The Journal of Value Inquiry 35: 371389, 2001.

ARISTOTLE ON THE VALUE OF FRIENDSHIP AS A MOTIVATION FOR MORALITY 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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Aristotle on the Value of Friendship as a Motivation for Morality

DALE JACQUETTE
Department of Philosophy, The Pennsylvania State University, 246 Sparks Building, University Park, PA 16802-5201, USA

1. Why Be Moral? In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle offers a compelling answer to a central problem of moral reasoning. Why be moral? is a question that arises especially when doing what we believe to be right conflicts with a potentially overpowering motive of self-interest. I know that moral duty requires me to conduct myself in accord with certain ethical principles. But if it is difficult or costly to be ethical, and if I think that I can get away with a wrongful act without being discovered or punished, then through weakness of will I may succumb to temptation by acting contrary to my moral convictions. The challenge for ethics is to provide a good reason for agents to be moral when it is easier or more profitable for them to act wrongly if they can do so with impunity. Wittgenstein puts the point succinctly in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, when he remarks: The first thought in setting up an ethical law of the form thou shalt . . . is: And what if I do not do it?1 Wittgenstein separates the morality of reasons for acting rightly from the accidental external rewards or punishments by which actions may be behaviorally reinforced or inhibited, adding immediately thereafter: But it is clear that ethics has nothing to do with punishment and reward in the ordinary sense.2 The need for an internal motivation for being moral is made explicit when Wittgenstein continues: This question as to the consequences of an action must therefore be irrelevant. At least these consequences will not be events. For there must be something right in that formulation of the question. There must be some sort of ethical reward and ethical punishment, but this must lie in the action itself.3 The problem of finding a sufficiently motivating internal reason for doing what is morally right remains as urgent in Wittgensteins day as in Aristotles. Why should I do what ethics requires? The answer is not, according to Wittgenstein, because if I act morally I might be rewarded, nor because if I do not act morally I might suffer a penalty. Rewards and punishments may or may not occur, and are in that sense external to my action. A morally right or wrong decision, in Wittgensteins view, must be internally charged with its

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own intrinsic justification. Wittgenstein claims never to have read Aristotle, and there is no reason to suppose that he sees himself as entering into philosophical conversation with the ancient Greeks.4 The point is that Wittgenstein, from the distinct perspective of logical atomism and the picture theory of meaning, fastens onto the same problem of moral reasoning as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, reflecting in a very different way an identical concern with the question of why we ought to be moral. 2. Socrates on the Ring of Gyges To appreciate Aristotles answer to the question of why we ought to be moral, it is worthwhile to begin with its origins in Plato. The classic statement of the problem of motivating morality, in a source with which Aristotle was deeply familiar, occurs in Platos Republic. Glaucon invokes the appearance-reality distinction, introducing the ring of Gyges, which with a twist of its stone makes the wearer invisible. If the shepherd who finds the ring can present the appearance to the world of being morally upright while in reality using the invisibility ring to indulge his immoral desires without tarnishing his reputation, why should he not do so? Platos myth of the ring of an ancestor of Gyges provides an ingenious thought experiment. It separates the philosophical task of explaining an adequate internal motivation for doing what is morally required from external events that might otherwise influence an agents decision. If the unnamed forebear of Gyges can avoid detection and thereby escape punishment for wrongdoing, the question of why he ought to do what is morally obligatory is purified of external considerations in a way that Wittgenstein would approve. The problem of why we ought to be moral if we have the ring of Gyges can then be answered only in terms of whatever internal motivations may derive exclusively from the intrinsic features of our actions. The conventional inducements to choose good over evil are eliminated. The appearance-reality distinction is invoked when Glaucon asks Socrates whether he would prefer to persuade his audience in reality or only in appearance. The challenge arises in response to Thrasymachuss patronizing head-nodding to the unrelenting force of Socrates . Thrasymachus offers the Nietzschean definition by which justice is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger.5 Socrates begins to refute the position by his usual method of interrogation, and Thrasymachus soon loses patience. Even before this point, while Socrates is discussing Polemarchuss mercantile definition of justice as paying to each person what we owe, Thrasymachus chafes at the bit to enter the fray.6 Socrates, as narrator of the dialogue recounts: Now Thrasymachus had many times started out to take over the argument in the midst of our discussion, but he had been restrained by the men sitting near

