{"id":229,"date":"2021-03-29T10:57:58","date_gmt":"2021-03-29T10:57:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu\/nicomacheanethics\/chapter\/5-friendship-and-goodwill\/"},"modified":"2025-07-11T17:44:32","modified_gmt":"2025-07-11T17:44:32","slug":"5-friendship-and-goodwill","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu\/nicomacheanethics\/chapter\/5-friendship-and-goodwill\/","title":{"rendered":"Section 5: Friendship and goodwill"},"content":{"raw":"Goodwill is related to friendship, but it is not the same as friendship. For one can have goodwill, but not friendship, towards people one doesn't know, and without their knowing it. This has indeed been said already.\r\n\r\nBut goodwill is not friendly feeling either. For it does not involve intensity or desire, whereas these accompany friendly feeling. And friendly feeling implies intimacy while goodwill may arise all of a sudden--as it does towards competitors in a contest, we come to feel goodwill for them and to share in their wishes, but we would not do anything with them. For, as we said, we feel goodwill suddenly and love them only superficially.\r\n\r\nGoodwill seems, then, to be a beginning of friendship, as the pleasure from sight is the beginning of love. For no one loves if he has not first been delighted by the form of the beloved, but he who delights in the form of another does not, for all that, love him, but only does so when he also longs for him when absent and craves for his presence. So too it is not possible for people to be friends if they have not come to feel goodwill for each other, but those who feel goodwill are not for all that friends. For they only wish well to those for whom they feel goodwill, and would not do anything with them nor take trouble for them.\r\n\r\nAnd so one might by an extension of the term \"friendship\" say that goodwill is \"inactive friendship,\" though when it is prolonged and reaches the point of intimacy it becomes friendship, but not a friendship based on usefulness nor a friendship based on enjoyment, since goodwill doesn't arise based on usefulness or enjoyment as such. It is true that the person who has received a benefit [like something usefulness or enjoyment] bestows goodwill in return for what has been done to him, but in doing so is only doing what is just. In contrast, the person who wishes others to prosper because he hopes for enrichment through them seems to have goodwill not towards them but rather towards himself, just as a person is not even a friend to another if he only cares for another for the sake of some use he will make of the other.\r\n\r\nIn general, goodwill arises because of some excellence and worth [perceived in the other person], when someone seems to another noble or brave or something of the sort, as we pointed out in the case of competitors in a contest.","rendered":"

Goodwill is related to friendship, but it is not the same as friendship. For one can have goodwill, but not friendship, towards people one doesn’t know, and without their knowing it. This has indeed been said already.<\/p>\n

But goodwill is not friendly feeling either. For it does not involve intensity or desire, whereas these accompany friendly feeling. And friendly feeling implies intimacy while goodwill may arise all of a sudden–as it does towards competitors in a contest, we come to feel goodwill for them and to share in their wishes, but we would not do anything with them. For, as we said, we feel goodwill suddenly and love them only superficially.<\/p>\n

Goodwill seems, then, to be a beginning of friendship, as the pleasure from sight is the beginning of love. For no one loves if he has not first been delighted by the form of the beloved, but he who delights in the form of another does not, for all that, love him, but only does so when he also longs for him when absent and craves for his presence. So too it is not possible for people to be friends if they have not come to feel goodwill for each other, but those who feel goodwill are not for all that friends. For they only wish well to those for whom they feel goodwill, and would not do anything with them nor take trouble for them.<\/p>\n

And so one might by an extension of the term “friendship” say that goodwill is “inactive friendship,” though when it is prolonged and reaches the point of intimacy it becomes friendship, but not a friendship based on usefulness nor a friendship based on enjoyment, since goodwill doesn’t arise based on usefulness or enjoyment as such. It is true that the person who has received a benefit [like something usefulness or enjoyment] bestows goodwill in return for what has been done to him, but in doing so is only doing what is just. In contrast, the person who wishes others to prosper because he hopes for enrichment through them seems to have goodwill not towards them but rather towards himself, just as a person is not even a friend to another if he only cares for another for the sake of some use he will make of the other.<\/p>\n

In general, goodwill arises because of some excellence and worth [perceived in the other person], when someone seems to another noble or brave or something of the sort, as we pointed out in the case of competitors in a contest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":249,"menu_order":16,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[48],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-229","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry","chapter-type-numberless"],"part":220,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu\/nicomacheanethics\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu\/nicomacheanethics\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu\/nicomacheanethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu\/nicomacheanethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/249"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu\/nicomacheanethics\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":659,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu\/nicomacheanethics\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/229\/revisions\/659"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu\/nicomacheanethics\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/220"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu\/nicomacheanethics\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/229\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu\/nicomacheanethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu\/nicomacheanethics\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=229"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu\/nicomacheanethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=229"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu\/nicomacheanethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}