It feels like it was just ingrained in me to form connections. As cavemen and women, friendship was integral to our survival. However, long gone are the days of hunting for our dinner and friendship exists for an equally, if not more important reason; to accompany us into the different stages of our lives. Humans are social beings, we need to build friendships. Friendship takes many forms, both positive and negative, and each friendship serves a different purpose.
Each type of friend shapes your life in different ways. Amongst these different types of friendships, some might serve more superficial purposes, while others might provide an overall deeper value; someone who can support on multiple different levels, this is what I call a true friend.
So, how can one recognize a true friendship? In my opinion, there are three crucial pillars of true friendship: acceptance, trust, and support. You choose friends based on mutual appreciation, despite sometimes differing in life views and values.
We accept them the way they are, as they accept us the way we are. Acceptance is not a blank cheque though. Growing up, I had a friend - let's call her Diana here, who was chronically late.
She would make plans for p. The lateness was a sign of the lack of respect she had for my time. If she had called me to push back our meeting time, or even just let me know she would be late, it may not have been such an issue but she had little regard for my schedule. She started actually arriving on time or would call ahead to ask if we could meet at p.
Otherwise, we would just be selfishly trying to change the person for our own good. However, this raises the question of why we allow any such direction and interpretation. One answer would be because we recognize the independent value of the interests of our friends, or that we recognize the truth of their interpretations of us.
But this would not explain the role of friendship in such direction and interpretation, for we might just as easily accept such direction and interpretation from a mentor or possibly even a stranger.
This shortcoming might push us to understanding our receptivity to direction and interpretation not in dispositional terms but rather in normative terms: other things being equal, we ought to accept direction and interpretation from our friends precisely because they are our friends. And this might push us to a still stronger conception of intimacy, of the sharing of values, in terms of which we can understand why friendship grounds these norms.
Unlike similar accounts, Sherman explicitly includes pride and shame as emotions I sympathetically feel on behalf of my friend—a significant addition because of the role pride and shame have in constituting our sense of ourselves and even our identities Taylor Thus, as she summarizes a passage in Aristotle b11—12 :. Rather, the values are shared in the sense that they are most fundamentally their values, at which they jointly arrive by deliberating together.
The intent of this account, in which what gets shared is, we might say, an identity that the friends have in common, is not to be descriptively accurate of particular friendships; it is rather to provide a kind of ideal that actual friendships at best only approximate. Like the union view of love, this account of friendship raises worries about autonomy. Even so, much would need to be done to spell out this view satisfactorily. In each of these accounts of the kind of intimacy and commitment that are characteristic of friendship, we might ask about the conditions under which friendship can properly be dissolved.
Thus, insofar as friendship involves some such commitment, we cannot just give up on our friends for no reason at all; nor, it seems, should our commitment be unconditional, binding on us come what may.
Understanding more clearly when it is proper to break off a friendship, or allow it to lapse, may well shed light on the kind of commitment and intimacy that is characteristic of friendship; nonetheless, this issue gets scant attention in the literature. A final common thread in philosophical accounts of friendship is shared activity. The background intuition is this: never to share activity with someone and in this way to interact with him is not to have the kind of relationship with him that could be called friendship, even if you each care for the other for his sake.
Rather, friends engage in joint pursuits, in part motivated by the friendship itself. These joint pursuits can include not only such things as making something together, playing together, and talking together, but also pursuits that essentially involve shared experiences, such as going to the opera together. Rather, the activity must be pursued in part for the purpose of doing it together with my friend, and this is the point of saying that the shared activity must be motivated, at least in part, by the friendship itself.
And this generally seems to be the case: for example, Thomas , , , , who argues for a weak conception of intimacy in terms of mutual self-disclosure, has little place for shared activity in his account of friendship, whereas Sherman , who argues for a strong conception of intimacy in terms of shared values, deliberation, and thought, provides within friendship a central place not just to isolated shared activities but, more significantly, to a shared life.
Nonetheless, within the literature on friendship the notion of shared or joint activity is largely taken for granted: not much thought has been given to articulating clearly the sense in which friends share their activity. This means in part that a particular theory of friendship might be criticized in terms of the way in which its account of the intimacy of friendship yields a poor account of the sense in which activity is shared.