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him, who wanted to hear the argument out.7 Before articulating his thesis, Thrasymachus accuses Socrates of pretending not to know, or at least being unwilling to risk, answers of his own to the questions he poses. Thrasymachus, we are told, burst out laughing very scornfully, and said, Heracles! Here is that habitual irony of Socrates. I knew it, and I predicted to these fellows that you wouldnt be willing to answer, that you would be ironic and do anything rather than answer if someone asked you something. 8 It is appropriate for Thrasymachus, given the view he champions, to swear by the legendary strong man. But he shows less strength himself in dealing with Socrates, when Socrates undertakes by skillful use of counterexamples to pick apart the definition of justice as whatever is advantageous to the strong. Socrates reminds Thrasymachus that we did say that injustice is mighty as well. Or dont you remember, Thrasymachus?9 To this, Thrasymachus balks and declares his intention in their ongoing exchange merely to appear to agree with Socrates wherever he chooses to take the argument. It is his way of protesting Socrates practice of questioning to which Socrates limits their interaction, when Thrasymachus would prefer to deliver an expansive oration in defense of the idea that justice is whatever is to the advantage of the strong. I remember, he [Thrasymachus] said. But even what youre saying now doesnt satisfy me, and I have something to say about it. But if I should speak, I know well that you would say that I am making a public harangue. So then, either let me say as much as I want; or, if you want to keep on questioning, go ahead and question, and just as with old wives who tell tales, I shall say to you, All right, and I shall nod and shake my head. Not, in any case, contrary to your own opinion, I said. To satisfy you, he said, since you wont let me speak. What else do you want? Nothing, by Zeus, I [Socrates] said, but if thats what you are going to do, go ahead and do it. And Ill ask questions.10 Thrasymachus humors Socrates to the end of Book I. Undeterred by this childish tactic, Socrates continues in the way he believes to be right. By refusing seriously to oppose Socrates conclusions, Thrasymachus tries to deprive Socrates of any dialectical victory, and to confer on him at best the false appearance of having persuaded his listeners. It is at this point and with this provocation that Glaucon introduces the Parmenidean distinction between appearance and reality. Socrates explains that: Glaucon is always most courageous in everything, and so now he didnt accept Thrasymachus giving up but said, Socrates, do you want to seem to have persuaded us, or truly to persuade us, that it is in every way better to be just than unjust? 11 Socrates then reopens what he thought had been the end of the discussion, when, unable to resist the lure of opposing reality to ap-

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pearance, he answers: I would choose to persuade you truly . . . if it were up to me.12 The ring of Gyges epitomizes the appearance-reality distinction. Glaucon wants Socrates to consider the position that the best possible situation with respect to justice is in reality to commit any act of injustice we desire, while giving a false appearance to the world of being just. An apparently favorable combination of real, willful injustice with apparent justice could be ensured by performing all of our moral misdeeds under the ring of Gyges cloak of invisibility. Glaucon introduces Platos famous problem in a memorable passage: That even those who practice [justice] do so unwillingly, from an incapacity to do injustice, we would best perceive if we should in thought do something like this: give each, the just man and the unjust, license to do whatever he wants, while we follow and watch where his desire will lead each. We would catch the just man red-handed going the same way as the unjust man out of a desire to get the better; this is what any nature naturally pursues as good, while it is law which by force perverts it to honor equality. The license of which I speak would best be realized if they should come into possession of the sort of power that it is said the ancestor of Gyges, the Lydian, once got. . . . [He found a ring in an elaborate burial which had such a power that] when he turned the collet inward, he became invisible, when outward, visible. Aware of this, he immediately contrived to be one of the messengers to the king. When he arrived, he committed adultery with the kings wife and, along with her, set upon the king and killed him. And so he took over the rule.13 Glaucon compares the happiness of the unjust man who appears to be just with the potential misery of the just man who appears to be unjust. By popular criteria of success and happiness, it appears that the person who is unjust in reality but just in appearance has every advantage over the person who is really just but apparently unjust. It seems to confer the best of both worlds to be able to do whatever we want without suffering any penalty, while enjoying an unspoiled reputation for justice. Glaucon explains: Now, let us set him [the unjust man] down as such, and put beside him in the argument the just man in his turn, a man simple and noble, who, according to Aeschylus, does not wish to seem, but rather to be, good. The seeming must be taken away. For if he should seem just, there would be honors and gifts for him for seeming to be such. Then it wouldnt be plain whether he is such for the sake of the just or for the sake of the gifts and honors. So he must be stripped of everything except justice, and his situation must be made the opposite of the first mans [who uses the ring of Gyges to do unjust acts while appearing to be just]. Doing no injustice, let him

