Narrative Constitution of Friendship

Abstract

We argue that friendship is constituted in the practice of narration, not merely identified through psychological or sociological criteria. We show that whether two people have, as Aristotle argues, ‘lived together’ in ‘mutually acknowledged goodwill’ can be determined only through a narrative reconstruction of a shared past. We demonstrate this with a close reading of Thomas Bernhard’s Wittgenstein’s Nephew: A Friendship (1982). We argue that this book provides not only an illustration but also an enactment of the practice of friendship as the urge to redeem—and thus to instantiate—Aristotelian suzên (‘living together’) by means of its telling.

‘... You feel like the one that got left behind’: a narrative inquiry into the friendships of people who have endured mental health difficulties

“…13 Distinct in its formation at specific times and places, friendship’s temporary attunement permits exploration and discovery of a joint humanity together. 21 Although ambivalence and open-endedness persist, 19 sustained friendship can become a compassionate ‘other self’, 11 with differing degree of psychologically ‘mattering’ to one another. 9 Friendship is a validatory experience of being known as a person, unachievable through individual volition, and in a qualitatively different way than that achieved through other modes of relating.…”

“…18 Thus, theories of historical attachment have yet to incorporate present-day, relational, non-normative experience of relationships like friendship. 16 Theories that utilise some other form of social reciprocation as the basis for friendship disregard the inherently ambivalent encounter of friendship 19 and may over-/under-represent any psychological contribution. Similarly, without attending to friendship's complementarity and alterity to other types of relating, 20 theories of relating may mis-appropriate the distinctive features of friendship.…”

What is Desirable About Having a Child with a Romantic Partner?

“…It is a difficult philosophical enterprise to characterize relationships, or the state of relatedness that they bring us into. Some characterize relationships as being constituted by shared activity (Telfer 1971), or as being constituted by the norms that govern them (Phelan 2020), or as being constituted by shared-narratives (Moore and Frederick 2017). We might wish to say that two people are more related when they engage in more relationship-constituting activities, or more important types of such activities, or a greater variety of such activities.…”