For example, one might think that we must distinguish between activity we engage in together in part out of my concern for someone I love, and activity we share insofar as we engage in it at least partly for the sake of sharing it; only the latter, it might be argued, is the sort of shared activity constitutive of the relationship of friendship as opposed to that constitutive merely of my concern for him see Nozick Consequently, according to this line of thought, any account of the intimacy of friendship that fails to understand the sharing of interests in such a way as to make sense of this distinction ought to be rejected.
Helm develops an account of shared activity and shared valuing at least partly with an eye to understanding friendship.
He argues that the sense in which friends share activity is not the sort of shared intention and plural subjecthood discussed in literature on shared intention within social philosophy on which, see Tuomela , ; Gilbert , , ; Searle ; and Bratman , for such sharing of intentions does not involve the requisite intimacy of friendship.
Friendships emerge, Helm claims, when the friends form a plural agent that cares positively about their relationship, and the variety of kinds of friendships there can be, including friendships of pleasure, utility, and virtue, are to be understood in terms of the particular way in which they jointly understand their relationship to be something they care about—as tennis buddies or as life partners, for example.
Friendship clearly plays an important role in our lives; to a large extent, the various accounts of friendship aim at identifying and clarifying that role. In this context, it is important to understand not only why friendship can be valuable, but also what justifies particular friendships. One way to construe the question of the value of friendship is in terms of the individual considering whether to be or continue to be engaged in a friendship: why should I invest considerable time, energy, and resources in a friend rather than in myself?
What makes friendship worthwhile for me, and so how ought I to evaluate whether particular friendships I have are good friendships or not? One sort of answer is that friendship is instrumentally good. Moreover, she claims, friendship is pleasant in itself as well as useful to the friends. Annis adds that it helps promote self-esteem, which is good both instrumentally and for its own sake. Cooper b , interpreting Aristotle, provides two arguments for why this might be so.
Hence, a flourishing life is possible only through the epistemic access friendship provides. Such activities include moral and intellectual activities, activities in which it is often difficult to sustain interest without being tempted to act otherwise.
Friendship, and the shared values and shared activities it essentially involves, is needed to reinforce our intellectual and practical understanding of such activities as worthwhile in spite of their difficulty and the ever present possibility that our interest in pursuing them will flag. Consequently, Cooper concludes, the shared activity of friendship is partly constitutive of human flourishing.
Similarly, Biss argues along Kantian lines that friendship and the sort of trust friendship involves, are a central and necessary part of the pursuit of moral self-perfection. So far these are attempts to understand the value of friendship to the individual in terms of the way friendship contributes, instrumentally or constitutively, to something else that is valuable to the individual. Yet one might also think that friendship is valuable for its own sake.
Indeed, we ought to expect that fleshing out this claim would involve a substantive proposal concerning the nature of that community and how it can have a separate federated? Friedman existence and value. Once again, the literature on shared intention and plural subjecthood is relevant here; see, for example, Gilbert , , ; Tuomela , ; Searle ; and Bratman A question closely related to this question of the value of friendship is that of what justifies my being friends with this person rather than with someone else or no one at all.
To a certain extent, answers to the question of the value of friendship might seem to provide answers to the question of the justification of friendship.
After all, if the value of friendship in general lies in the way it contributes either instrumentally or constitutively to a flourishing life for me, then it might seem that I can justify particular friendships in light of the extent to which they contribute to my flourishing. Nonetheless, this seems unacceptable because it suggests—what is surely false—that friends are fungible. To be fungible is to be replaceable by a relevantly similar object without any loss of value.
That is, if my friend has certain properties including, perhaps, relational properties in virtue of which I am justified in having her as my friend because it is in virtue of those properties that she contributes to my flourishing , then on this view I would be equally justified in being friends with anyone else having relevantly similar properties, and so I would have no reason not to replace my current friend with someone else of this sort.
This is surely objectionable as an understanding of friendship. In solving this problem of fungibility, philosophers have typically focused on features of the historical relationship of friendship cf.
Brink , quoted above. If my friend and I form a kind of union in virtue of our having a shared conception of how to live that is forged and maintained through a particular history of interaction and sharing of our lives, and if my sense of my values and identity therefore depends on these being most fundamentally our values and identity, then it is simply not possible to substitute another person for my friend without loss.
For this other person could not possibly share the relevant properties of my friend, namely her historical relationship with me. However, the price of this solution to the problem of fungibility, as it arises both for friendship and for love, is the worry about autonomy raised towards the end of Section 1. An alternative solution is to understand these historical, relational properties of my friend to be more directly relevant to the justification of our friendship. Thus, Whiting distinguishes the reasons we have for initiating a friendship which are, she thinks, impersonal in a way that allows for fungibility from the reasons we have for sustaining a friendship; the latter, she suggests, are to be found in the history of concern we have for each other.
