Love and friendship in the good life: VCE Philosophy
“Viewpoints and arguments on the role of love and friendship in the good life”
Aristotle argues in Book IX chapter 9 that the happy person needs friends: a self-sufficient life is still a social one, since we are social creatures, we need people to benefit and act well toward, and shared activity with a good friend makes our own goodness more visible and enjoyable. Cicero, in the set extracts from Laelius: On Friendship, also treats friendship as bound up with virtue. Allen widens the concern to citizens who are strangers; in her wider book she develops political friendship, built on trust and fair dealing, though your extracts focus on justice and equitable self-interest. Objections: friendship may be valued instrumentally in these accounts, and it can conflict with fairness to others.
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What this dot point is asking
Is a good life possible without love and friendship, and if friendship matters, why? Whether friends are valuable as a means to our own happiness, or as part of what makes a life good, is the main puzzle.
Aristotle: why the happy person needs friends
Aristotle faces an apparent paradox. If happiness is self-sufficient, why would a happy person need friends? The VCAA extract from Book IX, chapter 9 runs up to the conclusion that the happy man needs friends. Within it, his answer has three strands:
- We are naturally social. Humans are political creatures who live with others, so a solitary life is not a complete human life, even a self-sufficient one.
- Friends are among the greatest external goods. Part of why we want them is that they are among the best things that can come to us from outside.
- Friends are the best recipients of good actions. A good person needs people to do good to, so virtue needs objects.
The extract also reports the objection that a self-sufficient person would not need friends, because a friend, being another self, supplies what one cannot get alone. Later in the chapter Aristotle adds more arguments (we perceive our neighbours and their actions better than our own, and sharing life together makes it worthwhile). Those later arguments fall after the end of the VCAA extract, so use them only as background, not as claims from the set passage.
Argument form: if flourishing involves virtuous activity, and virtuous activity is best done and perceived in company, then friendship is part of flourishing, not an optional extra. Elsewhere in the Ethics he distinguishes friendships of utility, pleasure and character, and holds that only the third, between good people who value each other for who they are, is complete. The set extract focuses on the need for friends rather than on this classification, so check your own text before relying on it.
Cicero on friendship
Cicero's On Friendship (the dialogue Laelius) is the source VCAA's sample exam uses for the Cicero extract, so expect it to be your text too, but check your edition and page ranges. It sees friendship as grounded in virtue and mutual goodwill. For him true friendship is possible only among good people, and it involves loyalty and a willingness to help, with the limit that one should not ask or do wrong for a friend. For the exam, be ready to compare him with Aristotle on two points: both link friendship to virtue, but Cicero emphasises duty and the public side of life more strongly. Rely on your set extracts for specific claims.
Allen: political friendship
Allen's prescribed extracts concern what justice is and achieves, and 'equitable self-interest', in a society that includes strangers. In her wider book (check how far your extract goes), she suggests that citizens can cultivate a kind of political friendship: habits of trust, attention to others' interests and willingness to accept some loss in return for a fair shared life. She uses the history of racial segregation in the United States to show what such practices need and what happens when trust collapses. This links friendship to the good life of a community, not just to private bonds.
Evaluation
For the view that friendship is essential:
- Most accounts of wellbeing include relationships on their list, and life without them seems impoverished even when other things go well.
- Friendship is a way we exercise virtues like loyalty and generosity.
Objections:
- Instrumentalism worry. If a friend is valued because they help me flourish, it sounds as if the friend is a means. Aristotle replies that in complete friendship each loves the other for their own sake, but then the justification for needing friends is partly self-regarding.
- Partiality. Friendship asks us to favour particular people, which may clash with impartial justice. A person who always helps their friend may treat others unfairly.
- Necessity. A hermit-like thinker may flourish in contemplation; critics say the claim that everyone needs friends is too strong.
- Political friendship may be too thin or too demanding: citizens may not be able to feel anything like friendship toward millions of strangers.
Question: Does the good life require friendship?
Position: yes, in the sense that a life wholly without close relationships would lack goods most of us rank very high.
Reason 1 (Aristotle): virtue is exercised on and with others, and shared activity increases the pleasure and clarity of living well.
Reason 2: love and friendship give life meaning that is not reducible to pleasure, since people choose to sacrifice comfort for friends.
Objection: some people appear content and productive with few relationships.
Reply: that shows variation in degree, not that relationships are unimportant. Even a solitary scholar depends on a community of others for thought and language. I maintain friendship is a central, though not logically necessary, part of living well.
Practice questions
Explain one reason Aristotle gives for why a happy person needs friends.
Model answer: He argues that a virtuous person needs others to act well toward and that perceiving and sharing in the activity of a good friend makes one's own life more worthwhile. Since humans are social, a life with no friends is not complete and so cannot be fully happy.
Is friendship valuable only because it benefits us? Defend your view.
Model answer (sample): No. If I help a friend at a cost to myself with no expected return, that is a normal case of friendship, not a failure of it. This suggests friends are valued for their own sake. Aristotle's complete friendship fits this, though his argument that we need friends for our own flourishing shows that both sides of the matter are present.
Avoid claiming 'Aristotle says friendship is only useful'. He lists utility as only one type of friendship and ranks it below friendship based on good character.