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have the greatest reputation for injustice, so that his justice may be put to the test to see if it is softened by bad reputation and its consequences. Let him go through unchanged till death, seeming throughout life to be unjust although he is just, so that when each has come to the extreme the one of justice, the other of injustice they can be judged as to which of the two is happier.14 The opinion of the many is that the unjust person, by using the magic ring, profits from the false appearance of being just, and is likely as a result to have a happier life than a person who is just in reality but has a false reputation for being unjust. The just man who appears to be unjust, according to Glaucon, will be whipped; hell be racked; hell be bound; hell have both his eyes burned out; and, at the end, when he has undergone every sort of evil, hell be crucified and know that one shouldnt wish to be, but to seem to be, just.15 The unjust man who appears to be just, on the contrary: rules in the city . . . takes in marriage from whatever station he wants and gives in marriage to whomever he wants . . . contracts and has partnerships with whomever he wants, and, besides benefiting himself in all this, he gains because he has no qualms about doing injustice . . . wins and gets the better of his enemies . . . is wealthy and does good to friends and harm to enemies . . . makes sacrifices and sets up votive offerings . . . and cares for the gods and those human beings he wants to care for far better than the just man.16 Thus, they say, Socrates, Glaucon concludes, with gods and with humans, a better life is provided for the unjust man than for the just man.17 The cynical worldly wisdom enshrined in Glaucons comparison is that to avoid the consequences that usually follow as a result of immoral actions, to be unjust in reality but just in appearance, is advantageous when compared with the opposite possibility of being just in reality but unjust in appearance. The happier life, as the many judge such things, is to be unjust in reality provided we appear to be just, rather than being just in reality while seeming to be unjust. Glaucon knows that Socrates cannot ignore an unfavorable comparison of real as opposed to imitation justice. He presents the contrast between the two ways of life in order to offer Socrates an opportunity to defend genuine justice as against mere appearance, being versus seeming or becoming, and the knowledge of the one who knows about matters of virtue versus the opinion of the many whose judgment is clouded by the appearance of things. The question for Socrates, in trying to answer the problem posed by Glaucons thought experiment, is once again, Why be moral? Why do what is morally right when it is possible to do what is unjust without suffering adverse consequences? Why be just, why be moral in reality, when it is so much more rewarding to be just only in appearance?

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The problem occupies Socrates and his interlocutors through all the rest of Platos dialogue, from Books II to X. It is for this reason that Socrates constructs a city in speech, in order to identify justice where it is writ large in the ideal city-state, and then to apply the concept to the individual soul, where it is more difficult to discern.18 Yet it is only in appealing to the near-death experience of Er in Book X that Socrates ventures a reason not to use the ring of Gyges to pursue a life of clandestine evil. By acting wrongly, even without detection, while preserving the false appearance of being just, whether he knows it or not, the wrongdoer harms his soul, his most precious possession, by upsetting the proper harmony of its faculties by which the rational part is supposed to rule over the spirited and appetitive parts. To act immorally is to damage the health of the soul, and to place ourselves at a disadvantage in the afterlife. There we may suffer retributions for unpunished injustices, and be forced to accept undesirable conditions in a future reincarnation. Socrates appeals to each persons real and ultimate as opposed to merely apparent transitory self-interest in acting morally, even when it is possible temporarily to avoid discovery and punishment for moral wrongdoing.19 A person acts immorally, according to Socrates, only through ignorance. An immoral action occurs as a result of not understanding that by doing evil we do a more serious harm to our immortal soul, regardless of whether or not the action leads to any apparent worldly harm.20 No rational person would knowingly harm him or herself, and moral wrong is caused only when an agent fails to realize that to do so in reality inflicts a greater harm. Socrates solves the ring of Gyges problem and answers the question Why be moral?, by concluding that the only sound philosophical motivation for morality, even when it is difficult or costly to be just, despite the opinion of the many, is that it is in each persons rational self-interest to be just in reality and not merely in appearance, regardless of the apparently good or bad consequences that may follow as a result of the false appearance of being just or unjust. For the same reason, according to Socrates, regardless of appearances to the contrary, it is not really to the advantage and does not contribute to a truly happy life to be unjust in reality while preserving the false appearance of being just. The reason and motivation for being moral according to Socrates is that it is in everyones real best interests to do what is morally right for the sake of their immortal souls, even when it appears superficially disadantageous actually rather than merely apparently to be moral. 3. Aristotle on the Highest Type of Friendship Aristotle, as might be expected, answers the question of why we ought to be moral in a radically different way. Whereas Plato prescribes a long regimen of special training in gymnastics, music, mathematics, dialectics, and philoso-

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phy, tracking the four major divisions of the divided line in a program of studies, that culminates in the case of natural aristocrats in a grasp of the Form or Idea of the Good, Aristotle brings the more specific good for man from Platonic heaven down to earth.21 Aristotle concludes, not that we ought to be moral for the sake of maintaining the health and harmony of our immortal souls or to give us a solid foundation for choosing a happy future life, but because by acting immorally we make ourselves unworthy of the highest form of friendship. This is no trivial loss from Aristotles perspective, who regards friendship as one of the best things human life has to offer, and, in many ways necessary to our leading truly happy lives as essentially social beings. The connection between Aristotles theory of friendship and the problem of motivating morality has not always been recognized, and the place of Aristotles remarks on the importance of friendship is often misunderstood. J.O. Urmson, for example, in his recent excellent study, Aristotles Ethics, relegates the entire treatment of friendship or social relationships generally in Books VIII and IX of the Nicomachean Ethics to an editorial interposition of Aristotelian ideas that do not properly belong to the main argument of Aristotles treatise: It would seem that these two books go beyond the bounds of ethics as defined by Aristotle, and they seem to be an editorial addition, though obviously genuine. Thus Book VII ends its final discussion of pleasure with the words: Finally we shall speak about friendship (1154b 34), while Book IX ends the discussion of friendship with the words: We should next discuss pleasure (1172a 15); this is surely clumsy stitching together of separate pieces. Moreover there is no reference to these two books in the rest of the Nicomachean Ethics, and there is only one reference in them to the rest of the work, at 1170a 25, where Aristotle says that the nature of distress (pain) will become clearer in what follows. Theoretically, these books discuss a topic intermediate between the good of man considered in isolation and that good in large-scale political organizations, that can better be called the topic of social relationships within such comprehensive organizations than that of friendship only.22 It is true that internal textual evidence suggests that Nicomachean Ethics may be a compilation of lecture notes or an editorial artifact of essay fragments that Aristotle did not necessarily intend for publication.23 But, as Urmson also acknowledges, the doubtful provenance of the text should not be lightly invoked, but only as a final resort when there is no more reasonable alternative interpretation.24 As we will see, the discussion of friendship in Books VIII and IX of Aristotles masterwork is not an added interpolation or afterthought, but is indispensable to Aristotles ethical philosophy in answering the question, Why be moral?

