Nicomachean: Friendship and Justice Essay

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Friendship and Justice
Friendship and Justice have a few things in common, but at the same time they can be conflicting. Some of the similarities between friendship and justice are: they both deal with our relationship to how we treat other individuals, both friendship and justice binds a community together. Justice and friendship are about what people share in common
Now it seems, as was said at the beginning friendship and justice concern the same things and are present in the same things; for in every sort of community there seems to be something just, and also friendship (154).

There are three forms of friendship. There are friendships based on utility, pleasure, and goodness. A friendship that is based on utility is a friendship in which the people involved benefit in some manner from friendship. In a friendship of pleasure both people are drawn to the pleasure that they find in the friendship. In a friendship based on goodness both people involved aim at achieving goodness. A friendship of utility deals with distributive justice, a friendship of pleasure deals with corrective justice, and a friendship of goodness deals with reciprocal justice.
In a friendship the act of being a friend has to be voluntary. If the act of being a friend is involuntary it doesn't really count as friendship because the action is not voluntary. A mother loves her child more than the child loves the mother. This, in a way, forces a child to be friends with his parents this can be a voluntary or an involuntary action
But friendship seems to be present in loving more than in being loved. A sign of this is that mothers delight in loving, for some of them give up their own children to be brought up, and feel love just in knowing them, not seeking to be loved in return if both are not possible; it seems to be sufficient for them if they see their children doing well, and they love them even if the children, in their ignorance, give back nothing of what is due to a mother (153).

Since a mother loves her child more than a child loves his mother in many scenarios this is not just because there is not a fair exchange in the affection .In this scenario justice and friendship conflict with one another. The child owes the parent for giving them their life, and this is something that a child will never be able to repay. In this case justice is not achieved.
A friendship in where utility is present is a friendship in where people take from each other what they need this is a form of distributive justice. In this friendship people who are powerful mostly benefit from it because they keep those who are useful to them and discard those who are not useful But those who are in positions of power seem to make use of friends whom they keep divided, since some people are useful to them and others are pleasant, but not very often are the same people both(151)

Justice and friendship both have equality, but the equalities are different among justice and friendship. Equality in justices would be a fair share of what is owed to a person. In friendship equality would be being friends with a moral person
But what is equal in matters of justice does not seem to work the same way as what is equal in friendship, for in matters of justice, the equal is primarily what is in accord with what is deserved, and secondarily what is equal in amount, but in friendship it is primarily in accord with amount, and secondarily in accord with what is deserved" (152).

Justice gives equality in what id deserved and what is equal in amount, friendship equality is through amount and then in what is deserved.
A similarity that justice and friendship have is sharing what people have in common
Now it seems, as was said at the beginning, that friendship and justice concern the same things; for in every sort of community there seems to be something just, and also friendship.” (154).
Friendship and justice have to do with other people. Sometimes, our friends at times
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