Virtue Ethics, Friendship, and the Good Life
This paper applies Aristotelian virtue ethics to the domains of friendship and civic life, arguing that virtuous character is essential to achieving eudaimonia—happiness and flourishing. Drawing on Rosalind Hursthouse's account of virtue ethics and Michael Sandel's critique of market-driven society, the paper contends that commodifying relationships undermines the telos of friendship and corrodes civic bonds. Specific virtues examined include compassion, honesty, temperance, and humility. The paper also touches on broader social consequences of a profit-oriented culture, such as anomie and disconnection, and concludes by identifying the virtues most necessary for thriving as both a friend and a citizen.
- Friendship as the Foundation of the Good Life: Friendship requires virtue, trust, and eudaimonia
- Civic Duty and the Danger of Commodification: Commodifying relationships undermines civic and moral bonds
- Virtue Ethics and Social Wellbeing: Market thinking drives anomie and social disconnection
- The Virtues Required for Friendship and Citizenship: Compassion, honesty, temperance, and humility defined
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What makes this paper effective
- Grounds abstract philosophical concepts—eudaimonia, telos, virtue—in a concrete, relatable life domain (friendship), making the argument accessible and personally resonant.
- Synthesizes multiple ethical frameworks (Aristotelian virtue ethics and Kantian deontology) without oversimplifying their differences, adding intellectual depth to a short essay.
- Uses a specific cultural reference (the film Groundhog Day) and a real policy debate (healthcare) to anchor philosophical claims in recognizable contemporary contexts.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates applied ethical analysis: it takes theoretical concepts from Aristotle, Hursthouse, and Sandel and tests them against real-world phenomena—personal relationships, market commodification, and public policy. This move from theory to application is the defining technique of applied ethics writing at the undergraduate level.
Structure breakdown
The essay opens with friendship as its primary case study, then widens its lens to civic life and political debates, before closing with a catalogue of four specific virtues. This funnel-then-enumerate structure—broad concept → social implications → practical virtues—gives the argument a clear, progressive shape and a memorable concluding framework.
Friendship as the Foundation of the Good Life
The broadest area of my life that requires certain virtues in order to do well is friendship. To be a good friend demands virtue; the bond of friendship can be easily broken when a person exhibits poor moral character. One reason why friendship depends on virtue is that friendship also requires trust. A friend is someone we can lean on, or whose shoulder we can cry on. In order to lean on someone, we need to be vulnerable with that person, and vulnerability requires trust.
The telos of friendship is rooted in the basic human need for intimacy, connection with others, and a healthy social life. Having close friends also leads to what Aristotle called eudaimonia, which means "happiness" or "flourishing" (Hursthouse, 2016, p. 1). As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry on virtue ethics makes clear, eudaimonia is not a fleeting feeling but a condition achieved through sustained virtuous activity. A person does not need to be extraverted or around people all the time to experience eudaimonia, but does at some point need to have a handful of people who can be called upon in times of need—people with whom one simply shares a deep connection in life.
Civic Duty and the Danger of Commodification
Friendship is also connected with the concept of civic and moral duty, which is where Aristotle's virtue ethics align most closely with Kant's deontological ethics. As Sandel (2012) points out, "civic duties are not private property but public responsibilities. To outsource them is to demean them, to value them in the wrong way" (p. 1). Sandel (2012) focuses on the ways the world is moving toward the commodification of everything, coming dangerously close to even the commodification of friendship, of parenthood, and of citizenship.
When we use friends, buy friends, use money to manipulate others, or use money to gain power in a relationship, we undermine the telos of friendship. The main meaning and function of friendship is eudaimonia, not power. When people commodify their relationships—not just with close friends but with neighbors and fellow citizens—they are not acting in accordance with the principles of virtue and are unlikely to be happy in the long run. The film Groundhog Day (Ramis, 1993) deftly illustrates the importance of virtue in all our human relationships, showing how genuine connection cannot be manufactured or purchased.
References
Albert, T. (Producer), & Ramis, H. (Director). (1993). Groundhog day [Motion picture]. United States: Columbia Pictures.
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Trans. Roger Crisp. http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam032/99036947.pdf
Hursthouse, R. (2016). Virtue ethics. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-virtue/#FormVirtEthi
Sandel, M. J. (2012). What isn't for sale? The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/04/what-isnt-for-sale/308902/
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