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Who thinks that they can subdue Leviathan? Strength resides in its neck; dismay goes before it. It is without fear. It looks down on all who are haughty; it is king over all who are proud. These words inspired PJ Wehry to create Chasing Leviathan. Chasing Leviathan was born out of two ideals: that truth is worth pursuing but will never be subjugated, and the discipline of listening is one of the most important habits anyone can develop. Every episode is a dialogue, a journey into the depths of a meaningful question explored through the lens of personal experience or professional expertise.
PJ:
Hello and welcome to Chasing the Viathan. I'm your host, PJ Weary, and I'm here today with Dr. Sarah Horton, who just has received her PhD from Boston College and is Assistant Editor at the Journal for Continental Philosophy of Religion. Dr. Horton, absolute pleasure to have you on today.
Sarah Horton:
Yes, thank you for the invitation. It's a pleasure to be on.
PJ:
We're talking today about your new book, The Promise of Friendship, Fidelity with Infinitude. Why this book?
Sarah Horton:
Well, this book developed from my doctoral dissertation. So it was a book that had really been in the works for a while. I actually chose my topic in my second year in grad school when I was frustrated with how little attention contemporary philosophers give to the topic of friendship. It seemed that philosophers would always be talking about eros in preference to friendship and... We're completely neglecting this other kind of relation that's actually something that is very important to people. Lots of people have friends. People who don't have friends almost always wish that they had friends. And this is something that has historically been of great importance to philosophers. And look at the place of prominence that Aristotle gives to Philia. And of course, you know, one thing that I talk about is nephelia is not the exact same kind of relation that we're talking about when we say friendship today. But at the same time, it's not just a different relationship.
PJ:
Hmm.
Sarah Horton:
You know, there's something there that's important for philosophers to pick up on in talking about friendship today. And so I was thinking this is a topic that's really become very neglected. And it's, I mean, there's, there's some more recent exceptions, such as De Riedes, the politics of friendship. But overall, I was thinking this is just not something that's gotten enough attention from philosophers. And yet it's a topic that turns out to have a great deal to teach us about what it is. to be human. You know, you mentioned the subtitle is Fidelity with Infinitude, and one of the big questions that this book is tackling is, okay, why is friendship good for us?
PJ:
Hmm.
Sarah Horton:
Might it not be better if we were completely self-sufficient beings? And then one of the key things that I'm arguing is, well, if we were completely self-sufficient beings, then we're not human
PJ:
Hmm.
Sarah Horton:
anymore. That our finitude means that we're not self-sufficient, but at the same time, it's ridiculous to try to sum finitude up in terms of everything that we're not. We are the kind of beings that can be transformed through relationships with others.
PJ:
Hmm.
Sarah Horton:
And that's the beauty of friendship.
PJ:
And even as I, you know, is glancing through the book comes out in November, you know,
Sarah Horton:
Mm-hmm.
PJ:
so this kind of fun is a sneak peek I was able to glance through. But it's not just that, if I'm reading you correctly, it's not just that this relationship can transform us, it's that it should transform us, that we should have these relationships that transform us.
Sarah Horton:
Mm-hmm,
PJ:
Right,
Sarah Horton:
exactly.
PJ:
that it,
Sarah Horton:
Yes,
PJ:
go ahead.
Sarah Horton:
that fidelity is what creates the self. That if you're not bound to anyone, then you're actually less yourself. Did I talk about friends as translating the world for each other? That is that friends are experiencing the world not as the other one does, never just as the other person does. You're different people, but in light of the other's experience. And the whole idea of fidelity is that it's this binding commitment, that it's not just this sort of passing relationship. where you might briefly come to see something differently and then you move on. Like that's great. That's also something that's going to happen in the course of human life. But friendship goes deeper than that. It's this lifetime commitment and that very being bound infidelity long-term to another person. regardless of how you or the other person might change. I mean, that's not to say that the question of change is, is a simple one. If, if your friend becomes a serial killer, to take a really extreme example,
PJ:
Ha ha ha!
