Three Contiguities of Friendship: Consciousness – Contingency – Parable

Marcin T. ZDRENKA

Zakład Aksjologii i Etyki Społecznej, Instytut Filozofii, Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika, ul. Fosa Staromiejska 1a, 87-100 Toruń, Poland , Poland

Abstract

Friendship is the main issue of the article. The article has a specific form of narration. It is a story with no radical judgments, sharp demarcations or definitive conclusions. This form results from the ‘madness of excess,’ the main obstacle in the study of friendship: so much has been written about it that any attempt to deal with the problem of friendship seems naïve. The ‘excess’ in question applies to philosophical reflection as well as to trivialization of friendship in popular culture. In order to characterize the latter, the original category of coelia has been introduced. Coelia is a word formed from Paulo Coehlo’s name and it denotes banal aphorisms formulated in a simplified, catchy way which apparently grasp some hidden, especially philosophical, truth. The attempt to approach friendship is accomplished based on three additional terms, namely, consciousness, contingency and parable. In the Polish language, all of them, like the word przyjaźń itself, which denotes friendship, begin with the prefix przy. Consciousness refers thus to conscious – often one-sided – orientation toward the other, and it points to the uniqueness of friendship at the stage of its formation. Contingency describes the discontinuity of friendship, its inconsistency and ambivalence. And, last but not least, the parable, which involves a narrative thread, reflects the fact that friendship is accomplished in language and through language. It also justifies the specific form of the article. So does the fact that the human being is in the first place the speaking being (homo loquens).

Keywords:

friendship, consciousness, contingency, parable, coelia, narrative ethics