Agnes Heller

The Beauty of Friendship

I he representative stories about ems told by

Plato in the Symposium and the Phaedrus, together with a few other themes developed in
other dialogues, became the narrative ground of
beauty. Our desire is attracted by beautyit is
beauty that we desire. Plato speaks also ofphUia
(love as friendship) and philein (to love, to be a
friend of), especially in the Lysis, but here, much
as in Plato's other representative narratives, philia
remains closely associated with eras. Philosophy
(the love or friendship of wisdom) is also an object of our desire. We love wisdom, that is, we
desire it, because we do not possess it. What we
love is perfection, and we, the lovers, are not
perfectwhich is why we desire perfection.
The strong erotidzation of philia can bear witness to a tragic life experience. Plato rejected
tragedy as a politically dangerous genre, but he
still believed in the existence and power of tragic
experience. Our whole life is just a single strenuous effort to find the object of our desire, to possess something which cannot be possessed, to
achieve autarkyself-sufficiencythe only state
where we can finally find peace. Plato's perception of eras is not a happy one; rather, it reminds
The South Atlantic Quarterly 97:1, Winter 1998.
Copyright 0 1 9 9 8 by Duke University Press.

6 Agnes Heller

me of the daemon's ironic comment, described by Aeschylus and quoted

by Nietzsche, that the best thing for man is never to be born, and the second best is to die young. The state of autarky is like the state of death, not
necessarily physically but mentally: an autarkic person dies for all human
relationships. One cannot get rid of desire before death, nor can one be
happy before death. Since it is both archaic and tragic, Plato's narrative
does not elevate eras but devalues it. More precisely, eras has no value of
its own; it is just a vehicle, a mediator, a kind of energy source that serves
something else above and beyond itself.
The concept of the beautiful which emerges from this story can develop
in two different ways. One can take it in the direction of extreme sublimation: the beauty that we desire is thought of as something entirely spiritual
or mental, a kind of beauty that we do not see or hear and which does
not shake us emotionally (for there is no emotional involvement without
bodily pain or pleasure). The storyteller can alternatively take beauty in a
direction that still preserves these themes but in another orchestration: instead of eras we see philia emerging.
The arch-narrative of philia or phUein was not told by Plato but by Aristotle. This was a second, and different kind of, "beginning.'' And if one
thinks genealogically, one must conclude that modern concepts of love
have gained as much inspiration from Aristotle's story of philia as from
Plato's story of eras. This can easily be documented. What will be more difficult to make explicit is my thesis that the kind of love the Greeks called
philia, that is, friendship as it appeared in Aristotle and reappeared in all
variations on Aristotle's concept, has as great an affinity to beauty as Plato's
eras does.
But you need not take it from me that the arch-narrative of friendship
was invented by Aristotle. You can rely on Derrida's Politics of Friendship,1
as I do. To briefly recapitulate its main themes: Derrida takes as the representative sentence on friendship the pseudo-Aristotelian rhetorical address
(attributed or misattributed to Aristotle by Diogenes Laertius): "My dear
friends, there are no friends''; or, in another version, "My dear friends,
there is no friend.'' In fact, Derrida follows the historical vicissitudes of
this address, the twists and turns of its philosophical interpretations, in
the works of Cicero, Montaigne, Kant, Nietzsche, and Carl Schmitt, among
others. These brilliant analyses and interpretations, however, do not even
touch on the question of beauty. As the title of his book shows, Derrida

Beauty of Friendship 7

is mainly interested in the political implications of friendship, hence his

choice of guiding sentence. I, however, am interested in friendship's relationship to beauty; therefore, my guiding sentence will be a different
oneanother famous pseudo-Aristotelian statement"Plato is my friend,
but Truth is my better friend"; or the more pleasant-sounding "I love Plato,
but I love Truth more." That is, if I must choose between my friend and
the truth, I will choose the truth and abandon my friend. This is not just
a statement of personal preference nor one meant to represent the merely
occasional preference of a person called Aristotle. It is to be understood as
normative, as saying that in the case of a conflict between friendship and
truth, a philosopher should do as I do and choose truth. The choice is painful, but the outcome of the conflict between these two emotional involvements is not in doubt. If you are a philosopher, if you love wisdom, that
love of wisdomthe truthshould take precedence over all other loves.
"Doing the right thing" is identified with choosing truth, for to choose your
frienduntruthwould mean abandoning philosophy, undoing yourself
as a philosopher (an ideareminiscentof Max Weber or, at the very least,
Kierkegaard). The philosopher's absolute obligation to choose the truth
over his friendfollowsfrom his initial choice of guiding daemon.
In this pseudo-Aristotelian formula, truth cannot be replaced by justice.
If it could, the sentence would fit perfectly into many traditional, and most
modern, ethics. One could then say that in the case of a conflict between
the virtue of justice and the virtue of loyalty, it is generally (if not always)
better to choose justice, for the virtue of justice (as the sum total of the
other virtues) stands higher than that of loyalty. Furthermore, in the case
of such a choice, I remain in the territory of ethics, of what is valid for
everyone (or at least for all men) in a similar position. But when my choice
is between a friend and the truth, I leave the territory of "everyone." I see
the truth even if there is no one else to see it; I know what truth is even if
there is no second person to share this knowledge. Loyalty to my friend is
simply ethicaleveryone knows what loyalty is. Nevertheless, I sacrifice,
or I should sacrifice, loyalty to this knowledge, this insightmy truth,
the truthto this ghost. Aristotle, of course, would never have said "my
truth." His truth was Truthabout the cosmos, man, being and thinking;
about the end, the good, and truth itself; in other words, about everything.
Seen in this light, the choice between truth and friendship is a choice not
between two virtues but between an absolute claim and the claims of per-

