Love & Friendship
14. Aristotle's Six Reasons to Study Friendship, and Friendship in Shakespeare: Its Excellence, Concord, and Return of Love
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[0:00] to the third, it should be said that hate is also caused from love, as will be said below. He he has he has twists on hate, he has one on fear, and each of the passions particular rights. I'm not using the basic one. But Shakespeare said right. Shakespeare is very wise.

[0:23] God our enlightenment, guardian angels, bring the lights of our minds, order to illumine our images and arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelic doctor, and help us to understand all that you've written. Name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Amen.

[0:45] So in our church there were a feast of Saint Pio. I'm so used to saying Padre Pio, yeah, sounds kind of funny, Saint Pio, of Pietrelcina. So let's look at the premium that Aristotle gives here to his treatise on friendship, which I've translated here the basic parts of it, but there's even more than what I've given you here.

[1:18] The Nicomachean Ethics, which is Aristotle's main work in ethics, and Thomas Aquinas has a commentary on that. Has ten books. And two of the ten books are devoted to friendship.

[1:37] So I often say to students, the two best things in life are wisdom and friendship. So what could be better than friendship in the pursuit of wisdom? And they said, well, nothing. I said, well, how about wisdom shared with friends? Okay, that'd be even better than friendship in the pursuit of wisdom. Okay.

[2:06] And that's what our friendship with God is, right? Okay. So Aristotle has a premium here at the beginning of the two books on friendship, where he's going to give a number of reasons why one should consider friendship in ethics, which is also the foundation of political philosophy. So in ethics and political philosophy, why is friendship so important? And when you compare the ancient philosophers with the modern philosophers, you'll find in the ancient philosophers this emphasis on friendship.

[2:48] So you could say, just quantitatively speaking, one fifth in Nicomachean Ethics, two of the ten books is devoted to friendship, as if it's that important topic. And we have a little treatise on friendship by, say, Cicero, right? We have a dialogue by Plato on friendship.

[3:10] And of course, in the Middle Ages, caritas, charity, was considered to be a form of friendship. Maybe there's friendship even in the Trinity. See, if there's only one person in God, then there'd be no friendship in God. There'd be love. He's love, as Saint John says in his epistles. But you have to have at least two persons to have what friendship, because friendship involves mutual love. That's why we consider love, as we did in the treatise on love, before we consider friendship.

[3:48] There can be love without friendship, even love of another person without friendship. But there cannot be what friendship without love. Okay. Now, in the Greek word for friendship and the Latin word for friendship, you see etymologically the connection with a word to love. But there are many words to love in Greek, huh? And the Greek word philein names more a love that is in the will. Eros names a love that's more in the concupiscence, huh?

[4:26] But philein and the Greek word for friendship, philia, are obviously what connected. In the same way, in Latin, you have amicitia and amo and amare and so on. If you go and look in an etymological dictionary, the English word friendship, the word friend, goes back to the word freogan, which is an old Anglo-Saxon word meaning to love. But we've lost that word; we kept the word friend.

[4:58] So it's even more clear in Greek, as I say, in the words themselves, that friendship involves love. But everybody kind of knows that anyway. And notice the first reason Aristotle gives: it's looking back to what he's done in books two through six, especially, but also in seven, where he's been studying human virtue. And ethics is chiefly about what human happiness is, what the end or purpose of human life is, what man's chief good is.

[5:33] And you find out that virtue is the road to happiness, and vice is the road to misery or wretchedness. And all of our experience teaches this. So there's no question that ethics is about virtue. Aristotle is making use of that that's been seen very much through books two through six. In two through five, he takes up the moral virtues, and book six the virtues of reason. In book seven, he takes up things that are either above or below human virtue and vice.

[6:10] So we know that the consideration of virtue is a main thing in ethics. And when Shakespeare refers to in the Taming of the Shrew, where somebody's studying practical philosophy, he says he's studying or applying that part of philosophy that treats of happiness by virtue, especially to be achieved. So that's so well known that Shakespeare can stick it in a play.

[6:40] So it's kind of natural to give us his first reason, one that connects friendship with what's been talked about before, namely, what virtue. He talked primarily about happiness, and then virtue, because that's the road to happiness. And now we're going to talk about friendship, but that's connected with what we just talked about, virtue. After these things, we should go through friendship, for it is a virtue or with virtue.

[7:10] Now, sometimes you know we do a little test in class. I know some people have done this. They'll say, "What qualities would you like to have in a friend? " I mean, there are some qualities we put up with in a friend, but they're not the qualities we choose to have in a friend. And so you'd ask somebody now a question like, "Now, would you like to have a coward for a friend?

[7:42] " Or a courageous man for a friend. Everybody would say a courageous man. And would you like to have a a drunkard for a friend? Or a temperate man for a friend? See, would you want Don Giovanni for your friend? But you couldn't trust him with your wife or your sister or your your daughter, right? Would you want to have a stingy person for your friend? A thief for your friend?

[8:15] So you go through the various qualities that a person would want or not want, and you see the connection between what virtue and a desirable friend, right? And how vice makes you not well disposed to be a friend.

[8:36] If you ask people, is a friend someone you can trust? And they'll say yes. Well, can you trust a coward? Not in battle, right? Can you trust a glutton or a drunkard with your bottle or your cake?

[8:55] Can you trust the stingy man with your money and so on? Or the avaricious man with your money? Now notice Aristotle leaves it up in the open here. Is it with virtue, or is friendship itself a kind of virtue?

