Friendship as guidance?

This is a reflection on Dean Cocking and Jeanette Kennett [CK], “Friendship and the Self,” Ethics 108 (1998), 502-527. There are four aspects of the article worth thinking about here.

Aspect 1: CK’s primary thesis

CK argue that friendship is being “receptive to being [a] directed and [b] interpreted and so in these ways [c] drawn by the other.” I’ve interpolated the index marks because “direction” and “interpretation” seem separate elements to be receptive to, and CK seem to use “drawing” ambivalently, covering both elements at once: as “to pull” (re “direction”) and “to characterize” (re “interpretation”). I’m going to go through these in a mixed-up order.

Element [b], which claims that when someone interprets you, you come to understand yourself on the basis of that interpretation, is surely important. Yet CK say little about this. We might extend their view in five directions.

First, this receptivity must be reciprocal to count as friendship. We are influenced in our self-understanding by many people. The harm of name-calling or adverse characterization comes not just from our hurt feelings but also from our detrimental internalization of that characterization. Yet name-callers are not receptive to our interpretations, by and large. Friendship seems to require a free play of back-and-forth interpretation.

Second, the interpretation has to appear to us accurate. Many people try to interpret us, and try to insinuate themselves into our good graces by doing so, but when they are wrong, we dislike, disdain, or disregard them. Of course, interpretations are not just accurate but also apt—they are not just descriptively but also evaluatively right.

So, third, they must be beneficial, which means non-trivial (significance), pertinent to our goals (relevance), and ones we have not yet made at all or seriously enough (novelty).

What I refer to as “novelty” we might also call, fourth, insightful. This means that we had not made this interpretation before, or did not give it enough weight in contrast to other interpretations, but also that we can recognize the interpretation as appropriate. Our friend has seen better than we heretofore have about something we ought to have seen.

Fifth, “receptivity” cannot simply mean “being influenced” or “being affected.” If it did, then domineering and ruthless acquaintances would be friends: they force views of yourself, ones that are probably true and apt enough on you but that you never really can or want to come to terms with. Instead, receptivity to a friend’s interpretation requires endorsement. Though the friend has suggested a way for you to understand yourself, your reason for accepting that interpretation must be more than that person has accurately and aptly interpreted you that way. I think it cannot even be that your friend is really trustworthy (although this could be a reason for giving the interpretation a provisional role in your self-conception). For otherwise, anybody toward whom you are enthralled or in awe of would count as a friend. You’ve got to endorse the interpretation as accurate and apt; and this requires conditions of autonomy, reflection, or free choice. There is another reason for accepting this “endorsement” condition. CK claim that, after friends mutually interpret and receive those interpretations, “the self my friend sees is, at least in part, a product of the friendship” (505). Yet if the self-understanding, and thus the constitution of self, and thus the self, is merely caused (even in part) by the friend, then the friend becomes merely friends with his own work, rather than with another person. In other words, mutual independence and autonomy seem crucial parts of friendship. (We see this especially in Velleman, “Love as a Moral Emotion.”)

CK present element [a], which claims that friends are receptive to being guided by each other, as their leading idea. According to CK, I go to the ballet with my friend because my friend likes going to the ballet; I am “receptive to developing interests… primarily because they are the interests of the other” (504). It is not exactly clear, however, what CK take to be the actual motivation; they seem only to care that there is a “distinctive kind of responsiveness.” Here are some possibilities, all of which seem plausible to me, none of which they discuss expressly.

(i) I want to develop a shared interest. This would give me and my friend more to do and talk about together. This view assumes that we are already somewhat friends, and that we desire more or continued occasions for acting and talking together. It would be circular to claim that our being friends just amounts to us wanting to share more interests, for this would not answer why I want to share more interests with you, and what more shared interests allows.

