By Béla Hamvas
Plato says that the primeval word for community is law;
as for Aristotle he thinks it is Philia. Both could be right. What holds a
community together is the law above beings. But what creates a community is
friendship that lives in these beings. Philia means friendship, but this
friendship is not an idea. Rather it is a being itself, too. Where discord is,
presumably Ares, the stormy one is present; where there is love, presumably
Aphrodite, the one who dissolves opposites, is present; and where friendship is,
presumably Philia, the goddess of friendship is present, too. According to
Aristotle if thousands and millions of people live together, speak the same
language, foster the same traditions– all of these are the magic of the
presence of goddess Philia. Without her La Bruyere would be right asking: why
are you surprised that the humanity does not live in the same state, does not
believe in the same religion, and does not speak the same language? If I look
at the diversity and colorfulness of human character, temperament, talent and
wisdom, I am rather surprised that two people can sleep under the same roof
without strangling each other before morning. It is because of the magic of
goddess Philia that such things as common house, a common language, or a common
custom can exist between beings snarling at each other. Without her, they would
be no more than lonely beast of prey. Community is created by goddess
Friendship and thus the primeval word for community is Philia.
*
Compared
to the many things to which we paid special attention in the past hundred years,
the silence around friendship is more than strange. There exists only one
considerable work, made by Emerson. In the ancient world no one failed to keep
it in mind. The reason that so few write on friendship today is not really that
friendship is a classical subject and today’s people are not up to a classical
subject. The reason is rather that friendship is a classical relationship and
today’s man is not up to a classical relationship. Mankind has never been so
close to all beings becoming just beasts of prey, snarling at each other from
hiding. The aggressive collectivism of mass-religions is only the surface;
beneath it lives the man who is ready to kill the one he lives with under the
same roof before morning arrives, and only because he is different. Everyone
who had reached out his hands these days toward someone else had to have experienced,
humiliated, that people don’t understand the only thing that is important. But
no one can be called to account. Yesterday I reached out my hands toward
someone but he did not notice; today someone reached out for me and I was the
one not noticing him. We’re living a Philialess life and the
relationships that are still here between us might be only the remains of the
old days or a possibility for the future; no friendship springs from today.
*
However, Aristotle probably is wrong when he says that
the possibility of community is created by Philia. The community is not more
and is not less. The community is something different. It is an wholly and
perfectly and basically different life; an existence, possibility, reality,
magic and mysterium. They have found an expression for these days: they say it
is the relationship of Me and You. There must be at least three people for a
community. But when there are three Philia takes off. The Me and the You makes
two, always and only two. More with one than when one is alone and less with
one than when one is part of a community. The relationship of Me and You is a
circle of existence apart: a specific circle between the individual and the
collective. Between loneliness and community. Between aloneness and crowd.
Between the One and the Three. This two is the world where Philia thrives.
*
Astrology
divides the space of human fate into twelve parts, or in its vocabulary, it
divides the stages of human fate into twelve houses. Such houses are
personality, wealth, education, home, marriage, etc. and astrology assigns a
house apart for friendship, too. In the huge literature of modern psychology
one may find not a word on friendship – based on this single fact it seems
obvious that astrology has much more refinement to the whole of human
existence. Astrology also seems to know that friendship doesn’t have anything
to do with the Me nor with love. It designates a house apart for Philia and
values its weight and importance the way it values vocation or death.
Friendship is not a simple association, just the same way that a friend is not
a mere companion. Not a comrade, not a colleague, not a partner. What one
experiences in the house of friendship cannot be substituted by any other kind
of relationship. A friend cannot be replaced by anything else. There are people
incapable of friendship; there are people who are unfit for friendship; there
are people who have many other people around them; and there are some, whose
life passes in a constant hunger for a friend, without ever finding one.
*
Montaigne
says love never asks for permission. It comes when it wants and overcomes the
man like an elemental force. Friendship needs consent. My friend I choose for
myself, freely. However, once that is done it becomes a compulsion. I cannot
manage without him. “Il me semble n’etre plus qu’a demi” – it seems that
I am only the half of something. But even then, it doesn’t overcome me. It is
always gentle and passionless. Goddess Philia is the most gentle among divine
beings. A lover sometimes can feel the happiness or trouble of the absent
beloved and sometimes can guess his or her wishes. What’s exceptional in love
is natural in a friendship. I always know and have to know what’s happening to
him and what he’s thinking. No secrets can remain hidden between us. But this
is not a condition of friendship; sincerity doesn’t precede friendship. Those
believe that have no idea about friendship. For those who are united by the
goddess, all lies and masks fall. It is not that friendship springs from
sincerity, but sincerity springs from friendship. First there is Philia, and
all the rest are her gifts.
Montaigne
describes the forms of contact among the Greeks, and he says they were natural,
social, filled with love and hospitality. But there is no Philia in the nature
or society or love or hospitality. Friendship is Philia.
