Overthink
The best of all possible podcasts, Leibniz would say. Putting big ideas in dialogue with the everyday, Overthink offers accessible and fresh takes on philosophy from enthusiastic experts. Hosted by professors Ellie Anderson (Pomona College) and David M. Peña-Guzmán (San Francisco State University).
Overthink
Friendship
Even with endless social scripts around romance, we hardly know what it means to be a good friend. In episode 114 of Overthink, Ellie and David reflect on the highs and lows of friendship, from their own bond to Montaigne’s intimate connection to Étienne de La Boétie. From Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics to today’s loneliness epidemic, they question what friends do, how they hold each other accountable, and the deep ways in which our vices and virtues are shaped by our friends. Plus, in the bonus, they talk Ralph Waldo Emerson, intimacy, dyadic relationships, high school friends, and… pluralectics?
Check out the episode's extended cut here!
Works Discussed
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics
Francis Bacon, “Of Friendship”
Lydia Denworth, Friendship: The Evolution, Biology, and Extraordinary Power of Life’s Fundamental Bond
Elijah Milgram, “Aristotle on Making Other Selves”
Michel de Montaigne, “Of Friendship”
Lawrence Thomas, “The Character of Friendship”
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Hello and welcome to Overthink.
Ellie:The podcast where two friends, who are also philosophy professors, leverage our long term friendship into a hopefully engaging podcast for anyone and everyone.
David:I am David Peña Guzman.
Ellie:And I'm Ellie Anderson. David, back in Spring 2021, we did a podcast episode on friendship, but very few people listened to it. This is back when we were a baby podcast, less than a year old, but moreover, it was about friendship during COVID. It was part of a series we did on relationships during COVID, and so that's dated the episode quite a bit. I feel like nobody wants to relive that time. And if you are sitting there being like, okay, pandemic's not over, like this podcast might still be relevant. Let me just say the numbers are telling a very different story because nobody is downloading that episode.
David:Yeah, count me among those who don't want to relive that episode as well. But I mean, since then, a number of people have asked us for an episode on friendship. And so obviously there's a lot to say about this concept. And I feel like the time has come for us to do An episode on the topic that is just about the topic without qualifiers. But hey, if you want to relive what it was like to be friends during quarantine, go and check out that episode, it has some great content.
Ellie:We working working through some of the troubles we were having with friends during quarantine as well, like on that episode. I really loved that episode. And we talked to our first ever overthink assistant about it on the episode and like about how friendship was changing for students during college. So shout out to Anna Koppelman. Highly recommend. But yes, you're right, David. The topic was not exhausted with that Friendship during COVID episode. So we are revisiting and doing a general episode on the topic.
David:Yeah, a general episode, but as a way of broaching that general topic, maybe we can begin with the concrete, which in this case is us, Ellie. We are, after all, friends. You know, they say out there that we are friends.
Ellie:Except the people who think that we are partners. I'm like, you've never listened to our podcast, but like, people think we're a couple.
David:This long standing conspiracy theory.
Ellie:I know.
David:So yes, it makes sense for us to begin with the local and then go global from there.
Ellie:Yeah, we'll throw listeners some parasocial bones as we get into the topic. What do you want to say about our friendship?
David:My god, I have to go first? Fine. I mean, we began as friends, we met in grad school, and then fast forward a few years, we decided to take on this public scholarship intellectual project Overthink.
Ellie:Yeah, it wasn't just a few years, it was nine years that we were friends before we started doing the podcast.
David:I know, it's, it's, yeah, time flies. And you know, we've had some lows in our friendship in the sense of like, you know, we've had to navigate tensions, we've had to work through difficulties, we've had to figure out how to approach this project collaboratively. But we've also had some really amazing highs, you know, this shared sense of growth. Overthink is a collective accomplishment that grows out of our friendship. So we can point to that, right? It's our baby. It's our friendship baby. And so our friendship has been expanding. It has been tested. It has evolved. And I would say that it has evolved into a kind of friendship that is simultaneously intimate and personal, which is a typical way of thinking about friendship, but it's also a philosophical friendship that is united by ideas and philosophical discourse and conversation. But then because of this project, it's also an example of friendship at the workplace because we're co-workers now.
Ellie:exactly. And I feel like The amount of communication that has been required of us by virtue of not only hosting and researching and prepping podcast episodes together, but also of getting the podcast started, of running it, of hiring students, of communicating around promotion, marketing, like all kinds of stuff. Like that level of communication has required a level of interaction and actually honesty that I think is rarely experienced outside of romantic relationships in our day and age, to be honest. And I don't think that that's necessarily a good thing. I've definitely commented... I don't mean...
David:Too much contact!
Ellie:I've commented in other places that I think our society really vaunts romantic relationships more than it does other kinds of relationships. And I think that's too, like, that's not a good thing. I think we should treat other relationships as just important, if not more important, than romantic relationships and have a culture that reflects that. But I think because we've worked together so closely and we've had to work out some pretty major differences, we have developed a style of communicating that is like a lot more honest than, some of the friendships I'm involved with, which isn't to say that they're dishonest, but it is to say that it's not so common that you actually tell your friends, be brutally honest with them about what you think about them and what you think their flaws are, because in most friendships you can just take a step back if that happens, whereas because ours is also a working relationship, we've had to come out and say what bugs us about the other person in order for things to go on.
David:Yeah, no, you're absolutely right that the only reason we're friends is because of the podcast. Because the show must go on! No, but I would add to that, that one thing that has saved our friendship and our collaboration, not that we've had catastrophic near relationship ending scenarios, what has really helped us...
Ellie:We've had fights for sure.