8 Agnes Heller

sonal love or loyalty. If formulated in this way, there is no choice at alllove for the Absolute is the absolute love.
Let me now, for a moment, take Plato's perspective. How would Plato
have answered Aristotle's challenge? He would have accused Aristotle of a
double betrayal. He would have said something like Aristotle was disloyal
to me, but even worse, in abandoning truth for untruth, he betrayed both
friendship and truth. He chases a chimera; he cherishes a misconception
about truth. For I am the one who holds the key to Truth, and all my loyal
students share it.
This pseudo-Aristotelian sentence can be uttered with conviction only
by someone who, abandoned by his friend (in this case Plato), would abandon his friend (Aristotle) in turn for the same reason and in the same way.
All the traditional schools of philosophy hold that you should love the tram
more than your friend, who can be and remain your friend only if you both
share the same truth. Is "truth-sharing'' a beautiful relationship? Is the
choice of truth a beautiful choice? Is it the choice of beauty? Plato says that
we cannot desire what we possess. Yet, for Aristotle, saying "I love Truth
more" means knowing what Truth is. If I say, "I love truth," I am in possession of the truth, which is why I can be the friend of truth. Plato would
say that I am not in possession of the truth, yet I have foreknowledge of
Truth. Driven to it by ens, by my love of wisdom (philosophy), I approximate Truth. But for Plato mere was essentially only one representative,
all-encompassing, absolute philosophy. For Aristotle, however, because of
the pluralization of metaphysical philosophy within the same school, the
same city, and even among friends, the schism seemed necessary. The
pseudo-Aristotelian sentence conveys the message of a drama. Aristotle's
turning away from Plato was not like Spinoza's turning away from Descartes. The pseudo-Aristotelian sentence speaks of thefirstchoice between
an absolute yet nontraditional (and in this sense personal) Tram and a personal, untraditional friend. But if we leave drama behind and speak of the
philosophical "core" of the sentence, we return to the thought that it is
only in our possession of the beloved (Truth) that we can love it (the truth).
The history of philosophy is the history of disloyalty, the history of betrayal
for the sake of a truth that the philosopher (allegedly) possesses.
The modern, particularly the postmodern, philosopher or philosophical
thinker renounces the claim to possess "the truth." She can truthfully disclose what is true of all philosophical truths, that what is possessed is "my

Beauty of Friendship 9

truth." Whether she says (with Kierkegaard) that truth is subjective or subscribes (with Nietzsche) to a perspectivist concept of truth or points (with
Heidegger) to aletheia, it amounts to the same thing: I believe in my truth,
embrace it, take responsibility for it, for I love it (whether I believe mat I
also possess it or not). At the same time, I admit that others may have other
loves and may possess other truths, not just because they claim to possess
them but because they also take responsibility for them. We still have a
desire to abandon ourselves to something or someone, to a cause or mission, in order to overcome our metaphysical solitude, but the ethical issue
lies in whether or not to follow the voice of this desire unconditionally.
It is difficult to determine whether abandoning ourselves unconditionally
to our truth is morally permitted. That depends on the character of our
truth, on our situation and other factors. If we address this truth as "my
truth'' and not as "the truth," however, the danger of moral transgression
will be limited. In any case, if all of this sounds true, then a (postmodern
philosopher or philosophical thinker will not betray philosophy or philosophical thinking if he loves his friend better than his truth. Moreover, in
all probability this choice will not present itself. The thinker has his friend
and possesses his truth; his friend can possess another truth. If both truths
are morally permissible, why should one choose between friendship and
truth? Or, assuming that someone who has a dear friend desires truth yet
does not possess it, why should he abandon the friend whom he has and
desiresforsomething (truth) that he desires but does not possess?
The demise of metaphysics brought about the demise of philosophical schools. True friendships, in becoming less like truth-sharing alliances
even among philosophers who still emphatically embrace their personal
truth, have become more personal, more subjective. Ideological friendships still remind us of old times, yet they are generally short-lived; an
ideological alliance like the one between Heidegger and Jaspers lasts only
as long as the conditions that make it necessary or desirable. Such alliances represent a kind of camaraderie in civic battlesunless, of course,
personal love outlives the common cause.
Everything said so far has pointed to the importance of the Aristotelian
move to abolish, or at least to avoid, the strict Platonist distinction between possessing and desiring. The difference between philia and eras is
less important than the fact that the relationship between possession and
desire is what essentially makes the difference between friendship and

