Friendship Studies: Politics and Practices E-Book

• Herausgeber: ibidem
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 626

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

This anthology brings together scholarship in the field of Friendship Studies. In recent decades, friendship has been a site of analysis for understanding the connections between people and groups, and as a fabric for holding the political and social together. Starting with the theoretical debates about how to conceptualize friendship as a political idea, the anthology then looks at friendship’s relationship with justice, the state, and civic relations. The collection presents cutting-edge research which moves the theorization of friendship beyond western confines to consider the themes in cross-cultural and decolonized contexts.

Leseprobe

ibidem Press, Stuttgart

Table of Contents

Towards a Friendship Studies

Friendship as a Family of Practices

Sans Amity, No Truth or Justice

Justice as Friendship: The Relevance of Friendship in Theorising About Law

Fraternity, Solidarity, and Civic Friendship

Friendship and the State: Friendship as an Analogy for Political Obligation

Social Freedom and the Value(s) of Friendship

Civic Friendship After Covid: Strengthening Social Cohesion Through Other-orientated Emotions

Decolonising Friendship

Principles of Friendship and Decolonizing Cross-Cultural Peace Research in Aotearoa New Zealand

Unpacking Intersectionalities: On Boundaries and Culture in Javanese Friendships

Brothers Can’t Be Friends: The Embedded Hierarchy in Vietnam’s Relationship with China

Comparing the Contemporary Significance of Classical Friendship Ideals for China and the Liberal Democratic West

Towards a Friendship Studies

Graham M. Smith

What is friendship and why is it important?

If one person were to come to a point of sincerely posing this question to another, then it would be a cause for deep concern. The posing of such a question indicates that something has gone awry in the life of the enquirer. The questioner might well be suffering from some personal loss or psychological illness. For an individual to question friendship in this way reveals a fundamental disconnection from the world of mutuality, recognition, sympathy, and sharing. To ask the question is to disclose a disruption in the experience of binding of self with others, and with what sustains selfhood and identity. It is the question posed by one who is fundamentally detached and adrift. If such a question were asked in earnest on a personal level, no definition or explanation could be forthcoming—at least not one that would likely make sense to the questioner. Asked in the course of a human life gone astray, this question can only be responded to by being a good friend. It is not discussion but demonstration which is required as an answer.

No doubt this is an extreme case. Nevertheless, it also points to something of significance: the experience and practice of friendship is ubiquitous. Indeed, perhaps friendship is so ubiquitous that its complexities and possibilities are not sufficiently noticed or appreciated. It pervades our shared world so extensively that we do not even see it anymore. It has become commonplace. Perhaps because of its ubiquity and the fact that it is taken for granted, friendship also points to something very deep about the human experience. Indeed, it might well be a part of our basic ontology insofar as it appears to be a necessary component of the human condition. It is difficult if not impossible to imagine our world without it. That is what makes the question of ‘What is friendship and why is it important?’ so difficult to address. What this extreme case draws our attention to is the fact that friendship of some variety is necessary not only for a successful and flourishing life, but for the common life of human beings to be sustained at all.

It is no doubt true that personal friendships—the kinds of friendships which everyone seeks and which are welcome sustenance in the lives of billions—can be analysed in such a way as to bring coherence to our question as a part of a scholarly enquiry. In so doing, personal friendships are shown to cross the borders of a number of concerns. Personal friendships are never just personal. Although they might be thought of as private and individual, focusing on a unique identification between the friends and set of personalized emotions, reflection shows that our friendships are in part defined by, and transcend, the things which ‘border’ them. Personal friendships already contain implications for politics, ethics and philosophy, sociology, economics, and culture. This list could be expanded. Each of these fields raises fresh questions and identifies new puzzles about friendship. Each of these fields also brings forth fresh insight and understanding of friendship as a personal, intimate, and perhaps even unique bond between persons. Such insights are likely to enhance and inform the experience of friendship as it is lived between persons.

It is evident that personal friendships have implications for realms beyond what is immediate to the friends. Further reflection indicates the possibility of a wider and deeper perspective with friendship taken as a concern which expands beyond the personal instance and example and on to something more generic. Approached in this way we focus on the foundations, dynamics, and value of friendship. Friendship as a site of serious intellectual enquiry encompasses this, but it does not rest with the model of personal friendship (which is to say, it recognizes that the personal model of friendship is already complex and variegated). A concern with friendship includes the personal, but just as an account of personal friendship must consider wider dimensions, so too does the study of friendship move beyond the personal into these wider dimensions. This takes the study of friendship beyond the personal model. As a site of study, scholars are concerned with not reducing friendship to a single instance (the personal), but to exploring the diversity and variety of this phenomena. Thus, a concern with friendship also begins to touch upon the deeper questions of which personal friendship is simply one response. Understood in its most basic form friendship is a relation, and thus to be exploring and explaining friendship is to be engaged with the bonds between person and person, group and group. To be interested in these bonds is to be concerned with what is somehow shared between people; it is to be interested in how they act together, and how they understand each other, their ideas and ideals. However, it is not just about what is shared. What the relationship of friendship points to is something more than mere identity and sameness. It is also a way of being with others. That is to say, friendship is as much about the relationship of otherness and difference as it with self and sameness. It is the relationship which is shared—the selves of the friends are kept distinct from each other. The friends attend to their friendship, they are not friends without it, but crucially they do not misidentify as each other. They do not need to become each other. They share the friendship, but do not need to possess, change, or control their friend.

Thus, friendship has a personal dimension to be sure; but it also points to something wider and more complex than this. Every instance of friendship is an instance of a wider dynamic which enables a connection between self and other, sameness and difference, structure and freedom. In this way, friendship is personal but it is also something more than the personal. Friendship is a relation, practice and activity which is connected to the social and political structure itself. It enables coherence whilst ensuring the possibility of change. It allows identification whilst preserving difference. It is a way of navigating self and other in a shared world.

