From strangers meeting for the first time on the first tee to the decades-long weekly match among old buddies, golf seems to have a particular proclivity for fostering friendships.
While I’ve argued before that golf is an activity good for its own sake, it is, of its very nature a common pursuit of a gathered-together number of people. Golf is played in common. Common ground, common rules, a common interest. And having a common pursuit amongst them—some shared third thing—golf’s practitioners find a touchstone for their friendship.
To better understand all this, I’d like to turn to Aristotle. By calling on this ancient Greek expert on friendship, I think we can come to know the game of golf and the friendships fostered by it all the better.
For starters, it is commonly held that friendship is “most necessary for our life,” in fact, “no one would choose to live without friends even if he had all the other goods” (Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. VIII, Ch. 1). All walks of life are needful of it. The rich need it more so than others, for they need friends in order to show their generosity, they are also in need of friends for the protection of their wealth. The poor in their misfortune need friends, as people are of the opinion that these are “the only refuge.” The young need friends to guide them, and the old need friends in their weakness. Those in the prime of life need friends to magnify their ability “to do fine actions.”
Overarchingly, “friendship would seem to hold cities together,” this being even more central to political life than justice, since friendship already entails justice within itself. As Aristotle puts it: “if people are friends, they have no need of justice, but if they are just they need friendship in addition; and the justice that is most just seems to belong to friendship.”
Aristotle describes three types of friendship.1 Hopefully by reading this you’ll be able to figure out what kind of golf-friend you are and what types of golf-friends you have.
So we have three categories of friendship: 1. those based on pleasure, 2. those based on utility or usefulness, and 3. those that are “complete friendship,” centered in goodness, virtue, and mutual concern. These are each shaped by a certain kind of love, the type of love present determining what kind of friendship is present. And the type of love is determined by what in fact is loved in the friendship.
As Aristotle says, those that love because of pleasure, love the witty friend not for the friend’s own sake, but because he makes one laugh. Those that love a friend for her usefulness don’t love the friend herself, but rather the goods that come from the friendship. Aristotle says these friendships are “coincidental,” and are “easily dissolved,” since the friendship only persists as long as it coincides with either the pleasures or goods derived from the relationship.
The third type of friendship, on the other hand, endures since the friends therein love each other for the other’s sake, not primarily for any good derived from the friend. In these friendships, we “wish goods to each other for each other’s own sake.”
Friendships such as these, those built amongst people of virtue, are lasting since virtue is lasting. In this we love the friend because of who he is, his good character, without qualification or condition. Further, these friendships involve a mutual concern and “reciprocated goodwill.”
In reference to the two aforementioned incomplete species of friendship, Aristotle makes the point that this complete form actually possesses that which is good in the other, imperfect iterations. For the good and virtuous friend that we love for his own sake is pleasant to be around,. Additionally, since the friend will love us for our own sake, the friendship is sure to be useful and advantageous to us, though not in the mercenary manner found in friendships solely based on usefulness.
Consider this an initial exercise in the making of distinctions. Such distinctions and the realities they highlight can aid us as we continue to enrich our golf-friendships, or perhaps think of what kind of golf-friend we are or hope to be.
Based on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Book VIII, Chapters 1-4.