Selfish Humility: The Paradox of Friendship (part 4)

My "best friend"

Philosophy and experience further this idea of selfish humility in friendship. As a point of simple transition, consider the dog, well known as “man’s best friend.” It has achieved this high standing by gaining the reputation of loving unconditionally, loyally, and sacrificially. Yet, the dog’s friendship is purely selfish. It is founded upon food, shelter, security, and property. It is out to guard its own. It maintains the relationship for its own gain. Yet no one calls the dog selfish. It is this sort of experience we find in friendship in philosophy throughout the ages.

We can go as far back as Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics. As he ponders the virtue of self-love and love of neighbor, he concludes that the man who loves himself will be most virtuous and most loving towards his neighbor (Book IX, Chapter 8). He then resolves the tension that becomes apparent in that statement by saying that a friend is really a second self. Like David and Jonathan or Christ and the Church, the souls of the friends become one in a mysterious way. But in this way, the man who loves himself can most fully love his friends.

A few centuries later, Cicero authored his work on friendship, De Amicitia, which would further this idea of friendship grounded in selfish humility. Cicero was a Roman Platonist, therefore differing in his approach from Aristotle. Cicero was concerned mostly with financial or political gain and office when discussing the “need” for friendship. It is difficult to escape his utilitarian nature. However, he does offer this statement on the matter “those who falsely assume expediency to be the basis of friendship, take from friendship's chain its loveliest link. For it is not so much the material gain procured through a friend, as it is his love, and his love alone, that gives us delight” (De Amicitia, 14). Cicero admits that it should not be for financial gain that we pursue friendship, it is for our own delight in another’s love. Therefore, Cicero would agree that we selfishly seek friendship in ways this world would not normally deem selfish.

Aelred of Rievaulx was a twelfth-century abbot whose views on friendship come largely from Cicero. He explains that true friendship stems from a selfish love by quoting and interpreting Psalm 10: “‘For he that loves iniquity’ does not love, but ‘hates his own soul.’ Truly, he who does not love his own soul will not be able to love the soul of another” (58). This cunning perspective is echoed in the third book of Spiritual Friendship. Aelred comments on the second greatest commandment: “Behold the mirror. You love yourself. Yes, especially if you love God, if you are such a person as we have described as worthy of being chosen for friendship… For then truly he whom you love will be another self, if you have transformed your love of self to him” (107-8). Aelred is explaining how friendship can be built on a selfish love, but continually warns of friendship born out of worldly selfishness and not humility. We can conclude that Aelred would encourage this idea of selfish humility in friendship. Marsha Dutton, commenting on Aelred’s third book in Spiritual Friendship, summarizes, “One desires a friend in order to satisfy one’s own longing. Love of oneself makes one love one’s friend; friendship is ultimately the love of self. But God, who placed his own unity in the first humans as a desire for friendship, ensures that the expression of love for the self results in love for the friend as well” (46).

The twentieth-century Anglican apologist, C. S. Lewis, continues these thoughts in his chapter on Friendship in The Four Loves. He begins his discussion on friendship by explaining that it is the least biological and the least necessary of the loves. Yet he goes on to explain that we as humans have a desire for it. Indeed, the desire for needs is not counted as selfish as the desire for non-needs. Lewis explains that it is a selfish desire to be known, to be elite, to be accepted that fuels friendship. But it is also humility that strengthens friendship. He also seems to point to a selfish humility present in friendship.