View Of Friendship Research Articles

Political friendship, respect, community: Hannah Arendt’s de-materialization of Aristotelian political friendship

In this article I demonstrate how Hannah Arendt both appropriates and transforms Aristotle’s view of political friendship. I argue that the brief discussion of Aristotelian political friendship in The Human Condition relies on an earlier de-materialization of Aristotle’s work on friendship. This de-materialization of Aristotle’s view of friendship allows Arendt to discuss Aristotelian friendship as a kind of ‘respect’, where ‘respect’ is a philosophical notion unavailable to Aristotle. Ultimately, for Arendt, the experience of friendship opens up a space for human beings to begin to practice a distinct way of seeing one another – a ‘respect’ – that can in turn be practiced in public, making the experience of friendship an important precursor to action.

Aristotle and Iranian Ethicists

From Aristotle to the end of the Middle Ages, friendship was considered to be a core notion in Western political philosophy. However, as Von Heyking and Avramenko argue, friendship has lost its prominent politico-philosophical status in the modern era, particularly in the Western liberal tradition. In the Muslim tradition, and specifically in the history of Iranian thought, friendship as a moral paradigm went through a different course of development. In this article, I will present a comparative view of friendship as reflected in the works of Aristotle and three major Iranian ethicists: Ab? ?Al? A?mad Miskawayh (d. 1030), Ab??l-Q?sim ?usayn al-R?ghib al-Isfah?n? (d. ca. 1108) and Na?ir al-D?n ??s? (d. 1274). I will examine friendship-related perspectives rooted in the Irano-Islamic philosophical traditions that represent a significant but overlooked dimension of Iranian cosmopolitanism valuable for modern peacemaking approaches beyond such concepts as: “justice before peace,” “liberal peace” and “cold peace.”

Językowe obrazy PRZYJAŹNI w języku duńskim

<p>Celem niniejszego artykułu jest opisanie dwóch różnych obrazów przyjaźni występujących w języku duńskim. Materiał językowy, pozyskany ze słowników (definicje leksykalne, synonimy, antonimy, hiperonimy, derywaty i złożenia związane z głównymi leksykalnymi eksponentami konceptu) oraz z Narodowego Korpusu Języka Duńskiego, wskazuje na to, że w języku duńskim równolegle funkcjonują dwa obrazy przyjaźni – jeden związany z bardziej tradycyjnym postrzeganiem przyjaźni jako bardzo silnej i bliskiej relacji oraz jeden, w ramach którego głównym celem jest posiadanie wielu znajomych/przyjaciół. Dane pochodzące z korpusu pozwalają na stwierdzenie, że to właśnie ten drugi, nowszy obraz przyjaźni jest obecnie najczęściej przywoływany przez użytkowników języka duńskiego, mimo że tradycyjny obraz przyjaźni wydaje się być wciąż obecny w ich świadomości. Wniosek ten poparty został dodatkowo analizą rozwoju znaczenia leksemu ven, który jest głównym leksykalnym eksponentem konceptu i który współcześnie odzwierciedla szersze rozumienie przyjaźni w języku duńskim.</p>

Friendship and the social self in business success literature

What can we learn about the cultural meanings of friendship and personal bonds by turning to popular business success literature? Can it help to make sense of the new social spirit of capitalism? Social theory still takes as its object of criticism the bounded, autonomous, liberal subject, yet in the new business success literature, one finds instead a social conception of the person and a celebration of values like community, trust and reciprocity. Critical assessments of homo economicus are being incorporated into the success literature, often by cribbing from scholarly critique that has long invoked friendship as a counterpoint to instrumental relations of capitalism. We argue that in spite of these broad cultural shifts in ideas around what makes for successful business people, the view of friendship and selfhood advanced in the success literature gets caught in its own contradictions. The incorporation of friendship and social conceptions of the self into business success literature raises questions about how best to develop a relevant and critical concept of friendship in contemporary cultural and social theory.

Nietzsche and Aristotle on Friendship and Self-Knowledge

Abstract Focusing on Nietzsche's “middle period,” I argue that in those works friendship serves a vital function in Nietzsche's account of self-creation, and that there a kind of self-knowledge figures importantly. It is knowledge not of a self per se, but of an ineliminable need for what Nietzsche will call self-overcoming, the imperative to understand oneself as importantly constituted by processes of change and development rather than as the logical or transcendental condition of such processes. Friends figure in such processes because they are best placed to propel us on the particular path down which our development leads by making life seem worthwhile, and so making the processes of self-creation matter too. Here, I discuss Nietzsche's view of friendship and self-knowledge as it compares to that of Aristotle. And I attempt to show how Nietzsche's positive account of friendship and self-knowledge makes sense against the background of his more general criticisms of modern morality.

