Aristotle, Augustine, and the Secret of True Friendship

How virtuous friendship leads the soul toward the highest good

On the path to living a life of virtue, friendship is far more important than you think.

Aristotle said it’s a requirement for human flourishing, and that you cannot reach your life’s potential without sound allies in your corner. He even posits that politics, justice, and human civilization all fundamentally depend on friendship. Augustine will echo this same claim, yet take it a step further:

The only true friendship is rooted in God himself.

So does this mean finding the good is just a matter of finding friends?

Not quite.

Aristotle and Augustine agree that not all friendships are equal. Some are better than others, and some friendships are even bad for you.

Today, we’ll cover Aristotle and Augustine’s musings on friendship, to learn the art of friend-making, and using that as a pathway to living a good and meaningful life.

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The Three Friendships

Aristotle discusses friendship in his Nicomachean Ethics.

First, he defines friendship as those who have, “goodwill toward each other.”

Yet it’s more complex than a matter of mutual goodwill. Aristotle then explains that there are three types of human friendship:

Utility — a friendship in which there is mutual gain/benefit to both parties. Think of business partners who become friends because they enrich each other

Pleasure — a friendship of mutual affection. Think of drinking buddies at the bar, or the friend on your local softball team.

Virtuous — a friendship grounded in mutual love of moral excellence. These friends wish selfless goodness onto each other, and pursue virtue together.

Of course, all three of these friendships are fine themselves, but predictably, Aristotle says the virtuous friendship is far superior. In fact, he says it’s this friendship which can determine how meaningful and just (or miserable and wicked), your life becomes.

Here’s why.

Why Virtue?

Aristotle points out that utility and pleasure based friendships have limitations. Both are “conditional,” friendships.

For the friendship of utility, or mutual gain, that friendship only endures so long as both parties benefit. If we take the business partner example — if the business goes bankrupt, and neither makes money, then neither partner has any remaining substance to their friendship.

Friendships of pleasure are also limited in scope. Your drinking buddy at the bar may give you a lot of laughs, but you don’t turn to him in times of trouble, suffering, or despair.

So what distinguishes the friendship of virtue?

Aristotle continues:

“The complete friendship is the friendship of those who are good and alike in point of virtue. For such people wish in similar fashion for the good things for each other insofar as they are good, and they are good in themselves”

So Aristotle says that virtuous friendship is more stable, because it unconditionally wishes well-being onto the other. Yet there’s more:

“In this complete friendship, all that has been spoken of [in the lesser friendships] is present in the friends themselves”

So virtuous friendships aren’t just about selfless care, but also contain all the benefits of pleasure and utility friendships. You genuinely enjoy spending time with virtuous friends, and benefit by growing in moral excellence.

Aristotle’s key idea is that friendship is perfected by a united love of virtue, which instantiates the soul with virtue, pleasure, and utility at once. These are the friends, Aristotle says, that protect you from slander and injustice, support you in times of need, and lead to harmonious civilizations.

And though Aristotle ends his musings on friendship here, Augustine takes this reasoning one step further.

Friendship and the Divine

St. Augustine writes poignantly on friendship in Confessions.

It may sound strange to jump from pagan philosophy to medieval christian musings, but you’ll notice that Augustine eerily synthesizes Aristotle’s ideas in the passages below.

As a reminder, Confessions was Augustine’s autobiography of his path from sin to sainthood.

Early on, he laments that he was wicked, and part of this was due to his friends. They live amoral lives of vice. Yet, when a dear friend of Augustine’s dies, he doesn’t mince words:

“I had spilt out my soul upon the sand, in loving a mortal man as if he were never to die…

It was all one huge fable, one long lie; and by its adulterous caressing, my soul, which lay itching in my ears, was utterly corrupted. For my folly did not die whenever one of my friends did.”

Augustine calls this friendship a lie because he had loved a mortal man as if he were ultimate. His love was intense, but disordered, because it was rooted in a creature rather than in God.

In Aristotelian terms, we might call it a friendship of pleasure — emotionally powerful, yet lacking a deep, solid, and true foundation. Hence when his friend died, Augustine felt as if he too died, and despaired that life was worthless.

So what does Augustine call a true friendship?

He concludes:

“There is no true friendship unless You weld it between souls that clear together through that charity which is shed in our hearts by the Holy Ghost who is given to us.”

Whereas Aristotle says true friendship arises when good men love each other because of their virtue, Augustine says true friendship exists when souls are united in love of God.

For Aristotle, true friends selflessly wish the Good onto each other.

For Augustine, true friends selflessly love each other. And love in the Christian tradition is defined as “willing the Good onto each other.”

We see further light on the claim that Aristotle/post Socratic Greek thinking was oddly prophetic in anticipating Christianity.

Aristotle said true friends love good. Augustine said true friends love God.

What then, might we conclude?

The unifying factor between the classical and Christian tradition is that love of Truth precedes all friendship, harmony, meaning, and justice in life.

The classical philosophers discovered that human beings cannot flourish alone, and friendship is thus essential to the good life.

Aristotle showed that the highest friendships are those rooted in virtue, where each friend wishes the good for the other’s sake. Augustine then revealed the deeper foundation of that truth: virtue itself must ultimately be rooted in God, the highest Good.

True friendship, then, is more than companionship. It is the mutual pursuit of the Good — and ultimately, the pursuit of none other than God Himself.

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Reminder:

I offer private mentorship in the Great Books for those seeking clarity of vision and depth of soul. Inquire here.

If you’d like to support this work and receive future writings, you can subscribe below.

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