Jan 1, 1917 — THE TAO OF SENECA Practical Letters from a Stoic Master BASED ON THE WRITINGS OF SENECA Foreword by Tim Ferriss FEATURING ESSAYS BY MODERN STOIC THINKERS VOLUME 1 THE TAO OF SENECA Practical Letters from a Stoic Master BASED ON THE WRITINGS OF SENECA Foreword by Tim Ferriss FEATURING ESSAYS BY MODERN STOIC THINKERS VOLUME 1 The Tao of Seneca, Volume 1 Based on the Moral Letters to Lucilius by Seneca, translated by Richard Mott Gummere. Loeb Classical Library® edition Volume 1 first published 1917; Volume 2 first published in 1920; Volume 3 first published 1925. Loeb Classical Library is a registered trademark of The President and Fellows of Harvard College. Front Cover Design by FivestarBranding™ (www.fivestarlogo.com) Book Interior Design and Typography by Laurie Griffin (www.lauriegriffindesign.com) Printed in U.S.A. THESE VOLUMES ARE DEDICATED TO ALL WHO SEEK TO BETTER THEMSELVES AND, IN DOING SO, BETTER THE WORLD. -Tim Ferriss

Jun 1, 2021 — I have had many friends in the course of my life, but only since growing older have I given much . . . .

Oct 1, 1977

Sep 15, 2021 — Hosted on the 14th September 2021, this is a recording of the third webinar in the Centre's Fostering Personal and Social Virtues series, ‘Cultivating Civic Friendship in Education’, delivered in collaboration with The Congregation for Catholic Education, part of The Vatican. This session featured papers and presentations from: Andrew Peterson Professor of Character and Citizenship Education and Deputy Director of the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, University of Birmingham. Nancy E. Snow Professor of Philosophy and Director of Institute for the Study of Human Flourishing, University of Oklahoma. Lieven Boeve Professor of Fundamental Theology, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven and Director-General of Katholiek Onderwijs Vlaanderen. The webinar was chaired by Aidan Thompson, Director of Strategic Initiatives for the Jubilee Centre, and a Q&A with attendees followed the presentations which was chaired by Dr. Jörg Schulte-Altedorneburg, Managing Director at Porticus. To view the papers given during this session visit: https://www.jubileecentre.ac.uk/2971/papers/seminars-and-webinars/cultivating-civic-friendship-in-education For further details on this series visit: https://www.jubileecentre.ac.uk/virtues For more information on all Jubilee Centre Webinars, to register for future events and to find recordings of previous sessions visit: https://www.jubileecentre.ac.uk/seminarsandwebinars [This event was recorded in September 2021, by the Jubilee Centre, via the Zoom Video Conferencing platform]

Aug 31, 2021

Jul 30, 2021 — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Menu Browse Table of Contents What's New Random Entry Chronological Archives About Editorial Information About the SEP Editorial Board How to Cite the SEP Special Characters Advanced Tools Contact Support SEP Support the SEP PDFs for SEP Friends Make a Donation SEPIA for Libraries Entry Navigation Entry Contents Bibliography Academic Tools Friends PDF Preview Author and Citation Info Back to Top Friendship First published Tue May 17, 2005; substantive revision Fri Jul 30, 2021 Friendship, as understood here, is a distinctively personal relationship that is grounded in a concern on the part of each friend for the welfare of the other, for the other’s sake, and that involves some degree of intimacy. As such, friendship is undoubtedly central to our lives, in part because the special concern we have for our friends must have a place within a broader set of concerns, including moral concerns, and in part because our friends can help shape who we are as persons. Given this centrality, important questions arise concerning the justification of friendship and, in this context, whether it is permissible to “trade up” when someone new comes along, as well as concerning the possibility of reconciling the demands of friendship with the demands of morality in cases in which the two seem to conflict. 1. The Nature of Friendship 1.1 Mutual Caring 1.2 Intimacy 1.3 Shared Activity 2. Value and Justification of Friendship 2.1 Individual Value 2.2 Social Value 3. Friendship and Moral Theory Bibliography Academic Tools Other Internet Resources Related Entries 1. The Nature of Friendship Friendship essentially involves a distinctive kind of concern for your friend, a concern which might reasonably be understood as a kind of love. Philosophers from the ancient Greeks on have traditionally distinguished three notions that can properly be called love: agape, eros, and philia. Agape is a kind of love that does not respond to the antecedent value of its object but instead is thought to create value in the beloved; it has come through the Christian tradition to mean the sort of love God has for us persons as well as, by extension, our love for God and our love for humankind in general. By contrast, eros and philia are generally understood to be responsive to the merits of their objects—to the beloved’s properties, especially his goodness or beauty. The difference is that eros is a kind of passionate desire for an object, typically sexual in nature, whereas ‘philia’ originally meant a kind of affectionate regard or friendly feeling towards not just one’s friends but also possibly towards family members, business partners, and one’s country at large (Liddell et al., 1940; Cooper, 1977a). Given this classification of kinds of love, philia seems to be that which is most clearly relevant to friendship (though just what philia amounts to needs to be clarified in more detail). For this reason, love and friendship often get lumped together as a single topic; nonetheless, there are significant differences between them. As understood here, love is an evaluative attitude directed at particular persons as such, an attitude which we might take towards someone whether or not that love is reciprocated and whether or not we have an established relationship with her.[1] Friendship, by contrast, is essentially a kind of relationship grounded in a particular kind of special concern each has for the other as the person she is; and whereas we must make conceptual room for the idea of unrequited love, unrequited friendship is senseless. Consequently, accounts of friendship tend to understand it not merely as a case of reciprocal love of some form (together with mutual acknowledgment of this love), but as essentially involving significant interactions between the friends—as being in this sense a certain kind of relationship. Nonetheless, questions can be raised about precisely how to distinguish romantic relationships, grounded in eros, from relationships of friendship, grounded in philia, insofar as each involves significant interactions between the involved parties that stem from a kind of reciprocal love that is responsive to merit. Clearly the two differ insofar as romantic love normally has a kind of sexual involvement that friendship lacks; yet, as Thomas (1989) asks, is that enough to explain the real differences between them? Badhwar (2003, 65–66) seems to think so, claiming that the sexual involvement enters into romantic love in part through a passion and yearning for physical union, whereas friendship involves instead a desire for a more psychological identification. Yet it is not clear exactly how to understand this: precisely what kind of “psychological identification” or intimacy is characteristic of friendship? (For further discussion, see Section 1.2.) In philosophical discussions of friendship, it is common to follow Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics, Book VIII) in distinguishing three kinds of friendship: friendships of pleasure, of utility, and of virtue. Although it is a bit unclear how to understand these distinctions, the basic idea seems to be that pleasure, utility, and virtue are the reasons we have in these various kinds of relationships for loving our friend. That is, I may love my friend because of the pleasure I get out of her, or because of the ways in which she is useful to me, or because I find her to have a virtuous character. Given the involvement of love in each case, all three kinds of friendship seem to involve a concern for your friend for his sake and not for your own. There is an apparent tension here between the idea that friendship essentially involves being concerned for your friend for his sake and the idea of pleasure and utility friendships: how can you be concerned for him for his sake if you do that only because of the pleasure or utility you get out of it? If you benefit your friend because, ultimately, of the benefits you receive, it would seem that you do not properly love your friend for his sake, and so your relationship is not fully one of friendship after all. So it looks like pleasure and utility friendships are at best deficient modes of friendship; by contrast, virtue friendships, because they are motivated by the excellences of your friend’s character, are genuine, non-deficient friendships. For this reason, most contemporary accounts, by focusing their attention on the non-deficient forms of friendship, ignore pleasure and utility friendships.