Friendship and Ethics
The owner of the Religion, Philosophy & Ethics Blog at the University of Gloucestershire, UK sent a message lately over the PHILOSOPH mailing list inviting people to take part in a discussion about friendship.
This is a weird proceeding also called “spamming for traffic”. But since Blogs have become so numerous and it is kind of hard to get people to come back and enter a significant discussions on the topics you are addressing in your blog – especially concerning such heavy weight things like philosophical questions – I can understand the need to fish for traffic in mailing lists that share your interests.
Being the nice and loyal (especially when it comes to peers) person that I am, I went to have a look and I sincerely hoped to join into the discussion… and then devil hidden in the detail (or the code of blogspot.com or blogger.com blogs) showed his ugly face.
It is quite impossible to either comment on this blog or send a decent trackback without having a blogger.com account. (I resigned mine some 4 years ago) And I must say that I am more than disappointed at the turn this blogging service and software has taken. Not only is it just a real pain to add a comment… I don’t know how I managed to put the one I did. 
And who in his right mind will register for a simple trackback on a blog? I only have one advice: switch to wordpress.com. Get the comfort of controlling what shows on your page and what doesn’t etc. and on top of that – if you’re battling to get some readers and decent comments – you certainly won’t have any frustrated first time readers dropping off your blog radar simply because they’d need to have an account to share their views. Spam control is no excuse for a blogspot account anymore. Enough said.
Back on topic.
Dave W. starts his post with the observation that a lot of philosophy journals have started to publish papers on the general topic of friendship and on friendship within an ethical framework in particular.
While this might be true for Anglophone Philosophy Journals, this isn’t quite the case for research going on in other languages. Friendship, love, relationships and social interaction and its value have been a buzzing topic for quite a while in German philosophical research. Although I am really not happy with some of it’s aspects several papers on the value of work within relationships (friends working for friends, spouses etc.) or families have been published.
Dave goes on to ask the ultimate question:
I wonder where we should place friendship in an ethical framework?
Some may worry that it is a way of ignoring what we should do, and favouring those close to us at the expense of others. Might we not though consider the kind of friendship described here as some kind of paradigmatic relationship that we ought to cultivate in relation to all our dealings with other people?
Put that way the question is realised in the eternal opposition between utilitarianism and deontologism and there simply is no way to resolve it within this notional categories of either-or. Either you’re a follower of the notion that everything has to have an immediate use for your life (utilitarianism) or find it simpler to have friends just for the sake of celebrating your human-ness (deontologism). I am being a bit sarcastic here to prove my point. Neither one of those categories or schools of thought are applicable to friendship. Utilitarianism because, as human beings we no way of seeing beyond the now and who might be without any use to us now, might tomorrow be the one that could save our life. Deontologism because it places to focus on the individual and it’s free will and not on the relationship as such.
Friendship is not realised within any prefixed categories that philosophy could really cover in a neat theory. Friendship is too often simply what you make of it. Without thinking about the use, the consequences, the duties or the laws you should think about following imperative or rule.
Friendship starts with fascination. With inspiration. With a touching of souls. There can be no must or should. Ever. Applying an ethical framework to friendship would be it’s ultimate death.
On another note… What Dave is suggesting here:
Might we not though consider the kind of friendship described here as some kind of paradigmatic relationship that we ought to cultivate in relation to all our dealings with other people?
is nothing else than the Christian basic principle of charity. Treat any stranger like he was your friend or your kin. With the rise of the charismatic movement within all colours of Christianity from Catholic to Evangelical, this concept has become tainted for a general use somehow.
The consequences are dire to philosophy, since it needs to reinvent new terminology to treat something so indescribable or unclassifiable like friendship.
The funny thing about Dave’s ultimate question is… that the answer he is giving is not the proper answer to the question he is asking… If one would want to be precise, the question “I wonder where we should place friendship in an ethical framework?” requires an answer which regard the place attributed to friendship inside an ethical theory, for example is friendship a link only between human beings, or also between humans and animals, etc… the answer, the debate between utilitarism and deontologism is an answer to a question more like “how is friendship conceived by movement or theories like utilitarism or deontologism… Quite interesting… but two different matters
Well – I thought I ought to come back on a couple fo things here…
I had not thought of it quite as “spamming for traffic”, but rather as trying to pull others into discussions normally aimed at our Undergrads… They are often quiet in January due to the shape of our academic year – and thought some external comments might inspire them.. but no matter…
With reference to blogger – I agree. It has changed of late – and the comment-leaving process has made it more troublesome, esp for casual visitors. I think Wordpress is looking much more of a feasible proposition.
