Friendship

by A.C. Grayling

A central bond, a cherished value, a unique relationship, a profound human need, a type of love. What is the nature of friendship, and what is its significance in our lives? How has friendship changed since the ancient Greeks began to analyze it, and how has modern technology altered its very definition? In this fascinating exploration of friendship through the ages, one of the most thought-provoking philosophers of our time tracks historical ideas of friendship, gathers a diversity of friendship stories from the annals of myth and literature, and provides unexpected insights into our friends, ourselves, and the role of friendships in an ethical life.   A. C. Grayling roves the rich traditions of friendship in literature, culture, art, and philosophy, bringing into his discussion familiar pairs as well as unfamiliar—Achilles and Patroclus, David and Jonathan, Coleridge and Wordsworth, Huck Finn and Jim. Grayling lays out major philosophical interpretations of friendship, then offers his own take, drawing on personal experiences and an acute awareness of vast cultural shifts that have occurred. With penetrating insight he addresses internet-based friendship, contemporary mixed gender friendships, how friendships may supersede family relationships, one’s duty within friendship, the idea of friendship to humanity, and many other topics of universal interest.

Genres: Philosophy, Friendship, Nonfiction, Psychology, Essays

248 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Anthony Clifford "A. C." Grayling is a British philosopher. In 2011 he founded and became the first Master of New College of the Humanities, an independent undergraduate college in London. Until June 2011, he was Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London, where he taught from 1991. He is also a supernumerary fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford.

He is a director and contributor at Prospect Magazine, as well as a Vice President of the British Humanist Association. His main academic interests lie in epistemology, metaphysics and philosophical logic. He has described himself as "a man of the left" and is associated in Britain with the new atheism movement, and is sometimes described as the 'Fifth Horseman of New Atheism'. He appears in the British media discussing philosophy.

Reviews

[Sean · Rating 3 out of 5]

Few take the time to examine the friendship, the constructs and boundaries in which its operates, and its form: whether one of utility, pleasure, or virtue. A.C. Grayling examines the classics to find inspiration from philosophers on the nature of friendship. He praises Aristotle's conception of friendships of virtue -- those that arise not out of a need for utility or pleasure but rather intrinsically for the sake of the friend itself. Grayling also highlights the importance of maintaining just one or a few strong friendships and suggests that the modern era's Facebook-driven trend toward accumulating friends akin to accumulating possessions or wealth belies the true motive in experiencing the joys of friendship: sharing life's joys and sorrows with another intimately and without reservation, an impossibility among 100s or 1000s of so called friends.

I also appreciated Grayling's treatise on the gender roles of friendships and the evolution of relationships toward encompassing friendship -- such as the intimacy of an eros-driven young love toward a more stable and enduring love coupled with friendship. This book overall increased my understanding of the importance of friendship and if nothing else helped me define it where I had used the term too loosely and inappropriately in the past.

[Am Y · Rating 3 out of 5]

A factual and very dry read. Much could have been done to make the discussion of various concepts livelier.

[Regan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a primer for nonspecialists about the history of the concept of friendship. Grayling presents the canon on the subject--starting with Plato & Aristotle through the medieval period to the Enlightenment. Philosophical considerations are supplemented with overviews of famous friendships in literature. The author closes with some uninspired personal thoughts on the subject.

One would expect such a historical overview to at least suggest how contemporaries are wrestling with the concept, but Grayling is content to end his book with a personal narrative of his special friendships in his boarding school and undergraduate days. (Given that he acknowledges that male friendships have too long dominated the discourse, it is odd that he insists on recounting his own rather unremarkable--& notably unnamed--friends).

If this is indeed a series devoted to helping us navigate our current ethical landscape, then it is incumbent on the editors of the Virtues and Vice series to introduce (at least) a sketch of the concept as we use it now.

[Mj · Rating 1 out of 5]

I picked up this book as a birthday present to a friend of mine, but wanted to read it first to make sure it's philosophies aligned with mine. (Especially with a book on ethics, this could go either way.)

I'm glad I did, because I really don't agree with much of Grayling's antiquated views on friendship. For one, he seems to promote the idea that friendship is a boy's club and that boys and girls, or men and women, cannot form meaningful friendships. He also seems to promote the idea that masculine friendships just lead to some sweet, sweet man boning (his obsession over Achilles and Patroclus or David and Jonathon is palpable).

This is an easy book to read, and I still ended up giving the book to her with an addendum, but man. I won't be diving into more of Grayling's work.

[Tim Norman · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed the first few chapters that looked into the understanding of friendship in classical thought. As the book went on I found it less interesting, as Grayling insisted on making much of the book about speculations of homosexual or homoerotic relationships between fiction and historical characters. I did not understand how this was central to understanding friendship. So, if you are looking to understand some about friendship in the classical sense, read the first few chapters and then put it down.

[Cheryl]

Granted I just used the index to skim for any topics that seemed interesting... but even the index was boring and off-putting. What I did find is his conviction that friendship is so important that the friendless are unkempt, unclean, and half mad. No, I'm not exaggerating. That's what he said. At least once in those words, and another time almost as strong.

Other reviewers point to sexism, too much talk about erotic and homosexual friendship, and a dry tone. So, yeah, blurb intrigues but book does not.

February 2022

[Desheny Asher · Rating 5 out of 5]

An eye-opener, drawn in to the various points and contentions. Beautiful philosophical good-read. Friendship, true friendship is for those who care, are concerned and who allow you to be your whole you. If you ever need someone to count on, be with the one whom lends you their shoulder for mascara-bedded eyelashes and your snotty nose.