[9:13] When Thomas takes up caritas, he asks whether caritas, charity, is a form of friendship, and he answers yes to that question. So there, that kind of friendship at least we consider to be a virtue. But is human friendship a virtue too, or is it just something connected with virtue? And it seems to have. A certain likeness to the virtue of justice, most of all, because justice involves what another human being, right, and giving them what is their due and so on, huh?

[9:52] And giving them returning what you borrow and so on, right? Okay. And so we speak of the return of love and friendship. So if it is a virtue, it resembles that of justice, huh?

[10:13] But whether it is a virtue or just with virtue, there's a connection between friendship and virtue. So that's one reason to consider friendship in ethics and in political philosophy. Now the second reason he gives is that friendship is something altogether necessary in human life to live well. And of course, ethics is concerned with living well. but it's necessary to live well? And friendship is one of those things we very much need to live well.

[10:48] And Aristotle shows this, which is kind of obvious, by kind of induction, right? For he says, no one having all other goods would choose to live without friends. You've probably read Robinson Crusoe, right? Very self-sufficient man, right? He's able to provide for himself, but he's lost on this island, right? And he has no friend, right? And you sense his what loneliness, right? His sadness there.

[11:22] But having said that in general, now he shows by kind of couple inductions, huh? And the first one is by how you are in your

[11:35] state of life there in terms of riches and so on. He's going to say, whether you're rich or poor, you need friends. For the rich and those possessing rule and power seem especially to have need of friends. For what is the advantage of such prosperity, right? Without doing good, huh? Which is done especially and most praiseworthily towards friends, huh? What do you do with all this money, right?

[12:03] You got more money than you need, right? So you need to bestow this upon someone else, right? And who better to bestow it upon than a what? Friend, huh? Okay.

[12:17] But likewise, he says, huh? How could it be guarded and preserved without friends? So if you have a lot of money, a lot of wealth, you need those you can what? Trust as your bodyguards, huh? Okay, especially these guys going around want to kidnap you all the time, right? Or kidnap some in your family and so on, right?

[12:42] So the president or something like that, they need people to guard them, right, all the time, huh? People are willing to put their life to save your life, right? So even if you are rich or powerful or mighty, you need what friends, huh? Saddam Hussein needed friends, right, to stay in power, huh? Okay.

[13:06] He says, the greater be the wealth or the power or the position, the more insecure it is, huh? The more people are apt to try to get your wealth or to kidnap your child, right? They're going to kidnap the rich man's son or daughter, not my son or daughter, because I can't put up much, you see, to get them back, but the rich man can.

[13:28] Now, if you are not in rich but you are in poverty, huh? In other misfortunes, then of course men think friends the only refuge, right? You down and out there, huh? So whether you are rich or poor, right, you need friends, right?

[13:48] And now he has another induction, and the remainder of the paragraph where he takes the young and the old, and then the middle aged, right? And it is an aid to the young to avoid mistakes, huh? So your friend calls you back from some crazy thing you want to do, right? Judy dropped you, so you get all upset, right? You are about to run off and do something crazy, right?

[14:14] And your friend talks you out of doing this thing, okay? And to the old, you need someone to watch over you, right? So the old folk, you know, they call up every day, "How you doing? How you doing?" You know, and they don't get any answer, they they go over and investigate, right? Because you might have fallen down and not been able to get to the phone or something, right?

[14:34] Okay. So whether you are young or old, you obviously need friends, right? But? Even those, he says, who are in the prime of life. He doesn't say middle age. He calls that in between the young and old the prime of life.

[14:49] You need friends in order to accomplish great things, right? So hardly any man can accomplish anything great all by himself, right? So he doesn't have that same need that the young have because of their immaturity and so on, and the old because of their fading powers and so on. But in order to accomplish something worthwhile, something great, they need help, right? For when two go together, they are more able both to understand and to act.

[15:18] Okay. So I used to see, you know, when I was a student in Quebec. There, you know, I'd sometimes walking up there towards where I stayed, and I'd see Monsignor Dionne there. You know, he's about to go in to have a conversation with Charles de Koninck and Dionne was walking back and forth. He must be thinking out something. And I knew I just say hello and move on quickly.

[15:40] You know, because if you do want to be interrupted it's been the thought. So that's when two go together, right? Because De Koninck and Dionne, they're more able to understand, right? And I know of my best friend, and sometimes in life he would influence my thinking, you know, because he had some, you know, especially I didn't have or something. And other times I would be influencing very much his thinking with my reading and my understanding and so on.

[16:09] So we're both more able to understand working together, right? And likewise in acting, right? Even more so in acting, right? You require somebody else, huh?

[16:25] So this is the second reason, in general, that ethics and political philosophy are about the things that are necessary in human life, necessary to live well, right? And he shows this by two inductions, right?

[16:40] From the condition of people in life, as far as wealth or poverty is concerned, or from their age, young, old, or in the prime of life, right? But he prefaced all that by saying, no one would choose to live without what friends, huh?

[16:57] Now the third reason here might seem at first strange, because he's saying that friendship seems to be something natural. And some might say, well, is that a reason for it being considered in ethics and political philosophy? Wouldn't there be reason to consider it in natural philosophy? We'll come and answer the objection, but let's look at the way he brings out this natural. And it seems to exist by nature within the parent for its offspring.

[17:36] So Aristotle would speak of friendship even between the father and the son, a friendship between equals, as he calls it, okay. And in the offspring for its what parent, huh? I happened to see on TV there about a week ago that famous cat, you know, those in the burning building. It's been on before. It's kind of a famous example. The cat's in the burning building with her new litter of kittens, and she was taking each kitten by the nape of the neck and bringing it out of the fire and burning building, right?