Sarah Horton:
that's, that's going to be a problem. Uh, or if you become a serial killer, that's, that's going to be a problem for, for your friend, or at least it should, because, you know, obviously serial killing is bad. But the sort of commitment where you don't know what's going to come of it, that's actually something that's creating you as a self, that it's forming you. It's becoming part of who you are in a way that shapes your future and that even works backward to affect how you look at your past. So it is something that's fundamentally transformative and that kind of transformation is good because that's what brings you out of yourself and into the world. You might think I should play it safe. I shouldn't let myself get committed to somebody when I don't really know how it might change me or how they're going to change. But you say that, you decide not to take that risk, and you're really just shutting yourself off from other people and closing yourself off to that risk that's an essential aspect of living in the world and saying, I refuse to let my world be transformed. You're just locking yourself into this tiny narrow world.
PJ:
Yeah, yeah. I will say, I think that some people would actually be very pleased to be friends with a serial killer because, I mean, who wouldn't in our day and age want to be friends with a celebrity, right? I mean,
Sarah Horton:
I'm sorry.
PJ:
at least, you can at least be a podcast guest, right? No,
Sarah Horton:
I'm
PJ:
the,
Sarah Horton:
sorry.
PJ:
but no, point taken is that We don't know what's going to happen and the commitment really does transform us. You know, something that struck me from your title, and you've kind of touched on a lot of things, and they're very important things, so thank you. But you say fidelity within finitude. And one of the things that popped into my mind was why within?
Sarah Horton:
because it's a condition of existing with infinitude that shapes the whole way that fidelity works for us as human beings. But it's because of our finitude that we don't know where fidelity is going to lead us. But at the same time, that's what makes, that's what makes human fidelity. fidelity, that we're binding ourselves or we're being bound rather. It's not even something that you're necessarily even consciously doing. Like maybe you realize I would like to be lifelong friends with this person, but even in that case, it's not something that you're controlling. And, and it's also with infinitude because there's the idea. You're faithful to the friend even beyond death. You don't just forget about your friend the moment the friend dies, if the friend is the one to die first. And so there's that sort of infinity then within finitude, the infinite commitment, and yet within the finitude of a life bounded by death. and a life where you don't know what's going to come of this fidelity. And also because it's because we exist in infinitude that we can be transformed by other people. And indeed as you just mentioned that we should be transformed by other people. So it's our existence with infinitude that's constitutive of the way that fidelity does shape us and even create us, and that it even must shape and create us.
PJ:
Yeah, and. Let me follow up on that question, because as you're talking about within finitude, obviously we're talking about limits. What are the limits of the finitude you're talking about here? Are we talking about the limits of the relationship, the limits of the community, or are we talking about the limits of the self, like that I am finite and it's the faithfulness inside within me, or is it the faithfulness within the community? Because I know you also
Sarah Horton:
Mmm.
PJ:
reference Aristotle and the political side of things. finitude in that communal sense that and kind of like maybe shaped around us or our finitude as ourselves like as individuals
Sarah Horton:
It would refer to any of that really to the limits within which we as human beings exist, limits that constitute us as individuals, limits that also apply to the community and to
PJ:
Mm.
Sarah Horton:
life within community. within time and none of us chose to exist and we're all going to die at some point and we're subject to change and one really important thing that's going on here is actually a distinction between the finitude between finitude and the finite, and Martin Heidegger that were finite, you know, to be finite is like to not be infinite. There's
PJ:
Mmm.
Sarah Horton:
all these things that were not. And then
PJ:
Mm.
Sarah Horton:
the idea is that doesn't sum up human existence. Like for instance you can talk about a sonnet in terms of all the things that it's not, but at some point if you really want to to talk about it appropriately, you need to start talking about what it is.
PJ:
Right.
Sarah Horton:
And just talking about, okay, we're finite, we're not infinite, we're not eternal, we're not changeless, that ends up giving a bit of the impression that human existence is something to be regretted. The whole, wouldn't it be better if we were as God
PJ:
Hmm.
