Love & Friendship
Lecture 21: Friendship Among Equals and the Problem of Inequality

Transcript
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So this one kid down the block, he had a ball and a bat, you know, so we're going down there playing. And if the game didn't go the way he liked, right, he'd take the bat and the ball and go to the house with it. Well, his mother saw this selfishness, right? So she took the bat and the ball and brought it out again for us to play with, right? Well, he's in the house now. Well, in a sense, this is, you know, reinforcing in another way, right? But the idea that he should be, what, to share his baseball bat and the ball, right, huh? And not be selfish like he's doing. Things don't go, the game doesn't go the way he wants it to go or something, right? But that's, in a sense, a little example of a mother trying to, what, punish, in a sense, a child, right? But trying to get them to, what, eventually be open to sharing their baseball bat as well, their candy, right, with the other person, right? You see that? Okay. So that shows a real connection of another kind, again, between habit and, what, friendship, right? In other words, friendship is a habit, although it can also refer to the act, right? It itself is a habit, but also it's produced by, what, choice, right? And choice comes from really our habits, right, huh? Okay. Did I choose to be a philosopher? Hirstel says the philosopher and the sophists differ by their choice of life. Did I choose to be a philosopher with some sudden feeling I had one day? Or emotion? I saw it got an emotional attachment to the... Yeah. See? No, no. It arose, I suppose, from my somewhat studious habits, right? Okay. Because even before I met philosophy, you might say, I had student, you know, studious habits. I like to read and study things and think about them and so on, right? So in a sense, my habits, right, which were not friendship, right, but my habits were, what, going to determine or at least create influence the choices I was going to make. Okay? And so, if I become your friend by choice, and my choice is from my habits, then that's another connection between friendship and habits, right? Okay? And then, to really become your friend, he says, he has another reason, I have to wish well to you, huh? But you don't do that as we were naturally as a child, right? As a child, you're kind of naturally selfish, huh? You see? And you kind of see this with little children, you know, how it's kind of perverse in a way, but one kid, there's a bunch of toys there, right, to play with, right? And one kid starts playing with one toy. The minute one kid starts playing with one toy, another kid wants to play with that same toy. That same one. Yeah. You didn't want to play with it beforehand, but because that kid's playing with it, he wants it, right? And then there's a little fight or something, you know? And you see that kind of selfishness now, you know? And mothers are always, you know, trying to adjudicate these matters, right? And say, well, now, you know, let him play with it for a while. Now, you've played with it for a while, and now let him play with it, you know? But that's a form of more education, right? You're accustoming the child to think a little bit of the other's enjoyment of that toy as well, right? Right now, see? But the child's first reaction is he sees you playing with the toy, and you're enjoying that toy, and now I'd rather be enjoying the toy than, you know, I see you enjoying the toy. I want to enjoy the toy myself. And then I've got to take it away from you, and then I've got to, you know, have a little struggle with you, you know? And you see some little children. It's just, you know, university, but original sin or whatever it is. But that's what it is, right? And so the attempt of the mother or the father to remedy that situation, right, is an attempt by the father and the mother, by repeated acts, to what? Accustom them, right? To taking thought about the other, right? Yeah? My mother used to separate me and my brother, one of my brothers, when I got in a fight, you know? Of course, after a while, you know, you're separated. It's no fun playing by yourself. You know, so you have to make up. It was kind of a good way of doing it, I thought, right? In retrospect, right? You see? Because you just get bored, you know, being over yourself. You go to your room, you go to your room, you go to your corner, you go to your corner, and you go to your corner. And you want to play together, and, you know, it's got to make up before. they do it so okay now and loving the friend he says the last paragraph now they love what is good for themselves for the good becoming a friend becomes good to whom he is a friend reminds me of that quote in scripture right god is good to those who what love him right on seeking him for each loves what is good for himself and they give back the equal in wish and in kind for friendship is called equality right that's interesting huh and shows the likeness between friendship again and what virtue and the justice right that's why you have courts of equity