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The interpretation of friendship as the key to Aristotles solution to the problem of motivating morality in light of the ring of Gyges is supported by features of Aristotles treatise that are otherwise difficult to explain. We should recall Aristotles clarification that the present inquiry does not aim at theoretical knowledge like the others (for we are inquiring not in order to know what virtue is, but in order to become good, since otherwise our inquiry would have been of no use).25 An account of Aristotles ethics as attempting to answer the question why we ought to be moral is therefore well in keeping with Aristotles own unequivocal statement of purpose. What requires more careful development is the proposition that friendship in particular helps us to become good. The analysis weaves together several arguments that can be presented in a series of observations, like the steps of a proof. We begin by remarking that: (1) In several passages, Aristotle explicitly states that friendship is an inducement to morally upright action. Aristotle argues that friendship leads to specific virtues. In the paragraph where he introduces the subject of friendship, at the very beginning of Book VIII, in the statement Urmson finds mysterious and indicative of editorial intervention in its abrupt turn toward the topic, Aristotle writes: After what we have said, a discussion of friendship would naturally follow, since it is a virtue or implies virtue, and is besides most necessary with a view to living. For without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods; even rich men and those in possession of office and of dominating power are thought to need friends most of all; for what is the use of such prosperity without the opportunity of beneficence, which is exercised chiefly and in its most laudable form towards friends?26 The main thrust of Aristotles remark is that friendship is necessary for a fully satisfying life, and that no one would voluntarily choose to be without friends. The point of transition from previous discussion in Book VII is not immediately obvious. But Aristotle clearly states that friendship or is or im and that friendship offers the best occasion for practicing plies virtue or , such virtues as beneficence. The passage sounds the predominant theme that morality is a matter of perfecting our character and achieving excellence in pursuit of the natural potential of human beings as rational social-political animals. The concept of virtue is related to the happiness of each person, in the technical sense of being or living a good life. Aristotles opening reference to friendship includes it among the requirements needed to realize each persons full potential, according to the natural teleology of human life. To explain ethics in

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this way is to interpret moral good as the pursuit of excellence for the fulfillment of an essential human purpose, ultimately in biological terms of what animals such as ourselves must and are naturally inclined to do in order to achieve happiness as an ultimate end. By identifying the role of friendship in trying to live a good life for a human being, Aristotle grounds the practice of ethics in the natural history of our species. If it is true, as Aristotle believes, that all human activity aims at a good life, that happiness is the only intrinsically valuable or final end for the sake of which all other actions are undertaken, and that virtue is the pursuit of excellence in living a good or happy life, then virtue in the sense of striving for excellence is the satisfaction of natural human potential.27 Aristotle continues by describing ways in which friendship contributes indirectly to morality. Friendship helps young and old alike, and inspires noble actions. Aristotles reference to Homer recalls the homoerotic friendship of Achilles and Patroclus, who for the sake of their love fought bravely on the plain of Ilium, and would have been ashamed to act cowardly in each others presence.28 For the same reason, in the Republic, Socrates euphemistically allows the warriors of the ideal city-state to kiss whomever they choose among their companion soldiers, men and women alike exercising naked together during their military athletic training: And I [Glaucon] add to the law that as long as they are on that campaign no one whom he wants to kiss be permitted to refuse, so that if a man happens to love someone, either male or female, he would be more eager to win the rewards of valor. 29 Aristotle adds that: [friendship] helps the young, too, to keep from error; it aids older people by ministering to their needs and supplementing the activities that are failing from weakness; those in the prime of life it stimulates to noble actions two living together [Iliad x, 224] for with friends we are more able both to think and to act.30 The virtue of friendship is evident in the fact that it can be a substitute for justice, but not conversely. Where friendship prevails there is no need for official justice, but where official justice prevails friendship is still needed. Where citizens are friends, they do what is right toward each other without the need for judicial intervention. Friendship, Aristotle declares, is the underlying bond by which states are united, thereby relating friendship to virtue at the larger social and political as well as at the individual interpersonal level. The law enters in only when friendship does not exist between persons, inclining them naturally to treat one another justly. Friendship seems too to hold states together, and lawgivers to care more for it than for justice, for unanimity seems to be something like friendship, and this they aim at most of all, and expel faction as their worst enemy;

