Research in Phenomenology

RESEARCH IN PHENOMENOLOGY

Aims & Scope

Research in Phenomenology deals with phenomenological philosophy in a broad
sense, including original phenomenological research, critical and interpretative
studies of major phenomenological thinkers, studies relating phenomenological
philosophy to other disciplines, and historical studies of special relevance to
phenomenological philosophy.

Editorial Board
Editor: John Sallis, Boston College
Associate Editor: James Risser, Seattle University

Advisory Board
Peg Birmingham, DePaul University; Walter Brogan, Villanova University; Samuel
IJsseling, University of Leuven; †Joseph Kockelmans, The Pennsylvania State
University; David Farrell Krell, DePaul University; Otto Pöggeler, Ruhr-Universität
Bochum; William Richardson, Boston College; Richard Rojcewicz, Point Park
College; Dennis J. Schmidt, The Pennsylvania State University; Calvin Schrag,
Purdue University; Charles E. Scott, Vanderbilt University

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Research in Phenomenology
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Research in Phenomenology

Volume 39 (2009)

LEIDEN • BOSTON
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Books:
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Donald N. McCloskey, Enterprise and Trade in Victorian Britain: Essays in
Historical Economics (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1981), 54.
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Jacques Derrida, L’Écriture et la différence (Paris: Editions du Seuil, l967); trans-
lated by Alan Bass under the title Writing and Difference (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, l978).
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Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1978).
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Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, ed., Records of the Governor and Company of the
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William Farmwinkle, Humor of the American Midwest, vol. 2 of Survey of
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John N. Hazard, The Soviet System of Government, 5th ed. (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1980), 25.
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Ernest Kaiser, “The Literature of Harlem,” in Harlem: A Community in Transition,
ed. J. H. Clarke (New York: Citadel Press, 1964), 64.
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Louise M. Rosenblatt, “The Transactional Theory: Against Dualisms,” College
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ARTICLES
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Research in Phenomenology 39 (2009) 3–12 www.brill.nl/rp

Friendship and Solidarity (1999)1

Hans-Georg Gadamer

Abstract
With reference to Plato and Aristotle, Gadamer discusses the question of what is left of friend-
ship and solidarity in an age of ‘anonymous responsibility.’

Keywords
Aristotle, friendship, Hans-Georg Gadamer, intersubjectivity, Plato, solidarity

There is hardly a major ancient philosopher who did not leave behind teach-
ings, lectures, or bibliographies about ‘friendship.’ Aristotle, the master of
those in the know, dedicated a central place in his three treatises on ethics to
the concept of friendship. In contrast Kant, a master of philosophical thought
worthy of admiration, conceded only one page in his lectures on anthropology
to friendship. But admittedly he there expressed a truth that demands further
reflection. This statement reads: “A true friend is as rare as a black swan.”
Kant’s words invite us to think about the role of friendship in our society
and about the lack of natural solidarity that currently exists in mass society.
Recalling the Greeks would be recommended. Perhaps simply the tension that
stands between the concepts of friendship and solidarity is eloquent enough to
sharpen our thoughts and to clarify our tasks.
Karl Jaspers, my predecessor in the teaching chair that I held in Heidelberg,
had already in 1930 called our age the age of anonymous responsibility. A
term ahead of its time, it is becoming ever more true. It has become so dire-
fully true that nowadays there are clinics where the patient no longer has a
name, but instead receives a number. Indeed the question that we must in all

