FRIENDSHIP

 

A reciprocal relationship of affection or sympathy between persons of the same sex or at least independent of sexual attraction, and based on a community of nature and of interests, the latter of a spiritual kind. This article traces the historical development of the concept, presents a systematic analysis in traditional Catholic terms, and concludes with an evaluation of the role of friendship in Christianity.

History. The basic formulation of the definition of friendship took place in the context of Greco-Roman culture—the beginnings of the classical development in Greek antiquity and the remainder in Roman society. Later centuries added little to the essentials that were there discerned.

Greek Antiquity. The Greek naturalists were the first to speak of friendship, and this in connection with efforts to offer a rational explanation for changes going on in nature. They conceived of friendship as the basic principle of attraction and repulsion that governed the combining actions whereby material bodies were formed from their elemental constituents. Most of their discussions were concerned with the question of whether friendship was basically a union of contraries or a union of things with similar characteristics.

With SOCRATES, Greek thought began to restrict friendship to a relationship between persons and to give it a precise psychological meaning. In fact, friendship figured so importantly in Socrates’s thought that he set himself to teach and to practice the art of acquiring friends. Following his example, both PLATO and ARISTOTLE attracted their disciples more as friends than as students, so much so that L. Dugas could remark that the philosophical schools of ancient Greece were ‘‘not so much schools as they were associations of friends’’.

Aristotle presents perhaps the most complete analysis of friendship in classical antiquity in bk. 8 of his Nicomachean

Ethics. Rejecting the equivocal usage of his naturalist predecessors, he restricts friendship (filàa) to a type of accord among human persons and distinguishes it from the love (fàlhsij) that is also properly human. He approaches its definition indirectly by considering it as a form of attraction and finds its basis in being liked, whether this be for interest, or pleasure, or virtue. He thus distinguishes three kinds of friendship: that based on utility, which unites opposites, and those based on pleasure and virtue, which unite similars. Friendships based on utility or on pleasure care less for the friend than for the good he affords, and for this reason are less stable, ceasing as they do when their motivation disappears. Friendship based on virtue, on the other hand, is more perfect; in fact it is friendship par excellence, for in its case the friends seek each other for what they are, rather than for what they give. Again, it is more stable than other friendships because it is based on virtue, which itself is enduring, and at the same time has all of their prerogatives, for those whom it unites are pleasurable and useful for each other. Yet it is rarely found, partly because there are few who are capable of it, and partly because of the time involved in discovering and cultivating those persons who may be worthy of it.

Finally, for Aristotle, friendship thrives only when there is some community in living (sunz≈n). Those who reciprocally and consciously seek the good in each other, but are unable to associate and communicate for one reason or other, cannot strictly become friends. The element of community involved in friendship was understood differently, however, by various Greeks: the Pythagoreans saw it as a community of resources; Aristotle, as a community of likes and interests; and the Epicureans and Stoics, as a community of philosophical beliefs.

Roman Society. Among the Romans, CICERO held a position analogous to that of Aristotle among the Greeks as their principal theorist of friendship. Less profound than Aristotle, perhaps, he made up for this by the charm and warmth of his treatment. He based his notion of friendship on the instinct for sociability that is found in man, defining it as a perfect agreement of wills, tastes, and thoughts accompanied by benevolence and affection. Nothing, in his estimation, is more adapted to human nature than this type of accord. Other goods such as riches, health, power, and honor are uncertain and defectible; only friendship is really enduring, because it is based upon virtue. It can be found only among good men, for they alone have the loyalty and integrity to sustain it and lack the cupidity and passion that destroy it. True friendship is not easily found, he admits; but once found, it is forever.

The reason why true friendships are rare, for Cicero, is that few are worthy of being loved in and for themselves and many seek to make friends purely for pleasure or for profit. A true friend must be another self; thus if one desires to find friends, he must become good himself and then seek out someone similar. Cicero saw friendship as an aid to virtue, since good people who are benevolent to each other become masters of their passions and preserve virtue in one another. This explains why Cicero insisted that one should choose his friends well, for a failure of judgment could cause one to become attached to a person who would later do him harm, and then would not be a true friend.

Later Centuries. The thoughts of Aristotle and Cicero on the subject of friendship have remained classic. They passed on to the Fathers of the Church, such as St. AUGUSTINE and St. AMBROSE; to scholastic doctors and theologians, such as St. AELRED, St. THOMAS AQUINAS, and St. FRANCIS DE SALES; and to secular writers, such as M. E. de MONTAIGNE. They thus constitute a heritage that has become traditional in the Western world. Modern psychologists have complemented their doctrines on points of detail, and philosophers have subjected them to searching analyses, but neither have contradicted them in their essential elements.

Systematic Analysis. With this historical background, it becomes possible to present an analysis of the concept of friendship that describes its psychological characteristics, its metaphysical nature, and its moral aspect.

Psychological Characteristics. Friendship is first of all an attraction; seen externally, its principal effect is one of dynamism, for friends seek one another out and are not happy unless they are together. When proximity is spatially impossible, the attraction manifests itself by the one’s turning his thoughts and desires to the other.

Second, friendship involves affection, being based on an emotion known among the Greeks as fàlhsij and among the Latins as amatio. It is because a man loves his friend that he is attracted to him in various ways. This emotion is more interior than exterior, and one senses it without always being able to see it; yet it is occasionally discernible, sometimes by gestures, sometimes by smiles or even by tears.