In this light, to think about friendship again is to begin to re-engage with a tradition which has been obscured by Western modernity, but which also holds great promise for the times towards which we are heading. It is to focus again on what binds person to person, group to group. It is to focus again on that sharing and basic connectedness which provides the fabric onto which the social, cultural, religious, and political world is woven.

An outline of the contributions in this book

This book is a contribution towards the study of friendship. Each of the essays in this collection attend to some aspect of friendship. In so doing they show the way that friendship penetrates disciplines, interconnects with other concepts, and crosses cultural borders and systems of thought.

The first half of the book treats friendship conceptually and has a special focus on its political and societal aspects. The opening chapter by P.E. Digeser starts by thinking about how we can conceptualise friendship given its diversity. This is a crucial question as it is both a philosophical/theoretical question about what friendship is, and it is a question which recognises the historical, geographical, and cultural variety of the practices that are called friendship. The problem here is that ‘friendship’ becomes tormented on the horns of a dilemma. If the variety is recognised and friendship is defined very broadly then everything becomes friendship and it loses its conceptual value. If it is defined too narrowly then not only is the (cultural) variety of friendship ignored, but that friendship might become so precise that no existing relationship meets its criteria. Digeser proposes to answer this question by thinking about friendship in terms of ‘family resemblances’: friendships share overlapping characteristics, but they do not al share the same (limited set) of characteristics. Digeser proposes that friendship is ‘a set of social practices in which certain norms and expectations govern not only the actions, but also the motivations of the friends’. This approach immediately recognises the diversity of friendship. Digeser focuses on what how the friends understand their relation and what they seek to do. For Digeser, friendship is a practice, or ‘set of shared rules or norms to which participants must subscribe if they are to partake of the activity in question’. Although the practice of friendship is ‘plastic’ and can be shaped by the people involved, nevertheless, for it to be meaningful as a practice the friends must recognise that they are engaged in it. There could be various different ways of motivating friendship. There could also be various different things that the friends do together (and how they do them). However, in trying to identify friendship, and to distinguish it from other relationships, Digeser argues that: ‘A friendship … is a social practice in which the friends mutually recognize the appropriate motivations in one another and act in a manner than is consonant with expectations of how friends should act’. It is this idea of friendship as a practice—something that people understand themselves to be doing with each other—that is reflected in the conceptual essays which follow and this collection as a whole.

The next five chapters discuss the relationship between friendship and aspects of politics. The relationship between friendship and justice is an important one, although one dominant Western conception of friendship and justice is that they are opposed. In this view, justice (understood as an impartial procedure) is what is needed precisely because individuals have partial preferences motivated by emotional concerns. However, the relationship between friendship and justice has not always been seen in this way. Indeed, some form of friendship seems necessary to motivate a concern with justice. Friendship might be considered to be necessary as a grounds for any form of justice. For similar reasons concerning impartiality and rationality, friendship has also been neglected and even dismissed as a way of conceptualising relations between citizens. However, it is far from clear that what has replaced friendship is really fit to structure large and diverse groups (be that a fragmented and individualised citizenship, or identity with the state or nation). Nor is it the case that friendship should be thought of as a private relation serving individuals outside of the political sphere—and political freedom.

Preston King provides a chapter which considers what it is that binds us together and causes us to act in a just way. The essay shows that this cannot be truth—either believing that we hold it, or being committed to seeking it. Holding the same beliefs as others (whether they be true or not) does not bind us to others as our positions and actions in relation to those truths might be very different. Holding the same beliefs is coincidental, it does not mean that we share something. If we are seeking truth then (by definition) we do not know truth. It is the case that we can commit to finding the truth—but then it is our commitment to finding the truth, and not the truth itself, which has bound us (but does this common search provide the grounds for substantive relation?). King argues that for social justice to exist something other than the love of truth is needed. What is needed is ‘a minimal, even primal, foundation, one of mutual affection among fellow creatures’—in a word: friendship. Such a friendship facilitates the discussion of truth and the development of community and culture, not the other way around. As King writes, although beliefs and customs may change over time: ‘friendship is perceived as constant; the ideas contested qualify as secondary. The baseline of friendship does not oppose counterargument, but warmly welcomes it. It does not deflect from truth, but nimbly facilitates it.’

Seow Hon Tan approaches friendship and justice from the perspective of law. The basic problem here is that there needs to be some background association that enables us to resolve the ambiguities of policies and procedures (this approach thus has correspondences with the claims King advances about friendship being a background condition for other enterprises). Tan notes that these background associations are increasingly difficult to find in pluralistic societies. Tan’s chapter argues that friendship provides the model for understanding these background obligations. Tan notes that friendship ‘has a norm-generating effect as parties relate in a long-term reciprocal relation that is both reactive and voluntary and as parties treat each other as non-fungible. Not only is friendship norm-generating, an unspoken reflective and dialogic methodology exists that enables friends to work out their obligations to each other’. Friendship, then, does not need agreement about all things, but does presuppose some common enterprise which generates obligations. Ultimately Tan goes on to show that this is not an issue that should concern philosophers—it is of direct concern to the practitioners of law too.

The chapter by Sibyl A. Schwarzenbach starts from the assumption ‘that social and political justice requires some form of community or commonality between citizens’. The question the chapter addresses is what form this should take in pluralist democracies. Here the notion of civic friendship is proposed and contrasted to both fraternity and solidarity. In summary, the problem with both of these notions (and their practice) is that they are quickly gendered and lead to understandings of bonding that are militaristic and combative. Ultimately this is not only exclusionary, they are also likely to reproduce the very fragmentation and division we hope to overcome. Furthermore, taken to the extreme, they can also lead to oppressive and totalitarian forms of politics. Instead Schwarzenbach argues that attention should be given to the idea of civic friendship which provides a model of ethical praxis. Friendship is focused on the reproduction of flourishing relations for their own sake. This also brings those activities that have (traditionally) been associated with women back into the polity. However, civic friendship must be adapted to the 21st century and not be a return to the past. As Schwarzenbach writes, the social vision here: ‘is the model of an ethical labour and reproduction of relations of philia, a model which now centrally includes women and other overlooked groups’. The model of the democratic citizen therefore moves away from militaristic and economic models, and towards reciprocity, goodwill, and compromise. Schwarzenbach concludes that ‘the norm of democratic citizenship ought to be that of a civic friend: a model rich in suggestions of how to resolve the claims of self and other, and even the eternal conflict between the values of liberty and equality themselves’.

