A friend who asks us to betray the state or to undermine the common good is no true friend

Friendship in the modern world is not a political concept. It is a matter of the private sphere not of the public and if it happens to be a matter in public affairs it is by no means necessary to be in the name of the common good. In fact more often than not it is against the public interest. As far as international politics are concerned world friendship is just an unattainable utopia.

First we need to form a definition. What is a friend? A friend is another self says Aristotle. Intuitively we think of friendship as something inherently good. However it is not. For Aristotle friendship is reciprocated goodwill. Friendship is found in the need for pleasure and utility. We also want our friends to be good. We love our friend because of their own sake. That is because the friend resembles us and we love ourselves more than anything. This is where the love of friends" own sake and my self-love converge. Every friendship reflects some similarity. We like our friends because they are like us: They are good, useful and fun to be with. In the end friendship is for your own sake. The love of our friends stems from our self-love This mental construct tradition that my friend is a friend for my own sake is really powerful in history of the idea and is recurrent in many subsequent thinkers with Kant being somewhat an exception. Selfishness has a all too important role to play in the idea of friendship which is not something bad in itself if confined to the private life or moral and intellectual self-perfection. However there is a bad egoism can have negative consequences when transposed onto the political arena. From Aristotle Politics we know that a good government is for the sake of the governed. If the governors act in their interest solely and not in the interest of the governed the regime is corrupted. The innocent notion of friendship is actually capable of civil corruption because in its core stays the idea of self-love, and not the common good. I think that is the reason why Montesquieu says: If men were perfectly virtuous they wouldn’t have friends. Not because they will be self-sufficient as Plato suggest in Lysis, but because they should be impartial to all. Not very distant is Kierkegaard"s view that we should love our neighbours – all of the world indiscriminately. His line of argument follows the logic of Christian tradition.

Let us turn to Aristotle"s idea of friendship and its link to political life. In fact friendship is indispensable to the well-being of the politeia. The best political unit the optimum size of the state is the size of a city and so the polis is the best way to organise political life. Societies should be small in order for personal affection to develop among their members. Friendship is the strongest binding force of societies, and not merely interest. There is a limit to the persons you can know and you can trust. One cannot know the whole world. One can know his closest people. They together form a state. Other people will form a polis of their own. The world will be a collection of polises.

In many ways do our modern societies differ from the ancient ones. The distinction between public and private in the ancient world is blurred. Many political concepts that we take from the ancients today have a totally different meaning. As Benjamin Constant argues the freedom of the ancients is not like the freedom of the moderns. In fact the whole political structure is different. The basic unit of the modern international system is not the polis but the nation state. Nation-states are too big to sustain friendship among their citizens but they have come up with an ingenious alternative – the sense of nationhood. Nations are brought together not by the sense of personal trust but by belonging to this abstract entity the nation. Nations are imagined communities (Anderson 1991) and friends are real people.

Aristotle emphasizes on the virtue of your friend. Let us imagine friendship without so much virtue. Aristotle would say it would be unstable. What about if neither you nor your friends are that virtuous but you both share the same political interests? Cicero confines friendship only between good men. Cicero also thinks that greed for money, ambition for public offices and distinction are the sources of the greatest danger to friendship. In fact public offices and the hunger for power can solidify friendships which are based on interest, not on virtue. These are not true friendships, however they much resemble them. There is self-love, there is similarity between friends, common beliefs and trust. However it is common interest that replaces virtue. These untrue friendships, which Seneca describes as bargains are very common in politics. Usually it is a conspiracy of several friends against the public good. That is known as nepotism. When you are in power you put your friends in high offices and expect loyalty. Your friends might not be the best suited candidates for the job – they might not have the right knowledge or experience their job requires. But they are suitable for your needs and are in your self-interest. Nepotism is exacerbated if the one in power appoints not his friends but his relatives.

According to Seneca: “He who begins to be your friend because it pays will also cease because it pays. A man will be attracted by some reward offered in exchange for his friendship, he be attracted by aught in friendship other than friendship itself.” In the modern world this pay-off and interest maximizing is a inevitable part of all social relations. It is the economic rationale of the marketplace and it is a strong one indeed. Interest compatibility create very strong bonds among economic agents but also among political power seekers. The premise of Seneca that these friendship are not true friendships because they rely on the reward is still valid. But the reward itself is a very strong imperative for action. Napoleon famously declared that there are only two forces that unite men: fear and interest. If the common interest of these “quasi”-friends is against the public interest then most often than not their little common interest prevails at the expense of every one else.

Literature provide good examples of conflict between friendship and patriotism even when treating ancient plots. Friendship and politics can collide in a different sense. Which is the greater good: friendship or love of country? This dilemma is presented in Shakespeare"s tragedy Julius Caesar. The focus of the play doesn"t fall so much on Caesar, rather than his best friend and ultimate assassin – Brutus. Brutus kills Caesar because he sees Caesar"s ambition to power as a threat to the Roman republican regime. In the famous line of his soliloquy Brutus declares:

If there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of
Caesar"s, to him I say, that Brutus" love to Caesar
was no less than his. If then that friend demand
why Brutus rose against Caesar, this is my answer:
--Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved
Rome more. Had you rather Caesar were living and
die all slaves, than that Caesar were dead, to live
all free men? As Caesar loved me, I weep for him;
as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was
valiant, I honour him: but, as he was ambitious, I
slew him.

In another subsequent tragedy “Anthony and Cleopatra” Shakespeare develops this antithetical theme of love of the beloved and love of country in even more acute form. Anthony decides to leave Rome and live with the Queen of the Nile. Anthony proclaims:

Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch
Of the ranged empire fall! Here is my space.
Kingdoms are clay.

The Roman Triumvir even decides to take up arms against his country and in the name of his Egyptian queen he provokes yet another civil war among the Romans.

As we see from these examples it is not by any means certain that love for friend and love for country go together or always compatible. They are two different and separate things that might coincide but might not.. This is apparent in the modern world but can also be found it in the ancients.

Bibliography:

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.html last accessed 1.11.2010.

Anderson, Benedict., Imagined Communities, 1991., http://www.la.wayne.edu/polisci/kdk/nationalism/sources/anderson.pdf last accessed 1.11.2010.

Pakaluk, Michael, Other Selves: Philosophers on Friendship, 1991. Hackett Publishing

Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, http://www.william-shakespeare.info/act1-script-text-julius-caesar.htm

last accesses 1.11.2010

Shakespeare, Anthony and Cleopatra, http://www.william-shakespeare.info/act1-script-text-antony-and-cleopatra.htm last accessed 1.11.2010