To know and be known

Philosophy Bites about friendship, consists of a discussion with Mark Vernon who has written about the subject. In ten short minutes lots is said, I'll throw in just a crumb and hope to entice you with that into listening to a very worthwhile issue.

Mark gives us Aristotle and the other Greek philosophers who thought high of friendship and made it figure quite centrally in their philosophies. Friendship represents an exquisite quality of life, a love that is maybe more pure than others. If family love is the need to care and be cared for and sexual love is the need to have and be had, friendship is to know and be known. I must say, that resonates with me more than anything else.

Later philosophy started paying less attention to friendship. Also, it was less valued. Nietzsche went as far as to call friendship feign. Since you can't tell the truth to a friend as you can to strangers. With a friend you are sparing sensitivities, which with a stranger you would not. I wonder however, if with a close friend, where the sensitivities are so well known as well as the mutual respect, one really can't tell the truth. Besides, with a friend, with all the mutual knowledge, how can the inconvenient truths can truly horrible and unspeakable?

More on Friendship.
More Philosophy Bites:
Egalitarianism,
Skepticism ,
Thought experiments (and Avicenna).

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