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If it is said that such a relationship cannot be considered
a real friendship, then this could only be a stipulated
assertion, based upon an a priori definition of what
friendship is. In fact, we might say that, from a contemporary
perspective, to describe two people as “friends”
does not entail anything about their moral involvement
with each other.
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Aristotle insists, for example, that a good friend
will avoid burdening his friends with his own troubles
and pains. According to Aristotle, “That is why
someone with a manly nature tries to prevent his friend
from sharing his pain. Unless he is unusually immune
to pain, he cannot endure pain coming to his friends;
and he does not allow others to share his mourning at
all, since he is not prone to mourn himself either.”
And he concludes, “Females, however, and effeminate
men enjoy having people wail with them; they love them
as friends who share their distress. But in everything
we clearly must imitate the better person.”
Aristotle argues that no one would ever choose to live
without friends, even if he had all the other goods.
This is, I think, a true claim—it may even be
obvious—but it is at the same time a profound
and significant truth about human beings. Later Aristotle
explains: “Surely, it is absurd to make the blessed
person solitary. For no one would choose to have all
[other] goods and yet be alone, since a human being
is political, tending by nature to live together with
others” (1169b) . This suggests that being with
others, and especially with those, to whom we are friends,
is not merely a desirable benefit of being alive but
a fundamental condition for living a fully human existence
and for appreciating the value of life in the first
place.
Aristotle’s philosophical account of friendship
has remained the paradigmatic theory of friendship for
those who succeeded him. And even though there has always
been an enormous amount of scholarly controversy concerning
the proper interpretation of his most basic ideas.
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