David:We've had fights for sure, and what has always left me feeling confident after those fights is that I think you and I are similar in some ways that are relevant for that. And the two ways in which I think you and I are somewhat similar is that we do not like things to be left unsaid. And so we push through whatever tension until we feel It's all out in the open. And so that's been really helpful, but no kidding about this approaching romantic relationships in that traditional sense. Because my partner, especially during COVID, during confinement, he's like, okay, I guess I'm in a throuple now. And Ellie is the third person. And I did not sign up for this. We're just like adding fuel to the conspiracy theory that we're secretly in a throuple or a quadruple.
Ellie:Yeah, David, we've been talking about how this podcasting endeavor has... that our relationship as colleagues is not necessarily separate from our relationship as friends, but some of the times that I really valued in the past few years since we started the podcast have also been the times when we're able to just relate as friends. Like we've definitely had times where we're like, let's hang out and let's actually not even talk about the podcast because we've done enough of that. And I remember the first time that I saw you in person. After quarantine,
David:I remember this too!
Ellie:Yeah, it was like probably almost a year since we had, it was actually, it was about a year since we had started the podcast. We'd been meeting like at least weekly on Zoom and recording a ton and to actually see each other in person and give you a hug, like we both just started crying and I think that was not, that was In part because we were reminded of a different facet of our relationship that wasn't so work focused. It was like, you are a physical body that I have gone dancing with, gone, shopping with, gone to parties with. I don't know. We've done more things.
David:List all the activities that our bodies have been able to do due to their materiality.
Ellie:I know. But just, like, that physical proximity, I think, reminded us of some of the more clearly friend oriented aspects of our relationship than meeting on Zoom, which is very work coded.
David:I know. It's funny because whenever I talk to people about Overthink or whenever people talk to me about overthink, they're like, Oh, you guys have such a good dynamic on air. It sounds as if you guys really are friends. And I'm like, well, we are friends. Like what? We've known each other for a long time and we care deeply about one another. And so I'm happy that that translates onto this podcast, but it is also the case that we have this other version of ourselves that is in the past, but traces of which certainly continue, right? Like, we still go thrifting, we still go dancing, we still do material things IRL.
Ellie:And most importantly, I would say we also do those things with other friends, too, because we exist within a network of friends, which honestly can be helpful sometimes, too, if we're really annoyed with each other. It's like, David did this, you know? And we've talked in our gossip episode about how we think that gossip can be pro social, and so it's not backbiting style of gossip. It's more just like, I feel like it's helpful to exist within a network of friends where people know both of us too. And so they can kind of commiserate about like times that we're finding each other a little bit challenging and suggest like strategies.
David:You've been talking shit behind my back?
Ellie:I mean, when you said you were in a throuple with Rabih and me, I know that means you were talking about me, but I actually think that that's fine and okay and to be expected, right? Of course friends talk about each other when the other people are not around and like that's not, that can be useful and pro-social. There's like a nefarious form of that, not to rehash our gossip episode.
David:There's also a reparative form of that where the friends come in as a way of either navigating or just providing support as the tension resolves. Lest we give people the impression that we're like constantly bickering and fighting. We actually do really enjoy each other's company, Oh and you know, we go out of our way to try to see each other whenever possible, even though we live in different cities. But definitely, you are the person that I see most regularly, aside from my romantic partner, and we talk about each other probably more to our friends than vice versa.
Ellie:Yeah, yeah, totally. And we like deeply, profoundly respect and care for each other. I love you, David.
David:I love you too Ellie. It's like, this has become like live therapy. Today we are talking about friendship.
Ellie:What does it mean to be a friend?
David:How many friends can a person reasonably have?
Ellie:what are the benefits of friendship? I teach a class on love and friendship frequently, and one thing I hear a lot from my students is that they feel frustrated by the lack of social scripts that our society has around friendship. Romantic love and sex have a gazillion scripts associated with them, whether through movies, songs, reality TV shows, novels, but there's relatively little by contrast about friendship. And this indicates that our society undervalues friendship relative to romantic love. One consequence of this, and that's not to say there aren't like any depictions of friendship in our media, but of course like compared to love and sex. Very, very little. And one consequence is that people often don't know how to be good friends because there is a lack of a script around how to be a friend. And I feel this myself, to be honest.
David:Yeah, I feel it in you. I don't think you know how to be a friend. I
Ellie:Oh my god, don't make me cry.
David:No, no, no, Ellie, you're a wonderful friend. I also feel it in my life and just think about all the things that we don't have scripts for in connection to friendship that we do in connection to sex and romance, we don't have a friendship talk with new acquaintances. Like, are we friends yet? Like, what's our status?
Ellie:Yes!
David:I need to update myself on Facebook.
Ellie:Oh my god, you're so right. Every friendship is just a situationship.
David:Yes, where it's just ambiguous and without contours. This is, I think, really important. We don't know what we're entitled to demand from our friends, rather than just like maybe hope that they will do, you know, can I expect to be prioritized over another friend or over family or over a loved one? Who knows? And we also don't have a sense of what warrants breaking off a friendship. In romance, it might be cheating and lying. But with friendship, it's really more nebulous. It's very hard to tell when I should break it off.
Ellie:Yeah, and different people might have really different conceptions of that, which is similar to this idea that they might have really different conceptions of what they're entitled to demand. And even when it comes to defining whether somebody is a friend. Like, questions emerge there too, right? Am I friends with somebody if I like all of their Instagram posts and occasionally DM them, but barely see them in person even though we live only one neighborhood over? What about catching up with my friends from far away? A lot of my best friends don't live in the same city, and I often wonder, am I not doing enough to stay in touch with them because I'm not like, really a big texter or phone talker. How important is catching up with a friend relative to just hanging out with them? There's been some recent work on how just hanging out with friends has become a sort of lost art as we've retreated more into our homes and started spending less time with friends than in the past. And so then every friend-hang becomes an opportunity to catch up and you like hit the main points of relationship, career, family, etc. And that can get a little bit dull.