Sarah Horton:
idea. And then talking about finitude, that's talking about it in terms of, okay, what is human existence? It's to exist within time as changeable, as transformable. And that's actually what's suited to us. And it doesn't make sense to say, wouldn't it be better if we were gods? Because that's actually going to destroy what it is to be a human being. And it's good to be human beings. Okay. I give the analogy of, okay, so God's perfectly self-sufficient. God doesn't need external sources of beauty, for instance. And yet. it would be absurd to look at the human experience of the beauty of a mountain range or of the Saint-Echappelle in Paris or a great work of literature or any other experience of beauty and say, gee, what a shame that we have these experiences. Wouldn't it be better if we didn't need them? And then similarly too with friendship.
PJ:
Mm. Yes. Even as you're talking here, there was one part that some of my background, my background's actually in philosophy of religion. So
Sarah Horton:
Mm-hmm.
PJ:
there's some theology in there as well. There's a lot here about the distinction between law and grace and the way that grace is this over an abundancy, if that makes sense. And so it's not that like the laws like things must be this way, like there's a way that things should be. And then there's just things that are just like extra. that and that's what grace is in many ways and that when you talk about that these like God is beautiful in and of himself but that the idea that like other beautiful things don't add anything is it's foolish right and so is there any like as I talk about that those ideas of law and grace do you see any of the any connections there between those two things between your what you're describing
Sarah Horton:
Yes, yes, I think so. I mean, I even talk a bit about friendship as in terms of in terms of grace, that it's given to us to exist with infinitude and to be transformed. That's something that really should be thought of as a gift because it can be very easy, especially if I mean, I'm taking an approach that is very much influenced by Derrida. And yet one danger of that sort of influence is, is you can get caught up in thinking of all the ways in which things, you know, don't work all the ways in which we can't be perfectly faithful. You know, there, there's this demand of infinite fidelity and we can never live up to that. And friendship is always a risk, it's always a danger, and that's absolutely true. And yet also it's a gift or indeed a grace, in being called to friendship, that is an absolutely wonderful gift. And yes, there is the risk because you don't know what's going to happen ultimately, what's going to come of it. It is something that's dangerous to undertake, throwing back to Kukagoda, I say to be undertaken in fear and trembling, and yet also with gratitude for the gift, because this is an absolutely wonderful thing, and the opportunity to take that risk is just... incredible, I could even say to continue with the more religious language and an incredible blessing.
PJ:
Hmm. Yes, it's interesting. I was going to ask you. It's fun that you brought up Kierkegaard because I remember how important it was for me in my study to come across the concept of anxiety by Kierkegaard and where he starts off by talking about Adam approaching original sin, the original sin, not original sin as the concept, but like the original sin. And he uses that as a case study to demonstrate that some knowledge can only be found through the commitment.
Sarah Horton:
Mm-hmm.
PJ:
And of course, Heidegger would have been very familiar with Kierkegaard. And as you're pulling, I can see the strands here of this idea of like, there's a certain... there are certain barriers that can only be crossed through commitment and that is transformational even at a knowledge level, which is not something that's I think prominent in our culture, right? Like
Sarah Horton:
Mm-hmm.
PJ:
we're very consumer driven, we're very like, we'd like to research and pick and choose, but in terms of fully committing to something that's not something that we generally do as a culture.
Sarah Horton:
Mm-hmm.
PJ:
So I'm going to ask a terrible question. I'm just going to be honest. But I feel like at this point, our audience will want to hear it. I know this is an equivocal term, and there are so many different definitions. So feel free to break some apart. But you obviously have one in mind. What is friendship?
Sarah Horton:
Mm hmm. Yeah, the whole book is really wrestling with that question of saying it's not something that can be fully defined, because it has to be lived. I mean, if we want an approximative definition, the one that I start with in the introduction is, OK, we're looking at some sort of long term committed relationship. I started off sitting between two people, though without excluding the possibility that there can be friendships with multiple people, all of whom are friends. Something that you're not born into in the same way that you're born
PJ:
Mm.
