The Seneca quote reflects a world still bound by the patron-client system. Friendship was a virtue in those days because politics and society were intensely personal. Everyone counted on their friends to protect their property and interests.
The rise of print began the long decline of friendship. Print enabled the symbolic construction of vast bureaucracies. These bureaucracies, animated by abstractions like “The Nation,” became the mediator between individuals.
As we have become more efficient at mass producing symbols, we have likewise become more efficient at siloing individuals into their own private cells. Individual relations are so deeply mediated by impersonal institutions that genuine friendship is extremely difficult to achieve.
Interesting. What little I've read of Ellul's analysis of society and its reasons for being so individualistic jives pretty well with that—I'll have to get back to Ellul at some point.
Presumably, though, the Seneca quote isn't referring to the patron-client relationships as such, but more the genuine friendships between equals?
Probably, but even in relationships between equals, the broader context was the intensely personal world of premodernity.
In that world the number of impersonal institutions mediating individuals was relatively small. The police, state welfare, healthcare, corporations—these did not exist as we know them today.
Thus, their functions became part of the ideal of friendship. A good friend defends the other’s life and property, lends resources in times of need, and generally watches out for the other’s interests.
So much depended on friendship that people could not afford to treat it as lightly as we do today. The Vikings, for example, were known to stop battles if their lieges learned that friends were on opposite sides. They would try to work out a way so the friends didn’t have to fight each other. They would rather risk military ruin than strain the bonds that held society together.
I don’t know that friendship can ever be like that again today. There are too many impersonal institutions that make it easy to sever ties.
Do you know of any resources that focus on the political realities that affect our views of friendship?
I'm also increasingly convinced that the church needs to do as much as she can to push against the cultural force that desires us to avoid having true connection. Not sure what that will look like yet, but some form of non-romantic relationship being blessed/honored seems like a good place to start...godparents?
You might try reading “Children of Ash and Elm,” a history of the Vikings that discusses this a bit.
But most of what I just said is basically applying Weberian and McLuhan’s theories to friendship. If you read much of Weber or McLuhan and then read historical sources on friendship, I think you’ll see what I am saying. The connotation changes the more ubiquitous print becomes.
I think you're expressing something very real. Print culture and industrialization certainly have something do with it, but we shouldn't ignore the obvious factor of gender roles and gender expression. I've been reading around in Melville recently so Ishmael and Queequeg are on my mind. Their friendship is called a marriage multiple times and includes a lot of touch and physical intimacy. The chapter "The Monkey Rope" is an extended reflection on our bonds in society and how we are simultaneously (due to scale and global capitalism) forced to interact with each other as members of a massive joint-stock company but also never without the dependency, acknowledged or otherwise on people in our lives, even those who don't know us. MacIntyre reflects constantly on community, tradition, and friendship, and how those goods are threatened not by "modernity" in general, but the social forms of capitalism in particular. But I don't think there is some silver bullet explanation and there are always a variety of mid-range and particular factors. Part of why literature is so essential! I've always found D.H. Lawrence particularly attentive to the loss of the tactile (in eroticism, but also in lived experience generally). Loving the Kierkegaardian insight that you are obligated to express your emotion.
I haven’t read Moby Dick yet—maybe that’ll be my next great novel after I finish Crime and Punishment. I’m not familiar with Lawrence, where should I start with him? And I suppose for Macintyre I would do well to start with After Virtue?
The Seneca quote reflects a world still bound by the patron-client system. Friendship was a virtue in those days because politics and society were intensely personal. Everyone counted on their friends to protect their property and interests.
The rise of print began the long decline of friendship. Print enabled the symbolic construction of vast bureaucracies. These bureaucracies, animated by abstractions like “The Nation,” became the mediator between individuals.
As we have become more efficient at mass producing symbols, we have likewise become more efficient at siloing individuals into their own private cells. Individual relations are so deeply mediated by impersonal institutions that genuine friendship is extremely difficult to achieve.
Interesting. What little I've read of Ellul's analysis of society and its reasons for being so individualistic jives pretty well with that—I'll have to get back to Ellul at some point.
Presumably, though, the Seneca quote isn't referring to the patron-client relationships as such, but more the genuine friendships between equals?
Probably, but even in relationships between equals, the broader context was the intensely personal world of premodernity.
In that world the number of impersonal institutions mediating individuals was relatively small. The police, state welfare, healthcare, corporations—these did not exist as we know them today.
Thus, their functions became part of the ideal of friendship. A good friend defends the other’s life and property, lends resources in times of need, and generally watches out for the other’s interests.
So much depended on friendship that people could not afford to treat it as lightly as we do today. The Vikings, for example, were known to stop battles if their lieges learned that friends were on opposite sides. They would try to work out a way so the friends didn’t have to fight each other. They would rather risk military ruin than strain the bonds that held society together.
I don’t know that friendship can ever be like that again today. There are too many impersonal institutions that make it easy to sever ties.
Do you know of any resources that focus on the political realities that affect our views of friendship?
I'm also increasingly convinced that the church needs to do as much as she can to push against the cultural force that desires us to avoid having true connection. Not sure what that will look like yet, but some form of non-romantic relationship being blessed/honored seems like a good place to start...godparents?
You might try reading “Children of Ash and Elm,” a history of the Vikings that discusses this a bit.
But most of what I just said is basically applying Weberian and McLuhan’s theories to friendship. If you read much of Weber or McLuhan and then read historical sources on friendship, I think you’ll see what I am saying. The connotation changes the more ubiquitous print becomes.
I think you're expressing something very real. Print culture and industrialization certainly have something do with it, but we shouldn't ignore the obvious factor of gender roles and gender expression. I've been reading around in Melville recently so Ishmael and Queequeg are on my mind. Their friendship is called a marriage multiple times and includes a lot of touch and physical intimacy. The chapter "The Monkey Rope" is an extended reflection on our bonds in society and how we are simultaneously (due to scale and global capitalism) forced to interact with each other as members of a massive joint-stock company but also never without the dependency, acknowledged or otherwise on people in our lives, even those who don't know us. MacIntyre reflects constantly on community, tradition, and friendship, and how those goods are threatened not by "modernity" in general, but the social forms of capitalism in particular. But I don't think there is some silver bullet explanation and there are always a variety of mid-range and particular factors. Part of why literature is so essential! I've always found D.H. Lawrence particularly attentive to the loss of the tactile (in eroticism, but also in lived experience generally). Loving the Kierkegaardian insight that you are obligated to express your emotion.
I haven’t read Moby Dick yet—maybe that’ll be my next great novel after I finish Crime and Punishment. I’m not familiar with Lawrence, where should I start with him? And I suppose for Macintyre I would do well to start with After Virtue?
After Virtue is a great start (I also wrote a little reflection on MacIntyre https://open.substack.com/pub/andrewkuiper/p/theory-institutions-and-visions-1?r=2mzor&utm_medium=ios). For Lawrence on touch, I would suggest The Rainbow.