The Individual and S elf-Love in Friendship

by Karin Steele-Elliott

		Within the discussion and discourse on friendship, much has been said concerning the relation of one friend to another. Aristotle argues that a friend is "another self." Elizabeth Telfer and others describe our duties to friends. Montaigne asserts that the souls of friends "mingle and blend with each other so completely that they efface the seam that joined them, and cannot find it" (192). I will argue that an essential element of genuine friendship is the mutual respect, support, and defense of each individual. Friendship is a partnership of two (or more) individual selves. The loss of the individual in a friendship results in a relationship that is not one of ends, but of means. By the definitions I will give, this cannot be considered friendship at all.
     First we must consider the role of the "self" within the relationship. Anne Dziob, in considering the ideal of friendship and the individual in that context presented by Aristotle, defines the self as "one who is responsible for his own choices, is the source of his conduct and is one who recognizes himself as responsible, as source" (785). She explores and supports Aristotle's premise that self-loving is necessary in genuine friendship. When one wishes the good of the other, and what is good for the other is good for the self (as Aristotle asserts), then wishes the good of the self. Even when discussing the need to become "identical" with a friend, Aristotle maintains that we "become aware that [the friend] is another self while recognizing that [we] are one just like him, another self" (37). The other allows the individual to know herself, and both serve as knower and known. Despite this apparent dependency on friends for self-knowledge, Aristotle is not asserting that the two are one unit, as Montaigne argues. Indeed, when exploring the question of "whom should one love most, the self or the friend?" Aristotle supports self-love: "we must love most the friend that is most a friend; and one person is most a friend to another if he wishes goods to the other for the other's sake. . . .  But these are features most of all of one's relation to oneself. . . . One is a friend to himself most of all, hence he should also love himself most of all" (61).
     Stanton Peele's Love and Addiction describes the dangers of transferring one's self-love to another individual. Citing Freud's "Being in Love and Hypnosis," Peele writes "the other person more and more gains possessions of the entire self-love of the ego, whose self-sacrifice thus follows as a natural consequence. The [loved] object has, so to speak, consumed the ego" (72). Such a person is described as an addict, who "seeks subility and reassurance" through relationships (Pede 27). This behavior is also referred to as codependence, a pattern in which one loses his or her own identity within the relationship and seeks control of another through manipulation, caretaking, and guilt. The person sets unrealistic goals for themselves and others, and is, therefore, constantly disappointed. This person tends to ignore changes in the relationship or beloved, and is unwilling to let go when the relationship ends (Hogg 371).
    According to Neera Kapur Badhwar, a genuine, or "ends" friendship requires that a person is loved for their "concrete individuality." It is not an unconditional love that can overlook innumerable slights or alterations in character. There are, necessarily, conditions to the essential love we feel for another individual. If we love the self, and recognize that self as a unique person, distinct from others (for that is what makes a person irreplaceable and intrinsically valuable), then we cannot ignore changes ("Friends. . ." 6-7). She states, "for if the essential qualities of one of the friends change, such that either you are no longer the person who evoked my love, or I am no longer the person who loved you . . . the love must disappear because its object or subject have disappeared" (14-15). Badhwar continues, in a section detailing instrumental versus end love, to argue that a person who loses their identity is incapable of genuine friendship. They offer themselves as an instrument for the other's ends, and "it follows that such a person cannot be loved as an end" (Badhwar 18). One who merely adopts the role of "imitator" is also "duplicable and replaceable." To be loved as an end in himself, he must love himself In Badhwar's view, he must have and express his own values and goals, which are the products of his experiences in the world: "Only then [does he] express his sense of himself as someone worthy of living quite apart from his utility to others' ends, and able to live by his own judgment and effort. To be loved for being the person he is, he must be a person in his own right, neither as an instrument of others, nor their imitator" (18).
     In another treatise, Badhwar describes genuine friendship as one which "plays a constitutive role in our happiness and the constitution of ourselvesÑour identity," and that it "requires and fosters virtueÑthe other-regarding dispositions of benevolence and justice and the selfregarding dispositions of autonomy and integrity" ("Why it is wrong . . ." 483-4). This view is supported by the writing of Janice Raymond, whichÑthough chiefly concerned with friendships between womenÑaddresses maintaining identity within relationships. She advocates "thoughtful passion" that emphasizes thinking and awareness. Raymond states that thoughtful passion "ensures that a friend does not lose her Self in the heightened awareness of and attachment to another woman" (Raymond 245).
     In "Rights Between Friends," Michael Meyers approaches equality and reciprocity from the position of friends having rights they can expect the other to uphold: "The idea that a person has individual rightsÑeven against friendsÑprovides for a certain powerful sense of self-worth, typically not provided without individual rights" (474). Having rights is different from claiming them. Though an individual may have rights they consider to have been violated, the subject may not be broached because there is a "willingness to overlook minor conflicts" to preserve the friendship (475). He maintains, however, that "a proper sense of self-worth [as distinct from egoism] is arguably a precondition for, or at least a desideratum of, friendship itself" (477). Meyers lists rights necessary (but not exclusive) to friendship. They indude a right to a certain level of privacy; to be treated openly within the relationship (truthfulness); to concern and respect for one's own sake, not always to be asked to place a friendship before one's other needs, including other friends; to benefit of the doubt in cases of conflict; to roughly equal influence on the friendship (477-8). Admittedly, many, if not all, of these rights go "unconsidered" until violated. He says that friends honor each other "spontaneously" so consideration of rights is not usually necessary (478). These rights, as stated, support the view that genuine friendship involves individual selves, who are self-sufficient (also necessary to Cicero), and feel self-love. Note especially the right to place other obligatlons before the friendship, as contrasted with the concept of codependent relationships. Clearly codependency violates the rights of both individuals, as illustrated by Ba&war and Meyers.
     Consider, again, Aristotle's Nichomachcan Ethics. Friends engage each other in shared conversation and thought. His ideal is friends living together through communication and under standingÑbut I do not believe this means absolute agreement. I share Emerson's view in this: Better to be a nettle in the side of your friend than his edho" (228).
     Martin Buber's The Knowledge of Man calls for recognizing the other as "the very one he is" within the context of being in the world "in order to have genuine dialogue-though during the dialogue the two may disagree bitterly" (79). For, "If I thus give to the other who confronts me his legitimate standing as a man with whom I am ready to enter into dialogue, then I may trust him and suppose him to be also ready to deal with me as his Partner (79-80).
     Friendship is just that, a partnership of individuals who have rights, self-love, self-respect, and their own identities. It is not a self-abandonment or self-denial, where one allows "someone else to subsume [them] or subsumes them to fill inner emptiness" (Peele 75). One should follow the example of Emerson, who sought "not one disciple. Why? Because [I] did not go out with any wish to bring men to me, but to themselves."

