Frenemies: Nietzsche on the Nature and Value of Friendship

Admittedly, Nietzsche is probably not the first philosopher one would consult for insight into the nature and value of friendship. As the story goes, Nietzsche spent the later years of his life living a largely solitary and nomadic existence, writing furiously, until his mental breakdown in Turin. A number of his closest relationships—including his friendships with Richard Wagner and Paul Rée—ended acrimoniously. Furthermore, Nietzsche’s most well-known philosophical contributions emphasize the virtues of individualism, solitude, and self-regard. What could Nietzsche have to teach us about friendship?

The answer, as it turns out, is quite a lot. Although discussion of friendship is notably absent from his later works, Nietzsche is preoccupied with the topic in his middle period, ranging from Human All Too Human to Thus Spake Zarathustra. During this period, Nietzsche develops the rudiments of a theory of friendship according to which the ideal friend is closer to what we might nowadays call the “frenemy.” In this paper, I argue that Nietzsche’s theory of friendship—which has received scant attention in the secondary literature—can yield important lessons for normative ethical theory concerning the nature and value of friendship.

As is the case in so many other areas of Nietzsche’s philosophy, Nietzsche’s discussion of friendship owes a great deal to the ancients. I begin the paper by arguing that Nietzsche shares the following basic assumptions about friendship with Aristotle:

There is a hierarchy of friendships, at the top of which is an ideal type of friendship.
A’s participating in this ideal form of friendship is a necessary condition for A’s leading the best life.
A’s participating in this ideal form of friendship is a necessary condition for A’s attaining a particular kind of self-knowledge.

Although Nietzsche shares these starting points with Aristotle, he ends up in with a very different theory of friendship. Recall that for Aristotle, the best form of friendship is the friendship of character, which involves two virtuous agents united by their reciprocal love and pursuit of shared ends, who in the process achieve self-knowledge by apprehending “a second self.” Such a friendship functions as a mirror in which two virtuous individuals perceive the salient respects in which they are identical.[1] According to Aristotle, this relationship is a necessary condition of self-knowledge, and thus a necessary condition of leading the best life.

Nietzsche’s picture of friendship is nearly the opposite of Aristotle’s. Rather than functioning as a mirror in which two individuals are able to perceive what is common between them, for Nietzsche the highest form of friendship aims at differentiation of the two friends.[2] Through competition, striving, and rivalry—often in the pursuit of competing ends—the best friendships afford each participant the opportunity for perceiving how one’s character differs from that of one’s friend. In fact, Nietzsche thinks that such agonistic activity plays an important role in constituting the self; as he famously claims in I.13 of the Genealogy, “there is no ‘being’ behind doing, effecting, becoming.” The self emerges through an active interpretation of one’s interactions with others—and through their interpretations of oneself.[3] Friendship offers an especially extended and intimate arena for such differentiation and interpretation, and therefore presents one of the best means of both fashioning the self and gaining self-understanding. Ultimately, this fashioning of the self through differentiation is for Nietzsche a necessary condition for leading the best kind of life—a life of great creative or artistic achievement.

After introducing Nietzsche’s agonistic conception of friendship, I turn to an interpretive puzzle: if, in the middle period of his scholarly work, friendship does play this role for Nietzsche—an essential condition of leading the best life—why does the topic seem to drop out of consideration in Nietzsche’s later works? In response to this puzzle, I argue that the value of differentiation that Nietzsche has ascribed to his ideal of friendship is a value that can be realized to an equal and often greater degree by one’s relationships with one’s enemies. As it turns out, Nietzsche’s later works are rife with discussion of the value of one’s enemies. In fact, it is this relationship that Nietzsche comes to regard as a necessary condition for the best kinds of life: “to be able to be an enemy, to be an enemy, perhaps that presupposes a strong nature, in any case it is a part of every strong nature.” (Ecce Homo, §7)

In blurring the distinction between these two types of relationships—often taken to be diametrically opposed to each other—Nietzsche’s theory offers a number of lessons about the nature and value of friendships more generally. I conclude by addressing two of these: First, the opposition between the Aristotelian and Nietzschean conceptions of ideal friendships should lead us to a more ecumenical account of friendship. If the Nietzschean ideal is recognizable as a form of friendship, then we should aim for a theory of friendship that counts both moralistic friendships of character and Nietzschean “frenemies” as genuine and legitimate. I sketch out an account of friendship as an historically embedded social concept that explains both why and how this might be plausible. Second, even if we ultimately reject Nietzsche’s account of the ideal form of friendship—and I think that we should—I take it that Nietzsche has identified an important source of the value of personal relationships: the value of differentiation. This value, which has largely been ignored in the literature on friendship, allows us to account for why we take even some immoral friendships to warrant our concern. I conclude with a brief discussion of this issue.

Works Cited

Abbey, Ruth. “Circles, Ladders and Stars: Nietzsche on Friendship.” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 2, no. 4 (1999): 50–73.

Acampora, Christa Davis. Contesting Nietzsche. University of Chicago Press, 2013.

Cooper, John M. “Aristotle on the Forms of Friendship.” Review of Metaphysics 30, no. 4 (1977): 619–48.

Nehamas, Alexander. “The Good of Friendship.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 110, no. 3pt3 (2010): 267–94. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9264.2010.00287.x.

[1] cf. Cooper, “Aristotle on the Forms of Friendship.”

[2] Abbey, “Circles, Ladders and Stars,” 59–60 discusses this aspect of Nietzsche’s theory of friendship. My interpretation differs in that I argue that for Nietzsche this is the central or essential feature of the ideal friendship.

[3] cf. Acampora, Contesting Nietzsche, chap. 5 for a more general discussion of the role of one’s relationships in constituting one’s self.