[2] As mentioned in the first paragraph of this section, philia seems to be the kind of concern for other persons that is most relevant to friendship, and the word, ‘philia,’ sometimes gets translated as friendship; yet philia is in some ways importantly different from what we ordinarily think of as friendship. Thus, ‘philia’ extends not just to friends but also to family members, business associates, and one’s country at large. Contemporary accounts of friendship differ on whether family members, in particular one’s children before they become adults, can be friends. Most philosophers think not, understanding friendship to be essentially a relationship among equals; yet some philosophers (such as Friedman 1989; Rorty 1986/1993; Badhwar 1987) explicitly intend their accounts of friendship to include parent-child relationships, perhaps through the influence of the historical notion of philia. Nonetheless, there do seem to be significant differences between, on the one hand, parental love and the relationships it generates and, on the other hand, the love of one’s friends and the relationships it generates; the focus here will be on friendship more narrowly construed. In philosophical accounts of friendship, several themes recur consistently, although various accounts differ in precisely how they spell these out. These themes are: mutual caring (or love), intimacy, and shared activity; these will be considered in turn. 1.1 Mutual Caring A necessary condition of friendship, according to just about every view (Telfer 1970–71; Annas 1988, 1977; Annis 1987; Badhwar 1987; Millgram 1987; Sherman 1987; Thomas 1987, 1989, 1993; Friedman 1993, 1989; Whiting 1991; Hoffman 1997; Cocking & Kennett 1998; and White 1999a, 1999b, 2001) is that the friends each care about the other, and do so for her sake; in effect, this is to say that the friends must each love the other. Although many accounts of friendship do not analyze such mutual caring any further, among those that do there is considerable variability as to how we should understand the kind of caring involved in friendship. Nonetheless, there is widespread agreement that caring about someone for his sake involves both sympathy and action on the friend’s behalf. That is, friends must be moved by what happens to their friends to feel the appropriate emotions: joy in their friends’ successes, frustration and disappointment in their friends’ failures (as opposed to disappointment in the friends themselves), etc. Moreover, in part as an expression of their caring for each other, friends must normally be disposed to promote the other’s good for her sake and not out of any ulterior motive. (However, see Velleman 1999 for a dissenting view.) To care about something is generally to find it worthwhile or valuable in some way; caring about one’s friend is no exception. A central difference among the various accounts of mutual caring is the way in which these accounts understand the kind of evaluation implicit therein. Most accounts understand that evaluation to be a matter of appraisal: we care about our friends at least in part because of the good qualities of their characters that we discover them to have (Annas 1977; Sherman 1987; Whiting 1991); this is in line with the understanding of love as philia or eros given in the first paragraph of Section 1 above. For this reason, many authors argue that to be friends with bad people reveals a potentially morally condemnable evaluative defect (see, e.g., Isserow 2018). Other accounts, however, understand caring as in part a matter of bestowing value on your beloved: in caring about a friend, we thereby project a kind of intrinsic value onto him; this is in line with the understanding of love as agape given above. Friedman (1989, 6) argues for bestowal, saying that if we were to base our friendship on positive appraisals of our friend’s excellences, “to that extent our commitment to that person is subordinate to our commitment to the relevant [evaluative] standards and is not intrinsically a commitment to that person.” However, this is too quick, for to appeal to an appraisal of the good qualities of your friend’s character in order to justify your friendship is not on its own to subordinate your friendship to that appraisal. Rather, through the friendship, and through changes in your friend over time, you may come to change your evaluative outlook, thereby in effect subordinating your commitment to certain values to your commitment to your friend. Of course, within friendship the influence need not go only one direction: friends influence each other’s conceptions of value and how to live. Indeed, that friends have a reciprocal effect on each other is a part of the concern for equality many find essential to friendship, and it is central to the discussion of intimacy in Section 1.2. (For more on the notion of caring about another for her sake and the variety of philosophical accounts of it, see the entry on love.) 1.2 Intimacy The relationship of friendship differs from other interpersonal relationships, even those characterized by mutual caring, such as relationships among colleagues: friendships are, intuitively, “deeper,” more intimate relationships. The question facing any philosophical account is how that characteristic intimacy of friendship is to be understood. On this point, there is considerable variation in the literature—so much that it raises the question whether differing accounts aim at elucidating the same object. For it seems as though when the analysis of intimacy is relatively weak, the aim is to elucidate what might be called “acquaintance friendships”; as the analysis of intimacy gets stronger, the aim seems to tend towards closer friendships and even to a kind of ideal of maximally close friendship. It might be asked whether one or another of these types of friendship ought to take priority in the analysis, such that, for example, cases of close friendship can be understood to be an enhanced version of acquaintance friendship, or whether acquaintance friendship should be understood as being deficient in various ways relative to ideal friendship. Nonetheless, in what follows, views will be presented roughly in order from weaker to stronger accounts of intimacy. To begin, Thomas (1987; 1989; 1993; 2013) claims that we should understand what is here called the intimacy of friendship in terms of mutual self-disclosure: I tell my friends things about myself that I would not dream of telling others, and I expect them to make me privy to intimate details of their lives. The point of such mutual self-disclosure, Thomas argues, is to create the “bond of trust” essential to friendship, for through such self-disclosure we simultaneously make ourselves vulnerable to each other and acknowledge the goodwill the other has for us. Such a bond of trust is what institutes the kind of intimacy characteristic of friendship. (Similar ideas can be found in Annis 1987.) Cocking & Kennett (1998) caricature this as “the secrets view,” arguing: It is not the sharing of private information nor even of very personal information, as such, that contributes to the bonds of trust and intimacy between companion friends. At best it is the sharing of what friends care about that is relevant here. [518] Their point is that the secrets view underestimates the kind of trust at issue in friendship, conceiving of it largely as a matter of discretion. Given the way friendship essentially involves each caring about the other’s good for the other’s sake and so acting on behalf of the other’s good, entering into and sustaining a relationship of friendship will normally involve considerable trust in your friend’s goodwill towards you generally, and not just concerning your secrets. Moreover, friendship will normally involve trust in your friend’s judgment concerning what is in your best interests, for when your friend sees you harming yourself, she ought, other things being equal, to intervene, and through the friendship you can come to rely on her to do so. (See also Alfano, 2016, who emphasizes not just trust but trustworthiness to make similar points.) Such enhanced trust can lead to “shared interests or enthusiasms or views … [or] a similar style of mind or way of thinking which makes for a high degree of empathy” (Telfer 1970–71, 227). Telfer finds such shared interests central to the “sense of a bond” friends have, an idea similar to the “solidarity”—the sharing of values and a