Introduction
By Adrian Ma
One of the more memorable accounts of friendship I’ve read is by the French philosopher Michel de Montaigne. In his essay “On Friendship,” Montaigne describes an ideal of true friendship in terms that recall the paragons of romantic love (I am quoting from the translation here, but others are easy enough to find online):
For the rest, what we ordinarily call friends and friendships are nothing but acquaintanceships and familiarities formed by some chance or convenience, by means of which our souls are bound to each other. In the friendship I speak of, our souls mingle and blend with each other so completely that they efface the seam that joined them, and cannot find it again. If you press me to tell why I loved him, I feel that this cannot be expressed, except by answering: Because it was he, because it was I.
Montaigne’s opinions about friendship were stronger than most, but the questions he was engaging with are familiar. What does it mean to be a friend? Are there different kinds of friendship, and are some friendships more valuable than others?
After all, not all friendships look the same—nor, in Montaigne’s view, are they created equal. As Montaigne suggests, “[w]hat we ordinarily call friends and friendships”—best friends, family friends, childhood friends, work friends, online friends, imaginary friends, and friends with benefits, to name a few—include relationships of varying kinds and degrees of connection. Friendships, to judge from our ordinary uses of the word, can be sudden or gradual, shallow or deep, ephemeral or long-lasting; they can be sustained by shared spaces, shared hobbies, shared values, shared experiences, shared enemies, shared jokes,1 and even shared rivalries. For some, this seemingly kaleidoscopic nature is part of what makes friendship so rewarding. It’s also part of what makes friendship so puzzling—and a fitting subject for philosophical inquiry.
And so we inquired. At our Curiosity Café last Tuesday, moderated by philosophy PhD student Alexandra Gustafson and our very own Marybel Menzies, we explored some of the ideas and ideals surrounding that timeless (but also, in the wake of COVID, extremely timely) subject: friendship. Below, Marybel and I will reconstruct some of the thoughts you shared during our collaborative (and friendly) two-hour discussion. But first:
Featured Content:
Curiosity Café Recap: Friendship
Upcoming Events
“Why I’d rather be friends with a ‘bad’ person” by Alexandra Gustafson
Toronto Events
Readings & Resources
Curiosity Café Recap: Friendship
By Marybel Menzies and Adrian Ma
Our latest café, moderated by Alexandra Gustafson and Marybel Menzies, kicked off with an examination of the popular notion that we have friendships for “reasons, seasons, or a lifetime.” As Alexandra and Marybel write:
Sometimes we form friendships in our classes or workspaces, to perform well in that setting. Sometimes we form friendships for seasons, for instance, the kinds of friendships formed during your 20’s … that you eventually grow out of. And finally, sometimes we hope to form friendships for life. . . . [r]elationships that will stand the test of time.
Using this taxonomy as a starting point, we asked ourselves: What kinds of friendship do you have in your life? Are they “reasonal,” seasonal, or for a lifetime? Is one kind of friendship better than the others? And can you think of friendships that don’t fit neatly into any of these categories?
Here’s a small selection of what you had to say about the threefold distinction:
We can never conclusively judge whether a friendship is reasonal, seasonal, or for a lifetime. Sometimes, friendships we expect to be confined to a certain time or context grow into something deeper and longer-lasting; other times, friendships we expect to last forever can fall apart for reasons we didn’t foresee.
The expectation that a friendship will be limited to a context or a season can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I don’t expect to keep in touch with a classmate after the semester is over, I may see less reason to invest in and cultivate our friendship.
Often, the development of a relationship into a friendship can be inhibited by the original context—hence the common difficulty of befriending our colleagues or our teachers. Similarly, the residue of the initial context can make it difficult to transition from one type of friendship to another.
We can have friendships that are both seasonal (literally) and for life. For example, I may have friends I only see during the summer, but the summer-constrained friendship can last for a lifetime.
Lifetime friends are those with whom it is easy to pick up where you left off, even if you go months or years without seeing or talking to each other.
Sometimes, it’s better for a friendship to be reasonal or seasonal, because certain friendships, when prolonged, can overstay their welcome.
Although lifetime friendships are more valuable than the others, they can, and should, be supplemented by more transitory and perhaps even superficial friendships. However close you and your lifetime friends may be, it is unrealistic—and unfair—to expect your social needs to be met by a small circle of people.
Compared to familial relationships, friendships have a stronger voluntaristic element. We don’t typically choose our family members, but we do choose our friends, and we often have some control over the kind of friendship we want to share. This element of choice can make friendships more precarious, but it can also make them more meaningful.
