Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics by Robert C. Bartlett & Susan D. Collins

Author:Robert C. Bartlett & Susan D. Collins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2011-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIVE

Goodwill resembles something friendly, but it is surely not friendship. For goodwill arises even in relation to those whom one does not know and without their being aware of it, whereas friendship does not. (These points too have been spoken of earlier.) But goodwill is not even friendly affection, because it is without intensity or longing, things that accompany friendly affection. And friendly affection goes together with the habit of living together, whereas goodwill arises suddenly—for example, [1167a] it even arises for competitors, since people come to have goodwill for competitors and share their intent, though they would do nothing to assist them. For, just as we said, people feel goodwill suddenly and so feel only superficial affection.

Goodwill seems, therefore, to be the beginning of friendship, just as the pleasure stemming from sight is the beginning of erotic love. For no one falls in love who is not first pleased by someone’s appearance—though a person who delights in another’s looks does not for all that fall in love,11 except whenever he also yearns for the person who is absent and desires his presence. In this way, therefore, it is not possible for those without goodwill to become friends, but those who have goodwill do not for all that feel friendly affection.12 They merely wish for the good things for those they feel goodwill toward but would do nothing actively to assist them, nor would they even be troubled over them. Hence by way of a metaphor, someone might claim that goodwill is friendship that lies idle; but if that goodwill is prolonged over time and carries over into the habit of living together, it becomes friendship—though not a friendship based on what is useful or pleasant, for goodwill does not arise in these cases. For he who has received a benefaction renders goodwill in return for what he has received, thereby doing what is just. And he who wishes that another fare well because he hopes to be well taken care of by this person does not seem to have goodwill toward him but rather toward himself—just as he is also not a friend if he attends to that other person because that person is of some utility to him. On the whole, goodwill arises on account of virtue and a certain decency, whenever someone appears to another as noble or courageous or some such thing, just as we said in the case of competitors as well.

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