Few of us consider ourselves philosophers. “Philosophy” usually conjures images of dense textbooks and academic quibbling with no application to real life. It’s fun for professors,
Friendship is a way of seeing, of being able to look at oneself with another’s eye. But it is also integral to memory. To live without a friend is to suffer amnesia. Memory does no
The 'Lysis,' one of Plato's early inconclusive dialogues, deals with friendship or 'philia.' Socrates asks the boys Lysis and Menexenus, who are friends, what a friend is; several
Friendship, as understood here, is a distinctively personal relationship that is grounded in a concern on the part of each friend for the welfare of the other, for the other’s sake
Along with family and romance, certain types of friendship present ideals of a central kind of personal love, attachment, and identification with others. At their best, all these p
Philosophical interest in friendship has revived after a long eclipse. This is due largely to a renewed interest in ancient moral philosophy, in the role of emotion in morality
The principle of solidarity, also articulated in terms of "friendship" or "social charity," is a direct demand of human and Christian brotherhood.45 An error, "today abundantly wi
The story of the Good Samaritan is constantly being repeated. We can see this clearly as social and political inertia is turning many parts of our world into a desolate byway, even
Ideas of friendship as developed within philosophy and theology are distinct from, and more demanding than the notion of ‘being friends with someone’ that has developed in recent times, especially since the invention of social media. In terms of the latter a ’friend’ may be a mere acquaintance with whom one shares some interest, or a person with which one has (or hopes for) a mutual liking. This loose notion allows for the possibility of having a very large number of ‘friends’ and that is something sought for as a mark of one’s popularity. By contrast, ‘friendship’ as it has featured in the thought of major figures such as Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Erasmus, and Hegel is something necessarily restricted. For Plato, ‘friends’ have a depth of knowledge and interest in one another’s moral qualities, while Aristotle distinguishes three kinds of friendship: those grounded in 1) enjoyment of the other, 2) usefulness to one another, and 3) admiration and affection for the virtues of the other. While these kinds of interest differentiate the forms of friendship, they all involve some degree of concern for the good of the friend, hence they are not simply self-satisfying. With Christianity the Greek idea of friendship (philia) as responsive to features of the other, begins to blend with that of love (agape) for another that does not depend upon them satisfying some condition such as being pleasing, or useful. The love of a parent for a child is the most obvious form of this and it is significant that Jesus refers to the Divine love for human beings as being ‘fatherly’. Human love of God is a complex notion combining admiration, gratitude and affection. Likewise, the idea of friendship with God has to be reconciled with the fact of the radical existential and qualitative asymmetry between creature and creator. Nonetheless, this is a theme in spiritual writings of a mystical sort, though again it is significant that its divine partner tends to be the Son who, through the incarnation, took on human nature, rather than the Father or the Holy Spirit.