Friendship

Following the spirit of De Cruz's article, which I've blogged about, I'm capturing examples of this sort of engagement -- any source is fair game.

I plan to come back and give some context to these, where appropriate, later.

De Cruz cites the following passage from Mengzi (translation from her article, by Bryan Van Norden):

Mengzi said to his disciple Wan Zhang, “If you are one of the finest nobles in a village, then befriend the other fine nobles of that village. If you are one of the finest nobles in a state, then befriend the other fine nobles of that state. If you are one of the finest nobles in the world, then befriend the other fine nobles of the world. If befriending the other fine nobles of the world is still not enough, then ascend to examine the ancients. Recite their Odes and read their Documents. But can you do this without understanding what sort of people they were? Because of this, you must examine their era. This is how friendship ascends.”

Full letter is here. De Cruz quotes the famous passage where Machiavelli relates how he spends his evenings. Below is the translation provided in her article:

On the coming of evening, I return to my house and enter my study; and at the door I take off the day’s clothing, covered with mud and dust, and put on garments regal and courtly; and reclothed appropriately, I enter the ancient courts of ancient men, where, received by them with affection (entro nelle antique corti degli antiqui huomini, dove, da loro ricevuto amorevolmente), I feed on that food which only is mine and which I was born for, where I am not ashamed to speak with them and to ask them the reason for their actions; and they in their kindness answer me (et domandarli della ragione delle loro actioni; et quelli per loro humanità mi rispondono); and for four hours of time I do not feel boredom, I forget every trouble, I do not dread poverty, I am not frightened by death; entirely I give myself over to them ... I have noted everything in their conversation which has profited me, and have composed a little work On Princedoms, where I go as deeply as I can into considerations on this subject, debating what a princedom is, of what kinds they are, how they are gained, how they are kept, why they are lost.

Although De Cruz uses Clare Carlisle's own version of imaginary friendship with Spinoza as an example of how we might engage with the past - i.e. by imagining ourselves as a member of Spinoza's friendship circle - she doesn't discuss Spinoza's own engagement with the past.

Madeleine Thien, in The Book of Records, helps us out a bit here, albeit by way of fiction. Blogged about this at: Madeleine Thien imagines Spinoza's particular friendship with the ancients.

Du Bois is De Cruz's opening example, using the closing paragraph of Chapter 6, "Of the Training of Black Men":

I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil.

The Book of Records is full of fleshed-out imagined examples of reading/thinking in a manner that speaks of friendship.

• Hannah Arendt imagining playing chess with Kant (p. 118)
• Lina and Du Fu confiding in each other, sharing their desires, anxieties, and questions (p. 125-126)

In an interview w/Niela Orr for the NYTimes, Kincaid provides a funny example of conversation across historical distance --- not quite friendship, but it suggests a certain intimacy, a complicated one.

... she walked me over to a bust of Thomas Jefferson looming over a shaded corner of her garden, introducing me to him like he was an old friend or a hostage. “Very controversial, but we will explain,” she said. “When summer is over, he spends the winter in the basement.” Then, she showed me a plant called the twin-leaf, which has one frond divided into two nearly identical leaflets. “The two halves are not identical — is that Jefferson or no?” Kincaid asked, showing me the fraternal leaves with professorial wonder and not a small amount of delight. Its scientific name, Jeffersonia diphylla, was given to it by the botanist Benjamin Smith Barton, one of Thomas Jefferson’s contemporaries, “before anyone thought of his twin nature,” she said, of the president’s duality.

Kincaid is an admirer of Jefferson’s writing on horticulture, so when she discovered this plant, it appealed to her; she saw that it spoke to his fundamental contradiction as both a theorist of democratic liberty and slaver. “One has to contemplate these histories,” Kincaid said. “And so, I find him a good person to have a conversation with.”

Part of that conversation is about her garden.