Nicomachean Ethics VIII.12

Book VIII continues exploring the similarities and differences of friendship from other social relationships.  

Every form of friendship, then, involves association, as has been said. One might, however, mark off from the rest both the friendship of kindred and that of comrades. Those of fellow-citizens, fellow-tribesmen, fellow-voyagers, and the like are more like mere friendships of association; for they seem to rest on a sort of compact. With them we might class the friendship of host and guest. The friendship of kinsmen itself, while it seems to be of many kinds, appears to depend in every case on parental friendship; for parents love their children as being a part of themselves, and children their parents as being something originating from them.

This is also the division between the 'friendship' that constitutes political friendship and the natural authority of the family, as we were just discussing in VIII.11. This is in other words a basic distinction in human relationships: it is the reason that Aristotle considers man a political animal, as he puts it in the Politics I.2ff, i.e. that human beings have to extend their relationships beyond these natural family ties and form compacts that allow non-family members to trust that they will be fairly treated. 

How could such a compact be enforced? The traditional solution has been to set up a state according to one of the three types of constitutions that Aristotle has been discussing. Is it possible to do so without a state? Yes, apparently: the medieval Íslendingar did so with significant success for a time. However, the occasions have been rare and have not tended to survive without the kind of isolation that Iceland enjoyed at the time. 

Now (1) parents know their offspring better than there children know that they are their children, and (2) the originator feels his offspring to be his own more than the offspring do their begetter; for the product belongs to the producer (e.g. a tooth or hair or anything else to him whose it is), but the producer does not belong to the product, or belongs in a less degree.

One might see the point better with an acorn than with a tooth or a hair; the tooth or the hair is arguably a constituent part of the organism that generated it, and the good of the organism is the purpose of the tooth (or the hair). The acorn doesn't fall far from the tree, but it is from the start both a product of its elder -- we as observers could tell that the older oak and the younger one were related, as well as which was the elder and which was the younger. Yet from the beginning the younger oak has its own existence and purpose, its own life-cycle: and it is to some degree in competition with the parent for sunlight and resources from the beginning. (There is some evidence now that trees share, however, especially with their own but also with their analogs to friends, with fungal networks as a kind of necessary interlocutor.)

And (3) the length of time produces the same result; parents love their children as soon as these are born, but children love their parents only after time has elapsed and they have acquired understanding or the power of discrimination by the senses. From these considerations it is also plain why mothers love more than fathers do. 

Parents, then, love their children as themselves (for their issue are by virtue of their separate existence a sort of other selves), while children love their parents as being born of them, and brothers love each other as being born of the same parents; for their identity with them makes them identical with each other (which is the reason why people talk of 'the same blood', 'the same stock', and so on).

This is the first use of the concept of 'another self.' That will become important later, but it is worth noticing that it originates as an idea in the text in the context of the love a parent has for their own scion. 

They are, therefore, in a sense the same thing, though in separate individuals. Two things that contribute greatly to friendship are a common upbringing and similarity of age; for 'two of an age take to each other', and people brought up together tend to be comrades; whence the friendship of brothers is akin to that of comrades. And cousins and other kinsmen are bound up together by derivation from brothers, viz. by being derived from the same parents. They come to be closer together or farther apart by virtue of the nearness or distance of the original ancestor.

Commonality of age remains one of the largest divisions in American society, if anything only increased by the technological change of the era. People from my generation remember a time without smart-phones or the internet or computers, a time when we'd be turned out in the morning by our parents and expected to survive unsupervised until dinner. That is unknown to the youth of today, or even the generation immediately before them, and the results have created a division between us: they literally cannot imagine the world I remember from my youth. For those of a generation older than me, the effect is even greater. 

The friendship of children to parents, and of men to gods, is a relation to them as to something good and superior; for they have conferred the greatest benefits, since they are the causes of their being and of their nourishment, and of their education from their birth; and this kind of friendship possesses pleasantness and utility also, more than that of strangers, inasmuch as their life is lived more in common.

The kinship between parents and gods is one contemporary psychology has made much of, and consequently our literature: in Fight Club the imaginary version of Tyler Durden makes the point explicitly that 'our fathers were our models for God.' It may be true to some degree: I have sometimes thought that the unshakeable quality of my faith was built on the fact that I had a good father who was always there if I really needed him, but willing to trust me to go free about my business when I didn't call on him. Aristotle isn't making the psychological point, neither Freudian nor Jungian: he means gods, which really exist out there, and have the same relationship by extension that a parent does to children.

The friendship of brothers has the characteristics found in that of comrades (and especially when these are good), and in general between people who are like each other, inasmuch as they belong more to each other and start with a love for each other from their very birth, and inasmuch as those born of the same parents and brought up together and similarly educated are more akin in character; and the test of time has been applied most fully and convincingly in their case. Between other kinsmen friendly relations are found in due proportion.

Aristotle has made that point several times now: the types of constitutions that seem plausible to us seem to him to derive from these different family relations.  

Between man and wife friendship seems to exist by nature; for man is naturally inclined to form couples-even more than to form cities, inasmuch as the household is earlier and more necessary than the city, and reproduction is more common to man with the animals. With the other animals the union extends only to this point, but human beings live together not only for the sake of reproduction but also for the various purposes of life; for from the start the functions are divided, and those of man and woman are different; so they help each other by throwing their peculiar gifts into the common stock. It is for these reasons that both utility and pleasure seem to be found in this kind of friendship. But this friendship may be based also on virtue, if the parties are good; for each has its own virtue and they will delight in the fact. And children seem to be a bond of union (which is the reason why childless people part more easily); for children are a good common to both and what is common holds them together.

Another point underemphasized by our contemporaries: Aristotle not only expects that husband and wife will be friends, he regards the friendship of man and wife as even a more basic feature of human nature than the formation of cities. Given that 'civilization' in the West derives from the formation of cities (not in China, where it linguistically points to the formation of a system of writing), Aristotle is saying that the friendship of man and wife is more natural to humanity than civilization itself. 

How man and wife and in general friend and friend ought mutually to behave seems to be the same question as how it is just for them to behave; for a man does not seem to have the same duties to a friend, a stranger, a comrade, and a schoolfellow.

Here we get another return to the analogy between justice and friendship, which is as we've noted strange given that the sorts of equality that are appropriate to both are quite different. Likewise, justice was meant to be 'fairness' and 'lawfulness,' where 'fairness' pointed to proportionate equality and the law pointed to things that required virtuous behavior from each other. Mostly we don't regulate our friendships by law (although we do our marriages, to some degree at least). That seems to leave fairness: but the equalities aren't the same, so the kind of fairness required isn't the same either.