*
Emerson
affirms that the friend is nature’s paradox and masterpiece at the same time. A
friend is the only being, he says, from who I don’t desire what he has, but rather
what he is. The newer writers speak the same way in so far as they touch upon
friendship. Scheler, who wrote on the forms of sympathy, Buber, who expressed
the relationship of Me-You in the most beautiful way, Ebner, who built a whole
eschatology on this relationship, Barth, Gogarten, Jaspers, Klages -all who
wrote many beautiful pieces about the Zweisamkeit. But they all miss something
at a certain point: one believes that friendship, the relationship of Me-You is
no more than the copy of the relationship between God and Man; the other thinks
that it is a vital, or metaphysical, or existentional relationship. None of
them sees that we’re talking about something that cannot be traced back to
something else, nor can it be explained by anything else. They don’t see that
friendship is a state sanctified by the higher Power.
It
could be put this way: existence can shift toward the individual circle and can
attain its fulfillment there. That is the divinification of Me. One starts from
the metaphysic that says: only the Me is everlasting and immortal, thus he lays
stress there.
Existence,
however, can shift toward the community, too, and find its fulfillment there.
One starts from the idea that only the community, as a race or nation or
religion is everlasting and immortal, and so he lays his life’s stress there.
Friendship
is a circle of existence where the Me and the community are both fulfilled, and
live on untouched; but between and independent of them a brand new, third
possibility of existence springs up which cannot be derived from the one nor
the other. A new life form is opening. This is friendship. Friendship does not
resemble any other forms of existence. It is a circle completely apart.
Why? Philia creates a Philia-world that
cannot be confused with anything else. That is the world of friendship.
*
So
far no one has paid particular attention to the community of men., especially to
the alliance, the order, the association, the army. Men like to unite, and to
emphasize the importance of this union they apply ritual outward appearances.
Knights exchange swords between each other and swear secret oaths to each
other. Monks and soldiers wear uniforms, sit in rows and walk in step. In every
case they decide upon mandatory rules, and thus commit themselves to principles
such as the monastic oath, the knightly morals, or those of the military
service. Compared to a woman’s scattered mind and inward way of life - which
might have its center in herself - it strikes the eye how men are devoted to
their clubs, their chivalry orders, and that they prefer rules, uniforms, the
exchange of swords, and the walking in step. It may be that if the structures
of humanity were managed by women, the nation, community, society and state
would have never come into being. Laws wouldn’t have been written and uniforms
wouldn’t have been worn. Perhaps the collective is the work of men and the
state is none other but an enlarged monastic order or a softened and loosened
army.
All
men know what joy and seriousness is to be found in sport. Eleven men conclude
an alliance with each other, and stand against eleven other men; the task is to
kick the ball into the enemy’s goal. That is the football. All the
characteristics of men’s collectives are there: the rules, the oath, the
uniform, and the enemy. And the game is so important that fifty thousand people
watch it with bated breath.
If
someone knows what is it like to be in a war camp, to undertake a daring
enterprise, to live together for life-and-death on a battleship with
forty-eight similar men; if someone experiences what Amundsen or Shackleton
tell about their companions - participants of their Antarctic expedition - the
advantage, renunciation, solidarity, humor, gentleness, self-denial that these
men gave as proof toward each other, one will begin to understand what created,
creates and holds together the collective of men. One will begin to understand
that friendship is possible only between men.
*
Friendship
can only spring up when two men not only keep each other’s being safe but when they
step out of the circle of Me into the circle of Two. They do this because they know that that is
the place where their wholesomeness will be doubled by the wholesomeness of
their friend. Wholesomeness can only be completed by wholesomeness. Just as
suppression ends up by suppressing the suppression itself, and the way
completeness can only be accomplished by completeness. I can only be open by my
friend’s openness, and I can only be sincere by his sincerity. I can be a friend
by his friendship and he can be only by mine. There is no hierarchy, ranking, or
succession. This is the perfect acknowledgment of the mutual consistency of
values. Friends are equal. Because where they tarry there are no differences.
The place they live is beyond competition. Friendship grows and exists and
thrives and passes on its existence. The circle of friendship is not about life
but about existence. The shaking of hands is the sign of meeting in a higher
world.
*
Every
friendship begins with a vague feeling that we’ve already met somewhere. As if
we were brothers a long time ago; rather as if we were twins. Therefore our
meeting is just seeing each other again. And when one is separated from his
friend, he knows that being apart is just an appearance. Somewhere they remain
together just the way they were together before meeting each other.
*
Elemental
Eros is the ancient binding Power that holds together the atoms and equalizes
the opposites. Elemental Eros has two children, one of them governs the realm
of love and the other one the realm of friendship. Aphrodite is the goddess of
love and Philia is the goddess of friendship.
*
Love
lures out all man’s power, stirs it up, and whip it up. In other words, love
wakes up all man’s passions. Love sets free all the demons that live within the
man.
Friendship
brings all man’s powers into harmony. Friendship masters all man’s passions.
Philia is the goddess whose presence makes the elemental demons to calm down
and find their places.
*
Love
and friendship have one feature in common: the cause of its breaking up is
never the Other but always the Me.
