Friendships of use are when we are friends with people because they will help us study for tests, will give us rides places, or are a way into the crowd of which we would like to be a part. They occur when your sole reason for being with a person is for something they can provide you.
Friendships of pleasure occur when we are friends with someone purely because we enjoy their company. They make us laugh, we may share common hobbies, and they help us pass the time. These will be the majority of our friendships, and there is nothing inherently wrong with this category. Not all of our friendships can be true friendships.
In fact, Aristotle makes the category of "true friendship" exceedingly narrow. To qualify as a true friendship, your commitment to the relationship must be beyond the motivations of the first two categories. There is a Spanish song I absolutely love called Alegate de Mi, and in many ways I think it is a very astute embodiment of true friendship.
I'm going to do a side by side of the original Spanish and then my rough translation. I can't bear to just do one because if I just post Spanish, English speakers won't get anything out of it, and if I just post the English all that will be there is my butchered version. If you're reading the English please know that the Spanish version I fell in love with is so much more beautiful and poetic than my rough approximation, but hopefully the English is sufficient for its purposes.
| Alejate de mi y hazlo pronto antes de que te mienta. Tu cielo se hace gris , yo ya camino bajo la tormenta. Alejate de mi, escapa ve que ya no debo verte. Entiende que aunque pida que te vayas, no quiero perderte. La luz ya, no alcanza..... No quieras caminar sobre el dolor descalza....... Un Angel te cuida....... Y puso en mi boca la verdad para mostrarme la salida.... Y alejate de mi amor.... Yo se que aun estas a tiempo.... No soy quien en verdad parezco.... y perdon no soy quien crees YO NO CAI DEL CIELO Si aun no me lo crees amor............ y quieres tu correr el riesgo veras que soy realmente bueno en engañar y hacer sufrir a quien mas quiero.. Alejate de mi pues tu bien sabes que no te merezco |
Remove yourself from me and do it soon before I lie to you. Your sky is made grey, I now walk below the torment Remove yourself from me, escape, see that now I should not see you Understand that although I ask that you go, I don't want to lose you. The light now, it does not rise You don't want to walk through pain barefoot An angel cares for you And put in my mouth the truth in order to show me the exit And Remove yourself from my love I know that you still have time I am not who I appear to be And I'm sorry, but I am not who you believe, I did not fall from heaven If you still don't believe me, love, And you want to run the risk You will see that I am truly good at deceiving and making suffer those whom I love the most Remove yourself from me since you know well that I do not merit you |
So what does a Spanish love song have to do with Aristotelean friendship? I put my favorite line from the song in bold. Essentially, the voice of the song is acting completely selflessly here. He loves her and wants to be with her. To be with her gives him pleasure. Nonetheless, he knows that it is better for her to not be with him and is therefore willing to sacrifice all pleasure derived from his relationship with her for her greater good. True friendship is desiring the good of another and devoting yourself selflessly to that regardless of what you get out of it.
True friendship, however, is not about you just being a slave to everyone else. You would be acting as a true friend to those people by doing so, but that does not necessarily equal a true friendship because a true friendship must be reciprocal. That means that both of you are dedicated to the relationship not for pleasure, but for the other person's good. One of the primary reasons our nation's divorce rate is so high is because people marry when they are still only on the second level of friendships: friendships of pleasure. These friendships easily decay and fade away because they are based on common interests, transient sensorial feelings, and emotional stimuli. True friendships endure because they are based on a choice to pursue the good of the other. In a true friendship, you see and desire the beauty of their soul.
God has already shown himself to be a true friend to us by the incarnation and redemption, so that part of the true friendship will never be lacking. In fact, God is incapable of having any other type of friendship because he is entirely self-sufficient (no friendships of use) and is already the highest perfection in every thing, so his happiness can in no way be increased by us (no friendships of pleasure).
The question then remains, do we solidify our relationship with God as a true friendship by being true friends to Him?
Part 2: Consequences
Part 3: Real Life Implementation
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