2. It is all about relationships (I)
It is all about relationships

Relationships are a part of the human condition. We are social animals. In the coming weeks, I will say a lot about specific aspects of relationships, such as how a baby attaches to its mother, or how couple relationships wax and wane, or what is going on when someone who considers themselves in need of help gets therapy from a therapist. But all these particular alliances are framed by a life comprising a series of other associations. We are born into a relationship. Most of us grow up and old with a sibling tracking our progress. We fall in and out of love, relate to our own children, ideally from their birth to our death. We turn on the radio in the morning and imagine a connection with the newscaster, we strike up a conversation with a barista and feel drawn back to continue the conversation the following day. We curse the boss, join sides in workplace debates and embrace complete strangers when our sports team triumphs.
Aristotle on relationships
It is all about relationships.
Aristotle understood this. So that is where I will begin. With his, Nicomachean Ethics, to be precise. I might have started with the Bible, or the Koran or Buddhist teachings, but as well as being secular, Aristotle gave a particular focus to relationships, what he calls philia or friendships, a term he uses to describe all relationships that individuals develop with others. He defines friendship as a sort of flawless love that leads to a better life. How does he arrive at this point?
For Aristotle, friendships are ubiquitous. No one would choose to live without friends, not even when there is sufficient wealth to have the means to do whatever one chooses. He gives four reasons to explain why friendships are incumbent to a happy life. First, being with others is inherent to being human. Second, Aristotle believes that individuals have a need to help others that is stronger than the need to be helped. Being a good friend meets this need. Third, from a social perspective, friendships are both the mark of a good person, a virtuous person and they provide the means to train the virtues, to be prudent, just, courageous and more. And, lastly, individuals become aware of who they are, of their self by being with friends, by being with people who offer them a representation of who they are, who hold up a mirror to them.
No one would choose to live without friends, not even when there is sufficient wealth to have the means to do whatever one chooses.
So, for Aristotle relationships are functional. They make us. He posits that we are drawn to others based on what we find useful or, pleasant, or for the good of the relationship itself. He uses these criteria as the basis for classifying friendships into three types. The first two are based on utility and pleasure and are seen by Aristotle as imperfect. By definition, relationships based on utility or pleasure are transient since once they are no longer useful or pleasant the strength of the connection dies. When either party no longer perceives any personal gain the relationship dissolves. As if to further downgrade these types of relationships, Aristotle notes they are not based on the whole person, just on the bits that bring utility and pleasure.
The third type of relationship is for the sake of goodness alone. This is Aristotle’s idea of a perfect friendship and it is based on the whole person. Here, friends are equal. They share activities and cherish each other even when it conflicts with the self-interest of one or both. Being together in such a relationship is an end in itself. Time, contact, and context are, for Aristotle, the necessary ingredients to forming a perfect relationship. Strong virtues and virtue building connections take time and proximity to form, and a conducive space. Good people are able to live together, share pain and joy, whereas sour individuals, which is Aristotle’s way of describing non-virtuous people, find it difficult to be by themselves let alone with somebody else.
The third type of relationship is for the sake of goodness alone.
Aristotle noted that these perfect relationships are more stable and less easily broken as they are based on and therefore reflect an individual’s good character. When they dissolve, it is generally due to a change of context, say when friends are separated physically for a long time; or when childhood friends develop at a different pace and consequently lose their common ground.
According to Aristotle, people have limited capacity to form deep, meaningful relationships. The human species can only manage a few perfect relationships but it can cope with, in fact, it demands a greater number of friendships rooted in utility and pleasure.
The formation of a perfect relationship is akin to the construction of meaning in life. It is making something much more important than we ever make in our working life.
Why so few perfect relationships? Aristotle gives four reasons. One, perfect relationships demand qualities that humans have in short supply such an inner harmony, behaviour that matches thoughts, deep self-understanding, and harbouring few regrets about the past. Second, perfect friendships take a long time to form and demand greater effort to maintain. Third, it is difficult and demanding to intimately share joy and grief across multiple close relationships. Fourth, perfect friendships depend on two like-minded people finding each other. Not everyone, says Aristotle, has the capacity to form a perfect friendship. And not every relationship extending beyond utility or pleasure has the potential to become deep and, in Aristotle’s term, perfect. He says that two people destined for a perfect relationship are drawn to each other. But first they have to meet.
Although perfect friendships are in one sense essentially altruistic meaning that they are not rooted in utility or pleasure, they bring, from Aristotle’s perspective, deep benefits to both parties. The formation of a perfect relationship is akin to the construction of meaning in life. It is making something much more important than we ever make in our working life.
We find out, says Aristotle, who we are through perfect relationships. Our friends become our “other selves”, they show us, with words, without words, who we are. They validate our strengths, expose our weaknesses and reward our attempts to address those weaknesses. As such, perfect relationships bring into one the disparate parts of the self, they make us into one, they help us to be whole. And as a complete human being we are in a position to make meaning out of life.
Our friends become our “other selves”, they show us, with words, without words, who we are.
The work of building a relationship demands equality and balance. All relationships, even the deepest, loving relationships, have, according to Aristotle, periods of inequality. Finding balance is at the core of relating. The benefactor ought to receive from the beneficiary what is proportional to his help. A mother may provide food, security, and shelter but the child will offer warmth and unconditional love across the life course. This balance, says Aristotle, is fundamental to the quality and endurance of the relationship.
