Hölderlin to Hegel
Waltershausen
July 10, 1794
I am certain that you have occasionally thought of me since we parted from one another with the watchword -- Reich Gottes! [Kingdom of God] I believe that we would recognize each other throughout every metamorphosis with this watchword. I am certain that whatever you become, time will not efface this trait in you. I think that this will also be the case with me. Every trait that we love one another for is exquisite. And thus can we be sure of everlasting friendship.
(here)
4 comments:
The idea of entering into friendship is similar to that of joining an exclusive club, where membership at once signifies definition and isolation. To be a friend to another person is directly interpretable as being accepted into an albeit small circle (?), but always at the expense of a reduced individuality - with a sort of commonality leaving its mark on the given identity. That it is possible - notwithstanding the proclaimed "love" in the letter - to share common interests in the absence of friendship, does not rule out the possibility of a passion for recognition.
What I find fascinating about the process of making friends is the way social divisions seem to affect one's choice. It seems unless you are aware of it and in a position to impose your will in a deliberate way on the whole issue, that you tend always to aim for some sort of equity or uniformity, as in when you do not allow yourself to, say, feel embarrassed by having, or cause embarrassment to, a friend who's not as well off as you, or considered to be not in the same social caste. Even at the level of the teen-age peer groups, the 16-year-old who gets mad drunk is "merely displaying the wild side of his/her temperament" if he/she happens to be from a middle class background, whereas with a w-class stigma about him/her, he/she has just proved to be unable to behave in a civilized manner, doesn't possess an awareness of his/her social status, and can't perhaps be trusted to befriend our values as well as he/she should! Such social-class-based judgments used as criteria for choosing friends hardly ever apply to relations among children, who tend to have a lot more forbearance. In their case, though, it's still uncanny how they tend to choose friends who are about the same height as themselves, unless if it be a case of the opposites who attract each other, where you can no longer speak of a "circle of friends" but only "a pair". On a different note, can't imgaine what the wheelchair pictogram is trying to say appearing here!
Thanks Dan, much food for thought in yr comments. You seem to suggest that friendship is always somehow about self-definition on an Imagniary level. What interests me is the possibility of friendships beyond precisely that -I'll hopefully try and post something on this.
Thank YOU! There are, in theory, innumreable possibilities. Personally I try to understand friendship by dividing it into two basic types (thus resorting to method where originality of thought or first-hand experience may be lacking): the type where you accept and are accepted by a friend, in which identities may well be given or "imaginary". The other type of friendship is about affirmation, a great big YES, so to speak. This one goes beyond the notion of identity, is the culmination of acceptance, and of course feeds on things on the "imaginary level". I haven't so far been able to come up with any other basic types.
Self-definition depends on the degree of self-consciousness, but does not necessarily conduce to a definition of friendship of one sort or another.
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