[18:09] Then going back into the burning building and next kitten, and each time she's getting you know more and more singed, right? And the firemen were actually so impressed they actually cheered seeing this mother cat do this. And then of course they they called the you know, main society whoever was, and and you know found homes for all the kittens and nursed them all back to health, you know.

[18:32] I mean, but there you see that what how natural it is, right? Between the parent and the what offspring, huh? I know in my daughter's cat, Tabitha, had her kittens, and when they get old enough to drink, you know, out of a bowl instead of their mother's milk, and you have six or seven kittens, and you make a great big bowl, and the kittens all run up to the bowl, you know.

[18:55] But Tabitha would sit there, you know, back and watch the six or seven kittens drink, and it's not until the last kitten finished drinking, right, that she'd walk over and drink some milk herself. So my respect for her motherhood there went way up, you know. And

[19:15] you know Shakespeare says in Macbeth, there you know that the what some bird, they're a very small bird there, but the most diminutive of birds will fight for its young, you know, even when it's being attacked. So he says this is natural not only in men but also in birds, right? That's example that you have in Shakespeare's Macbeth and most other animals, right? But Of course, more the mother and the other animals, huh?

[19:47] And then he says to those of the same race, huh? And especially to men, whence we praise lovers of what mankind Philanthropists, right? Okay. He gives a little interesting sign here. For one can see in wanderings that every man is akin to and friend of man. Where you give somebody directions, how many times you give somebody direction on the street or something like that, right? Some stranger, you know.

[20:16] So, oh, no, that's the wrong way. You got to go this way, you know. And it shows that it's kind of a something natural about friendship between all men, right? And not just those he says of the same race, but even all men. Now, coming back to the little objection that I raised, why does Aristotle point out that there's something natural about friendship? Well, you could say in general that if there was nothing naturally good and something naturally bad in human affairs, there would be no ethics.

[20:57] There would just be sociology or an account of what the customs are, you know. Customs in my country is to eat daddy when he gets to be 70, you know, or customs in my house is to eat the, you know, those who defeated in battle or whatever it is, right? But there'd only be a narration of customs. There wouldn't be any ethics deciding what's good and what's bad and what's the road to happiness and what's the road to misery, right?

[21:20] It'd all be indifferent, huh? So Aristotle is always trying to follow nature. And as he says in the second book of Natural Hearing, nature seems to be something of an art in things, but not human art.

[21:40] So it's something of the divine art in things. So when we follow nature, if we know how to follow nature and so on, we're in a way following what God, right? So when when reason or art imitates nature, as we say, one's learning from God in the way we first learn, which is by imitation.

[22:05] So it's interesting Aristotle would give that as his third reason there as something naturally good about friendship, huh? Now the fourth reason here is in terms of the good of the city.

[22:28] And friendship seems to hold together cities. So you want friendship among the citizens, right? If there's enmity and hatred among the citizens, that's going to be what. Destructive, right? And he says, lawgivers are more concerned about it even than justice, because sometimes even you know justice, punishing somebody, even when it's just to do so, may encourage what hatred among his friends or supporters or stuff like that, right?

[23:03] Okay, and so you might have enmity among the classes because of justice, huh? So the friendship seems to be even more important than justice. Now, justice among the moral virtues is the one that is especially emphasized, huh? And so Aristotle devotes a whole book five of the Nicomachean Ethics to justice, huh? While the other virtues take up only part of one of the other books, huh? So justice is the main thing, but a friendship is even more necessary in the view view of the lawgiver, right?

[23:37] Um, that's obviously a concern for ethics and political philosophy, because justice is already agreed upon as something very necessary in ethics, right? So a friendship is even better and more necessary than justice, than even more so is it a concern of the what philosopher, and as they say, he devotes two books to friendship, and only one to justice, and less than one to you know courage and temperance and the other virtues.

[24:15] For harmony seems to be something like what friendship, right? And this they most of all desire: peace, harmony among the citizens, and they especially try to banish discord as being something what unfriendly, right?

[24:36] So a civil war, like our civil war, there's a kind of... what Lack of friendship there between the North and the South, right? Huh? Between the slave states and the free states, and so on. Huh? Trying to overcome that, huh? Just got through reading a biography of Henry Clay. You know, the great compromiser. They say he delayed the Civil War what ten years, right? He died finally in eighteen fifty-two, but the last compromise was in eighteen fifty.

[25:08] So the war could have come even sooner, but terrible thing. If you look at the Peloponnesian War there by Thucydides, huh? Some of the Greek cities are democracies in the sense that we had democracy in those days. Others were oligarchies, right? So the democratic cities and the oligarchic cities were in conflict, huh? Within the democratic cities, there would be an oligarchic faction, which the oligarchies are trying to help, right?

[25:39] And in the oligarchic cities, there'd be a democratic faction. The democratic cities were. So you're fighting, you know, with the other city states as they call them now. But likewise, there was a kind of a civil war almost inside each of these cities, huh? So that's terrible, right? Terrible, being torn apart.

[26:03] So that's the fourth reason that Aristotle gives in this proemium, huh? And now he comes to the fifth reason, which is again in terms of what justice, right? In being friends, there is no need of justice.

[26:24] If I'm your friend, I'm going to give you what you need, right? What is yours? I'll Do more than that, right? See. So if you and I have friendship, we don't have to worry about justice, right? If I'm your friend, I'm not going to steal from you or take what is yours, am I?

[26:46] But if you have just justice, right? Is that enough in human affairs? Sometimes I take the example of marriage. You know, and should a husband and wife, you know, say, "Well, this is your responsibility to mow the lawn. This is your responsibility to do the dishes, or something like that. I'm not going to do your job. No, that's not the way it works, does it? Huh? See?

