The virtuous friendship of the classical era offers an ethical foundation for cooperation among nations, peoples and civilizations

The Second World Conference of Classics was held on Tuesday and Wednesday. More than 200 classical scholars from over 18 countries gathered in Athens, the cradle of Western civilization. With one of the sub-forums focusing on “Friendship and Community: The Ethical Community in the Transition from Ancient to Modern Times”, the conference reflected on why we should return to the ancient ideals of friendship and community in an age of atomization, fragmentation and loneliness.

Looking back to the classical traditions of both East and West, we can clearly trace the intellectual trajectory by which personal affection gradually became the foundation of the civic order. The ancient Greek word philia had an exceptionally broad range of meanings: individual friendship, kinship ties, guest-host relations, military alliances and even erotic love. Its semantic reach far exceeds what we mean by “friendship” today. Not only is it difficult to find an exact equivalent in Chinese, but even in modern Western languages — friendship in English or amitié in French — the full resonance of philia is lost. In Modern Greek, the word philia has seen its meaning drastically narrowed due to profound grammatical and historical changes: from “civic friendship” as the bedrock of polis order, through the medieval period, when agapi (selfless love) gradually displaced philia as the core of religious ethics. Subsequently, philia was secularized into mere personal sentiment between friends, until in modern society it shrank into a private emotional bond between individuals.

Tracing this evolution of friendship in Western intellectual history reveals why revisiting classical friendship today is, first and foremost, a direct response to the modern “crisis of connection”. Modernity’s triumph is the liberation of the individual. It shattered the shackles of traditional families, villages and guilds, granting each soul unprecedented freedom and independence. Yet the price of this liberation has been a rupture of the primordial ethical bonds between people. The logic of the market economy has turned all relationships into transactions; human interactions are increasingly governed by utility and efficiency rather than by affection and care. Digital technology has further allowed virtual socializing to replace face-to-face, heart-to-heart conversation; the click of a “l(fā)ike” has supplanted deep resonance between souls. The more we “connect” online, the more alone we feel in reality — and the more we long for the ancient art of companionship.

We revisit classical friendship above all because it embodies ethical wisdom that modernity cannot provide. This conference invites scholars to explore in depth the essential differences between classical friendship and what modern people understand as “friendship”. In other words, modern people regard friendship as a private sentiment — a relationship based on shared tastes or mutual exchange of interests, while from the perspective of classical thought, both Eastern and Western, friendship is first and foremost a means by which a person comes to know how to live.

As Socrates said in Plato’s Lysis: Whom you choose to befriend means what way of life you choose. Plato’s student Aristotle, in turn, distinguishes three kinds of friendship: friendship based on utility, pleasure and virtue. He makes it clear that the first two kinds are accidental and perishable; only virtue friendship — in which one wishes the good of the other for the other’s own sake — is founded on mutual appreciation and respect for each other’s character and does not depend on any external utilitarian end. A true friend is “another self”, and the process of friendship is one in which two souls sharpen each other and together pursue a life of goodness.

Almost in the same period, Confucius in the East also proposed that true friends are those who can help one cultivate virtue and expand knowledge — companions who share the same path. Friends should admonish and encourage each other, for “the superior man seeks to perfect the admirable qualities of men, and does not seek to perfect their bad qualities”.

What is especially important is that friendship in classical times, in both the East and the West, possessed a distinct public character. Aristotle wrote in his Nicomachean Ethics: “Friendship seems too to hold states together, and lawgivers to care more for it than for justice.” It was a statement that remains thought-provoking to this day. Justice can only demarcate the boundaries of rights between people and resolve conflicts that have already arisen; friendship, however, can enable people to voluntarily consider others and actively care for the common good, preventing conflicts at their source. A society without friendship, even if it possesses the most perfect legal system, is nothing more than a cold alliance of interests, liable to disintegrate at any moment.

To revisit classical friendship is ultimately to seek an ethical foundation for building a community with a shared future for humanity. The world today is facing grave challenges including climate change, public health crises, wealth disparity and civilizational clashes. No single country can meet these challenges alone; they require the cooperation of all humanity. Yet the basis of modern international relations is too often interest and power, and alliances built on such interests are fragile and unstable. When interests collide, cooperation turns into confrontation.

Classical friendship, however, champions mutual respect, mutual flourishing and the pursuit of the common good — thus offering a deeper ethical foundation for cooperation among nations, peoples and civilizations. It reminds us that human beings are not rivals locked in endless competition, but rather a community with a shared future, bound together in weal and woe, for friendship is humanity’s oldest common language, and its strongest force for unity.

The stone columns of the Athenian Acropolis have stood for more than 2,000 years, witnessing the rise and fall of countless civilizations. Today, as scholars from around the world gather once more upon this sacred ground to revisit the ancient question of friendship, they come not to retreat into the past, but to reach toward the future. In an age of deepening uncertainty, classical friendship shines as a beacon — lighting the way out of our atomized solitude and toward the rebuilding of human solidarity. The Second World Conference of Classics has convened precisely to let this ancient light burn anew in the 21st century, casting its glow upon the path of humanity yet to come.

Let us conclude by recalling the words of the Roman philosopher Cicero from 2,000 years ago: “But I hold this first: that friendship cannot exist except among the virtuous.”

The author is the director of the Center for Classical Civilization at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and a professor at the University of CASS.

The author contributed this article to China Watch, a think tank powered by China Daily. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

Contact the editor at editor@chinawatch.cn.