Eudemian Ethics

We must also consider self-sufficiency and friendship, and the interrelationship of their potentialities. For one may raise the question whether if a person be self-sufficing in every respect he will have a friend, or whether on the contrary a friend is sought for in need, and the good man will be most self-sufficing. If the life that is combined with goodness is happy, what need would there be of a friend? For it does not belong to the self-sufficing man to need either useful friends or friends to amuse him and society, for he is sufficient society for himself.

This is most manifest in the case of God; for it is clear that as he needs nothing more he will not need a friend, and that supposing he has no need of one he will not have one. Consequently the happiest human being also will very little need a friend, except in so far as to be self-sufficing is impossible.

Of necessity, therefore, he who lives the best life will have fewest friends, and they will constantly become fewer, and he will not be eager to have friends but will think lightly not only of useful friends but also of those desirable for society. But assuredly even his case would seem to show that a friend is not for the sake of utility or benefit but that one loved on account of goodness is the only real friend.

For when we are not in need of something, then we all seek people to share our enjoyments, and beneficiaries rather than benefactors;and we can judge them better when we are self-sufficing than when in need, and we most need friends who are worthy of our society.

But about this question we must consider whether perhaps, although the view stated is partly sound, in part the truth escapes us because of the comparison. The matter is clear if we ascertain what life in the active sense and as an End is.

It is manifest that life is perception and knowledge, and that consequently social life is perception and knowledge in common. But perception and knowledge themselves are the thing most desirable for each individually (and it is owing to this that the appetition for life is implanted by nature in all, for living must be deemed a mode of knowing).

If therefore one were to abstract and posit absolute knowledge and its negation (though this, it is true, is obscure in the argument as we have written it, but it may be observed in experience), there would be no difference between absolute knowledge and another person’s knowing instead of oneself; but that is like another person’s living instead of oneself, whereas perceiving and knowing oneself is reasonably more desirable. For two things must be taken into consideration together, that life is desirable and that good is desirable, and as a consequence that it is desirable for ourselves to possess a nature of that quality.

If, therefore, of the pair of corresponding series of this kind one is always in the class of the desirable, and the known and the perceived are generally speaking constituted by their participation in the determined nature, so that to wish to perceive oneself is to wish oneself to be of a certain character,—since, then, we are not each of these things in ourselves but only by participating in these faculties in the process of perceiving or knowing (for when perceiving one becomes perceived by means of what one previously perceives, in the manner and in the respect in which one perceives it, and when knowing one becomes known)—hence owing to this one wishes always to live because one wishes always to know; and this is because one wishes to be oneself the object known.

To choose to live in the society of others might, therefore, from a certain point of view seem foolish (first in the case of the things common to the other animals also, for instance eating together or drinking together, for what difference does it make whether these things take place when we are near together or apart, if you take away speech? but even to share in speech that is merely casual is a thing indifferent, and also neither to impart nor to receive information is possible for friends who are self-sufficing, since receiving information implies a deficiency in oneself and imparting it a deficiency in one’s friend, and likeness is friendship)—

but nevertheless it surely seems that we all find it pleasanter to share good things with our friends,as far as these fall to each, and the best that each can—

but among these, it falls to one to share bodily pleasure, to another artistic study, to another philosophy—; and so it is pleasanter to be with one’s friend (whence the saying Distant friends a burden are ), so that they must not be separated when this is taking place. Hence also love seems to resemble friendship, for the lover is eager to share the life of the loved one, although not in the most proper way but in a sensuous manner.

Therefore the argument in raising the question asserts the former position, but the facts of experience are obviously on the latter lines, so that it is clear that the raiser of the question in a way misleads us.

We must therefore examine the truth from the following consideration: friend really denotes, in the language of the proverb,'another Hercules'—another self; but the characteristics are scattered, and it is difficult for all to be realized in the case of one person; though by nature a friend is what is most akin, yet one resembles his friend in body and another in spirit, and one in one part of the body or spirit, another in another. But still none the less a friend really means as it were a separate self.