[27:11] Because sometimes you see the wife out there mowing the lawn, right? Because her husband's working extra hours, or you know, she wants to surprise him, or you see the husband often do the dishes or whatever it may be, right? But in other words, you you you require something more than strict justice in human life to to to live pleasantly with somebody else, huh? And so if you've got friendship, you'll do more than what is just to the other person, right?

[27:38] You go out of your way to to be generous with them, right? Okay, so if you have friendship, we don't really need justice. But if you have justice, you don't need friendship, right? So, so everybody's agreed that the city depends upon justice. I need, you know, courts and all the rest of it, huh? But friendship does the job even better. Okay, And notice what he says. and what is most just seems to fit a friend.

[28:13] He's touching upon that likeness of friendship to justice. Like Saint Catherine of Siena says, "Don't forget to pay the debt of love." So you have an obligation there, right? You owe your neighbor love, huh? That's like justice, isn't it? Giving you what I owe you, and I love you. Okay,

[28:41] so those two arguments there—the fourth and the fifth ones—were involving somewhat the comparison to justice, right? Now, friendship, in some ways, seems to be even more important than justice, and even more necessary, right? And yet, we all agree that justice is necessary.

[29:08] Now, the sixth argument, and here he's saying it seems to be not only necessary in life, like we were saying, especially the second argument, and as the argument here in terms of the city, you know, friendship among the citizens is very necessary in the city, right?

[29:27] In the army and so on, but he says not only is it necessary for human life, but it seems to be something noble, something desirable for its own sake.

[29:38] For we praise. those who love their friends, huh? There's just something noble about that, right? And to have many friends seems something what beautiful, right?

[29:52] And some think that good men and friends are the same. Well, we Christians think that, don't we, right? Because you think you are made good by caritas, by charity, right? And that's a kind of what friendship, right? Okay. So in that sense, good men and friends, in that sense, are the same, right? Okay.

[30:16] Now later on, Aristotle would distinguish a number of kinds of friendship, and there is one kind of friendship which is the best kind and the fullest kind of friendship, and that's only possible between men who are good, right? And there are lesser kinds of friendship that fall away from the full definition of friendship, and there even bad men can be friends of bad men, or even bad men of good men, right?

[30:43] Okay. Now, in the next paragraph, it goes into some of the disagreement that goes back to problems that Plato raises in the dialogues, right? About who is a friend and not, and he says, "But there is no little disagreement about this," he says. For some lay down that is a likeness, and those alike are friends, huh? Because we saw in our study of love that likeness is a cause of love, right?

[31:18] Once they say like to like, huh? And jackdaw to jackdaw. These are like Greek sayings, huh? We have one like birds of a feather flock together, but same idea, right? And others on the contrary say that all such are potters to each other. Now we saw that reference there, huh? That's again a Greek proverb that potters are always fighting, right? Because I want you to buy my pot, he wants you to, you know, wants to sell his pot to you too, right?

[31:46] So we're in friction, right? Because we're both potters, right? Now if he was selling wine and I was selling pots, we maybe you know sell you a pot and eat full of wine, no conflict, right? But if we're both trying to sell a pot, and you can't you can't buy two pots. Well, then we're enemies, right? Because we're alike, right? Okay.

[32:10] So some people say opposites attract, right? You hear that said again and don't, don't you, right? Okay. See, the French of DeSales almost speaks as if there were two, huh? The opposites attract, huh? And grandparents like their grandchildren, right, huh? You know, the old like the very young, and so on, right? Okay. So there's all kinds of ways that. Opposites seem to attract each other. So, what's the truth?

[32:39] Is it that you're drawn to one that's like you, or attracted to the opposite? He says, "And some seek higher and more in accordance with nature about these things." As Euripides says that the earth, when dry, wants rain. It wants the opposite of what it is. Right? It's all dry and it wants the rain. Huh? So the dry wants the wet.

[33:11] And the revered heavens, filled with rain, want to fall upon the earth. And Heraclitus says that the opposite is useful. Well, when we examine that phrase in natural philosophy, the opposite is useful. I say, well, the whole American way of life is based on this, right? Because our economic system is based on what? Competition, right? And that's useful to prevent me from overcharging the customer, right? Because they'll go to somebody else who's getting a more reasonable price.

[33:48] And if you improve your product and people want to buy your product, I've got to improve my product, right? A guy down in the Chevrolet place told me, you know, we're making our cars better because the Japanese are making them better than us, and we're losing so much market to them, you know. So, our economic system is based upon that, right? And what about the courtroom? See, we think in the courtroom, there should be one guy trying to prove he is guilty, and someone else trying to prove he's not guilty, right?

[34:17] We think it's useful for the jury to hear both sides, right? So, the opposite is useful. So, our economic system, or judicial system is based on that. Our political system. We have opposing parties, right? Each trying to point out the defects of the alleged defects of the opposite. huh? Our one party state seems to be almost what tyranny has been in the 20th century, right? The Nazis or the Communists or someone else, right?

[34:42] The Baathists there in Iraq and so on. We see in Thomas there how every article in Summa begins with the opposite, right? The opposite is useful. Thomas is saying, right, to make someone stop and think. So Heraclitus says a lot, right?

[35:05] And another saying of Heraclitus: the most beautiful harmony is from those differing, right? So I say to students: what would you think of homosexual marriage?

[35:18] The most beautiful harmony is from those differing, huh? If you look at a painting, like say the the man in the helmet there, everybody's seen that painting of Rembrandt, right? If the whole painting was flooded with light, it wouldn't be beautiful, right? If the whole painting was dark, it would be beautiful. Once a shaft of light falls on the helmet or something, and you have that contrast, then it's more beautiful, huh?