*
Love’s
secret is that out of two will be one; friendship’s secret is that out of one
will be two. Therefore love is a reversed friendship and there is always
something oozing from one into the other. Love can sometimes seem as if there
were two out of one, whereas there were always two and only love made them
become one. Friendship can sometimes seem as if two made one, but they always
were one and only friendship made them seem two.
*
Women
forget their friends but never their lovers.
Men
forget their lovers but never their friends.
*
A
history of book printing exists, of minting, of sailing, of clothing, of the
use of poisons and of crockery. Friendship has no history. Why? Friendship’s
history is Lao Tze and his friends, Buddha and his friends, friends in the
Trojan war, Harmodios and Aristogeiton, the friendships of Socrates, the
knights of the Grail, the friendships of painters, artists and poets, the
George-circle.
*
Friendship
has three main obstacles: pride, arrogance and irony. These are the three basic
forms of the Me overstepping itself. All of these involve closing and
expelling. They are autistic forms of behavior and are only used by those who
want to differ at any price. Pride looks for and finds a mirror in the other
one; arrogance wants only a servant and someone inferior to despise; and irony
is only after imperfection. We all know that we all are mirrors, servants and
imperfect. But we also know that this is not the most important thing. A friend
chooses to make himself to be a mirror, a servant and imperfect. One who
doesn’t understand that and doesn’t return it the same way hurts not the man
but friendship itself.
*
Friendship
has four forms: it can be heroic, intimate, spiritual or playful. A genuine
friendship unites all four in one, and therefore it’s possible to see them as
four dimensions of friendship. Heroic means that I sacrifice my life for
him; spiritual means that it is the world of the spirit where we’re
together; playful means that I am playing with him as cheerfully as a
child; and intimate means that I open my heart to him.
*
Goethe
says that it is not enough to be ready to sacrifice your life for your friend –
you have to deny your beliefs for him.
*
The
fact that Philia had a statue in the ancient world shows how well known she was
there. Later statues represented either only one man, the immortal Me, either
the group, the immortal community. The immortal two was forgotten. The
memory of two Athenian men, Harmodios and Aristogeiton is the statue of
friendship. It holds all that is important in a friendship: the duplication of
existence, and in such a manner that if only one man stood there, one could
easily see that he’s just the half of something.
Lawrence
says about the friendship of the Bearhunter and the Delaware chief that it is
deeper than family, deeper than fatherhood, deeper than motherhood, deeper than
love – “so deep that it is loveless”. All attraction, sympathy, wishing,
desire, passion have disappeared, and it is so deep that one can only reach
those depths in his deepest roots. Deep there is silence, undisturbed
tranquility and motionless peace. That is the world of idyll, the golden age.
In love, the happiness that springs from the endless tranquility can be
attained only for moments, while in friendship is always present. Friendship
can be identified because of this idyllic quality. Such a silence is unknown to
communities. The community of the golden age so far has not been realized on
Earth. One can experience tranquility, even if lonely, only once and only if one
is specially favored by the gods. But is floating in a friendship, even if the
two friends are setting out for a battle, if they’re having a snack by a fire
in the woods, if are playing, or if one of them lives on the other side of the
ocean and one here, ten thousand miles from each other. When one is alone, it
seems, one can and should only step into the idyllic existence through the
favor of the gods; so far it seems that together it is impossible. Man and
woman’s union can never reach that height where the golden age could be
attained – for more than a moment. Friendship begins by both stepping into the
idyllic. And there’s no need for desire, wishing, power or struggle; the idyll lacks
nothing and satisfies all passions. Therefore friendship is deeper than
affection and deeper than love.
The
idyll, which steps into the highest circle of existence called the golden age
is perfectly whole, complete and accomplished. And what is whole, perfect and
accomplished is classical. Friendship is a classical way of solving life. That
is why they appreciated it in the antique times and is not understood today. Classical
means that the basis of existence is revealed in a crystal clear light. The
creator and protector of the classical way of life is Philia.
*
There
is an incomprehensible relationship between friendship and stars. Why is my
friend a star? And why is a star like a friend? Because he’s so far and yet
living inside me? Because he’s mine and yet out of my reach? Because the space
where we meet is not human but cosmic? Because he doesn’t want anything from me
and I don’t want anything from him either? Only to be and to be the way he is
and the way I am and that’s completely enough for both? There’s no answer.
There’s no need for an answer. I will always think of my friend as a star, the
universe shining down on me, incomprehensibly.
*
In
the human world friendship was and will always be the classical way of life.
Friendship steps out of the bewildered irreality of the human being, which they
call reality in an unexplainable manner, and solve life in a poetic manner. It
is said that love makes you become poetic - often. Friendship makes life itself
poetic; life becomes poetry. Poetry disappears from love quickly,
because for love everything is just means to unite man and woman, the two
biggest opposites of the universe. This poetic relationship is friendship
itself. We don’t write poetry, but we live it.
Perhaps
Aristotle was thinking of this when saying that the primeval word for community
is Philia.
© On friendship - an excerpt from The Invisible
Story by Béla Hamvas (1897-1968), translated by Zsolt