Does true friendship exist in the modern world, or is the ability to make friends a thing of the past? What do “normal” friendships look like and what is happening with them today? Philosopher’s opinion.
Psychologies: What is modern friendship anyway?
Alexander Filippov: From a philosophical point of view, friendship does not exist today. I’m not going to shock you, but only stating a fact – as an observer and no more.
Good conversation starter…
A. F.: Ready to explain. Aristotle said: “nature reveals itself in the end.” What does it mean? That the purpose and nature of any object or phenomenon is most fully manifested when the object or phenomenon is perfect, that is, completed, and their improvement is impossible. If you want to know true friendship, look at its ideal. This is the point of view of philosophy. Let’s say two scoundrels conspire to kill someone. They are very solidary in their undertaking, help each other in every possible way, and then they also hide each other from the police. Is this friendship?
That is, you want to say that there is simply no such ideal now?
A. F.: Exactly. And this applies not only to friendship, but also to almost all close relationships.
Are there really no normal friends today, as well as normal families?
A. F.: There are no normal connections at all. The concept of the norm of relations is always determined by the era and society. And if you and I were now in Athens during the time of Aristotle, we would certainly be horrified. The chanting of homosexual pedophilia, the legal possibility for men to have sex with the three kinds of women – wives, slaves and hetairas – and wives who dare not stick their noses out of the gynaecium, the female half of the house. Now tell the ancient Greek about a Moscow single mother with three daughters from three different fathers, the eldest of whom is already pregnant at the age of 15 and lives with her classmate with his parents … So the concept of “norm” is not applicable here. Besides, I’m not saying at all that today there are no loving parents, grateful children, faithful spouses and reliable friends. I’m only talking about the fact that today there are no ideals of relationships. And this also applies to the ideal of friendship. I think the destruction happened in about the last 30 years.
That is, before that, everything was in order with friendship?
A. F.: I would not say that everything was in order, but there was definitely an ideal. For example, the Soviet ideal was based on romantic notions of friendship with a touch of antiquity. The ancient ideal of friendship is, whatever one may say, a civil ideal. Ancient philosophy developed in small city-states, where all people were somehow familiar with each other: together they defended the policy from enemies, were brought up together at theatrical performances, and participated in religious rituals. An ideal polis is a place where all the inhabitants live a good life. And the idea of friendship was subordinated to the same goal, the goal of the common good. Naturally, in Soviet times, the idea of the common good was also present. Although the difference between a small city and one sixth of the land is too great for this ideal to be viable. But in the Soviet understanding of friendship, there was a lot of romantic ideal as well.
Yes, we are well aware of the romance of friendly relations of that time from the books of Vasily Aksenov, the films of Marlen Khutsiev, and the songs of Vladimir Vysotsky.
A. F.: But this is secondary romance, the origins of which are well illustrated by Schiller’s ballad “Bail”. The plot in a nutshell is this. The hero tries to kill the cruel tyrant, but is captured and sentenced to death. He is ready to die, but first he certainly wants to arrange the fate of his sister, to marry her. He asks the tyrant to let him go for three days, and during this time, a friend of the hero will remain in custody as a bail. The tyrant agrees, the friend, of course, too – and intrepidly takes a place in prison. And the hero, having married off his sister, sets off on the return journey – and encounters a mass of monstrous obstacles, but still manages to return at the moment when his friend is already being led to execution. After that, the touched tyrant begins to see clearly and decides to be friends with such wonderful people from now on. As you can see, this is a completely different ideal. Civic feelings are in the background, the main thing is the strength of feelings of a particular person.
“UNLESS WE HAVE NEW IDEALS, WE HAVE TO BE FRIENDS AND LOVE, RELYING ONLY ON OUR OWN POWERS”
Very beautiful, in my opinion, the ideal.
A. F.: Wonderful! Just very quickly outdated. Remember the caricature of the romantic Lensky. And Pushkin’s caustic lines: “He believed that his friends were ready to accept fetters for his honor, And that their hand would not falter To break the vessel of the slanderer.” In this irony there is a deep disappointment from the fact that there is no romantic friendship in the world, that the ideal is unattainable. Nevertheless, just such a friendship – adjusted for the common good – was instilled in us. In the course of critics and prosecutors there was a characteristic wording: “a misunderstood sense of camaraderie.” This phrase contains a terrible imbalance between human feelings and the requirements of ideology.
Well, this artificial ideal has collapsed, and what’s next?
A.F.: In fact, the destruction of the ideals of friendship happened not only in our country. For example, I had to live and work in Germany. They are very fond of the word Freund – friend. This is a good, warm word, it seems that people even want to say it more often. But when you are addressed as “mein Freund”, you need to clearly understand that this does not oblige you to anything. There is nothing behind this word at all, no strong attachment or willingness to sacrifice something. Language reflects the processes taking place in life. And the change in the meaning of words speaks of problems with the concepts themselves. In Russian, the word “friend”, in my opinion, on the contrary, is now less common, it is replaced by pseudosynonyms: friend, acquaintance and – the most characteristic! – friend. Well, who would think of counting hundreds of their friends on Facebook as real friends? What can these friends do for each other? Unless you put an extra like…
If the ideal of friendship is being destroyed everywhere, then there is a universal reason for it. Which?
A. F.: First of all, the mobility of modern life. We move too much and easily – both in space and in social ties. And we often fail to build strong relationships. On the other hand, the number of connections increases to such an extent that complete dedication becomes impossible. The ease of establishing contacts turns into the ease of their destruction and the lightness of the relationship itself. In none of the hundreds of emerging connections we can – or do not have time, do not want to, or all together – invest our “I”. In other words, put your soul into it. Here another question arises: is this most carefully guarded “I” really valuable? I suspect not. That this truly valuable “I” also no longer exists. It was not only one of the parties in friendship or love. It was both the cause and the result of a deep, authentic relationship. The constancy of family, love, friendship ties, as it were, overturned back into the inner world, giving it stability, shape and depth.
Your words sound like an epitaph…
A. F.: No, no, don’t take them that way. It’s about the destruction of ideals, but this does not mean that there are no more feelings themselves. I said that there are still loving spouses and true friends. There were no universal models, but the need to be friends and love has not gone anywhere and will not go away. Perhaps, over time, new ideals will arise. In the meantime, it remains for us to be friends and love, relying only on our own strengths.