Concept of Friendship, Igwebuike African worldview and Aristotle’s Philosophy

Abstract

Friendship as a term, as a concept is the foundational, it should be said, fundamental reality behind every human interaction, whether formal and professional, as in doctor to patient relationship, lawyer to client relationship and the likes, or informal as seen in relationships that are of a familial type. What is being said here is that friendship underlines every human relationship. The early Greek poets and philosophers understood the important place friendship held in the lives of the human person, and in the functioning of his society. Thus they spoke brilliantly about this, using target words and punchlines to drive home one fact, which sought to praise the beauty of this reality. Friendship was necessary not only for a strong and prosperous society, but also for a well defended and progress minded country. In the Greek system of thought, friendship was for the human being, which in the Roman political system was only for the human person. What the Romans referred to as the human person, was anyone who was a free citizen of the state, and this was a tradition that was seen in the Greek political system. Friendship thus was for the free citizen of the state, it was for the human person. It was for that set of animals who are imbued with a certain type of consciousness called rational. Of all the poets and philosophers who devoted time to the praise of friendship, none came close to the full elaboration provided by Aristotle in his Nichomachean Ethics, where he adumbrated explicitly the meaning and reality of the term. The Igwebuike thesis arises from the Igwebuike reality, which says that in number there is strength, there is power. The Igwebuike reality is positively enmeshed in the concept of friendship. The belief here is that persons cannot total to a “numberful” force without the accord and concord that friendship gives. The implication is that we cannot be a united force without a united goal, and intention, and we cannot have a united goal and intention, without a united mind and soul, and there can be no united mind or soul, without friendship. The famed saying, whose origin is still not certified, that “friendship is one soul in two bodies” (some attribute this to Aristotle, others Cicero, others to Augustine), defines in clear terms what the Igwebuike stands for, and what it hopes to achieve as an African Philosophy, for Africans in a world where unfriendliness and selfishness seems to be becoming more of the norm. The Aristotelian concept of friendship is a broad project, whose concerns are elaborate, much of which would not be considered here, for we intend to indicate that the Igwebuike philosophy is one that enshrines and crowns the beauty of friendship in human interaction. Igwebuike is the priceless fruit of true friendship. What is true friendship? Aristotle’s classification of friendship, will shed more light and provide an answer to the aforementioned question. The heart of this paper is to indicate that there can be no strength in number, no Igwebuike, without friendship, and that friendship is what makes for a well-defined Igwebuike.