sense of what’s important—that White (2001) advocates as central to friendship. For trusting my friend’s assessments of my good in this way seemingly involves trusting not only that she understands who I am and that I find certain things valuable and important in life but also and centrally that she understands the value of these things that are so meaningful to me. That in turn seems to be grounded in the empathy we have for each other—the shared sense of what’s important. So Telfer and White, in appealing to such shared sense of value, are offering a somewhat richer sense of the sort of intimacy essential to friendship than Thomas and Annis. An important question to ask, however, is what precisely is meant by the “sharing” of a sense of value. Once again there are weaker and stronger versions. On the weak side, a sense of value is shared in the sense that a coincidence of interests and values is a necessary condition of developing and sustaining a friendship; when that happy coincidence dissipates, so too does the friendship. It is possible to read Annas’s summary of Aristotle’s view of friendship this way (1988, 1): A friend, then, is one who (1) wishes and does good (or apparently good) things to a friend, for the friend’s sake, (2) wishes the friend to exist and live, for his own sake, (3) spends time with his friend, (4) makes the same choices as his friend and (5) finds the same things pleasant and painful as his friend. (4) and (5) are the important claims for present purposes: making the same choices as your friend, if done consistently, depends on having a similar outlook on what reasons there are so to choose, and this point is reinforced in (5) given Aristotle’s understanding of pleasure and pain as evaluative and so as revealing what is (apparently) good and bad. The message might be that merely having coincidence in evaluative outlook is enough to satisfy (4) and (5). Of course, Aristotle (and Annas) would reject this reading: friends do not merely have such similarities antecedent to their friendship as a necessary condition of friendship. Rather, friends can influence and shape each other’s evaluative outlook, so that the sharing of a sense of value is reinforced through the dynamics of their relationship. One way to make sense of this is through the Aristotelian idea that friends function as a kind of mirror of each other: insofar as friendship rests on similarity of character, and insofar as I can have only imperfect direct knowledge about my own character, I can best come to know myself—both the strengths and weaknesses of my character—by knowing a friend who reflects my qualities of character. Minor differences between friends, as when my friend on occasion makes a choice I would not have made, can lead me to reflect on whether this difference reveals a flaw in my own character that might need to be fixed, thereby reinforcing the similarity of my and my friend’s evaluative outlooks. On this reading of the mirroring view, my friend plays an entirely passive role: just by being himself, he enables me to come to understand my own character better (cf. Badhwar 2003).[3] Cocking & Kennett (1998) argue against such a mirroring view in two ways. First, they claim that this view places too much emphasis on similarity as motivating and sustaining the friendship. Friends can be very different from each other, and although within a friendship there is a tendency for the friends to become more and more alike, this should be understood as an effect of friendship, not something constitutive of it. Second, they argue that the appeal to the friend’s role as a mirror to explain the increasing similarity involves assigning too much passivity to the friend. Our friends, they argue, play a more active role in shaping us, and the mirroring view fails to acknowledge this. (Cocking & Kennett’s views will be discussed further below. Lynch (2005) provides further criticisms of the mirroring view, arguing that the differences between friends can be central and important to their friendship.) In an interesting twist on standard accounts of the sense in which (according to Aristotle, at least) a friend is a mirror, Millgram (1987) claims that in mirroring my friend I am causally responsible for my friend coming to have and sustain the virtues he has. Consequently, I am in a sense my friend’s “procreator,” and I therefore find myself actualized in my friend. For this reason, Millgram claims, I come to love my friend in the same way I love myself, and this explains (a) Aristotle’s otherwise puzzling claim that a friend is “another self,” (b) why it is that friends are not fungible, given my role as procreator only of this particular person, and (c) why friendships of pleasure and utility, which do not involve such procreation, fail to be genuine friendships. (For more on the problem of fungibility, see Section 2.1.) However, in offering this account, Millgram may seem to confound my being causally necessary for my friend’s virtues with my being responsible for those virtues—to confound my passive role as a mirror with that of a “procreator,” a seemingly active role. Millgram’s understanding of mirroring does not, therefore, escape Cocking & Kennett’s criticism of mirroring views as assigning too much passivity to the friend as mirror. Friedman (1989) offers another way to make sense of the influence my friend has on my sense of value by appealing to the notion of bestowal. According to Friedman, the intimacy of friendship takes the form of a commitment friends have to each other as unique persons, a commitment in which the friend’s successes become occasions for joy; her judgments may provoke reflection or even deference; her behavior may encourage emulation; and the causes which she champions may inspire devotion …. One’s behavior toward the friend takes its appropriateness, at least in part, from her goals and aspirations, her needs, her character—all of which one feels prima facie invited to acknowledge as worthwhile just because they are hers. [4] As noted in the 3rd paragraph of Section 1.1, Friedman thinks my commitment to my friend cannot be grounded in appraisals of her, and so my acknowledgment of the worth of her goals, etc., is a matter of my bestowing value on these: her ends become valuable to me, and so suitable for motivating my actions, “just because they are hers.” That is, such a commitment involves taking my friend seriously, where this means something like finding her values, interests, reasons, etc. provide me with pro tanto reasons for me to value and think similarly.[4] In this way, the dynamics of the friendship relation involves friends mutually influencing each other’s sense of value, which thereby comes to be shared in a way that underwrites significant intimacy. In part, Friedman’s point is that sharing an evaluative perspective in the way that constitutes the intimacy of friendship involves coming to adopt her values as parts of my own sense of value. Whiting (1991) argues that such an approach fails properly to make sense of the idea that I love my friend for her sake. For to require that my friend’s values be my own is to blur the distinction between valuing these things for her sake and valuing them for my own. Moreover, Whiting (1986) argues, to understand my concern for her for her sake in terms of my concern for things for my sake raises the question of how to understand this latter concern. However, Whiting thinks the latter is at least as unclear as the former, as is revealed when we think about the long-term and my connection and responsibility to my “future selves.” The solution, she claims, is to understand the value of my ends (or yours) to be independent of the fact that they are mine (or yours): these ends are intrinsically valuable, and that’s why I should care about them, no matter whose ends they are. Consequently, the reason I have to care for myself, including my future selves, for my sake is the same as the reason I have to care about my friend for her sake: because I recognize the intrinsic value of the (excellent) character she or I have (Whiting 1991, 10; for a similar view, see Keller 2000). Whiting therefore advocates what she calls an “impersonal” conception of friendship: There are potentially many people exhibiting (what I would consider to be) excellences of character, and these are my impersonal friends insofar as they are all “equally worthy of my concern”; what explains but does not justify my “differential and apparently personal concern for only some … [is] largely a function of historical and psychological accident” (1991, 23). It should be clear that Whiting does not merely claim that friends share values only in that these values happen to coincide; if that were the case, her conception of friendship would be vulnerable to the charge that the friends