[35:41] The evening, the night sky with the stars is beautiful because you have the stars against the black sky. If the whole sky was illuminated, it would be garish, right? The whole sky is dark; it wouldn't be beautiful. But from the stars against the black sky, it's more beautiful that way, huh? And usually it's more beautiful at sunrise or sunset. We have that contrast of of opposites, huh?

[36:06] And sometimes you've been in the winter, you know, where the leaves have all left the trees and it's kind of barren. But you get a nice moonlight night, and you get the moon going through the trees and casting on the snow those shadows, you know, that black and white. That's beautiful, huh? And so he's saying, huh? The most beautiful harmony is from those differing, huh?

[36:33] And all things come to be by strife, he said. But on the contrary, others such as Empedocles, another famous natural philosopher, says that like wants what? Like, huh?

[36:49] Now Aristotle says we're not going to be concerned about this question of natural philosophy. That's left to natural philosophy. So he says let the doubts about natural things be set aside, for they do not belong to the present inquiry. But whatever are human and pertain to customs and passions, these we will examine, as whether friendship comes to be in all, or it is not possible for the bad to be friends, right?

[37:18] Aristotle's going to give a nuanced answer to that, right? It's not possible for the bad to be friends in the perfect kind of friendship, he'll say, right? But in some imperfect and defective kind of friendship, the bad can be friends of each other or even of the good, but only the good. Can be friends of each other in the highest kind of friendship, huh? But that's getting ahead of the arc here, right?

[37:42] He's just raising the question, right? And again, the question: whether there's one form of friendship or many, huh? You see, some people say, "Well, friendship is really one thing. Either you can have more or less of this same thing, right, huh? " Just like if someone said sweet is really one thing, but something can be more or less sweet than another, right? Okay. But then it's the same kind of thing that you're having more or less of.

[38:13] Or is it that there are really different kinds of what friendship, right? Now he says those thinking it is one because it admits of more and less, right? Do not believe, he says, by sufficient sign.

[38:32] For things other in kind, or in form, can still be more and less. Okay. So just like we might say, for example, that wisdom is better than what candy, right? It's more good than candy. Candy is less good than wisdom, right? But are they really good in the same way, candy and wisdom?

[39:08] Is the fact that one is more or less enough to say it's the same kind of thing? You find Aristotle, you know, disagreeing with what you find in the Platonic dialogues sometimes, where Plato is saying, "Is the rule that say of a father over his family, and the rule of a king over the city? " Plato seems to speak as if they differ simply in more. More or less, huh?

[39:41] Ruling a family, I'm ruling whatever the family five, six, seven, eight, you know, some number, right? Ruling the city, I'm ruling ten thousand or whatever the city is, right? Or is the rule of a father over his children, and of a king over the citizens, really a different kind of rule? What would you say?

[40:05] Different kind. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. But that's a question that's raised because some people speak as if it's really the same thing, right?

[40:16] Just differing in degree, more or less, huh? Okay. Now, convinced we should study friendship, okay? Now, this other group of readings here that I passed out here are ones I kind of use to loosen up your mind a bit, right?

[40:41] To get you thinking about friendship and different aspects of friendship, some of which we'll meet in Aristotle's treatise, right? Was a little less formal, right, than the treatise will be, right? Okay. So the first friendly topic here is the excellence of friendship.

[41:07] Now, notice in these words of Lorenzo de Portia, you may recall the scene of the Merchant of Venice. Portia and Bassanio just got, you might say, married, right? And then Bassanio gets the letter from the Merchant of Venice that he's in danger now of losing his life to the Jew, and Portia can see how upset he is, huh? And she urges him to go to the relief, if he can, of the Merchant of Venice, right?

[41:44] No honeymoon, anymore So after Bassanio leaves, Lorenzo kind of praises Portia, right, for her appreciation of the friendship between her husband, right, her new husband, and the Merchant of Venice, huh? So he says, "You have a noble, right, and a true conceit. That's the old word, concept, understanding, right? You have a noble and a true thought or understanding of godlike amity. Now amity is a word derived from the French word for friendship, right?

[42:19] But notice he's calling friendship here godlike. That's interesting, isn't it? Because we think that friendship is something godlike too, don't we? The friendship between the father and the son, right, in the Trinity. Now Shakespeare doesn't call many things godlike, huh? In the exhortation to use reason, he says. He calls reason godlike, right? Well, here he's calling what friendship godlike, right? Well, that's quite a what praise of the excellence, you might say, of friendship.

[42:57] There's something godlike about friendship. If you go to the greatest works of Greek fiction, huh, the Iliad of Homer and the Odyssey of Homer, right? Well, the Iliad of Homer is a celebration, in a way, of the friendship of what

[43:19] Achilles and Patroclus, huh? A friendship among equals, as we call it in the treatise on, friendship. And the Odyssey is a celebration of the friendship among unequals, between the husband and the wife, the the father and the son, and the master and his what slave or servant. You have those three friendships, huh? The wife and the son and the servant. Eumaeus, huh? The swineherd. They're all very faithful to what?

[43:53] To Odysseus, right? Yeah. When I was first in Worcester there, he used to go to the Greek restaurant, and when the waitresses, you know, they always called her Penny. And I was eating there one time with a Greek guy. He says, "What's what's really her name?" I said, "Penelope." But they call her Penny for short right? But that was regarded as a great thing to call the girl Penelope, is to recall to the Greek mind the faithfulness of Penelope waiting for 20 years, I guess, to Odysseus got the Trojan War, huh?