David:Yeah, and so all of these are reasons to think more systematically and rigorously about friendship. You know, what is friendship? Of course, we can say at a very basic level that friendship is a kind of loving relationship. But there are many relationships that are rooted in care and love for another person, right? Like parent child, lover lover, so on and so forth. So what makes friendship unique? What does it mean to be a friend? One theory promoted by the philosopher Lawrence Thomas is that friendship's main ingredient is mutual self disclosure. So this is what is known as the Secrets View or the Secrets Theory of Friendship. Where to be a friend is to share and receive secrets that are not shared with anybody else. And so it's a combo, I would say, of self vulnerabilization through the sharing of secrets, plus putting trust in the other person that they won't divulge them in a way that will be harmful to you.
Ellie:David, knowing what we know about relative levels of self disclosure between men and women and among men and women, do you think that according to this view there would be many men who actually have friends?
David:I don't think there would be men who. can be friends.
Ellie:Oh my god!
David:Forget about having friends. No, I think that's a real question, right? Because men don't share secrets. It's like a fucking battle even in like sexual and romantic dating situations.
Ellie:Oh yeah, I mean there's a lot of empirical research on this that like women have much higher levels of self disclosure than men do. And it's like, I'm wondering whether that can link up with what we know about the loneliness epidemic among men, and this idea that men often are bonding what's known as shoulder to shoulder, like doing a shared activity together as opposed to face-to-face relationships, which women tend to. And so I would say, maybe rather than concluding that men don't have friends, we can say, on Thomas's view men don't,
David:Don't share secrets.
Ellie:Yeah, then like maybe, maybe it's Thomas's definition of friendship that is the problem, right? Because it seems obvious that a lot of men do have friends, even if we say there is a loneliness epidemic among all people and especially among men. Yeah, maybe like this idea of sharing secrets as being essential to friendship that Thomas mentions is not really a good way to define friendship.
David:Maybe, but in defense of Thomas, I think he could respond by saying, well, the reason that there is a loneliness epidemic among men is because they have shallow, fake friendships because they're unwilling to put themselves on the line. through this self vulnerabilization that allows the formation of an intimate bond and that enables mutual self disclosure. Cause there's a lot of, I speak here really as a man. I've had male friendships, especially when I was younger, where it's like, we don't really know much about each other, but we are what we got, so I guess let's keep going.
Ellie:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you're like a middle school girl making a new friend, you better believe that there's going to be a ton of disclosure of secrets that then might come to bite you in the back. depending
David:well, Yeah, so that's where the trust issue comes in. But your point is nonetheless well taken that maybe we do not want to entirely equate or reduce friendship to just secret sharing and self disclosure. And by now, I would say that most people who work on friendship accept that the secrets can be part of our understanding of friendship, but it's not sufficient to really account for the full gamut of all of its expressions. And one concern about the secrets view is that it's a largely negative conception of what it means to be a friend, right? I am your friend, Ellie, only because I won't do something bad to you. Namely, violate your trust by divulging your secrets, right? That's what it means to be a friend. It's like keeping other people's secrets without revealing them to the public. And so it's almost exclusively negative. And I think many of us would want a more positive theory of friendship where our friends are not just people that are there as a sounding board for our secrets, or people who are just refraining from harming us. We want our friends to, I don't know, maybe actively want our good fortune. We want them to have goodwill towards us rather than just not being willing to backstab us.
Ellie:This is interesting because at first when you were talking about that I was like, oh no, the secret sharing view isn't a negative view of friendship because it also involves disclosing secrets to your friends, right? But um, I take your point that when you're thinking about being on the receiving end of those secrets it's not just, oh I will keep those, it's that like I want to actually foster your Well-being too, right? And so it's more than, maybe it's even more than just that a friend has goodwill for us or expresses solidarity with us. I think also key to friendship is this idea that they influence and shape our way of thinking and our way of being in important ways. And so one thing I like about the Secrets View is that it suggests that our friends have privileged access to our inner life. It's just that I think that access maybe is about more than secrets. It's about shaping who we are, shaping our desires, shaping our interests. And so, when I think about my closest friends, there's a kind of affinity, or what in the literature might be called even a unity, or a psychological identification that explains why we keep coming back to one another. For instance, I want my friends to Appreciate my sense of humor. Appreciate and even share some of my interests. Hold me accountable and push me to be a better person. And that all goes beyond secret sharing and keeping.
David:I agree. It goes beyond that. And this view is expressed by the philosopher Elijah Milgram, who wrote an essay on Aristotle's theory of friendship, where he makes similar points. Now, in the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle describes friends as mirrors of ourselves, and Milgram picks up on this turn of phrase and argues that there is a powerful truth in it insofar as the bond that exists between me and my friends is so deep and psychological, in a sense we co create one another in the context of our friendship. He uses the word procreation to capture this relationship. He says we procreate one another, like we are, we are co-engendering,
Ellie:Yeah, co-create is fine. Procreate? That's a bit of a strange turn of phrase for me.
David:Yeah because we make each other who we are. And he goes quite far in this direction, actually, arguing that since our friends make us, and we also make them, we are ultimately responsible for the vices and virtues of our friends.
Ellie:Okay, interesting. That's a really bold claim.
David:Yeah, it is a really strong claim.
Ellie:Some of my friends have some pretty serious vices.
David:Yeah, it's because you're a shitty friend.
