The kinds of friendship may perhaps be cleared up if we first come to know the object of love. For not everything seems to be loved but only the lovable, and this is good, pleasant, or useful; but it would seem to be that by which some good or pleasure is produced that is useful, so that it is the good and the useful that are lovable as ends.
It's really only the good, then, because the useful is always posterior rather than prior for Aristotle. This is because the useful is useful for something else that is wanted for itself. Since we just finished the last book on a meditation proving that pleasure was a good -- and perhaps the highest good, if properly considered -- we know that "good" is the last candidate standing here.
Do men love, then, the good, or what is good for them? These sometimes clash. So too with regard to the pleasant. Now it is thought that each loves what is good for himself, and that the good is without qualification lovable, and what is good for each man is lovable for him; but each man loves not what is good for him but what seems good. This however will make no difference; we shall just have to say that this is 'that which seems lovable'.
The obvious problem here is when one falls in love with someone who is bad for you: perhaps they don't really love you back, or perhaps they have destructive qualities that will be harmful to you if you stick with them. This experience is universal enough that all of us know someone who has been in a love relationship like that, if we haven't been in one ourselves.
Aristotle doesn't mention this aspect explicitly, and indeed he rarely discusses such things except in biological terms. Yet it is clear that we don't love that which is good per se; nor even what is good for us. We often love mistakenly because of what seems so to us.
Now there are three grounds on which people love; of the love of lifeless objects we do not use the word 'friendship'; for it is not mutual love, nor is there a wishing of good to the other (for it would surely be ridiculous to wish wine well; if one wishes anything for it, it is that it may keep, so that one may have it oneself); but to a friend we say we ought to wish what is good for his sake.
This gives us our first premise: true friendship and genuine love generally are reciprocal and mutual.
But to those who thus wish good we ascribe only goodwill, if the wish is not reciprocated; goodwill when it is reciprocal being friendship. Or must we add 'when it is recognized'? For many people have goodwill to those whom they have not seen but judge to be good or useful; and one of these might return this feeling. These people seem to bear goodwill to each other; but how could one call them friends when they do not know their mutual feelings? To be friends, then, the must be mutually recognized as bearing goodwill and wishing well to each other for one of the aforesaid reasons.
One can imagine two people of fair fame who know of each other but haven't met; and each one thinks well of what he has heard of the other, and thus they wish each other well. Yet they clearly aren't friends, because they haven't met.
Aristotle gives us a condition of recognition of the friendship, but that probably isn't quite strong enough. Even if they were informed of each other's good will and recognized it, but still had never met nor communicated directly, it would be strange to call them 'friends.' Allies, perhaps: they might well have common aims in the world, and see each other as usefully advancing those aims. Friendship seems to require more.
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