The Value Of Friendship

If in my Applied Morals class at Oberlin someone were to propose friendship as a significant moral paradigm and essential aspect of ethical consideration, I am sure their proposition would be met with scoffs and laughter. So how did we end up at a point in society where friendship is not taken into moral consideration if some of the most important Hellenic minds were so adamant about its importance? I would argue that friendship must return to post-modern life as a tool of improvement to our society, without stripping friendship of its inherent purity. Friendship is an ontological need for humans but also an overlooked political device and possibly the only solution to the many social issues in our current Trumpian era. As Nicgorski says “friendship

We seem to have inherited the gaps in all previous periods’ philosophers view of friendship, and morphed those gaps into one confused definition of what friendship is meant to be. “The medieval philosophers were limited by religious reasons, the modern philosopher by socio-political reasons, and the contemporary philosophers by philosophical reasons.” (Mitias 216). As friendship stands in post-modern society, it is stifled by all the same limitations to which each of these era’s philosophers was limited. The re-introduction of friendship as a defining paradigm in post-modern life is necessary and would be beneficial to society, but to reestablish the value of friendship in modern morals, we must examen previous limitations and concerns of philosophers on friendship and an explanation as to why. The resurrection of friendship must take into consideration the types of friendships and the usefulness of all of them. I think, for us to get the most out of friendship as a moral paradigm, we must radically redefine how friendship can work for us. The word morals often brings to mind words like code, or rules, or standards, and if friendship is to be an essential part of our morality again, we must approach it as something to be followed, used, and

Vernon explains that “In Athenian and Roman society friendship of various sorts… assumed a prominent role in public life simply because friends inevitable found themselves engaged in it together.” (Devere 11). Politics and friendship intermingling holds so much stigma in post-modern friendship practices. We are discouraged from bringing up politics at the dinner table or amongst friends for fear of disagreement. This needs to change. I love talking about politics with my friends and have made many true, pure friendships through political engagement and the sharing of ideas, even if those political ideals differ from one another. “For Greeks, practices of friendship were what first informed their practice of politics” (class notes). In Athenian and Roman societies it was inevitable, and now it is avoided. With the re-emphasis on friendship as a moral paradigm, we need to find the healthy middle ground between political engagement among friends because there is a place to “use the notion of friendship in politics to point out the tensions between friendship in politics… and the necessary striving for political friendship.” (Zweerde