Arquivo para February 28th, 2025
Friendship and the Other
28
Feb
In an individualistic world, where people look
for bubbles where everyone “has the same thought”, friendship seems to be the path of the same and not the Other, worse when this is seen as religion, pushing away bad friendships, when in fact the Other will always be different, there is no “soulmate”, “half of the orange” or any other idealistic concept, the next in the religious sense will always be Other different from my mirror.
Aristotle goes against the biblical meaning of neighbor to define friendship: “perfect friendship is that which exists between men who are good (see previous post) and similar in virtue, as such people desire good for each other in an identical way, and are good in themselves” (EN VIII, 1155/2021, p. 167).
Thus, avoiding “false” friendships is avoiding a world without virtues and without any desire for understanding, thus opposing the idealistic definitions of friendships, where there is “affection” between narcissists and egocentrics.
About false friendships Aristotle warns that they do not reveal themselves, we were the ones who had a false concept out of interest or little known, he thus divides friendships into three types: virtuous (the main one at the top), useful where there are common interests and pleasant where there is a mutual relational love, which makes it possible to bear differences, but there are almost always conflicts.
Paul Ricoeur wrote about usefulness in “Le socius et le prochain” (The partner and the neighbor), where the neighbor is a world where the center of relationships can be long-lasting, but mediated by complex and anonymous collective circuits, where there are common interests, when they end the “society” falls apart.
Biblical wisdom about friendship can be found in Ecclesiasticus 6:5-7: “A gentle word multiplies friends and calms enemies; an affable tongue multiplies greetings. Let those who greet you be numerous, but your counselors be one among a thousand. If you want to acquire a friend, acquire him through trial; and do not be quick to trust in him.”
This highlights the concept of empathy through pleasant words and reinforces Aristotle’s concept that we did not “lose” friendship, we did not have a correct concept about it, in the biblical sense “do not rush to trust him”, and your advisors “one among a thousand” we see the perverse influence of modern narratives of “coaching”, “influencers” and “idols”.
Finding friendship requires wisdom, in a world of shallow culture and shallow elaborations, it is not uncommon to seek security in artificial “bubbles” and groups that do not even understand their own foundations.
A true humanism, a true spirituality or just “a path” needs a method, a deep elaboration and a detailed examination of the consequences.
Aristotle. Nicomachean ethics. (2012) Trans. Torrieri Guimarães. Brazil, São Paulo: Martin Claret.
