Perfect Friendship and Bitter Merit
What strikes me most in Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals is his discussion of our duties to others.
It wasn’t until I read Kant two years ago that I first encountered the concept of duties to others.
Before that, I was rather like Sun Wukong—placing my autonomy and dignity above all else. Stubborn by nature, often at odds with the world, absolutely refusing to give anyone leverage over me or to allow emotional manipulation.
Though deeply sentimental at heart, I rarely expressed it to others, as if it were a weakness or vulnerability. And indeed it was—meeting the wrong people made me an easy target for exploitation. Once, an old friend of ten years swindled me out of some money, and I was so furious I mentally blacklisted everyone from that entire province. The money itself—a few thousand dollars—wasn’t much. What hurt more was the betrayal of friendship.
Even so, we should still pursue friendship. The most precious things in life are friends, followed by time. Both friends and time are worth more than money.
1. Perfect Friendship
Perfect friendship seems to exist only in romantic novels—nearly impossible to achieve in reality, relying on chance and rarely reaching perfection. The ship of friendship capsizes easily, and once overturned, can scarcely be righted again.
The difficulty of friendship lies in the tension between love and respect. Friends must have affinity and maintain attraction; yet they also need mutual respect and appropriate distance—a kind of repelling force.
Perfect friendship, then, is merely an ideal—unattainable. Yet we must pursue it nonetheless.
Since friendship is so contingent, my understanding of the methodology is this:
First, uphold all the principles of friendship, fulfill all the duties a friend ought to have, make yourself worthy of friendship, and only then hope to find friends who can understand such friendship.
Four principles of friendship:
Even the best of friends should not become overly familiar. Excessive intimacy irreparably undermines respect.
Mutual advantage must not be made the end of friendship. Even when friends help each other, this is merely the outward manifestation of inner benevolence, not the end or ground of friendship.
Whether helping or being helped, preserve a sense of equality—help one another as peers, not as a benefactor bestowing favors.
Do not put friendship to the test.
2. Bitter Merit
Since reading Kant and Dostoevsky these past two years, I’ve been trying to practice the idea of loving others. But it hasn’t gone smoothly.
The biggest problem is: What do we do when our good deeds are met with misunderstanding and indifference?
To be honest, I don’t enjoy doing good at all. I know I’ve never been a good person.
In the past, I most admired Sulla—half lion, half fox—whose motto was: “No friend ever served me, and no enemy ever wronged me, whom I have not repaid in full.”
So whenever my goodwill is misunderstood or my kindness repaid with evil, I’m immediately filled with rage and want to retaliate.
I’m a hired servant, I expect my wages at once—that is, praise and the repayment of love with love. Otherwise I’m incapable of loving anyone!
—Madame Khokhlakov, The Brothers Karamazov
For someone as wicked as me to suddenly reform and pursue goodness—you can imagine this entirely unfamiliar path won’t be easy.
Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all.¹
But active love is labor and fortitude, and for some people too, perhaps, a complete science.¹
—Elder Zosima, The Brothers Karamazov
Yet this is precisely the true path that Kant and Dostoevsky point us toward.
When our good deeds are met with misunderstanding and coldness, though the feeling is bitter, the moral merit is actually greater, because it more purely demonstrates the strength of our virtue.
Even if you cannot attain to happiness, always remember that you are on the right path, and try not to leave it.¹
—Elder Zosima, The Brothers Karamazov
3. Love Your Neighbor as Yourself
Honestly, I still don’t understand how one can actually love one’s neighbor.
I could never understand how one can love one’s neighbors. It’s just one’s neighbors, to my mind, that one can’t love, though one might love those at a distance.²
—Ivan Karamazov, The Brothers Karamazov
But loving your neighbor as yourself doesn’t mean first stirring up feelings of love in your heart, then helping others through that impulse. Rather, treat doing good as a duty—do good first, and the doing itself will naturally generate love for others in your heart.
This is practical wisdom.
References
¹ Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, Elder Zosima’s teachings
² Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan Karamazov’s words