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and when men are friends they have no need of justice, while when they are just they need friendship as well, and the truest form of justice is thought to be a friendly quality.31 The foundations of morality are thus intimately connected for Aristotle with the good relations that obtain among friends. Friends help friends to be virtuous, by enabling them to be happy in their efforts to achieve moral excellence. As such, friendships knit together the human social fabric at every stratum. (2) The concept of friendship according to Aristotle entails that only virtuous persons can truly be friends, or can share in the highest form of friend ship, and that it is impossible to love persons who are not good. The most important part of Aristotles argument about the value of friendship as a motivation for morality begins with his claim that only virtuous persons can truly be friends in the highest sense. We have a good reason for being moral in terms of our rational self-interest if it is valuable to enjoy the highest type of friendship, and if only virtuous persons can be true friends in the highest category of friendship. Aristotle distinguishes between three types of friendship, whose objects are utility or advantage, pleasure, and virtue. The order among the three types is determined by the conditions under which friendships are formed, and under which they terminate. Friendships of utility are formed for the sake of advantage, and dissolve when their purpose is fulfilled. Friendships of pleasure go beyond utility when friends continue to find enjoyment in each others company. Only friendships of the third kind, those entered into for the sake of the friend as a person, and not for the sake of something else that is useful or pleasurable, are true friendships that continue even when the ends of utility and pleasure are satisfied. These are friendships that recognize the friend as intrinsically valuable, rather than merely valuable as a means to another end. Since usefulness and pleasure can be exhausted, it is only the third kind of friendship that is the most enduring, and that, insofar as it is a true friendship, persists as long as the friend lives, as a friendship of the highest order. The definition implies that only virtuous persons can be friends of the highest type. Aristotle begins by asking whether there can be friendships between wicked persons: [L]et us examine those [problems] which are human and involve character and feeling, e.g. whether friendship can arise between any two people or people cannot be friends if they are wicked, and whether there is one species of friendship or more than one.32 He argues that only good persons can be true friends, because to be such a friend means to wish the other friend well for the friends sake, for the good of the friend, and for the sake of what is good for the friend. What Aristotle does not make explicit is the suppressed assumption needed to complete the thought, that only good

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persons, indeed, in Aristotles male gender biased formulation, more specifically, good men, can wish well to a friend for the friends sake. The reasoning appears to be that only good persons can wish well to another person for that persons own sake, and that persons who are less than good can at most wish well to another person for the sake of utility or pleasure, or in any case something other than the friend. Aristotle goes even further in denying that persons can remain friends if one changes character from being good to being bad: But if one accepts another man as good, and he turns out badly and is seen to do so, must one still love him? Surely it is impossible, since not everything can be loved, but only what is good. What is evil neither can nor should be loved; for it is not ones duty to be a lover of evil, nor to become like what is bad; and we have said that like is dear to like.33 Aristotle states: Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in virtue; for these wish well alike to each other qua good, and they are good in themselves. Now those who wish well to their friends for their sake are most truly friends; for they do this by reason of their own nature and not incidentally; therefore their friendship lasts as long as they are good and their goodness is an enduring thing.34 By contrast, Aristotle holds that morally bad persons can be friends only when the friendship has pleasure or utility as its object. He advances an obvious simplification of the first two types of friendship, conflating them into the single category of friendships of advantage, whether for pleasure or utility. As before, the argument is that only good men can be friends, with the added proposition that bad men do not delight in each other except for the sake of advantage: For the sake of pleasure or utility, then, even bad men may be friends of each other, or good men of bad, or one who is neither good nor bad may be a friend to any sort of person, but for their own sake clearly only good men can be friends; for bad men do not delight in each other unless some advantage come of the relation.35 As an elaboration, Aristotle further maintains that it is part of the idea of friendship that in the true sense of the word morally bad men cannot be friends. Only good men can be friends essentially, while bad men can only be friends equivocally or incidentally, by comparison with the true friendship enjoyed by men of virtue. Aristotle argues that: [f]riendship being divided into these kinds, bad men will be friends for the sake of pleasure or of utility, being in this respect like each other, but good men will be friends for their own sake, i.e. in virtue of their goodness. These,