[44:24] And but you might say that that's in sense the highest thing almost in fiction there to be presented. friendship, huh? Just like in the Merchant of Venice, the friendship between the Merchant of Venice and Bassanio. But notice he calls him godlike, right?

[44:46] They have all kinds of references to friendship in the sonnets. I just quoted a couple of the couplets that kind of sum up, you know, the sonnets have fourteen lines, and you have three quatrains that are completed, you know, by a couplet, sometimes which sums up the thing. So he got a lot of problems in life, but if the while I think on thee, dear friend, all losses are restored and sorrows end.

[45:12] Was quite a thing if that's true, right? About friendship, or for thy sweet love, remembered such wealth brings that then I scorn to change my state with what kings.

[45:32] Well, Shakespeare's two metaphors there, wealth, right? Even our Lord uses wealth metaphorically in the for heaven and so on, huh? Man who found the treasure there in the field and so on, and then the the word sweet, huh? And I mentioned before, I think, of how the best explanation of metaphor sweet is given by Thomas in his commentary on the Psalms.

[45:59] He has to explain the words taste and see how sweet is the Lord, right? But I think I've explained this metaphor before haven't I with you, but just recall it very briefly. A metaphor is a figure of speech based on likeness, and in the metaphor sweet, the most obvious likeness is that of being pleasant, right? Okay. So every kid likes candy, right? It's pleasant to eat something sweet.

[46:30] But a second reason Thomas gives is that it's something restful and tranquil about it, and so the policeman gives what an ice cream cone to the kid who's lost until they find the parents because it calms them down, huh? Or I would take some candy in the car, you know, to give to the kids when they got a little bit too restless, huh? Driving across country, and then it's what refreshing, right?

[46:56] Okay. Well, isn't that true about the love of a friend, right? It's pleasant to be loved by somebody, right? There's something refreshing about it, right? And there's something what?

[47:11] Let's say the likeness, something restful about it. You can rest in the friend, huh? Why hate? If you experience hate in someone for you, right? It's not a pleasant thing to be hated, right? It's kind of unsettling, you know. It's not a restful thing at all, right? And it's it's kind of wearying, huh? You know. But William F. Buckley speak of the tenacious ill will? And where no one's vote chosen tenacious, tenacious ill will of some of his opponents.

[47:44] Okay. So Shakespeare uses that word "sweet" now with those three likenesses in mind. Sometimes he speaks of your sweet form, meaning your beautiful form, right? For the beautiful is that which pleases when seen, right? So he has that likeness to the sweet. But we also speak of what, how restful we see a beautiful scene, huh? If you go to somebody's house and overlooks the ocean or overlooks the mountains, you know, and so on, how restful and how refreshing, you know?

[48:17] You say, beautiful girl, a sight for sore eyes, right? Refreshes you, huh? Um. So Shakespeare is saying very well. Now, from Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson, one of the most famous biographies in English language, the one of the great books. Johnson says to Boswell, "The longer we live and the more we think, okay, the higher value we learn to put on the friendship and tenderness of parents and of friends."

[48:54] As I mentioned before, Aristotle will use the word "friendship" between parents and children too. Though sometimes we just use it for the other. parents we can have, but once, right? And he promised himself too much. Who enters life with the expectation of finding many true friends? Okay.

[49:17] Now Smollett there, the novelist of the 18th century, there, and his travels through France and Italy. I am at last in situation to indulge my view with her sight of Britain. Now he can see across water. After an absence of two years, he's anxious to get back to England, right? And indeed, you cannot imagine what pleasure I feel. While I survey the white cliffs of Dover at this distance, I am attached to my country because it is a land of liberty, cleanliness, he's fed up with France, and convenience.

[49:51] English inns better, but I love it still more tenderly as the scene of all my interesting connections. That's interesting, well, he says that, huh? All my interesting connections, as the habitation of my friends, right? For whose conversation, correspondence, and esteem I wish alone to live. That's all he lives for, right? That's very strong, right? That's all you he wishes to live for is for the conversation, correspondence, and esteem of his friends.

[50:22] It's his great attachment to the excellence of friendship, right? The importance of it, huh? Now, one of his novels here, most famous one, very famous one, the Expedition of Humphrey Clinker, right? But

[50:35] these old guys have met after many, many years, right? And they're all decrepit, you know, they got canes and so on. And he's describing the effect upon them, right? Our former correspondence was forthwith renewed with the most hearty expressions of mutual goodwill.

[50:55] Notice that mutual goodwill. It's involved in friendship, right? To to what the love of wishing well, right? But it's gotta be mutual for friendship, right? And as we had met so unexpectedly, we agreed to dine together that very day at the tavern. Truly, this was the most happy day I've passed these twenty years. You and I, Lewis, having been always together, that's his friend he's writing to, never tasted friendship in this high hue contracted from long absence.

[51:27] I cannot express the half of what I felt at this casual meeting of three or four companions, who had been so long separated and so roughly treated by the storms of life. It was a renovation of youth, a kind of resuscitation of the dead, resurrection of the dead, right? That realized those interesting dreams in which we sometimes retrieve our ancient friends from the grave. Perhaps my enjoyment was not the less pleasing for being mixed with a strain of melancholy produced by the remembrance of past scenes that conjured up the ideas of some endearing connections which the hand of death has actually dissolved.

[52:06] The spirits and good humor of the company seemed to triumph over the wreck of their constitutions. They had even philosophy enough to joke upon their calamities. Such is the power of friendship, right? The sovereign cordial of life. Okay, maybe we'll multiply these things, but just to give a little taste there of the excellence of friendship, huh?

