Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Introduction: Blasphemers and Others
- 1 ‘Good? But what is good?’ Ethics after Ikonnikov
- 2 Our Brothers’ Keeper: Moral Witness
- 3 Angelus Novus: The Angel of History
- 4 Infidels and Miscreants: Love and War in Afghanistan
- 5 Trouble Makers: Laura Poitras and the Problem of Dissent
- 6 The Silage of History: Anselm Kiefer and the Kieferworld
- 7 Footfall: The Moral Economy of Reinhard Mucha
- 8 Tony Blair's Vietnam: The Iraq War and the Special Relationship
- 9 Accomplicity: Britain, Torture and Terror
- 10 Mending the World: Artists’ Manifestos
- 11 The Hallowed Mentor: Cézanne by Numbers
- 12 The Vacuity of Evil: Rumsfeld in Washington
- Index
8 - Tony Blair's Vietnam: The Iraq War and the Special Relationship
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2016
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Introduction: Blasphemers and Others
- 1 ‘Good? But what is good?’ Ethics after Ikonnikov
- 2 Our Brothers’ Keeper: Moral Witness
- 3 Angelus Novus: The Angel of History
- 4 Infidels and Miscreants: Love and War in Afghanistan
- 5 Trouble Makers: Laura Poitras and the Problem of Dissent
- 6 The Silage of History: Anselm Kiefer and the Kieferworld
- 7 Footfall: The Moral Economy of Reinhard Mucha
- 8 Tony Blair's Vietnam: The Iraq War and the Special Relationship
- 9 Accomplicity: Britain, Torture and Terror
- 10 Mending the World: Artists’ Manifestos
- 11 The Hallowed Mentor: Cézanne by Numbers
- 12 The Vacuity of Evil: Rumsfeld in Washington
- Index
Summary
Utility is an impermanent thing: it changes according to circumstances. So with the disappearance of the ground for friendship, the friendship also breaks up, because that was what kept it alive. Friendships of this kind seem to occur most frequently between the elderly… and those in middle or early life who are pursuing their own advantage. Such persons do not spend much time together, because they sometimes do not even like one another, and therefore feel no need of such an association unless they are mutually useful. For they take pleasure in each other's company only in so far as they have hopes of advantage from it. Friendships with foreigners are generally included in this class.
AristotleThere are three kinds of friendship, Aristotle tells us, friendship based on utility, friendship based on pleasure, and friendship based on goodness. Of these three, only the last is perfect, as he says, for ‘it is those who desire the good of their friends for the friends’ sake that are most truly friends, because each loves the other for what he is, and not for any incidental quality’. In other words the friendship is essential rather than circumstantial, dedicated rather than calculated, persistent rather than evanescent. It does not wait on time and tide, terror and tyranny, suicide attack or simmering stockpile. It rests on character, and specifically on goodness, a scarce commodity. Friendships of this kind are rare, adds Aristotle, because men of this kind are few.
And in addition they need time and intimacy; for as the saying goes, you cannot get to know each other until you have eaten the proverbial quantity of salt together. Nor can one man accept another, or the two become friends, until each has proved to the other that he is worthy of love, and so won his trust. Those who are quick to make friendly advances to each other have the desire to be friends, but they are not unless they are worthy of love and know it.
To demonstrate worthiness of this sort is no easy task, individually or internationally. To maintain the conviction is even harder. ‘The wish for friendship develops rapidly,’ Aristotle concludes appositely, ‘but friendship does not.’
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- Information
- On Good and Evil and the Grey Zone , pp. 122 - 142Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2015