right make equal right okay um these things belong most of all to that of the good but notice that shows the difficulty of friendship between um god and man let's say right huh okay because the great inequality and one of the reasons given for the incarnation is that um god's coming down more to our level right to make love more easily between us and god right okay but even in human society between those that are far apart right love or friendship seems more difficult right okay and he's going to come back again to the side of equality later on in friendship and develop a little bit more but touches upon it here okay now what's the transition from what's gone on up to this point and the sixth reading right okay well we've learned what friendship is and the kinds of friendships there are right now but now there's another consideration here and that is in whom can these friendships be what realized right okay it's a little bit like what you have in in practice in a political philosophy where it's one thing to say what government is right and to um distinguish the kinds of government there are right but then what about realizing this kind of government in this or in that people right okay now is it possible to realize a democratic form of government in iraq or in iran or in afghanistan or some other or some african country right and sometimes you know uh people are kind naive right about um whether a given people are ready right you know after the second world war a lot of these colonies and in africa became independent and they got in name at least a kind of democratic or parliamentary form government but in practice were they really see and you got kind of you know terrible tyrants in many cases you know bloody tyrants and so on so it's a little different to talk about what government is and the kinds of of government right and now come around say in whom and how many can this kind of government be what realized right okay so it's a little bit like that here right he's talked about what friendship is and the kinds of friendship right now he says now let's get a little more practical and say in whom or how many or towards how many right can these kinds of friendship be realized right okay or who is more what capable right of this quality this habit of friendship right huh okay and who is not so suitable right okay so you see the difference in the in this thing and the reason why this comes where it does right okay now he's already talked a bit but he comes back and makes the point again here friendship comes to be less The person knows harsh, right? People kind of severe and, you know, character. But you've probably met some people in life like that, right? Broke off, for example. And sometimes they may have good will towards you, you know, right? They're not, you know, they're not malicious or evil or like that, right? You see? But they're kind of, a word you say is kind of severe, you know, personality, right? Kind of foreboding or something, right? So, this is not so fruitful a soil for friendship, right? And again, those who are old, right? Especially in Aristotle's day, the old, but even our day, they get, what? They've got ailments in there. They've got the rheumatoid, you know, rheumatoid. They've got pains, you know, right? And things. And maybe they're hard of hearing and so on, right? Okay? So, they are more discontented, right? With life now, huh? And they enjoy company less, right? Can't stand the noise and the hub of it all, right? Okay? So, I think that's, it doesn't mean everybody old is like that, right? If you take the famous, you know, lifeless Samuel Johnson, right? Johnson continues to make new friends, even in his old age, you might say, right? Okay? But he's kind of the exception that proves the rule, right? And so, the young, for example, more quickly and more easily make friends than the, what, old, huh? And a lot of times when people look back upon their life, they see that their closest friends are people they knew maybe in high school or maybe college, right? But in their earlier years, they'll make their best friends, let's say, right, huh? Okay? So, the young are more suitable for becoming friends, right? Than are the, what, old, right, huh? Now, maybe one could ask the reason for that, but that seems to be a matter of, what, experience, right, huh? Okay? But these things seem to be especially friendly and productive of friendship, right? Wherefore, the young become friends swiftly, because he's pleased and enjoy a cup and so on, but the old do not. For they do not become friends of those whom they do not enjoy. Likewise, neither the harsh. But such can still be, what, well-wished, is to each other, right? Okay? For they wish good things and come to each other in need, right? It comes back to the idea now that friendship may be, in the fullest sense, it's only the act of friendship is living two together, right, huh? But they are not all together friends, he says, right? Because they do not spend the day together or enjoy each other, which especially seems to, what, befit friends, right? Okay? And notice, living together is more the act of