5 - Beginning the Natural History of Friendship

Summary

So we should begin the philosophy of friendship not with a formal, logically watertight definition, but rather with a rough definition of friendship, such as my own characterisation of friendship as benevolent companionship over time, or such as the dictionary definition that I quote in Chapter 3. We can also base our reflections on the question ‘What is opposite to friendship?’, and on an explicit and conscious list of examples of friendship. And it’s all the better if this list is explicit and conscious, because our thoughts about friendship almost certainly will be guided by our own experiences of friendship whether we realise it or not, so we will be using some list of examples either consciously or unconsciously; consciously is preferable.