1)
“Freundschaft und Solidarität,” in Hermeneutische Entwürfe: Vorträge und Aufsätze (Tübingen:
Mohr Siebeck, 2000), 56–68. First published in Konstanten für Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, Fest-
schrift für Walter Witzenmann, vol. 3, ed. Jolanda Rothfuss and Hans-Eberhard Koch (Konstanz:
Lahard-Verlag, 1999), 178–90.
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2009 DOI: 10.1163/156916408X389604
4 H.-G. Gadamer / Research in Phenomenology 39 (2009) 3–12

earnestness ask ourselves is how those things that support human happiness
can be developed and preserved in the new forms of life that arise from the
industrial revolution and its consequences. I do not presume to proclaim any
great wisdom about this. I would like, however, to reflect on just these changes
in things and perhaps present some illustrations that can help our reflections.
That the theme of friendship and solidarity contains a tension filled truth is
something that one immediately hears.
Friendship is a concept that covers all that one is fond of. The word philia
in Greek, like “friendship” in our linguistic use, has a prolific range of applica-
tion. The true friend, Kant’s black swan, is truly a rare appearance. In contrast,
within the rich spectrum of language the word “friendship” is used with color-
less frequency. Spoken language is surely the true repository of human experi-
ence and also therefore the permanent inventory of the thoughts of mankind.
So today perhaps even more than in past centuries—for example, the eigh-
teenth century maintained something like an authentic cult of friendship,
which was also reflected in poetic images—we strive to pay attention to our
particular linguistic usage and to think with language. The word ‘solidarity’
teaches us that there is a tension between the concepts of friendship and soli-
darity. And we are certainly acquainted with the exemplariness of the Greek
life when it concerns friendship, as our humanistic tradition is entirely domi-
nated by Greek models. Who does not know about the friendship of Achilles
and Patroclus, which dominated the Iliad? And everyone knows about the
heavenly twins, Castor and Pollux, as even the constellations commemorate
the inseparability of friends.
Nevertheless we must address the question of what true friendship is and
what a friend is in a world that at one and the same time is a world of shared
institutions and firm regulations—and is a world of the greatest diversity of
conflicts and of understandings, which make communal actions possible. We
ourselves certainly live in this age of anonymous responsibility, which, thanks
to its own way of being organized, leads into to a world of interrelated foreign-
ness. Who is our neighbor with whom we live?
In this situation we have to ask ourselves what solidarity requires of us of
and what a so-called ‘avowed’ solidarity should be. Here the word ‘avowed’ has
a strange ambiguity that we have to consider. One must obviously avow some-
thing that naturally includes a clear obligation. We will have to admit to our-
selves that Kant’s skeptical saying about the black swan was not completely
pulled out of thin air. The true friend—and what amounts to the same thing,
the loyalty of the friend—is seldom enough put to the test in our social struc-
ture. Anyhow it is worth it to make clear how we all share in both, in friend-
 H.-G. Gadamer / Research in Phenomenology 39 (2009) 3–12 5

ship and solidarity, and that we have to defend this inseparableness. We must
recognize how in life our groupings of association lead to solidarity and, in the
process, to obligations to one another. On the other hand, they provide some-
thing like friendship, which one can only live and can never define. The
Greeks, who are considered the inventors of definitions, in particular Socrates,
Plato, and Aristotle, looked to apply to the concept of friendship their skill at
distinctions and precise definitions. From Plato we find a whole dialogue
about it, the Lysis. That is a conversation between Socrates and a couple of
boys in the sports hall, the so-called Gymnasium, where they are surrounding
their mentors and their friends and their courted loves, as was the custom in
the Greek educational system. The boys are asked by Socrates what good
friendship is: “Aren’t you two good friends?” And then he asks: “Who of you
is the older?” “Yeah, we fight over that.” Fortunate times, when there was no
registry office. “Which of you comes from the best family?” Both beam. And
then: “Which of you is the most beautiful?” And then they both laugh,
embarrassed.
One feels like a conversation will then begin about what is most distinctive
of friendship, why anyone is a good friend, and what a true friend is. One is
obviously aware that these childlike interlocutors in the Socratic dialogue
could not possibly yet know what a friend is. What they know is childhood
friendship. It is a boasting competition, with which children outdo one
another. What these adolescent children do is the first step into life, if the
conversation with Socrates awakes in them a delight in thinking. But could
they already know what friendship is?
So it is probably no wonder that the first Socratic question asks if friendship
is based on like finding like. That idea should be clear to the boys, but also that
it cannot hold up. They see right away that that cannot hold up. Perhaps
instead the opposite is true: the choice of friends is formed by those differences
worthy of admiration and love that one discovers in another. Or perhaps,
above all, it is the search for the model in a world where children are so often
pulled back and forth between good and bad, hideous and beautiful. To find
a model—perhaps that is what one sees in a friend and is all that one likes in
a friend and so draws friends to one another.
But it will turn out that one cannot arrive at a real answer with such boys.
In the end it becomes apparent to them that all the attempts have failed.
Friendship is something hidden, not something that lies close by. The Greek
word that Socrates proposed and that one cannot accurately translate now, is
Oikeion, the ‘house-like/domestic,’ the ‘home-like/native.’ The Oikos was the
main structure of the ancient economy. Economics is home-economics. Also
6 H.-G. Gadamer / Research in Phenomenology 39 (2009) 3–12

