Imagination. Responsibility. Friendship.

Brian Robinson Level 3 Philosophy Page 1 of 48
Imagination
◦
Responsibility
◦
Friendship
Brian Robinson
Level 3 Philosophy Work

This document contains the three main pieces of work I submitted at Level 3 for the
philosophy half of a bachelor’s degree in Psychology with Philosophy at
Staffordshire University. The first is an essay I wrote for a module on Kant’s Critique
of Pure Reason, taught by Douglas Burnham – which was actually the final piece of
work I produced. Next is an essay for a module on Totality and Infinity by Levinas,
taught by David Webb. Finally, there is my research project on true friendship,
supervised by David, which takes Aristotle’s Ethics as a starting point.
Page Contents
3-13 The importance of the imagination in the Transcendental Analytic: The

object-form as imagination’s spontaneous product (submitted on 25
January 2010)
13-14 References
15-22 A responsibility to all: Levinas, the ethical relation, and the

significance of the third party (submitted on 26 May 2009)
23 References
24-44 True friendship in Aristotle’s ‘Ethics’ and the unresisted ethical

demand of otherness (submitted on 19 June 2009)
44-45 References
46-48 References (combined)

The importance of the imagination in the

Transcendental Analytic:
The object-form as imagination’s
spontaneous product
Introduction
My suggestion will be that the importance of the imagination is in spontaneously