10 Agnes Heller

passionate love. In friendship there is desire, ems (at least there can be),
but there is also possession of the person (or thing or thought) mat one
desires. The beauty offriendshipis the unity of possession and desire. For
this and only this kind of love is love infreedomand reciprocity. There is
freedom in every kind of beautythe free play of imagination, the free
handling of artistic material, and so on. Friendship is the most beautiful
emotional attachment because it is freely chosen, freely cultivated; it flourishes in reciprocity, mutual possession, and mutual self-abandon. Sartre
said convincingly (in L'Etre et le neant) that one can be free only in abandoning oneself to another. Freedom becomes actualized in self-alienation.
This was, for Sartre, a tragic fact of life, since he believed that reciprocity
was impossible. Aristotlethe realist of the Rhetoricsdid not have high
expectations for human relationships. But his two Ethics, both models for
later moral philosophy, are normative, though not in an extreme sense.
Aristotle presents us with virtuesnorms that can be practiced, yet which
are frequently not practiced. This is preeminently true of Aristotelian first
friendship. Much later, Kant did something similar in his Metaphysic of
Ethics. After quoting Aristotle on absolute friendship, he added that it was
extremely rare but possible nonetheless. This is what makes the difference between the most morally sublime human attachment and the choice
of maxims according to duty. We do not know whether anyone has ever
chosen all of his maxims according to moral law, and in all probability that
law is only approximated. But prate phUia, as rare as it is, is possible and
visible; here one can hit the center of the circle, for friendship is the sensual, perceptible actualization of human perfection and virtue.
Perfect friendship is morally good, and it is also beautiful; it contains
and embodies the promise of happiness. It is where virtue and grace, possession and desire, coalesce. Friendship, not erotic love, is the beautiful
human relationship.
Aristotle's model of friendship is well-known from the Nicomachean
Ethics, the Eudemian Ethics, and, though in all probability not one of his
genuine works, the Magna Moralia. Friendship belongs to ethics; it is a
virtue. In none of these three ethical treatises do we find the emphatic
stance toward Truth of the oft-quoted master sentence attributed to Aristotle. He speaks mainly to common citizens and, with the possible exception of book 10 of the Nicomachean Ethics, to nonphilosophers. Those
common citizens were, as we are today, hardly faced with a dramatic

Beauty of Friendship 11

choice betweenfriendshipand truth. Friends are freely chosen. Although

we frequently call our friends our brothers, they are not brothers. Freely
chosen relationships are closer than blood relationships. Friendship is, as
we know, always mutual. It is reciprocal precisely because it is a relationship. Both parties in afriendshipabandon themselves fully to their friend.
My friend receives my freedom, as I receive his.
Freedom is an organic element in beauty, but as free choke it is also a
moral matter. Indeed, it is preeminently a moral matter. In any ethically
relevant choice, the chooser takes responsibility for something. It is for
the sake of living up to this responsibility that I (as chooser) sometimes,
perhapsfrequently,do not do the things I like doing most or that I exert
pressure against my own impulses, causing pain and self-conflict. Nothing
like this happens in friendship, which is ethical because turning toward
the other in love is praiseworthy. But I abandon myself in freedom; I abandon myself to a person whose friendship I possess, as he abandons himself
to me, whose friendship he possesses. There is no conflict between us, and
none within us. Living up to my responsibility to him, as he does to me,
requires neither of us to make painful spiritual sacrifices. It is joyful to live
up to this responsibility; it is what we wish for most, what we both most
desire. Whatever I do for the other is my pleasure and not my duty. Responsibility itself is pleasure, never duty. In friendship, where possession
and desire coalescein prote philia (i.e., specialfriendship,firstfriendship,
bestfriendship)reasonand passion coalesce. And the coalescence between reason and passion is what we call the beautiful: it is beautiful.
Aristotle's prote philia resembles Aristophanes' mythic encounter of the
two separate halves of man/woman in Plato's Symposium. Yet it is also
essentially different, and it is this difference which makesfriendship(the
absolute relationship) beautiful in Aristotle's philosophy. The encounter,
the eternal embrace, in the myth of Aristophanes is like fateit is fateful.
These halves have not chosen to be cut offfromone another, nor do they
choose to be reunited; instead, they are driven together by an irresistible
desire to embrace. But in prote philia the free choice comes first because
it is a relationship founded on mutual free choice. The irresistible drive
or desire to be together, to live together, to see each other constantly and
never to be separated from one anotherin short, everything that Aristotle enumerates among the manifestations of prote philiaresults from
thatfreeand mutual choice. Desire enters the world and ihe works of friendship