[52:33] Our next little friendly topic there is Concordia, the bond of friendship, right? Ensure bind this knot of amity, of friendship, right? It's a synonym for friendship, amity, huh? Amity. We carry not a heart with us from hence that grows not in a fair consent with ours.

[53:01] It's a concord of heart, agreement of hearts. This ring I gave him when he parted from me, Julia, and the Proteus the not too faithful lover, huh? To bind him to remember my what? Goodwill. But that's your friendship with him, right? Mutual.

[53:26] They that thrive well take counsel with their friends. Now, next topic is return of love. Of course, there has to be a return of love for there to be what friendship, right? So, if I love you, but you don't return my love, right?

[54:00] Then we're not friends, huh? Okay. I think it's kind of interesting that expression "return of love" because it doesn't mean I'm returning your love, or that I'm giving you my love in return for your love. You know,

[54:19] I mean, if I give you, if I lend you something and you return it, you no longer have it, right? But if you return my love, you still have my love, right? But why do we speak as if the very love you have received, you are what returning, right? Okay. You have to stop and think about that way of speaking, huh? You know, is that way of speaking, imperfect, not saying exactly what you mean.

[54:53] right return your love, I don't want your love. I am going to give it back to you, take it, take it. No, it doesn't mean that, does it? Although it may seem to someone to be saying that in the words, right? I am going to return your love, huh? The girl returns the ring. That's the end of things, I guess. But if I return your love, that doesn't mean that's the end of that.

[55:20] That means the start of a friendship, right? I think it shows kind of the likeness of friendship to justice, right? Because you speak as if you return the very love you received, right? Okay.

[55:48] They seem to pity the lady. It seems her affections have their full bent. I see. This is the scene, you know, where they're trying to get Benedict and Beatrice, you know, to declare their liking for each other, and they're always kidding each other, you know, and so. And they work on him separately, right? You know, that Benedict is learning that Beatrice is really in love with him.

[56:09] Through overhearing the conversation of the men who have plotted this, and Beatrice is hearing that Benedict really loves her, right? And then she says, "wow, I've got to return this love that he's given me or she's given me, right? " So Benedict, upon hearing this, they seem to pity the lady, as if she loves Benedict, but he won't love her in return, right? They seem to pity the lady, and this, of course, is a sorrowful thing, right?

[56:31] To love someone and not have the love returned, huh? They seem to pity the lady. It seems her affections have their full bent. Love me, quite must be requited? I feel. I hear I am censured, right? Not loving in return. They say I will bear myself proudly if I perceive the love come from her. They say too that she will rather die than give any sign of affection.

[57:01] Of course, finally Benedict and Beatrice, you know, we do like each other, but they have this problem, you know, not kidding each other all the time. Of course, they finally realize that they're on the play. This is Act Five, Scene Four, that they've been played upon, right? Then you do not love me, she he says. No, truly, but in friendly recompense.

[57:23] Now, in the Merry Wives of Windsor, if you know the story, there that's Shakespeare's greatest comedy, right? There is three or four people who want to marry Anne page, and they all got arrangements, you know, to run off with her at the end of this this evening. And Fenton, who is really the one who loves her. And she loves him in return, right? They're the ones actually run off and get married.

[57:47] And so Fenton is talking to the, he's going to help him. From time to time, I have acquainted you with the dear love I bear to fair Anne Page. You mutually have answered my affection, right? That means what? She's returned his love, right? So far forth as herself might be her chooser, right? Even to my wish, huh? Of course, in Shakespeare's day, you still have the idea that you know you don't marry, choose to marry; your parents choose for you, right?

[58:21] But that seemed kind of unfeasible to people in our century, right? But you know, I was thinking of the old idea: if you and I are walking along the beach there, and there's a piece of wood there, and I pick up that piece of wood, and then I start to carve and I carve it into a statue, something like that. To whom does that statue belong now?

[58:50] You. Yeah, it belongs to the maker of it, right? Okay. If I write a book, you think it belongs to me, right? Have a copyright and so on. So the made belongs to the maker, right?

[59:08] Now you find this in the Psalms, right? That the Lord's is the earth and its fullness, right? The world and those, who dwell in it Because he made it, right? Okay. Of course, in the case of God, more so than in the case of my picking up the piece of wood, I didn't make the wood, right? But I gave it the form of the statue, right? But God creates without any matter, right?

[59:32] He creates the matter as well as the form, right? So we belong entirely to God. We Don't belong to ourselves. But in a way, doesn't the child belong to the parents more than to himself? Because they what made him, right? Okay, so the child belongs to you. Then you should have the right to bestow them in marriage upon the person. Well, there's something reasonable about that, right? When our customs, of course, regard as you know, oh, an infringement upon freedom and so on, right?

[1:00:08] Was taken for granted, you know, until fairly recently, huh? And of course, a lot of the old plays depend upon that. I mean, you know, Romeo and Juliet depends upon the fact that you know you don't go and decide yourself who you're going to marry. The parents decide for you.

[1:00:24] That's what it says. So far forth, is herself might be her chooser, right? Now, in Venus and Adonis, of course, that's the famous mythology that Shakespeare writes the narrative poem about. But Venus loves Adonis, but he's not returning the law, right? I know not love, quoth he. Nor will not know it unless it be a boar, and then I chase it. He's a hunter, right? But he's not a lover.

[1:00:50] Tis much to borrow, and I will not owe it. I like to say to justice again, huh? My love to love is love, but to disgrace it, for I've heard all kinds of bad things about it. It's a life and death, right? That laughs and weeps, and all but with a breath.

[1:01:12] Now in Sonnet 23, who plead for love and look for what recompense, huh? No, if you love another person, you naturally want them to love you in return, right?

