[1242a]
[1]
Specified sorts of friendship are therefore the friendship of
relatives, that of comrades, that of partners and what is termed civic
friendship. Really friendship of relatives has more than one species,
one as between brothers, another as of father and son1: it may be proportional, for example
paternal friendship, or based on number, for example the friendship of
brothers—for this is near the friendship of comrades, as in
this also they claim privileges of seniority. Civic friendship on the other
hand is constituted in the fullest degree on the principle of utility,
for it seems to be the individual's lack of self-sufficiency that
makes these unions permanent—since they would have been
formed in any case merely for the sake of society. Only civic
friendship and the deviation from it are not merely friendships but
also partnerships on a friendly footing; the others are on a basis of
superiority. The justice
that underlies a friendship of utility is in the highest degree just,
because this is the civic principle of justice. The coming together of
a saw with the craft that uses it is on different lines—it
is not for the sake of some common object, for saw and craft are like
instrument and spirit, but for the sake of the man who employs them.
It does indeed
come about that even the tool itself receives attention which it
deserves with a view to its work, since it exists for the sake of its
work, and the essential nature of a gimlet is twofold, the more
important half being its activity, boring.2 And the body and the slave are
in the class of tool, as has been said before.3
[20]
Therefore to seek the proper way of
associating with a friend is to seek for a particular kind of justice.
In fact the whole of justice in general is in relation to a friend,
for what is just is just for certain persons; and persons who are
partners, and a friend is a partner, either in one's family4 or in one's life. For man is not only a
political but also a house-holding animal, and does not, like the
other animals, couple occasionally and with any chance female or male,
but man is in a
special way not a solitary but a gregarious animal, associating with
the persons with whom he has a natural kinship; accordingly there
would be partnership; and justice of a sort, even if there were no
state. And a household
is a sort of friendship—or rather the relationships of
master and slave is that of craft and tools, and of spirit and body,
and such relationships are not friendships or forms of justice but
something analogous, just as health5 is not justice but
analogous to it. But the
friendship of man and wife is one of utility, a partnership; that of
father and son is the same as that between god and man and between
benefactor and beneficiary, and generally between natural ruler and
natural subject. That
between brothers is principally the friendship of comrades, as being
on a footing of equality—“
For never did he make me out a bastard,
But the same Zeus, my lord, was called the sire
Of both—
”6 for these are the words of men seeking equality.
1 These two clauses look like an interpolation.
2 Not its ἕξις, its shape, hardness, etc.
3 Aristot. Eud. Eth. 1241b 17-24.
4 i.e. 'friend' in the sense of 'relation.'
5 Perhaps the text is corrupt.
6 Soph. Fr. 755 (Jebb and Pearson; 684 Nauck). The third line is completed in a quotation by Philo, θνητῶν δ᾽ οὐδείς. (For τῷδε dative of agent see Kuhner-Gerth, i. 422).
Aristotle. Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 20, translated by H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1981.
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