Many participants also zeroed in on the question of non-traditional friendships, like human-AI and human-animal friendships.
Certain conditions of friendship, like trust and communication, can be hard to satisfy in the context of some non-traditional friendships. For example, it is harder to develop friendships with our pets than with our fellow human beings, because the extent to which we can communicate with non-human animals is limited.
At the same time, non-human animals can still communicate and show concern in their own way, even across the species barrier—perhaps enough to meet the threshold for genuine friendship. In other words, even if non-traditional friendships are disadvantaged, they shouldn’t be ruled out in advance.
If friendships are necessarily reciprocal, then one-sided relationships, like parasocial and human-AI relationships, can’t qualify as friendships at all. Friendship requires that the parties involved acknowledge each other as friends.
How explicit does this acknowledgment need to be? Can two people be friends without ever saying it out loud?
Perhaps all that matters in assessing the reality of a friendship is whether we feel that it is real. Children believe in their imaginary friendships; can grownups do the same?
Regardless of whether they constitute bona fide friendships, one-sided relationships can still yield many of the benefits of friendship—whether directly or indirectly. Talking to a chatbot can lead to genuine improvements in one’s psychological and emotional well-being. A shared love of a celebrity or a fictional character can form the basis of a friendship or even a community.
Although an AI could theoretically do and say everything a human friend would, the knowledge that there is no living intelligence or heart behind its outputs would make even the illusion of friendship impossible. (For more on human-AI relationships, check out our newsletter on AI Ethics from April).
Characters in movies and books can often feel like friends, and the emotional resonance of their stories can resemble the emotional resonance characteristic of friendship.
After the break, we considered a different threefold distinction—this time, between friendships of pleasure, friendships of utility, and friendships of virtue. We began by examining theories of friendship by two foundational Western philosophers, Aristotle and Immanuel Kant. As Alexandra and Marybel write:
Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics, Book VIII) distinguishes between three kinds of friendships: friendships of pleasure, [of] utility, and [of] virtue. E.g., a friendship of pleasure is one where you enjoy going to the pub on the weekends or karaoke. A friendship of utility accounts for those friends that serve a purpose such as reliably letting you know where the hottest parties in the city are. A friendship of virtue is one where your friend pushes you to be the best version of yourself. According to Kant (Metaphysics of Morals), on the other hand, virtue, first and foremost, is what defines friendship. That is, friendships of mere utility and pleasure are not friendships, strictly speaking. Rather, virtue (in the form of the pursuit of moral self-perfection) is necessary for friendship.
With these distinctions in mind, and with a particular focus on the relationship between friendship and virtue, we asked: What types of Aristotelian friendship do you have in your life? Can you have friendships that are based on pleasure, utility, and virtue—or none of these? Can genuine friendships exist between “bad”, or unvirtuous, people?
Here are a few of your responses to these and other related questions:
It seems as if all of the Aristotelian categories make it such that the good of friendships isn’t the friendship itself, but the thing you get from it. However, friendships are also good in themselves, independent of other goods they may or may not provide us with.
Even when a friendship is conducive to pleasure, utility, or virtue, explicitly aiming to promote these values would risk turning the friendship into a means to an end.
No matter how useful or virtuous someone may be, we can’t really call them a friend unless we also find pleasure in their company.
When it comes to friendships, pleasure, utility, and virtue tend to be found together. The friend I most enjoy spending time with is also, generally, someone I find good or “useful.”
Friendships can exercise an undue influence over us and lead us astray from the virtuous or moral path. It is therefore healthy to preserve some degree of independence from our friends.
No friendship is conducive to these values all the time. We’ll all have periods when we find little enjoyment or utility in our friendships, or when we or our friends behave badly. The ability to survive such lapses is one of the hallmarks of true friendship.
Indeed, friendship may be needed most when one is experiencing a moral lapse. I may need my friends to call out my bad behaviour, or support me through the personal crisis responsible for my uncharacteristic collapse of morals.
Friendships with unvirtuous people might be more amenable to the promotion of virtue than friendships between morally perfect individuals. An unvirtuous friend has greater room for improvement, and in helping them realize their virtuous potential, I am also developing my own virtue.
No one is wholly bad or unvirtuous; everyone has a redeeming quality. Thus, even if friendships can or should revolve around virtue, no one should be written off as a candidate for friendship.
We sometimes see what appear to be friendships between bad people, but such friendships might still be underpinned by an element of virtue, however slight. Friendships between members of the Mafia, for example, still depend on moral qualities like loyalty.