[1:01:29] Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain. Thou gavest me thine, not to give back again. Now, friendship and justice again, expanding a bit on that likeness between the two. Now,

[1:01:56] Celia and Rosalind, of course, are the daughters of the what? Present Duke and the Duke who's been exiled, who his throne has been usurped by the younger brother, right? But the daughters have remained friends, right? Herein I see thou lovest me not with the full weight that I love thee. If my uncle, thy banished father, had banished thy uncle, the Duke, my father, so thou hadst been still with me, I could have taught my love to take thy father for mine.

[1:02:30] So wouldst thou, if the truth of thy love to me were so righteously tempered as mine is to thee. the truth of thy love, right? Truth is like justice, isn't it?

[1:02:50] Macbeth, huh? Mac Malcolm is saying in Macbeth, "We shall not spend a large, expensive time before we reckon with your several loves and make us even with you." And notice we use that in justice, don't we, huh? Yeah. I'm going to get even with you. But even if you know you go to the store and I say, "oh, will you get me a bottle of milk or something or a loaf of bread," then we come back and we settle, right?

[1:03:20] and sometimes we say, "You know, we're even now," right? Meaning is justice, right? So justice is the question of getting even. And so notice he's saying here, though, huh? We shall not spend a large, expense of time—won't wait a long time—before we reckon with your several loves and make us even with you.

[1:03:44] My thanes and kinsmen henceforth be earls. So he's promoting them, the first that ever Scotland such an honor named. But Montague is bound as well as I in penalty alike, and 'tis not hard, I think, for men so old as we to keep the peace. Of honorable reckoning are you both, and pity 'tis you lived at odds so long, right? That's the opposite of what being even, right?

[1:04:20] To be at odds with somebody, right? Okay. But it shows kind of likeness between justice and being even, right? And enmity and being at odds with somebody, huh? You see that? That's our way of speaking, isn't it? I guess. If I'm at odds with you, that means that we're in some kind of conflict. Right. See. If I get even with you. That's justice, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[1:04:51] So it's kind of showing the likeness there between friendship and and justice, huh? Now, Egeus doesn't want his daughter to marry the man that she's fallen in love with. Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung, with feigning voice, right? Versus a feigning love, right? And stolen the impression of her fantasy, with cunning hast thou filched my daughter's heart. Ah, stolen the heart, right? It's unjust, right?

[1:05:33] Sometimes you can you can you see in a courtroom sometimes alienation of affection, I think they call it. Yeah. Well, you've someone getting somebody else's child to be attached to you, you know, more than to them. You know, you can actually be charged with alienation of affection, right? Okay. It's if they're giving the love where it shouldn't be, right? You've stolen. You filched my daughter's heart, right?

[1:06:01] Okay, unjust here. Now Don John is a great villain, but what you do about nothing if you know the play? The guy who's thoroughly disgusted with life and things. I'd rather be a canker in a hedge than a rose in his grace. And better fits my blood to be disdain'd all of all than to fashion a carriage to rob love from any. In this, though, I cannot be said to be a flattering, honest man.

[1:06:31] It must not be denied that I am a plain dealing villain. Now, Julia, Madam, 'twas Ariadne passioning, for Theseus' perjury and unjust flight perjury and unjust flight. It was unfaithful to her, right? This is a question of what. It's being called unjust, right? Okay.

[1:07:01] So adultery would be considered unjust, right? Okay. His abandoning Ariadne, right? His perjury—that's against justice, right? An unjust flight. Now the last scene there in almost the Two Gentlemen of Verona, Proteus has been pursuing Valentine's girl, and she's been refusing him, and now he's getting violent, you know, to rape her, you might say, and Valentine shows up, right? Ruffian, let go that rude, uncivil touch. thou friend of an ill fashion, Valentine.

[1:07:44] Proteus, Proteus is well named. because Proteus in Greek mythology is the god who's always assuming a different shape. So Proteus was, you know, betrothed with twenty soul-confirming oaths to Julia, and then he went over to Sylvia, right? So he's changing his shape all the time.

[1:08:02] He says, "Thou common friend, that's in the pejorative sense, right? That's without faith or love. For such is a friend now. Treacherous man, thou hast beguiled my hopes. Not but mine eye could have persuaded me. Now I dare not say I have one friend alive, huh? Because they were their best friends, huh? Thou wouldst disprove me. Who should be trusted now, when one's right hand is perjured again?

[1:08:33] the word perjured right? to the bosom. Proteus, I am sorry, I must never trust thee more, but count the world a stranger for thy sake. The private wound is deepest, O time most cursed. Amongst all foes, that are friends should be the worst.

[1:08:54] That's very interesting. I call those plays like the Two Gentlemen of Verona, the love and friendship plays of Shakespeare, right? Because you have this, you know, love, you know, romantic love, but then you have a friendship, right? And sometimes there's some conflict between the two, you know. And that's very interesting. These six plays of Shakespeare. So the Two Gentlemen of Verona are friends, but then there's there's love.

[1:09:19] What would the others be? Well, yeah, the three early ones, the Midsummer Night's Dream, and the Two Gentlemen of Verona, and the Merchant of Venice, right? Okay. And then you had the more mature ones, The Much Ado About Nothing, and As You Like It, and then the Twelfth Night. Okay. Okay crime one They're All very interesting plays. So they're both about romantic love, and they're about friendship, you know.

[1:09:45] And usually, friend between two men, right? So the two gentlemen are friends. Merchant of Venice and Bassanio right In In the Merchant of Venice and A Midsummer Night's Dream, though, it's more the the women are friends. The women are friends, yeah, yeah. And then they what goes on in the