FRIENDSHIP

Friendship and its Place in the Moral Debate

Friendship is a central theme in ancient ethics, most notably in Aristotelian ethics, with two of the ten books of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (Books VIII and IX) (1985) devoted to the subject. But modern moral philosophy (from the mid-eighteenth century to the later part of the twentieth century) largely overlooked the role of friendship in moral life, in part because of the dominance of the impartialist stance of utilitarian and Kantian moral theory. Those theories also influenced the study of Aristotelian ethics. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, this trend shifted, in part due to a confluence of causes—renewed interest in Aristotelian ethics for its own sake, the development of modern virtue ethics, and the rise of feminist ethical theory. A seminal article by John Cooper on Aristotelian friendship (1977) helped to make Aristotle's account accessible, and especially emphasized the role of friendship in a morally reflective life. Aristotle's account remains the locus classicus for understanding the nature of friendship and its place in the moral life; however, before turning to that account, some background is important for understanding its resuscitation in the contemporary moral debate.

The Neglect of Friendship in Modern Moral Philosophy

From a classical utilitarian view, in the broad tradition of Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), an agent is obligated to do that which promotes maximally desired outcomes for the greatest number of people, irrespective of standing commitments to friends and family or other personal projects and pursuits. One is to view oneself as a causal lever, Bernard Williams (1963) charged, of optimal outcomes. Thus, if one can save one's spouse or the next inventor of a cure for AIDS, one may be obligated, on a strict utility theory, to save the latter over the former. Rule utilitarians try to counter the unwelcome result, arguing that a general rule or practice of taking care of kith and kin is an overall best way of promoting general welfare. But a strict act utilitarian (that is, one committed to assessing the overall good consequences produced by discrete acts) cannot consistently make this response.

From a Kantian view, drawn primarily from Immanuel Kant's early work The Groundwork from the Metaphysic of Morals (1785), motives of friendship may be acted upon in morally permissible ways when properly constrained by the impartial point of view of the Categorical Imperative. But even then, such motives, like those of sympathy or other inclinations, lack intrinsic moral worth of their own. So, to adapt a well-known example from Michael Stocker (1976) on a Kantian view, one acts in a morally worthy way when one visits a hospitalized friend not out of friendship, but out of duty. In later writings, Kant seems to soften his view, arguing that acting from friendship may be an important way of realizing the more general, obligatory end of beneficence. Still, Kant is ever wary that intimacy can undermine mutual respect; thus, friendship, is a constant teeter-totter between getting close and keeping at bay: "For we can regard love as attraction and respect as repulsion, and if the principle of love commands friends to come together, the principle of respect requires them to keep each other at a proper distance" (1976, p. 470).

The difficulty of fitting friendship squarely into modern moral theory led many to return to Aristotle's account. This renewal of interest coincides with a feminist push to take seriously the role of interpersonal relationships and caring in a moral point of view. In particular, the influential work by psychologist Carol Gilligan (1982) galvanized philosophers of various stripes to begin to look at friendship and attachment relations as important arenas of moral agency and moral development. Thus, in a sense, the renewed interest in friendship brought with it a rediscovery of the kind of moral psychology that is an integral part of ancient ethics.

Friendship in Aristotelian Ethics

The framing question of Aristotelian ethics, like that of most ancient ethics, is what constitutes flourishing or happiness (eudaimonia ) for human beings? Aristotle's answer is that happiness is a composite of virtuous activity and external goods; chief among those external goods is the relational good of friendship, or philia. Humans are by nature "social creatures," Aristotle says, and self-sufficiency is always relational. Even if it turned out that the kind of virtuous or excellent activity most fitting for humans was contemplative and not civic or practical, people would still contemplate best in the company of others (NE 1177a33).

According to Aristotle's definition, philia is a mutually acknowledged reciprocation of affection and good will on the basis of some ongoing specific interest, such as pleasure, utility, or virtue. Chosen friendship grounded in virtue or good character is the paradigmatic and most stable form of friendship. It is a friendship dedicated to the whole person and committed to the joint project of good living. The best sort of friends "live together" and "spend their days together," not as cattle grazing the same pasture, but "by sharing in argument and thought" (NE 1170b11–12). Given the intensity of these ideal friendships, one can reasonably expect to cultivate only a few at a given time. There is much good sense in these views: People are attracted to others on the basis of common pursuits and affinities and show mutual practical concern and good will within the context of the friendship. Were the friendship to dissolve, so, too, would the degree and nature of practical concern for the other.

