The Value Of Friendship In Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics discusses virtue as a disposition to act in a manner that is a mean between excess and deficiency. In the following, friendship will be shown to be a virtue by explaining the different kinds of friendship. Beginning by understanding what a virtue is for Aristotle will show that friendship is a desirable state of character and help prove it is a virtue. By contemplating the value of friendship and it’s importance to the moral good of human action, the paper will show that friendship is a virtue. Reflecting upon these topics will finally point to the fact that friendship is a virtue. To being we must understand what a virtue is; this is because for Aristotle moral virtue is both a disposition and an action. Disposition

Since men act in ways that bring their lives happiness, it is generally found that friendship brings happiness; however different kinds of friendship bring different types of happiness. Regardless of the type of friendship, what can be agreed and accepted is that the best type of friendship will be virtuous. “[G]oodwill, when it is reciprocal being friendship… To be friends, then, they must be mutually recognized as bearing goodwill and wishing well to each other” (Nicomachean Ethics, 8.2, 1155b-1156a 34- 5). Friendship requires reciprocal well-wishing, and mutual awareness based on lovable qualities, such as the good, the pleasant and the useful. By analyzing these three kinds of friendship, it will be proven that the friendship is a virtue or rather a good action. There are different kinds of friendship, ones that bring about certain goods for each other such as men of business or of some type of exchange. There also exists a state of friendship where pleasure is given, that in this state what is being given are pleasurable things and that each loves what is being given and as such continuous until such qualities cease to come

They exist in states where it is without qualification rather, they are beneficial, or useful, to each other not for their own sake. “[F]or in the case of this kind of friendship the other qualities also are alike in both friends, and that which is good without qualification is also without qualification pleasant, and these are the most lovable qualities” (Nicomachean Ethics, 8.3, 1156b 20). You find someone lovable not because they are useful, or because they bring you something. You love someone for they are both pleasant and useful and above all good in themselves. Understanding this, friendship is an act of loving another, and not just being loved- gaining or simply finding gain as in the sense of loveable qualities of useful or pleasant- but rather finding something desirable and with agreement with your state of charter that allows you to find