Friendship
Friendship
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Friendship is a term used to denote co-operative and supportive behaviour between two or more humans. This article focuses on the notion specific to interpersonal relationships. In this sense, the term connotes a relationship which involves mutual knowledge, esteem, and affection. Friends will welcome each other's company and exhibit loyalty towards each other, often to the point of altruism. Their tastes will usually be similar and may converge, and they will share enjoyable activities. They will also engage in mutually helping behavior, such as exchange of advice and the sharing of hardship. A friend is someone who may often demonstrate reciprocating and reflective behaviors. Yet for many, friendship is nothing more than the trust that someone or something will not harm them. Value that is found in friendships is often the result of a friend demonstrating on a consistent basis:
- the tendency to desire what is best for the other,
- sympathy and empathy,
- honesty, perhaps in situations where it may be difficult for others to speak the truth,
- mutual understanding.
In a comparison of personal relationships, friendship is considered to be closer than acquaintanceship, although there is a range of degrees of intimacy in both friendships and acquaintanceships. Friendship and acquaintanceship can be thought of spanning across the same continuum.
C. S. Lewis for example, in his The Four Loves, writes:
- "To the Ancients, Friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves; the crown of life and the school of virtue. The modern world, in comparison, ignores it. We admit of course that besides a wife and family a man needs a few 'friends'. But the very tone of the admission, and the sort of acquaintanceships which those who make it would describe as 'friendships', show clearly that what they are talking about has very little to do with that Philia which Aristotle classified among the virtues or that Amicitia on which Cicero wrote a book."
- Mellin de Saint-Gelais, Oeuvres poétiques
- The Bible, Proverbs 17:17 (NRSV)
- A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend that sticks closer than a brother.
- Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up."
posted by Don Low @ 8:30 PM
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