friendship, right, huh? Okay, where you enjoy each other's conversation and are mutually, you know, helpful and so on. But again, you know, just like in the case of the moral virtues, courage doesn't just consist in having a habit, but actually in doing things according to that habit, right? So if these people don't want to live together, they don't seem to be friends altogether in the fullest, what, sense, huh? Now, he's going to say that the perfect kind of friendship is hard to have for more than one other person. So he says, it is not possible is going to be the perfect kind of friendship, right? So I'm going to say that the perfect kind of friendship is going to be the perfect kind of friendship, right? to be a friend of many, according to the perfect friendship, right? And he compares it to sexual love in this respect, right? Just as sexual love is not of many together at the same time, right? Okay? Now notice, what's his comparison of the two, right? Well, sexual love is something very intense, right? Okay, although it's something based more on the passions, right? But one cannot be that passionate, right? About two people at the same time, okay? So, when Romeo, take the example there of the play, when Romeo sees Juliet, right? He forgets all about Rosalind, right? You know? Takes a nail to try a lot of nails, they say, right? You see? So because of the intensity, right, of this romantic love that Romeo has for Juliet, you can't have romantic love anymore for Rosalind, right? It's just, you know, it's an intense thing, huh? Well, Aristotle is suggesting the likenesses in this, that this perfect kind of friendship is a very intense thing, right? And you take the friendship there of Hamlet and Horatio, right? Okay? Or more, take the example of the friendship of Bassanio and the merchant of Venice, right? And the merchant of Venice is willing to lay down his life for Bassanio, right? Okay? So, you know, greater love of this hath no man, right? So it's not a romantic love, no. But there's an intensity of love there, right? And is it possible, when you have a very intense love, to have this more than one person? Well, Aristotle compares to sexual love in terms of a certain intensity, right? And so just as in the sexual love, it seems to be one-to-one, Romeo to Juliet, right? Anthony to Cleopatra, right? Okay? Bassanio to Portia, right, huh? You know? All these famous ones are one-to-one, right? And that seems to be because of the intensity of the sexual love, the romantic love there. Well, if the highest kind of friendship is that has a certain intensity of its own, right, is it possible to have this for more than one person? Okay? Certainly not for, you know, very many people, right? Maybe we have it two or three or something, right? See? Okay? But these famous examples, again, going back to the greatest of the poets, in the Iliad, right, he had the friendship there of what? Of Achilles, right? And Patroklos, right? And Patroklos, you know, because of the tragedy of the thing, it was his life. And Achilles, you know, he'll never have a friend like this again, right? So it's kind of like a one-to-one thing, right? Okay? Bassanio and the Merchant of Venice have many other friends that we meet in the Merchant of Venice, right? But there's nobody that is the Bassanio, like the Merchant of Venice, or vice versa, right? There's a real closeness there, huh? And the same way with Ham and Horatio, right? Gilder Starr and those guys are nothing compared to Horatio, right? So there's an intensity, huh, of those most noble friendships, right? And they seem to be one-to-one, right? So notice what he's saying here, right? He can say, ah, this is the most perfect kind of friendship, right? This is the only full friendship. But is it reasonable to say I can have this for 10 people, 20 people? No. You're lucky if you have the kind of friendship that Ham and Horatio has for one other person, right, huh? Okay? With that closeness, huh? So he compares it to sexual love. For it seems like the excessive, right, huh? Okay? But such is apt to come to be towards one, right? And he gives another reason. Further, it is not easy for many to be pleasing to the same one at the same time, right? Okay? Now here he's thinking maybe of less of a thing besides virtue, right? Okay? So maybe you're... I like to use a lot of garlic in your food and I can't stand it out, right? Or all kinds of little things that are kind of secondary in life, right? And nothing you do with your character, really, you know? Father Boulay used to be known for a lot of garlic a lot, you know, they say. You know, garlic at the table and so on. So maybe this guy, you know, something about the man's habits, you see, that you just don't, you know, quite go for, right? Okay? I had a friend who never got up until about, oh, one o'clock in the afternoon, right? So if you called the house and wanted to talk to him, you know, he's still in bed, you know? So, I mean, now, once he was this way too, right? He would, you could get him to about two in the afternoon, right? But these guys, they would read or, you know, study through the