aristotle, remember sappho

And now for something completely different. This is the paper I wrote for the philosophy class I took this spring at Washtenaw Community College. Several people have asked to see it, so here it is. I won't be hurt if you skip this one.

Philosophy 205: Ethics
Professor Corinne Painter
April 24, 2008


Aristotle, Remember Sappho: Friendship and Morals
in Ancient Greece and 21st-century America

Julia Henshaw


In the Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle devotes books VII and IX to an eloquent and extensive discussion of friendship. For him, friendship is an important ingredient in the essential and ultimately desirable state of happiness, which flows from the virtuous actions in life. The contemporary field of feminist ethics (and its subset of lesbian ethics) has explored friendship as a significant characteristic of women’s relationships, leading to changes in a woman’s moral understanding and actions. It seems quite that modern feminists have found a kinship of philosophical ideas with Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics, as he might be considered the quintessential philosopher of the heteropatriarchy, writing in his Politics that women are weak creatures, to be ruled by their fathers and husbands, suitable only for bearing sons. Nevertheless, the appeal of Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics is its flexibility and emotional consideration of others, in contrast to the impartial abstract ethical principles espoused by the canonical Western male philosophers (e.g., Kant and Mill) who have dominated the discourse over the centuries.
In this paper, I will consider Aristotle’s concept of friendship as it relates to the establishment of a virtuous character for an individual (always a person of his class, an elite, male citizen of Athens), thereby leading to the ultimate goal of happiness throughout a man’s life. In contrast, as I will show, the contemporary feminist position sees one aspect of friendship as a valuable extension of moral agency and moral growth, in support of the feminist agenda of change, which hopes to overturn the lingering sexist prejudices of western society. Inspired by Sappho’s community of young women on the island of Lesbos, lesbian ethicists such as Marilyn Frye go further, advocating a separation of women from men as the only way true equality can be achieved. For if the rules of dogmatic ethical systems are those imposed by a dominant group on a subordinate class, in an ideal society formed by equal women of good will, there would be no need for rules as such.
Contemporary feminist virtue ethicists certainly take a different approach to friendship than the traditional Aristotelian one, broadening the understanding of friendship and its relation to morality. In order to establish this, I will briefly outline the principal ideas of the classical philosopher and then discuss a few of the main tenets of feminist philosophy, especially regarding the importance of friendships among women. On the basis of my consideration, I shall maintain that the contemporary approach to and understanding of virtue ethics is far more suitable to the conditions of the modern, more or less liberal and diverse society in which we live, men and women alike.


Aristotle on Friendship
As is well known, Aristotle wrote extensively on the importance of friendship to happiness (eudaimonia is the Greek word, which is sometimes translated as “flourishing,” rather than “happiness.” In any case, this is a lifelong project, not a fleeting sense of pleasure or enjoyment). He writes, “It is necessary for the happy person to have friends” (NE 1169b 23) and “Life is difficult for one who is alone” (1170a 5). He differentiated between three kinds of friendship, those of utility (such as colleagues in business affairs), those of pleasure (such as persons sharing in agreeable activities such as sports and romantic liaisons), and most importantly, those based on the outstanding good character of a friend (1156a-1156b). It is of these “true” friends that he writes extensively. He comments that these mutually beneficial friendships will be formed by likeminded equals (1159b 3-7), will be lasting, and cannot be sustained if too great in number, as an abundance of time must be spent in a friend’s company: “It is not possible for people to know one another until they use up the proverbial amount of salt together (1156b 26-29). Given the culture of Athens in the 4th century B.C.E., it goes without saying that these gratifying friendships will only be formed between male citizens; friendships with foreigners, women, or slaves could at best be characterized as “imperfect” friendships. In the “perfect” or “virtuous” friendships enjoyed between virtuous equals, a man identifies closely with his friend, loving him as he loves himself, and wishes to act virtuously to the benefit of the other. This also accrues benefits for himself, as he acts benevolently and appropriately, and thus practices such virtues as generosity and courage . Unlike our own, Aristotle’s society highly valued homosexual relationships between mature men and adolescent boys, but these would not have been equals in societal standing. He does take the trouble to comment that “when the bloom of youth fades,” lovers may remain friends, if they have “become fond of each other’s characters” (1157a 11-12). (Since any close relationships between women were hardly significant for men in the ancient world, perhaps that allowed lesbian liaisons to go unnoticed. Or perhaps they might have been considered only less valued “friendships of pleasure,” certainly not friendships of virtuous equals.)
In a remarkable passage that reveals a significant attitude among male friendships that seems familiar today, Aristotle wrote, “Someone of a manly nature…is reluctant to make his friend share [pain]…in general he does not permit others to express grief with him because he himself is not apt to express grief. But girlish women and womanish men enjoy having people lament with them…”(1171b). Thus it seems that these masculine friendships will be satisfying, intimate, and of mutual benefit only when life is going well for both parties. Perhaps, given their privileged position in ancient society, most things did go well for Aristotle and his cohort most of the time, but it is imaginable that occasionally a man might feel pain and wish to express grief to a sympathetic friend. But such an emotion lies clearly in the denigrated province of women, the weaker sex, and effeminate men. By excluding the sharing of expression of painful events, a man limits the genuine intimate understanding of a significant part of his friend’s life.
It is a commonplace to observe that women form close friendships more easily than men, and American women typically have a larger circle of intimate friends with whom they can share both their joys and sorrows than contemporary men enjoy (e.g., Carol Gilligan, p. 154, quoting Daniel Levinson, The Seasons of a Man’s Life.) For example, my friend Joe says that when his marriage ended, his wife had a large circle of friends to support her, when he had almost nowhere to turn to find a sympathetic person to understand and share his grief.