Emerson's Philosophical Hour of Friendship: A Reply to Robinson

This paper responds to David Robinson's reading of Emerson's Friendship. On Robinson's reading, that essay initially offers a pessimistic picture of friendship grounded in determinism, then reverses itself and in doing so, repudiates philosophy altogether. My aim here is to establish that Emerson's arguments in that essay are not only consistent but tenable and do not call for recantation. I will argue that Robinsons misreads several key passages and applies flawed logic to what he finds in them. I argue that the Aristotelian strains in Emerson's view of friendship do not lead to the pessimism about human relations Robinson describes, nor does Emerson subordinate friendship to a determinism that would deprive friends of agency. I agree that the passage Robinson takes to repudiate philosophy is self-critical but show that this self-criticism is far more circumscribed than he believes; its import is to establish that friendship does not lie outside the process of becoming. Further, since it is possible (and common) to reject determinism without rejecting philosophy, there seems to be no basis, even on Robinson's reading of the essay, for attributing any misology to it. Taking note of several key Emersonian positions, such as the continuity between man and divinity and the distinctive epistemological role he assigns to moods, serves as a corrective to the reading and criticisms Robinson propounds.

A Pedagogy of Friendship: young children’s friendships and how schools can support them

ABSTRACTChildren’s friendships are often neglected by teachers and researchers. This phenomenological study conducted with seven children aged five and six years explores young children’s perceptions of their everyday friendship experiences. This multi-method study used role play interviews, drawings and persona doll scenarios to consider children’s everyday experiences of friendship in school. The paper discusses the importance of socio-cultural aspects of children’s friendship including: imaginary friends; losing friends; protecting time and space to develop friendships and children’s routines and practices as they form and maintain friendships. Data and findings are discussed, leading to an original conceptual framework: a ‘Pedagogy of Friendship’. This is designed to help children make meaning from their friendship experiences and also provide practitioners with the opportunity to nurture and scaffold children through their friendship experiences in schools. We suggest that there is a need to raise the profile of children’s friendships in early childhood education and generate an educational perspective on friendship. Finally we conclude that listening to children’s views of friendship indicates that the application of the framework of a ‘Pedagogy of Friendship’ would be beneficial to children’s all round learning and development.

View of Friendship by Park Ji-won and the Influence of Western Learning -Centered on On Friendship(交友論) by Matteo Ricci-

View of Friendship by Park Ji-won and the Influence of Western Learning -Centered on On Friendship(交友論) by Matteo Ricci-

Review Essays: Landscape of Farewell: Alex Miller’s vision of friendship

The fiction of Australian novelist Alex Miller has long been exploring the dynamics of friendship, but in Landscape of Farewell (2007) he provides the most ambitious, and in my view the most comprehensive and perceptive, treatment of the subject of any contemporary novel, Australian or otherwise. This essay explores this profound view of friendship, which goes quite beyond mateship, and examines the ways in which Miller represents and embodies that vision in fiction. Through its brilliant handling of the complexities of tone and its rich deployment of the dynamics of gift exchange, Landscape of Farewell confronts the stark realities of suffering and death and finds within the darkness itself the deepest sources of light.

Philia and Social Ethics

Benedict XVI's first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, treated the different characteristics of human love and their expression. The first section discusses eros and the second shows how agape provides the essential framework for Catholic charitable organisations. I will be arguing that by omitting any reflection on the role of philia, he missed a significant opportunity to retrieve an important part of the Tradition and expand our usual understanding of the elements of social ethics. Part I briefly gives the background of Benedict's non-use of philia in his encyclical and indicates the basis for the view that philia has no place in Christian social ethics. The favoured approach is that of agape. Part II presents Thomas Aquinas' view of friendship and how it might counter the shortcomings identified by the authors in Part I. Part III applies his view of friendship to the key principles in Catholic social teaching of solidarity and preferential option for the poor. Part IV concludes with some general summary remarks.

