Reading people
Aristotle
Friendship
Aristotle (Ancient Greece · 384–322 BC) — Friendship.
What actually happened?
When Plato died in 347 BC, Aristotle was thirty-seven and had spent about twenty years at the Academy. It passed to Plato's nephew Speusippus, and Aristotle left Athens. Later, criticising his teacher's theory of Forms in the Nicomachean Ethics, he admits the task is awkward, because the people who introduced Forms were friends of his. He writes it anyway, and says it is the truth that comes first.
Ask what holds it up
He sorts friendship into three kinds: useful, pleasant, and for the person himself. The first two rest on benefit and enjoyment, so when those go the bond goes. Only the third rests on the person.
Two people at the same dinner, one there for business, the other because they get on.
Where the complaints come from
Grievances and reproaches, he says, arise mostly in friendships of utility, where each side feels it gives more and gets less. The sense of being short-changed is close to built in.
At year end, each partner is sure they put in more.
A friend who has changed: can he be saved?
Book IX asks whether to break with a friend who turns bad. His order is to ask first whether he can be brought back; if he can, help him mend his character, and end it only when he is past saving. Even then, leave some room for the old friendship.
A colleague pads the numbers: say it once to his face, and if he does not stop, deal with him differently.
Two ways of being deceived
If you took someone to like you for yourself when he wanted something else, you misjudged him. If he put on a show to deceive you, you may complain, and he says with more right than against a counterfeiter, since more was taken.
"He never said he admired me" and "he called me his closest friend, then sold what I told him" are not the same case.
How do I use it today?
Take one friend who has left you cold. Write two lines: what was this bond resting on, and did I misjudge him or did he put on a show? Only after that decide whether to get in touch; do not decide in the heat of it.
Deep read
Read alongside
Further
Lines to keep
When the support goes, the bond goes.
Did he fool me, or did I misjudge him?
Parting does not make the old years unreal.