Be Friend - a podcast by 1st Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco

Be Friend

Friendship is difficult to describe, but that hasn’t stopped us from trying. Take Aristotle. He believed that friendship – philia – is a great good, one of the greatest goods. And to be a good friend, you must be a good person; only good people can be friends. Like Aristotle, I believe friendship is a great good, both for the individual and society as a whole. The world could do with fewer frenemies, for sure. But there’s more to the story.

Concepts of friendship have changed since the days of Aristotle. The poet and philosopher John O’Donahue believed friendship is an act of recognition and belonging, cutting across convention, morality, and category. Friendship may be hard to describe, but the story of friendship is a deep one.

In his essay on Friendship, Ralph Waldo Emerson said that “Friendship demands a religious treatment. Reverence is a great part of it. Treat your friend as a spectacle.”

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