the beginning of industrialization, insofar as it can be talked about, is called,

not without good reason, ‘economy.’ The word, which is familiar to us today
as the term economics, should mean that which constitutes the home, where
everything is familiar. What this amounts to is not that one is equally fond of
everything, nor that in admiration for the Other your differences and adora-
tion and love become apparent. Nothing like that at all. But what is it then?
Perhaps we could turn to adults, just as Plato obviously thought and Socrates
asked for at the end of the dialogue. But there the children are recalled. They
have their attendants, their physical trainers. Socrates would have to turn to
the older ones to possibly hear what true friendship is.
Perhaps one day Plato lets Alcibiades lead such a discussion. Alcibiades was
notorious for his beauty and spirit, who played a dubious and fateful role in
the large military conflicts between Athens and Sparta. We possess a dialogue
that was written by Plato. But even if it was not Plato’s, then it was of a con-
temporary seeker, which at any rate deserves more attention than the ‘authen-
ticity’ question.
It barely helps our situation that this Alcibiades, who had played such a role
in the Peloponnesian War, is described in the conversation with Socrates as a
young man, as a “Socrates” in the process of growing up, who is packed with
ambition and in the end is overcome by his ambition. When Socrates comes
into conversation with him, then at first the voice of a juvenile, ambitious real-
ist comes to be heard. The young Alcibiades says, oh, all that you rant about
justice, bravery, and courage, and so on, that is nothing but empty twaddle.
Where it all ends up it is just the victory of power.
Now a long educating dialogue begins on Socrates’ side. He obviously
acknowledges the beautiful, talented, and very promising young man, but he
also senses the dangers that lurk in such captivating ambition and will for
power. Thus a conversation begins in which Socrates slowly and gradually
leads his partner to see that friendship and true friendship is very much some-
thing that, opposed to the simple rivalries of power and the struggle for influ-
ence and wealth and all the things that the young man might have dreamed
about, far outraces them. They do not measure up to what authentic friends
are and what true friendship is.
The Greek philosophers have summoned their sharp senses in order to dis-
tinguish what is unique in the various kinds of friendship. We have already
described friendship among children; that is just as beautifully described in
their boasting competitiveness as in their tender shyness. It is likewise with the
young man in the process of growing up, with the first loving friends that life
passes on to one. It is there in every society, even in one not organized as Greek
 H.-G. Gadamer / Research in Phenomenology 39 (2009) 3–12 7