12 Agnes Heiler

ikroutfifreedom. It still remains irresistible. But since this desire grows out
offreedom,neither of the twofriendswants to resist it, so in this sense it
is not irresistible.
Harmony and symmetry, on the one hand, the unity of reason and emotion, on the other, are the most characteristic constituents of beautiful
phenomena. Prote philia is the most beautiful of them all. Although friendship is an ethical matter, it is also beyond the realm of moralityin the
same way and to the same extent that a beautiful statue or a beautiful
poem is. Since there is no drama, no painful conflict tears apart the soul,
and no moral practice per se is required to preserve the capacity for responsibility. First friendship is ethical, insofar asfriendsdo for each other
all of those things which qualify as "virtuous" or "good" in ethics; yet first
friendship is also beyond ethics, for the motivation of thefriendsis not
moral but emotional. Finally,firstfriendshipcannot go against morality,
for only righteous and brave men have the capacity to be such friends; thus
do beauty and morality coalesce.
Plato idolizes self-sufficiency [autarkeia). A person is most free if he
needs and desires nothing because he is in possession of everything. Aristotle takes up this idea too; prote philia is indeed a relationship between
two autarkic persons. Aristotle speculates on this issue: Why would two
men, each of whom is self-sufficient, still need a friend? For, miraculously,
they do. The two are of oneone soul in two bodies. Together, they are
self-sufficient, autarkic. Beingforone another belongs to the goodness and
the autarky of best friends, which is also their freedom. This sounds very
Nietzschean, like close friendship. It is not out of any need, lack, or deficit
that someone seeks a friend. Best friends are always living in abundance;
spilling over with the plenteousness of life, they are rich, not poor. Friendship is a plus, an addition to wholeness; it is a gift given by, and received
by, such men who are already in possession of more than they need. It is
not the deficiency but the Being of one another that triggers this love.
Beforefollowingthis thread any further, a few other elements in Aristotle's concept of friendship must be considered, as these will have some
bearing on the question of the beauty of the absolute relationship. Aristotle
analyzes friendship in terms of the categories of quantity, quality,time,and
space. I have already mentioned quality and space. Thatfriendshipis freely
chosen and reciprocal, that afriendpossesses what he desires, and vice
versa, pertains to the quality offriendship;goodness and autarky are quali-

Beauty of Friendship 13

ties of prate philia. As is well-known, Aristotle distinguished among three

kinds of friendship (friendships of utility, of pleasure, and those based on
the good). But why must absolute friendship be based on goodness? Why
must absolute friends be good? This sounds like an artificial condition.
We can recall counterexamples of morally ambiguous, sometimes even
wicked, men who were good friendsnot for the sake of utility or pleasure, but just for friendship's sakeand who remained true to each other
until death. On the basis of such examples we could say that Aristotle's
condition (goodness) was artificial, serving only to satisfy his theoretical
presuppositions.
But was not Aristotle right, in spite of the fact that morally problematic and wicked men can maintain ties of friendship for friendship's sake?
Perhaps such friendships only resemble prate philia, being in fact erotic attachments of the Platonic tradition kind; or, perhaps such ambiguous characters can keep an entirely moral/ethical kind of friendship as a "niche"
of virtue in their personal lives. Shakespeare knew all about friendship, so
I defer to his wisdom. Consider, for example, his portrayal of the friendship of Brutus and Cassius. It is absolutely reciprocal, but while Brutus
is an altogether morally motivated man"self-sufficient" in the Aristotelian senseCassius is far from flawless. The latter entertains personal
ambitions; he is resentful, jealous, and suspicious. But these character
flaws sharpen his political intuition, whereas the virtuous Brutus remains
politically naive. Their difference in this regard leads to repeated conflicts
between these two "best friends," in all of which Cassius is politically
right. He knows only too wellas Shakespeare shows in the great altercation scenethat if he gives in to Brutus, their common cause will be
lost. ButforCassius friendship stands higher than victory, even the victory
of that cause. It is precisely because the Brutus/Cassius friendship is not
archetypical ofprate philia, but rather an attachment which merely approximates the archetypeonly one of the friends (Brutus) being an absolutely
moral personthat Cassius's decisions in all conftictual situations will be
made on purely moralratherthan prudential grounds. The friendship of
the "noble" Brutus, which he possesses, is the highest good that Cassius
desires; andforthe sake of this friendship, for the sake of Brutus's approbation, he is ready to give up everythinghis cause and his life included.
At least, this is how Shakespeare, whose wisdom is deeper than the "love
of wisdom," sees their friendship.