producing what I will call the object-form, and so meeting the transcendental
condition of experiencing objects – which are what constitute our experience.
Mostly this will be my interpretation of what is said in the Critique of Pure Reason
(Kant, 1996). I will briefly go beyond this, though, by proposing as a possible
implication the regulative idea that as the object-form is not imposed on us it arises
from what is in effect a choice we make.
Kant frequently uses the term ‘imagination’ in the Critique to refer to what is not
actual, such as when he considers the possibility that space and time ‚are only
creatures of the imagination‛ (ibid.: 93; A40=B57). In a footnote in the B edition he
talks of ‚the reality of outer sense, as distinguished from imagination‛ (ibid.: 37; Bxl,
footnote 144); and there is a passage in the A edition which has several instances
where the use of ‘imagination’ is in keeping with this, in phrases such as ‚mere play
of imagination‛, ‚deception of imagination‛, etc. (ibid.: 404-6; A373-7). This accords
with our everyday use of the term – it is familiar to us from when we say things like
‚it was just my imagination‛. As an everyday use, it can be regarded as
philosophically unimportant.1
1The word ‘imagination’ occurs on 63 pages of the unified edition of Pluhar’s translation (i.e., Kant,
1996). It is given for both Einbildung and Einbildungskraft, which the translator says are ‚used
virtually interchangeably by Kant‛ (ibid.: 404; footnote 137). I have examined all occurrences in the
text, and many are what I have called its everyday use. First, I have set aside the following places it
occurs as not being relevant to this essay, either because the word is used in its everyday sense or
used in some other trivial or non-pertinent way (there are 18 of them, and I list the page numbers to
the aforementioned edition, followed by the page numbers for the German editions, with the
The first we hear of a different task for the imagination in the Critique is when Kant
says that without it ‚we would have no cognition whatsoever‛ (ibid.: 130;
A78=B103). This is due to its role in synthesis, which I will examine in Section 1.
Kant later refers to something he calls a schema, which he says is ‚a product of the
imagination‛ (ibid.: 212-3; A140=B179-80). Hence, schemata, and the importance
they suggest for the imagination, will be discussed in Section 2. Finally, Section 3 is
about spontaneity and will consider whether the imagination is ‚free‛ to act, and in
the Conclusion I will discuss a possible implication.
1. Synthesis
As I have pointed out, Kant asserts the importance of the imagination in his claim
that without it we could not have cognition. He justifies this with the notion that
‚the synthesis of presentations rests on imagination‛ (Kant, 1996: 225; A155=B194; my
italic). We can say that I receive various empirical information from the various
sources available to me – which constitutes a ‚manifold of sensible intuition‛ (ibid.:
200; B164) – but to have cognition I must do something with it, and it is here that the
imagination plays a part. As Kant puts it, ‚receptivity can make cognition possible
only when combined with spontaneity‛, and he points out the central role the
imagination has in that (ibid.: 152; A97); and similarly, he says ‚mere appearances
< are subject to no law of connection whatever except the one prescribed by the
connecting power‛, adding that connection is achieved by the imagination (ibid.:
200; B164).2 To take Kant’s example of cinnabar (A100-1), if I am holding a piece of it
standard A/B notation): 16, Bviii; 108, A53=B77; 184, B141; 235, A163=B204; 236, A164-5=B205; 242,
A170=B211; 289, B275; 292, B278; 348, A295=B352; 451, A416=B444; 476, A449=B477; 491,
A469=B497; 749, A822=B850; 772, A853=B881; 306, A239=B298-9; 371, A326=B383; 562, A570=B598;
666, A710=B738. Secondly, the occurrences which I do consider relevant, though they are too
numerous for explicit reference to be made to all of them in this essay, have all informed my
discussion and arguments, so I list them here: 130, A78=B103; 131, A78-9=B104; 148-9, A94; 152,
A97-8; 154-155, A100-2; 164, A115-6; 166-71, A118-25; 171, A125; 174, A129-30; 191-3, B151-5; 199,
B162, footnote 311; 200, B164; 212-3, A140=B179-80; 213-4, A141-2=B180-1; 217-8, A145-6=B185; 225-
6, A155=B194; 226-7, A156=B195; 227, A157=B196; 228, A157-8=B196-7; 260-1, B233-4; 269,
A201=B246; 277, B257; 286, A223-4=B271; 290-1, B277, footnote 52; 304, A236-7=B295-6; 623,
A649=B677; 669, A713=B741; 707, A766-7=B794-5; 709, A770=B798.
2 For the most part I will base what I say about Kant’s arguments either on text that is the same in
both editions, or, as is the case here, where equivalent statements are made. I agree with Gibbons
(1994: 14) that the two versions of the Transcendental Deduction are ‚generally compatible‛ but that
there are important differences, including the greater detail in which Kant describes synthesis in the
A edition. Longuenesse (1998: 60) explains how it might be possible for these discussions in the two
in my hand I can group together such things as the redness I see and the heaviness I
feel, and exclude other empirical information, such as the pinkness of my hand, from
that group.3 Thus, because the information is not given to me already grouped, I
have to add that to it in an act of the imagination – that is, information such as
redness and heaviness is present for me because of my receptivity to it, but the
group is not present and is something I contribute, though at times I may do so
‚erroneously‛, as Kitcher (1990: 85) points out.4 Allais (2003: 374) describes it as an
‚active imaginative interpretation and grouping‛. However, that does not deny the
objective reality of the resulting group, as she emphasises.5
This function does not in itself mean the imagination is of exceptional importance,
though. It is an empirical process, and there are other empirical processes required