Leadership and friendship: On the possibility of taking risks

Literature about the significance of cultivating democratic relationships in universities and schools abounds. However, very little has been said about the importance of friendship in engendering democratic relations. In this essay I argue for a complementary view of friendship based on mutuality and love - with reference to the seminal ideas of Nancy Sherman and Jacques Derrida. Our view is that human relations ought to be used as pedagogical spaces to nurture forms of friendship which not only encourage mutuality but also love in order to make possible the taking of risks on the part of leaders and their colleagues. And, if leaders and their colleagues act with mutuality and love they would be more favourably positioned in their society to take risks and to sustain democratic relationships. In this essay we shall show how both Nancy Sherman's (1997) and Jacques Derrida's (1997) ideas of friendship can be used to nurture human relations which involve taking risks. Our argument in defence of taking risks through friendships is hopefully a move away from fostering democratic interactions among leaders and colleagues, which could potentially ignore forms of action which involve challenging, undermining and disagreeing with one's friends.

Cracking the mirror: on Kierkegaard’s concerns about friendship

In this article, I offer a brief account of some of Kierkegaard’s key concerns about friendship: its “preferential” nature and its being a form of self-love. Kierkegaard’s endorsement of the ancient idea of the friend as “second self” involves a common but misguided assumption: that friendship depends largely upon likeness between friends. This focus obscures a vitally important element, highlighted by the so-called “drawing” view of friendship. Once this is emphasized, we can see a significant aspect - though by no means all - of Kierkegaard’s worry as misplaced. However, the “drawing” view also enables us to begin to see what a “Kierkegaardian” friendship might look like.

Coleridge and the Idea of Friendship, 1789-1804 by Gurion Taussig (review)

MLRy ioo.i, 2005 201 to distance Blake, satire being too exclusively negative, whereas Blake's intent is, ul? timately, to go beyond the corrosive to affirmativespiritual values. For Rawlinson, the heart of Blakean comedy is the 'carnivalesque', a kind of egalitarian, communally founded, celebratory social liturgy. (Rawlinson is at some pains to locate the origins of the carnivalesque in religion.) The question, for many readers, will be whether this understanding of the comic has enough in common with theirs for the book's argument to resonate. The upshot is that for long stretches little attention is given to the comic in the ordinary sense, or forthat matter even in Rawlinson's sense. His very long chapter on An Island in theMoon goes into considerable detail about what he believes is happening , but his focus is less on the comic, even in the limited sense of the carnivalesque, than on the implications for society of the characters' faulty 'readings' (which seems to mean interpretations). How much has this got to do with comedy? And throughout the book, Rawlinson's own method of 'reading' is questionable. His typical method is to substitute freely in discursive equations, as it were, drawing equivalences from pictorial or textual references in far-distant locations in Blake's oeuvre, too often in an unconvincingly strained way. This, of course, is a method that Blake critics use all the time, but Rawlinson pushes it to almost unexampled lengths. This book could have used more practical planning and better execution. There is a chapter on Blake's designs that cries out for illustrations. (Plenty of books that cost less than ?40 manage to include pictures.) Rawlinson and his editors consider it adequate to referto a work by page number in the Erdman edition without naming the work. And I counted some three dozen or more errors of spelling, punctuation, grammar, and typography. University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Brian Wilkie [Professor Wilkie, a regular contributor to MLR, died on 14 December 2003.] Coleridge and the Idea of Friendship, 1J8Q-1804. By Gurion Taussig. Cranbury, NJ: University of Delaware Press; London: Associated University Presses. 2003. 376 pp. ?50. ISBN 0-87413-741-1. A recurring theme in Taussig's original and carefully argued study is the contest, in Coleridge and his contemporaries' writings, between 'transcendent and empiricist notions of friendship'(p. 53)?thatis, between the 'spiritual'view of friendship as ideally imitating God's love forhumanity, and the Hobbesian view that All Society [. . .] is either forGain, or forGlory, not so much forlove of our Fellowes, as forlove of our Selves' (pp. 28-29, 229). Needless to say, Coleridge's own allegiance was primarily to the firstof these views, involving a 'fervor' which tended to elevate friendship 'from a mundane to a spiritually charged mode of interaction' (p. 29). At the same time, how? ever, this tendency was ambiguously connected, in the early part of his career, with an 'enthusiasticsensibility that threatened to disrupt conventional allegiances to fam? ily,state, and church' (p. 49); and part of Taussig's study traces Coleridge's gradual movement away from the view of friendship as the basis for 'a new kind of democratic relationship [. . .] that presupposes a fundamental equality between men based upon their common political rights' (p. 146). The ideal of transcending individual, private attachments in favour of iove of humanity' is evident, for example, in the pantisocratic Coleridge's description of his wifeas a woman whom 'I do not love?but whom by every tie of Reason and Honor I ought to love' (p. 137); yet even here, the force of individual feeling clearly threatens the rational ideal of universal friendship on which pantisocracy was based. A furthernotable case is Coleridge's decision to avoid excessive involvement with his friend (and 'friend of freedom'), John Thelwall, in favour 202 Reviews of preserving his and Wordsworth's ideal of rural retirement in the Quantock hills, which had been threatened by questions which the owner of Alfoxden raised about Thelwall'spresence there (pp. 203-04). Coleridge'scelebration, in 'Fears in Solitude', ofhis 'lowly cottage' in Nether Stowey, moreover, is interpretedby Taussig as seeking 'to demonstrate his sentimental integration within the landscape and affections of the...