14 Agnes Heller

What mainly constitutes quality in Aristotle's model of prote philia is

the perfect goodness of both friends. But if each friend were a man of
perfect goodness, their attachment to one another would not entail any
conflicts requiring virtuous choices. In the case of friends like Brutus and
Cassius, their friendship is continually being tested and reaffirmed by the
possibility and the actuality of virtuous choice. The Aristotelian archetype
is, in a modern setting, tantamount to Nietzschean close friendship. Each
party becomes what he isamong other things, the best friend of his best
friendbyfollowinghis own destiny.2
Now let me proceed to the category of quantity. One cannot have many
friends, and prote philia archetypically occurs between two friends. One can
have perhaps three or four close friends, simultaneously or successively.
The more close friends one has, the less one's chance of having a "first
friendship." This absolute friendship is by definition intensive, not extensivethere are not many "firsts" or "bests." Hegel speaks of the intensive
infinitude of a work of art, an expression that alsofitsfirstfriendship, the
resources of which cannot be exhausted. Extensive infinitude, by contrast,
entails the pursuit of more and new knowledge, more and new experience with more and different men and things. After one experience should
come the next. (Don Giovanni is the hero of extensive infinitude.) In the
case of intensive infinitude, one continually rechooses the same man, the
same relationship. The more often one repeats that choice, the more of an
inexhaustible resource the other becomes. I cannot repeat it often enough:
in first friendship one desires what one possesses. Exhausting someone
or something that one possesses is as impossible in this relationship as
embracing everyone or everything that one does not possess. Intensive infinitude means that one is everything; extensive infinitude means that all
is everything.
The unity of possession and desire is beautiful. When you exclaim,
"How beautiful this landscape is!" or when you enjoy the beauty of a piece
of music, you possess what you desire. The unity of possession and desire
renders intensive infinitude as the infinitude of beauty. Because it is in first
friendship that one absolutely and simultaneously possesses and desires
another, it is the beautiful relationship par excellence. Among a lover's desires, the desire to know (for Aristotle, perhaps the most important of all of
our desires) takes pride of place,forlovers desire to know each other. The

Beauty of Friendship 15

unity of possession and desire, where possession is founded on free reciprocity and desire includes the desire to know the other, the friend, is the
truth of friendshipthat truth which includes both the good and the beautiful. If every man were my first friend (which is impossible), the world
would be redeemed; if I knew my friend entirely (which is also impossible),
I would know all of humankind. The wonderful, exciting excursion into the
labyrinth of each other's soul, as if it were the greatest, utterly inexhaustible work of art, is the greatest adventure, and one from which instrumentalization is absent. The microcosm is the macrocosm. This much, at least,
needed to be said about Aristotle's second category of friendship, quantity.
Asforhis third category, space, I have already briefly mentioned that first
friendship means dose friendshipliterally, not metaphorically, close.
Best friends desire to be together all the time, or at least to meet frequently. They miss each other when absent; they love to live together. This
means thatprote jriiilia knows much suffering and need. One suffers if the
other is absent; desire becomes unquenchable if the other is far away. Such
suffering does not stem from within, from the relationship itself (where
beauty and happiness coalesce), but from the external world. If one of the
best friends dies before the other, the loss cannot compare with any other
loss. At the beginning of his book, Derrida makes mention of Montaigne's
suffering over the loss of his only, best, close friend. Nothing and no one
can remedy this loss. No other friend can replace the best friend in the
way that a new lover can replace even the best lover. Mourning belongs to
dose friendship. Engaging in afirstfriendship includes exposing oneself
to afifty/fiftyrisk of suffering inconsolable grief. This is where the Platonic
theme of seeking immortality enters prate philia.
Friendship is mortal, for man is mortal. But best friend does not die
with best friend;firstfriendship requires the dead friend's survival in the
soul of the living one, as the other or better part of his soul. Our best
friends live on in our souls as long as we live, which is still mortality, but of
a prolonged kind. Yet friends are not satisfied with a prolonged mortality
they wish their friendship to be immortalized. Storytelling is immortalizing. The friend mourns, engaging in what Freud called the work of mourning. In remembering, describing, and narrating the story of the friendship,
the survivor mourns his friend even as he immortalizes their friendship.
In telling this story of happiness, of an unhealed wound that speaks of