To perceive and to know a friend, therefore, is necessarily in a manner to perceive and in a manner to know oneself. Consequently to share even vulgar pleasures and ordinary life with a friend is naturally pleasant (for it always involves our simultaneously perceiving the friend), but more so to share the more divine pleasures; the reason of which is that it is always more pleasant to behold oneself enjoying the superior good, and this is sometimes a passive, sometimes an active experience, sometimes something else. But if it is pleasant to live well oneself and for one’s friend also to live well, and if living together involves working together, surely their partnership will be pre-eminently in things included in the End. Hence we should study together, and feast together—not on the pleasures of food and the necessary pleasures (for such partnerships do not seem to be real social intercourse but mere enjoyment),

but each really wishes to share with his friends the End that he is capable of attaining, or failing this, men choose most of all to benefit their friends and to be benefited by them. It is therefore manifest that to live together is actually a duty, and that all people wish it very much, and that this is most the case with the man that is the happiest and best. But that the contrary appeared to be the conclusion of the argument was also reasonable, the statement being true. For the solution is on the line of the comparison, the correspondence being true; for the fact that God is not of such a nature as to need a friend postulates that man, who is like God, also does not need one.

Yet according to this argument the virtuous man will not think of anything; for God’s perfection does not permit of this, but he is too perfect to think of anything else beside himself. And the reason is that for us well-being has reference to something other than ourselves, but in his case he is himself his own well-being.

As to seeking for ourselves and praying for many friends, and at the same time saying that one who has many friends has no friend, both statements are correct. For if it is possible to live with and share the perceptions of many at once, it is most desirable for them to be the largest possible number; but as that is very difficult, active community of perception must of necessity be in a smaller circle,

so that it is not only difficult to acquire many friends (for probation is needed), but also to use them when one has got them.

One for whom we feel affection we sometimes wish to prosper in absence from us, but sometimes to share the same experiences. And to wish to be together is a mark of friendship, for if it is possible to be together and to prosper all choose this; but if it is not possible to prosper together, then we choose as the mother of Heracles perhaps would have chosen for her son, to be a god rather than to be with her but in service to Eurystheus.

For men would say things like the jest which the Spartan made when somebody told him to invoke the Dioscuri in a storm.

It seems to be characteristic of one who feels affection for another to debar him from sharing his troubles, and of the person for whom affection is felt to wish to share them. Both these things happen reasonably; for to a friend nothing ought to give so much pain as his friend gives pleasure, yet it is felt that he ought not to choose his own interest.

Hence people hinder their friends from sharing their sorrows; they are content to be in trouble by themselves, in order that they may not appear from selfish considerations actually to choose the joy of their friend’s grief and furthermore to find it a relief not to bear their misfortunes alone.

And as both well-being and companionship are desirable, it is clear that companionship combined with even a lesser good is in a way more desirable than separation with a greater good. But as it is not clear how much value companionship has, at this point men differ, and some think it is friendly to share everything in company, and say, for instance, that it is pleasanter to dine with company though having the same food; others wish to share only in well-being, because, they say, if one supposes extreme cases, people experiencing great adversity in company or great prosperity separately are on a par.

And it is much the same as this in regard to misfortunes also; sometimes we wish our friends to be absent, and do not want to give them pain when their presence is not going to do any good, but at other times for them to be present is most pleasant. And the reason of this contrariety is very easily explained; it comes about because of the things stated before, and because to behold a friend in pain or in a bad state is a thing we absolutely shun, as we shun it in our own case, but to see a friend is as pleasant as anything can be, for the reason stated, and indeed to see him ill if one is ill oneself;

so that whichever of these is more pleasant, it sways the balance of wishing him to be present or not.And it fits in that the former occurs in the case of inferior people, and for the same reason; they are most eager for their friends not to prosper and not to be absent if they themselves have to suffer adversity. Hence sometimes suicides kill those whom they love with themselves, as they think that they feel their own misfortune more if their loved ones are to survive; just as, if a man in trouble had the memory that he had once been prosperous, he would be more conscious of his trouble than if he thought that he had always done badly.