Sarah Horton:
into familial relations. I'll end up problematizing, calling into questions from the ideas of choice as it applies to friendship. But... It's... It's not something where you're just kind of born with the relationship that just exists and nothing can change the fact that there's this sort of This biological relationship is with familial relations. And it's not erotic that friendship, qua-friendship doesn't involve the desire to be one flesh, which again, that's not to rule out the idea that family members can be friends or that lovers can be friends or that it's going to be easy to figure out what belongs to friendship. and what to some other sort of love, but at the same time there are these differences. So we're thinking some kind of long-term committed relationship that's not familial and not in and of itself familial and not in and of itself erotic. And... Then the book is talking about how, okay, but in the end, it's not really something that you can come up with this one precise, exact definition for, because it is transformative and it does have to be lived out. And we don't want to assume too quickly, oh, we know what we're talking about.
PJ:
Would another way, just to make sure I'm tracking with you,
Sarah Horton:
Mm-hmm.
PJ:
would another way of saying it would be like, it's a concrete process between two persons, right?
Sarah Horton:
Mm-hmm.
PJ:
Would that, is that another way of saying it?
Sarah Horton:
Yeah, I think you could look at it that way, though I want to clarify, you know, it's not a process where you're sure of where it's going to come out. Um,
PJ:
It's not a status
Sarah Horton:
it...
PJ:
bar leading up to 100%.
Sarah Horton:
Mm-hmm.
PJ:
Right.
Sarah Horton:
Yeah, yeah, it's sort of like a journey where... You might have some idea of what's going on, but you don't have a complete map or... exact plans of where you're going. I mean, you might have a partial map. I mean, it's going to be pretty well understood that there are some things that are just like not part of friendship, and there are some things that are important in friendship. Like I talk about the idea of being there for the friend in trouble, rejoicing in the friend's joys.
PJ:
Mm-hmm.
Sarah Horton:
Those are things that are going to be very important in friendship. Exactly how they look can be different depending on the particular people. But at the same time, indeed, it's something that's discovered in the living of it and not something that you ever look at and look, oh yes, I understand exactly how this works. I can put it in a bottle. or I can pin it to the click below, don't have it there just for observation.
PJ:
Yes. Yeah. Can you talk about, you mentioned that you problematize choice in friendship, and that's fascinating
Sarah Horton:
Mm-hmm.
PJ:
to me. What are some of the problems with this idea of like, oh, well, friendship is just when you choose the other person.
Sarah Horton:
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that grows out of my looking at friendship in light of Immanjula Lavinas's ethics, because Lavinas says I'm absolutely responsible for the other person who is not responsible for me. So it's an asymmetrical ethical relation and I have that responsibility toward every other, and I don't get to pick and choose. And so that's where friendships may seem questionable, because isn't friendship the choice of one person that you've decided you're going to care about more than other people? And one argument that you can make is, look, I don't have enough resources to devote to everyone. It makes sense that there would have to be some level of choice. And that's true as far as it goes, except it doesn't go far enough because it makes friendship out as... I mean, it's not really friendship then. It's a perhaps unfortunate practical necessity, but it's not the whole richness of friendship. as something that's good in itself. And so then I'm looking at the question of, okay, how could you justify this preference for another person? Except then in looking more closely at what's going on, it's not really about preference. And it makes sense really that it wouldn't be, I am choosing, because I don't really know what's going on. I don't know where it's all going. Uh,
PJ:
Yeah.
Sarah Horton:
I don't fully know who the other person is. I don't know how this relationship is ultimately going to transform me. So how could it be like all about my choice when I don't know enough about what's going on and, and another thing is. that friendship is actually fundamentally not about comparing the friend to other people. That talking about preference and choice makes it sound like I'm looking at an array of possible friends in the way I might look at a bunch of different brands of ketchup and I'm like, I pick that one. And that's not fundamentally what's going on. Because friendship is about... I say in the book, it's not about others' insufficiency, but about the friend's sufficiency, meaning it's not that I'm looking at an array of people and I'm like, hmm, all those people are inadequate. That no, it's that... the friend is someone that I'm drawn to as a friend. And yet in practice, it might occur to me to compare the friend to other people. Like, oh, we have a similar sense of humor or all that sort of thing that ultimately, again, because it's a commitment, it goes deeper than these shared characteristics. that fundamentally it's not, oh, I'm picking someone because of these characteristics that they have, but I'm, I find myself bound to this other person even beyond death, not as a matter of comparing them to other people, but as a matter of I am bound to this singular individual. And. Ultimately to return to the question with, with Levine Haas, ultimately, you know, friendship is a relation that should be directing me toward justice because I'm encountering
PJ:
Hmm.