really are not concerned for each other but merely for the intrinsically valuable properties that each exemplifies. Rather, Whiting thinks that part of what makes my concern for my friend be for her sake is my being committed to remind her of what’s really valuable in life and to foster within her a commitment to these values so as to prevent her from going astray. Such a commitment on my part is clearly a commitment to her, and a relationship characterized by such a commitment on both sides is one that consistently and non-accidentally reinforces the sharing of these values. Brink (1999) criticizes Whiting’s account of friendship as too impersonal because it fails to understand the relationship of friendship itself to be intrinsically valuable. (For similar criticisms, see Jeske 1997.) In part, the complaint is the same as that which Friedman (1989) offered against any conception of friendship that bases that friendship on appraisals of the friend’s properties (cf. the 3rd paragraph of Section 1.1 above): such a conception of friendship subordinates our concern for the friend to our concern for the values, thereby neglecting what makes friendship a distinctively personal relationship. Given Whiting’s understanding of the sense in which friends share values in terms of their appeal to the intrinsic and impersonal worth of those values, it seems that she cannot make much of the rebuttal to Friedman offered above: that I can subordinate my concern for certain values to my concern for my friend, thereby changing my values in part out of concern for my friend. Nonetheless, Brink’s criticism goes deeper: Unless our account of love and friendship attaches intrinsic significance to the historical relationship between friends, it seems unable to justify concern for the friend qua friend. [1999, 270] It is only in terms of the significance of the historical relationship, Brink argues, that we can make sense of the reasons for friendship and for the concern and activity friendship demands as being agent-relative (and so in this way personal) rather than agent-neutral (or impersonal, as for Whiting).[5] Cocking & Kennett (1998), in what might be a development of Rorty (1986/1993), offer an account of close friendship in part in terms of the friends playing a more active role in transforming each other’s evaluative outlook: in friendship, they claim, we are “receptive” to having our friends “direct” and “interpret” us and thereby change our interests. To be directed by your friend is to allow her interests, values, etc. to shape your own; thus, your friend may suggest that you go to the opera together, and you may agree to go, even though you have no antecedent interest in the opera. Through his interest, enthusiasm, and suggestion (“Didn’t you just love the concluding duet of Act III?”), you may be moved directly by him to acquire an interest in opera only because he’s your friend. To be interpreted by your friend is to allow your understanding of yourself, in particular of your strengths and weaknesses, to be shaped by your friend’s interpretations of you. Thus, your friend may admire your tenacity (a trait you did not realize you had), or be amused by your excessive concern for fairness, and you may come as a result to develop a new understanding of yourself, and potentially change yourself, in direct response to his interpretation of you. Hence, Cocking & Kennett claim, “the self my friend sees is, at least in part, a product of the friendship” (505). (Nehamas 2010 offers a similar account of the importance of the interpretation of one’s friends in determining who one is, though Nehamas emphasizes in a way that Cocking & Kennett do not that your interpretation of your friend can reveal possible valuable ways to be that you yourself “could never have even imagined beforehand” (287).) It is a bit unclear what your role is in being thus directed and interpreted by your friend. Is it a matter of merely passively accepting the direction and interpretation? This is suggested by Cocking & Kennett’s understanding of friendship in terms of a receptivity to being drawn by your friend and by their apparent understanding of this receptivity in dispositional terms. Yet this would seem to be a matter of ceding your autonomy to your friend, and that is surely not what they intend. Rather, it seems, we are at least selective in the ways in which we allow our friends to direct and interpret us, and we can resist other directions and interpretations. However, this raises the question of why we allow any such direction and interpretation. One answer would be because we recognize the independent value of the interests of our friends, or that we recognize the truth of their interpretations of us. But this would not explain the role of friendship in such direction and interpretation, for we might just as easily accept such direction and interpretation from a mentor or possibly even a stranger. This shortcoming might push us to understanding our receptivity to direction and interpretation not in dispositional terms but rather in normative terms: other things being equal, we ought to accept direction and interpretation from our friends precisely because they are our friends. And this might push us to a still stronger conception of intimacy, of the sharing of values, in terms of which we can understand why friendship grounds these norms. Such a stronger conception of intimacy is provided in Sherman’s interpretation of Aristotle’s account of friends as sharing a life together (Sherman 1987; see also Moore & Frederick 2017, which argues that friends must share a life together partly through the mutual acknowledgment of their shared activity in the form of a joint narrative that interprets these activities as meaningful). According to Sherman’s Aristotle, an important component of friendship is that friends identify with each other in the sense that they exhibit a “singleness of mind.” This includes, first, a kind of sympathy, whereby I feel on my friend’s behalf the same emotions he does. Unlike similar accounts, Sherman explicitly includes pride and shame as emotions I sympathetically feel on behalf of my friend—a significant addition because of the role pride and shame have in constituting our sense of ourselves and even our identities (Taylor 1985). In part for this reason, Sherman claims that “through the sense of belonging and attachment” we attain because of such sympathetic pride and shame, “we identify with and share their [our friends’] good” (600).[6] Second, and more important, Sherman’s Aristotle understands the singleness of mind that friends have in terms of shared processes of deliberation. Thus, as she summarizes a passage in Aristotle (1170b11–12): character friends live together, not in the way animals do, by sharing the same pasture, but “by sharing in argument and thought.” [598] The point is that the friends “share” a conception of values not merely in that there is significant overlap between the values of the one friend and those of the other, and not merely in that this overlap is maintained through the influence that the friends have on each other. Rather, the values are shared in the sense that they are most fundamentally their values, at which they jointly arrive by deliberating together. [Friends have] the project of a shared conception of eudaimonia [i.e., of how best to live]. Through mutual decisions about specific practical matters, friends begin to express that shared commitment …. Any happiness or disappointment that follows from these actions belongs to both persons, for the decision to so act was joint and the responsibility is thus shared. [598] The intent of this account, in which what gets shared is, we might say, an identity that the friends have in common, is not to be descriptively accurate of particular friendships; it is rather to provide a kind of ideal that actual friendships at best only approximate. Such a strong notion of sharing is reminiscent of the union view of (primarily erotic) love, according to which love consists in the formation of some significant kind of union, a “we” (see the entry on love, the section on love as union). Like the union view of love, this account of friendship raises worries about autonomy. Thus, it seems as though Sherman’s Aristotle does away with any clear distinction between the interests and even agency of the two friends, thereby undermining the kind of independence and freedom of self-development that characterizes autonomy. If autonomy is a part of the individual’s good, then Sherman’s Aristotle might be forced to conclude that friendship is to this extent bad; the conclusion might be, therefore, that we ought to reject this strong conception of the intimacy of friendship. It is unclear from Sherman’s interpretation of Aristotle whether there are principled