society was. And finally, like out of the loving friendship and later the friend-
ship of the independent, mature man, develops authentic friendship, the
friend for life.
So one can, as it were at the beginning of all thinking about friendship, be
aware that it is not some abstract concept, which is divided into various sub-
species. That sounds exactly like Aristotle’s beginning. There will be distinc-
tions, friendships can be based on the desirous, sensual happiness, on the
pleasure that friends find with one another. Or they can be based on advan-
tage, on profit, so on those things on the basis of which we call people business
friends or friends of the party, or whenever we use these extended conceptions
of friends. It is all obviously a kind of friendship.
Then, however, there is the true, the complete friendship. The actual friend-
ship. What is that, what does it mean that it is supposed to be called the
Oikeion? The at-home, that whereof one cannot speak, is what it is. We hear it
all through a more melodious and mysterious concept when we speak of home
and homeland. What then is it?
That is also nothing I need to describe. For you [your own city] is the most
beautiful, and its surroundings are the most lovely. We all know that the
homeland is something immemorial. We cannot say what it is that stirs the
soul and connects people together. But that homeland and origin represent a
connection, a kind of community, a kind of solidarity of a genuine kind, does
not require that one first avow one’s solidarity. One is it and does not want to
know at all what is actually in play there.
Although it has yet to fully show itself in all of its mechanisms of everyday
life, grouping, fights, civil wars, hostile arguments, and in the always new
democratic achievements of order, here Greek thinking now leads to the ques-
tion of what the particular secret of this house-ness, home-ness is, this connec-
tion about which we cannot speak. Same to same, different to different, or
seeking for an ideal, what is it really? It is a big issue, which was first repre-
sented by Plato and then taken up by Aristotle, that is to be discussed here.
There is a word that frightens us nowadays, as the Greeks themselves with-
out question also were: the word is Philautia, ‘self-love.’ Thus it is; in self-love
one becomes aware of the true ground and the condition for all possible bonds
with others and commitment to oneself.
I will also have to say a bit about solidarity—it is neither a word given at the
time nor something that one has to first elucidate. What therefore is Philautia
really? Naturally it was exactly as it is with us—‘self-love’ has a bad ring to it.
We know it from the Greek comedies and in many other sources. The often
comical and certainly tremendous vice of humans appears to be that they
8 H.-G. Gadamer / Research in Phenomenology 39 (2009) 3–12

always only think of themselves and not what the Other is and what is for the
Other. Now Plato has dared to say it, and Plato spoke for himself and us and
the whole world in a comprehensive language: No, the true authentic love is
something quite otherwise. It is this, that one must always be one with oneself.
One must be united with oneself if one is to be a friend for another, and even
if only a lover, even if only a business friend, even if only a co-worker. Every-
where those who cannot be one with themselves will feel living together with
others to be a handicap and to be foreign.
Now one thing is more certain, home and house are the places of living
together. That does not mean having shared convictions, nor, for that reason
also, an accordance in inclination and interests. It is not even that which you
would first say were someone to ask, why are you so in love? Because he shares
so much with me that is dear to me? So similar to me? No, it is no unanimity.
Take these great prototypes of the Greek pairs of friends: for instance the mur-
derer of tyrants, who played such an enormous role in public Athenian life as
monument, as archetype, and as image of men. Likewise we could take the
saying in German for friendship among youth: they have one heart and soul.
The Greeks say instead mia psyche.
Is that true friendship? No, it is not that either. The bold thesis is: friendship
must exist first and foremost with oneself. That is required so that one can
actually be bound (verbunden) to the Other and with the Other. How far that
is from what we would call ‘obligatory’ (Verbindliches)! So I would like to go
through with this enormous step to Philautia that Greek thinking undertook.
This step means a thought that was far removed from the surrounding world
and that nevertheless at the same time fought so passionately for its own lib-
erty and way of life, as the Greeks did for all of us through the occurrences of
fate in the Persian War. Europe is Europe because this kind of real, lived soli-
darity of Greek life had to oppose its unique ways against the expansionist
Orient. One thinks only of the partings of father and son, which still in the
fifth century testified to it like archaeological museums.
We are about to see clearly where these thoughts will lead us if we continue
to think them through. We asked ourselves, what is an Oikos, what is a real
at-home-ness, and therefore what is a real friendship. One cannot say that it is
something definite in him, something I like, that makes him my friend. We
must naturally always think in our society likewise of the friendship between
husband and wife and between father and son. We must also always recognize
marriage between friends, friendship in a marriage, as one of the great tests of
human life, in which differences, of the Other, of Others, the Other of the
Others, develop to with-one-another and also to shared insight.
 H.-G. Gadamer / Research in Phenomenology 39 (2009) 3–12 9

