How to Live · ages 5–8
What makes someone a friend?
Someone plays with you every day but says mean things to your other friend. Is that a friend?
Aristotle said there are three kinds of friendship. Useful friends, because they give you something. Fun friends, because you enjoy the same things. And good friends, who want you to do well, even when it is not useful to them.
The first two are not bad - they are just the ones that fade when the situation changes. When people say they lost a friend over something small, it is often the third kind that was missing.
His test was simple: does this person want good things to happen to you, or do they just want your snacks?
Try it
Draw three circles on paper: Useful, Fun, Good. Put the people in your life where they fit. Nobody is only in one circle, and nobody needs to see this drawing. Then ask: who would I like to be that kind of friend to?
What do you think?
Do you think there is a right answer to this question?
Talk about it
- Can you be friends with someone you never see?
- Is it possible to be friends with a pet or a robot?
- Should you stay friends with someone who is only sometimes kind?
Yes, but… — the arguments people actually make
You can be friends with someone who is horrible to other people, as long as they are nice to you.
You can. The interesting question is what you have agreed to by staying — and what you would say if they were horrible to you one day.
Friendship is just people who happen to like the same things.
That is Aristotle's second kind, and it is real. The test he suggests: does this person want good things to happen to you, or do they want your snacks?
You should always stick by a friend, whatever they do.
Then loyalty and honesty are pulling in opposite directions and you have to choose. Most people discover which one they actually value only when it costs them something.
What other philosophers think
- AristotleThree kinds of friendship: the useful, the pleasant, and the good. The first two fade when the usefulness or the fun does. Only the third survives a bad year.
- CiceroWrote that real friendship is only possible between people who are trying to be good, because a friend is someone you can trust with the truth.
- ConfuciusFriendship is kept by small attentions, not grand gestures — how you greet someone, whether you listen, whether you keep your word.
If you want to go further
- Nicomachean Ethics — AristotleBooks VIII and IX, the first serious attempt to say what a friend is for.
- Laelius: On Friendship — CiceroShort, and still sharp about loyalty versus honesty.
- The Analects — ConfuciusScattered remarks rather than a theory — much of it about how to behave towards people you like.
Most of these were written for adults, which is why it is worth reading them with someone older.