reasons to limit the extent to which we share our identities with our friends; perhaps an appeal to something like Friedman’s federation model (1998) can help resolve these difficulties. Friedman’s idea is that we should understand romantic love (but the idea could also be applied to friendship) not in terms of the union of the two individuals, in which their identities get subsumed by that union, but rather in terms of the federation of the individuals—the creation of a third entity that presupposes some degree of independence of the individuals that make it up. Even so, much would need to be done to spell out this view satisfactorily. (For more on Friedman’s account, see the entry on love, the section on love as union.) In each of these accounts of the kind of intimacy and commitment that are characteristic of friendship, we might ask about the conditions under which friendship can properly be dissolved. Thus, insofar as friendship involves some such commitment, we cannot just give up on our friends for no reason at all; nor, it seems, should our commitment be unconditional, binding on us come what may. Understanding more clearly when it is proper to break off a friendship, or allow it to lapse, may well shed light on the kind of commitment and intimacy that is characteristic of friendship; nonetheless, this issue gets scant attention in the literature. 1.3 Shared Activity A final common thread in philosophical accounts of friendship is shared activity. The background intuition is this: never to share activity with someone and in this way to interact with him is not to have the kind of relationship with him that could be called friendship, even if you each care for the other for his sake. Rather, friends engage in joint pursuits, in part motivated by the friendship itself. These joint pursuits can include not only such things as making something together, playing together, and talking together, but also pursuits that essentially involve shared experiences, such as going to the opera together. Yet for these pursuits to be properly shared in the relevant sense of “share,” they cannot involve activities motivated simply by self interest: by, for example, the thought that I’ll help you build your fence today if you later help me paint my house. Rather, the activity must be pursued in part for the purpose of doing it together with my friend, and this is the point of saying that the shared activity must be motivated, at least in part, by the friendship itself. This raises the following questions: in what sense can such activity be said to be “shared,” and what is it about friendship that makes shared activity so central to it? The common answer to this second question (which helps pin down an answer to the first) is that shared activity is important because friends normally have shared interests as a part of the intimacy that is characteristic of friendship as such, and the “shared” pursuit of such shared interests is therefore an important part of friendship. Consequently, the account of shared activity within a particular theory ought to depend at least in part on that theory’s understanding of the kind of intimacy relevant to friendship. And this generally seems to be the case: for example, Thomas (1987, 1989, 1993, 2013), who argues for a weak conception of intimacy in terms of mutual self-disclosure, has little place for shared activity in his account of friendship, whereas Sherman (1987), who argues for a strong conception of intimacy in terms of shared values, deliberation, and thought, provides within friendship a central place not just to isolated shared activities but, more significantly, to a shared life. Nonetheless, within the literature on friendship the notion of shared or joint activity is largely taken for granted: not much thought has been given to articulating clearly the sense in which friends share their activity. This is surprising and unfortunate, especially insofar as the understanding of the sense in which such activities are “shared” is closely related to the understanding of intimacy that is so central to any account of friendship; indeed, a clear account of the sort of shared activity characteristic of friendship may in turn shed light on the sort of intimacy it involves. This means in part that a particular theory of friendship might be criticized in terms of the way in which its account of the intimacy of friendship yields a poor account of the sense in which activity is shared. For example, one might think that we must distinguish between activity we engage in together in part out of my concern for someone I love, and activity we share insofar as we engage in it at least partly for the sake of sharing it; only the latter, it might be argued, is the sort of shared activity constitutive of the relationship of friendship as opposed to that constitutive merely of my concern for him (see Nozick 1989). Consequently, according to this line of thought, any account of the intimacy of friendship that fails to understand the sharing of interests in such a way as to make sense of this distinction ought to be rejected. Helm (2008) develops an account of shared activity and shared valuing at least partly with an eye to understanding friendship. He argues that the sense in which friends share activity is not the sort of shared intention and plural subjecthood discussed in literature on shared intention within social philosophy (on which, see Tuomela 1995, 2007; Gilbert 1996, 2000, 2006; Searle 1990; and Bratman 1999), for such sharing of intentions does not involve the requisite intimacy of friendship. Rather, the intimacy of friendship should be understood partly in terms of the friends forming a “plural agent”: a group of people who have joint cares—a joint evaluative perspective—which he analyzes primarily in terms of a pattern of interpersonally connected emotions, desires, judgments, and (shared) actions. Friendships emerge, Helm claims, when the friends form a plural agent that cares positively about their relationship, and the variety of kinds of friendships there can be, including friendships of pleasure, utility, and virtue, are to be understood in terms of the particular way in which they jointly understand their relationship to be something they care about—as tennis buddies or as life partners, for example. 2. Value and Justification of Friendship Friendship clearly plays an important role in our lives; to a large extent, the various accounts of friendship aim at identifying and clarifying that role. In this context, it is important to understand not only why friendship can be valuable, but also what justifies particular friendships. 2.1 Individual Value One way to construe the question of the value of friendship is in terms of the individual considering whether to be (or continue to be) engaged in a friendship: why should I invest considerable time, energy, and resources in a friend

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Jan 1, 2021 — AMITY: The Journal of Friendship Studies (2021) 7:1, 1-22 https://doi.org/10.5518/AMITY/33 The moral value of Aristotelian friendships for utility, with an online example Kristján Kristjánsson* ABSTRACT: Can (Aristotelian) friendships for utility have moral value? There is an assumption much of the literature on Aristotelian friendships that his 'lower forms' of friendship, especially friendship for utility, do not merit the label 'genuine friendship' and thus do not 'qualify as morally valuable'. Rather, friendships for utility are just considered to be about taking advantage of one another in amoral or immoral ways. I offer counter-arguments, going beyond the letter if not necessarily the spirit of Aristotle's own texts, based on delineating two different levels of utility friendships and showing that the higher one (with non-instrumental while extrinsic value) can have moral worth in combatting moral despondency, incontinence and even vice. A personal illustration is given from the moral utility value of friendships in Facebook support groups for patients with a rare disorder. Keywords: Aristotle; friendships for utility versus character; extrinsically valuable but non- instrumental friendships; continence; online support groups 1. Contexts and questionable assumptions This article aims to explore one fairly specific question: can so-called friendships for utility have moral value? I take Aristotle's account of utility friendships - with respect to his other friendship types – as my starting point because of its historical importance and logical nuance. In a sense, then, this is an essay in Aristotelian retrieval. However, 'retrieval' must be taken here to mean 'reconstruction' rather than 'exegesis'. My ultimate answer goes beyond anything Aristotle says explicitly, although its main ingredients are extracted from his texts. In