Feminist Friendships
“It is obvious that the values of women differ very often from the values which have been made by the other sex…yet it is the masculine values that prevail.” Virginia Woolf, 1929
In contrast to the classical masculine understanding of friendship and its proper role in our lives, women throughout the ages have typically formed networks of intimate women friends and family members. In contemporary feminist thought these friendships bring a rich variety of benefits to one another and to society. The connections between women are often formed by their virtuous feelings of responsibility and care for others in their communities, which are based on emotional responses to the predicaments as well as the accomplishments and pleasures of their friends. Women, at least since the time of Aristotle and surely before, have not been afraid to share difficulties, pain, and grief with their friends. Importantly, this level of trust allows them to enjoy a rich intimate relationship based on sharing the full range of life experiences, including much morally valuable experience.
While there are many ways in which feminists approach the subject of friendship between women, I wish to focus on the aspects of moral agency that lead to furthering the values of the feminist agenda of change for equal opportunities in the contemporary world (Marilyn Friedman, pp. 195-203). As girls and young women are taught our first lessons in values and morality from our family and later from our schools, these come from the broader society that still retains abundant evidence of the millennia of insidious sexism that has permeated western society. But as times and customs have changed so drastically in the post-modern world and the extended family has become more fragmented, women have placed an even greater emphasis on the need for support from their close friends. Women are willing to share a whole range of their thoughts, emotions, experiences, hopes and fears with their friends. The sense of mutual trust that arises from a reciprocal friendship allows an individual woman to be exposed to a wider range of life’s experiences than her own, and she may well find that her own sense of morality is changed and expanded.
For example, while it is possible to find other ways of being in the world though literature both fiction and nonfiction, movies, and television, when friend A sees her friend B living and acting in the real world, and when friend B is fully available to reciprocate, sharing her experiences and values that may differ from those learned in her family and society, and frankly answer questions about her life, this can result in a change in friend A’s own morality (Marilyn Friedman 201-02).
This, I would submit, differs from Aristotle’s relatively comfortable and rather cozy description of friendship between men, who seem to have had no interest in rocking the boat and changing values in the men’s club. Why would the privileged citizens controlling Athenian society ever wish to do so? But contemporary thinking women, still a subjugated class, wish to have the same rights and privileges as men, and in order to do so, must act to bring about societal change.

If you are squeamish

Don’t prod the
beach rubble.

