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Aristotle and Kant on Self-Disclosure in Friendship

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Aristotle and Kant on Self-Disclosure in Friendship The Journal of Value Inquiry 38: 225–239, 2004. 225 C 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. Aristotle and Kant on Self-Disclosure in Friendship ANDREA VELTMAN Department of Philosophy, York University, 5428 Ross Building, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario, M3J 1P3, Canada; e-mail: [email protected] Among the common elements in the accounts of friendship offered by Aristotle and Kant is the notion that the highest form of friendship makes possible a mutual knowing of another. Both note that in the course of spending time together, friends come to know and to be known by each other. Aristotle names this activity “joint perception” in the Eudemian Ethics,where Kant speaks of “disclosing” or “revealing” ourselves to another in friendship in the Lectures on Ethics and the Metaphysical Principles of Virtue.1 Inven- tively, Aristotle argues that knowing another person in friendship enables friends of like virtue to know themselves. By knowing another person who resembles ourselves, we are able to overcome the difficulties normally in- volved in self-perception and, in effect, see ourselves in seeing someone whose character mirrors our own. Kant similarly characterizes the highest friendship as one that allows friends to jointly know each other, but instead of identifying a benefit of self-knowledge in the activity of mutual know- ing, Kant notes that the highest friendship permits an intrinsically valuable self-disclosure unachievable through any other venue. In revealing themselves to a trusted friend, people in the highest friendships become known by an- other person, thereby connected to another person, and no longer remain alone. We will consider Aristotle’s treatment of knowing another in friendship in the context of Kant’s claim that the highest friendships allow an intrinsically valuable self-disclosure. Viewed next to Kant’s treatment of self-disclosure in friendship, Aristotle’s account of knowing a friend appears both less at- tractive than Kant’s account and puzzling in itself, given Aristotle’s emphasis on the social dimension of human beings. Although both Aristotle and Kant identify the mutual knowing involved in friendship as a reason for cultivating friendships with others of good virtue, Kant understands self-disclosure in friendship to be valuable in itself, whereas Aristotle regards joint perception in friendship as a means to self-knowledge. In addressing Aristotle’s argument that character friendships enable self- knowledge, scholars of Aristotle’s ethics have not only tried to interpret 226 ANDREA VELTMAN Aristotle’s cryptic remarks on contemplating others but have also argued that friendships, in spite of their utility in securing self-knowledge, have an in- trinsic value for Aristotle.2 The literature on Kant’s account of friendship has centered less around his remarks on self-disclosure in friendship and more around issues of impartiality and friendship, but some attention has been given to his notorious admonition in his earlier work that we hold back from revealing ourselves to our friends, lest we be harmed by the improbity, untrustworthi- ness, or sheer clumsiness of our friends.3 However, while Aristotle and Kant’s accounts self-knowledge and self-disclosure in friendship have been treated within their respective literatures, comparative analyses of Aristotle and Kant on friendship have neglected the similarities and differences in these aspects of their accounts of friendship. At the same time that Aristotle and Kant em- phasize complimentary aspects of the mutual knowing involved in friendship, Kant gives a comparatively more attractive account of self-disclosure as an inherently valuable activity. Although Kant’s account of self-disclosure in friendship represents an ad- vance over Aristotle’s account, Aristotle’s account of friendship as a whole is nevertheless more developed and more firmly grounded in human sociabil- ity than Kant’s account of friendship. Aristotle establishes a more prominent place for friendships in a good life, since on his account the need to culti- vate relations with others flows from our make-up as social creatures, and friendships are integral in human happiness. Kant, in contrast, determines friendship to be a duty and human nature an “unsocial sociability.”4 In his earlier remarks on friendship, Kant also mars his otherwise appealing picture of self-disclosure in friendship with an admonition to beware of the ultimate untrustworthiness of friends, whereas Aristotle notes that friends develop trust only in time in the course of sharing activities together. Given that Aristotle’s account of friendship retains several advantages over Kant’s, it is not the case that Kant advances a superior account of friendship; rather, he advances a superior account of self-disclosure in friendship. 