for cognition, such as my receptivity. 6 Moreover, the information can only be
editions to be made ‚completely coherent‛ with each other. If, though, I can succeed in showing the
importance of the imagination using what is common to the two editions it will sidestep the debates
about possible incompatibilities between them, and what I say will not rest, for instance, on whether
or not Longuenesse is successful.
3 The issue here is what modern neurophysiology of perception terms the ‘binding problem’, and can
be stated as follows: ‚*H+ow do our minds determine which among the plethora of any full set of
concurrent sensations are sensations of any one object or event, both within any one sensory
modality, and even more so, across our sensory modalities?‛ (Westphal, 2006: 278-9).
4 By saying the group is ‚not present‛ I am deliberately echoing Kant’s B edition description of the
imagination as ‚the power of presenting an object in intuition even without the object’s being present‛
(Kant, 1996: 191; B151). I think we can say, generally: that which is not given as grouped can be
imagined as grouped. In this way, imagination achieves synthesis.
5 She says it can be that ‚even though its shape and colour are both properties of a thing, our
experiencing them both as being properties of the same thing requires activity of synthesis on the part
of our minds.‛ (Allais, 2003: 374).
6 Indeed, it could be argued that receptivity is more basic, and thus in a sense more important
(because we could have receptivity without imagination but not the other way round, although it
remains the case that receptivity on its own could not provide us with experience). Hanna (2005: 249)
says ‚there are no other fundamental cognitive faculties over and above the intuition-producing
faculty and the concept-producing faculty‛, and cites A50=B74; but he adds that he is ‚construing the
sensibility as only relatively passive < by virtue of its expressing a mental power for spontaneous
synthesis, or mental processing‛, which he says is the imagination. It is worth looking in detail at the
passage from Kant to which he refers: ‚Our cognition arises from two basic sources of the mind. The
first is [our ability] to receive presentations (and is our receptivity for impressions); the second is our
ability to cognize an object through these presentations (and is the spontaneity of concepts). Through
receptivity an object is given to us; through spontaneity an object is thought in relation to that [given]
presentation (which *otherwise+ is a mere determination of the mind).‛ (Kant, 1996: 105-6; A50=B74).
Thus, there are two possible readings open to us: (1) the imagination is separate from our receptivity
for impressions and spontaneity of concepts, but is not a basic source of cognition, or (2) the
imagination is a basic source of cognition, but only as part of either our receptivity for impressions or
spontaneity of concepts, or both. The situation is further complicated by Kant’s statement in the A
grouped in ways that allow it to be placed under a concept. Kant (1996: 130;
A78=B103) says: ‚Bringing this synthesis to concepts < is a function belonging to the
understanding; and it is through this function that the understanding first provides
us with cognition in the proper meaning of the term.‛ In other words, grouped
information can only be part of experience when it is placed under a concept.
Therefore in this respect it can be said to be governed by the process of
conceptualisation.7 However, Kant emphasises that there are also things ‚that we
must be given a priori in order to cognize any object‛, where the imagination has a
role (ibid.: 131; A78-9=B104). In the B edition he says the empirical synthesis
‚depends on transcendental synthesis‛ (ibid.: 200; B164), and in the A edition he
suggests that each empirical process, including imagination, has a transcendental
counterpart (A94, A115-6). It is here I believe we will start to see why the
imagination is as important as I am claiming it is, and so it is to the transcendental
synthesis that I now turn.
Guyer’s formulation – that there is, a priori, ‚a single act of imagination antecedent
to all particular experience‛ (Guyer, 1980: 205) – is potentially misleading. We need
to be careful what we mean when we say that something occurs a priori. I think it
would be wrong to picture it in terms of a sequence, as if it is an event (or ‚single
act‛) taking place before all the experiences which then follow. The a priori
synthesis is a transcendental condition of experience, and is not within time (because
it acts on time), and in my view can best be thought of as ‚ongoing‛, if that word is
not inherently temporal too. What is required a priori, then, for synthesis? To group
empirical information I must be able to assign it to a common time (or common
times) and, where appropriate, a common area of space. We might suggest temporal
and, for outer intuition, spatial regions are allocated, ready to have information
assigned by empirical imagination, and that this is transcendental synthesis.
However, this could not occur without reference to the empirical information
edition that: ‚There are three subjective sources of cognition on which rests the possibility of an
experience as such and of cognition of its objects: sense, imagination, and apperception.‛ (ibid.: 164;
A115), though this admittedly does not assert that they are all basic sources. My preference is to
consider the imagination separately from receptivity and conceptualisation, as it seems to be doing
something different. It may be said to ‚belong to‛ or be an ‚action of‛ (ibid.: 191; B151, B152) these
other faculties when it carries out its functions, but I maintain I am justified in calling them its
functions.
7 The phrase ‚Performed by the imagination as governed by the understanding‛ appears as the
translator’s footnote (number 166) as a clarification of ‚synthesis of apprehension‛ (ibid.: 269;

