Nicomachean Ethics VIII.6

Today's chapter builds on the discussion of the previous one.

Between sour and elderly people friendship arises less readily, inasmuch as they are less good-tempered and enjoy companionship less; for these are thou to be the greatest marks of friendship productive of it. This is why, while men become friends quickly, old men do not; it is because men do not become friends with those in whom they do not delight; and similarly sour people do not quickly make friends either. 

One expects that the elderly of Aristotle's day were indeed much less "good-tempered" than currently, given the absence of any pain relief other than wine or pharmakon so primitive that there was no distinction made between 'medicine' and 'poison.' I don't think it's necessarily a comment on the elderly in general; I don't find older folk to be especially akin to sour people as a rule -- some are, and some aren't. 

But such men may bear goodwill to each other; for they wish one another well and aid one another in need; but they are hardly friends because they do not spend their days together nor delight in each other, and these are thought the greatest marks of friendship.

Certainly sour people don't seem to delight in much. The elderly may here as above be in a happier case in our generations; they are more mobile, for one thing, given the advent of cars and other sorts of mobility technology. 

One cannot be a friend to many people in the sense of having friendship of the perfect type with them, just as one cannot be in love with many people at once (for love is a sort of excess of feeling, and it is the nature of such only to be felt towards one person); and it is not easy for many people at the same time to please the same person very greatly, or perhaps even to be good in his eyes. One must, too, acquire some experience of the other person and become familiar with him, and that is very hard. But with a view to utility or pleasure it is possible that many people should please one; for many people are useful or pleasant, and these services take little time.

There are two important points being made here, one of which is more debatable than the other. True friendship is time intensive, and it's also attention intensive. You can't have many very deep friendships just because of the mutual investment that is required. 

The more debatable point is how many. Is it really possible to love only one person at a time? Not obviously given that we tend to have wives and also children, parents and extended family and a close friend or two or three as well. It can't be many for the reasons spelled out above, but it isn't obvious that he's right that 'it is the nature of such to be felt only towards one person.' He's making a close analogy between love and friendship, and clearly intends for the 'only one' to apply to love per se, but the analogy is so close -- that is, the point of disanalogy comes so very late in the comparison -- that it's not clear that love and friendship really differ here. 

Of these two kinds that which is for the sake of pleasure is the more like [true] friendship, when both parties get the same things from each other and delight in each other or in the things, as in the friendships of the young; for generosity is more found in such friendships.

Generosity and openness to it is important partly because it overcomes the inequalities that friends may find between themselves, as discussed in VIII.5. If a richer friend is very generous, and the poorer friend is very open to being treated that way without feeling indebted by it, the two can exist as functional equals in a way that would otherwise be more difficult. They can dine together more often, go on trips together, even live together (likely in our time only if they are either young enough to be roommates, or if older have come to a point in their lives in which a roommate arrangement makes sense). 

Friendship based on utility is for the commercially minded.

Indeed business relationships can be friendly without being true friendships; this is not at all uncommon, and may even be desirable. After all, we have to spend time with these people in any case; why spend time with people who don't like you? Cultivating at leas a sort of friendship is common sense.

People who are supremely happy, too, have no need of useful friends, but do need pleasant friends; for they wish to live with some one and, though they can endure for a short time what is painful, no one could put up with it continuously, nor even with the Good itself if it were painful to him; this is why they look out for friends who are pleasant. Perhaps they should look out for friends who, being pleasant, are also good, and good for them too; for so they will have all the characteristics that friends should have.

Yes, true friendship has all the good qualities.

We now begin to discuss something I warned yesterday was coming: what about friendships with, or for, those in power? 

People in positions of authority seem to have friends who fall into distinct classes; some people are useful to them and others are pleasant, but the same people are rarely both; for they seek neither those whose pleasantness is accompanied by virtue nor those whose utility is with a view to noble objects, but in their desire for pleasure they seek for ready-witted people, and their other friends they choose as being clever at doing what they are told, and these characteristics are rarely combined. Now we have said that the good man is at the same time pleasant and useful; but such a man does not become the friend of one who surpasses him in station, unless he is surpassed also in virtue; if this is not so, he does not establish equality by being proportionally exceeded in both respects. But people who surpass him in both respects are not so easy to find.

A man in authority would do well to have friends who are better than him both in power and virtue; and indeed, we can readily see how that would be beneficial to him. How it 'establishes equality' to be surpassed in both areas is not as evident. Aristotle goes on to explain what he means:

However that may be, the aforesaid friendships involve equality; for the friends get the same things from one another and wish the same things for one another, or exchange one thing for another, e.g. pleasure for utility; we have said, however, that they are both less truly friendships and less permanent.

So there is a kind of equality even given the clear inequalities: the equality of 'getting pleasure' or 'getting utility' or 'getting good' from each other, and likewise an equality of wishing these goods for each other.  

But it is from their likeness and their unlikeness to the same thing that they are thought both to be and not to be friendships. It is by their likeness to the friendship of virtue that they seem to be friendships (for one of them involves pleasure and the other utility, and these characteristics belong to the friendship of virtue as well); while it is because the friendship of virtue is proof against slander and permanent, while these quickly change (besides differing from the former in many other respects), that they appear not to be friendships; i.e. it is because of their unlikeness to the friendship of virtue.

We talked about the slander issue already. Those in authority are particularly likely to become targets of slander, as tearing down their reputations is a way for competitors to move in on their position. Having friends who have the right qualities to test them and find the goodness in the authority allows them at least someone whom they can trust, and who won't believe the lies about them. 

Yet the people in authority are unlikely to have true friends in the unrestricted sense due to the rarity of candidates. More, the greater their authority the fewer the potential friends: if the best case is someone who surpasses you in both station and virtue, those at the highest positions will find no human beings whatsoever who can surpass them in both. If they want to find a friend who surpasses them in station, they must turn to the divine (who presumably also surpasses them in virtue!). 

Just as Aristotle has argued that having friends makes people better because it brings out goodness in them that they wish to bestow on the other, so too having a dearth of friends -- or no friends -- makes one worse. Thus, as power insulates the powerful it also strips them of one of the chief factors that can improve one's character in quality and nobility. We are aware that power corrupts; it also isolates, and removes that which might have kept such a person better than he or she turns out to be without such good influences.