Aristotle devotes two full books of the Nicomachean Ethics to friendship, and students tend to find the topic more approachable than most of the work. They bring personal experience to the page and write with unusual energy. The risk is that personal anecdote crowds out textual analysis, leaving the grader with a heartfelt paper that barely engages Aristotle's argument.

The core framework divides friendship into three kinds, based on utility, pleasure, and virtue. Most students can recite this division, but strong essays go further by explaining why Aristotle considers virtue friendships the complete form and why the other kinds are friendships in a derivative sense. They also discuss how friendships of utility and pleasure are easily dissolved when the benefit disappears.

A common weakness is treating the three kinds as a typology to be illustrated with examples from the student's life. A paper that labels a friendship with a roommate as pleasure and one with a mentor as utility may be accurate but remains descriptive. The essay needs a question to answer, such as whether virtue friendship is realistic or whether Aristotle's standards exclude too many relationships.

Balancing Personal Examples and Textual Analysis

Personal examples can be powerful illustrations when they serve an argument. The rubric should reward examples that test or complicate Aristotle's claims, such as a friendship that begins as utility and grows into something deeper. It should not reward anecdotes that exist only to fill space or demonstrate emotional sincerity.

• States which kind of friendship the argument concerns and why
• Explains Aristotle's reasons for treating virtue friendship as complete
• Uses personal or contemporary examples to test the theory, not just illustrate it
• Addresses the claim that a person needs friends even when fortunate
• Cites passages and distinguishes the student's views from Aristotle's

Handling Sensitive Disclosures

Because friendship is personal, some students will disclose difficult experiences, such as betrayal, loss, or isolation. Instructors should grade the philosophical work in the paper while responding with appropriate sensitivity to the personal content. If a paper raises concerns about a student's wellbeing, the instructor should follow institutional procedures for support instead of treating the matter as a grading issue.

Setting expectations in the assignment prompt can help. Letting students know they may use examples at a comfortable level of disclosure, and that they may choose hypothetical or literary examples instead, gives them control over what they share. This respects privacy while still allowing the assignment to draw on lived experience.

Using Feedback to Deepen the Analysis

Good feedback on a friendship essay asks the student to look beneath the example. If a paper describes a friendship that Aristotle would label as utility, a comment might ask whether the participants would agree with that description and what the disagreement tells us about the theory. Such questions invite the student to think critically about the framework instead of applying it mechanically.

AI grading tools like GraideMind can help by flagging essays where the textual analysis is thin relative to the personal narrative, based on the rubric criteria. The instructor can then focus comments on helping students integrate the two. This targeted use of automation saves time while preserving the thoughtful, human response that a personal topic deserves.

Extending the Assignment

Friendship essays work well as the first stage of a longer sequence. A follow-up assignment could ask students to compare Aristotle's account with a modern view, such as research on loneliness or the effect of social media on relationships. Building on the earlier paper encourages students to revise and deepen their thinking.

Because the topic is accessible, it also serves as a good opportunity to teach the habits of philosophical writing. Students who learn to move from anecdote to argument in a friendship essay are better prepared for harder texts later in the course, and the grading effort spent on this assignment pays off through the rest of the semester.