Philosophers have often treated equality of some kind as a prerequisite of friendship (see SEP entry on friendship). In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle distinguished among three kinds of friendship: friendships of pleasure, of utility, and of virtue. The last, the highest or truest form, required similarity of character. Philosophers since Aristotle have rejected some of his prerequisites for friendship, such as equality of social or economic status, but they have shared his view that friend