Sarah Horton:
the friend as the singular individual who is, you know, intrinsically valuable for himself or for herself. And that's something that should ultimately be pointing me to the intrinsic value of all people. Friendship is a relation that's not mediated by that political relation. If I'm going to calculate everybody's interests. And so it's something that forces me to confront the limits of that kind of political calculation.
PJ:
Yeah, even as you're talking there, the idea that they translate the world for you, right? It means that we grow in wisdom, like this very concrete, like lived experience that comes from commitment. And we grow in the knowledge of justice because we are growing in our knowledge of the other.
Sarah Horton:
Mm-hmm. Yes.
PJ:
That always makes it. Yeah, I like I just make it sure I'm tracking with you. I'm going to try and draw a few things here. So, you talk about, and I think you're kind of dancing around the word philia again, you know, you're talking about this
Sarah Horton:
Mm-hmm.
PJ:
bond, right, that's going on with Aristotle, and in Aristotle you talk about self-sufficiency versus the political. But when Aristotle uses the term political, I think, and correct me if I'm wrong here, I feel like the word communal might be more useful or
Sarah Horton:
Mm-hmm.
PJ:
might limit some misunderstandings because
Sarah Horton:
Mm-hmm.
PJ:
one of the things that, and I think this circles back to many of the things we've been talking about, when you talk about the political in today's climate, even as you're talking about these calculations, right? our idea of the political in the Western world is built around certain ideas of like the disinterested observer, rational agents that avoids the very kind of knowledge that friendship gives. So when Aristotle,
Sarah Horton:
Mm-hmm.
PJ:
you're mentioning politics with Aristotle, you're talking about in many ways the knowledge that comes with commitment. But when you're talking
Sarah Horton:
Mm-hmm.
PJ:
about the, we talk about politics as we understand today, we're talking about like a very rational, very transactional and agenda driven or this idea of rational agents. Is that,
Sarah Horton:
Mm-hmm.
PJ:
do those threads work together? Am I tracking?
Sarah Horton:
Yeah, I mean, when I was using the word political just now, I was thinking
PJ:
Yeah.
Sarah Horton:
in the sense that Lévinas and Derrida use it of
PJ:
Yes.
Sarah Horton:
in contrast to ethics, where it is what you're describing, the
PJ:
Yes.
Sarah Horton:
disinterested observer trying to engage in calculation. And I mean, yes, as you say, for Aristotle, there is indeed more the sense of community, of people who are bound together. in the Pol-less
PJ:
Mm-hmm.
Sarah Horton:
and that's actually getting at something very interesting as well because There's the sense of what exactly is the place of friendship within the broader community? What is the place of a bond between two people within the broader community? And for Aristotle, it's something that is essential to the polis, that even grounds the polis. And yet... there is the possibility of the threat to it, of what if the friend ends up taking precedence in a way that's overall harmful? And that's a concern that you see recurring in a number of discussions of friendship. And it's true that ultimately, that's not a danger. that can be completely eliminated. I was just talking about friendship as something that should ultimately be pointing us toward true justice,
PJ:
Mmm.
Sarah Horton:
because it's the encounter with the singular individual who is inherently significant, precisely as the singular individual that he or she is. And that reminds me of the limits to any of those efforts at calculation. And, and, and yet there, there is the danger that there, there's the possibility of. of conflicts between what's good for different people. There's the possibility of needing to make a choice. And one thing, that was why Montaigne questioned the idea of whether you could be friends with more than one person actually, saying if they're both in need, which one do you go to? And ultimately
PJ:
Cough.