                 Works Cited

Aristode. Nicomachcan Ethics Books 8 and 9. Other Selves: 30-69.
Badhwar, Neera (Kapur). "Friends as Ends in Themselves."  Philosophy and 
			Phenomenological Research. v. XLVIII (Sept. 1987).
_____ "Why It Is Wrong To Be Always Guided By the Best:  Consequentialism and 
			Friendship." Ethics. v. 101 (April 1991): 483-50k.
Buber, Martin. The Knowledge of Man. New York Harper,1965.
Dziob, Anne Marie. "Arlstotelian Friendship: Self-love and Moral Rivalry." Review of 
		Metaphysics. v. 46 (June 1993): 781-801.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "Friendship." Other Selves: 220-32.
Hogg, John A. "Toward an Interpersonal Modd of Codependence and Contradependence." 
			Journal of Counseling and Development. v. 70, n 3 (Jan/Feb 1992).
Meyers, Michael J. "Rights Between Friends." Journal of Philosophy v. 89 n. 9 (Sept 
			1992): 467-484.
Montaigne. "Of friendship." Other Selves 187-199.                 
Pakaluk, Michael. Other Selves: Philosophers on Friendship.  Indianapolis: Hackett, 
			1991.
Peele, Stanton. Love and Addiction. New York: Taplinger, 1975.
Raymond, Janice. "A Passion for Friends."
Telfer, Elizabeth. "Friendship." Other Selves 250-67.