In the chapter by Ruairidh J. Brown friendship is used to understand the relations between citizens, focusing primarily on obligation and the state. This is insightful as clearly friendship creates obligations for the friends, but friendship is also thought to be a voluntary relationship and one of mutual aid and mutual deliberation (these obligations and deliberative aspects also discussed by Tan). In order to explore the possibilities of a connection between friendship, obligation, and the state, the chapter contrasts the idea of friendship as a model of the state to that of another influential model: the family. As Brown notes, the family model of the relations between citizens and state has appeal because in both instances ‘one is born into a social group one did not choose, yet, despite this lack of choice, one still feels a sense of obligation to the other members of this group’. The state-as-parent analogy also encourages us to think of the state as both a benevolent provider and an authority which should not be challenged. This view has been criticised by feminists as it is predominantly understood in gendered and patriarchal terms, and it ignores the emotional and reproductive labour (traditionally) carried out by women (also discussed in Schwarzenbach’s chapter). Furthermore, it also seems to deny the agency of the citizens (they are treated like children) and seems to lead to the conclusion that the state should be obeyed simply because it is the state. In contrast to this model, the chapter argues that friendship is a more appropriate model. Although ‘chosen’ the choice of friends is nevertheless curtailed by geographical location. Friendships are characterised by shared experiences. It is the interactions between friends that create moral obligations. Using this model the chapter shows how citizens can consider the state (and each other) friends who are involved in a cooperative enterprise of world-building. This world building is a shared enterprise and creates obligations, but it also allows for flexibility and freedom.

In Shay Welch’s chapter the relationship between friendship and freedom is discussed. In so doing, the chapter connects friendship to one of the most prominent and recognisable political concepts and ideals in the Modern Western tradition of political thought. The chapter focuses on liberal notions of freedom as its starting point. In liberal notions of freedom, the role of the state is to constitute two related spheres: the public and the private. Many would assume that friendship belongs to the private sphere. Indeed, the revival of friendship in Western political thought has been a move against the assumption that friendship is individualised and private and has no (legitimate) role in the theorisation of the public life of the polity. The chapter advances this work by arguing that in addition to the public and the private there is a third sphere of freedom: the social. In contrast to the liberal understanding of the private sphere which characterises as individualised, the social sphere is where individuals pursue projects which cannot be achieved individually. It is a sphere of interaction and not just action. It is here that we find friendship. The chapter conceptualises such friendship as being flexible. Friendship is a free social relation. It stretches from relations with strangers to the more intimate. Crucially it does not predetermine ways that friends are to connect with one another. Thus, in the social sphere, Welch writes that ‘individuals function more as persons than in roles’. The chapter argues that those who wish to enhance their social relations (and thus their social freedom) would benefit from working towards such forms of friendship. Friendship is thus practical in providing a liberatory model, and an inspiration to act together.

The chapter by Ana Romero-Iribas and Consuelo Martínez-Priego is both unique and timely insofar as it approaches the concern with atomisation and social connection from the perspective of a recent event: the Covid-19 pandemic. This has had a fragmenting consequence for both individuals and institutions, leading to loneliness and isolation. The chapter considers civic friendship to be a remedy to this. Civic friendship involves other-orientated emotions. It is a concern for both self and others, and aims at collective goods. However, it is not just emotional—it also has a rational component. Thus conceived, civic friendship offers a solution to the problems of fragmentation from three perspectives. From the point of view of the sociological, ‘it is a relationship that is based on trust between citizens and cooperating to promote shared interests’; from the point of view of political theory, it offers a defence to totalitarianism by promoting freedom; from a psychological point of view, civic friendship binds other-orientated emotions. Thus this chapter also illustrates how friendship transcends disciplines as the topic and discussion is situated between political philosophy and social and emotional psychology. Civic friendship cannot be reduced to the emotions—but it cannot exist without them either. According to Romero-Iribas and Martínez-Priego, civic friendship is characterised by other-orientated emotions. The action which results from these emotions is guided by concern for the shared life of the subject and the other. These emotions are therefore not utopian or altruistic (self-sacrificing), they are rational emotions and wholly suited to political life. In discussing civic friendship in these terms, this chapter does much to free the emotions from being confined to the personal view of friendship which would view than as idiosyncratic and irrational, and to put them on a rational and generalized basis in politics and society as a whole.

* * *

With the essay by Astrid H.M.Nordin the book refocuses its approach to the study friendship—one that begins to look at how friendship is structured by, and structures, the local and global relations in which it is embedded. Furthermore, whilst the preceding essays have looked at friendship from a largely Western focus, the essays which form the second half of the book explore friendship as methodology, theory, and practice beyond the West. However, Nordin’s chapter (like the other chapters found here) does not seek to dismiss the work that has been done in the ‘Western’ tradition. Instead, by extending inquiry into friendship beyond ‘the West’, Nordin’s approach allows both Western and non-Western traditions to attain a mutually enlightening interface, and to further our knowledge and conceptualisation of friendship in a decolonised and more radical way. In this way Nordin’s chapter highlights some of the dominant assumptions in ‘Western’ ways of thinking about friendship, and thus to show the cultural specificity of that way of thinking, how that specificity leads to limitations, and how things could be thought otherwise. Focusing on International Relations, Nordin uses visions of friendship from beyond the West to propose three alternative assumptions to those which structure Western thought: (1) that friendship is a central category for theorising global political relations, and is not best understood in binary relation to enmity; (2) friends need to be significantly other to the self; and (3) we can have positive friendships with an unstable, flexible, and fluid sense of self. Nordin argues that these alternative starting points not only bring what is excluded back in, they also show how Western ways of thinking about friendship continue to structure global relations. Thus, Nordin’s call for a postcolonial friendship studies is more than a call for diversity. As Nordin writes ‘the project is not simply one of creating more diversity, it is an active process of engagement and change in the ways that we think and the things that we privilege’. Our understanding and practice of friendship are central to this.

