Friendship

On friendship. WHAT a man applies himself to earnestly, that he naturally loves. Do men then apply themselves earnestly to the things which are bad? By no means. Well, do they apply themselves to thin

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קדֵשה: מיסוד הקשר הזוגי וחשיבות האחווה2 ואומר: ידוע שחברים הם דבר שהאדם זקוק לו כל ימי חייו. אריסטו ביאר זאת בספר התשיעי של "אתיקה" (לפי הסדר בתרגום הערבי. לפנינו: ח,1). בשעת בריאותו ואושרו הוא נהנה מ

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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 wha

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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; f

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And since there are three sorts of friendship, based on goodness, on utility and on pleasure, and two varieties of each sort (for each of them is either on a basis of superiority or of equality), and

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It is a mark of the useful friend that one wishes the things good for him, and so of the benefactor, and in fact a friend of any sort (for this definition of friendship is not distinctive); of another

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All these defining marks are predicated in the case of some friendship, but none of them with reference to friendship as a single thing. Hence there are many of them, and each is thought to belong to

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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 natu

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But in reality there are many kinds of friendships: this was among the things said already, as we have distinguished three senses of the term friendship—one sort has been defined as based on goodness,

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On the other hand friendship based on pleasure is the friendship of the young, for they have a sense of what is pleasant; hence young people’s friendship easily changes, for since their characters cha

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Therefore since the primary sort of friendship is in accordance with goodness, friends of this sort will be absolutely good in themselves also, and this not because of being useful, but in another man

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And since to love actively is to treat the loved object qua loved, and the friend is an object of love to the friend qua dear to him but not qua musician or medical man, the pleasure of friendship is

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The primary form of friendship therefore, and the one that causes the name to be given to the others, is friendship based on goodness and due to the pleasure of goodness, as has been said before. The

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It is also possible for a bad man to be friends with a good man, for the bad man may be useful to the good man for his purpose at the time-and the good man to the uncontrolled man for his purpose at t

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