Ellie:I do think, David, that this leads me to think a little bit about holding friends accountable. Because one of the things that we talked about with our relationship is that in as much as we are also like work partners, we've had to hold each other accountable and really be explicit about what we perceive to be each other's shortcomings. And I have to say, I don't do that with most of my friends, and I sometimes struggle with whether I should do that more or not. I think some of my most valuable moments of self transformation have as a result of loved ones really facing me with issues that they're having with me. And being like, you know what, this is a pattern with you that just doesn't work for me. Whether it's like the fact that I tend to be around 15 minutes late to most friendship oriented events and like sometimes that's fine and sometimes that's really not fine. And so I've tried to really become better about that or maybe more serious things. But I have some friends that I've known for forever, and I definitely have a sense of some of their flaws, and it might be helpful if they knew about those, or at least that I was aware of them, but I struggle with knowing how, when, or why to bring those up, because it can feel like it's bringing about unnecessary antagonism, and it can also sometimes feel inappropriate. Like, there's, I think there's a fear, I don't know if this is, actually this is probably way more even the case on male and male friendships, but I think there's a fear for me with both my friendships with other women and friendships with men, that sometimes if I like face somebody with like, Hey, you did this thing and it really made me feel bad, they might be like, Oh, why are you treating me like I'm your boyfriend or like your partner? You know, I think there's a way that we feel so comfortable talking to romantic partners about what we think their shortcomings are, but there's often like a cone of silence around that for friends. And yeah, I just find that challenging in my own relationships.
David:I think that is really difficult to hold friends accountable because it's seen almost as being in tension with the very spirit of friendship, right, which is maintaining good spirits and a positive relationship. I would say that One example that I had of that that was extremely destabilizing, and I thought about it for a very long time, was the case of talking to a friend about their drinking problem. I just didn't know if I should. I knew that they probably did not agree with me, and it really required a lot of soul searching. And once that discussion did take place, it changed our friendship, in this case, for the better. But I can imagine a scenario in which it would have gone the diametrically opposed way. So there's always this question of if I hold the friendship accountable to norms that seem extrinsic to friendship, will it break the friendship itself?
Ellie:Totally, totally. Yeah, this is one of the damaging things about not having social scripts about friendship is that it enables people to be like, You did a weird thing. Like, why are you holding me accountable? That's creepy. It can seem creepy. And of course, I do think sometimes people do expect too much of their friends and can act creepy towards their friends. So I'm not denying that that can be the case, but it's just like, I think the lack of social script around friendship makes it really easy to accuse friends when they do something that makes us uncomfortable, especially when it comes to our own shortcomings to accuse them of like, well, I'm just your friend, I'm not more than that. I don't know what you're thinking, but I want to know in this case, David, to what do you attribute the success of that conversation? Like you said it went well and it changed a friendship for the better. Why, in your view, is that?
David:So I do think part of it has to do with the personality of the friend in question. He took the criticism on the nose and I began it with a lot of caveats about the talk we were about to have. I began it by saying, look, I'm really torn about this. I am very afraid that it will hurt our friendship. I want you to know that my priority is you. So I did a lot of cushioning. And so I ended up just sharing with them that I had these concerns and whether they shared them. And that led to an opening up that then became the basis for further discussion about the topic and ultimately a change in that person's behavior that was good for them above all. And so I think that is an important point, this issue about the lack of social scripts in friendship, but I still do really like the Milgram. Okay, procreation is, maybe not the right term. Co-creation captures the same idea. And I wouldn't go as far as to say that we are responsible morally for each other's failures or vices. Maybe we are implicated, I would say, because in a lot of friendships, because we tend to shy away from those difficult conversations, we end up becoming enablers.
Ellie:So, David, over the summer, I presented at the Simone de Beauvoir Society Conference in Berlin. I often present at this conference and yeah, I mean, one thing that I don't do so often, but I did do in this case because I was like deep in writing for my book, is that I wrote my conference paper kind of last minute based on teaching notes. And, um, my argument involved contrasting Beauvoir with Montaigne and Aristotle. And because I was writing this kind of last minute, I know the Beauvoir like the back of my hand, but Montaigne and Aristotle are less areas of specialization for me. So I was drawing on the teaching notes that I have for Montaigne and Aristotle. And I said something about Aristotle that an actual scholar of ancient philosophy came up to me during the conference and was like, yeah, that wasn't right.
David:that was like, false, straight up, that's not true. Or I disagree with the interpretation.
Ellie:So it was incorrect, but it wasn't like I made it up out of nowhere. It was that because I was drawing from my teaching notes, I ended up extrapolating from one point in Aristotle's text that he elsewhere qualifies and taken in context, it's clear that my interpretation was pretty much wrong. So talk about being held accountable and finding yourself in a situation of discomfort.
David:And you're like, we're not friends. Don't come talk to me about my Aristotle references.
Ellie:I really appreciated it. And this was, I actually communicated with the scholar a bit afterward. And this scholar, or budding scholar, because she's a PhD student at Yale is named Angela Yeo. And Angela told me that, basically, I had misinterpreted how many friends Aristotle thinks we can have. Because my view was that Aristotle thinks we can only have one complete friend. Whereas, she said, the situation's actually more complicated than that. A lot more complicated. And most scholars take it for granted that Aristotle does think we can have more than one complete friend. Although we can't have infinite friends.
David:Wait, and so does he say how many friends you can have? Does he have a range? Is it like MySpace top eight?
Ellie:Okay, yeah, I don't know about that, although it does seem like Myspace's choice of eight friends was, like, potentially philosophically rich, but certainly some friends. So some number more than one, but less than many. But I realized as I was thinking about this, and part of why I'm glad that Angela mentioned this to me is because I as a scholar want to be precise and accurate. Luckily, this was a conference paper. It's something that would have been caught before publication. But I realized that my assumption that Aristotle was saying that we could have only one complete friend, and I won't get into like the textual reasons that I thought that, I thought we might do that, but I'm realizing that's like not going to be so interesting.
