(e) Emerson on Friendship
Emerson’s characterization of friendship radically departs from many earlier accounts, especially from Aristotle’s. One could see Aristotle’s theory of friendship, at least today, as a very “safe,” middle-of-the-road, if not conservative, account of friendship. It is based on mutual respect for each other, but also respect for social hierarchies (friends, know your place!); and it is a doctrine of harmonious, easy relations between persons.
Emerson sees friendship as something radically different: it is still seen as one of the highest goods, but it is something to aspire to, though we never quite reach it truly (at least not in this lifetime). More than this, though, friendship in Emerson is seen as a strange form of conflict: the friend is the one against whom we come to know and define ourselves better, but who presents her- or him-self to us as a challenge. Friendship is, in a sense, a moral challenge – a challenge to be or become something other than we are, someone truer to our deep-rooted, natural self (Emerson does appear to believe that buried in each person is something like a true nature or essence). The reasons for this are sometimes hard to explain, as Emerson writes in such a way that his thoughts often seem to be in fatal conflict with one another. But this is quite deliberate: Emerson is prepared to risk saying nothing at all for the chance of some one thing that is truly new. And for him, that is rather like true friendship, which, he writes, is rarely come by. When it is, however, it is a form of divine poetry.
The two ingredients of friendship, for Emerson, are truth and tenderness (or, perhaps, love). True friendship “demands [the] ability to do without it,” because if you are reliant on another, rather than on yourself, how can you be a friend to another? “[T]he only way to have a friend,” claims Emerson, “is to be one.” It is not always clear, however, to whom one is to be a friend. It is possible to read Emerson as suggesting that one must be a friend to one’s self before one can be a friend to another; but it is equally feasible to read as suggesting the opposite. Perhaps he has both in mind: perhaps the friendship one finds in another enables us to befriend our selves, and from there to offer friendship in return. Because Emerson’s writings strain at the limits of the metaphorical and the literal, all such readings are possible without being certain.
The combination of truth and tenderness that friendship requires means that you must be self-reliant before you can be a friend, for you must have the courage to not change your way of being and acting in the presence of another, and certainly you should not merely parrot everything others say: “Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo.”
Ultimately, friendship as Emerson understands it is a mass of beautiful contradictions – the sorts of tensions and contradictions that are alone capable of producing true art. (Thus, again, friendship and poetry are virtually one and the same for Emerson.) The true friend is someone to whom we must aspire but never bow down, never flatter. The true friend is someone almost divine, yet whom makes us feel anew our earthy, gritty contact with the world. By making us aim higher, the friend plants our feet firmly on the ground. The friend is, then, “a delicious torment,” “a sort of beautiful enemy.”
Works Cited
Emerson, R.W. (1841). “Friendship.” Essays: First Series. http://www.emersoncentral.com/friendship.htm. Accessed 28/09/16.
Emerson sees friendship as something radically different: it is still seen as one of the highest goods, but it is something to aspire to, though we never quite reach it truly (at least not in this lifetime). More than this, though, friendship in Emerson is seen as a strange form of conflict: the friend is the one against whom we come to know and define ourselves better, but who presents her- or him-self to us as a challenge. Friendship is, in a sense, a moral challenge – a challenge to be or become something other than we are, someone truer to our deep-rooted, natural self (Emerson does appear to believe that buried in each person is something like a true nature or essence). The reasons for this are sometimes hard to explain, as Emerson writes in such a way that his thoughts often seem to be in fatal conflict with one another. But this is quite deliberate: Emerson is prepared to risk saying nothing at all for the chance of some one thing that is truly new. And for him, that is rather like true friendship, which, he writes, is rarely come by. When it is, however, it is a form of divine poetry.
The two ingredients of friendship, for Emerson, are truth and tenderness (or, perhaps, love). True friendship “demands [the] ability to do without it,” because if you are reliant on another, rather than on yourself, how can you be a friend to another? “[T]he only way to have a friend,” claims Emerson, “is to be one.” It is not always clear, however, to whom one is to be a friend. It is possible to read Emerson as suggesting that one must be a friend to one’s self before one can be a friend to another; but it is equally feasible to read as suggesting the opposite. Perhaps he has both in mind: perhaps the friendship one finds in another enables us to befriend our selves, and from there to offer friendship in return. Because Emerson’s writings strain at the limits of the metaphorical and the literal, all such readings are possible without being certain.
The combination of truth and tenderness that friendship requires means that you must be self-reliant before you can be a friend, for you must have the courage to not change your way of being and acting in the presence of another, and certainly you should not merely parrot everything others say: “Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo.”
Ultimately, friendship as Emerson understands it is a mass of beautiful contradictions – the sorts of tensions and contradictions that are alone capable of producing true art. (Thus, again, friendship and poetry are virtually one and the same for Emerson.) The true friend is someone to whom we must aspire but never bow down, never flatter. The true friend is someone almost divine, yet whom makes us feel anew our earthy, gritty contact with the world. By making us aim higher, the friend plants our feet firmly on the ground. The friend is, then, “a delicious torment,” “a sort of beautiful enemy.”
Works Cited
Emerson, R.W. (1841). “Friendship.” Essays: First Series. http://www.emersoncentral.com/friendship.htm. Accessed 28/09/16.