night. Well, there's nothing wrong with that, right? There's nothing wrong with the English driving the left side of the street, right? But you can't quite get, what, used to those little things, right? Okay? My mother, you know, was Irish, you know, and, of course, she knew, in those days, of course, a lot of Irish women worked as, what, maids in the households of the rich, right? And a lot of times they worked in the household of the Jews, huh? And, of course, the eating habits of the Jews are much different from the Irish, right? Uh-huh. You see? So it's not that one eating habit is sinful, but just you can't, what? You know, you can't take it, right? You see? I suppose some people in the world there, you know, their diet is mainly, what? Fish, right? So, I don't like fish, you know? So, how am I going to live with someone who wants to have fish four or five times a week, you know? He said, I really have steak four or five times a week, but not fish. I'm always saying, you know, well, why do I speak of something as being fishy, you know? What's there something wrong with that? I don't see. But, or even in terms of fish, you know, my wife grew up here on the East Coast, you know, so she's used to ocean or seafood, you know? I grew up in Minnesota, so I was used to freshwater, see? So, for me, the best thing in fish is walleye pike, huh? With almond stories on it, huh? Walleye pike, see? She made, like, lobster or, you know, these things. And I never quite got used to lobster. I could do a little shrimp or some of these things, you know? But, again, it's just, you know, part of your habits, your customs, right, huh? So, there's all kinds of little things in life, huh? That might please you or annoy you with somebody else, right, huh? So, to be really close to somebody, you've got to have a lot of, what? Little things alike, right? You see? If you're a beer drinker primarily, I'm a wine drinker, well, you know? You want to go where the beers are, I want to go where the wines are, you know? You know, well, it doesn't mean one of us is bad because of this, but it just, you know, makes life less pleasant, right? You know, if you enjoy wine more and beer less, we could get a lot a little better, you know? So, he's talking about all these little things, right? Okay? What time of day do you play your music, right? You know? Some people like to do their work in the morning and then listen to their music, they relax in the evening, and some people want to hear some music right away in the morning, you know? So, you know, it was a Karl Barth, you had to listen to Mozart right away when he got up, you know? Before he began his day. And, you see, I'm going to get up and say my prayers, and we do a little read of some Thomason, and I get a little bit tired, and go and say some Mozart, you know? You know, just little things bother us, right? Sorry, I'm still being very human here, right, huh? For it's not easy for many, what? Yeah, take a little break there at that point. All right, thank you. So, in the second paragraph of reading six, he gave a reason why the highest kind of friendship, the perfect and the full kind of friendship, is had hardly for more than one person. And that reason was the intensity of the friendship, right? Okay? And, you know, if you read, you know, those plays I was mentioning, Hamlet, or you read Merchant of Venice, you see the intensity of that friendship between Bassanian and the Merchant of Venice, right? The Merchant of Venice would be willing to lay down his life for Bassanian, right? Okay? So that intensity, it's hard to have that for more than one person because it's so intense. And he makes that comparison, right, to the sexual love, the romantic love, right, like you have between Romeo and Juliet, it's only one-to-one, right? And then he gives a second reason in the third paragraph, in the first part of that sentence, that it's not easy for many to be pleasing to the same one at the same time, right? If you think of all the little things that go to make up, find it to be enjoyable to somebody, right? Everything from, not only their virtue, the essential things, but their eating habits and their habits of life, right? How loud they play the radio, how loud, you know? Okay. Veristyle adds a little footnote there, and perhaps not good. You see, if I found many people extremely pleasing to be with, I wouldn't be able to get my work done, right? You see, I'd be constantly, you know, distracted by, you know, all these close friends I have, right? Okay. So maybe there's something in nature or divine providence there, but you don't have this kind of intense friendship for everybody, right? Just like if Romer had as many women he was interested in as he said in Juliet, how he thought it was lying, right? Now, on the top of page 8 there, he gives another reason, right? And that is that in order to have this highest kind of friendship, you have to have been, what? Have a long experience with another person, right? You have to be put in circumstances, in other words, whereby you can talk to this person and associate them for a long time and get to know that