David:Thank you.
Ellie:I think I was overlaying Montaigne, Renaissance philosopher who has a very famous essay of friendship that is influenced by Aristotle, onto Aristotle himself. Because Montaigne does come out in his essay of friendship as a monogamist about friendship. To the point that many people think he actually was in love with his best friend Étienne de La Boétie.
David:Even though some say homosexuality wasn't developed until quite recently, 1870 according to Foucault to be exact, the queers, we do love claiming Montaigne as one of our own, him and La Boétie and their illicit philosophical queer love affair.
Ellie:Yeah, and like, we have no way of knowing what their actual relationship was, but I actually think the tendency to assume that an intimate male friendship was sexual and or romantic speaks way more to how we don't take friendship seriously than it does to this idea that an intimate male friendship would have had to be sexual and or romantic, right?
David:Wrong. They were homos. Period.
Ellie:Well, it's like, my students always are like, oh my gosh, where are they? You know? No, my students are way more comfortable talking about queerness than that suggests, but I think it just like, who knows? I mean, that's a question for the historian, but I just think, yeah, our imaginary about friendship is so closed off that the idea that Montaigne could say what he does about La Boétie, which is like a sort of two become one model of we're so intimate that we were one, like that is only intelligible in our current discourse in the discourse of romantic love.
David:Yeah, in a world where men don't share secrets and don't talk about, their intimate lives with one another, it's almost as if the very act of secret sharing has been feminized to such a degree that it either renders you a woman or a queer. In the eyes of our culture, right? Like, yeah, men don't air their dirty laundry. Because of this stoic image that we have to cultivate and protect at all costs.
Ellie:And I think one of the few places where we see this idea that friendship is really valuable is in the frequent phrase like, that you're, like, my wife is my best friend and stuff like that. I don't know, that doesn't actually seem to subvert the idea that romantic love is the most valued kind of love. It just like weirdly coexists with it.
David:No, yeah, it's always like, and she's also, or he's also, my best friend. But if the fact that they're not interchangeable, right, like you would never say oh, she's my best friend and she also happens to be my wife, right? It's always first. It's never friend that is first.
Ellie:That is so true. As though like being a friend is an optional added extra bonus. And if somebody said like, my wife is my best friend and my best friend only, then people would be really suspicious.
David:And my best friend. Oh, yeah, yeah,
Ellie:Yeah, and be like, oh my god, that's so sad. Like, their relationship is platonic.
David:Marital deathbed. Yes, exactly. That's right. Oh, their relationship is Aristotelian. No! And this also makes me think about an article that I read a couple of years ago. I cannot remember where, but it was about these women who are old friends and who basically decided to let go of the idea of looking for a man, and they decided to buy a home together and live together as friend partners for the rest of their lives. And so I think that actually subverts the model a little bit more when friends start doing things together, like buying a home together, that are typically reserved for romantic partners. So that's a case where friendship does come first and is the organizing principle.
Ellie:Yeah, but then everybody's like, well, you know what they're secretly doing. Fucking.
David:Oh my god, they're like, they're the feminine version of Montaigne and La Boétie times five.
Ellie:Yeah, yeah. Okay, wait, let's talk a little bit about Montaigne's view of friendship and like why I consider him a monogamist about friendship. In his essay Of Friendship, which was written between 1572 and 1580, he describes his friendship with Boétie, who has died. And David, you and I actually did a YouTube video talking about, uh, this essay of Montaigne's a while back. I feel like we started talking about our YouTube channel a little bit more recently on the podcast. I hope it's not irritating people, but we have started to do more content there together. Although, like, the podcast is our real baby and our real passion. But Montaigne writes in the essay that his friendship is characterized by an enjoyable harmony of wills and a loss of any sense of ownership. They share everything in this relationship to the extent that even their selves merged. And this made the relationship really incomparable to any other kind of relationship in their lives. And central to their friendship is actually this really interesting idea that they did not explicitly lay out boundaries or needs. He says in this noble relationship, services and benefits do not even deserve to be taken into account. The reason for this is the complete fusion of our wills. For instance, like Montaigne and La Boétie are not concerned with an even division of labor or like, you know, I'm doing a paper exchange with one of my good friends right now and I'm like, you should only spend the same amount of time reading my work as I'm spending reading yours. Like for La Boétie and Montaigne, that kind of question just didn't even emerge because their wills were so fused. And this harmonious relationship, he said actually bound all aspects of themselves. And I think that Montaigne's account here is really interesting because it reveals an investment in the singularity of the friend, and it suggests that this singularity can be honored only because there are no comparable relationships to it. And Montaigne suggests that this is important practically speaking because he asks us to imagine if two friends called for help at the same time. In such a case, Which friend would you run to? You really have to prioritize one friend over the other in such a case. And so friendship cannot be complete for two people.
David:Yeah, and so here we start seeing all the reasons why he is a monogamist, as you said, right? There is the fusion of wills and there is also the prioritization of one over the many. And the idea that there are pressures on our time and energy would suggest that we ultimately have to identify the one who will be our Etienne de la Boétie, you know, if we are Montaigne. Although this raises a question about the viability of this understanding because it just seems as if Montaigne is inverting what is now common in our culture. So he is putting friendship rather than marriage or romantic love in that highest pedestal and saying that sort of everything else is subordinate to it. And of course, nowadays we don't think about it in this way, but it doesn't seem as if he has less of a hierarchical understanding of human relationships.