A201=B246).
because only then is it possible to define the region that will be occupied, and so it
cannot be said to take place a priori. To return to the example, I can only group the
redness and heaviness because I am assigning them to a common temporal-spatial
region, but that region is determined when I group them, and all the other empirical
information grouped with them. Instead, then, I suggest the a priori synthesis
enables the possibility of allocating regions of time and space, and thus of assigning
information to such regions. Melnick (2001: 460) makes a similar point by saying the
imagination’s synthesis of the pure manifold of space and time ‚is not a combination
of ultimate elements into a determinate expanse of space or time, but rather a
generation of expanses by flowing constructions.‛ Thus, the a priori synthesis
achieves a transition from simply a ‚structured field of possible spatio-temporal
relations‛ (Rukgaber, 2009: 186) to what I call possible regions of space and time, as
indeterminate expanses.
There is a problem with this interpretation, though: the possibility of allocating

empirical information to regions of time and space is not sufficient for grouping that
information, because it can only be grouped on the basis that it belongs together.
Thus, unity is not something merely added to grouped information, but is
presupposed for it to be grouped. In other words, there must be the possibility a
priori for grouped information to be brought under a concept and be an object of my
experience, for without that there could not be the possibility that it belonged
together and so there would be no ground for its being grouped. 8 Indeed, Kant
(1996: 304; A237=B296) almost seems to make this point, saying: ‚appearances, as
data for a possible cognition, must a priori already have reference to, and be in
harmony with, that synthetic unity‛ – although he insists it is something ‚the
understanding confers, originally and on its own, on the synthesis of imagination by
reference to apperception‛.9 This is perhaps not surprising as earlier he has argued
that thinking an object means it must have a concept, so ‚concepts of objects as such
presumably underlie all experiential cognition as its a priori conditions‛; these
concepts of objects as such are the categories, and ‚only by means of them can any
8 Against this, it could be argued that empirical information is only grouped provisionally. However,
to group it at all can only occur on the basis that, at least, it could belong together – and so the
possibility of belonging together, and thus the notion of unity, is still presupposed.
9 Similarly, he says one of the things we need ‚to cognize an object that we encounter is the concepts
which give unity to this pure synthesis and which consist solely in the presentation of this necessary
synthetic unity. And these concepts rest on the understanding.‛ (ibid.: 131; A79=B104).
experiential object whatsoever be thought at all‛ (ibid.: 148; A93=B126). So the

understanding confers unity by means of the categories.
Nonetheless, I maintain that because this unity is required to provide the ground for
grouping empirical information, which is achieved by the imagination, the
transcendental operation of the imagination must bring together the categories and
the pure manifold of intuition. At an empirical level the notion of ‚belonging
together‛ means, for example, that if I move a piece of cinnabar its redness and
heaviness go with it; so underlying this there must as its transcendental condition be
a combination of the possible regions of space and time and the categories such as
cause and effect – making it possible to link the cinnabar here, now, with the same
cinnabar where it was before I moved it, and maintaining its integrity as an object.10
My claim, then, is that the transcendental operation of the imagination leads to what
I will call the object-form, which makes objects possible by just such an a priori
combination – and this reverses the situation discussed earlier with regard to the
empirical operations of grouping information and bringing it under a concept,
because now the (pure) concepts are governed by the imagination’s generation of the
object-form, which provides them with a link to objects and hence ensures they are
meaningful.11 So, when Schmidt (2008: 468) says that before we can represent an
image by means of an empirical synthesis the imagination must carry out an a priori
synthesis to provide the ‚general representation of an object as such in time and
space‛, we cannot merely understand it to mean the imagination in its transcendental
operation makes it possible to allocate regions of time and space, but should, I
believe, invoke the object-form as a transcendental product of the imagination.
10 Making a similar point, Deleuze (1995: 16) says: ‚For example, not every object is red, and one
which is red is not necessarily so; but there is no object which is not necessarily substance, cause and
effect of something else, in a reciprocal relationship with something else.‛ He adds: ‚Thus the
category provides unity for the synthesis of imagination< In short, we can say what depends on the
understanding < is not synthesis itself, it is the unity of synthesis and the expressions of that unity.‛
Providing unity for the synthesis of imagination could imply that in doing so the understanding serves
the imagination, which is my proposal, although I do not suggest this is Deleuze’s intention in using
that phrase.
11 That is, have ‚signification‛ (Kant, 1996: 211; A139=B178). See also the translator’s footnote
(number 66) on this use of the word ‘signification’ for Bedeutung; and A146=B185, which I will refer to
in the next section; and note that space and time are also given signification by their link to objects
(A156=B195). In fact, Kant says: ‚experience, as empirical synthesis, is in *regard to+ its possibility the
only kind of cognition that provides reality to all other [footnote: i.e., a priori] synthesis. By the same
token, this latter synthesis, as a priori cognition, has truth (agreement with the object) only because it
contains nothing more than what is necessary for synthetic unity of experience as such.‛ (ibid.: 228;
A157-8=B196-7).
2. Schemata
We can use the imagination to supply instances of empirical concepts – going, for
example, from the concept ‘dog’ to a specific image of a dog.12 But such instances do
not come from ‚within‛ a concept, as if the concept somehow already contained all
possible instances (real or imagined) that could ever be placed under it, but rather
are generated from the concept. Kant (1996: 213; A140=B179-80) says there is a
‚universal procedure‛ whereby the imagination can generate images from a concept,
and he calls this a schema.13
One way to think of the placing of a group of empirical information under a concept
is that the group is acceptable only if it matches an instance that can be generated
from a concept (and this validation travels in both directions). So, schemata enable
us to generate instances of concepts – and to understand a particular group as an
instance of a concept, thus bringing it under the concept. However, unlike empirical
concepts (and even the pure sensible concepts such as ‘triangle’), we cannot furnish
the categories with any image (A142=B181). Yet each of them can, nonetheless, be
subject to a schema; and it is by means of this, a ‚transcendental product of the
imagination‛, that ‚all presentations ... cohere ... in one concept‛ (ibid.: 214;
A142=B181). Thus, all instances of a concept are instances of that concept, which
parallels the unity conferred on an object: when I look at a piece of cinnabar, close
my eyes, then look again, I am seeing the same piece of cinnabar, and in a similar
way every piece of cinnabar I experience or imagine is an instance of the same
concept, ‘cinnabar’.
Underlying the imagination’s ability to generate instances of a concept according to