they are trustworthy and that they are truly virtuous and so on, right? For it's necessary to have experience and to become intimate, huh? Conversation and so on, which is the most difficult of all, right? Okay. I know sometimes students, when I've talked about this in class, you know, a student told me one time, you know, how you went to some wedding in the family, right, huh? At the wedding, you know, in the reception afterwards, you get talking to people, right? And how you meet somebody who you really think is a nice person and you'd like to be friends with this person, but they're from some other part of the country, so... That's what I was talking about here, right, huh? Okay. You have to be thrown in, you might say, together with this person, right? To get an experience of them and to have a lot of conversations with them. And it's not possible in most cases, right, huh? I might go to a philosophical conference and I meet somebody who kind of oppresses me in some way, right? But he goes back to his college, you know? And there's not really an opportunity for us to get to know each other that well, right? So you might say there's basically three reasons Cyril Aristotle gives, right? By the friendship of the highest kind, Second, it's difficult to realize for more than one person, right? And one reason is because of the intensity of that friendship, right? Another reason is because they have to be pleasing in all kinds of things, right? Even kind of secondary things, right? In order for you to really enjoy being with them all this time. And then third, it's difficult to have this, what, intimate experience of another person, unless you have circumstances whereby you are brought together with that person. But now, what about the other kinds of friendship, right? But it is possible to please many through the useful and the, what, pleasant, right? Like we're seeing over here in the friendly topics there, you know, that Garrett, the actor, right, huh? He's always been invited to somebody's house and he enjoys his company, he enjoys his company, right? So you can have many pleasant friends and many useful ones, right, huh? And it's amazing how many friends one of these politicians will have that are successful, right? You know, when I was down in Kentucky here this, recently, my son had a biography there of Lincoln. So I started reading it, you know, and got interested in Lincoln again. So when I came back here, I went to the library and I got another, you know, rather competent biography of Lincoln. And it's amazing, you know, you see Lincoln, of course, building up, you know, towards the, eventually the nomination of the Republican Party there in 1860, right? But all the people he knows, you know, you know. And all these people who you have to be associated with, right? Of course, Lincoln was always going around, you know, Illinois, on the circuits, you know, and you see to know everybody by name, they say, you know. You have to know so many people, right? And all these people who became useful to him later on when he was going to make his push. So it's possible, in fact, you see it in these great politicians, right, that they have many, many useful friends. And they do need many useful friends to get anywhere in politics. But you can also have many what they call social friends, right? And those are usually friendships of what? Of pleasure, right, huh? For there are many such people of this sort, right? They could be useful to you, right? And agree of one way or another. And the services are in a short time, right? You're not devoted entirely to this person, right? But of these, he says, that through the pleasant seems more like friendship whenever the same things come to be from both and they enjoy each other or the same things, such as are the friendships of the young. For the liberal is more in these, but that to the useful is commercial, huh? So the friendship of pleasure is closer to the highest friendship, right? Than the useful one is, right? And the useful one seems more like business, right? More like commerce, huh? Now, of course, the word liberal there comes from the Latin word liber, meaning free, huh? In the Greek, they have the same thing, right? I think I mentioned how in English, if you look in the etymological dictionaries, you'll see that the word free and the word friend are related, huh? And we've talked about that a little bit here in the friendly topics, huh? So to say it's more liberal, more free, huh? More like friendship. And he gives another sign here. And the blessed have no need of the useful, but of the pleasant, right? For they wish to live together with someone, right? Now, one may put up with the disagreeable. That should be a short time, I think. But no one can submit to this continuously, right? Not even the good itself, if it were a disagreeable to oneself, huh? Okay? Whence they seek pleasant friends, and perhaps such ought to be good and further to them. For thus there will belong to them whatever ought to belong to friends. Now he comes to those in power, right? Now, does Aristotle have some experience of men who are