Ellie:I think that's exactly right. And I think that's something that makes his account interesting because we're not used to seeing that hierarchy applied to friendships, but it also could point out a shortcoming because it's definitely not this idea that we should have a more communal way of living. It's like, no, you have your best friend and like that best friend is the most important relationship to you. He says, explicitly that that best friend is more important to you than your spouse. But, you know, we've been talking about how Montaigne really runs with this idea of a complete friend that Aristotle develops. But Aristotle's account in the Nicomachean Ethics of friendship doesn't pertain just to complete friendship, which, as we've said, can't only be had for one person, that's like more of a Montaigne view, but also can't be had for a lot of other people either, like it can be had for some. But Aristotle also thinks that there are other kinds of friendship, and complete friendships for Aristotle can only obtain between virtuous people. They're pretty rare, and they also take time, they can't be easily dissolved, they involve caring for the friend for their own sake. But most friendships, of course aren't like this. Like, this is a sort of idealized version of friendship. And so Aristotle identifies two other forms of friendship as well, which we might say are like a lot more common. And these friendships don't involve loving the friend for their own sake and obtaining only between virtuous people. They're friendships of pleasure and friendships of utility. These are Aristotle's two other forms. They're very well known in the history of philosophy. David, what do you think? Like, let's get into friendships of utility and friendships of pleasure.
David:Before we do that, let me say that as a person who identifies as not virtuous, I am offended by Aristotle's exclusion of me from the category of complete friendship. I don't, I don't really know anybody who can be a complete friend on this account, to be honest. But either way, it's clear that I do have friendships of pleasure and utility. Maybe pleasure and utility only, if I really am as non virtuous as I brag about being. But friendships of utility, according to Aristotle, are the kinds of friendships that we have where we value the other person insofar as we gain some good from them. So they are Instrumental friendships, right? For example, I might have a golf buddy or somebody that can give me advice on how to buy a car to make sure that I'm not swindled by the car dealership.
Ellie:I definitely took advantage of that when I was buying a new car over the summer.
David:And he says really in a funny moment, Aristotle, that these friendships of utility are found mostly in old people.
Ellie:Retirement communities in Florida are packed with friendships of utility. This just out from Aristotle. You've got to have that buddy for your Mahjong game.
David:And he contrasts this with friendships of pleasure, where you like the person for the pleasure that they bring you, that you get out of their company or their presence. So what friendships of pleasure and utility have in common is that you don't love the friend, intrinsically in and of themselves. Rather, you love them for something that they give you or bring you or provide for you. Again, it's that notion of instrumental value that is operative in both cases.
Ellie:Yeah, but specifically they have to bring and provide you with pleasure, otherwise it would be a friendship of utility, right?
David:Yeah, but I'm saying what they have in common is that they are instrumental.
Ellie:Oh, gotcha. yeah.
David:And you mentioned, Ellie, that complete friendships, when there is this complete fusion of the will, They're not easily dissolved, right? Because once you're fused, how do you unfuse? Friendships of pleasure and utility are easily dissolved. Aristotle is like, block people left and right, don't worry, they're just utility and pleasure providers. And of course, in the same way that friendships of utility are mostly found in old people, he says friendships of pleasure are primarily found in young people. No wonder I haven't really stayed in touch with my gay clubbing buddies from my early 20s.
Ellie:This raises the question, though, about whether friendships of pleasure and utility even count as friendship at all. And Aristotle raises this point. He says they seem like it because pleasure and utility are part of true friendship. Like, so, so complete friendship, just for what it's worth, includes pleasure and utility, but it ultimately has to do with the good of the friend for their own sake. So it's different, it's not instrumental. But he says these also seem not like because they're not long lasting, they may include slander.
David:Slander? I love that. So maybe they're more like acquaintances than friends. Maybe they're like Facebook friends or Instagram followers because of the slander. Wouldn't it be like shocking if suddenly Aristotle on friendship is a really good tool for thinking about social dynamics in the age of the virtual?
Ellie:I don't know that it would be shocking. It would be very overthinky of us. But it is interesting, I think, that the social media that predominate today tend to be ones that are not necessarily reciprocal, right? You follow somebody, but they might not necessarily follow you back, which is not the case for Facebook, where you are like, quote, friends. And so that's, like, that's the difference between a friend and a follower, right? Online is that a friend, it's mutual.
David:Yes. I think that's right. And I wonder whether that would fall under the category of utility. And then the Facebook friend would be the pleasure because you have the presence of the other profile in your virtual world.
Ellie:One of the things Aristotle says about friendship, though, is that it requires proximity. And in her book Friendship, which is about evolutionary biology and like that approach to friendship, the author Lydia Denworth talks too about how digital media can foster friendship, but they can't replace proximity. And so I think going back to my question from earlier, like, am I friends with somebody if I just occasionally DM them and like their Instagram post but never hang out with them? The answer to that is likely no. And I do even feel like for my friends who live far away, it is important for the upkeep of our relationship that we do see each other periodically. And Denworth talks about how there are metaphors of spatial proximity that show up a number of different cultures and so for instance in Bangladesh there is the phenomenon of thick friends or in Mongolia they speak of quote inside friends and she says that social network scientists tend to speak more in terms of strong ties versus weak ties and I think you see that come up in a lot of the discourses around social media today too. This idea that like we have proliferated weak ties, like to follow a friend on Instagram is to foster a weak tie, but to follow a friend on Instagram and then also to have like an important, meaningful trip with them once a year, that can help. That, that's like a strong tie, right? Or to go to them in times of need, to rely on them.