16 Agnes Heller

fullness, theremainingpart of a soul preserves the whole. Aristophanes

again? Plato again? To a certain degree, but in such a new orchestration
that it can no longer be traced back to Plato's narrative.
One reason for this novelty is that Aristotle's normative description of
protephUia is not embedded in a more general cosmic vision or metaphysical theory. Every friend remains in the memory of the friend who mourns
him. Recollection is meant prosaicallyone remembers a common life.
Life is and remains immanent, just as the absolute does in the recollection
of a single person, a friend, the surviving and suffering half of the soul.
One person recollectsfortwo.
The categories oftimeand space continually overlap and overdetermine
one another. Since friendship is a freely chosen relationship, there is a time
in the life of each friend prior to their fateful first encounter, before the
"miracle'' of mutual recognition occurs, during which space is irrelevant.
Where either of the friends lived before they met, whether in the same
house or a thousand miles apart, is of no importance. In Nietzsche's metaphor of friendshiptwo vessels crossing each other's path in the middle
of an oceanthe "after" is symmetrical with the "before.'' Although this
figure captures a certain kind of friendship (e.g., the one between Nietzsche and Wagner), it is not Aristotelian protc philia, in which the "before"
and the "after" are asymmetrical. There is a "before"forboth friends but
an "after"foronly one of themthe "after" of mourning, when space again
becomes irrelevant. The survivor can mourn in the same spot where the
friends met or he can take his misfortune to the remotest spot on earth.
The friend remains with him, in himin his memory and in his soul, as
the better part of his soul. It is in space that the friendsremainunited. The
"after" is the time of recollection and narrative; it is the time of the past,
for there is no future after the death of a friend. The time of the past is the
time of the narrative.
Prote philia blooms here for the second time. All representative stories
of friendship are beautiful not because they are beautifully written, but because they are the stories, the recollections, of a true friendship (whether
narrated in an essay, a poem, a private letter, or perhaps only in the memory of a lonely man). Nostalgia is one of the names for this beauty. The
past is beautiful, and friendshipas mourning, as a story, as the showing
of an open woundis a representative kind of beauty.
Aristotle says many things about friendship's "before." Erotic attraction

Beauty of Friendship 17

can occur in an instant, but friendship takes time to develop. Like wine, it
gets better, tastes better, as the years go by. Yet (to speak in the Aristotelian
tradition, if no longer with Aristotle) friends normally also accord significance to the moment of theirfirstmeeting, their initial enchantment. This
is not yet friendship but something like falling in love. Friendship, after
all, develops out of love. Love may not yet be friendship, but first friendship is always love. How else could it be desire? Friendship without erotic
attraction (though not in the sense of sexual attraction) is just camaraderie, which has very little to do withfirstfriendship.
The absolute beauty ofprate philia is thus to be found in Aristotle's narrative, to which all narratives aboutfirstfriendship recur. But if Aristotle was
the one who said, "I love Plato, but I love Truth more," then he was also the
one who did not put friendship at the top of the ladder. He was prepared
to abandon his friendbut for what? For the sake of Truth. But when he
speaks of nonphilosophers, his fellow citizens, even the megalopsychos, the
best of men, he does not cast them in terms of such a choice. True, he
ranks theoretic life higher than practical life, and friendship is discussed
in the framework of practical life. But nowhere does Aristotle say that men
living a theoretic life cannot seek to form the ties of friendship. What he
does say is that friends must be similar and thatfirstfriendship, at least,
is most likely to develop between similars, such as between men of similar spiritual interests. But they need not think similarly about the same
things. They can perhaps be better friends if their attitudes toward things
are much alike (assuming that both are righteous and neither suffers from
emotional or spiritual deficiency), but they should entertain some different opinions as well. How could friends have interesting conversations if
they shared the same opinions about everything? And conversation plays a
crucial role in the encounter and intercourse between friends in Aristotle's
model. Here, there is no obligatory choice between friendship and truth.
And what is truth? What is Aristotle's truth?
I think that Aristotle's choice was between two beauties. He believed
that the beauty of a game called philosophyhis game, which he called a
true onewas more beautiful, more worthy, than another beautiful thing,
namely,friendship.That is, Aristotle's choice was between two kinds of
friendships: the friendship of wisdom and the friendship of a wise man.
Sincefirstfriendship is an absolute relationship, one can have only a single
first friendone cannot have two, simultaneous absolute relationships.

18 Agnes Heller

[Either Truth or Plato had to be Aristotle's best friend.) An absolute relationship with Truth would entail the unity of possession and desire, and it
would be of intensive infinitude, but it would also be an absolute friendship without riskbecause there would be an absolute certainty that I (or
Aristotle) would die first. Aristotle's choice of Truth over Plato, the choice
of a friendship that could not outlive him, was the choice of a beauty that
could be intensively interpreted but that need not be recollected. Was not
Aristotle's choice (whether or not we agree with it) the greatest challenge
to Plato? What did Plato actually do in his dialogues? Did he not recollect
the character and the work of his old master and great friend, Socrates?
Is not Plato's entire work a work of mourning for his friend? That is why
he told the stories he didwhy the stories are beautiful! And did not Aristotlewho became the first friend of Truth instead of remaining the first
friend of Plato (who, for his part, remained the first friend of Socrates)
choose another philosophical style that enabled him to celebrate his beloved beauty, masked as Truth, as true knowledge? He put an end to the
conflating of friendship and knowledge, myth and certainty, life and truth,
description and recollection, in philosophy. Aristotle began to speak of the
world, the cosmos, Being, appearance, logos, language, and all the restwithout speaking of a friend. (My dear friend, there are no other friends.
My dear Truth, there are no other truths.) And perhaps it was precisely this
process of disentanglement that enabled Aristotle to speak of friendship.
I am convinced that it is no longer necessary to choose between these
two beautiesfriendship and truth. In our own century, the marriage
beween theoretical and practical philosophy arranged by Plato and not entirely annulled by Aristotle is already past the point of divorce. Since we are
no longer held at gunpoint by the traditional cry of "truth or friendship,''
if anyone now claims to prefer truthand chooses itover his friend, we
are justified in questioning his authenticity. We can also be sure that his
friendship is (or was) not prote philia.
Yet the more modem life unfolds, the more likely it becomes that differences, sometimes grave differences of opinion and judgment, will develop
between even the best of friends. Truthfulness requires us to speak of
such differences freely, and friendship requires the perseverance of mutual
absolute trust. One need not choose between justice and friendship, for
friendship not only allows justice but also encourages it. Friendly love
(philia), however, does not itself know justice. First friendship, as an abso-

