Last word spoken on friends

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• The last word on friendship — Guardian

What was the Last Word spoken ever in Friends?

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Oh My GOD!	Where?
Balls	How you doin’?

eisai_xazo posted over a year ago

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In a world full of enmity it is always interesting to contemplate the nature of friendship. Received wisdom has it that a friend is a person who gives without being asked; who understands, or tries to; who rejoices at good fortune and supports through bad; who tells unpleasant truths and pleasant untruths when either is necessary; whose affection is freely given, and who makes the innocent and proper assumption that all the claims, expectations, rights and duties of this vital and valuable human bond are reciprocal. Who could disagree? Perhaps the most important human relationship is the parenting, and especially mothering, of small children. But even the latter has friendship as part of its goal, if successful. Because friends are independent partners in their relationship, achieving friendship with one’s offspring means that the project of helping them grow into freedom has worked.

The great philosopher of friendship is Aristotle. In two striking chapters of his Nichomachean Ethics he distinguishes genuine friendship from two simulacra, one in which the basis of the relationship is pleasure, the other in which it is mutual usefulness. These shallow forms of friendship last only as long as the pleasure or utility they afford, says Aristotle, whereas true friendship lasts because it is «grounded in good,» in the sense that one wishes for one’s friend what is best for him. Aristotle calls this friendship «perfected» or «completed» because its goal lies wholly within the relationship itself, and does not treat it as merely instrumental for some other or further end.

Aristotle says that a friend is «another self», meaning that the kind of concern one properly has for one’s own good is extended to one’s friend too. Proper self-concern is appropriate for an ethical individual, who will be motivated thereby to act nobly, and to make intelligent decisions about how to choose and act — and who will therefore always see that, as a social being, what is best for himself is at one with what is best for his friends and (ultimately) community. To treat a friend as another self, therefore, is always to will the best for him for his own sake.

The Aristotelian ideal of friendship is personal and mutual, and the very highest friendships are exclusive. Other philosophers took a different view. Immanuel Kant held that the truly virtuous individual will offer friendship to all other people equally, and that it is legitimate for people to expect a reciprocity of pleasure and utility. Soren Kierkegaard rejected Aristotle’s view on the Christian ground that since one is to love all one’s neighbours, there is no room for friendships that exclude any of them or discriminate among them.

These opinions are not, as it happens, inconsistent with Aristotle’s view. One can nourish benevolent feelings towards the rest of humanity in general, and work for its good — and can appropriately expect from most of one’s acquaintanceships a mutuality of pleasure and usefulness — while at the same time enjoying true friendship, in Aristotle’s sense, with just one or some others. The key is that the overriding point of the relationship is the relationship itself. How indeed could one be a genuinely good friend to one’s lover, one’s family, one’s chosen comrades, without offering them more of oneself than to strangers, however much one’s concern is to be a responsible part of the comity of man? For friendship is by its nature particular, with its focus in individual things, in confidences and the security provided by mutual understanding. Multiplying such relationships too far makes each one less.

«The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,» said Polonius, «grapple to thy soul with hoops of steel; but do not dull thy palm with entertainment of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade.» This advice seems to render the making of new friends impossible, and therefore needs qualification; but it suggests an allied truth, which is that friendships once made need tending; and nothing substitutes for time together, in circumstances where other pressures are lifted so that the gates of communication can spring open, allowing free trade to pass between.