Why isn't a Perfect Man Complete in Himself?
Can a man be perfectly
virtuous and happy without having friends? Aristotle draws out in the latter
part of the Nicomachean Ethics that
it is not that friends are a supplement or addition to a complete life of
happiness, but that even to name this state of happiness is already to include
others. These are others that are virtuous friends, and it is through such
friends that a man not only is inspired to act virtuously, but that he can
contemplate the goodness of human life as a whole. To know of the goodness of
one’s own life is a prerequisite for delighting in that goodness – i.e. in
being happy. Contemplating the fullness and completeness of the good life in
another leads a man to be able to have it himself.
When Aristotle
brings his idea of friendship into the Nicomachean
Ethics, it is in context of a well established understanding of the life of
virtue. The conjunction of these two ideas naturally give rise to the question;
How can a perfectly virtuous man, seeming to be already complete in himself,
need friendship, which looks to be something that only those who have a falling
short in themselves could need? Namely, if friendship is lacking in one’s life,
would that mean the life is incomplete? How can this be if being perfectly
virtuous has been established as being perfectly happy and complete?
The question’s
premises are somewhat false. Aristotle has indeed emphasized self-sufficiency
(1169b6), but that doesn’t mean the self-sufficient man is an island with
everything he needs in his own self, for that would be to say that man when
self-sufficient becomes a god. Rather, self-sufficiency means a man chooses his
activities because they are intrinsically worthy and complete in themselves,
and therefore he doesn’t care what else he can gain from them (1177b1-3). He
isn’t grasping to fill up a lacking in himself. So since his life is already
complete, Aristotle is not asking whether friendship is needed as a means of
improving the happy life, but whether it is a key component of that life.
The
complexity here lies in the apparent contradiction between perfect happiness
and human needs. It seems that often when we speak of happiness we mean a fulfillment of all needs and
desires. But Aristotle is pointing out that men are not gods, and part of what
it means to be merely a man is to have weaknesses that can best be made
perfections through a friendship. We should be thinking of friendships based on
virtuous character between two who wish each other well, not friendships of
utility or pleasure, those that Aristotle calls friendships only incidentally,
through a likeness to true character-friendship (1157b3). Aristotle comes to
the point where, by bringing in happiness in Books 8 and 9, he brings the
discussion of friendship to its deepest level, and so it is important to think
of this true character-based friendship if one is to understand the nature of
friendship itself. Socrates works to understand the complexity found in this
deepest of friendships in his dialogue Lysis;
… “Or what
could be done to it by its like that could not be done to it by itself? Can
such things be prized by each other when they cannot give each other assistance?
Is there any way?”
“No, there isn’t.”
“And how can anything be a friend if it is not
prized?”
“It can’t.”
“What about this, though? Isn’t a good person, insofar
as he is good, sufficient to himself?”
“Yes.”
“And a self-sufficient person has no need of anything,
just because of his self-sufficiency?”
“How could he?”[1]
Socrates concludes this part of his
dialogue by leading his interlocutor to admit that a person who needs nothing
would prize nothing, and also that what he didn’t prize he couldn’t love. It
seems that one must treasure another to be able to love him, and must first need something from the other to be able
to treasure him.
Aristotle
has an understanding of the reason why perfectly virtuous men need friends that
is more profound than a cursory reading of the Ethics would seem to point to. For there is a reason his discussion
of friendship precedes the final chapters on contemplation and happiness;
friendship not only expands our awareness of our activities, but is actually
the way we contemplate the perfect universal man and are able to then bring
that universal into ourselves and fulfill our function as man.
Aristotle
progresses in his argumentation for why the happy man will need friends in the
chapter devoted to this question[2]
beginning with the most known and agreed upon arguments. The third argument of
the chapter is the first of many from the nature of man. He says that since man
is a political animal, it would be strange for even a perfect man not to have
friends, because it is in his nature to live with others (1169b19). He then
makes a helpful concession; it is true
that the perfectly virtuous man will not need friends of utility. Strikingly,
not only is the happy man free from needing useful friends, but even from
needing pleasant friends (1169b28). What then could it mean to say he needs
friends on any deeper level, if he is already living a life so full and
pleasant?
The argument in [1169b28-1170a4]
is that the good and happy man wants to study good actions, and that this is
best accomplished by observing and understanding the actions of others.
