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Food for Thought

Aristotle’s Email – Or, Friendship In The Cyber Age

Tim Madigan ponders the mysteries of friendship.

‘Cause it’s been forty years or more,
Now Martha please recall,
Meet me out for coffee,
Where we’ll talk about it all.’
– Tom Waits, ‘Martha’ (from Closing Time)

In Book VIII of his Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle categorizes three different types of friendship: friendships of utility, friendships of pleasure, and friendships of the good. Friendships of utility are those where people are on cordial terms primarily because each person benefits from the other in some way. Business partnerships, relationships among co-workers, and classmate connections are examples. Friendships of pleasure are those where individuals seek out each other’s company because of the joy it brings.

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