a schema is the possibility of an instance. An instance must exist in time and be
particular (‚this instance‛). Empirically this is achieved in objects – the object arises
from grouped information that can be accepted as an instance of a concept. What,
though, is produced when the categories are subject to schemata, if not tangible
instances (i.e., images)? When the imagination schematises the categories, it brings
12 We should not think of ‘image’ only in terms of what is visual. My image of the dog might include
what it smells like, for example. (The example of the dog comes from A141=B180.)
13 The procedure is universal because it is not ‚limited to any single and particular shape‛ in the
images it produces (ibid.: 213; A141=B180), not because the same procedure can be used with all
concepts.
them and the a priori form of intuition together, and so provides one aspect of what is
required for the possibility of objects.14 It is, therefore, a transcendental synthesis – and
in that respect I disagree with Deleuze (1995: 18) when he says we should not
‚confuse synthesis and schema in the imagination‛.15 This occurs alongside the
transcendental synthesis of the pure manifold of intuition into possible regions of
time and space, leading jointly to what I call the object-form. While an empirical
concept is linked to objects because particular objects are instances of the concept,
the categories are linked to objects because when schematised they help provide the
object-form, which is the transcendental requirement for there to be objects. Kant
(1996: 217-8; A146=B185) says the schemata of the categories give them a ‚reference
to objects‛ and thus give them meaningfulness – in being rooted in, and necessary
for, experience.
3. Spontaneity
Finally, I want to turn to whether the imagination is constrained in its operations,

which is widely disputed.16 Tantalisingly, in a footnote to the B edition Kant (1996:
290-1; B277; footnote 52) mentions ‚the spontaneity that characterizes all
imagining‛.17 If the imagination can be shown to be free of constraint in some
14 I have said here ‚the a priori form of intuition‛, in the singular. At A142=B181 Kant mentions only
the form of inner sense, time. Allison (1983: 190) says that ‚Kant seems to be justified in defining the
schema of possibility in exclusively temporal terms‛ because while all appearances are in time, they
are not all in space.
15 Deleuze (1995: 18; my italic) adds immediately after the phrase I have just quoted: ‚Schema
presupposes synthesis. Synthesis is the determination of a certain space and a certain time by means of
which diversity is related to the object in general, in conformity with the categories.‛ But determinate
regions of space and time only occur with empirical synthesis, as I have argued; and a pure schema
cannot depend on empirical synthesis. My alternative, therefore, is that empirical synthesis depends
on transcendental synthesis, and there are two aspects to transcendental synthesis: enabling the
possibility of regions of time and space, and combining the categories with the form of intuition using
schemata.
16 For example, Ginsborg (2006: 357) suggests ‚a concept is a rule for the synthesis of imagination‛,
with the apparent suggestion of that applying to all synthesis; but according to Gibbons (1994: 14),
‚identifying all synthesis with concept-guided combination leads to the neglect of the broader role of
imagination which Kant took pains to develop.‛
17 This is not the only place where Kant suggests the imagination is unconstrained in its operation.
Earlier in the B edition he has said: ‚< the synthesis of imagination is an exercise of spontaneity,
which is determinative, rather than merely determinable<‛ (Kant, 1996: 191; B151-2). In the A
edition he describes the imagination as an ‚active power‛ (ibid.: 167; A120), and, mentioning the
categories as underlying the synthesis of imagination, he adds: ‚Hence the order and regularity in
the appearances < are brought into them by ourselves<‛ (ibid.: 171; A125), again suggesting an
active role. Furthermore, Schmidt (2008: 468) calls the transcendental synthesis carried out by the
respects, that would elevate its importance compared with if it simply serves other
faculties of the mind and is beholden to them. This certainly seems to be
Heidegger’s view.18 Norris (2006: 180), though, is unconvinced, dismissing the
imagination as a ‚mysterious agency‛. It is certainly true that Kant (1996: 130;
A78=B103) suggests the imagination’s activities are ‚blind‛ and that we are rarely
conscious of them; and for this reason Westphal (2006: 279) says it is not ‘free’ in the
way our judgements are, but insists that it still cannot be reduced to ‚purely causal
processes‛.
To recap, a group of empirical information is only applicable within experience if it

