On friendship
Dan, a man of large mind, is doing a blog series on Friendship. I do like Dan’s blog – it’s different – and I like the elements that have appeared in this series. I've posted the links in here below, because wordpress blogs just don't work like I'm used to for series labels. I particularly like this paragraph:
Maybe there is another reason that friendship is hard to find: that it is somehow essentially resistant to definition. To begin with a definition is to seek the ‘sameness’ of friendships, to isolate the distinctive patterns and markings that make ‘friend’ into a kind. I don’t want for a minute to deny that there is something distinctive about this relation. But what if its distinctiveness lies in its freedom, in the basic unboundedness, the foundational non-obligation of the relationship which makes it into such a gift? If so, maybe we should start with the ‘different-ness’ of friends. Perhaps here we will find traces of the friend who is to come?
Friendship I – Apology and Confession
In Hope: Meditations on Friendship Lost and Found
Friendship: Losing and Finding
Friendship: How to think ‘friend’?