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then, are friends without qualification; the others are friends incidentally and through a resemblance to these.36 Good men are friends by virtue of their goodness, and not for any other reason. The friendship of good persons nevertheless does not preclude friends in the true sense from also being friends of pleasure or utility. Yet friends lacking virtue, who are friends only for the sake of pleasure or utility, cannot be friends in the true and highest sense of the word. The conclusion can be expressed in this way: (3) The concept of friendship entails that true or perfect friends, friends of the highest type, will choose as friends only persons who are virtuous, and only such friends wish well for their friends for their own sakes, in virtue of their goodness. Aristotle next explains how the highest form of friendship, among virtuous persons associating together for the sake of virtue, can contribute to their virtue. Virtuous friends, as a manifestation of wishing the friend well for the friends own sake, encourage each other in the cultivation of virtue, perfection or excellence of character, and avoidance of moral wrongdoing.37 Aristotle writes: Now equality and likeness are friendship, and especially the likeness of those who are like in virtue; for being steadfast in themselves they hold fast to each other, and neither ask nor give base services, but (one may say) even prevent them; for it is characteristic of good men neither to go wrong themselves nor to let their friends do so. But wicked men have no steadfastness (for they do not remain even like to themselves), but become friends for a short time because they delight in each others wickedness.38 We can summarize this stage in Aristotles discussion in the following proposition: (4) True or perfect friends of the highest type encourage each other in the enhancement and preservation of virtue, because the cultivation of virtue in one another is the basis and purpose of the highest type of friendship. The same passage supports Aristotles conclusion that friendship of the high . est type motivates a virtuous friend to overcome weakness of will or Aristotle thereby directly links the highest form of friendship to reasons for being moral. A moral agent suffers from weakness of will when the agent

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knows what it is right to do, but lacks adequate motivation to do it. To have a friend in the true and highest sense of the word is to enter into a personal relationship among the virtuous dedicated to promoting one anothers virtue. An important part of the mutual support of true friends in the pursuit of virtue is the variety of ways in which they can help each other to overcome weakness of will. (5) Friendship of the true or highest type among virtuous friends provides a motivation for overcoming weakness of will in doing what is morally right even when it is more expedient to lapse into moral lassitude. The argument for friendship as a motivation for morality picks up the thread of Aristotles observations earlier in Book VIII, where he holds that friendship inspires friends to noble actions. Friends in the true or highest sense are steadfast, or by definition they would not be capable of this calibre of friendship. To be steadfast or morally continent means several things, but conspicuously includes being able to avoid distractions so as to stay fixed on moral ends and their means, together with the will to do what is morally required, by undertaking the actions determined by practical reasoning to bring about a morally justified purpose. Anyone can falter in trying to do what is right, through weakness of will occasioned by frustration or fatigue, or conflicting considerations of apparent self-interest. But virtuous friends in the true or highest sense can help each other through periods when weakness of moral will threatens an otherwise good person with the temptation to act immorally. In the continuing discussion of friendship in Book IX, Aristotle develops this theme: Therefore the bad man does not seem to be amicably disposed even to himself, because there is nothing in him to love, so that if to be thus is the height of wretchedness, we should strain every nerve to avoid wickedness and should endeavour to be good; for so and only so can one be either friendly to oneself or a friend to another.39 The phrase that we should strain every nerve or to avoid wrongdoing and endeavor to do good addresses the problem of moral incontinence or weakness of will. The word derives from the Greek verb for drawing a bow string.40 To strain every nerve in W.D. Rosss edition is a good formulation, as is Harris Rackhams translation, We should do our utmost.41 The same expression appears in a longer passage, when Aristotle explains how friendship of the highest type provides a motivation for morality in the sense of giving moral agents a philosophically sound reason for being moral and resisting or straining every nerve against weakness of will:

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Whence it follows that he is most truly a lover of self, of another type than that which is a matter of reproach, and as different from that as living according to a rational principle is from living as passion dictates, and desiring what is noble from desiring what seems advantageous. Those, then, who busy themselves in an exceptional degree with noble actions all men approve and praise; and if all were to strive towards what is noble and strain every nerve to do the noblest deeds, everything would be as it should be for the common weal, and every one would secure for himself the goods that are greatest, since virtue is the greatest of goods. Therefore the good man should be a lover of self (for he will both himself profit by doing noble acts, and will benefit his fellows), but the wicked man should not; for he will hurt both himself and his neighbours, following as he does evil passions.42 A friend of virtuous disposition can assist friends to remain steadfast in virtue in a number of ways. As we know from common sense and everyday experience, friends can help friends to be virtuous by providing a good example, by inspiring friends with a sense of shame for wrongdoing, and by living a life of virtue to be admired and imitated. When we are prepared in this way to struggle against temptation, we are sufficiently motivated to be moral. Aristotle emphasizes yet another way in which virtuous friends can help friends to remain steadfast in morality and overcome weakness of will. Virtuous friends, by practicing virtue, contribute to the virtue of friends simply by not doing bad things themselves. They thereby offer no opportunity for collaboration in wrongful acts, and, if necessary, may even physically prevent or rationally persuade their friends from acting immorally. Persons of ordinary moral virtue can sometimes be led astray by associating with persons who act immorally. A virtuous friend by affording no occasion for immorality eliminates a major cause of slipping into wrongdoing, and to an even greater degree assists friends who are already virtuous over temporary rough patches in their lives when they may be at risk of moral incontinence. To underscore this conclusion, Aristotle contrasts the association of the virtuous with the unvirtuous. When good friends get together, they enhance each others goodness and help each other to do good things; whereas when bad friends get together, they only goad each other into doing wrong. Aristotle argues: Thus the friendship of bad men turns out an evil thing (for because of their instability they unite in bad pursuits, and besides they become evil by becoming like each other), while the friendship of good men is good, being augmented by their companionship; and they are thought to become better too by their activities and by improving each other; for from each other they take the mould of the characteristics they approve whence the saying noble deeds from noble men.43