That is now what Plato brings forth in the Alcibiades dialogue as a failure.
The conversation with Alcibiades does not lead to continuing success in life.
Socrates, full of intuition, indicates this at the end. It still remains uncanny
(unheimlich) to him, how this young man is driven by power and ambition. In
any case, Socrates wanted to lead him on a path that Alcibiades did not actu-
ally take, as every Greek reader knew. What is this path? It is a famous story:
Socrates says, we must learn to know ourselves. One knows the famous “know
thyself,” this saying of the Delphic oracle that always impresses itself on the
human mind. “Know thyself.” That means, notice that you are only a man and
not an appointment of divine providence or a particularly charismatic one of
the Lord’s anointed, so to speak, to whom privilege, victory, and success are
given on this side of and beyond all human commitments. None of those
things.
Now what Aristotle adds to these is obviously friendship: that one recog-
nizes oneself in others and the other recognizes itself in us. Not simply in the
sense of “he is too.” Far more in the sense that we grant to one another our
being as Other and that it almost aims to be said with Droysen: “So must you
be, for so I love you”. In brief, that is true friendship. Aristotle called it friend-
ship of Arete. But what is Arete? The virtue is “best-ness,” as Wolfgang Schade-
wald has suggested for it. What is best-ness? Even that is to some extent to be
understood perhaps only in the fact that it is a superlative. It means something
that one cannot increase any more. Surely no human possesses such virtue.
And so the true, deep meaning of such self-knowledge is exactly that one never
recognizes the biases of one’s own self-love even when one believes oneself to
be a correct friend of the Other. But if the correct unity with oneself is also the
precondition for the correct being a friend, what is being a friend itself ? On
what is the Oikeion based?
The Oikeion is something different in each of the cases of friendship among
children, of friendship of affection, and adolescence, and of business friend-
ships, and what might follow from all of them, in the end, building a familial
community on renunciation and benefit. Are these classes under a universal
concept of love? Probably not. The Greeks here had a crucial thought. It is the
idea of analogy, of analogical similarity. It comes to prominence first in the
Academy and in Aristotle, and was particularly recognized by the Christian
dogmatists as it makes thinkable the relationship between creator and cre-
ation. Analogy permits that which is incomparable to still, despite everything,
be brought into comparability. In sum, that is analogy. It tells us that friend-
ship among boys is not simply competing with one another to prove them-
selves to each other. No, it already contains something of the with-one-another
10 H.-G. Gadamer / Research in Phenomenology 39 (2009) 3–12

and the for-one-another that are there in the competition. In so far as this
competition is a friendship, it becomes a true friendship for the first time if
out of it begins to form the with-one-another of the whole life, a with-one-
another that is not yet present in the friendship of children. One knows the
quick fights and quick reconciliations when there is also time and time again
community.
Next are youth friendships, from which life friendships can finally emerge.
All life friendships probably will always have something of the unattainable,
which would be the real, true, final, and complete, the Good. That is the
structure we are familiar with in other areas. I’ll give the example of health. It
is an example from Aristotle who said: This food is not healthy, or the color in
the face is not healthy, or finally also that humanity as a whole is not healthy.
What is that? It is completely mysterious why all of these have their point of
reference in health. What it is we see when we mean what “health” is actually
based upon “healthy”—no one can say. The standard values are the conven-
tional aid of industry. Health eludes all observation. It is exactly the same with
other things as well.
The Greeks saw, above all, that one can also not conceptualize Being, this
fundamental metaphysical concept, as the highest genus that can be differenti-
ated. Being is something that can, so to speak, light up in the light of an
instant, just as what in the greatest distance of duration or of eternity displays
itself in the dreaming glance.
So it is without doubt that true friendship itself is exactly this way, that each
calls to mind in each other in a characteristic way how little the friendship
actually approaches its completed ideal, from which perhaps it inwardly takes
its measure. Let us turn for a minute to our own concerns. What does it mean
for our society as it becomes anonymous, what does the necessity of a rational-
ized mass existence mean, to which then also belongs the uncanny character
of statistics, without which no global economy would work? Are not too many
things in which we could really recognize ourselves being withheld from us?
One declares oneself in some sort of solidarity or one also feels oneself in
solidarity. I can recall in an instant the things that have illuminated my own
life experiences, and I am certain that the older ones of you have experienced
similar things. I mean how the bombing in the war created solidarity. Sud-
denly your neighbors, those who in the circumstances of the city were unknown
strangers, were awoken to life. So need works, and in particular a need felt by
all so that undreamed of possibilities of feelings of solidarity and acts of soli-
darity come about. It is no longer the case, what the word solidarity suggests
to us. What do we mean in particular when we speak here of solidarity? Natu-
 H.-G. Gadamer / Research in Phenomenology 39 (2009) 3–12 11

