The Ethics of Friendship

Greetings All,

The latest Thinking Out Loud podcast has been released on iTunes. The session was recorded on Wednesday, June 4th, and the topic was:

"What are the ethics of friendship?"

Thank you, Deborah Martin, Steve Stokes, and Uriah J. Fields, for your participation. The discussion was insightful and stimulating. For those of you who missed out, here are some of the questions we grappled with:

Are friendships optional? Are they necessary to live the good life? Is there a universal need to give and receive affection? Where do our feelings about friendships come from? Why do we treat our friends the way we do? Are friendships more "disposable" than they used to be? How do friendships come to be? How much is it by choice? How much is it by chance? Does it require willful action? What are friends for? What are the motives for making and keeping friends? How can we know if a friendship is "true"? What do we expect from friendship? How do expectations differ? Are friendships meant to last forever? What are the ethics of ending a friendship? Is friendship an investment? Is it ethical to end a friendship with unequal investment, "an unbalanced account"? Is it ethical to just fade away? Must we know and must we give a reason for ending a friendship? How do we reconcile the need to grow and to be free with the expectations of friendship? Can we ever fail to profit from our friendship "investment" so long as we see friendship as its own reward without any further expectations?

To subscribe to the podcast with your podcast software (such as iTunes or iPodder) copy and past the following link into your software:

www.citizenphilosopher.com/rss/tol_podcasts.xml

If you have iTunes, you can find us listed in the Apple Music Store directory under Podcasts/Society & Culture/Philosophy, or just do a search in iTunes on Thinking Out Loud People. The direct iTunes link is:

phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=214321935

If you don't have iTunes or other podcast software and just want to download the mp3 file directly, use this link:

Listen to the broadcast (mp3)

You are invited to add your thoughts by clicking on the "comments" link at the lower right hand corner of this post.

The next Thinking Out Loud will be Wednesday, July 2nd, at 7:00 pm. No topic has yet been chosen. We will select a topic at the beginning of the next session. I will reserve the time between 7:00 and 7:15 for topic selection, so please arrive on time with your topic suggestions, if you want to participate in the selection process. You can also email me your suggestions ahead of time, whether or not you are planning to attend. The recording session will last one hour as usual. I'll hang around for an additional 15 minutes after the recording for anyone who wishes to critique that particular session or any aspect of the Thinking Out Loud project.

Lastly, let me leave you with one of my favorite quotes on friendship. I don't remember where I found it and I wish I had thought of it during our podcast recording. Nevertheless, here it is - a definition of friendship:

"A friend is someone who knows all about you,...and likes you anyway."

Cheers,

Steve

****************************************************
Premed Science Tutor,
Citizen Philosopher,
Life Coach
www.citizenphilosopher.com
****************************************************