The chapter by Heather Devere, Kelli Te Maihāroa, Maui Solomon, and Maata Wharehoka is an example of both the theory and practice of cross-cultural research on friendship that is identified by Nordin as a way to both challenge the dominance of Western models and to enhance our understanding of friendship. It explores the possibility of relating the methodology in the work of Professor Linda Tuhiwai Smith, kaupapa Māori (also introducing here kaupapa Moriori) to the principles of friendship developed by Professor Preston King in his essay ‘Friendship and Politics’ published in 2007. Thus, this chapter is not only about cross-cultural friendship and decolonised methods, it is an act of cross-cultural friendship. In other words, the decolonial aspects of the approach are performative in the friendships of the researchers. The chapter achieves this by identifying eight principles of kaupapa Māori and Moriori research methods which are then compared to the ten principles of friendship proposed by King. In this way not only are new insights generated, but they are achieved via a decolonizing methodology that allows for sensitive material to be revealed in a way that avoids some of the harm research can cause to communities that have already experienced a painful history. This is also an example of how Western and non-Western views of method and friendship can work in a productive way together, and can be understand to be cooperative and restorative rather than mutually exclusive.

In the chapter by Eric AntonHeuser some of the philosophical ideals behind Javanese friendships are discussed. In the spirit of interdisciplinary and decolonial approaches to the study of friendship, Heuser draws from the history of friendship within anthropology to show how this has led to a marginalisation of friendship historiographies from the Global South. As Heuser writes: ‘…we need more in-depth analysis of philosophies from the Global South to gain a broader understanding of the different ideals of friendship that exist, across cultural boundaries and across different historical epochs’. Focusing on asymmetrical friendships in patronage or embedded in business contexts and homosocial friendships, Heuser finds that the intersections between friendship and other social relationships echo particular socio-cultural boundaries, which define contemporary friendship practices in Java. Fieldwork in Java has shown that friendships are highly flexible and oscillate between different moral-social poles provided by their ‘neighbouring’ relationships. The chapter concludes that to understand friendship on a more comprehensive level then attention needs to be paid to the local construction and meaning of those intersections that shape the social realities of friendships. This research is therefore an example of how non-Western forms of friendship map onto, but also challenge, Western constructions and practices.

The chapter by Chiung-Chiu Huang considers the possibility of the relations between Vietnam and China as being one of ‘friends’. Despite the shared characteristics of the two countries (in terms of culture, political system, and shared ideology), certain dynamics prevent them from truly being friends. The chapter argues that Vietnam and China could hardly become friends due to the historical fact of the Sino-centred tribute system, the nature of the relationships between/among socialist states, and Vietnam’s feeling of inferiority when comparing itself to China. At the core of the inability to become friends appears to be a deep and persistent inequality and the presence of hierarchy. This would appear to chime with some of the assumptions typical in Western theories of friendship (e.g. that the friends have to be equal), but also some of the themes from Confucian views about friendship (e.g. that friendship was the fifth relationship based on equality, and thus the relationship which sat least well with the other four hierarchical relationships considered normative). However, the chapter draws attention to a different epistemology from that of the Western literature which would emphasise sameness in friendship. In so doing, it offers a sharp contrast to expectations that friendship is about like attracting like, or sameness. Indeed, the inability for Vietnam and China to become friends (despite their similarities) draws attention to the specificity of the Western model (as Heuser’s chapter has also emphasised in the case of Java). This also helps to explain why Vietnam views its relations with China in a more structural and role-based terminology: comrades and brothers.

The final chapter, by John von Heyking, connects both China and the West, and the global with the local. Focusing on political friendship, the chapter compares Plato and Aristotle for the West, and Confucius for China. Although there are differences in the approaches of the Ancients, philia for the ancient Greeks and ren for Confucius, are regarded by both traditions as the culmination of virtue. As Heyking writes: ‘By comparing the two traditions on friendship, one compares the whole of their moral possibilities in microcosm’. The chapter explores these similarities under three rubrics: friendship as the genesis of political order; friendship as ideal of political order; festivity and political friendship. Crucially, the local and the global are linked in both traditions as they maintain that the good regime depends upon the friendships of those who are virtuous. Friendship is present and flows through all levels of political activity and organization. However, not only is friendship essential to the development of personhood, it is also the foundation for homonoia or harmony. This means not that we must agree, but that we must seek a foundation that allows for diversity and disagreement. This has consequences not only for individuals and regimes, but the relations between regimes themselves, which leads us back to the potential for more friendly and harmonious relations between China and the USA.

* * *

Taken as a whole, these essays demonstrate that the study of friendship is an important concern—indeed, it might well be vital to our times. To think about friendship is to re-engage with what might be thought of as a fundamental question—a question that is likely to generate many answers. What is friendship? Friendship is a relationship between persons which forms of complex of self and other, sameness and difference. Why is friendship important? Friendship is important because no recognizably human world is possible without it, and the possibility of a shared world of freedom would be extinguished.