(ii) My friend enjoys not only ballet but also either seeing ballet with others or having others value ballet too. So my attending the ballet satisfies a desire my friend has (for community or for philanthropy). And if my friend is right that ballet is valuable to watch, and that this value is perceptible in watching it, then I may come to value ballet in watching it, and this will make me prone to attend even more ballets with my friend, satisfying more desires of my friend. This should be described less as “being guided” by my friend as desiring to satisfy my friend’s desire; or in other terms, taking my friend’s good as my own. So “being guided” is constitutive of friendship only to the extent it involves taking my friend’s good as my own.

(iii) I may trust that my friend correctly sees what would improve myself, and so I take her advice. My friend sees what would be good for me that I have not yet recognized as good for myself (e.g., ballet-appreciation); recognizes that it will be easier for me to develop an interest in something I do not currently enjoy if I can practice it while enjoying my friend’s company and instruction; and is willing to spend time with someone who does not appreciate ballet during the training period. Here, then, is the obverse of (ii) – my friend takes my good as her own. It is also a form of [b]. My friend has interpreted me as a person who does not yet but could come to enjoy and value ballet; I experiment with that interpretation because I judge my friend to have made good interpretations of me in the past; and then once I have attended enough ballet to have come to enjoy and value it, my self-understanding changes. I now see that I enjoy ballet, and perhaps also that I have been long unaware of my proclivities to aesthetic enjoyment, proclivities that do in fact make sense of much of my unconscious yearning. In sum, then, CK’s view of guidance seems to distill to “taking the other’s good as your own,” where this is even easier when those goods are otherwise shared.

Finally, a remark about element [c], that a friend is drawn by another. This is a good term. It captures, in its connection to element [b], the fact that I characterize my friends. Sometimes I do this for them (perhaps accidentally, perhaps to give advice, perhaps to encourage them to do it for me, perhaps as a shared activity); sometimes I do it for myself (to understand their actions, to understand why I think they’re good, to understand how I could myself be, either by modeling myself on them or away from them). Naturally, we use drawings for many reasons. This term captures, in its connection to element [a], the fact that I seem magnetic to my friends. It looks like I pull them toward myself. But perhaps that’s wrong. More probably, I draw them toward that toward which I am also drawn: namely, the good. For perhaps I, as an empirical entity, have no power of influence; but the norms which I display being oriented toward do have a power of influence; and if I can show how to be (happily) drawn by those norms, then my friends can see and decide for themselves to be drawn by them as well.

Aspect 2: CK’s rejection of the “secret-sharing” view

CK reject the view of friendship as secret-sharing, which is how they interpret self-disclosure. Their too-easy dismissal – based on the valid observation that we often share secrets more readily with strangers than with friends, and that some secrets we have no reasons to share with anyone – suggests that they have not acknowledged what makes self-disclosure or secret-sharing plausible as a view of friendship, even if in the end that view of friendship (Thomas’) takes some appearance as deeper than it really is. Understanding the view requires understanding better what secrets and their sharing amount to. But we can get to the core of the issue less analytically. Imagine I’m interviewing at another university. This is a secret from my current colleagues. But I’m close friends with one colleague. So I tell her about it. That she’s my friend means I can tell her; that I tell her partially constitutes our being friends. But why do I tell her? Because I realize I am looking at the issue (a job-change) from only my limited perspective, and because she understands my limited perspective, as well as alternative perspectives, and because she understands, to some degree, what would actually be good for me, I value hearing from her. Also, as part of knowing that she accepts my good as her own, I know that she will not jeopardize my interests (telling my other colleagues) for her private interests (the joy of gossip). But it seems wrong to present friendship as sharing secrets; it’s rather that friends have conversations about all sorts of important beliefs and goals, and some of these beliefs and goals should not be known by certain other people. This is why it is fine to tell some secrets to strangers: they will not share them with others – perhaps because they have no reason to hurt a stranger, but mostly because they are not in the position to share it with the relevant others. But it is also why we do not tell some secrets to friends. Not because secret-sharing is not constitutive of friendship, but because we do not think that we need our friend’s perspective on some things; and worry, in addition, that these secrets could needlessly sadden or bore our friend.

