Just in case you thought it was all worthy hard slog over here at YRTK – I’ve decided to post an off-topic article I wrote on Facebook, Aristotle and friendship. Yes, I know – the world has heard too much about Facebook in recent weeks but can you honestly say you’ve seen it done like this before? And besides, I have to find some way of paying for all the time I’ve spent socially networking.
This is the full version of an article that appeared in the New Statesman (you’ll note they added a lot more about comedian Stephen Fry).
Poking Aristotle
By Heather Brooke
What would Aristotle make of Facebook? The great thinker had a lot to say about friendship that is newly relevant with the rise of social networking sites. The founding father of the scientific method, western philosophy and logic would likely have hundreds clamouring to join his Facebook friend list. Perhaps he might even rival comedian Stephen Fry’s reported 20+ friend requests an hour or be forced to hire an assistant to manage his online social networks as some busy execs do.
But Aristotle was no Lindsay Lohan, a US-starlet renowned for her mega-friend list. Not for him the craven popularity contest – though he saw its necessity – but rather the pinnacle of friendship based on moral goodness.
Friendship, as defined by Aristotle, is “mutual reciprocity of affection and purpose.” Liking someone from afar is not enough: “Being a friend of many people at once is prevented even by the factor of affection, for it is not possible for affection to be active in relation to many at once.” Hence when numbers get into the thousands we’re talking stalkers and/or admirers not friends. Barack Obama has it right – he’s changed his 91,495 Facebook ‘friends’ to ‘supporters’. Fry has decided to set up a separate friendship group for strangers who would like to be his friend.
Aristotle studied biology as a youth and brought the same techniques he used to analyse the plant kingdom to human behaviour. His findings on friendship outlined in Eudemian Ethics would make a useful FAQ for those coming to Facebook for the first time. He began his analysis with close observation, which led him to conclude there were three types of friendship: those based on utility, pleasure and goodness.
Utility is the most common basis of friendship he observed and exists between two people who are mutually useful to each other. Indeed, Aristotle thought the primary goal of political science was to make citizens useful to each other and so plant the seeds of friendship and goodwill: “While the moral friendship is more noble, utility is more necessary.” So he would have loved the way social networking sites make people useful to one another.
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