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In appealing to rational self-interest in living the good life as an ultimate intrinsically valuable end, Aristotle makes true friendship a powerful motivation for morality. If virtuous friends encourage each other in cultivating moral excellence, then the desire for friends in the true or highest category gives every person a rational self-interested motive for being virtuous, as a precondition for enjoying the highest type of friendship, as essential to living a good life. Striving for excellence, trying to realize the greatest natural human potential, including moral excellence, is the good at which all human activity aims as a final end. If happiness in the sense of living the good life is the ultimate end to which all human activity is directed, and if friendship of the highest type contributes to happiness, then there can be no more persuasive argument for being moral. Overcoming weakness of will in order to be morally virtuous contributes directly to individual happiness by making us worthy of the highest type of friendship, in achieving one of lifes most valuable goods for social beings. Living a good or happy life is living in accord with our greatest human potential, and as such requires and admits of no further justification. In the effort to be happy, to live the good life as explained in Aristotles ethics, whatever helps to make us happy shares in its justification as the means to an ultimate intrinsically valuable end. If we naturally want to be happy in the sense of living a good life, if having friends of the highest type is a vital part of living a good life, and if being moral makes us worthy of the highest type of friendship, then we have every reason and should therefore be rationally motivated in every way to be moral, and, if necessary, to strive or strain every nerve to overcome weakness of moral will. It is important to distinguish between actually attaining and merely being worthy of the highest form of friendship as motives for morality in Aristotles ethics. The prospects of actual friendship will not motivate agents to act rightly in situations where there are no true friends to be had. Yet it is an intrinsically valuable condition to aspire to being worthy of the highest type of friendship, as essential to happiness, to living the good life as the ultimate natural end of action determined by practical reasoning.44 (6) Friendship of the true or highest type contributes to individual happiness or , when true friends of the highest type help each other to fulfill their natural potential as social beings. By offering mutual assistance in achieving virtue, including mastering the will, setting positive examples for one another, instilling a sense of shame for real or imagined wrongdoing, and in these and other ways enabling each other to produce morally worthy actions, friends of virtue help their friends on the way to happiness in living a good life. Aristotle distinguishes degrees of happiness and describes the highest form of happiness for man as the contempla-

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tion of known truths and noble actions. This provides yet another sense in which friends of the highest order contribute to their friends attainment of happiness or a good life. Aristotle argues that: the supremely happy man will need friends of this sort [good, virtuous men], since his purpose is to contemplate worthy actions that are his own, and the actions of a good man who is his friend have both these qualities.45 All the advantages lauded by Aristotle as resulting from the highest category of friendship can be obtained only by being virtuous and cultivating a morally excellent character. The natural need and desire for social relationships provides a reason for being moral, in order to be worthy of the highest form of friendship. By comparison with Wittgensteins requirements for an adequate theory of ethics in the Tractatus, Aristotle answers the question why we ought to be moral, or what will happen if we choose not to be moral, in terms of features intrinsic to the actions themselves, which make the actions morally good or bad for the agent, rather than in terms of accidental extrinsic rewards or punishments. For Aristotle, to be worthy of the highest type of friendship is intrinsically valuable in and of itself, because it is in this way that we achieve our greatest natural human potential as social animals. 4. On Being Good for the Sake of Good Friends The interpretation which has been proposed makes sense of Aristotles discussion of friendship as an integral part of a complete theory of ethics. The location of the two books on friendship immediately after the discussion of weakness of will in Nicomachean Ethics, Book VII, whether original in Aristotles plan or a later addition, suggests that the innate desire for a true or perfect friendship answers the problem of overcoming weakness of will and motivating morality by providing a sound philosophical explanation of why we ought to be virtuous, independently of the rewards or punishments that may or may not accompany our actions. As Aristotle concludes: And if it is more characteristic of a friend to do well by another than to be well done by, and to confer benefits is characteristic of the good man and of virtue, and it is nobler to do well by friends than by strangers, the good man will need people to do well by. . . . Surely it is strange, too, to make the supremely happy man a solitary; for no one would choose the whole world on condition of being alone, since man is a political creature and one whose nature is to live with others. Therefore even the happy man lives with others; for he has the things that are by nature good. And plainly it is better to spend his days with friends and good men than with strangers or any chance persons. Therefore the happy man needs friends.46

