Aristotle distinguishes three kinds of friendship: that of virtue, of pleasure and of utility. All of them require that friends love each other and that their love be not hidden from each other. However, there is another criterion of friendship regarding which the text appears to be vague: benevolence which, in the first instance, is part of the general definition of friendship. I will be referring particularly to chapters III and IV of the eighth book of the Nicomachean Ethics, offering what I believe to be a new interpretation of some passages.