I would have to say that most of my friendships are considered pleasure friendships, in Aristotelian terms. However, I would also have to say that some of my relationships could be considered a mixture of both pleasure and utility. Those instances are, oddly enough, with a select few professors on campus. I would consider at least one professor under this category. I often find myself in his office late into the afternoon talking about random things, not even remotely related to class, or even academics. As far as my other relationships, mainly with students on campus, I would consider them to be solely pleasure based. Some of my friends do share the same major as me, and we do talk about academia together, however the bulk of our friendship is pleasure-based. I would also have to say that I have one virtuous relationship, with my girlfriend. The way we interact with each other and how we compliment each other's life reaches far beyond that of a pleasure-based relationship. Anything I do to improve the relationship we have is solely for her; I try to never think about myself as far as the relationship goes, and I believe that shows it is a virtuous one.
A situation where some of my core beliefs were questioned happened quite recently. I have always been taught that people have different views on certain aspects of life, and to respect their decisions, even if I do not agree with them. Recently, my fraternity has had internal issues, where some members were going out of their way to cause problems, and be, in an essence, "problem children". This was causing damage to the structure of our fraternity. Long story short- our fraternity started to divide. All of a sudden I was in a position where I pretty much had to choose sides- something I have never had to handle before. In this case, if I chose one side, the other side resented me. It was unhealthy, as friends, and as a fraternity, to handle the situation like we did. If we had gone by what my parents had taught me, we might have bypassed the issues our fraternity had faced.
A situation where some of my core beliefs were questioned happened quite recently. I have always been taught that people have different views on certain aspects of life, and to respect their decisions, even if I do not agree with them. Recently, my fraternity has had internal issues, where some members were going out of their way to cause problems, and be, in an essence, "problem children". This was causing damage to the structure of our fraternity. Long story short- our fraternity started to divide. All of a sudden I was in a position where I pretty much had to choose sides- something I have never had to handle before. In this case, if I chose one side, the other side resented me. It was unhealthy, as friends, and as a fraternity, to handle the situation like we did. If we had gone by what my parents had taught me, we might have bypassed the issues our fraternity had faced.
