Aristotle dedicated books VIII and IX of his Nicomachean Ethics (Gredos, 2003) to studying friendship. His reflections greatly illuminate friendly relationships. He observes, formalizes, and helps to think about the various dimensions of friendship. Recently, the Acantilado publishing house has made a new edition in Spanish of these texts (On Friendship. Books VIII-IX of Nicomachean Ethics, 2025) and, of course, there is no shortage of books by specialists who return to this and other virtues of Aristotelian ethics. The trilogy by Mexican professor Héctor Zagal is not to be missed in this sense. My interest in Aristotle and friendship continues.
Aristotle considers -I use Gredos’ version-that friendship is a stable, lasting way of being that reaches its highest level among good and virtuous people: “Perfect friendship is that of good men and equal in virtue {179}; for, to the extent that they are good, they likewise want the good of each other, and such men are good in themselves; and those who want the good [10] of their friends for their sake are the best friends, and they are thus disposed of because of what they are and not by accident; so that their friendship lasts as long as they are good, and virtue is something stable.” This perfect friendship has two other accidental faces, those based on the delight of pleasurable goods (food, drink, etc.) or the exchange of useful goods (do ut des, business, medial goods). The latter -moving, ephemeral friendships- have an expiration date: the time that the delight or the interest lasts.
Full friendship, the kind of friendship that is proper to those who strive to have a good life, is rare, it requires time, contact, “until each has shown himself to be kind and trustworthy to the other.” Hence, friends are chosen, and it is proper for them to aspire to meet and get to know each other: “Is it not true that for friends to live together [30] (…). Friendship is, in fact, a community, and the disposition that one has for oneself is also that of the friend. As for oneself, the feeling that it exists is kind, and so, also, with respect to the friend. Now, the activity of this feeling [35] arises in living together, so that friends probably aspire to it. (…). [1172a] (…) and, in each case, friends spend their days together with those they love most in life; because, wanting to live together with friends, they do and participate in [5] those things that they believe bring about living together.”
We know this observation from experience. Friends are sought out, we feel at ease with them, we share common affinities and interests, and we are willing to do good for their own sake, in times of prosperity and in times of hardship: we are true friends, we would say in colloquial language.
Friendship is an attraction between kind people, for their good qualities. The bad person, on the other hand, “seems not to be willing to love even himself, because he has nothing kind. Therefore, if having such a disposition is a great misfortune, we must make every effort to avoid evil and try to be good, because in this way one can not only have friendly dispositions towards oneself, but also become a friend to another.” True friendship is nourished by virtues, grows with contact, and is open to learning and correction. Toxic relationships, on the other hand, generate negative learning.
We can say even more about friendship. The Christian sense of friendship sheds new light, it expands the relational sphere and the heart of friends beyond the measures and moderate reflections of Aristotle. It is a perspective, whose reflection I will leave for another occasion.