 

Friendship as a Family of Practices

P. E. Digeser

One of the great challenges of proceeding with any study of friendship—be it philosophical, historical, sociological, anthropological or psychological—is having an adequate account of the object of study. One can hardly proceed without providing some answer to the question “what is friendship?” The challenge, however, is that any thoughtful exploration of friendship will soon face the reality of its extraordinary diversity. This article seeks to make sense of that diversity by building on the suggestion, offered by a number of philosophers, that different understandings of friendship bear no more than a family resemblance to one another. The theoretical challenge taken up here is to offer an account of friendship that is both consistent with the view that it is a family resemblance concept and that tells us something about how it differs from other sorts of relationships. The goal is to provide plausible generalizations that will hold, more or less, for how we use the concept. Helping to structure this endeavor is Michael Oakeshott’s idea of practice. More specifically, the article primarily sets out what it means for friendship to be understood as a set of rule-governed social practices.

The second part of the article considers a number of objections that could be raised to seeing friendship on these terms. After addressing three such objections, the remaining sections consider the criticism that, unlike the account I offer, it is indeed possible to set out the necessary and sufficient conditions for friendship. To develop and respond to this critique, the discussion takes Elizabeth Telfer’s particularly concise and well-formulated account of friendship as illustrative of a philosophical attempt to nail-down the conditions for friendship. In response, I argue that no one motive or specific sort of action is essential for friendship.

Family Resemblance and Friendship

To cut to the chase, the basic elements of the theory of friendship offered here are rather simple: friendship is composed of a set of social practices in which certain norms and expectations govern not only the actions, but also the motivations of the friends. These practices bear no more than a family resemblance to one another. No essential action or motivation differentiates friendship from other social practices or unites the different practices of friendship. Supplementing these basic elements are certain features of practices. Like all practices, cultivating and having friends requires learning and subscribing to norms, conventions and expectations which are then interpreted and employed with varying degrees of skill and success. Like many practices, the conventions associated with friendship are less about what to do at any particular time and more about how to go about doing whatever it is that friends wish to do for or with one another. In addition to these more general features of practices, friendships entail more specific conditions. For example, friendships also appear to require the mutual recognition of appropriate motivations. As in the case of the actions that we expect from our friends, there exist multiple kinds of motivations that affect the tenor of the relationship. The practices of friendship are diverse, historically contingent and adverbial in character. This understanding of friendship will be broad enough to encompass the wide variety friendships. Friendship is a flexible relationship whose boundaries are ultimately established only by the human imagination.

Evidence of friendship’s flexibility and breadth of character is not difficult to find. Not all of our friendships are the same and none is immune to change. The friends with whom we go to the movies, out to dinner, or celebrate the New Year may not be the friends at work or the bridge group or in the mosque. The friends that we have made simply because they lived next door may not be the friends with whom we confide our secrets and seek consolation. Our friendships at work may be extraordinarily important and, in many respects, fulfilling but those may not be friends with whom we feel most relaxed and ourselves. These differences that we experience are not hard and fast. Sometimes our closest friends fade out of our lives and other times a mere acquaintance, known for years, is transformed into a close and loyal friend. At any given time, different friends and sometimes the same friends play different roles. The diversity of the relationship is astoundingly rich and important to us.

This diversity is further confirmed when we move from an individual to a social perspective. What friendship means to children is very different from what it means to adolescents and adults (Pahl, 2000, p.101). In addition, the ways of being friends may differ depending on the familiar distinctions of gender, class, and culture. In part, these differences are a matter of the sorts of actions that friends do with and for one another. The sorts of accommodations expected in guest friendships in Ancient Greece are not the same expectations of a twenty-first century reading group in Freeport, Maine. These kinds of friendships may also differ depending on the sorts of motivations that drive the friendship. In the Greek case, they are founded on certain tribal or familial obligations; in the latter case, they may be based on mutual affection or a desire to have an enjoyable evening discussing ideas.

The diversity and flexibility of friendship is a puzzle that has fascinated philosophers from Plato to Jacques Derrida. For many ancient and modern thinkers, this diversity is a spur to discern the true form or the best type of friendship. In contrast, for Derrida the philosophical difficulties of setting down the necessary and sufficient conditions of friendship tell us something about the yearning for the presence of another (and ourselves) that can never be fulfilled (Derrida, 1997). In the last century, however, an attention to language and meaning has provided a variety of ways to understand the flexibility and fluidity of language. In the case of friendship, one particularly useful suggestion is to see friendship as a family resemblance concept. As separately suggested by Sandra Lynch and Diane Jeske, the idea is that when we seek to find some common element that joins together all of the ways in which we use the word friendship, we find similarities that “crop up and disappear” (Lynch, 2005, pp.21, 189-191; Jeske, 2008, pp.95-104). In effect, the similarities in these usages bear no more than what Ludwig Wittgenstein saw as a family resemblance to one another (1968, section 66). Just as we recognize certain familial traits (large nose, high forehead, a set of facial expressions) among a group of family members, we may associate certain characteristics (affection, loyalty, care, joint activity) as part of the meaning of friendship. Nevertheless, not all of those familial traits may be shared by all the family members nor may any one of them be deemed an essential trait. Not all members of the family may have the “family nose” and some may merely have a high forehead, which others do not share at all. Similarly, not all friendships entail the sharing of secrets and some may simply involve common activities which other friendships do not entail at all. What joins together some uses of the word friendship will be unnecessary for other uses.