CK present Thomas as arguing that sharing secrets (i) makes us vulnerable, showing our friends regard for and trust in them, and (ii) puts our friends “in the privileged position to comment on our lives and contribute to our flourishing” (515). Element (i), articulated this way, makes Thomas seem to have an expressivist view of friendship, where friendship is constituted by the activities that show friendship. This of course seems backwards. While friendship may need to be acknowledged to count as friendship (Aristotle thinks so), something else besides the acknowledgement ought to be acknowledged. This view, as CK interpret it, and as they cite Reiman as saying, presents secret-giving as the ongoing subscription cost for a friendship. In fact this is how some teenagers seem to act, as though life were a trust-building exercise. But buying trust does not seem the real reason for revealing secrets. Furthermore, most secrets we hardly have to reveal; astute friends know when something weird is going on. Element (ii) is more plausible, especially if it is understood as giving our friends the information they need to understand us, and thereby help us. CK are right that this information need not be secret (516); but it is true that our deep motivations and aspirations (e.g., to become a dean, to live in the north, to be outside all the time) are often hidden from most people’s awareness. But it is hidden not because these are secrets as such, but because they do not come up in casual conversation, because the correct interpretation of which is difficult to determine (“does it mean he is restless?” “does this mean he hates it here?” “does it mean he dislikes being inside?”), and is mostly irrelevant to most interactions (“let’s just talk about philosophy and the weather!”). Close friends, by contrast, do talk expansively about non-work or non-mundane matters; they can interpret one’s desires correctly (“the desire to be a dean is pretty latent and extremely long term”); and they take as relevant one’s deep motivations (“we’ve been friends for years, and will be friends for decades more; I see that you’ll need to come to terms with those desires sooner rather than later”).

Aspect 3: CK’s rejection of the “mirror” view

CK critique the view that friendship occurs when we see ourselves usefully reflected in another person, where this reflection requires similarity between people. Their rejection has a number of parts:

1. friendship abides dissimilarity because interpretation abides it (507, 509)
2. similarity need not cause friendship (508)
3. friendship may but need not cause similarity (508, 514)
4. whatever similarity we see in friends may be a result of mutual drawing (508).
5. the “mirror” view depends on the false view that friendship assumes two “fully formed and self-sufficient individuals” (509)
6. the “mirror” view assumes falsely that when our interests are guided by our friend’s, we are seeing our (preexisting) true self (512).
7. the “mirror” view presents the friend as a passive reflection for one’s self-growth
8. friendship has “nothing to do with character development.”

In sum, CK take issue with the “mirror” view’s commitment to similarity, to reflection, and to self-improvement. But I doubt the force of their eight critical points. I take them in reverse order:

Re 8.: Aristotle judges friendship practically a virtue (EN 8.1 incip.), and thus a disposition or competence to act, guided by reason, that advances one toward the good. Being good at friendship therefore is nothing other than being virtuous in that way, and thus able to live well. Friendship is a character-trait to be developed, as we see from the fact that many people are bad at being friends. Indeed, we learn to be a good friend in large part by being with better friends; their friendliness gives them occasion and authority to critique and help us (cf. 9.9). It is a further point that Aristotle thinks that we need friends because they help us improve (9.9).

Re 7.: To the extent we merely watch our friends, then they might seem passive. But this is misleading. First, what we are watching is excellent activity; our friends can be role-models only if they are active. Second, their excellent activity may be performed with us, and so we benefit only if they choose to act with us. Third, they may be critiquing us, and that is a fully engaged investigative and interpretative activity on their part. Indeed, there seems to be no reasonable so-called “mirror” view in which the friend is actually like a mirror, where our traits bounce off their static surface.