Beauty of Friendship 19

lute emotional disposition, is beyond justice, which is (also) why friendship is beautiful.
Let me now call again on my star witness, Shakespearethe Shakespeare not of Julius Caesar but of Hamlet. Although Hamlet can likewise
be read as a drama of friendship, loyalty, and betrayal, loyalty and betrayalas ethical/moral conceptshave no direct bearing on my topic. In
fact, the drama of friendship in Hamlet belongs to Derrida's story, not to
mine. I have chosen to focus on the pseudo-Aristotelian sentence referring
to the conflict between friendship with Truth and friendship with Plato,
whereas Derrida chose tofollowthe adventures of the pseudo-Aristotelian
exclamation "My dear friends, there is no friend." But, like Nietzsche's vessels, these master sentences can cross paths somewhere in the middle of
the ocean of our tradition. Derrida also discusses Montaigne's touching
essay on friendship.1 That Shakespeare was a reader of Montaigne is wellknown; that Hamlet, as a drama of friendship, belabors Montaigne's theme
is too obvious to have gone unnoticed. Although I have never studied the
finer points of Shakespeare criticism, I am sure that this topic has been
frequently tackled, if not exhausted several times over. I am just a simple
friend of Shakespeare; he is my first friend, and I am his. He remains true
and close to me; he will never betray me. And he is a most reliable friend,
for, knowing everything about human character, he also knows me best.
Furthermore, I will never stop reading his soul, interpreting him.
A friend (in the singular) and friends (in the plural) are strictly distinguished by Montaigne. My friend is the other half of my soul, my partner
in best friendship, whom I trust absolutely. Myfriendscan betray me (and
some of them usually do); my friends can become (as Montaigne said and
Nietzsche repeated) my enemies, my closest enemies. Consider Hamlet.
The Hamlet/Horatio friendship is an absolute relationshipfirst friendship, in the Aristotelian tradition. Hamlet's attachment to Horatio is his
sole absolute relationship. Although he loves Ophelia, who reciprocates
his love, then betrays him, Hamlet has no absolute faith in Ophelia; he desires her, but he does not possess her in the sense that friends possess one
another. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Hamlet's friends (in the plural); he trusted them but never absolutely, which is why hefelt,even before
he could have known it, that they had betrayed him. Hamlet's friends thus
become his closest enemies, and he lets them be killed without remorse.
We learn that Laertes was Hamlet's friend in a traditional way, without

20 Agnes Heller

great emotional involvement; it is only Hamlet's remorse and sense of justice that make him want to recover this already lost friendship. Horatio
alone is an absolute friend.
Hamlet is a young man who has lost his world: nothing is real anymore;
nothing can be grasped or understood. This devastating experience of the
loss of the world is what makes Hamlet a modern hero. Without Horatio,
Hamlet would go mad, for Horatio is the only remaining reality, a reality
as solid as a rock. It is due to Horatio's (omni)presence that Hamlet can
gradually begin to recover bits and pieces of his lost world. When Horatio,
who would never lie or pretend even for his best friend's sake, corroborates Hamlet's conjecture about the guilt of the king, two people share
this knowledge and thereby share the same world. Hamlet can still distinguish between reality and unreality, therefore, because he still has a hand
to grasp; he still has a home. There is still something absolute in Hamlet's world where nothing else remains, neither its former metaphysical
certaintiesthe afterlife, death, God, annihilationnor even the comfort
of motherly love or the love of other women. First friendship, absolute
friendship, alone prevails. And this is everything, the whole.
Is Hamlet a beautiful drama? Yesif "beautiful" stands for "great," "perfect," "deep," and so on. But it is not beautiful as a Cezanne painting or
a Goethe poem is beautiful. Hamlet is not so much beautiful as it is unheimlich, in the Heideggerian senseterrifyingly uncanny, confronting us
with the possibility of life in which being and appearance remain far apart
even at the very end of the play (unlike King Lear or, to remain with Heidegger, Oedipus). Being does not stand here as aleiheia, as unconcealment.
There is concealment throughout. Hamlet is dying. With his death, the
gap between appearance and being will remain and concealment will win
the day, for eternity. But Horatio is there.
The dying Hamlet turns to the only true man, to the oneremainingwitness of truth, and implores him to shed the light of unconcealment on his
case so that his homeless being is exhibited and can thus be seen through
its appearance. There will be no aleiheia for Hamlet (unlike Oedipus) so
long as he lives. We know his story onlyfromHoratio's account; it is Horatio who immortalizes Hamlet. In all of Shakespeare's other tragedies, the
story we are told originates outside the drama, where the storyteller remains. But here, and only here, the storyteller is the best friend of the
play's hero. Without the testimony of Horatio, Hamlet's storyand the