I think re the util/deontology appraoch – you amy be right – but I also feel many do some the notion of friendship as infused with intrinsic value of some sort..
When you write:
“Friendship starts with fascination. With inspiration. With a touching of souls. There can be no must or should. Ever. Applying an ethical framework to friendship would be it’s ultimate death.”
it seems to idealise friendship somewhat. I have connections with friends, but I am not always sure I even like them – never mind wanting to touch their souls (yuck).
Applying an ethical framework to it may, though, be to take away from its value – but that does not mean that we cannot recognise that the nature of friendship-relations might sit within our broader ethical approach to life.
[I worry that having an over-strong conception of the value of friendship may lead us to be less fair in our dealings with people]
I fear you may be right with ref to the tainted-ness of the all-as-friend approach – but given the broad cultural currency of the notion of friendship, it may yet have something to offer – but maybe it is just too dirtied?
Arsedendi makes a comment I am not sure quite how to respond to – but will say something anyway…
I see the difference here – but what interests me is the idea of explicating friendship more than I have done at all so far – as suggested. I was tempted to say that human-animal friendship is prevented as ‘true friendship’ requires a level of equality and the ability to mutually respond – but then, I am not sure this is true.
Some kinds of intense childhood friendship look rather like practice for romantic relations. This led me to think of all the ‘friends are the new family’ stuff we saw in the 90s (and the TV show Friends, etc) – which we might argue is that 20-somethings now, in many places, delay permenant family-settling things – and then use friendships as a bridge between their own family they began in – and the one they may start/end in – but this is more to do with the cultural constructions of different modes of friendship than the touching of souls…
Sorry this is rather incoherent – in a rush this morning – maybe try to tidy some of this into some sense later!
Maybe I should end with a quote from someone I don’t normally much like: Morrissey:
We hate it when our friends become successful
And if they’re Northern, that makes it even worse
And if we can destroy them
You bet your life we will
@arsedendi:
Good point. But what is ethics anyway? The mother of all questions, isn’t it? Are we talking about applied ethics or individual ethics? And since ethic relies heavily on reason, what is reason? And are we reasonable at all? You get my drift?
The way you’re defining ethics is simply social. And this is by far not the only possible definition.
@Dave:
I understand that you’re looking for more discussion and that is fine. I’m just a bit stern when it comes to blogging etiquette. On that topic: glad if I can convince you to switch to wordpress.
And now for “something more serious”:
I cannot agree with your approach to friendship or your categories somehow.
Friendship is not colleagueship, nor are old friends the same as casual friends. If you have friends that you call friends that you don’t like, you are in trouble or simply call anybody a friend that is acquainted to you.
That’s fine by me, but then you cannot use your category of friendship for general use. Because in a strong kantian way of speech: I certainly wouldn’t want to have friends that I don’t like.
Even if you adopt the all-as-friend approach you still will have several statuses or “classes” of friends. So it’s all a matter of terminology. Not of ethics.
Only if the underlying maxim of my dealings of the world would imply that I am only courteous, nice or helpful to my friends, which would come close to a utilitarianist approach.
Well, I can surely say that my dog does respond to anything I do or do not do. As for the concept of truth within friendship, I am not sure that it has anything to here, since truth cannot be verified in friendship: the mirror right into the inner emotional workings of a person not having been invented as of yet.
Have a nice end of the day and watch out for Kyrill.
Kyrill – indeed.
Just home from work and blown all over, even my magic hi-vis jacket and elegant plastic cycling trousers were of little use against such gusts…
Maybe a typology of friendship is what we need – I will think about – but this evening I am meeting a friend (one I actually do like) – and I will be only as nice to him as he deserves
(though in the UK most male friendship is cemented and reinforced by mock non-nice/I-hate-you behaviour – many men [esp non-middle-class] would greet each other with an insult as part of some kind of play-conflict)
I am aware of that fact – having spent enough time growing up in the UK. I don’t see the pertinence of local or personal code in philosophical question ’should we treat everyone as our friends in order to be more ethical’ somehow…
Is not the content of friendship largely determined by local codes/social convesntions? Or is there some essence of ‘the ideal friend’ – like Hannuman in the Ramayana, or some such that you suggest transcends culture and social construction?