This was a nice article on friendship in Dawn newspaper. I want to share it with u all too.

Friendship and reality
By Anwar Syed

Aristotle addresses the subject in Nicomachean Ethics (Books VIII & IX). The sum of his argument is that friendship is a partnership in virtue. The object of all human action, he says, is happiness. True happiness is the same as goodness or, if you will, virtue. A good person is one who lives and acts in accordance with reason (as opposed to passion or whim).

Aristotle goes on to say that friendship is an essential component of the good life. Friendship between good persons is to be distinguished from that based on utilitarian considerations or those of transient pleasure (such as one may get from the company of a person who is enchanting or has a good sense of humour). The one based on the sharing of virtue is more inclusive and enduring, while those based on expectation of gain or fun are incomplete. In the former case, friends do good to each other for each other’s sake. This does not preclude being mutually helpful and pleasant. In addition, they share each other’s joys and sorrows. It is, thus, a fuller relationship.

Friendship between good people is deep down self-love or, we may say, it is one’s friendship with one’s own self. Yet, a good man needs friendship with others because, being by nature gregarious, he derives happiness from contact with them. Moreover, it has a positive influence on the development of each party’s character. Their friendship increases the more often they meet, do things together, and correct each other. Friendship is, then, an intrinsic part of the good life.

Cicero (106-43 BC) — a renowned Roman jurist, statesman, administrator, orator, and philosopher of his time — also thinks of friendship in ethical terms. Virtue, he says, is the soul of friendship. While it may be that all of us need friends, and friendlessness is a wretched state, true friendship can exist only among good people. Friends will tell each other the truth even if it is going to be offensive, and they will neither ask each other to do, nor will they do if asked, anything that is wrong.

Identity, or similarity, of views on divine and worldly matters, joined with common interests and mutual affection, is the parent and preserver of friendship between men of virtue. These men value honour, purity, equity, and liberality; they have the courage of their convictions, and they reject greed, lust, and violence. There is sharing of confidence among friends; one can unburden oneself to a friend without reservation and without fear of betrayal. One shares the friend’s joys and sorrows, and sees in him one’s own “second self.” (Recall Aristotle’s similar observation.) Old friends should not be forsaken for new ones.

Jesus, not a political philosopher as such but the source original for the thinking of several mediaeval Christian political philosophers (e.g., St Augustine, Thomas of Aquinas, William of Occam, Nicholas of Cusa, John of Salisbury) made a specific reference to friendship during his last meal with his disciples. He said they were not his servants but his friends, and that they were friends to one another. As such they were to love one another as he had loved them. Their friendship was founded not in expectation of gain but in their common allegiance to Jesus and to virtue as he had elucidated it. Thus, once again, friendship became a partnership in virtue.

Let us now consider friendship as seen by thinkers who claim to be concerned with “ground realities”, with things as they are and must be, and not with how they might have been or ought to be. In his essay on friendship, Francis Bacon (1561-1626) wrote that a true friend was one “to whom you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatever lieth upon the heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or confession.” Kings may raise some persons to be companions. He may call them his friends, but actually they rise to be no more than favourites. Their status results from the king’s indulgence, and they keep it during his pleasure. They can be returned to their original station, or somewhere even lower, at his whim.

According to Thomas Hobbes, probably the most eminent of the English political thinkers, friendship is not a good in itself; it is a means to desired advantage. Men who seek and enjoy the company of others do so by their own choice, not in response to the call of human nature. For with their differing opinions and passions, their incompatible strivings, and their competitive pursuit of scarce resources, they are, by nature, not friends but antagonists. Even shared passions and pursuits, which form the basis of partnership, instigate hostility, giving rise to countless causes of quarrel.

Friendships are the means for acquiring more of some desired good. A friend is one who does what you ask him to do, even though he is not otherwise required to do it. But he will be your friend if he expects the relationship to work to his benefit also in a measure that he considers adequate. In politics one makes friends to defend against a common foe. Apart from situations where association with someone is fun, friendship, in Hobbes’s reckoning, is like an alliance of convenience, and often a shifting one. He emphasizes repeatedly how unreliable friends are likely to be. They will keep their covenants only if they fear that breaking them will bring them intolerable consequences.

Hobbes thinks that wealth, joined with liberality, is the most convenient way of acquiring friends (as well as servants). A rich man who is stingy will effortlessly make any number of enemies. A combination of eloquence and flattery is the next best way. (Cicero thought flattery worked only with the feeble-minded.)

Let us now move on from philosophical to sociological expositions. In this perspective friendship is a comfortable and relaxing relationship, involving “self-disclosure” (sharing of confidences), which presupposes mutual trust. It also involves sharing of joys and sorrows, loyalty, and mutual assistance (when needed). It takes the investment of much time and emotional energy to develop. Friendship will wither without physical contact: friends must meet periodically and talk together. But in conversations, neither side should make long speeches, for that will sound to the other as a sermon. Some sort of equality and mutual respect must also be present if friendship is to endure.

A friend, to begin with, is someone with whom you have some significant commonality of background, views, values, and ways. Beyond that, he is one who finds being with you to be enjoyable; he accepts you as you are; believes in you; forgives or overlooks your mistakes; says good things about you to others; tells you the truth when you want to hear it. He is trustworthy: he will keep your secrets, and he is there for you when you need him. You don’t have to be charming or put up appearances; you can be just yourself. There are limits to this relationship, as there are to all others: there are things that neither of you will ask the other to tell or do.

Friendship as a partnership in virtue may still exist in some ideologically committed groups. But I doubt that most friendships among other people will answer that description. I think the sociologist’s exposition of friendship will ring more bells in most ears than will the philosopher’s.

Kings, it is said, have no relatives, and we may say, with Francis Bacon, that they don’t have friends either. Friendships are likely to be rare even in the world of democratic politics. Two members of our National Assembly, having roughly the same social standing, and neither in the other’s way of advancement, may become good friends. But the moment they become competitors, or one of them reaches a position that makes him the other’s superior, their friendship will most likely cease.

Politicians of high rank are like kings in this respect. Mr Jinnah did not have any personal friends that I have ever heard of; nor, to the best of my knowledge, did Jawaharlal Nehru. Once, in the summer of 1974, I asked Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto if he had any personal friends. He said all his friendships were made in the “public interest”, meaning that he did not have any. The same can probably be said of Ayub Khan, Ziaul Haq, and now General Musharraf.

At one tine time Winston Churchill was thought to be a personal friend of Prime Minister Lloyd George. But that was not what Lloyd George thought. He is reported to have told his secretary-mistress, Frances Stevenson, that “Winston would make a drum out of the skin of his own mother in order to sound his own praises.”

Robert Jackson, a judge of the United States Supreme Court, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) had known each other since their younger days. They drank and played poker together for many years. Harry Hopkins, aide and confidant, joined President Roosevelt for martinis (which FDR mixed himself) in his retiring room on the second floor of the White House every evening. But neither Jackson nor Hopkins (nor for that matter anyone else other than his wife, Eleanor) presumed to be familiar enough to call him by his first name (Franklin). They addressed him as Mr President.

The insight provided by both philosophers and sociologists, to wit, that some sort of equality is a pre-requisite to friendship would seem to be entirely sound. There simply cannot be friendship between high and low, when one is inferior to the other in rank and status. In politics it is certainly lonely at the top, and relationships can be treacherous even at lower echelons.