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There are good reasons for being moral. They are the best reasons that could be imagined within the framework of Aristotles theory of human nature. It is beneficial and as such in our rational self-interest to have virtuous friends, because virtuous friends help us to fulfill our potential in attaining the greatest possible happiness of which we are capable by encouraging, setting good examples, shaming, persuading, or physically preventing us from doing wrong, and in other ways assisting us to overcome weakness of will and achieve moral excellence. Since it is good to have morally virtuous friends, and since in order to be worthy of morally virtuous friends we must ourselves be morally virtuous, aspiring to the highest form of friendship gives every moral agent a rational motivation for doing what is morally right regardless of the consequences. Although Aristotle does not mention the ring of Gyges, the implication is that aspiring to the highest form of friendship, as we should, provides good reasons for not acting immorally, even if by magic we could make ourselves invisible and escape punishment when acting to satisfy wrongful desires. We thwart our rational self-interests, whether we know it or not, when we do what is wrong. To the extent that we act immorally, we make ourselves unworthy of the highest form of friendship. Immorality impedes every effort to realize our greatest potential as social beings, and to that extent for the same reason excludes us from the highest form of human happiness. The virtuous life, regardless of its external consequences, as Aristotle understands the concept, is also the happiest life. In order to be truly happy, we must strive for moral excellence against all temptation in overcoming weakness of will, without overriding concern for the possibility of external reward or punishment.47 Notes
1. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, ed. C.K. Ogden (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1922), 6.422. 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid. See Dale Jacquette, Wittgenstein on the Transcendence of Ethics, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 75 (1997), and Jacquette, Wittgensteins Thought in Transition (West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 1998), pp. 110133. 4. M. OC. Drury, Conversations with Wittgenstein, in Rush Rhees ed. Recollections of Wittgenstein (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 158. 5. Plato, The Republic of Plato, 2nd ed., trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1991), 338c14. 6. Ibid., 331e3336b1. 7. Ibid., 336b14. 8. Ibid., 337a26. 9. Ibid., 350d67. 10. Ibid., 350d7e8. 11. Ibid., 357a2b2.

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12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

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24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

Ibid., 357b3. Ibid., 359b7360b2. Ibid., 361b3d3. Ibid., 261e10262a3. Ibid., 362b2c10. Ibid. Ibid., 368c8360a6. Ibid., 614b3621d3. See Platos Meno 77b978b1. Jacquette, Aristotles Refutation of the Universal Good, Journal of Value Inquiry 32 (1998). J.O. Urmson, Aristotles Ethics (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), pp. 109110. See W.D. Ross, Aristotle: A Complete Exposition of his Works and Thought (New York: Meridian Books, Inc., 1959), pp. 183227. Cf. W.F.R. Hardie, Aristotles Ethical Theory, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 110. See Urmson, op. cit., p. 7. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, in W.D. Ross ed. The Works of Aristotle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952), IX, 1103b2729. Ibid., 1155a310. Ibid., 1097a14b22. See Nicomachean Ethics, 1170a1315. Also see Aristide Tessitore, Reading Aristotles Ethics: Virtue, Rhetoric, and Political Philosophy (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1996), pp. 7395, esp. pp. 7578, and John McDowell, Eudaimonism and Realism in Aristotles Ethics, in Robert Heinaman ed. Aristotle and Moral Realism (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1995), pp. 201218. Homer, Iliad, Books XVIIXIX. Plato, Republic, 468b8-c3. See 452a8-457b5. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1155a1217. Ibid., 1155a2327. Ibid., 1155b812. Ibid., 1165b1317. Ibid., 1156a612. Ibid., 1157a1219. Ibid., 1157a36b3. Ibid., 1157a2429. Also see Suzanne Stern-Gillet, Aristotles Philosophy of Friendship (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1995), pp. 5977; John M. Cooper, Reason and Human Good in Aristotle (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975), pp. 89143; and Cooper, Aristotle on Friendship, in Amelia Oksenberg Rorty ed. Essays on Aristotles Ethics (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1980), pp. 301340. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1159a37b10. Ibid., 1166b2428. I am indebted to Henry W. Johnstone, Jr., for this etymological insight and advice about Aristotles Greek. Aristotle in Twenty-Three Volumes, XIX, The Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Harris Rackham (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975), p. 539. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1169a215. Ibid., 1172a814. See W.F.R. Hardie, Aristotles Ethical Theory, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 317335; Norman O. Dahl, Practical Reason, Aristotle, and Weakness of the Will (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1984); Sarah Broadie, Ethics With

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Aristotle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 266312; and C.D.C. Reeve, Practices of Reason: Aristotles Nicomachean Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 9697, 111114. 45. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1170a24. 46. Ibid., 1169b915; 1722. 47. I am grateful to The Institute for Arts and Humanistic Studies, The Pennsylvania State University, for a Term Fellowship in 19971999, which made possible completion of this among related research projects.

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