rally, behind the expression “solidarity” is the Latin solidum, which also plays
a role in the expression “der Sold ” [payment]. It means that it counts upon
receiving it as payment, not as counterfeit money. It must be sterling, and it
indeed seeks to express through the word a sterling and reliable inseparability,
and to remain the same if, when in truth, the differences in the interests and
the life situations let it be tempted to go its own way and to set back the well-
being of the Other. The concept of solidarity belongs to an ambiguous world
of meaning. When one declares oneself as in solidarity, whether freely or under
duress, in every case there lies a renunciation of one’s own interests and prefer-
ences. In certain schools of thought one gives up something in solidarity in
certain instances for certain purposes. One sees immediately how both occur
in our society partly as a benefit, partly as a deprivation. I do not talk without
a special reason about this ambiguity. Our representative democracy nowadays
creates many concerns for us because our constituency is missing solidarity.
We have cause to admit to ourselves that political organizations as such should
make solidarity conscious, but also make actual unreasonable demands. One
thinks perhaps of the discipline of the party that is difficult to keep in some
instances of political life, such as if one is of a completely different opinion
from the majority of one’s party. But this is almost the principle of democracy,
that within certain limits, which I here suggest, communal action nevertheless
remains possible. Or one thinks of the meaningful observance of regulations
whose inexpediency is seen clearly on the spot, for example, in traffic rules. I
would however like to expressly stress to where our communal attention wants
to direct itself. Authentic solidarity must be conscious, only then does it
work.
Let us consider the example of the judiciary. It may be often attacked, and
perhaps not always unjustly, and nevertheless it possesses, on the whole, bind-
ing normative value. This was shown to us in an example from some time ago
in Italy. It is necessary to make clear that real solidarity depends on the indi-
viduals who have avowed themselves to it and stood up for it. An isolation of
the classe politica remains itself isolated. Getting into the meaning of the word,
we also must think in the military sphere of loyalty among soldiers, which, in
the time of war, demands from us solidarity in life and death. Thus in this
sphere also the concept of der Sold in “soldier” was superceded. Undoubtedly
something like camaraderie is indispensable for the living together of humans.
We have not broken so free from evolution that we possess unambiguous
instinctual systems for all decisions, somewhat like the birds that fly inces-
santly during breeding time so that they can feed their young. We humans are
far more dependent on choices and therefore susceptible to bad choices. I had
12 H.-G. Gadamer / Research in Phenomenology 39 (2009) 3–12

hoped to be able to call on the wisdom of the language to help for the word
solidarity and therefore have opted for the Greek concept of Philia, as a trans-
lation of ‘Solidarity,’ and I thought that this expression had already a long
prehistory that stands bound up with mass society. In truth it is an entirely
new word, hardly a century old. But there is much to say about it. Solidarity
here means a promise of a payment of friendship, which is limited, like every-
thing, as it calls on the complete dedication of our good will.
Thus the tasks presented to us are to be just as much one with oneself and
to remain united with Others. There is no possible natural ability that is able
to carry this out for us. It requires self-knowledge and grateful learning from
models.

Translated by David Vessey

Grand Valley State University, and
Chris Blauwkamp
Washington University, St. Louis