Sarah Horton:
I end up saying, You know, okay, that is a real question, but trying to limit the number of friends that you can have, you know, that's itself a calculation, an attempt at eliminating danger. So, you know, there are these risks, but the only way to avoid them would be to say, okay, let's have no binding commitments between people. And then you don't have any kind of community at all. It is just politics. in the sense that Derrida and Lévinas talk about, in the sense that you were just talking about now. So if we say, okay, let's eliminate this danger, let's just have these purely rational calculations for weighing different people's interests, and then there's no community at all, no relation to, no real genuine relation to other people.
PJ:
Yeah, and even as you're talking about this, this might be a strange place for my mind to go, but I think of like, probably half of the villains in literature are, and this is where friendship points towards true justice. Half the villains in literature are people who deem that other people's sacrifices are worthwhile. So when we
Sarah Horton:
Mm-hmm.
PJ:
talk about how friendship can be brought over the community in a harmful way, we know that's true, right? You can't choose your friend over everyone. On the other hand, there comes a point where if you start... disembodying other people. If you do not have friendships, if you do not have these concrete commitments, then you start playing numbers and you start acting like a God, even though you are not.
Sarah Horton:
Mm-hmm.
PJ:
Without actually getting into real life politics, there are definitely politicians who treat people like numbers. And
Sarah Horton:
Mm-hmm.
PJ:
we start to understand that there is a lack of virtue in that, and a lack of justice in that as well. And that's where friendship, true friendship, can be... a tool to guide us towards true justice.
Sarah Horton:
Exactly, yeah, and everything you were saying there is a really good way of putting it. And it's like the tyrant in Plato's Republic who won't listen to anyone else. He's just being pulled apart by all of his desires, by his whims. He's just following whatever he wants. And because of that, he's not even able to want... anything coherent. It's just the whims of the moment with no restraint on him. And if you look at actual tyrants in history, you see how they really are very much like Plato's tyrant. If you look at, for instance, Nicolae Trotschewska, the Romanian dictator from the time of the Soviet Union. I've read some about him and he was really an absolutely pathetic person who was wrapped up in this constant fear for his personal safety. And
PJ:
Hmm.
Sarah Horton:
of course somebody who did not value the lives of other people. And if you read about him, it's like, this is Plato's tyrant. The person who hasn't. let himself be transformed by other people. And so what's left isn't, you know, the fully actualized self, but just this sort of very pathetic assortment of concerns for safety, the pursuit of unrestrained desire that's ultimately destructive. of course to other people but to yourself as well.
PJ:
Hmm. And you kind of talked about with the you've mentioned self-actualization there, which, of course, you mentioned negatively. And but at the end of the book or the end, excuse me. But as you start to shift in the book, you start talking about how fidelity is the grounds. And you've talked about this quite
Sarah Horton:
Mm-hmm.
PJ:
a bit, how fidelity transforms us. Can you talk about what that process is like? What does it mean that fidelity creates the self?
Sarah Horton:
Mm-hmm. Yeah, it means, you know, there is now something that is... not just constraining, but even shaping my desires. It's no longer just up to me. The even this fear of things that I want is now being driven by concern for a regard for somebody else that I'm being shaped by someone else's perspective and things. by someone else's needs and desires. And it really is very much like writing, where if you're going to write anything, you can't just be like, oh, I'm just going to throw down a whole bunch of words with no shape or structure. I mean, sure, that might be part of some kind of brainstorming process, some sort of initial draft. But there does have to be some kind of structure. And if you're just like, I'm just typing a whole bunch of words, it's never going to be shaped into anything. No, why would I want it to be shaped into anything? That's this unnecessary constraint imposed on the beautiful process of banging out word after word. And so, no, you're not gonna come up with anything that makes any sense. It's not even going to become prehensible. And if you're just throwing out all constraints, are you even sure that those are words? Okay, I keep using the word constraints, but it's, I mean, that's really an overly negative sort of way of looking at it, because it's looking at the whole not side, as if you're talking about, I mean, yes, if you're writing a sonnet or a novel, there are constraints, but those are, that's also what... creates it as what it is. It's a direction, a sort of being given direction. Even without knowing what's going to come of it, you start writing a sonnet, you don't know the full final form that it's going to take, a half a line that you're convinced is brilliant and is absolutely going to go into the final product might end up being changed. but it's being created within. There's this framework that's like, this is a sonnet. And so, you enter into friendship, you're bound. On the one hand, there are now certain restrictions on you, certain obligations, but those are the restrictions and obligations that are ultimately going to make you who you are. Hopefully, ultimately... a less selfish person,
PJ:
Hmm.