Seeing friendship as a family resemblance concept has a number of implications. First and foremost, it implies that “there is no determinate complete answer to the question, ‘What is friendship?’” (Jeske, 2008, p.96; Lynch, 2005, p.22). All understandings of friendship need not share some common attribute that differentiates it from all other relationships.1 Second, just as one conception of “game” (which Wittgenstein uses as another example of a family resemblance concept) is not in competition with another conception, so differing conceptions of friendship can coexist. We need not choose between conceptions of friendship in order to establish that this conception is more of a conception of friendship than some other. The fact that a friendship was motivated by respect, does not make it less than a friendship based on affection. Abandoning the search for the essential motives and actions of friendship, however, does not mean that any sort of relationship is a friendship. It does not prevent us from distinguishing friends from lovers, partners, colleagues, comrades, customers, and acquaintances (let alone strangers, enemies, rivals, and foes).2 Third, the edges of the family are going to be blurry. The differences between a friendship and a partnership may sometimes be difficult to discern. Similarly, and certainly more fraught, the line between romantic entanglement and a caring friendship is also one in which clear distinctions can be elusive. These difficulties in identifying the conceptual boundaries of friendship are not necessarily to be seen as failures or inadequacies of the concept. Rather, the lines that we draw with regard to these matters may be no more than provisional and indicative of traditions, purposes and norms that exist at a particular time and place. Finally, seeing friendship as a family resemblance concept does not preclude us from viewing certain forms of friendship as preferable to other forms of friendship. As in the case of the word “game”, we may prefer certain games over others. Those preferences, however, do not make the less preferred games something other than games and the less preferred friendships something other than friendships. In other words, employing the notion of family resemblance does not preclude us from arguing that certain friendships are better or more desirable than others. It may prevent us, however, from saying that an ideal understanding of friendship is the only form of friendship.

Why should we accept or even entertain the possibility that friendship is a family resemblance concept? In Wittgenstein’s view, there is no better answer to this question than to go “look and see.” Given the widespread experience of making, having, and sometimes losing friends, readers may want to consider whether all of their friendships, from childhood on up, are/were driven by the same motives and expressed in the same actions. At a more theoretical level, the plausibility of seeing friendship as a family resemblance concept can be strengthened by considering a well-formulated account to the contrary: an account that argues that friendship has certain core or essential motivations and actions. As noted earlier, Elizabeth Telfer provides one such account and examining her position below will help illustrate the problems associated with attempting to set out the necessary and sufficient conditions of friendship. While these arguments hardly amount to a proof, they do suggest a certain skepticism in finding the necessary and sufficient conditions of friendship.

Suggesting that friendship is a family resemblance concept may help diminish our expectations of finding a definitive account of friendship, but that is not the same as saying that no account whatsoever can be given. After all, friendship is a something and not an anything or a nothing. To have a friendship is to have a kind of relationship that is distinguishable from other sorts of relationships (although it frequently overlaps with a variety of other relationships and roles). In order to map out those distinctions, the following sections turn to Michael Oakeshott’s conception of practice and apply it to friendship. What is gained by employing the notion of practice is a clearer sense of the nature of the variation of understandings of friendship as well as the ways in which friendship differs from merely friendly relationships and relationships of good will.

Oakeshott and Practices

Characterizing friendship as a social practice is not new although little philosophical attention has been devoted to what that might actually entail.3 Here, the idea of a practice is meant to refer to a set of shared rules or norms to which participants must subscribe if they are to partake of the activity in question. In his account of practice, Oakeshott writes:

A practice may be identified as a set of considerations, manners, uses, observances, customs, standards, canon’s maxims, principles, rules, and offices specifying useful procedures or denoting obligations or duties which relate to human actions and utterances. It is a prudential or a moral adverbial qualification of choices and performances, more or less complicated, in which conduct is understood in terms of a procedure (Oakeshott, 1975, p.55).

Moreover, he writes, practices “may range from mere protocol to what may be called a ‘way of life’ . . . They may acquire the firmness of an ‘institution’, or they may remain relatively plastic” (Oakeshott, 1975, p.56). Practices that come to constitute institutions can take a formal character and be embodied in requirements that license sanctions or punishment if they are violated. In these cases, many of the rules and procedures that define the practice are formalized, ratified, and sometimes enforced by an identifiable authority. These practices may establish discrete roles or distinctive personae that one assumes at a particular time (e.g., a teacher, a lawyer, a doctor).

In contrast, the practice of friendship is much more plastic (to use Oakeshott’s term). It is not institutionalized in the sense that there do not exist formalized ways of becoming or being a friend (Allan, 1989, p.4; Jeske, 2008, p.129), at least in the contemporary West. Like the practices of parenting or entertaining guests, it admits a variety of approaches that are largely free of a recognized authority. Nevertheless, it is necessary to subscribe to the conventions of friendship in order to be friends. Not to abide by these conventions—either through choice, misunderstanding, or lack of competence—can mean not merely failing to participate in the practice, but suffering from informal sanctions that, in the case of friendship, can have unfortunate and sometimes heart-breaking consequences.

It will also become important to note Oakeshott’s claim that a practice entails rules that qualify or condition human actions and that those qualifications are adverbial in character. Practices do not specify performances. On Oakeshott’s use of the term, a practice is defined less by what is pursued and more by how something is pursued. As a set of adverbial conditions, a practice does not tell us specifically what to do, but rather how to do it. Hence, central elements of practices may entail acting, “punctually, considerately, civilly, scientifically, legally, candidly, judicially, poetically, morally, etc.” (Oakeshott, 1975, p.56). For example, in the practice of etiquette we are instructed how to eat, not what to eat, not what to say, but how to say it. Subscribing to a practice of etiquette does not preclude any particular kind of meal, merely how it will be eaten. Similarly, it does not prevent or demand that we say anything in particular, but rather how we say what it is that we are going to say. How we are to understand the adverbial character of the practice of friendship will be discussed below. As we shall see, it may be possible to distinguish different practices of friendship based on differences in the adverbial conditions that are expected in a relationship.

Oakeshott’s discussion draws our attention to two features of practices (mentioned earlier) that will prove useful in this account of friendship. First, the practices of friendship condition the actions of agents, and second, they condition their motives. A focus on action presupposes a certain voluntary character to friendship in the sense that we must make choices as to how to be with our friends. The norms and expectations of friendship are not self-executing in the sense that friends must interpret and apply them to specific people and circumstances. Friends must make choices. To do otherwise is to act thoughtlessly and to act thoughtlessly with our friends is to violate a common norm of friendship. In this regard, Oakeshott notes that a practice entails a language of self-disclosure. We tell the world something about us not merely by having certain desires and interests, but by the way in which we pursue those desires and interests. As we shall see, friendships can be understood as requiring particular languages of self-disclosure that set them off from other sorts of relationships. In other words, we can distinguish practices of friendship from other practices (psychiatry, parenting, policing, and so forth), not so much by what is specifically done with or for friends, but how friends go about doing the things they do.