can be an instance of a concept. Likewise, an instance (i.e., image) generated from a
concept using a schema can only help link the concept to experience if it matches an
actual group of empirical information. Thus it might seem that in these functions the
imagination is merely a tool to mediate between the empirical information I receive
and the concepts I apply. However, underlying these empirical functions are
transcendental functions. Now, Kant (1996: 202; B167-8) makes a very good case
against ‚preformation‛ of the categories. He discusses the possibility that instead of
being ‚self-thought‛ they are ‚implanted in us‛ – and so we would have them from
the start, and be able to experience according to them but only because of the
arbitrary way they shape that experience for us. In that case, the concept of
causation, for example, would have no necessity but would simply be a
manifestation of how we have been made to experience the world. To avoid this the
categories must come from us spontaneously.19 However, I have suggested the
transcendental condition for the imagination to be able to group empirical
information is the possibility of objects, which in turn requires all the a priori forms
to be brought together, resulting in what I have called the object-form. It is because
of this requirement, then, that the categories are needed – and so their spontaneous
imagination an ‚a priori or spontaneous function‛ (my italic), apparently equating the two. This is an
interesting idea: if something occurs a priori it could be argued that it must, therefore, be
spontaneous.
18 Referring to A78=B103, Heidegger (1997: 44; my italic) says: ‚With this we have the first indication
that apparently everything about synthetic structures in general which shows in the essential
construction of knowledge is brought about through the power of imagination.‛ Steigerwald (2003: 114)
suggests Heidegger’s interpretation is of a transcendental imagination that ‚joins together *fügt] the
two hinges [Fugen] of knowledge, intuition and thought‛ and thus ‚validates‛ the categories through
its ‚authority *Befugnis+‛.
19 As Burnham and Young (2007: 108) say: ‚The categories, as a type of presentation of real things, are
not just given (they are not innate ideas, then) <‛.
generation serves the imagination. They are brought about, and given signification, as
a result of the imagination’s spontaneous creation of the object-form underlying all
objects.20
Conclusion
I explained that the imagination groups together empirical information, but I have
pointed out that such groups must be capable of being placed under a concept, so
this operation is governed by conceptualisation. I have said the imagination creates
possible regions of space and time, to which empirical information can be assigned,
but that this is not sufficient for grouping information – because grouping it
presupposes it is possible for it to belong together, or there could be no basis for
grouping it. So I have suggested a pre-eminent importance for the imagination: in
its transcendental operations it brings together the a priori forms of our experience,
and in doing so produces the object-form. In the object-form those a priori forms
obtain their link to experience – and through that link to experience, their reality
(A157-8=B196-7) – and so, indeed, they are not just brought together but brought
about, for it is the imagination’s spontaneity that creates the need for them, and
causes their inclusion within experience.
Because experience depends on the object-form, however, I cannot experience its

inception.21 If the object-form ‚arises freely‛, in that it is unconstrained and a priori,
and yet its inception is outside my experience and so I am not present when it arises,
who or what is its cause? The object-form is within all my experience, as a
transcendental condition, and is the result of my self-activity; it is not imposed on
me, so I can ascribe it to myself, I can claim it. It is as if it exists because I choose to
bring it about, but it is my choice to call it a choice. Thus, while without the object-
form I could not have experience, my choice to say I choose to bring it about is a
regulative idea (see, for example A664=B692, and O’Shea, 1997). This is because of a
spontaneous act of the imagination. Here, then, is an alternative to philosophies that
suggest we are, from the start, confronted with the world entirely against our
20 Which is why it can be said that, to continue the quotation, the categories ‚are made real in a
spontaneous synthetic act of the imagination.‛ (ibid.).
21 And the very notion of its ‘inception’ is problematic, since the object-form includes the a priori form
of inner sense, which is time; and anyway it would mean we are talking from a perspective outside
any possible experience. The same applies to phrases such as ‚when it arises‛.
wishes. Instead, it is as if I choose to make my experience possible, and thus to make

