on friendship

Music: none.

Post-edit: This post got me thinking of one of my favorite bands, Big Star, and their song "Thank You Friends."

As a consequence of a few conversations in the last couple of days, I've been thinking about friendship. A newer friend mentioned that I seemed to have a lot of friends, and as I reflect on that, I'm not sure that's truly the case; I have a handful of very close friends, I suppose, and then a number of friends whom I really enjoy but who do not know the secrets of my soul (oh, wary reader: I'm an open book, for sure, but n'er be mistaken that I don't self-censor on the blog!).

In high school I fell in love with philosophy and with Aristotle and existentialism in particular. When I gravitated, eventually, toward philosophy as a major in college, my obsession was Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics and Alisdair MacIntyre's After Virtue. There's something about living the "good life" through the dynamic practices of doing what one does well (flourishing) that resonated with how I thought about life and what I wanted. The neat thing about Aristotle on virtue is that one's friendships have a central role in the good life; indeed, one cannot flourish without friends.

David Thunder has a wonderful overview of Aristotle's thoughts (and helped to refresh my memory; it's been a long time since I read that stuff). Basically, Aristotle says there are three kinds of friends: friends based on good, like-minded people, friends based on people who give you pleasure, and friends based on utility or circumstance. We all know the "user" friend, and we've all used people---often without knowing it until after the fact---and you can probably guess what Aristotle says about the utility-friend. There's a lot of those friends in academics, by the way: people who want to know you for association only. In general, I dislike those kinds of friends, but they only come around (which means I guess I only come around too) at conferences. I'm horrible myself at making those kinds of friends, too (I tend to gravitate toward a few, good friends instead of lots of incomplete friendships). Unfortunately, to do what I do for a living you have to cultivate utility-friendships for various reasons; they call it "networking." I worry that younger and younger generations, particularly those who go do business school, will start mistaking utility-friendships for complete, good friendships. I mean, don't we all have a story about someone we worked with or for who got "screwed" by a utility-friend whom they mistaked for a good friend?

Aristotle warning number 666: never confuse the utility friend with a complete, good friend.

Friendships based on pleasure---which means the folks that make you laugh, the party- or club-friend, and the fuck buddy, of course---well, Aristotle says that's an incomplete friendship too. Since threes and the average are always magic for "the Brainy One" (as Plato termed his favorite student), you can bet that the only good friendship is the one with the good person. This is "virtuous," complete friendship. Thunder details the five qualities of a good, complete friendship:

1. X wishes and does goods to Y, for Y's sake
2. X wishes Y to live and to exist, for Y's sake
3. X spends time with Y
4. X makes the same choices as Y
5. X shares Y's distress and enjoyment

Well, that sounds about right to me, especially the bit about sharing good and bad life events and spending time together. Aristotle continues that these are the same qualities an individual needs to be good to herself too (if you don't spend time with yourself, you are either raising kids or afraid to . . . as an only child, I worry I want to spend too much time with myself, and in more ways than one).

It's interesting to think about objections. Thunder notes that some folks complain that Aristotle's account of friendship is too Other-oriented and self-less, or, alternately, that it is merely narcissism in disguise (e.g., you only befriend folks that are like you so that when you do something for your friend, you are sorta doing it for yourself). I think, however, that both of these objections are true and are to be understood dialectically: our good friends mirror the good qualities we harbor in ourselves. In other words, a good friendship encourages our essential goodness.

When I reflect on my best friends (and you know who you are), I find I am generally happy for their sake a lot, and want to see them do well and flourish. And when we are together, on the phone even, I often feel their joy and their sorrow as if it were my own. One thing that some of my very best friends do, and I try to do back (although not as much as I should), is tell me that I am a good person and how much they appreciate our friendship. I recall that you'll find these meta-assessments are important in Interpersonal Communication textbooks (I used to teach introduction to IP at LSU, so I'm slightly familiar with that literature).

I think friendship is also on my mind because I'm in a new place and it takes a longer time to make friends the older you get. I have made a few new friends and strengthened older friendships, but I'm still working my way out of the solitary and lonely "first year at a new job" space. But I already have those feelings of wanting to see my newer friends here flourish, and so, I think I'm well on my way.

I was saying to a newer friend in email that, just like potential lovers, you can smell "your kind" when you meet them. Sometimes not "at first sight," but you kind of know when you meet someone if they are "like you" in the way that is important for friendship, or rather just someone to enjoy or use (or get used by). Dogs sniff butts for a reason; we sniff words and glances and body movement, but, you know, you can often tell when someone shares your values and is interested in cultivating the same virtues. I guess you can call it "flirting" or "friend fliriting," this sniffing out potential friends . . . you're not looking for pleasure alone, you just need someone to share good times and sadness with.

One of the reasons I enjoy the fraternity of Freemasonry is because of the strong emphasis on friendship and "brotherly love." On this score, Benedict's first encyclical letter is a good illustration of the best teachings that Christianity has to offer (his take on love, though Platonic, has a lot of cool things to say about friendship).

You know, it is too bad in our day and age that friendship is not understood like the Greek's understood philia: friendships are intimate, and our homophobic/oversexed culture codes anything too intimate as "romantic," which isn't necessarily the case. When I visited Mirko in Berlin, he pointed out two straight men walking down the street holding hands. "Best friends," said Mirko. We then went to a diner and noticed two men sitting on the same side of the table. "Those aren't homos," said Mirko, "this is Europe." I still had no compulsion to hold Mirko's hand or sit on the same side of the table, because I've been trained to feel and think about friendship differently (no touching allowed, you know, unless you're from the south and are a hugger). But when I reflect on all my best friendships/good friends, they are all the sort of people I would hold hands with down the street.