The idea that the practices of friendship condition the actions of friends also appears to be in accord in Graham Allan’s view that “friendship is not just a voluntary or freely chosen relationship. It is one which is patterned and structured in a variety of ways by factors which can be recognized, at least to some degree, as genuinely social and lying outside the individual’s immediate control” (Allan, 1989, p.152). While the rules of the practices of friendship may be outside the individual’s immediate control, they are not totally beyond control. Practices of friendship vary within cultures, over time and between cultures. As we shall see, these variations further support the view of friendship as a family resemblance concept.

The voluntary character of friendship is embedded in the notion that friendship conditions how we are friends. Some go further and argue that the voluntary character of friendship also extends to the question of whether to initiate a friendship. In support of this position, it is argued that friendship is frequently distinguished from non-voluntary relationships of blood, in which one has little or no choice in one’s parents, siblings, or cousins. The expression “choosing a friend” or “making a friend” appears to point to a rather robust voluntary element in creation of a particular friendship.

On the other hand, the voluntary view is sometimes contested by those who argue that we also “discover friends” or find ourselves in a friendship. Anthropological and historical evidence suggests that not all peoples understand friendship as a simple matter of choice (Friedman, 1993, pp.227-228; Bell and Coleman, 1999, p.3). Even in the West, the practices of friendship may be a bit more nuanced than is frequently portrayed. While we may choose our friends, most friends come from the same socio-economic background (Allan, 1989, p.23). Furthermore, the practices of friendship may not only tell us how to be friends, but with whom we should and should not be friends. Finally, to the extent that the motivations and sentiments of friendship (discussed below) are themselves unchosen, then the decision whether to be friends would also appear to be involuntary through and through.

In this dispute over whether the choice of friends is really a choice, one could argue that the involuntary elements that are part of a practice of friendship can never fully push out the voluntary elements associated with initiating and sustaining a friendship. Certain sentiments of friendship may spontaneously well-up inside us. Certain social sanctions may exist for failing to be friends with someone from a certain tribe or class. Social status may define the opportunity set for friendship. Nevertheless, even when we “find ourselves” in a friendship because of an involuntary affection or social position we must still choose to act upon that affection as well as sustain and maintain the relationship. We may choose not to recognize the appropriate motivations in others, or resist acting on our own motives and never initiate the relationship, or we may refuse to live up to the appropriate adverbial conditions for how we should be friends and destroy the relationship. Clearly, our choices are influenced by context, although it is unlikely in the extreme that they are fully determined by context. After all, no one is attracted to everyone with the same socio-economic status. In contrast, one remains a sibling, even if one loses all (or refuses to have any) contact with a brother or sister. Not so with friendship. At least in the contemporary West, friends can always ask whether they are or should remain friends.

A second dimension of the rules of a practice is that they condition the motivations of participants. Oakeshott calls a focus on motivations, self-enactment (as opposed to self-disclosure). From his perspective, the motive of an action “is the action itself considered in terms of the sentiment or sentiments in which it is chosen and performed. An agent may, for example, choose to perform an action in a sentiment of greed, fear, compassion, resentment, benevolence, jealousy, love, hatred, kindheartedness, pity, envy etc.” (Oakeshott, 1975, p.71-72). Because self-enactment refers to the choices of sentiments and because friendships need not rest on choices of this sort, I will simply refer to the motivational requirements that constitute friendship. Moreover, these motivational features can include not only sentiments but also duties, commitments, and self-interest. In sum, friendship can be understood as a set of practices in which there are certain rules that govern how friends interact as well as why they are motivated to be and remain friends.

Objections to Viewing a Practice-based Understanding of Friendship

Before proceeding, I will consider three objections to viewing friendship as a set of practices. The first is that our relationships to our friends are so idiosyncratic that whatever expectations and norms that compose a friendship can hardly be portrayed as having the rule-governed quality of a practice. A second objection is that if there are rules and expectations associated with a friendship, they are constructed by the friends themselves. If this is the case, then friendship cannot be understood as a social practice. A third objection is that friendships require that we act for the sake of the friend and not because of a set of rules or out of a role that constitutes a practice. From this perspective, viewing friendship as a family of practices distorts its motivational requirement.

The spirit of the first objection makes an appearance in Montaigne’s essay that honored his friend Etienne La Boetie. Here Montaigne asserts that the highest form of friendship is a joining of souls (Montaigne, 1991, p.192). “Our friendship,” he noted, “has no other model than itself, and can be compared only with itself” (1991, p.193). It is a friendship “so entire and so perfect that certainly you will hardly read of the like, and among men of today you see no trace of it in practice. So many coincidences are needed to build up such a friendship that it is a lot if fortune can do it once in three centuries” (1991, p.188). It is a conception of friendship that not only turns on the individuality of the participants, but also sees the relationship itself as distinctive and close to being inimitable. It is a vision of friendship whose virtues are to be found in the very fact that it departs from “common usage” (1991, p.197).

It is certainly true that something that happens only once every three hundred years can hardly be described as a social practice. However, it is also clear that Montaigne did not understand this model of friendship as encompassing what he sees as common friendships. Consequently, the idiosyncratic character of Montaigne’s ideal conception may not be as much of an objection to seeing friendship as a practice as an exception to a more general account. An alternative possibility is that it may be useful to consider a distinction between an ideal and a set of conventions and considerations that establish an ideal. The fact that there exists an ideal friendship (however rare) does not preclude that ideal from being part of a larger social practice. From this perspective, Montaigne does carve out a vision of friendship that differentiates it from other social practices that he associated with the natural, the social, the hospitable, and the erotic (Montaigne, 1991, p.188). In so doing, he is arguing that whatever friendship happens to be, it is not to be confused with relationships possessing these characteristics. More positively, he sees friendship as a relationship in which there is no ulterior end or purpose, but only a mutually recognized love that dissolves all competing obligations. In other words, his ideal friendship contains mutually recognized motivations (their mutual love) and adverbial forms of self-disclosure (lovingly, trustingly, willingly, conjointly) that do point to a nascent practice.