any case, in order to situate my question and elicit its relevance, both for the moral discourses on friendship and on Aristotelian virtue ethics, some context-setting is in order. Complaints are still being raised about the relative paucity of discussions of the role of friendship in an Aristotelian conception of virtue ethics, or of 'living well' more generally (Kristjánsson, 2019). These complaints may seem misplaced given that reams of scholarship have been written about the concept of friendship in Aristotle, stretching back into the early days of virtue ethics (see e.g. Cooper, 1977), and that his famous tripartite * Professor Kristján Kristjánsson, Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, School of Education, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, B15 2TT, U.K. Email: [email protected] The moral value of Aristotelian friendship for utility 2 substantive and normative classification of friendships (into those for utility, pleasure and character/virtue) has set the terms of most philosophical friendship discourses for 2300 years. However, there is a grain of truth in those complaints. The grain of truth is that the philosophical debate about Aristotelian friendships is typically fairly narrow and exegetical. Whereas other key virtue concepts in Aristotle tend to be reconstructed quite liberally by neo-Aristotelians in order to be more relatable to modern practical (e.g. educational) concerns and typically brought to bear on the ultimate aim of the good life as eudaimonia (Kristjánsson, 2020a) - the discussion of friendship has remained mostly textual and theoretical (yet see Brewer, 2005, for a notable exception). Even when the aim of the proposed inquiry is moral rather than historical or exegetical, large questions about the relative weight of friendship in the good life tend to be elided. For example, there is a scarcity of papers on friendship and phronesis, offering clues about how Aristotle's intellectual meta-virtue of phronesis (Darnell et al., 2019) ideally adjudicates the value of friendship vis-à-vis other Aristotelian values and virtues in everyday practical contexts, especially in cases of conflict within different friendships or between friendship and competing virtues (Kristjánsson, 2020b; yet see Salkever, 2008, on the role of friendship in 'the prohairetic life': the life of overall wise choices). There is one area of discourse, however, where Aristotelian friendships are being discussed in ways that are non-exegetical and highly practical: the discourse on the merits and demerits of online friendships. While many of the participants in this discourse are in fact academic philosophers, it seems to have largely escaped the attention of mainstream philosophy, being mostly confined to specialised journals. Much of the current debate refers to a special issue of Ethics and Information Technology from 2012. Some of the relevant participants claim that online friendships in general and Facebook ones in particular have turned human friendship into a 'toxic substance leading to isolation' (Fröding & Peterson, 2012, p. 201; Deresiewicz, 2009). The quality of argumentation in this ongoing debate is measured, well informed (with respect to Aristotelian theory) and rigorous (see e.g. Vallor, 2012; Kaliarnta, 2016). This debate deserves recognition and development in mainstream philosophy outlets, and although my intention is not to reset its terms here, I acknowledge it by deriving my illustrative examples in the fourth section of this article from an online context. The reason I choose not to enter this specific debate directly here is that its main bone of contention is the question whether online friendships, in any shape or form, can qualify as genuine Aristotelian character friendships. While I have a distinct view on this topic, as I reveal briefly at the close of the fourth section, my current focus is a different one: namely on utility friendships. However, as my focus was motivated by reading the recent literature on cyberfriendships, it is instructive for present purposes to identify an assumption that tends to be taken for granted in that literature, both by friends and foes of online friendships qua character friendships (see further in Kristjánsson, 2020c): that the lower forms of friendship (with respect to character friendship), especially utility friendship, do not 'merit the label "genuine friendship”' and thus do not 'qualify as morally AMITY: The Journal of Friendship Studies (2021) 7:1, 1-22 Kristján Kristjánsson 3 valuable' (Fröding & Peterson, 2012, p. 201). Rather, friendships for utility are just about taking advantage of one another in amoral or immoral ways (Bülow & Felix, 2016, p. 27). This assumption, which I consider largely misplaced, is tricky to identify with respect to provenance. The standard interpretation, not only in the recent discourse on Aristotelian online friendship but in the general friendship scholarship, is that this assumption is actually Aristotle's own reasoned view (Fröding & Peterson, 2012; Millgram, 1987; see rejoinders to the standard literature in Cooper, 1977). While that interpretation has surface credibility at least, given various unsympathetic and dismissive things that Aristotle says about friendships for utility, I do believe there are potential resources within Aristotelian theory to reconsider and reject this assumption, but that those resources remain hidden (even to Aristotle himself) for various reasons that I explain in the following section. In all events, my motivation for writing this paper is substantive rather than exegetical. I propose to offer counterweight to the above assumption and do so in a way that is at least not fully alien to the spirit as distinct from the letter - of Aristotle's account. Aristotle aside, I go against the grain of ruling friendships for utility out of moral court. I have only found one article that proposes to do anything similar to what I aim for. Thus, I agree with James Grunebaum's contention that utility-based friendships 'have been unjustly undervalued by philosophers' (2005, p. 203). However, I propose to go beyond Grunebaum's argument and offer a different take on the value of (Aristotelian) friendships for utility. Apart from Grunebaum's thorough treatment of this topic, the literature on it is actually quite meagre. It tends to be dealt with fleetingly in the context of fleshing out Aristotle's concept of character friendship – or, more specifically, offered as a foil to such 'complete' friendship in line with the assumption identified earlier. The exception is the literature on Aristotelian civic or political friendships. In the Eudemian Ethics, Aristotle maintains that civic friendship 'is constituted in the fullest degree on the principle of utility' (1935, p. 415 [1242a5–8; cf. p. 421 [1242b22–23]) and that it is ʼmore necessary' than character friendship, although the latter is 'nobler' (1935, p. 427 [1243a32–36]). This view of civic friendship as a form of utility friendship grounds, for example, Irrera's (2005) interpretation. However, even against the backdrop of Aristotle's own words to the contrary, there are those who argue that Aristotelian civic friendship must be 'based in virtue and not merely utility' (Curren, 2000, p. 133). The (implicit) undervaluation of utility friendships, which Grunebaum refers to, is here once again in evidence. In any case, I leave the literature on civic friendships out of consideration in this article to focus on the more fundamental question about the moral value of utility friendships in general. Upsetting the applecart is always an exciting prospect for a philosophical article. However, my aim is not so much to achieve a conceptual reshuffle of standard friendship classifications as it is to open up new avenues of thought. Prior to the ultimate analysis of utility friendships in the third section, I therefore need to ask readers to bear with me for a while. To motivate a moral defence of utility friendship from an Aristotelian or quasi- AMITY: The Journal of Friendship Studies (2021) 7:1, 1-22 The moral value of Aristotelian friendship for utility Aristotelian perspective, it must be shown first that it has a role to play in an Aristotelian account of moral development. I do so in the following section. Moreover, Aristotle's own account of the different kinds of friendships requires a brief rehearsal for readers without a ready knowledge of Aristotelian philosophy. I do so in the first part of the third section. A full comparison and contrast of my defence of utility friendship with Grunebaum's thus awaits the second part of the third section, after I have spelled out my own account - to be followed, in the fourth section, with an illustrative example from an online context. 