The most beautiful treasure in the world can be ours and yet not bring us the joy of possession if we do not know its value. Such is the fate of friendship.
The most beautiful treasure in the world may belong to us – and yet not bring us the joy of possession if we do not know its value. Such is the fate of friendship. Our culture has celebrated romantic love for the last two or three hundred years. We strive for it with all our hearts, we envy those to whose lot it has fallen, and we often do not pay much attention to those amazing relationships of spiritual intimacy and mutual support that connect us with friends. This injustice of ours in relation to friendship and ourselves is what the modern Norwegian philosopher, whose interests are very diverse (from mathematics to sociology), is trying to make up for. Especially since, examining the changes that friendship has undergone since the time of Homer and Confucius to the present day, he makes an interesting observation. It turns out that in modern society there is a process that he calls “friendliness”: “If earlier people’s behavior was determined rather by their social role and status, and traditions and customs set the boundaries of what can be said and done, now we are increasingly treating each other as with friends at work, at school or at home.
PROGRESS-TRADITION, 256 p.