A version of the second objection could be drawn out of the claim that friendships are minimally structured interpersonal relationships. For example, Laurence Thomas writes that for friendship, “aside from the rules of morality, the nature of that interaction is not defined by this or that set of social rules” (Thomas, 1987, p.219). The sociologist Ray Pahl also notes that “There is an emerging modern ideal of friendship. This is not based on rules, regulations, or any part of the institutionalized order. Individuals, out of their own volition, work out how they should behave with their friends” (Pahl, 2000, p.61). As a final example, the anthropologist, Robert Paine argues that what is deemed permissible or desirable in a friendship may be rule-governed, but “those rules appear not to be imposed from the outside, and, furthermore, they may be largely hidden from the view to all outside the relationship” (Paine, 1999, p.41). Whether these sorts of claims could serve as objections to the notion of friendship as a practice depend, in part, on how antinomian or private the relationship of friendship turns out to be. For example, on the one hand Pahl notes that the emerging modern ideal of friendship is not based on rules. On the other hand, he also outlines certain standards and norms that accompany that ideal; namely that the exchanges between friends are not scrupulously monitored, the attachments are free from legal or administrative regulation, the feelings are not ones of obligation, and the origins and maintenance of the relationship is through conscious choice (Pahl, 2000, p.62). Without a doubt, these understandings are meant to admit a high degree of variability and individuality within the relationship. Nevertheless, characterizations of the sort offered by Pahl do point to things that look like conventions, if not rules that identify a practice.

Still, there is something to the claim that the expectations and considerations that govern our relationships with our friends are privately negotiated and established (as suggested by Paine). For example, in the case of one’s closest friends, one friend cannot replace another. This attribute of friendship appears to point to the individuality of the friends as well as the possible uniqueness of each relationship. In response, one could argue that friends must understand themselves as being in a particular sort of relationship that is not just any kind of relationship. They share some kind of understanding that theirs is a friendship and not, say, a mere relationship of employer to employee, or brother to sister, or lord to vassal. There is some set of social customs or mores that allow such differentiation.

In addition, the idiosyncratic character of a particular friendship is not precluded by the idea of a practice. The rules, norms and conventions of friendship must be learned and hence presume a certain level of agency to acquire and apply those rules. Moreover, because they are learned, they can be learned well or poorly and practiced clumsily or adroitly. For some, making friends will come almost naturally. For others, it will happen in fits and starts. Because of choice or chance many will have no more than a taste of friendship. A few adepts will be so skillful as to be able to manipulate the conventions of friendship in order to establish the pretence of friendship. Out of these performances have come such assessments as true friends and false friends, close friends and fair-weather friends. Some of our friends are simply better at being friends. Just as not everyone who learns to play the clarinet can play like Artie Shaw, the learned character of the practice of friendship means that it will inevitably be practiced with a great deal of variability.

The variable character of our friendships is built into the idea of a practice in another, perhaps even more important, way. As noted earlier, the rules of friendship, like all social rules, are not self-executing. They must be understood and applied to particular persons in particular circumstances. The rules of friendship take one by the elbow and not by the throat so we must choose how we go about being friends with one another. As suggested above, while we do not choose the norms of friendship nor even perhaps choose our friends, we must choose how we go about being friends. In this way, the character of friendship must admit the idiosyncratic and the variable. The practice of friendship does not mean that all friends will respond to one another in the same way.

A third objection to seeing friendship as a social practice may be found in the claim that the reasons for friendship are very much focused on the friends themselves and not on external criteria such as social rules. For example, Lawrence Blum claims that “the conception of friendship as a practice, on the model of a game or institution involving rules, defined roles, positions, and responsibilities, etc. . . . applies very poorly to large areas of our personal moral lives and experience” (Blum, 1980, p.60). Blum filled out this objection in a later essay in considering friendship as more like a vocation than like a role. He wrote, “Thus if I appeal to the norms of friendship as a way of ensuring that I am able to regard myself as a good friend, I am not really acting for my friend’s sake. It can even be argued that appealing to the norms of friendship out of a genuine desire to be a good friend is too distant from a concern for the specific friend himself” (Blum, 1990, p.186). Within a practice, it could be argued that one is provided with a given set of reasons for doing something with or for one’s friend, whereas in a true friendship the only motivation that should count is acting for the sake of the friend. From this perspective, if Alan defends the name and reputation of his friend Denny not for Denny’s sake but because the rules of friendship tell him to do so, then he is not really being a good friend.

Blum’s argument points to a rather complicated feature of friendship involving the role of certain motivations in friendship. It is also points to the question of the connection between the norms of friendship and friendship itself. On the one hand, the general thrust of Blum’s position is quite correct: there is something about certain motivations that appear to be incompatible with friendship. Envy, jealousy, and disdain are thought to be inconsistent with initiating or maintaining a friendship. In the contemporary West, self-interest or utility are rarely taken to be sufficient motivations for friendship. On the other hand, Blum’s assertions that “acting for the sake of one’s friend” is a necessary condition for all understandings of friendship and that this condition must preclude all other motivations are less compelling. The presence of self-interest or personal advantage does not necessarily corrupt or disable friendship as long as there is also the mutual recognition of an appropriate motive (such as affection or desire). We may not see the friendships of egoists as the best sort of friendship insofar as they are based on pleasure or desire, but they may be friendships none-the-less.