David:Well, and I think this also points to the fact that for acquaintances we have a pretty clear sense of where our acquaintances are, people that we see every once in a while, but don't have intimacy, don't have unity, don't have a fusion of will. On the other end of the spectrum, we have the romantic partner, you know, a kind of fusion of its own in the traditional model. But in between we have this very vast amorphous domain of friendship, where on the one hand, we want friends to be more than just followers, more than fans, more than acquaintances. And so we yearn for that, you know, we can call it, you use the term, proximity, presence, company, people in the literature, as we noted, talk about psychological identification. Then there is a point at which if that starts turning physical,
Ellie:By physical, do you mean sexual?
David:I do mean sexual. And one of the reasons for that is, because some philosophers have argued that one of the fundamental differences between romance and friendship is that in romance there is a yearning for physical union, whereas in friendship it's purely psychological union. And so our collective understanding of the distinction between romance and friendship seems to be a projection based on the mind-body split. Like we want physical unity with the body. For love, but only of the mind for the friend.
Ellie:Yeah, it probably goes without saying that I really disagree with that conception. Very common view that romance is friendship plus sex. I don't think that's the right way to think about romance at all, nor do I think the right way to think about friendship is as intimacy minus physical touch. Especially because there's been the rise of attention recently to...
David:fuck buddies. Like, well, that's what it is, friends with benefits.
Ellie:That's not what I was, that's not what I was gonna say. Although, like, there is that. There certainly is that. But no, there's, there's been the rise of friendships that involve more physical touch, too, like more cuddling or, you know, massages, like closeness and intimacy. But yeah, friends with benefits, oh my god, I have way more to say about friends with benefits than we have time for here. Let's just say I think that there are reasons why they often don't work for people, and those reasons have nothing to do with with the fact that you can be friends and also have sex with somebody. I think that is totally compatible. It's not like, I don't think the reason friends with benefits often fails is because like we all secretly want to be in romantic relationships with our friends with benefits. I think like it's a totally viable structure, but it's just like, all too often are confusion around what the social scripts about friendship are and the way that, like, because we don't have a lot of social scripts about friendship, our romantic and sexual scripts end up kind of seeping in. I think that often leads to the destruction of what would otherwise be fulfilling friends with benefits situations.
David:Yeah. Our feeling of ambiguity in those situations also speaks very loudly to the extent to which we deep down sometimes, I mean we've internalized those scripts about what it should be, right? And the natural evolution of our relationship. Because when I was in grad school, I did both of those things. I had friends with benefits and sometimes I'd be like, Oh, is this maybe going to become something? Even when the friend with benefit relationship was perfectly great. Sometimes I would like, think about it. And on the other side of that spectrum, I went to a couple of radical fairy cuddle piles.
Ellie:Oh, I remember that.
David:Yes, and I was like, Oh, you know, this is just like friends cuddling in a pile. And then I was like, is this turning into something else? What's happening? And then it didn't, it didn't. But it's almost as if I couldn't think it on its own terms at that time and I expect it to become something else. And so that of course revealed more about my own thinking than about the situation itself.
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David:Friendships, especially genuine ones, add a lot of value to our lives. And in an essay on friendship, Francis Bacon talks about some of these benefits. Beginning with the emotional ones, he writes, this is a quote from his essay on friendship, A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and discharge of the fullness and swellings of the heart. To make sense of this claim, he uses medicine as an analogy. In the same way that sometimes our organs swell and need to be discharged of various liquids in order for us to return to health, so too our emotions swell. And when they are trapped inside of us without an outlet, they rot and make us sick. And friendship is what allows us to release that sickness of the heart.
Ellie:Oh my god. This is so right to me. I'm just gonna say, okay, so I'm really excited that we're talking about the Bacon because I'd never read Bacon's piece on friendship before. I was like thinking maybe we'd talk about Emerson of friendship, but we'll do that for the bonus. So if you're like, where's Emerson in the friendship episode? That's where he'll be. But I think Bacon's really interesting because Bacon is actually a less common reference than Ralph Waldo Emerson on this notion of friendship. But I really enjoyed this essay that you had us read. In relation to what you just said, David, I'm thinking a little bit about two of my very dear friends, both of whom are philosophers, Jessica Locke, who's been on the podcast ages ago, and Roshni Patel, also a friend from grad school. And Jess and Roshni and I are, like, dear friends. We each have our own kind of dyadic relationship, but we also are definitely like a friendship triad. And I was thinking about them. As you were saying this, because there are people that I text about despair over the state of the world and drama happening within my family and anxiety that I'm feeling over my work. And I feel like whatever the challenges I'm experiencing in my life they're people I can communicate with to help ease that. And sometimes that is via text because Roshni lives in Chicago, Jess lives in Baltimore, I'm in LA, but then like when we actually all get together, oh my gosh, so much joy, so much easing of the swellings of the heart.
David:So much, yeah, so much discharge of the fullness of the heart,
Ellie:Especially because it's three women, that sounds so gross. Talk about physical.
David:I mean, this is very similar to that secrets view, right? Like where you just outpour yourself to a friend, but it's not quite reducible to it.
Ellie:Yeah, I would say it's different.
David:Yeah, no, it's different, but it definitely has this sense of sharing internal things with one another. Here there is the emphasis on health, of course, which is the benefit of friendship. But I really like that Bacon takes this to a political register right away and says that this is why it's really hard for people in positions of power, such as kings, to ever have true friends. And the reason for that is because the king has to raise somebody to their level in order to be an equal and to be a friend, which would produce all kinds of contradictions regarding the status of the king, who is supposed to be above all else, right? And also about the friend, who is supposed to be subordinate.
Ellie:It's lonely at the top, my friend.
David:Yeah, exactly. And so when the king doesn't have any friends, that medical analogy kicks in, and because they don't have somebody to share their worries and their struggles with, their mind and their body will disintegrate and they will grow ill and they will become bad kings. And so it's a kind of aporia where If you do take on a friend, you lose your status as a king, but if you don't, you become a bad king, which would seem to lead to the paradoxical conclusion that there is no such thing as a good king ever.
