[1244b]
[1]
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;
[20]
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.1 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.2
1 i.e. of man with God, l. 8 above; cf. Aristot. Eud. Eth. 1245b 13.
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