Too Many Friends

In book nine and part of book eight, Aristotle declares, “To be a friend to many people in the complete kind of friendship is not possible” (1158a 10).

I guess we must first look at what Aristotle means by complete friendship. Well we know that friendship is an active condition of the soul and Joe Sachs describes it in footnote 260 that the life of friendship seems to be “an expansion of the soul instead of a contraction of communal life.” Aristotle calls truly loving too many people an “extreme condition” (1158a 10). So if a true friendship is an expansion of our soul and when we gain too many friends, we move from an active condition to an extreme condition, then Aristotle must be correct in saying that one can have too many friends.

Aristotle also says “the friend is another self” (1166a 30). This means that we find likeness in their thinking, virtue, etc. So how many selves can we actually have? Besides, Aristotle says that it’s “not easy even for there to be many good people to be pleased by.” In other words, true virtue is rare and there are probably not even enough good people to have an excess of friends or that will be like us. So when people claim to have many friends, these are just familiar acquaintances, lacking the depth and virtue of a true friendship.