Book 7
8
But a man in the middle enjoys without passionate desire things by nature pleasant, whereas the others enjoy everything that takes them outside their natural state.
9
This kind of relationship, then, exists even between inanimate things; but when it occurs in the case of living things it becomes affection. Hence sometimes people take delight in persons unlike themselves, the stiff for instance in the witty and the active in the lazy, for they are brought by one another into the middle state.
10
Hence accidentally, as was said, Aristot. Eud. Eth. 1239b 32. opposites are dear to opposites also on account of the good.
10
It has, then, been said how many kinds of friendship there are, and what are the different senses in which people are termed friends, and also givers and objects of affection, both in a manner that makes them actually friends and without being friends.
1
The question whether one is one’s own friend or not involves much consideration. Some think that every man is his own best friend, and they use this friendship as a standard by which to judge his friendship for his other friends. On theoretical grounds, and in view of the accepted attributes of friends, self-love and love of others are in some respects opposed but in others manifestly similar.