Sarah Horton:
for instance, or the friend, the friendship, the friend will be somebody that you make tone to for advice, for instance, but it even goes deeper than that, that now the whole world for you is a world in which you have this bond to this other person. And that's something that's ultimately going to shape really everything about you, even if you're not consciously thinking of it at any given moment. Like you friends with such and such other person is a fundamentally different person than you not friends with that person. There's this whole array of experiences, of responsibilities, of... really of this gift that you would not otherwise have been. And if it's really that commitment to somebody else pointing you towards seeing the singularity of every person, then that's something that's shaping you for the better.
PJ:
Hmm. Yeah, I think as you say here, you're talking about constraints as a negative term. I think the positive term you talk about in here is grounds, right?
Sarah Horton:
Mm-hmm.
PJ:
To use your, so it's the ground for the self.
Sarah Horton:
Mm-hmm.
PJ:
To take your argument about writing without form to its absurd conclusion. I mean, if you really wanted to write without form, you wouldn't use paragraphs. You wouldn't use sentences. use words, you wouldn't use letters. And
Sarah Horton:
and then it's not reading anymore.
PJ:
it's nothing, right? And that's where it's, instead of being this negative thing, like words and sentences and paragraphs. Letters these are not constraints. These are the grounds for communication. They make
Sarah Horton:
Mm-hmm.
PJ:
things They make communication possible. No one would actually look at that and say that's constraining That's what that's the condition for what makes it possible And so you're in the same way where when you're talking about this As I understand it what we think of as constraints is because we are dissatisfied that we're not infinite But if we
Sarah Horton:
Mm-hmm,
PJ:
recognize
Sarah Horton:
yes.
PJ:
and we become okay with being finite, with our finitude, what we recognize is that our friendship is the grounds for being who we are.
Sarah Horton:
Exactly. And it's the distinction that I talk about then between the destructive madness
PJ:
Hmm.
Sarah Horton:
or the creative madness, that on the one side you have the destructive madness of the Cartesian ego that's standing apart from the world, you know, like in the second meditation where Descartes is looking out at the square and he's like, all I see are... hats and coats, but I judge that they are men, you know, separate from the world, trying to know and judge without oneself being known and judged and interpreted. And and that way does lie a destructive madness, the ultimate separation from from one's grounds, from everything that's going to make you who you are. And then on the other hand, the creative madness of... you find yourself committed to another person, to a specific person, without knowing what's going to come of it. And there is that risk and danger,
PJ:
Yeah.
Sarah Horton:
but that's the whole thing that even gives you the possibility of being any sort of coherent self at all.
PJ:
So I'm gonna ask one of those questions I think that sometimes philosophers just hate. As you've worked through this, what are some practical things that you have found for your own friendships and for friendship? That it's like, this has changed how you've approached things.
Sarah Horton:
Mm. Yeah, that is
PJ:
If that's
Sarah Horton:
a
PJ:
too
Sarah Horton:
good
PJ:
personal,
Sarah Horton:
question.
PJ:
that's
Sarah Horton:
And
PJ:
okay too.
Sarah Horton:
I mean, I think in the course of writing this, I have gained a deeper sense of friendship as commitment. And it's kind of interesting because I talk about, I have a whole chapter dealing with Proust's and Soch's of lost time and- the main characters' thoughts on friendship, which involve a letter of friendship as a distraction to the artist. And I end up talking about actually friendship itself is an art. And I talk about writing as an act of friendship. And there were certainly times in writing it, in the course of the writing, that it did feel like, you know, this is just taking... so much time. I've got some real sympathy with the post-generator and... And yet... You know, friendship has to be something that you do keep devoting time to. I guess you're not always... equally available for everything in the same way at all times, but it really does have to be something that you take the time for because In the end, I mean, even the very act of autistic creation, the solitude of the artist is still a solitude that's shaped by that relation to others. Proust's narrator has quite a lot to say about the solitude of the artist. And, and I'm certainly not saying that no, you need to be. talking to somebody else like the whole time you're writing that doesn't work but it's also always shaped by other people and I think I came out of it with indeed with this deeper appreciation of friendship as commitment and where it's actually important that you that you don't fully know where It's going to go.