2. Some Aristotelian concepts and complexities regarding moral development The very question about the potential moral value of utility friendships may seem like a non-starter from an Aristotelian perspective, as Aristotle had no concept of 'the moral' at his disposal (Kraut, 2006). Not only is there no distinction in Aristotle's vocabulary between the 'moral' and 'non-moral', there is no distinction to be drawn from his works between (moral) character and (non-moral) personality; ancient Greek had no specific word for 'personality' (Reiner, 1991). Aristotelian developmental theory thus lacks the relevant conceptual resources to engage in some of the elementary debates about issues that divide contemporary moral psychologists (cf. Darnell et al., 2019). For present purposes I propose to stipulate a meaning of 'moral' that accommodates contemporary conceptions but still has some reasonable place within an Aristotelian (or at least a reconstructed neo-Aristotelian) system. Let us try this: consider a trait or quality 'moral' if it at least aims at mitigating vice or incontinence in people, for their own sake, without necessarily making them virtuous. While this a fairly broad definition, which obviously includes a wide range of traits in addition to the standard character virtues, it does not make the claim that friendships for utility have moral value trivially true, because it is still open to sceptics to argue that friendships for utility simply do not have this aim. Indeed, that is what most of them seem to want to argue, given their understanding of the concept of 'friendship for utility' as amoral, typically taken to be derived from Aristotle (see e.g. Fröding & Peterson, 2012). This definition also gives me leverage to argue as I propose to do that friendships for utility have moral value insofar as they help turn vice into (at least) incontinence, and incontinence into (at least) continence, although they may not produce virtue.In spite of Aristotle's inability to avail himself of the word 'moral', he could have made this point about friendship for utility if he had wanted to by using terms that were available to him, for example by talking about it as a relationship that is, at its best, 'characteristic of people striving towards goodness or flourishing'. The reasons why he choose not do so are, I would argue, somewhat complex and have to do both with the intended readership of the Nicomachean Ethics and Aristotle's lack of focus on non- virtue-routed developmental paths leading to less than full phronesis. I need to say something about both those reasons before proceeding further. General readers of the Nicomachean Ethics may easily get the impression that it was written as a self-help manual for ordinary people who want to learn to flourish – much AMITY: The Journal of Friendship Studies (2021) 7:1, 1-22 Kristján Kristjánsson 5 like, say, Martin Seligman's (2011) contemporary bestseller on flourishing – and that the two extensive chapters on friendship are meant to help people like us' make and sustain healthy friendships. This impression is erroneous, however. The Nicomachean Ethics is specifically written for a discrete and fairly small group of people: aristocratic young men, 'brought up in good habits' (Aristotle, 1985, p. 6 [1095b4–5]) and already (being) habituated into virtue. Even more specifically, the message of the book is geared towards readers who are later to become statesmen or entrusted with the moral education of the young. While these points have been made repeatedly by Aristotelian scholars (see e.g. Curren, 2000; Pangle, 2003), they seem to become swept under the carpet when the overall ethical message of Aristotle's work gets distilled and analysed. I am claiming that the Nicomachean Ethics plots a unique and somewhat 'idealised' (Curzer, 2017) developmental path for young men blessed with constitutive 'moral luck'. After the habituation process, which presumably requires considerable systematic guidance by a parent/mentor/educator, a process of phronesis development follows, in which the budding virtues tur into fully fledged phronetic (phronesis-guided or phronesis-infused) moral virtues with the help of character friends. We later learn in Book 10 that not even this suffices for the fully flourishing life; complete moral virtue complemented by the wherewithal of abundant worldly resources to do good (as in the case of the notoriously blasé but supremely good megalopsychoi) leaves people unfulfilled unless they can practise the somewhat esoteric activity of pure contemplation (see Kristjánsson, 2020a, chap. 4). From the point of view of contemporary developmental psychology, even this main (idealised) path plotted in the Nicomachean Ethics, for its prospective elite readers, remains curiously underdeveloped. The standard Burnyeat (1980) interpretation of two distinct developmental phases, habituation qua mindless conditioning, followed by critical and reflective phronesis development, turns the whole process into the famous 'paradox of moral education' (of learning uncritically and heteronomously to become critical and autonomous, see Kristjánsson, 2007, chap. 3). Even if one opts for a more rhapsodic interpretation of the habituation process as being reason-guided and critically stimulated from the word go, there remain urgent questions about when (namely at what age) and how the external guide becomes overtaken by character friends and what the powerful intellectual virtue of phronesis really assumes and incorporates by way of intellectual and moral faculties leading to a plethora of conflicting contemporary interpretations (Darnell et al., 2019). Why does Aristotle not expand on this developmental story? For one thing, he simply may not consider it necessary to retell the obvious; after all, this is the way good young men in Athens are being brought up so you just need to look around yourself for example. Or he wants to defer to the natural scientists' the psychological details of the story (cf. Aristotle, 1985, p. 181 [1147b5–9]): a naturalistic remark that is somewhat ironic, given the fact that Aristotle himself was probably the leading natural scientist of his day. I have grappled with many of those puzzles before (Kristjánsson, 2007, chap. 3; 2015, chap. AMITY: The Journal of Friendship Studies (2021) 7:1, 1-22

Dec 1, 2020 — THE JUBILEE CENTRE FOR CHARACTER & VIRTUES Civic Friendship Professor Randall Curren Chair of the Department of Philosophy University of Rochester, USA Professor Laura Elenbaas Assistant Professor of Pyschology University of Rochester, USA Insight Series UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM 1 1. The Importance of Civic Friendship There is a widespread perception that in many countries of the world today there has been an erosion of the norms of public life that sustain democracy and cooperation. Norms of goodwill, trust, civility, forbearance, honesty, willingness to listen, reasonableness in evaluating people's statements and evidence, and concern for the common good are flaunted. As this progresses, members of different political parties and social groups come to be regarded as enemies to be vanquished by any means and whatever the cost, rather than as fellow citizens with equal rights and legitimate perspectives on the public interest. These conditions of factional conflict are often inflamed by demagogues at the expense of democratic constitutional norms. This has occurred in Europe and the Americas since the 2008 financial collapse and as migration of displaced populations has grown, but these phenomena were already systematically documented in the constitutional histories compiled by Aristotle and his school in the 4th century BCE. Aristotle's motivation in founding political science was to understand the role of virtues in societal flourishing, and he concluded that civic friendship (politikê philia) and education that promotes it are what best unify a society and protect it from painful and destabilizing factionalism. Aristotle devoted a remarkable proportion of his ethical and political writings to the topic of friendship, and the influence of his ideas in recent ethical thought has made these writings the primary point of departure for current discussions of civic friendship. He wrote that 'goodwill when it is reciprocal' and mutually recognized is friendship (philia), and that friendship is the greatest good of states and what best preserves them against revolutions'. ¹ Civic friendship unifies a society by sustaining goodwill between its many and diverse members. It also supports honest communication, trust, shared governance, belief in a common good and the possibility of impartial justice, and cooperation in achieving shared goals. It prevents a society from dissolving into warring factions. As Aristotle depicts the unification of a society thorough civic friendship, it requires that each individual have some civically significant friendships that connect them in friendly ways to diverse others. The civic well-being of a society requires that most if not all of its members have a limited number of these substantial 'civic friendships' and that individuals acquire through these friendships an aspect of civic virtue that could be called civic friendliness or a disposition to 1 Barnes, 1984, pp. 1826, 2003 (NE VIII.2 1155b33-35; Pol. II.4 1262b7-8). 