Third, friendship is a reciprocal affection. It is only when an antifàlhsij responds to the fàlhsij, or a redamatio to the amatio, that one can speak of true friendship (filàa, amicitia). This explains why inanimate things cannot be friends or the object of friendship; a man may love wine, but wine cannot be his friend. Again, the reciprocity involved in friendship explains why it grows and deepens with each return of affection, for it involves a type of psychological resonance based on the phenomenon of love’s provoking more love in ever-increasing proportions.

Fourth, friendship is a union of a spiritual kind. There are reciprocal affective responses even at the level of brute animals, and yet one does not speak of these as friendship. What is peculiar to friendship is its concern with the intellectual life, not with the life of sense. Its activity has a certain independence from matter, and it provokes a spiritual union, i.e., one based on intellect and will and feeling, and thus properly human. This is why Aristotle could maintain that friendship can exist only between persons.

Fifth, friendship is a disinterested type of relationship. Persons may voluntarily associate for a variety of reasons, such as for profit or for pleasure; but what these associations have in common is that they promote the interest of the one entering into them. The peculiar association that is friendship is more noble and ideal than these, for it sets aside personal gain and, in this sense, is disinterested. The true friend is such because of the qualities he finds in the other; this explains why he will make sacrifices for his friend and do things with no thought of what he himself gets out of them. This also explains why friendship has a lasting character, for monetary and sensual interests are subject to frequent change, whereas the virtuous qualities that attract a friend are stable and enduring.

Finally, perfect friendship is a fusion of souls. Spiritual and disinterested relationships can be more or less intimate, but at their best they encompass all the activities of the souls engaging in them. The effect of this perfect friendship, in the expression of Aristotle and Augustine (Conf. 4.6.11), is to put but ‘‘one soul in two bodies.’’ Then everything is held in common; the distinction between the ‘‘I’’ and the ‘‘Thou’’ disappears; and there results the highest type of unity to be found among men.

Metaphysical Nature. Friendship manifests itself by its acts, but such acts presuppose the reality that is friendship just as volition presupposes the will and judgment presupposes the intellect. This reality is not a power or faculty of the soul, because it is not inborn in man; rather it involves an acquired disposition, a HABIT, that exists in man’s rational appetitive faculty, or WILL. This habit is actualized, as Aquinas teaches, when one friend ‘‘informs’’ the affection of the other. As HENRY OF GHENT and RICHARD OF MIDDLETON observed, however, habits of this type must exist in each person involved in the friendship, and thus the habits themselves must be numerically distinct. The reality that is friendship must therefore be a RELATION that is based on two absolute habits; one may refer to each habit as friendship in the person participating in it, but the notion is not complete unless it includes the relationship that unites one habit to the other.

Thomas Aquinas and other theologians who study friendship in the context of man’s relationship with God generally speak of it as a kind of LOVE; they see the ‘‘love of friendship’’ as the highest form of love, and oppose it to the ‘‘love of concupiscence’’ (Summa theologiae 1a2ae, 26.3–4). From this viewpoint, one may define friendship as a love of benevolence, something held in common and based on the mutual regard of its participants. Lower forms of love are at the level of sense; they seek pleasure and self-gratification, and this is true even of the sexual love whereby man is prompted to conserve his species. The love of friendship, on the other hand, is of a higher order; it is essentially spiritual, and thus serves well to explain the optimum relationship that unites man to God.

Moral Aspect. Friendship as such is good, and therefore is legitimate for man. It is, in fact, beneficial for his soul: the companion of VIRTUE, it may itself be considered as a virtue in the one possessing it. Yet it places demands on those who embrace it, and in certain circumstances, particularly when too restrictive, can be harmful and even vicious. 

Role in Christianity. The fact of being a Christian in no way changes man’s nature or his needs. It is thus possible for Christians, while living a supernatural life, to have purely human friendships among themselves. There is nothing distinctively Christian about such friendships, however, unless Christianity in some way enters into the relationships and transposes them to a higher level.

Some have seen an opposition between the teaching of the pagans on friendship and the New Law given to men by Jesus Christ. For example, Jesus prescribes charity toward man’s neighbor, and this independently of one’s particular feelings and personal likes or dislikes. Such a prescription seems to deprive friendship of its proper character; for, rather than seek something selective and personal, the Christian is urged to a universal attitude of love toward all men, and this by obligation rather than by free choice. Thus the pagan ideal of friendship seems to be absorbed in charity, and itself destroyed in the process. Again, the perfection of the love of God, as conceived by such spiritual writers as St. IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA, seems to demand of man that he transfer all of his affection from creatures to his Creator; thus the renunciation of human friendships seems to be the ideal toward which the perfect Christian should tend.

There is some element of truth in these considerations, but at the same time it is possible to oppose them by others that argue for the basic compatibility between friendship and charity. For one, Christianity has focused attention on the dignity of the individual independent of his place in society; it has liberated man more from matter by accenting the immortality of his soul. Such a liberation can only favor friendship, for it provides the basis for greater personal appreciation of one’s fellow men. Much the same can be said for the teaching on the universality of the Redemption, for this too proclaims the equality of all souls in God’s sight. Finally, by the gift of supernatural life, Christianity has made numberless human souls incomparably better and therefore more worthy of love; it has increased their resemblance to one another and has thus provided a new basis of community among them.

De facto, friendship does exist among Christians. It has never flourished so much as it has since the promulgation of the gospel, nor has it ever been so pure and so noble in its practice and its ideals.

Written by W.A. Wallace in "New Catholic Encyclopedia, second eition, vol. 6, excerpts pp. 6-8, Gale, 2003, USA. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.