Aristotle has sometimes been criticized for viewing friendship as a kind of mutual admiration society, and this, in part, because of his remark that a friend is "another self" or a "second self" (NE 1170b7). But in the context of his larger discussion, his claim is that people can rely on the best sort of friends to critically see themselves. Friends, he insists, are essential for the process of self-knowledge and for sustaining activities with a kind of zest and zeal that would be hard to muster individually (NE 1170a4–6). The best kind of friendship, he insists, is a sphere for moral growth and learning throughout life. And it is so, he concedes, even if friendship, as a kind of external good, exposes the individual to risk of loss and vulnerability. Kant's later worry that intimacy might erode self-sufficiency or autonomy is not Aristotle's concern. People's lives would lack luster without friends and loved ones. One misunderstands the nature of human happiness if one arms against the losses that attachments bring.

Empathy and Friendship

However, there is an aspect of friendship that Aristotle never fully articulates, though it is central to a viable conception of friendship. And this is the notion of empathy, or better, mutual empathy. Part of the craving of friendship is to be in synchrony with another. People want their closest friends to track their hearts and minds. They want to know that another can feel their joy or anguish and share concerns and wishes in a way that is psychologically deeper than just formally sharing ends or activities. They want to know that without too much struggle, a friend can be "on the same page" and convey that fact in a way that makes it clear that they are understood.

"Empathy" is an early-twentieth-century psychology word, a Greco translation (from empatheia ) of the German Einfülhlung, to feel one's way into another. A century and a half earlier, the Scottish moral sentiment theorists David Hume and Adam Smith used the term sympathy to mean something similar. For Hume "sympathy" is a kind of vicarious arousal, a congruent feeling that allows access into others' minds. His model is mechanical: One is connected as if by a cord. A tug at one end causes a reverberation at the other. In this way, one "catches" another's feelings, as if by contagion. Adam Smith proposed a more cognitive account: Feeling another's pain or anguish through an act of imagination; to trade "places in fancy" (1968, p. 4). And this requires some analogical reasoning. As he puts it, one brings another's experiences "home" to one; brings the case back to one's own "breast" (1968, p. 4-5). More precisely, one conjures up in one's own mind, through associations and memories, what it would be like to stand in the other's shoes. The process, while cognitive, is not emotionally flat. One must feel something of what the other is feeling, "beat time" with the other, as Smith says (1968, p. 140, 146, 167). Moreover, to really understand the other's mind, it is not enough for imagination to transport oneself into the other's shoes. One may have to become the other in the other's shoes. As Smith puts it, one has to "become in some measure same person with him" (1968, p. 4).

Whether one thinks of empathy as congruent feeling or imaginative transport, one expects close friendship to have some degree of attunement of this sort. The demand is not for a friend to be a mind reader of one's most concealed thoughts; that would be both psychologically implausible and, moreover, an invasion of privacy and autonomy. The point is that one wants from another some sense of being in sync, of being understood in a way that truly makes a life shared. Granted, this can become narcissistic—reminiscent of what an infant demands of a parent and what a parent offers an infant as part of the basic formation of the parent-child bond. Thus, shared eye gaze and reciprocal smiling are part of the early moments of learning mutuality. But a touch of this is what most people still wish for well into their adult years. The craving seems a reasonable part of close friendship.

See also Aristotle; Bentham, Jeremy; Hume, David; Kant, Immanuel; Love; Loyalty; Smith, Adam; Virtue Ethics; Williams, Bernard.

Bibliography

Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics, translated by W. D. Ross, rev. J. O. Urmson. In The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, Vol. 2, Bks. VIII, IX, edited by Jonathan Barnes. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985. From the same set by Oxford, also see Aristotle's Eudemian Ethics. Translated by J. Solomon. VII. 1–2; Magna Moralia. Translated by St. G. Stock, II.16; Rhetoric, translated by W. R. Roberts, II.4.

Badhwar, N. K., ed. Friendship: A Philosophical Reader. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993.

Blum, Lawrence. Friendship, Altruism, and Morality. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980.

Cicero, Marcus Tullius. De amicitia. Translated by W. A. Falconer. London: Heinemann, 1923.

Cooper, John M. "Aristotle on the Forms of Friendship." Review of Metaphysics 30 (1977): 618–648. A revised and condensed version of both original articles appears as "Aristotle on Friendship" in Essays on Aristotle's Ethics, edited by A. O. Rorty. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.

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Stocker, Michael. "Values and Purposes: The Limits of Teleology and the Ends of Friendship." Journal of Philosophy 78 (1981): 747–765. Reprinted in Friendship: A Philosophical Reader, edited by N. K. Badhwar. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993.

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Nancy Sherman (2005)