ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on an argument, one which does not rely on empirical questions about whether people who are generally bad to others are capable of making exceptions when it comes to their friends. Aristotle's account of friendship entails a connection between virtuous character and friendship. Aristotle argues that there are three kinds of friendship: friendships based on mutual usefulness, friendships based on pleasure taken in each other's company, and friendships in which friends' value each other as good in themselves, which he calls friendships of virtue. While friendship is a valuable human relationship its norms and ideals clash with those of morality: in fact, it necessarily involves moral danger. Friendship includes not merely responsiveness to a friend's subjective interests, but also concern about friends' well-being. Vlastos argues that in Aristotle's account, virtue friends are valued as bearers of virtue and are thus not themselves intrinsically valued, and this sounds quite unfriendly.
