Love & Friendship
Lecture 23: Friendship Consists More in Loving Than Being Loved

Transcript
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If you take the highest kind of love, right? This love wishing well, right? Is it more belong to friendship for me to wish well to my friend, right? Or to have my friend wish well to me? Because it involves both, right? Friendship is mutual love, right? And therefore, there must be being loved as well as loving, right? But why would Aristotle... I think the reason that Aristotle would take his being so obvious in the context of what has gone before and so on, that obviously friendship consists more in loving than in being loved. Perfect love and love, it's an act. Yeah, yeah. It's an act, yeah. My loving you is an act of friendship, isn't it? Is my being loved an act of... No. I am said to be loved because of an act in you, right? But that act in you is loving me. Being loved is not really an act of friendship, is it? Now, make a comparison to something that we said before. We said how friendship is either an effective virtue or it's a kind of virtue itself, right? And if you look at it as being a kind of virtue, it resembles most of all the virtue of justice. Okay? And as you know, justice involves what? I'm paying my debts and so on, right? But someone asks you, does justice consist in paying what you owe or having what is owed you paid you? Or does it consist in both? What would you say? It's both involved in justice, right? Because if I'm paying you what I owe you and others are paying you what they owe me, right? Then you are being paid what you are owed and I'm being paid what I owe, right? But which is more an act of justice? Which would you think of me as a just man? Because people are paying you what they owe me? No. That's not really an act of justice at all in me, is it? It may be said of me because of an act of justice in somebody else. It's not really an act of justice in me at all, is it? I'm just because people are paying me what they owe me? I'm just because I pay to others, right? I give to others what is their due, right? Do you see? The other really isn't an act, is it? So notice, my loving you, and by that love of wishing well, right? My loving you is a real perfection of me as a friend, isn't it? What did he say? Greater love than this hath no man than to be loved by his friends? No, no. But it's a real perfection in me to be loving you, right? Okay? By the right kind of love, huh? Loving you as myself. But is my being loved, is that really a perfection of me? At most, it's a sign of perfection in me, maybe. Something good in me, right? Ah, I haven't falsely presented myself, right? It could be a sign of something good in me, right? But my loving you is actually a perfection of me, right? By loving you by the love of wishing well. Do you see that? So if the one is a real perfection of the lover of the friend, and the other is at best only a sign of the perfection of that lover, obviously it consists more in loving than in what? Being loved, right? But again, the fact that, as we said earlier, that men, those men, let's say, seek more to be loved than to love, right? Is a sign of the defect in our, what? Friendships, right? Okay? And that St. Francis should have that in the famous prayer as a sign that this is something to pray, right? Of course, it's kind of funny because obviously, as Augustine says, and Thomas can follow him, nothing moves us so much to love someone else as an experience of their love for us, and especially an unselfish love, right? So the more unselfishly you love others, the more they're going to be apt to love you in return. So what you're not seeking so much, you're getting more of, right? And the person who seeks only to be loved and doesn't really love, but I love wishing well anyway, others, huh? Do you see? You see, Aristotle kind of passes it over because it should be clear to a man who spent six or seven books on the virtues, right? Okay? That to love is an act of friendship. To be loved is not an act of friendship at all. It's something, it's what we call in logic an extrinsic denomination, right? I am said to be loved because of an act of loving you for me. You see? But I'm loving you by an act of love that's perfecting my will in me. Even though love of wishing well, right? Do you see? Clear? Yes. Thank you. Now, Aristotle passes over the obvious reason, Thomas says, and he gives a sign. Now, the sign is taken from the mother. Now, why from the mother rather than from the father? That's obvious, right? The mother is known for having perfection of what? Of love, right? Okay? However, it seems to be more in loving than in being loved, huh? A sign is that mothers who are especially given to the excellence of love rejoice in what? In loving. Now, it's taking a very example here because I suppose in Greece there wasn't Similac and all these artificial milks that we have nowadays, right? So, if a mother didn't have enough milk in her breast for her baby, that baby could be in real what? Trouble, right? What these mothers would do would give it to another woman, right? To breastfeed. And that would what? Be for the good of the baby, right? It's really dangerous, huh? Now, if the baby feeds at the other woman, that baby is going to what? Be attached to the other woman because of this intimacy, right? So that she's going to, the baby's going to love that other woman or express more warmth than for its own, his own mother, right? Okay? Why then does the mother give it to the other woman? Because she seeks more to love than to be loved, right? She seeks more the good of the what? The baby, right? Okay? It's a beautiful example that he has there. A sign is that mothers rejoice in loving. For some give theirs to be nourished, right? And they love knowing, but do not seek to be loved in return if both are not possible. I might give it to the farm woman out there, you know, on the outskirts of town, right? Okay? But it seems to be enough for them if they see the babies and so on doing well, right? And they love nevertheless the babies even if the latter impart nothing that befits a mother through what? Ignorance, right? Okay? Now you can take other examples of that, you know, like sometimes in these calamities you might see a mother giving up her child, right? Because the country is collapsing or the city is collapsing, right? And so on. Like in Vietnam at the end of the war and so on. And she gave up that child in a sense to be adopted by somebody else, right? Now if that child is adopted by someone else and doesn't really know it's natural mother it's going to give whatever love it has to that adopting parent, right? So they're going to be loved more than the natural mother, right? So why does the natural mother give up the baby in those circumstances? Yeah, so she loves more, she seeks more to love the baby, as a sign of which is that she's seeking more of the good of the baby, right? And she's seeking to be loved herself, right? Sometimes these very young girls get into trouble in high school and so on, and they don't have an abortion, but they do have the baby, right? But sometimes, all things considered, they put the baby up for adoption, right? Because they realize they, you know, a young teenage girl with a good-for-nothing father there, can't really provide for that baby very well, right? And someone else can give them the nourishment, education, all the rest, right? So if they do this, they are, what? Seeking more the good of the baby than to be loved by the baby, right? Okay? So this is the kind of example that Aristotle is taking here, right? As a sign that those who are more perfect at loving, namely the mother who is supposed to be the most perfect among human beings at loving, they seek more to love than to be loved, right? Interesting sign, yes, huh? I passed it over the obvious reason. Okay? 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