powerful? Yeah, like Alexander, huh? He's the teacher of Alexander the Great, right? Sure. There's a lot of speculations, if you read the histories or biographies that they have of Alexander the Great, right? What exactly was the relation between Aristotle and Alexander, especially in later years, huh? And there's some questions of whether Alexander was a bit corrupted by power, you know, in the later years, right? Okay. But you can see this in other powerful men, too. Those in power seem to have separate friends, for some are useful to them, and others pleasant. But the same are not at all both. So he has some men he associates with for the sake of pleasure, he plays golf with, or whatever it may be, right? Others that he finds useful to get work done, right? Not the same people. They seek neither those pleasant with virtue, nor those useful and noble things. But the witty, when desiring the pleasant, right? Or the terribly efficient to do their commands. Not the virtuous, right? But these do not at all come to be in the same. It has been said that the good man, the virtuous man, is at the same time both pleasant and useful. But such a man does not become a friend of one placed over others, unless he be also overtopped in virtue. If not, he will not make equal the proportional of being overtopped. But it is not at all customary for such to come to be. There's still maybe hinting that power corrupts, right? And absolute power corrupts absolutely. I told you that little story there when I was teaching at St. Mary's College, you know, back in the early 60s, and there was still some of this hazy, you know, so when you were a freshman, you know. So I came on campus and I saw this sophomore who I had known as, you know, had in class as a freshman, but now he's got a freshman carrying his books around for him like a slave, right? And I just kind of laughed, you know, seeing this situation, you know. The sophomore turned to him and he said, now you know that the power corrupts, right? But just think if he had, you know, absolute power with his freshman, you know, what he'd be begging him to do, right? So, Aristotle could see this in the powerful men. The force and friendships, then, are inequality, for the same things come to be from both. This is kind of an epilogue here to the treatise of friendship so far, right, which has been between, what, equals, right? Because in reading 7, he's going to talk about the other kind of friendship, which is among unequals, right? Okay. And of course, because of the connection between friendship and equality, he talks about the equal friendships, what, first, right? Okay. So what about the friendship of God the Father and God the Son, right? Friendship among, what, equals. Now, the force said friendships, then, are inequality, for the same things come to be from both, right? We can be equally useful to each other, right, or equally pleasing to each other, right? And our wish to each other. Or sometimes they exchange one thing for another, such as pleasure for utility, and try to equalize things that way. That these are less friendships, the friendships that are based on usefulness or upon merely pleasure, and less lasting has been said. Now, he's kind of summarizing. They seem through likeness and unlikeness to the same. In other words, they seem through their likeness to the highest and the perfect and the fullest kind of friendship, the friendship simply, right, and not by happening. They seem through their likeness and unlikeness to the same, to be and not to be friendships, right? Okay. I mentioned how Cicero would only regard the highest friendship, the friendship based on virtue, to be friendship, right? So these other ones seem to be and not to be friendship, right? For this, the highest one, has the pleasant and the other useful, but these belong to that. But in this one being without slander, the highest kind, and lasting, but those quickly changing and differing in the other things, they do not seem to be friendships on account of their being unlike that one. True love seems to be, what? Eternal, like in that sign we have in Shakespeare's, right? Okay, that's what we had in there, about love, huh? When Lincoln got married, right, he gave his wife a ring. What's in the ring? Love is eternal. So do we really love each other if we're not going to love each other forever? You know, these people get married now, you know, and they have these prenuptial agreements, huh? That's like saying, you know, we're going to get married and see if it works out. If it does, we'll continue. If not, you know, we're going to be protected by this prenuptial agreement, you know, they'll take my stuff and you take your stuff, and so on, right? Well, that's something wrong there, obviously, huh? Okay. So what would you say? Do we love each other if our love is not forever? Well, you know, limited of all. Yeah, yeah. Yes and no, right? Yes, sir. So now we have a little pause here, and he's going to go on to talk about friendship among, what? Equals, right? I mentioned how the greatest poet of the Greeks there, the greatest poet of antiquity is only Homer, and