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Other Selves in Public
Aristotle said that, in a true friendship, each friend regards and loves the
other as his 'other self'. Christ taught that each of us is to love
his neighbor as himself. The two ideas converge, if we suppose that we
are to treat everyone as a friend. This
Aristotle denied: we should aim to befriend, he said, only those we can
reasonably love; but since love is reasonably directed only at goodness, and
few people are good, we can reasonably love and befriend only a few
persons. In fact, he said, it would be wrong to try to love everyone. If
we love those who are not good, Aristotle warned, then we risk becoming
corrupted, since people become similar to what they love. Anyone who loves
a bad person, and therefore associates with him, is liable to become bad
himself. Aristotle’s reasoning seems entirely
correct, and there are only two ways to escape it. The first way, more
difficult, is to say that there is some respect in which all human beings
are good, even if their characters are bad, and that this respect serves as
a foundation for universal love. Christianity achieves this through
teaching that everyone is a child of God, either naturally, through
creation, or supernaturally, through baptism.
The reason this is a difficult
view to hold is that it imposes a standard on our affections. If the
basis for our love for any other person considered at random, is that he or
she is a child of God, then our affection has to be governed by that end: we
can reasonably wish that person to have only those things that contribute to
his relationship with God, and we should oppose those things opposed to that
relationship. This requires that we make judgments about behavior, which
many people are loathe to do, and which in any case can be unpopular. What
is our judgment on, say, sleeping around outside of marriage, or abortion,
or pornography, or satisfying one’s whims, or creating unnecessary needs, or
being complacent about one’s own ignorance? If such things hinder another
person’s relationship with God, then, on this picture, we will have to
oppose them.
The logic is irresistible: if
our love for others, generally, is rooted in their relationship to God,
then, by that very love itself, we will need to form a judgment about what
is in their true interest. And then we need to be prepared not to
consent to they want, and in some cases even to resist it, when what they
want is against their true interest.
The easy way to love others
universally, in contrast, is to abandon the requirement of forming
judgments, by holding, in effect, that there is no objective difference
between good and bad character. In modern society, this denial of objective
goodness and badness takes two forms.
The first is relativism, which
we have several times mentioned already. Relativism is the view that each
thing is as it seems to the person involved. If abortion (say) seems like
the right thing to you, then—for all I know—it is the right thing. No one
else can be in a position to gainsay your opinion. (What is called ‘the
right to privacy’ in modern discussions frequently ends up being no more
than the finding that relativism is to be adopted as regards a domain.
‘Abortion falls under the right to privacy’ means, simply, ‘What seems
correct to the woman involved is correct; there is no gainsaying her
opinion.’) Obviously, if what seems correct is correct, and since people
generally choose what seems correct to them, then all people are good.
Relativism is the easy way to love others universally, because it
automatically confers infallible goodness on everyone. Another easy way to love others
universally, by denying an objective difference between goodness and
badness, is to let others decide for you which things are wrong, through
their anger. It is to refrain from judgment, by deferring judgment. No one
decides for himself, but others decide, yet not on evident principle. We
say such things as that, ‘Your liberty should be limited only by the liberty
of others,’ or ‘The law should constrain only harm done to others’, or ‘Your
right to move your hand stops at the point of my nose.’ These maxims
presuppose that the only standard for judging an action wrong is someone
else’s taking offense. We do not ourselves look at the action directly, and
judge it to be wrong, but we take on the viewpoint of the person offended,
and hold it to be wrong, because it offended. This viewpoint makes everyone good by
presumption. The ‘love’ for them that is based on this view takes the form
of using reason instrumentally, to satisfy their wants and inclinations
maximally, to the extent that others do not take offense. This is the
viewpoint of modern liberalism, which springs from 19th century
utilitarianism. The great flaw in this
approach, however, is that it cannot distinguish between justified and
unjustified offense. One person is offended by a cross displayed in
public; another by an abortion clinic in his neighborhood. One parent is
offended by prayers in school; another is offended by lack of prayers in
public school. Homosexual troop leaders for the Boy Scouts cause disgust
in some persons; but the banning of homosexual troop leaders seems equally
disgusting to others. In truth, there is no real resolution of these
differences, apart from some genuine conception of objective human good. “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself”.
But no one, in his own case, takes what seems good to him, actually to be
good. And no one, in his own case, regulates his actions solely by the
negative condition of not causing offense to others around him. (Suppose
that those around him are bad, and take offense at good things. And the
people who happen to be around us change.) But then neither can universal
love be based on relativism or the Harm to Others Principle. Love for
others generally must take the form of extending the same criteria to them,
that a good person naturally applies to himself.