[Sydney Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my first Grayling book and there will definitely be more. I loved how this book aimed in integrate thoughts from a number of philosophical texts with additional thoughts from Grayling. Will definitely return to this again later.

[Nolan Mandelino · Rating 1 out of 5]

Awful book with very little taste

[Pedro Pérez Motilla · Rating 3 out of 5]

Agosto 2024.

Un tratado desigual que explora la idea de la amistad a lo largo de los siglos, desde la A. Grecia, pasando por el Cristianismo, hasta Kant y posteriores. Tiene partes interesantes y otras repetitivas o algo inanes.

3/5.

[Ron Peters · Rating 3 out of 5]

A. C. Grayling has written about a book a year since the early 1980s. Notably, in 2007 he published seven of ‘em. Olé! He has always been deeply interested in practical ethics, i.e., the question of how we should live.

This isn’t self-help or pop-psych, it’s a history of the idea of friendship in philosophy. He begins, as one does, with Socrates, who holds with the Trumpian notion of transactional, utilitarian friendships, then moves on to Aristotle, whose thinking is more subtle, but who basically promotes the direct opposite, friendship as a complete union between two people, which sounds more like love and was in fact taken as such by early Christians who likened it to the idea of union with God. Next comes Cicero, whom Grayling likes better. Cicero defines friendship as “enjoyment of the other’s company, accord on many things, and mutual goodwill and liking.” And so on, through Augustine, the medieval era, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, etc.

You get the general idea; I'm writing a brief review, not an essay. Reading this book will not give you direct and clear guidance on how you should behave with respect to finding and keeping friends. It will illumine key ideas for you to mull over with respect to why you may want friends at all, and considerations to puzzle yourself with related to how you and your friends might want to treat one another. Brief-ish and worth the read if you are at all thoughtful person.

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

I selected this book with the specific purpose of learning the philosophical foundations of friendship. I was also interested in what I could learn from the literary selections the summary of this book promised to contain. Mr. Grayling does an excellent job in the first section of introducing and expounding upon early philosophical discussions of friendship. He also highlights weaknesses and failings in those discussions as well as his own attempt to tackle such an enormous endeavour. I found the first section fulfilled my purpose for reading the book. The second section, in which literary examples of friendship were to be introduced and addressed, focused too much on super-friendships. By that, I mean that each literary example of friendship was of friends with so strong a friendship as to resemble a spousal level of intimacy. This led the discussion beyond friendship and left me as a disappointed reader. In the last section, we get a smattering of excellent points and discussion - worthy thoughts. I would have liked to have gone deeper into some of these subjects (multimedia friendship, multiplicity of friends, interfamilial friendships, and friendship in relation to different pairings of gender. I found this book to contain well written philosophical summary, tactful placement of authorial opinion, and the beginnings of answers to questions about friendship.

[Tucker · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good introductory chapter describing how Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics identifies "the qualities that attract people into friendship [philia] with each other, 'lovables' or phileta ... He says 'philia is the motive of society', and that it is even more important than justice because it is what promotes concord in the city." (pp. 31-32)

"There are three phileta, he says, and they are what is useful, what is pleasing, and what is excellent. These correlate to three kinds of friends: those who are friends with each other because of the advantages gained by being so, those who are friends with each other because of the pleasure it brings them to be so, and those who are friends with each other because they 'resemble each other in excellence' and love each other because of 'what the other is'. This last, he says, is the truest and highest kind of friendship." (p. 33)

Not very much on the reasons friendships sometimes end, except in brief general comments at the end and within his personal reflections on "drifting apart."

What an epigraph!
amare curare sentire refovere osculari oblectare tangere fortunare

[Carl · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book never achieves what it sets out to do; it never gets to the heart of friendship. And as such, I would not recommend this book to anyone who has not already spent a great deal of time contemplating and reading about Friendship elsewhere. This book is only really useful in its ability to refer the reader to other writers who have addressed Friendship.

On an a more personal note, I was bothered by Grayling's discussion on Christianity and Friendship. His analysis struck me as philosophically uncharitable. But perhaps this was to be expected from someone described as the "Fifth Horseman of New Atheism."

[Tim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Focused on historical texts and on his own logical response to them, it is strangely devoid of the feel of friendship. His repeated returns to sex, the homoerotic and friendship between men and women, were more prominent than useful or well considered. His reflection on classical texts was a lot like a tiresome book report, but one written by someone quite willing to disagree with Aristotle and to chortle at Augustine (and at all of Christianity). Some interesting bits but overall too much particular analysis and too little friendship - almost the opposite of Joseph Epstein's book. Both disappointed in the end.

[Sally · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this well-written overview of the concept of friendship, the first volume in a projected series on Virtues and Vices from a philosophical angle. He covers very ably the views of philosophers from classical antiquity to the Victorian era, and then emblematic friendships from legend and literature that have informed Western culture. As he points out, almost all this is from a male perspective about friendships between men. He ends with his own reflections on idea of friendship today.

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVED THIS BOOK!
And I want everyone to read it!

I grab just about everything that discusses friendship, and I am so glad this particular book crossed my path! I'm very grateful to my FRIEND for showing it to me. ;)

[Joe Reindeer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dire

[Santo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Niente di che..era meglio non leggerlo..

[Mills College Library]

177.62 G783 2013