Aristotle to Mark Zuckerberg: What Kind Of Friend Are You?

This is my views about friendship after watching the movie "The Social Network", It's about the early days of Facebook and how Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin eventually lost their friendship.

Let me begin by making this sweeping statement: You can't choose your family but you can definitely choose your friends.

Really leaves nothing much to be desired within your family circle as you need to put up with them and all their eccentricities. But, of course, you love them anyway because they're family! It's the blood that runs through your veins that keeps you connected.

With friends, however, the forces of nature have been balanced and you are finally given the chance to choose persons with whom you can freely associate with. It's not imposed but out of your own free will. Choosing friends is your ultimate gauge to freedom and independence.

There are actually a number of theories, discussions, dialectics, songs, poems, and stories about true and lasting friendships and one common thread that weaves through all of these is the fact that in one way or another, we see a little bit of ourselves in them and vice-versa. (Although, I would also like to believe that there's something about them that we aspire to be and possibly vice-versa, too!)

Question is: Is there a motive to friendship? I see this as the perfect question in answering where the friendship of Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin has gone wrong.

Ancient philosopher Aristotle outlined in one of his discussions on friendship featured in the "Book of Virtues" compiled by William J. Bennett, that there are varying motives for friendship, which could either be a motive to desire one another's good or merely for utility or pleasure. The latter kind of friendship is one that is easily dissolved since it only exists only in relation to these circumstances. To quote Aristotle: "I mean, that the others cease to have any friendship for them when they are no longer pleasurable or useful."

Aristotle, on the other hand, cited what is true friendship:

"That then is perfect friendship which subsists between those who are good and whose similarity consists in their goodness: for these men wish one another's good in similar ways; insofar as they are good (and good they are in themselves); and those are specially friends who wish good to their friends for their sakes, because they feel thus toward them on their own account and not as a mere matter of result; so the Friendship between these men continues to subsist so long as they are good; and goodness, we know, has in it a principle of permanence.

Rare it is probable Friendships of this kind will be, because men of this kind are rare."

Going back to Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin, what kind of friendship did they have?


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