Each of the constitutions may be seen to involve friendship just in so far as it involves justice. The friendship between a king and his subjects depends on an excess of benefits conferred; for he confers benefits on his subjects if being a good man he cares for them with a view to their well-being, as a shepherd does for his sheep (whence Homer called Agamemnon 'shepherd of the peoples'). Such too is the friendship of a father, though this exceeds the other in the greatness of the benefits conferred; for he is responsible for the existence of his children, which is thought the greatest good, and for their nurture and upbringing.
Now this is an interesting move because we started this book by laying out the ways in which the 'equalities' of justice aren't the same as the 'equalities' of friendship. There are several of each, and they differ significantly. So now the 'friendship' involved in political communities is tied to the justice equalities -- which are, you will recall, proportionate in several different ways for the most part, arithmetical when providing rectificatory justice to the injured. These are all unlike the 'equalities' of friendship, which have to do with things like 'each giving the other the same thing (e.g. love or honor or pleasure).'
Thus we can see that political friendship is purely analogical to real friendship, even more than frienship-for-pleasure-or-utility was merely analogical to true friendship.
These things are ascribed to ancestors as well. Further, by nature a father tends to rule over his sons, ancestors over descendants, a king over his subjects. These friendships imply superiority of one party over the other, which is why ancestors are honoured.
Two of those are more 'by nature' than the third one. As we recently discussed, the natural authority of parents over children really does come from nature: children are born helpless and need guidance as well as protection to survive ("Don't eat those berries!"). Those who brought them into the world tend to provide that guidance, and in return are due honor and respect; and if you break that law of nature by ignoring or rejecting their guidance, nature itself will punish you (as for example if you ate 'those berries' anyway).
Ancestors, to a more extended degree, are due respect because they did the work that laid the grounds for your present prosperity (whatever it is). You look back on whatever goods you have, and you find that you have them in part because those who came before you spent their lives toiling to create some conditions of prosperity from the world that you inherited. Even bad ancestors did at least some of this, or you and your parents wouldn't have survived to exist now. The superiority mentioned here of ancestors is thus really priority in the literal sense, i.e., they came first.
Kings, however -- there's nothing natural about kings. We used to tell stories about royal lines that tried to imbue them with power and authority from God, but it's been clear for a long time that those stories were fictions. As Jefferson put it, "that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of god." Arrangements like kingship are artificial: indeed, all such political relationships are artifices, meaning things made by men rather than found in nature. That doesn't necessarily make them bad, but it does mean that such arrangements aren't rooted in anything like natural law.
The justice therefore that exists between persons so related is not the same on both sides but is in every case proportioned to merit; for that is true of the friendship as well. The friendship of man and wife, again, is the same that is found in an aristocracy; for it is in accordance with virtue the better gets more of what is good, and each gets what befits him; and so, too, with the justice in these relations.
This 'the better gets more of what is good' is not thought proper to marriage today. However, the same idea underlies the superior pay of commissioned officers in the military to that of NCOs, even when the NCOs might be greatly senior to the junior officers as Sergeants Major are to First Lieutenants. The notion is that the officers are better, traditionally by birth but in the United States purely by education, and thus deserve higher pay and privileges. Yet, at least in the Marine Corps, this is formally balanced by a recognition that they also have a duty of care for those under their command, such that at mess the officer may not eat until he has seen that all of his men have been fed.
We don't have to do things that way with our military, just as we don't run our marriages that way anymore. We could pay instead by proofs of virtue, for example years of honorable service or by awards and recognitions earned. Because these arrangements are artifices, we are free to arrange them differently if we think of a better way.
The friendship of brothers is like that of comrades; for they are equal and of like age, and such persons are for the most part like in their feelings and their character. Like this, too, is the friendship appropriate to timocratic government; for in such a constitution the ideal is for the citizens to be equal and fair; therefore rule is taken in turn, and on equal terms; and the friendship appropriate here will correspond.
This is meant to be the worst of the true forms of government, recall.
But in the deviation-forms, as justice hardly exists, so too does friendship. It exists least in the worst form; in tyranny there is little or no friendship. For where there is nothing common to ruler and ruled, there is not friendship either, since there is not justice; e.g. between craftsman and tool, soul and body, master and slave; the latter in each case is benefited by that which uses it, but there is no friendship nor justice towards lifeless things. But neither is there friendship towards a horse or an ox, nor to a slave qua slave. For there is nothing common to the two parties; the slave is a living tool and the tool a lifeless slave.
The transformation of a living man with all his joys and pains and experiences into a thing that can be disposed of for one's own ends is a base violation of human dignity. It is one of the apparent advances of our era over the glories of the ancient world to have understood that, though few places even today go as far to secure it as to recognize the individual right to keep and bear arms that best secures it.
Qua slave then, one cannot be friends with him. But qua man one can; for there seems to be some justice between any man and any other who can share in a system of law or be a party to an agreement; therefore there can also be friendship with him in so far as he is a man.
That was the last refuge of justice even in slavery that the Dred Scott decision rejected.
Therefore while in tyrannies friendship and justice hardly exist, in democracies they exist more fully; for where the citizens are equal they have much in common.
Indeed, quite a lot in common insofar as they are in any sense 'equal.' It's not clear which equality Aristotle is thinking of here, but it might be the equality before the law, so that all citizens are held to the same rules even when the rules are unfairly slanted to allow the majority to extract what it wants from the minority.
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