For we have said at the outset that
happiness is an activity; and activity plainly comes into being and is not
present at the start like a piece of property. If happiness lies in living and
being active, and the good man’s activity is virtuous and pleasant in itself,
as we have said at the outset, and a thing’s being one’s own is one of the
attributes that make it pleasant, and we can contemplate our neighbors better
than ourselves and their actions better than our own, and if the actions of
virtuous men who are their friends are pleasant to good men (since these have
both the attributes that are naturally pleasant) – if this be so, the supremely
happy man will need friends of this sort, since his purpose is to contemplate
worthy actions and actions that are his own, and the actions of a good man who
is his friend have both these qualities.
The unspoken premise here for why a
good man would want to study good action is that a key foundation for the happy
life is self-knowledge, and that the best way to gain objective knowledge is by
studying actions of good men that are not ourselves. But Aristotle has spoken
of the happy life as an activity, so it is not immediately evident why true
self-knowledge would be relevant. But it seems reasonable to assent because to
live one’s life well cannot merely mean to conform to one’s proper function,
but for a man must also entail a seeking out, a conscious choosing of the life
of virtue. If he was not self-aware, he would not be aware of his own
happiness, but to be happy clearly includes a conscious delighting in the
goodness of one’s life.
Yet
the full strength of Aristotle’s defense of friendship as necessary for good
men is not brought out until we ask why it is so important for a man to have
others to observe in order to such a self knowledge, and to ask more precisely
what this knowledge would consist in.
Does it not seem that a man can just look at himself to gain
self-knowledge? Let’s look again at Aristotle’s account of the complete life of
virtue.
Now if the function of man is an
activity of the soul which follows or implies reason, and if we say ‘a
so-and-so’ and ‘a good so-and-so’ have a function which is the same in kind,
e.g. a lyre-player and a good lyre-player, and so without qualification in all
cases, eminence in respect of goodness being added to the name of the function
(for the function of a lyre-player is to play the lyre, and that of a good
lyre-player is to do so well): if this is the case [and we state the function
of man to be a certain kind of life, and this to be an activity or actions of
the soul implying a rational principle, and the function of a good man to be
the good and noble performance of these, and if any action is well performed
when it is performed in accordance with the appropriate virtue: if this is the
case], human good turns out to be activity of soul exhibiting virtue, and if there
are more than one virtue, in accordance with the best and most complete.[3]
The function of the life of man is
activity – specifically, rational activity – i.e. thought and perception,
including sensation. But Aristotle has also said that the function of man is
good and pleasant. So awareness of our activities is an awareness of our
function, and that same awareness will be good because the function of man’s
life is good. Further, a true
friend stands to one as another self. This means that not only will the
happiness of one’s life be augmented by the good life of a friend, but also if
one can perceive the actions of the friend as a whole – a full and complete
function – that will be the way one can best see the function of man. A man
becomes realized by fulfilling the activities that are proper to his nature. A
friend displays man’s nature as a complete whole in a way that mere
self-reflection cannot, and so shows one the function of man and gives him
inspiration to perform the same rational activities that will fulfill this
function.
According
to Aristotle, one can become a whole and complete man through contemplating the
concept of humanity, because he says the mind becomes the form of what is thought.[4]
The mind does not just become similar to the form, but becomes the form itself.
In the very act of contemplating what is essential, one becomes the very same
whole that he is contemplating – a man leading a complete and perfect life. Contemplating
is the best activity and a man is actualized through contemplating his own
species.
Aristotle
devotes a deep analysis to friendship because it is better and easier to
contemplate the species of man through a friend. Friends, when they are
virtuous, accord their life with reason, giving due time and significance to
different activities as is fitting, and it’s easier to objectively perceive
their virtues than our own (1169b33-34). When sharing a life in common,
including sharing in discussion and thought,[5]
friends together decide what is worthwhile. When we perceive life and decide
together with them what is significant it must be against the schema of life as
a whole, to be able to prioritize nobler activities or have any sort of system
of comparison. So contemplating the life of a virtuous friend is to contemplate
the life of man as a whole. But to contemplate man as a whole is to contemplate
the species and function of man, and this contemplation leads to our own
awareness of our lives as happy unified wholes. And since in true friendships
we are interested in the well being of our friend for his own sake, it is easy
for us to look at what is truly good for him. By our contemplation of a friend,
we take pleasure in his very existence, not just each individual action, but in
his life as the continual activity of the soul in accordance with right reason.
Through friendship we move from taking pleasure in actions to being happy with
our lives at the level of being aware and happy about our similarly continual
activity of our existence.
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