Re 6.: It is a difficult metaphysical question whether to count seeing who I could be as seeing myself, i.e., seeing a potentiality as an actuality. This point returns to issues that arose in “Aspect 1” above, namely, what my ballet-loving friend is doing when she asks whether I would see a ballet with her. I think that she is telling me, in effect, that I am such a person as to like ballet but I have not recognized this yet. Thus she is representing to me something already in me, albeit inchoate or general (a taste for the fine arts, or an interest in performance). Of course, it would be possible that she thinks I have no such taste, but that I could; but then either she is developing my preexisting interest in being a companionable person or giving things the ol’ college try; or she is trying to start up an interest from scratch, and whether this is a coherent idea is doubtful.

Re 5.: Aristotle does think that mature people are more stable and more virtuous, and thus better friends. But his emphasis on self- and mutual improvement means that he does not think friends are completely stable and virtuous. He also recognizes various levels and degrees of friendship: children, for example, form and dissolve friendships of pleasure; these friendships grow in endurance and value as the children become older and more self-controlled.

Re 4.: Granted, friends can draw themselves closer together, but I think for reasons argued above that the ability to guide and the receptivity to guidance requires sufficient pre-existing proximity in at least the relevant areas (which may be, in some cases, narrowly defined).

Re 3.: The claim that friendship need not cause similarity seems simply implausible; I think it is being claimed tendentiously. I cannot imagine friends who become deeper friends in becoming different from each other. I can imagine friends who grow apart but remain friends above a certain minimum level, and I can imagine friends who help each other develop interests they do not share with each other (she, a non-philosopher, makes me a better philosopher; I, a non-doctor, help her become a better doctor); but I do not think that these divergences are, qua divergences, constitutive of friendship.

Re 2.: It is in some sense true that similarity does not cause friendship. One reason is that we can have only so many intense friendships; we may have reached our limit, and coming across an extremely similar person would not cause us to have another friend. Another reason is that the similarity between people may be of bad (and thus non-friendship-producing) traits; we may both break promises. A third reason is that the similarity may be irrelevant; we may both have 3-year old border collies. But I find that similarities do cause me to feel some affinity; for example, I had friendly feelings toward the people on the 114 Express Bus in Minneapolis simply because we all rode the same bus. And to the extent that we have standing desires for friendship, desires that seek outlets, then similarity may provide the grain around which an incipient friendship might crystallize.

Re 1.: We can interpret people who are somewhat different from us, but only so different as we can still understand them; and our sympathetic understanding often comes from prior similar experience. In fact, the more similar we are, the better able we may be at sympathetic understanding and explanation: in other words, at drawing.

Aristotle’s view is hardly visible in CK’s paper; it really is more reasonable than they make it out to be. Aristotle does say that friends are similar (8.3 1156b22), but in this respect: they can come to agree on what ought to be done (9.6 1167a25-30). This is for two related reasons. First, friendship is manifest in shared activity; so each party must enjoy and value enough of the same same things. So friends must be similar in liking to do the same things: talking, hunting, cooking, etc. (8.5 1157b24; 9.12). Second, we can share activities only when we approve of and delight in approximately the same thing (9.3 1165b23-31). Of course Aristotle also thinks that one most becomes friends when one most becomes virtuous. Similarity in the level of virtue just means similarity in a concern for the joint and several goods pursued by the friends, caring for other people and oneself as one ought, maintaining composure in the face of difficult circumstances, etc. Similarity is not in order that we see ourselves in our friend; it is so that we may act and therefore constitute friendship. Now, Aristotle does talk of your friend being another self; but this is because friends take each other’s goods as their own; the goods of each have expanded!

 

Aspect 4: no talk of love

I find it odd that CK do not canvass any definition of the nature of friendship that appeals to love. A plausible definition of friendship is “reciprocated acknowledged love” (or, instead of love, “goodwill that you act on,” as Aristotle has it). Love is not easy to define, but does provide content to the ethical understanding of friendship (per Velleman, “Love as a Moral Emotion,” Frankfurt, The Reasons of Love, etc.). It connects friendship to care for another’s good, to feelings of affection and emotional openness, and to a sense of completeness.