2 2 exhibit goodwill toward all the diverse members of the society. When the term civic friendship is used to refer to a civic virtue or aspect of civic virtue, it refers to this disposition. What is important to civic friendship unifying a society is how members of the society speak of one another, whether they exhibit friendliness and goodwill when they encounter each other, and whether they exhibit a willingness to act for each other's good in the choices they make and policies they support. Commentators on Aristotle's works have found it challenging to piece together a consistent understanding of his views on the relationships between justice and friendship and on the relationships between close friendships, civic friendship, and bonds of reciprocal goodwill that unify an entire society. A common observation regarding justice and friendship is that friendship seems to make justice superfluous, so that justice is apparently only necessary in the absence of friendship. This has led to some confusion over the relationship between Aristotle's ideals of civic justice and civic friendship. A major sticking point with regard to the relationships between different kinds of friendship is the question of what the basis of civic friendship is supposed to be. The truest, best, or most complete form of friendship is one based primarily on mutual appreciation of good character, according to Aristotle, but commentators often suggest this cannot be the basis of civic friendship. Friendships may also be based on shared pleasures or friends' usefulness, he argues, but he takes valuing people for themselves to be essential to true friendship, and he seems to equate valuing a person as such with valuing the person's character. Aristotle says more than once that participants in every community of any kind are friends "to the extent to which justice exists between them'.³ The implication of this is that people enact forms of mutual respect and willingness to act for each other's good to the extent that they deal with each other in ways that are just and mutually recognized as just. Justice requires mutual respect and regard for well-being, so Aristotle's conditions for friendship would be fulfilled when there is justice between two people. Such 'friendships' could be as fleeting as a single commercial transaction, but Aristotle's understanding of a just constitutional system is that requirements of mutual respect and goodwill would permeate the society and shape character. A just constitution is devoted to the common good and its laws establish norms of mutual respect that are favourable to the acquisition of virtues of mutual 2 Curren & Dorn, 2018. 3 Barnes, 1984, p. 1833 (NE VIII.9 1159b25-31). 3 valuing and willingness to act for each other's good. Justice would thus establish a setting in which dispositions of civic friendship could take root. What ideally takes root even in commercial transactions is not simply a mutual recognition of utility, moreover. In the Eudemian Ethics Aristotle offers the empirical generalization that ‘civic friendship has been established mainly in accordance with utility', but he quickly adds that people would have come together anyhow for the sake of living in company'. 4 This is compatible with his recognition in the Politics of a three-fold sense in which human beings are naturally politikon zôon or creatures for whom it is natural to live in a city (polis) or as part of an organized society: people need (find it useful) to be part of a larger society in order to flourish, they are drawn together by the pleasure of living together, and their powers of speech enable them to know what is good and just and cooperate in living well (valuing good character and contributing to each other's flourishing). Moreover, he explicitly regards societies as not merely economic or military alliances, but as properly concerned with the goodness of their members. We need to like or think well of the members of the groups to which we belong, taking pride in their accomplishments and feeling shame in their failings. These considerations point to the conclusion that Aristotle's ideal basis of civic friendship is not just the pleasures of social life and usefulness of cooperation but mutual liking or appreciating the goodness in one another. This would make civic friendship ideally a form of character friendship, in Aristotle's terms. If a disposition to civic friendship is a civic virtue then it is surely this openness to seeing the goodness in diverse members of one's society that it is most directly an antidote to the incivility, distrust, and mutual vilification that so often pervade public life. Being open to seeing and appreciating the goodness in one another is civically important. So too is listening to one another, trusting that people very different from ourselves may have legitimate perspectives and interests we have failed to consider. If civic friendliness is openness to seeing the goodness in diverse members of one's society and acting for their good, it is also an important foundation for the public conversations and deliberation essential to a healthy democracy. Aristotle's view of the origins of the wide civic friendliness that can unify a society is that it begins in a small number of substantial friendships that are civically important. His conception of how these initial 'civic friendships' with ‘kinsmen, comrades, [and] partners' 4 Barnes, 1984, p. 1968 (EE VII.10 1242a6-9). can lead to a generalized disposition of friendliness toward all members of one's society is that it would involve forming some of these relationships in settings such as schools and clubs that bring different kinds of people together. 5 In these settings people may become friends with people who are in some ways different from themselves, and those relationships would put a friendly face on kinds of people who might otherwise seem alien, strange, and threatening. This kind of transmission of friendliness was predictable from Aristotle's perspective, because we tend to like our friends' friends, 'those who are like ourselves in character' and 'those who desire the same things as we desire'.6 If these are psychological facts, then the more venues there are in which different kinds of people interact in ways favorable to friendship, the more the society will tend to be unified by civic friendliness and the less likely it is to become civically and politically polarized and uncivil. From the standpoint of contemporary political sociology, the conditions that lead to civic polarization are complex, but they typically do involve patterns of separation that align across many spheres and thereby inhibit different kinds of people from interacting with each other. These include residential, geographic, occupational, educational, religious, recreational, cultural, and other spheres. An important question confronting many societies today is how they can overcome the separation across all these spheres to promote civic friendship. Although many innovations are conceivable, we will focus our attention on what schools can do. Before considering some ways in which civic friendliness can be fostered, we will first consider the accuracy of Aristotle's observations about the transmission of friendliness in light of contemporary psychology. Although Aristotle was pessimistic about children's capacity for real friendship, there is evidence that children do form peer relationships based on mutual valuing. They also have early-emerging prosocial tendencies and moral concerns for others' welfare, and it is not unreasonable to think that it is possible for them to form dispositions of civic friendship. However, in present conditions, young children may be especially at risk of adopting hostile attitudes towards members of other groups, due to the rapid acquisition of group identities and inter-group attitudes in early childhood and the impact of social environmental messages on children's thinking. This is particularly problematic because negative inter-group attitudes formed early in life are difficult to change in adulthood. Existing research indicates that 5 Barnes, 1984, p. 1968 (EE VII.10 1242a6-9). For textual and interpretive details, see Curren, 2000, pp. 129- 139. 6 Barnes, 1984, pp. 2200, 2201 (Rh. II.4 1381a15-20; 1381b15 and 17-18). 5