Thank you to everyone who came out on Tuesday and made our discussion pleasurable, useful, and (I think) virtuous. If you’re curious about our upcoming events, or wondering what a Curiosity Café even is, check out the section below. After that, be sure to read Alexandra’s short but powerful essay, “Why I’d rather be friends with a ‘bad’ person,” which she was generous enough to write for this newsletter.
I hope you see a friend this week, or make one.
Upcoming Events
Curiosity Café: Bi-weekly on Tuesdays. Tickets below!
About: For those of you who haven’t had the opportunity to join our Curiosity Cafés and are wondering what they’re all about: Every two weeks, we invite members of our community (that includes you, dear reader!) to come out to the Madison Avenue Pub to engage in a collaborative exploration of our chosen topic. Through these events, we aim to build our community of people who like to think deeply about life’s big questions, and provide each other with some philosophical tools to dig deeper into whatever it is we are most curious about. After our scheduled programming, we encourage attendees to stay and mingle over food and drinks.
We will be hosting our next Curiosity Café on Tuesday, June 25th from 6:00-8:30 pm at the Madison Avenue Pub (14 Madison Ave, Toronto, ON M5R 2S1). Please get a ticket using the button below the event description. If tickets are sold out, please contact us, either on Instagram @beingnbecomingorg or over email at sophia@beingnbecoming.org, and we will let you know if we are able to accommodate you. (Yes, this is new! We are so excited about our growing community; however, we also want to preserve the amazing quality of our discussions and ensure that everyone present has the opportunity to participate. As a result of this, we are working towards limiting numbers at our cafés. Thank you for working with us through these changes!)
The topic of our next café is: Trusting Others
In many ways, trust is paradoxical. We are often at both our strongest and most vulnerable when we put our trust in others. What do we mean when we say that someone (including ourselves) is deserving of trust? How do we show others that we are trustworthy?
In the 2009 movie The Invention of Lying, Mark Bellison, played by Ricky Gervais, lives in a world where no one lies, ever. In other words, everyone trusts that at least what everyone says is true. The movie explores the perplexing situations that arise when one party is endlessly trusting and the other, well, lies. At the next Curiosity Café, we will appeal to these unlikely scenarios to shed light on the value of trust, as well as dissect how and why we trust others.
Trust has other ways of manifesting itself in our lives beyond interpersonal relationships. While we often use the term self-doubt to describe when we feel inadequate in our abilities, we rarely use the term self-trust to describe when we do feel up to the task. How would our lives change if we trusted ourselves more? What prevents us from putting trust in the one person we know the best? Next Tuesday, put your trust in co-moderators Matt Lam and Sofia Panasiuk to guide your exploration of these questions and more.
Both the “Pay-What-You-Can” and "free" tickets serve as a ticket to our café! We ask that you consider making a donation by purchasing a “‘Pay-What-You-Can”’ ticket to help us make our work and growth as an organization possible. If you have accessibility-related concerns, please visit our Eventbrite Page—in the event description you will find some accessibility-related information about the venue and the event.
Experimental Series: Collective Phenomenology: A workshop on shared experience
When: Wednesday, July 3rd, 2024. 7:00-9:00 pm
Where: Bampot House, 201 Harbord St., Toronto, ON
Tickets: $15 (Ticket price includes a drink at Bampot!)
On July 3rd, we will be hosting the second event of our experimental event series: Collective Phenomenology: A workshop on shared experience! Phenomenology is most straightforwardly the study of how things appear in experience. It takes as its object solely how the world appears in subjective, first-person experience, and understands the world according to the appearances of things in experience. Phenomenology is also a method of doing philosophy that focuses on describing experience, but not giving explanations for how or why it is experienced.
This workshop is inspired by a series of workshops hosted by Herbert Spiegelberg, an American phenomenologist who played a prominent role in bringing phenomenology to the United States. From 1965 to 1972, Spiegelberg organized workshops on how to practice rather than merely study phenomenology. These were intensive workshops for collective inquiry, intended to demonstrate that reality is always already shared, and that experience, while subjective, must also be understood as co-subjective.
In our workshop, we will do a series of perceptual experiments, embodied experiments, and concrete phenomenology. These experiments will focus on sense isolation, perception, and experience recall. For each experiment, we will pay attention not only to the content of our particular experience but also to the attitudes we have while having the experience. Together, we will explore what these experiences are like by sharing them with one another, developing our own perspectives and attending to how and where our perspectives converge and diverge.
For more information on this event and to purchase your ticket, please RSVP on Zeffy below!
