Reading group: Aristotle on friendship, Nicomachean Ethics VIII and IX, over four weeks

Two of the ten books of the Nicomachean Ethics are about friendship, more space than Aristotle gives to any single virtue. For a day spent on why we love people, here is a slow read of them. Our book page: Nicomachean Ethics.

Plan:

1. VIII.1–4. Why friendship belongs in ethics. Three kinds of friendship, based on usefulness, pleasure and good character. Only the third wishes the friend well for the friend's own sake, and it takes time: as the proverb says, people cannot know each other until they have eaten salt together.
2. VIII.7–14. Friendship between unequals, in families and in cities, and why friendships of utility produce the most complaints.
3. IX.1–8. When friendships should end, including the hard case of a friend who becomes bad. The friend as "another self", and whether self-love is a vice.
4. IX.9–12. Does the happy person need friends at all? Aristotle's answer, and the claim that friends want to spend their days doing together whatever each of them loves.

Question to carry through: in the friendship of character, is Aristotle's friend loved for his qualities? And if so, what does Book IX's hard case do to today's question?

One week per section. Any translation will do.