as his friend or as someone who shares in the joy and sorrow of the friend.  This latter definition especially concerns mothers.  With one of these ideas they also define friendship.  Each of these is found in the good man’s relation with himself (and with respect to other men, in that way in which they think they are such, just as it is said, virtue and the good man seem to be the measure for each).  The good man is likeminded with himself, and he grasps at the same things with his entire soul.  And he wishes the good for himself and what appears to be good, and he does it (for to do good is characteristic of a good man) and on account of himself (that is, for the sake of the intellectual faculty, which very thing each man seems to be).

τὰ φιλικὰ δὲ τὰ πρὸς τοὺς πέλας, καὶ οἷς αἱ φιλίαι ὁρίζονται, ἔοικεν ἐκ τῶν πρὸς ἑαυτὸν ἐληλυθέναι. τιθέασι γὰρ φίλον τὸν βουλόμενον καὶ πράττοντα τἀγαθὰ ἢ τὰ φαινόμενα ἐκείνου ἕνεκα, ἢ τὸν βουλόμενον εἶναι καὶ 1166a.5ζῆν τὸν φίλον αὐτοῦ χάριν· ὅπερ αἱ μητέρες πρὸς τὰ τέκνα πεπόνθασι, καὶ τῶν φίλων οἱ προσκεκρουκότες. οἳ δὲ τὸν συνδιάγοντα καὶ ταὐτὰ αἱρούμενον, ἢ τὸν συναλγοῦντα καὶ συγχαίροντα τῷ φίλῳ· μάλιστα δὲ καὶ τοῦτο περὶ τὰς μητέρας συμβαίνει. τούτων δέ τινι καὶ τὴν φιλίαν 1166a.10ὁρίζονται. πρὸς ἑαυτὸν δὲ τούτων ἕκαστον τῷ ἐπιεικεῖ ὑπάρχει (τοῖς δὲ λοιποῖς, ᾗ τοιοῦτοι ὑπολαμβάνουσιν εἶναι· ἔοικε δέ, καθάπερ εἴρηται, μέτρον ἑκάστων ἡ ἀρετὴ καὶ ὁ σπουδαῖος εἶναι)· οὗτος γὰρ ὁμογνωμονεῖ ἑαυτῷ, καὶ τῶν αὐτῶν ὀρέγεται κατὰ πᾶσαν τὴν ψυχήν· καὶ βούλεται 1166a.15δὴ ἑαυτῷ τἀγαθὰ καὶ τὰ φαινόμενα καὶ πράττει (τοῦ γὰρ ἀγαθοῦ τἀγαθὸν διαπονεῖν) καὶ ἑαυτοῦ ἕνεκα (τοῦ γὰρ διανοητικοῦ χάριν, ὅπερ ἕκαστος εἶναι δοκεῖ)· NE 1166a1-17

Here as elsewhere, Aristotle appeals to the definition of friendship as someone wishing well for another person for the sake of that person.  To perhaps oversimplify it: relational altruism.  Now altruism, as it turns out, is quite the tedious topic, tending toward an exhaustive regress.  Every time seemingly altruistic motives are displayed, a gainsayer can point here or there and say, “See, you really did it to satisfy x or y for yourself!”  This problem or paradox of altruism, however, as vexatious as it is for us, does not seem to have arisen by the time of Aristotle.  Nevertheless, since this definition– doing something for someone else’s sake alone –seems integral to Aristotle’s attempts at understanding friendship, we are saddled with solving the implications of this difficulty ourselves.

The problem is that Aristotle affirms (1) Friendship is wishing well for the other for his own sake (2) Friendship originates from the relationship we have for ourselves.  The difficulty for me in accepting both these beliefs is that (1) seems precluded by (2).  If friendship is really an extension of my own relationship toward myself, then only in so far as that relationship partakes or mirrors my own relationship toward myself, can it be said that it is a friendship.  However, this very idea undercuts the notion that we do things merely for the sake of the friend as in (1).  For example, if a friendship either becomes or appears to become different than our relationship with ourselves, will we not dissolve the friendship?  Yes, as I understand it, in accord with (2), but no, if we consider (1) alone.

I will discuss in the next post a possible solution to this problem.