Why I’d rather be friends with a “bad” person
By Alexandra Gustafson
There is a general consensus among philosophers that a bad person cannot be a good friend. The argument goes something like this: “Good friendship” requires “good” things like honesty, empathy, kindness, etc. “Bad people” (so it goes) are not honest, empathetic, or kind. Ipso facto, bad people cannot be good friends. I’ll argue, however, that there are certain things good friendship requires that a wholly good person would not do. As such, at least in some cases, a bad person may actually be the better friend to have.
Imagine, if you will, that you and your friend have been recently arrested. Let’s imagine that this arrest was for your joint participation in a peaceful protest. Once arrested, you and your friend are separated and ruthlessly interrogated. The interrogators inform you that all of those involved in the planning of the protest will be prosecuted “to the fullest extent of the law,” whereas those who merely participated will be released with a small fine. Now, suppose that you were indeed part of the planning; however, your friend was not. Supposing you are comfortable lying in order to protect your cause and to avoid unjust punishment, you would, obviously, deny the significance of your involvement. But what would your friend do?
Let us imagine your friend being interrogated in the next room. They are told: “If you will only provide testimony that your comrade was part of the planning, we will not even fine you—we will let you go free without punishment.” What would a wholly good person do?
We have already said that good things like honesty are part of what define good friendship. Supposing the wholly good person has this virtuous character trait, what would they do in this situation? Obviously, they would tell the truth: you were part of the planning. They would say this with good intentions. Perhaps, by cooperating with law enforcement, they think they would somehow ultimately help your case; this would suggest that being honest in this situation is instrumentally good, or valuable because of what it brings about. More likely, however, the wholly good person thinks being honest is always the honourable or moral thing, even when there are bad consequences; this would indicate a commitment to the intrinsic goodness of honesty. Probably, a wholly good person would have this commitment. Is it always honourable or moral to be honest, regardless of the consequences, however?
I argue that it is not, and that the above case is precisely one where the moral thing to do is to lie unhesitatingly and unflinchingly. It is not only the moral thing to do (for the reason that the punishment does not fit the “crime”), it is what good friendship demands. This is because a good friendship is not consistent with betrayal and, in this case, telling the truth amounts to precisely that. In this way, perhaps honesty is not such a crucial component of good friendship, after all; perhaps loyalty is more essential. Certainly, I would prefer the friend who lies like a snake in the grass; who swears up and down he never even met me till today; that he knows nothing and isn’t saying shit. If that makes me a bad person, well—maybe — it also makes me a superior friend.
Toronto Events
If you want more opportunities to connect, inquire and mingle with like-minded people, check out Chris’ Calendar. Chris curates this calendar with events happening in Toronto. Events include thought-provoking lectures, group discussions, and workshops.
makeworld’s Calendar of Toronto Events
makeworld’s curated list of recurrent events in Toronto, which include tech meetups, lectures, unconventional comedy shows, and discussion-based events (like ours!).
The Official Toronto Pride Event Calendar
Happy Pride Month! Here you can find a list of pride events happening in Toronto throughout this month.
Readings & Resources
Sophia’s Recommendations:
“Friendship and the Self” by Dean Cocking and Jeanette Kennett. In this paper, Cocking and Kennett develop a view of intimate friendships. They go through different views of friendship (which is interesting in itself!), and then develop an account for the nature of our attachment to our close friends they take to be unaccounted for in other views. In a close friendship, they argue, “I am (partly) determined by the friend’s interpretation of me, and I have reasons to act that are determined by her interest” (527). I find this account of friendship quite convincing, because I think it’s true that I will often do things I wouldn’t normally do because my friend likes them, and that when my friend tells me something I haven’t noticed about myself, seeing myself through their eyes often changes my understanding of myself. It is for this reason that I think friendships are so important, but it is also for this reason that they might be morally dangerous (Cocking and Kennett have another paper called “Friendship and Moral Danger,” where they address the latter implication of their view. If you have a subscription to Ethics you can find it there!).
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante. In terms of its relation to our last café, the title speaks for itself! This book is the story of an intimate, all-encompassing friendship between Elena and Lila, two girls growing up together in a poor neighbourhood in Naples after World War Two. Here is one of my favourite quotes from the novel, written from Elena’s perspective as she recalls venturing into another part of Naples and imagining she is with Lila: “I, I and Lila, we two with that capacity that together—only together—we had to seize the mass of colors, sounds, things and people, and express it and give it power.”
Featured Quote
Loving friendships provide us with a space to experience the joy of community in a relationship where we learn to process all our issues, to cope with differences and conflict while staying connected.
- bell hooks
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To whom it may concern: #13.