it possible for me to choose. I choose to experience.
References
Allais, Lucy. (2003). ‘Kant’s transcendental idealism and contemporary anti-realism’.

International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 11:4, pp. 369-392.
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A responsibility to all: Levinas, the

ethical relation, and the significance of
the third party
Introduction
To assess the significance of the ‘third party’ in Totality and Infinity (Levinas, 1969) I
will begin with some remarks about the notion of responsibility. There are four
reasons for this. First, it will allow me to set the third party into context; there are
relatively few instances where the term ‘third party’ occurs, but ‘responsibility’ is
used frequently and is fundamental for Levinas, and thus important for an
understanding of the text as a whole. Secondly, responsibility and the third party
are linked, which is made clear when he says (not for the first time) that the Other
calls me to responsibility, and then in the same paragraph points out that the third
party is present ‚in the eyes that look at me‛ (Levinas, 1969: 213). The call to
responsibility and the third party are therefore both experienced in the encounter
with the Other. Third, if responsibility is conceived broadly it may obviate the need
for the third party: if I am to show the latter is significant, I have to demonstrate that
something is left unaddressed in Levinas’ discussion of responsibility such that the
third party still has an important philosophical role to fulfil. 22 And finally, my
interpretation of the third party will suggest that responsibility is a responsibility to
all, and its significance will come from the way it widens responsibility.
Levinas first mentions responsibility in the Preface, as part of a discussion of

eschatology, or the ‚doctrine of the last things‛ (Fergusson, 1997: 226) and the
judgment of our lives; but for Levinas it does not take place only when everything
has come to an end, but is a judgment of the living which comes from the infinite, as
22Peperzak (2003: 152), on the contrary, believes there is no such role for the third party: ‚‘The third’
seems to me superfluous for the universalization of the ‘proximity’ that reveals my responsibility for
all real and possible yous in their transcendence of the world.‛ (See also footnote 33.)
experienced through a relation with the absolutely other.23 It is in this sense that the
eschatological calls beings forth to their ultimate responsibility (Levinas, 1969: 23).
We always need to be able to answer for ourselves – it is a ‚judgment at every
moment‛ (p.25) – because of this call coming from beyond ourselves. Before an
Other as absolutely other, I could be asked anything, so I am opened up to the need
for a response to questions (p.178) whether or not they are ever actually uttered.24
Thus I find myself in responsibility, needing to be able to justify myself, with ‚an
existence already obligated‛ (p.183). This means my freedom is called into question;
but rather than limiting a freedom I already have, my freedom arises precisely
because I am called to responsibility (p.197): my goodness, whereby the Other
matters more to me than I do to myself (p.247), is kindled by the vulnerability of the
Other, whose appeal through ‚destitution and nudity‛ – ‚hunger‛ – is what Levinas
calls ‘expression’ (p.200). He quotes Rabbi Yochanan saying: ‚To leave men without
food is a fault that no circumstance attenuates‛ (p.201).25 But the ‚hunger‛ Levinas
refers to is one that no amount of food will eliminate because it consists in the
Other’s vulnerability and mortality, and so my obligation can never be met.26 My
responsibility comes from guilt (p.203) and is summoned by the expression of the
Other (p.208); the relation with the absolutely other invites the will to responsibility
and so to ethical behaviour (p.218). However, as Levinas says: ‚The will is free to
assume this responsibility in whatever sense it likes; it is not free to refuse this
responsibility itself; it is not free to ignore the meaningful world into which the face
of the Other has introduced it.‛ (pp.218-9). Finally, my obligation increases
whatever I do in attempting to meet it – which means the responsibility is infinite
(p.244) – and I can never be excused from it or hand it over to someone else (p.245).
23 As Levinas (1969: 180) says: ‚The relationship between me and the Other does not have the
structure formal logic finds in all relations. The terms remain absolute despite the relation in which
they find themselves.‛
24 With reference to Hendley (2004) on Levinas and conversation, Plant (2006: 84-5) cautions against
giving ‚too much content‛ to the need to respond – it is not a situation where someone says
something and I try to think what I should say in reply – and he points out that the need to justify my
very existence arises before the start of any actual conversation, as a result of the presence of the Other.
25 Bergo (2005: 163) says this is a reference to ‚Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai, commenting on the
Mishnaic Treatise ‘Sanhedrin’‛.