PJ:
Yeah. And, uh, and you, we've talked about this at length here and I've really appreciated, uh, I've appreciated one. Thank you. This has been awesome talking about this, but, um, that we don't do it because of that, cause it won't work then, but recognizing that when we, uh, are working on friendship, we are also working on ourselves.
Sarah Horton:
Yes. And it's, I mean, that, that is, that is something that you can certainly be, be aware of, but, uh, indeed it's, it's not something that it's like, okay, I know how I want myself to tone out, so I'm going to do this, it's sort of letting go of that attempt at controlling who you are, that, that who you are is shaped. by others is even grounded in that sort of relation. And I mean, yeah, honestly, that's not an idea that I necessarily automatically like. I don't necessarily
PJ:
Hahaha
Sarah Horton:
automatically like the idea of finitude as a positive thing and existing within limits as being, okay, this is who we are as human beings and that's good. And this has been a work that has reminded me of that, obliged me to not forget that, that's brought that to the floor for me in a way that it would not have been if I hadn't written this book.
PJ:
Hmm. Yeah, I I'm sorry. All I can think of is it would be a great main character like a farce or uh parody would be someone who Um, and some people do talk like this. It's like, all right I want to be this certain person and in order to be like this, you know to be the well-rounded man I need friends. Will you be my friend so I can be a well-rounded
Sarah Horton:
I'm sorry.
PJ:
man? You know like you're like look at that. It's like, yeah, obviously you've misunderstood like When you're pursuing friendship, you're pursuing the friendship. It will act upon you
Sarah Horton:
Mm-hmm.
PJ:
get that control and that's part of being finite.
Sarah Horton:
Yeah that's actually a bit of what's going on in Search of Lost Time with the character of Robert de Saint-Loup who really wants to be friends with the narrator because he has this great ideal of friendship as important and
PJ:
Heheheheh
Sarah Horton:
so he's like, we are friends! Our friendship is important! And this is a great friendship! And he's deeply caught up in this abstract concept of the friendship. And the narrator himself has a tendency to see friendship that way, which is why he ends up critiquing friendship. And I end up drawing the novel more broadly to talk about writing itself
PJ:
Hmm.
Sarah Horton:
as an act of friendship, you know, to language the effort for fidelity. I've been using writing as an analogy quite a
PJ:
Hmm.
Sarah Horton:
lot and that's because it's really more than just an analogy that writing is an act of friendship to the readers,
PJ:
Hmm.
Sarah Horton:
even to the language or the form that you're working within that's shaping what you're doing
PJ:
Hmm.
Sarah Horton:
and friendship with another individual person. is part of the writing of one's life. And it's very clear then it's not a writing that you're just in charge of, not that the other person is just in charge of it either, not that other people can interpret you and construct whatever narrative about you that they like, but that it's a living. It gets back to, you know, this is why we can't just define friendship. because it has to be lived out. Like you can give a definition of a sonnet, but that's not the same thing as reading one or writing one.
PJ:
First off, thank you for coming on today. Secondly, besides buying your book when it comes out in November, which people should, what is one thing you would leave for our audience to kind of contemplate or think about for the next week after listening to this?
Sarah Horton:
I think it would be the idea that... Okay, friendship isn't something that you can ever perfectly talk about or define. And that's something that testifies to the very greatness of what friendship is and that it is a risk, but it's one that we should rejoice in.
PJ:
Hmm.
Sarah Horton:
That it's, it's not something that we should want to be totally in control of, but we should rejoice that we're not, because that's what makes it better than anything that we could just completely control.
PJ:
Friendship is a risk that we should rejoice in. It's a wonderful way to summarize today. Dr.
Sarah Horton:
Mm.
PJ:
Horton, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you.