Friendship and Happiness ─ And the Connection Between the Two

This philosophical 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.

Tim Delaney is a professor and department chair of sociology at the State University of New York at Oswego. He sponsors an annual sportsmanship day symposium and recently co-created a sports studies program at his university. He lives in Auburn, New York. Tim Madigan is an associate professor of philosophy at St. John Fisher College. The former editorial director of the University of Rochester Press, he is on the editorial board of Philosophy Now magazine and lives in Rochester, New York.