Friendship As a Metaphysical Experience

Abstract

The author focuses on a philosophical tradition born from a friendly dialogue. To understand the development and specificity of philosophical concepts, it is important to study the interpersonal, existential communication of authors within small philosophical communities and groups. The author considers friendly com­munication among the most essential interpersonal existential communications for the philosophical tradition. The trajectory of understanding friendship as the basic structure of human existence was set for centuries by Aristotle and Ci­cero. Since Montaigne, friendly communication has been seen as the source of philosophizing. Transcending the anthropological approach, Heidegger linked the phenomenon of friendship with the question of being. The article presents the phenomenon of friendship as an experience of voluntary freedom that makes a person. Friendship is understood as filia – love that gives a person integrity, making him/her what the person cannot be without his/her circle of friends. Phi­losophy as the “voice of a friend” was considered by La Boétie, Nietzsche, Flo­rensky, Heidegger, and Fédier. Montaigne put debt of such friendship above civil duty and love passion, Lessing thought it possible to sacrifice truth for the sake of such friendship, Hannah Arendt gave preference to such friendship over brotherhood and comradeship. The article shows that the art of philosophizing is largely determined by intellectual generosity, talent for friendly communication. Being engaged in philosophy implies listening, discussion, argument, mutual ex­change of intuitions, reasoned expression of disagreement.