1. Aristotle on Knowing Another Person in Friendship In the course of supplying reasons why the happiest life includes friendships, Aristotle observes that the highest form of friendship between people of good character allows friends to achieve self-knowledge. Time spent in shared ac- tivities in the course of being together enables friends to know each other, and the similarity between friends of good character, in turn, enables friends to know themselves in knowing each other. This argument for the importance of character friendships in the blessed life appears in each of the Aristotelian treatises on friendship in the Nicomachean Ethics, the Eudemian Ethics, and the Magna Moralia.5 Where the Nicomachean and Eudemian Ethics present the argument in a manner both convoluted and truncated, however, the Magna ARISTOTLE AND KANT ON SELF-DISCLOSURE IN FRIENDSHIP 227 Moralia gives the most clear and concise treatment of the argument. In the Magna Moralia, Aristotle summarizes the argument as follows: If, then, when one looked upon a friend one could see the nature and attributes of the friend ,...such as to be a second self ,...as the saying has it, “Here is another Hercules, a dear other self.” Since then it is both a most difficult thing, as some of the sages have said, to attain a knowledge of oneself, and also a most pleasant (for to know oneself is pleasant) – now we know we are not able to see what we are from ourselves (and that we cannot do so is plain from the way in which we blame others without being aware that we do the same things ourselves ,...and there are many of us who are blinded by these things so that we judge not aright); as then when we wish to see our own face, we do so by looking into the mirror, in the same way when we wish to know ourselves we can obtain that knowledge by looking at our friend. For the friend is, as we assert, a second self. If, then it is pleasant to know oneself, and it is not possible to know this without having some one else for a friend, the self-sufficing man will require friendship in order to know himself.6 The first premise of the argument is that self-knowledge is a highly desirable but elusive good. Because it is pleasant to contemplate ourselves, Aristotle reasons, “self-perception and self-knowledge is most desirable to everyone.”7 He similarly notes in the Nicomachean Ethics that it is pleasant not just to live well but to perceive our living well, adding that the purpose of the happy man is to contemplate his own virtuous actions.8 Knowledge of ourselves, however, is difficult to obtain given that human beings cannot readily see who we are for ourselves. Aristotle himself addresses the reason we cannot easily perceive ourselves only briefly in the Magna Moralia,inwhich he suggests that the tendency to exaggerate our virtues and distort our faults prevents us from accurately seeing ourselves.9 In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle fills out the notion that we cannot perceive ourselves with the notion that we can perceive others. Giving the second major premise in his argument that character friendships enable self- knowledge, Aristotle remarks that “we can contemplate our neighbors better than ourselves and their actions better than our own.”10 This premise remains without further explanation in the Nicomachean Ethics or elsewhere and has primarily two possible interpretations. Firstly, as John Cooper has suggested, Aristotle may mean simply that we have a degree of objectivity in relation to others that allows us to see others as we cannot see ourselves.11 To its advantage, this interpretation conforms with the suggestion in the Magna Moralia that self-knowledge ordinarily remains elusive because of the human tendency to inflate our virtues and downplay our shortcomings. The lack of objectivity human beings have in relation to ourselves may be one reason for 228 ANDREA VELTMAN the overly generous self-assessments that, according to the Magna Moralia, prevents us from knowing ourselves. Alternatively, Aristotle may be referring to a human inability to step back and contemplate ourselves in the course of exercising virtue in action. We can adequately appreciate a characteristic or virtue, Richard Kraut has argued, only when observing it exercised by another.12 Someone exercising coura- geousness in war, for example, would be far too engrossed in courageous activity to step back and behold the courageousness of his action. Likewise, a statesman acting or speaking in the political arena would be too focused on the political issues at hand to contemplate her virtues as a politician. It is, rather, only an onlooker observing courageousness or political skill in another who can readily observe and appreciate the realization of
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