Liberal Citizenship and Civic Friendship

Aristotle famously argues that friendship can serve as a normative model for the practice of citizenship, and this view has been widely accepted by neo-Aristotelians. Liberals, however, are quick to reject both Aristotle’s view of friendship and his view of citizenship. Does this mean that the concept of friendship is politically irrelevant for liberalism? This essay suggests, on the contrary, that the concept of friendship is far from obsolete, even for liberals. Specifically, communicative constraints derived from the norms of friendship, as interpreted by Ralph Waldo Emerson, could serve to promote the modest instrumental purposes of liberal citizenship—personal freedom, social justice, and civil peace—while simultaneously allowing the practice of liberal citizenship to develop in noninstrumental directions, enriched rather than strained by the multicultural realities of most modern societies.

Social relationships and friendships among young people with Down’s syndrome in secondary schools

More young people with Down’s syndrome are being taught in mainstream schools and interest in the educational aspect of inclusion has grown over the last few years.In this article Pat Cuckle, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Leeds, and June Wilson, a support teacher working for Education Leeds, explore patterns of friendship and social relationships among teenagers with Down’s syndrome. The young people who took part in the study either attend mainstream schools or resourced provision in mainstream schools. The enquiry provides fascinating insights into the participants’ views of friendship and into the range of their social experiences. Pat Cuckle and June Wilson conclude their report with a set of recommendations focusing on the need to create more opportunity for social interaction for young people with special needs.

Politics, Friendship and Solitude in Nietzsche (Confronting Derrida’s reading of Nietzsche in ‘Politics of Friendship’)

The paper offers a counter-reading to Derrida’s “utopian” reading of Nietzsche, focussing instead on Nietzsche’s cynical view of friendship, based on the impossibility of being a friend to oneself. Unlike Aristotle, who sees the basis of human political nature in their shared rationality and mutual friendship, Nietzsche sees not only politics, but human beings themselves as being constituted by a violent act of submission, and characterised by an ongoing struggle for power.The paper further examines two intellectual traditions about friendship and politics, one (primarily associated with Aristotle) according to which the two are positively related and no real tension could exist between them. Another tradition (primarily associated with Montaigne) holds friendship to be irreconcilable with politics.Elements of both traditions can be recognised in Nietzsche who, finding the radical deceptive nature of friendship unacceptable, moves to a solitude which is equally unbearable. For it is precisely the hermit that knows that his solitude makes him into an other to himself; which turns out to be a motive for real friendship, the third element which prevents the lonely hermit from sinking into the depth of self-interrogation. The paper concludes with the recognition that friendship, for Nietzsche, can only have an intermediary function on the way to full realisation of friendship, which will be a friendship of an inner difference or plurality, i.e. on our way to what is ultimately beyond the human condition, to the “overman”.

Friendship through Dialogue Journals: A Cross Grade Unit

different grade level. As reading and writing teachers, we had been seeking ways to strengthen both the sixth and eighth grade language arts cur ricula. Our goals were to tap some new liter ary resources and to make the reading and writing experience more meaningful than it had been. Realizing how crucial peer rela tionships are to middle school students, we decided to develop a study of friendship that went across disciplines as well as across grade levels. We developed the following objectives: 1. Students will deepen their understand ing of the gestalt of friendship. 2. Students will consider point of view as they read three short stories dealing with friendship. 3. Students will analyze the elements in the stories they have read. 4. Students will relate the view of friend ship in literature to their own experi ences.

Five and Six Year‐Olds’ Views of Friendship

Five and Six Year‐Olds’ Views of Friendship