However, it is unclear how the historical-relational properties can provide any additional justification for friendship beyond that provided by thinking about the value of friendship in general, which does not solve the fungibility problem. It is not clear how the appeal to historical properties of my friend or our friendship can provide an answer. In part the trouble here arises from tacit preconceptions concerning the nature of justification.
Solving the problem, it might therefore seem, requires somehow overcoming this preconception concerning justification—a task which no one has attempted in the literature on friendship. For further discussion of this problem of fungibility as it arises in the context of love, as well as discussion of a related problem concerning whether the object rather than the grounds of love is a particular person or a type of person, see Section 6 of the entry on love.
Another way to construe the question of the value of friendship is in more social terms: what is the good to society of having its members engaged in relationships of friendship? For similar claims, see Annis These answers to the social value of friendship seem to apply equally well to love: insofar as love essentially involves both a concern for your beloved for his sake and, consequently, action on his behalf for his sake, love will exhibit the same social value.
Friedman , however, argues that friendship itself is socially valuable in a way that love is not. Understanding the intimacy of friendship in terms of the sharing of values, Friedman notes that friendship can involve the mutual support of, in particular, unconventional values, which can be an important stimulus to moral progress within a community. Consequently, the institution of friendship is valuable not just to the individuals but also to the community as a whole.
On the other hand, however, we might worry that friendship can have negative consequences for society as a whole. A growing body of research since the mids questions the relationship between the phenomenon of friendship and particular moral theories.
At the root of these questions concerning the relationship between friendship and morality is the idea that friendship involves special duties : duties for specific people that arise out of the relationship of friendship.
Thus, it seems that we have obligations to aid and support our friends that go well beyond those we have to help strangers because they are our friends, much like we parents have special duties to aid and support our children because they are our children.
Given this, the question arises as to what the relationship is between such special duties of friendship and other duties, in particular moral duties: can our obligations to our friends sometimes trump our moral duties, or must we always subordinate our personal relationships to morality in order to be properly impartial as, it might be thought, morality demands? Such moral schizophrenia, Stocker argues, prevents us in general from harmonizing our moral reasons and our motives, and it does so in a way that destroys the very possibility of our having and sustaining friendships with others.
Given the manifest value of friendship in our lives, this is clearly a serious problem with these moral theories. What is it about friendship that generates these problems? One concern arises out of the teleological conception of action , implicit in consequentialism, according to which actions are understood in terms of their ends or purposes.
The trouble is, Stocker argues, the characteristic actions of friendship cannot be understood in this way. To be a friend is at least sometimes to be motivated to act out of a concern for your friend as this individual cf. Section 1.
That is, actions done out of friendship are essentially actions motivated by a special sort of concern—a concern for this particular person—which is in part a matter of having settled habits of response to the friend. This, Stocker concludes, is a kind of motivation for action that a teleological conception of action cannot countenance, resulting in moral schizophrenia.
Jeske argues for a somewhat different conclusion: that in order to heal this apparent split between impartial moral obligations and the partial obligations of friendship, we must abandon the distinction between moral and nonmoral obligations.
Stocker raises another, more general concern for consequentialism and deontology arising out of a conception of friendship. Consequently, either act consequentialists must exhibit moral schizophrenia, or, to avoid it, they must understand consequentialist reasons for action to be our motives. However, because such consequentialist reasons are impersonal, taking this latter tack would be to leave out the kind of reasons and motives that are central to friendship, thereby undermining the very institution of friendship.
The same is true, Stocker argues, of rule consequentialism the view that actions are right if they follow principles or rules that tend to result in the most good overall, impersonally conceived—see the entry on rule-consequentialism and on deontology the view that actions are right just in case they are in accordance with certain rules or principles that are binding on all moral agents.
If we are to avoid moral schizophrenia and embody this reason in our motives for action, we could not, then, act out of friendship—out of a concern for our friends for their sakes. That signals that your friends are getting you something if their presence in the room is comforting. I turn to long-distance friends for certain things, like if I got dumped, or if my cat died.
The role that friends play becomes really obvious. Like, I need these people to feel part of this society, to feel I can make my own way and cope with even small challenges, like having the flu.
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