Cultivating friendships of virtue over pleasure or utility

Invest most deeply in friendships where mutual character development — not just enjoyment or usefulness — is the bond.

Why it works

Aristotle distinguishes three friendship types: utility (based on what each gets), pleasure (based on mutual enjoyment), and virtue (based on mutual admiration of character and shared pursuit of the good life). Only virtue friendships are stable over time because they don’t depend on either party remaining useful or entertaining. They also uniquely promote eudaimonia: the friend is described as a "second self" who provides an external perspective on one’s own character. Contemporary wellbeing research on friendship quality vs quantity closely mirrors this.

How to do it

1. Identify which of your significant relationships are primarily utility-based, pleasure-based, or virtue-based.
2. Audit your investment of time across the three types.
3. In at least one friendship, explicitly raise the question of how each of you is living and whether either can hold the other to account.
4. Maintain utility and pleasure friendships without illusion — they serve real needs — but protect time for virtue friendship specifically.

Evidence

Friendship quality rather than quantity is consistently associated with better wellbeing outcomes. Relationships involving mutual growth and honest feedback are associated with higher flourishing than relationships based primarily on utility or entertainment in positive psychology research. (observational)

Contemporary research doesn’t operationalise Aristotle’s three types directly; the mapping is the author’s alignment of the research with the philosophical framework.

Sources

• Waldinger & Schulz (2023), The Good Life — Harvard Study of Adult Development on relationship quality

Common mistake

Treating every friendship as though it should be a virtue friendship — demanding mutual accountability from a utility or pleasure relationship that wasn’t built for it. Each type has its proper place and proper expectation.