Friendship and Happiness

And the Connection Between the Two

This philosophical and sociological look at friendship and happiness begins with a review of Aristotle’s three categories of friendship—friends of utility, friends of pleasure and friends of the good. Modern variations—casual friends, close friends, best friends—are described, along with the growing phenomena of virtual friendships and cyber socialization in the Internet age. Inspired in part by Bertrand Russell’s The Conquest of Happiness, the authors propose that conquering unhappiness is key to achieving the self-satisfaction Russell called zest and Aristotle called eudaimonia or thriving by our own efforts.