Sappho, fragment 84 (ca. 600 BCE)


On a personal note, here is an example of how a friendship opened the possibility of significant new values for me. In 1975, I was married, had two children, was teaching classes in feminist art history, and had read extensively about feminism and lesbianism. Although I had had close friendships with women all my life, I thought I had never known a lesbian, and never considered a woman as a sexual partner. Then, on July 4, sitting around the swimming pool in Detroit while our young children splashed in the water, my close friend S told me that she’d been having an affair with a woman in Toronto, a safe distance away in those closeted times. In fact, she was sharing her grief, as the relationship had ended. I was very surprised, but not shocked or appalled. S next joined a group called “Sappho Sisters Rising” and made her way in and out of several relationships. I watched, shared in her joys and sorrows, met some of her new friends and saw that their values were good ones. Thus I understood that a loving relationship with a woman that included a sexual component could contribute more to my happiness and personal growth than the distant emotional chilliness of my husband. I eventually took the leap, asked for a divorce, and entered into a lesbian relationship myself. In my marriage I always felt like a second-class citizen. The feminist movement of the 1970s allowed my intellectual understanding of women’s compromised position in society and this led to an increase in my moral authority, which I believe was helpful to the students I was then teaching. It also led to other satisfying accomplishments in work, deepening friendships, and a feeling that I was indeed now flourishing.
Opportunities for learning diverse values and life styles from friends of different backgrounds classes probably were few in ancient Athens, but would Aristotle have taken advantage of them if they had? As a member of the privileged upper class, he would have had scant motivation to do so.
Lesbian ethicists, such as Mary Daly and Marilyn Frye, have postulated an ideal separatist Lesbian Nation, where, according to Frye, there would be no dominant and no subordinate class, and all women would be truly equal. In this case, they argue that no form of rule-making ethics would be necessary (in Claudia Card, pp. 58-59). While this seems impossibly idealistic, it does raise the question of whether dogmatic ethical rules are put in place by a ruling group seeking to control others.
An idea of Sarah Hoagland’s caught my attention. In Lesbian Ethics, she proposes, “I think we would do well to dissolve the rigid distinction between friend and lover.” (p. 174). Indeed, I know of more than one couple of women living together in very long-term passionate and exemplary relationships, who have never felt the desire to be lovers in the sexual sense. Part of the feminist agenda has been to dispense with the ancient Greek terminology rigidly separating eros, phillia, and agape, concepts developed and propagated by men, and consider the more complex expression of range of possibilities in freely chosen loving friendships between women.
By exploring, however briefly, feminist concepts of morality in the variety and richness of friendships between women, I have found these much more compelling and useful than the more limited and segmented Aristotelian discourse, and certainly closer to my own morality, the way I can personally feel a kind of happiness in living in the world.
Tell everyone

Now, today, I shall
Sing beautifully for
My friends’ pleasure

Sappho, fragment 1

Of course Aristotle would have known of Sappho and her community of women; the fragments of her poetry have been found all over the ancient Mediterranean world. Fragments, not entire books. But her name and that of Lesbos, the lovely Aegean island, still resonate in Western minds 2,600 years later as “The L Word” is in its sixth season on Showtime TV.



References

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, translated by Joe Sachs, Newburyport, Mass., Focus Publishing, 2002.

Card, Claudia. Feminist Ethics, University Press of Kansas, 1991.

Daly, Mary, Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism, Boston, Beacon Press, 1978.

Friedman, Marilyn, What Are Friends For?: Feminist Perspectives on Personal Relationships and Moral Theory, Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press, 1993.

Frye, Marilyn, “A Response to Lesbian Ethics: Why Ethics?” in Claudia Card 1991.

Gilligan, Carol, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development,
Cambridge, Mass., and London, Harvard University Press, 1982.

Griffiths, Morwenna, and Margaret Whitford, Feminist Perspectives in Philosophy, Bloomington and Indianapolis, University of Indiana Press, 1988.

Hoagland, Sarah Lucia, Lesbian Ethics: Toward New Value, Palo Alto, Institute of Lesbian Studies, 1988.

Mohin, Lilian, ed., An Intimacy of Equals: Lesbian Feminist Ethics, London, Onlywomen Press, Ltd., 1996.

Nye, Andrea, Philosophy and Feminism at the Border, New York, Twaine Publishers, 1995.

Pollit, Katha, Reasonable Creatures: Essays on Women and Feminism, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1995.

Sappho, A New Translation by Mary Barnard, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1958 [unpaginated]

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on line: various articles, passim.

Woolf, Virginia, A Room of One’s Own, New York, Harcourt Brace, Inc. 1929, pp. 76-77.