Aristotle famously wrote that a person who has no need of friends is either a beast or a god. This is a strikingly strong statement. And while we may all pay lip service to it, I wonder just how many of us actually believe it. This is certainly so when we consider Aristotle’s conception of a good friend. For that is a virtuous person. Do we really believe, then, that in the absence of a friendship with a virtuous person life lacks something so fundamental that our very humanity is called into question?
Certainly, when we look around us, the evidence points in the opposite direction; for strong bonds between corrupt individuals abound. This suggests, then, that a great many people believe that Aristotle in fact got it wrong.
But Aristotle seems to have been as insightful about friendship as anyone has ever been. So if he is mistaken that is extremely significant.
I want to read Aristotle as follows: (1) No one can live well unless he can trust himself. (2) No one can live as well as he could live if there are not fundamental respects in which he can trust another to the very same degree that he can trust himself. (3) The more a person can trust another to the extent that he can trust himself, the deeper the friendship.
Anyone of the above theses may be true or false. A person need not be able to trust himself. And this may be true in fundamental respects. Some cannot trust themselves around alcohol. Others cannot trust themselves alone around another’s spouse. Others cannot trust themselves alone around a person’s money. And so on. Truth be told, there are lots and lots of important respects in which people cannot trust themselves.
Now, being able to trust oneself is not the same thing as having a kind of rule rigor mortis. One does not trust one self if fear of getting caught, for instance, is the primary explanation for one’s behavior. For trust and prediction do not amount to the same thing. I may predict that the Nazi will kill the Jew. But there is no trust on my part here. Likewise, I may predict that I will not consume any alcohol. But there is no trust here by me of me if fear of getting caught is the primary motivating factor. After all most, people who are addicted can make all sorts of predictions about themselves. Indeed, they can often predict that they will not follow through with the commitment they made to rid themselves of the drug in question. Prediction is not trust.
The point here is that being able to trust oneself speaks to something that is extremely significant, in a most positive way, about one’s character. For this speaks to a moral power that one has with regard to exercising self-control. And a person who cannot exercise considerable self-control with respect to his life is much more like a beast than a human, though presumably he stops considerably short of approximating a god.
Now, I take the following to be true: an axiom of the moral personality, if you will. (4) No one who has considerable self-command over his life, and so who can trust himself enormously, would ever choose to give up that self-command, and so the wherewithal to trust himself. That would be rather like choosing to be a puppet. And no one can rationally make that choice if he has considerable command over, as it were, the strings of his life.
Another way of putting the preceding point is that no one who has considerable self-command could fail to value the fact that his life is so structured, no more than a healthy person could fail to value the fact that he is healthy.
This perhaps brings to what is sublime. Our sense of what it is to be healthy is majestically informed by what we see going on around us. If we saw only healthy people, we would still grasp that we are healthy. But there is no doubt about the fact that seeing unhealthy people underwrites our appreciation of being healthy.
So it is with self-command. We certainly know what it is to exercise control over our lives simply in virtue of acting. But when we see the difference between those who have self-command and those who lack it, then those have self-command come to have an appreciation that is just that much richer—an appreciation that we could not quite have in the absence of the contrast.
No doubt one can appreciate the next move: Our having self-command is a contingent feature of our humanity. We were not born with it. Rather, we acquired it. So we can lose it. Surely no one who has considerable self-command would want to interact with any person who would contribute to his loosing that self-command. Given that friends have enormous influence in one another’s lives, then it would be foolish to choose for a friend someone who lacked self-command if one possesses it in abundance. For that would be rather like choosing for a friend someone who would diminish one’s moral personality. No one would knowingly do that. And there is no need to add here “no sane person”, since to begin with the insane person is lacking in this regard.
So the following saying has more truth to it than many of us suppose: Birds of a feather flock together. People with strong ties as friends, as opposed to mere associates, tend to be equal with respect to their level of self-command.
But why the need for friendship? The answer more or less drops out of what has been said. Self-command is to living what language is to speaking. Practice makes perfect. And there is no better conduit for perfecting our self-command, then the trust of a friend who has considerable self-command. Together, then, two friends with extraordinary and equal self-command provide one another with a most remarkable opportunity for moral excellence—an opportunity that cannot be had otherwise.
The gods necessarily have all the excellences that are appropriate to them. Beasts do not know what excellences that they have or do not have. On the one hand, human beings do not necessarily have all the excellences that are appropriate to them; on the other, they can be poignantly aware of what to strive for. Friendship at its best reflects this insight. What better evidence can we have that we are justified in trusting ourselves than that someone with extraordinary self-command deems us trustworthy? The answer is very simple: None.