Beauty cf Friendship Zl

tragedy Hamletwould have remained concealed by the appearance of a

happy kingdom devastated by a young madman, a ruthless murderer called
Hamlet. In the modern world, where being cannot be disclosed within
appearance to the regard of everyone who matters, your best friend may
remain your sole regarding witnessa truthful witness who carries your
soul in his soul, with love. This is everything; whoever has a best friend
has everything.
One answer to our question about truth is that truth dwells in the better
part of one's own soul. This is how Shakespeare answers the question in
Hamlet. Horatio is telling his best friend's story while placing that friend
in the draft of being where truth appears. What is the truth of Hamlet's
story? It is what Horatio presents as the truth about Hamlet. He loves
Hamlet, so bis truth is the truth of love; he is a just man, so his truth is
also the truth of justice. He does what the dying Hamlet asks him to do.
After Hamlet's death, Horatio takes on the greatest of burdensthe burden of surviving his best friend. And the only thing that makes him carry
this burden for a little longer is the need to tell Hamlet's story, truthfully,
as his friend has asked him to do:
O God, Horatio, what a wounded name,
Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me!
If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,
Absent thee from felicity awhile,
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,
To tell my story.4
Hamlet does not ask Horatio to clear his name or to apologize for him;
he asks that the truth be told about him so as not to let "things . . . unknown . . . live behind" him. Hamlet wishes Horatio to tell his story as one
that brings his character and fate into the light of day, which (I am sorry to
repeat) is what Horatio, in the tragedy Hamlet, does.
The fact that the dying Hamlet could ask Horatio to tell his story becomes, then, the only, yet absolute, confirmation of his life. For what does
Hamlet say to Horatio after the confirmation scene? "Since my dear soul
was mistress of her choice / And could of men distinguish her election, /
S'hath sealed thee for herself."9 Having confirmed his sanity through
Horatio, Hamlet then confirms himself as a man, as a whole soul, through
Horatio's friendship. This friendship, and this friendship alone, invests

22 Agnes HeUer

Hamlet's character and tragic fate with beauty. And this is a modern kind
of beauty, as it is a modern kind of friendship. It is not the absolute relationship of "similars" described by Aristotle but an absolute relationship of
dissimilars, who are and remain best friends in and through dissimilarity.
One is stoic, the other a slave to his passions; one is guiltless, the other
guilty; one is a poor scholar, the other a prince, next in line to the throne.
Still, their relationship is far from being the erotic "attraction of opposites"
that Plato describes. It is afriendship,whereby discrepancy and difference
in character enhance the beauty of the relationship. The source of that
beauty is the absoluteness of the choice by which the relationship is maintained and cherished in all situations, however unprecedented and unforeseeable. The friendship of Hamlet and Horatio is absolutely beautiful; it is
Heimlich in an unheimlich world. To make a home amidst the. uncanny, in
the uncanny, and to let both the home and the uncanny be, through this
beautya modern beauty, a trozdcm beautyis to let truth shine through.
Hamlet is not a beautiful drama. Or is it? Can we perhaps say that it is
beautiful in the friend's eye? But accepting this interpretation would be to
take back everything that has ever been said about friendship. Horatio relates a terrible story, one that could hardly be more devastating or uglier.
There is no beauty here except in the story's being told, and by Horatio.
There is no beauty except in the friendship between the dead hero and the
living storyteller who resurrects himthe storyteller who, we know, will
choose death, finishing his life after finishing his story. This is beautiful,
this momentary victory over the uncanny. Beauty is the celebration of this
momentary victory. The rest is silence.

i Jacques Derrida, Politiques de I'amitU (Paris, 1994); Politics if Friendship, trans. George
Collins (London and New York, 1997).
a That Nietzsche also saw friendship in another light, or rather in several other lights, is
a different matter. What I hope to have made clear is my interpretation of "quality" in
friendship. Perhaps Kierkegaard is the only true follower of Aristotle.
3 See Derrida'sfirstchapter, "Oligarchies: Naming, Enumerating, Counting," in Politics 0/
Friendship, 1-25, esp. a.
4 Shakespeare Hamlet 5.2.333-38.
5 Ibid., 3.2.60-62.