Ellie:Yeah, I don't see Bacon as that aporetic, though, because he says that, yeah, it's really hard for great kings to have friends. He says, like, it's so important to them that sometimes they end up purchasing it at the hazard of their own safety, right? They can end up bringing people into their orbit who will take advantage of them. I think that's definitely a common trope you see in the language of the powerful. But he does suggest that rulers still really value friendship and so it requires raising others up to their level. And I don't read Bacon as saying that's impossible, just as that's like what's required and it is dangerous for kings to have friendships.
David:No, but it does call into question again the status of the crown if there is somebody that is also at their level, right? So that's the issue there, that's the paradoxical element. I don't have a very smart thing to say about this, but he mentions that friends, this sharing of secrets or discharging of the hearts, the Romans called friends participes curarum, which means those with whom you share your sorrow. And I just thought that was so beautiful. As partners in sadness,
Ellie:it's interesting because I'm thinking a little bit about how in the Denworth book she talks about how there's a real precipitous drop off for people in their 30s with respect to how much time they spend with their friends and I think you could have an Aristotelian take on that which is that like, yeah, when you're in your 20s you have a lot of friendships of pleasure and so you're hanging out with them a lot etc and then in your 30s you sort of have a drop off, you have fewer friends but the friendships that you do have are deeper and I'm not really sure about that latter point but I do think it's striking me as somebody in my 30s that like, many of us are having a lot more sorrows than we did in our 20s and this is a time when we really need to especially be leaning on friends. I also want to mention another point that I was thinking about with respect to Bacon from the Denworth book, which is that One of Denworth's main ideas in her book on friendship is that friendship is evolutionarily adaptive for humans. And of course, she's drawing this from a lot of work that other people in this field have done on the role of cooperation and human society building. And the idea there is that humans are as powerful as we are because of our capacity to build social connections and that friendship is one aspect of that. And it reminded me of something Bacon says towards the beginning of the essay, where he says that what distinguishes humans from the beasts is that we are social creatures, not solitary ones. He thinks that animals are solitary creatures, but that humans are not.
David:Yeah, I mean, obviously I wonder what animals he's looking at that he doesn't see sociality in animals like a pack of wolves.
Ellie:I know, not me, just like taking Bacon seriously on this point.
David:But be that as it may, let's continue thinking about the benefits of friendship, according to Francis Bacon.
Ellie:Okay, so Bacon's point in this essay is to identify three benefits of friendship. And the first one is the one with which you started this discussion, David, which is the idea that friendship eases and discharges our heartache. Like, it gives us more peace. I think he's right about that. I think that's great. The second one that, yeah, check. The second one I really like, and I feel like this takes us back to some stuff we were talking about earlier in the episode, which is that friendship aids understanding. It helps us support our judgment. And so, like, a friend can kind of set you straight if you are going astray, and if you're feeling confused, the friend can help shed light on your situation. So he says that first fruit of friendship is really more about the affections, and the second fruit of friendship is about the understanding.
David:Yeah, and the reason for that, according to Bacon, is because our friends, don't share our vanity and our biases, and one of the failures of human nature is that human nature is self flattering, right? We always paint ourselves in the best possible light. And when we see ourselves through the eye of a friend, we are no longer able to do that. And so friends can sort of clarify and order our interpretation of ourselves by giving us a refracted or reflected vision of who we are. And there is a quote that I really like about this in the essay where he says, The best preservative to keep the mind in health is the healthful admonition of a friend.
Ellie:Yeah, and I didn't read it so much as just he thinks that we tend to be vain and like our friends set us straight because he also has this amazing passage about how your friends should gas you up and like how great it is when they encourage you, but I think definitely this idea that they can keep us in check, whether that is like bringing us down a little bit if we've flown too far up or like boosting us up if we are lacking confidence is great. And he says, This can extend both to friends who give us advice or faithful counsel, but it can also really help the understanding to have friends who don't give us advice. Like, we still get those benefits even in sharing with our friends and bringing our thoughts to light. We can see our thoughts as if from a distance, like just by virtue of airing them to a friend.
David:Yeah, and the point about the externalization of our thoughts, I interpret it really as a point about the value of friendly conversation. So, in talking with friends, we order our thinking. So I really come to know what I think in the act of working it out and talking about it with somebody that I consider to be a good friend of mine. And so it's almost as if the friend becomes an extended part of my mind that I require in order to really break up and organize my thinking.
Ellie:Yeah, exactly. And then we have the third fruit of friendship, which, like, we're rapidly approaching the end of our episode, David, so I'm going to say quickly. But this is that the friend aids you in actions and occasions. They take part in actions and occasions. They're the ones who are going to throw a bridal shower for you, come to your bachelorette party. Sorry, these are, like, extremely marriage normative examples, although that is kind of what our culture gives us, right? But, or they're going to be at your graduation cheering you on.
David:Yeah, and I think this can take two forms for Bacon. One is that friends will help carry out our projects. But it also takes the form of your friends extolling your virtues for you, especially in cases where you can't or don't feel comfortable doing it on your own.
Ellie:So maybe, at least from Bacon's Three Fruits of Friendship and our previous discussions of other philosophers, we can have a little bit more scaffolding, if not a full script, of what a good friendship might look like. Oh, we hope you enjoyed today's episode. Please consider joining our Overthink community on Patreon for bonus content, Zoom meetings, and more. And thanks to those of you who already do.
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Ellie:We want to thank our audio editor, Aaron Morgan, our production assistant, Emilio Esquivel Marquez, and Samuel P. K. Smith for the original music. And to our listeners, thanks so much for overthinking with us.