Other Selves in Private
That love takes the form of extending to
others the relationship that a good person has to himself, leads Aristotle
to draw a remarkable conclusion in Aristotle about the nature of intimate
friendships. What is the highest form that love can
take? Most people, I think, would say that love, at its height, takes the
form of giving. Mother Teresa, for instance, gave food and shelter to poor
person in Calcutta. Parents give nourishment and an education to their
children. In the extreme, a friend may even give up his life for his
friend. But Aristotle points out, sensibly, that
giving is not something that characterizes a good person’s relationship to
himself. It’s not possible, in fact, for a person to give himself anything:
you already have what you think you might give. —Well, there is a sense in
which a person gives something to himself, when, through foresight and
prudence, he plans for something in the future. A retirement savings plan,
then, is in a sense a gift from a man, in his youth, to himself, in his old
age. But such actions are gifts only in a metaphorical sense, and hence
giving, although necessary and important, is ultimately an imperfect
expression of love.
But then, how do we most properly love
others? Aristotle argues that we do so when we simply spend time with them,
and enjoy their company. This is the highest expression of love. Being
with is greater than giving, just as being is greater than
having. Here is his argument. Aristotle claims
that a person is in some sense identifiable with his activity of living.
But the activity of living consists in some kind of perception, either
sensing or thinking. So, in a sense, a person consists of his sensing and
his thinking.
But now consider that both sensing and thinking have a reflexive component.
That is, to see a chair is, at the same time, to perceive that you see a
chair. To think about that chair is, at the same time, to be aware
or to perceive
that you are thinking about that chair. All sensation and thought is
complex, because it has a reflexive character. Hence, in every sensation and
thought, a person adopts a relation to himself. When he thinks, he is
related to himself as perceiving that he thinks. When I see a flower, I am
related to myself as perceiving that I see a flower.
Can this relation, then, be extended to others, so that they share in it,
and become related to us as we are to ourselves? Yes, Aristotle says,
it can be so extended, when we share in their sensing and thinking.
The sharing is more perfect in the case of thinking. You tell me
something that you are thinking about, and I become aware that you are
thinking about it, just as you are aware of it. I becoming so aware, I
become related to you, as you are to yourself. But then you
become aware that I am aware of what you are thinking about (this
kind of mutual awareness is essential to friendship), and thus you also
become related to me, as I am to myself. As a result of this mutual
awareness, you and I become, so to speak, mirror images of each other.
Each of us thinks something, and is aware of what he is thinking, and this
relation is extended to, and reflected in, the other.Aristotle’s conclusion, then,
is that, in this kind of sharing of thought and sensing (which he calls
‘living life together’, compare the Spanish word, convivencia) two
persons most fully share in the life that each has on his own. If love is
an extension of self-regard to others, then this is the fullest form of
love. At the same time, Aristotle points out, the relation of giving is
unsatisfactory, for two reasons. First, it implies an inequality: the
person who gives, insofar as he gives, adopts a position of superiority over
the person who receives. Second, giving cannot be shared simultaneously:
when the one person is giving, the other person must be receiving. They can
take turns, perhaps, but they cannot both be doing the same thing at the
same time.
Yet it is not so with sharing
in thought and sensing. This phenomenon is entirely equal and simultaneous
as between friends. In fact, Aristotle holds, giving is meant to give way
to spending time together. Suppose that two persons who, initially, are
unequal in their possessions, become friends. By impulses natural to
friendship, their possessions would overtime become more equalized, or at
least managed jointly for the good of both. But the point of this sort of
equalization, and sharing in possessions, is not merely that the friends be
equal. This result might, indeed, be enough to gratify the envious; but in
fact the real point of their equality in possessions is that, if they are
thus equal, they can better enjoy each others’ company and spend time
together. Aristotle’s argument is very
sound. The main points are found in Nicomachean Ethics book 9,
chapter 9, and I encourage all readers of this essay to examine the passage
directly. The conclusion which he draws, of the priority of being with
to giving, applies to all human affairs. It applies to relations
between peoples and nations (by analogy), as much as to intimate relations
between friends. Stepping back, we may say that Aristotle’s argument, in
essence, is that human life is inherently ordered to sociability, because of
the reflexive character of sensing and thought. (“True personality consists
in an orientation to communion”, as Jacques Maritain once commented.) What
all of us want, in virtue of our common humanity, is to live life
side-by-side with others. We do not want to enjoy our existence, alone and
separately, but we want to enjoy life through enjoying the existence of
others as well, and through having them enjoy the fact that we exist also.
This is the end of human life, and a necessary feature of human happiness.
It is therefore the proper goal to which assistance and giving should be
directed. A vision of human solidarity,
then, should govern our dealings with others, both in public and in
private—which seems a fitting enough conclusion to this series of essays.
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