In “Nicomachean Ethics,” Aristotle delivers one of the defining descriptions of friendship.
“A friend is a second self, so that our consciousness of a friend’s existence … makes us more fully conscious of our own existence,” he said.
But why do we cultivate certain friendships over others? How can we be good friends? On March 21 at Pomona College’s Pearsons Hall, Carleton College Assistant Professor of philosophy Allison Murphy turned to Aristotle in an attempt to answer these questions.
Murphy’s talk primarily explored Aristotle’s quintessential “Nicomachean Ethics,” in which Aristotle lays out eudaimonia, a Greek term that describes human flourishing. To achieve eudaimonia, he says, people must live by particular virtues.
For Aristotle, virtues are skills or traits developed through practice, which serve as moderation between the extremes of excess and deficiency. These virtues align with a rational and ethical life — a good life. Aristotelian virtues include courage, patience and temperance. Murphy said a trait like temperance is virtuous both on an intrapersonal and interpersonal level.
Of the 10 books in the “Nicomachean Ethics,” two discuss friendship — but Aristotle never explicitly calls friendship as a virtue. Friendship is not a trait or skill that forms a particular part of an ethical life, Murphy said, but rather a mode of living ethically. Since virtues are both private and public, the good life entails both individual good and good with respect to others.
“We can think about a sort of parallel between what’s going on in the friendship books and what’s going on in the rest of the Ethics,” Murphy said. “When the individual is living well, she has eudaimonia … so living well together for friends is going to be shared eudaimonia.”
Aristotle’s conception of friendship differs from two conventional models: the intimacy model, which centers on enjoying time together and the loyalty model, which centers on supporting one another.
“Aristotle’s partnership model, by contrast with [conventional models], is going to subordinate the relational aspect of friendship to the shared objective,” Murphy said. “[Friends are] joined together due to their shared pursuit of some end.”
There are different ends that friendships can pursue. Pleasure friendships are based upon similar interests, while utility friendships are friendships founded upon business partnerships.
For Aristotle, the most valuable kind is virtue friendship, in which friends spend time together philosophizing or discussing justice within the political community, activities that Aristotle considers as improving the character of each friend.
“For Aristotle, developing better friendships is not going to be primarily a matter of the right set of relational skills. Rather, he’s going to advise that if you want better friendships, work first for better ends.”
Murphy argued that, like eudaimonia, virtue friendship is an “ultimate” good. Although there are two common interpretations of Aristotelian “ultimacy,” Murphy used the simpler interpretation for the purposes of keeping the talk concise: The ultimate good contains all other goods. Virtue friendship is ultimate because it contains the benefits of other kinds of friendship, such as pleasure and utility.
“There’s going to be an associated pleasure because virtue is pleasant, but virtue friends also turn out to be useful and pleasant in ways that are totally unconnected with virtue,” Murphy said. “A virtue friend might introduce another virtue friend [to create a] business network.”
During the Q&A portion, Julie Tannenbaum, associate professor of philosophy at Pomona, asked why Murphy thought Aristotle included friendship in the Nicomachean Ethics. If eudaimonia contains all goods, Tannenbaum asked, why do we need friends?
Murphy stated that a friend is not an addition to an already complete life, but rather a collaborator and companion in life’s endeavor of striving towards virtue. A friend is instead identified with their friend, united through their shared pursuit.
“Why does the person need a friend?” Murphy said. “For the same reason he needs himself. He just is — that is his life, [the friend] is himself, on a certain understanding. The friend is another self not because the friends provide you something that you can’t get on your own, but because the friend is another subject with you in a shared life.”
For Aristotle, living together through challenges necessitates mutual support, strengthening each friend’s character.
“The presence of others allows for a sort of richer mode of [eudaimonia],” Murphy said. “The friend makes one more into the likeness of the good or the bad end, depending on whether it’s a virtuous friend.”
Sylvie Cromer SC ’26 appreciated seeing the philosophy community in action.
“To see an example of a philosopher in action was pretty cool,” Cromer said. “To see someone presenting [Aristotle’s] ideas and explaining them … [and] to see a professor I’ve had … It’s really nice to see professors be so engaged. It’s cool, we’re all part of this learning process.”
Ava Lattimore PO ’27 inquired about what the end is in friendships between neutral individuals who are neither good nor evil.
“[Aristotle’s] conception of friendship is that you have to already be good to have good friends,” Lattimore said. “I think that [excludes] a lot of people … one of his virtues is magnanimity … you can only have that virtue if you’re already so rich that you can frequently make large donations. So virtue is not for everyone and it made me wonder if, for him, maybe friendship wasn’t for everyone.”
Murphy said that friendship has the potential to move people toward evil ends and shallow goods like pleasure or toward virtue.
“For Aristotle, developing better friendships is not going to be primarily a matter of the right set of relational skills,” Murphy said. “Rather, he’s going to advise that if you want better friendships, work first for better ends.”
The talk expanded Lattimore’s notions of friendship.
“It’s really more like, how do our values align?” Lattimore said. “And why are we good people for each other? And I think that that is … more kind than just thinking about how mechanically you can ‘act’ as a better friend and not truly ‘be’ a better friend.”
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