All relationships require common interests, quality time, experiences, suffering, and joys which bond people together and help shape individuals. Aristotle believed that there existed three types of friendships: friendship of utility, friendship of pleasure, and friendship of virtue. [1] Virtue friendship is the truest form of friendship necessary to acquire happiness, or eudaimonea. While utility is only in place so long as something is to be offered and pleasure is only as deep as the humor, virtue is centered on seeking the well-being of another person for that person’s sake.
1. Friendship of Utility
“Those who love each other for utility love the other not in his own right, but insofar as they gain some good for themselves from him.”
The person who only wants to copy your work but never offers to help you; you have a car and suddenly they need to get places but don’t offer gas money; you have a Netflix or Amazon account and they want the log in information; this kind of friend is anyone who wants something and expects you to provide it for them. They pop in and out of your life to get things from you. These people tend to not invest in you or care about you. You have a skill or resource? They want it. It doesn’t necessarily cost you anything, but they require things from you and it just leaves you feeling used and emptied.
2. Friendship of Pleasure
“The same is true of those who love for pleasure; for they like a witty person not because of his character, but because he is pleasant to them.”
This is someone you go out and have adventures with. Someone you would go to lunch with to catch up; that nice person you always say “Hi” to when you cross paths. This is the clever and amusing character that cracks jokes to get a laugh. This person is fun to hang around but not necessarily someone that you know anything about. Think of a Robin Williams personality: everyone enjoys being around them because they are entertaining, make people laugh and feel better about themselves, but no one truly knows them.
3. Friendship of Virtue
“But complete friendship is the friendship of good people similar in virtue; for they wish goods in the same way to each other insofar as they are good, and they are good in their own right.”
The deeply caring, thoughtful person concerned with the well-being of others more than what they can obtain from others. These people ask “How are you?” and actually want to know how you are doing and what is going on in your life rather than just looking for a simple reply of “Good” in passing conversation. They spend quality time in quality discussions and will lovingly correct and guide one another into commendable living and character. They have no intentional or expected gain or personal advantage from the friendship. They act in honest compassion and selflessness for the sake of the well-being of their friends. These people of virtue may have things to offer and pleasantness resulting of their character whereas friends of utility and pleasure are not necessary virtuous. Friendships of virtue are rare and are the most conducive to human flourishing which is what humanity consistently strives for.
These three types of friendships are not singular (as in, friendships are either one or the other), they can be combination friendships fulfilling multiple categories – such as, utility and pleasure, utility and virtue, pleasure and virtue, or a combination of all three. Friendships of utility and friendship of pleasure are not wrong if they are resulting of virtue friendship, but there is something incomplete in each of them on their own or in addition with one another only. Both utility and pleasure are concerned with gaining something for oneself from another person, which is not valuing the person. Valuing someone for the services or entertainment they can provide you with is valuing them only for what they can do for you, not valuing the person in and only of themselves.
Virtue friends are notorious for self-sacrificial love, but utility and pleasure friends are both centered on the self. However, friendship of virtue that results in usefulness or joy is natural and should be appreciated. Others will probably be able to provide services to you because they have different resources and availabilities that you may not have but need. This does not mean that your relationship is based on services alone but that they are benefits of the friendship instead. It is not the action which produces the love, but the love that produces the actions. Utility or pleasure is only then being accomplished as a result of the goodwill a virtuous friend has for you.
“To a friend, however, it is said, you must wish goods for his own sake. If you wish good things in this way, but the same wish is not returned by the other, you would be said to have [only] goodwill for the other. For friendship is said to be reciprocated goodwill. Goodwill would seem to be a feature of friendship, but still it is not friendship.” Loving people as they are rather than what they have the potential to be may mean that your good deeds or well-wishing towards others go unrewarded or unreciprocated. Hospitality and care for others’ well-being should not be determined by the expectation of receiving something in return if it is actually a selfless act.
As a final tidbit, Aristotle stated that “the defining features of friendship that are found in friendships to one’s neighbors would seem to be derived from features of friendship toward oneself.” This quotation sounds an awful lot like Mark 12:30-31, “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” [2]
All friendships have a purpose because they allow you to learn and grow from them, from what they possess or what they lack, which then helps develop who you are as a person. What kind of friends do you have? What kind of friend are you?
[1] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1999).
