Eudemian Ethics

Friendship—its nature and qualities, what constitutes a friend, and whether the term friendship has one or several meanings,and if several, how many, and also what is our duty towards a friend and what are the just claims of friendship—is a matter that calls for investigation no less than any of the things that are fine and desirable in men’s characters.

For to promote friendship is thought to be the special task of political science; and people say that it is on this account that goodness is a valuable thing, for persons wrongfully treated by one another cannot be each other’s friends.

Furthermore we all say that justice and injustice are chiefly displayed towards friends; it is thought that a good man is a friendly man, and that friendship is a state of the moral character; and if one wishes to make men not act unjustly, it is enough to make them friends, for true friends do not wrong one another.

But neither will men act unjustly if they are just; therefore justice and friendship are either the same or nearly the same thing.

In addition to this, we consider a friend to be one of the greatest goods, and friendlessness and solitude a very terrible thing, because the whole of life and voluntary association is with friends; for we pass our days with our family or relations or comrades, children, parents or wife.

And our private rights in relation to our friends depend only on ourselves, whereas our rights in relation to the rest of men are established by law and do not depend on us.

Many questions are raised about friendship—first, on the line of those who take in wider considerations and extend the term. For some hold that like is friend to like, whence the sayings: Mark how God ever brings like men together Hom. Od. 17.218; For jackdaw by the side of jackdaw...; And thief knows thief and wolf his fellow wolf.

And the natural philosophers even arrange the whole of nature in a system by assuming as a first principle that like goes to like, owing to which Empedocles said that the dog sits on the tiling because it is most like him.

Some people then give this account of a friend; but others say that opposite is dear to opposite, since it is what is loved and desired that is dear to everybody, and the dry does not desire the dry but the wet (whence the sayings—Earth loveth rain, and In all things change is sweet— change being transition to the opposite), whereas like hates like, for Potter against potter has a grudge, and animals that live on the same food are hostile to one another.

These opinions, therefore, are thus widely variant. One party thinks that the like is friend and the opposite foe— The less is rooted enemy to the more For ever, and begins the day of hate, Eur. Phoen. 539f.

and moreover adversaries are separated in locality, whereas friendship seems to bring men together. The other party say that opposites are friends, and Heracleitus rebukes the poet who wrote— Would strife might perish out of heaven and earth, Hom. Il. 18.107 for, he says, there would be no harmony without high and low notes, and no animals without male and female, which are opposites.

These, then, are two opinions about friendship, and being so widely separated they are too general; but there are others that are closer together and more akin to the facts of observation. Some persons think that it is not possible for bad men to be friends, but only for the good. Others think it strange that mothers should not love their own children

(and maternal affection we see existing even among animals—at least, animals choose to die for their young).

Others hold that only what is useful is a friend, the proof being that all men actually do pursue the useful, and discard what is useless even in their own persons (as the old Socrates used to say, instancing spittle, hair and nails), and that we throw away even parts of the body that are of no use, and finally the body itself, when it dies, as a corpse is useless—but people that have a use for it keep it, as in Egypt.

Now all these factors seem to be somewhat opposed to one another. For like is of no use to like and opposition is farthest removed from likeness, and at the same time opposite is most useless to opposite, since opposite is destructive of opposite.

Moreover some think that to gain a friend is easy, but others that it is the rarest thing to recognize a friend, and not possible without misfortune, as everybody wants to be thought a friend of the prosperous;

and others maintain that we must not trust even those who stay with us in our misfortunes, because they are deceiving us and pretending, in order that by associating with us when unfortunate they may gain our friendship when we are again prosperous.