26 Levinas (1969: 179) writes: ‚Death, source of all myths, is present only in the Other, and only in him
does it summon me urgently to my final essence, to my responsibility.‛ – and here we see the link
between the mortality of the Other, and the responsibility I am summoned to. But I cannot save the
Other from death.
If the responsibility is infinite, and is something I am ‚unable to shirk‛ (p.245), it

could seem there is no philosophical need for the third party because everything is
included within the notion of responsibility. However, it is infinite because it will
always expand; this does not necessarily mean it is all-encompassing, and so having
infinite responsibility does not in itself eliminate a possible role for the third party. I
have an infinite responsibility to the Other, and other others do not, in what has
been said so far, feature in that responsibility. Yet once I am called to responsibility
by the Other I am held to account, not only with regard to the Other but for every
moment of my life, because of the requirement for me to be able to justify myself.
All my actions, all my choices, are subject to this need for justification – and so again
it could seem the third party is redundant. However, my actions and choices are
meaningful because the Other matters, because I experience the need and
vulnerability which is how the Other speaks to me. Without that there would be no
ethical grounding for my decisions. And, in what has been said so far, the ethical
grounding refers only to the Other whose face is before me. What is lacking, then, is
a wider scope, otherwise only the Other’s needs would play a part in the ethical
demand that underpins my decision-making. I cannot, though, simply say there are
other others just like the Other who speaks to me, as this would bring them all
within a common concept (p.252); and for this reason no representational scheme
can be used to show the importance of these ‚other others‛. Therefore for what
matters to me to embrace all, this too must be part of the ethical demand coming to
me from the Other, and it is in achieving this that the third party will be seen to have
its significance.
The third party
In Totality and Infinity, Levinas (1969) twice mentions something ‚visible to a third
party‛ (p.121 and p.201; italic added), using the term ‘third party’ in what might
loosely be called its everyday sense. However, he first talks of the third party in the
fairly short section ‘The Other and the Others’ (pp.212-214), which will be the main
focus of the rest of this essay, and here it is given the novel meaning I am interested
in. It then only appears a handful of further times. 27 To assess its significance we
27In addition to p.213, the phrase ‚the third party‛ is only used on pages 251, 265, 280, 300 and 305.
The first two of these can be ignored for the purposes of this essay: on p.251 it is used in connection
with the ‚impossibility of the exterior point of view‛, and thus in a similar sense to its use on pages
121 and 201; and p.265 is about voluptuosity, which ‚excludes the third party‛.
need to consider who or what the third party is. The term itself initially suggests,
perhaps, that there are three people who are party to an encounter, corresponding to
the grammatical first, second and third person in linguistics: me, you, and him or
her. This is reminiscent of Diana, the Princess of Wales, saying there were ‚three
people‛ in her marriage, with the implication that the third party is in some way an
intruder into an intimate relationship, even if not physically present (or ‚empirically
present‛ as it is put by Treanor, 2007: 41).28 My argument, though, is that by opening
up what would otherwise be private, this intrusion into the intimacy between the I
and the Other ensures my responsibility is to all.
Reminding us of the ‚non-postponable urgency‛ of the Other’s requirement that I

respond, Levinas (1969: 212) says my response cannot be a private matter because
the face before me situates itself in the public arena. The I and the Other are not
bound together to the exclusion of everyone else, having concern only for each other,
sharing mutual obsession and secretive love, because the third party ‚looks at me in
the eyes of the Other‛ (p.213). The Other’s appeal, as has already been mentioned,
comes from vulnerability and need; this is expressed ‚in the total nudity of his
defenceless eyes‛ which convey the Other’s plea not to be murdered (p.199). 29 Yet
now it is clear the eyes do not only plead with me on behalf of the Other, but in those
eyes the ‚whole of humanity‛ is looking at me, and therefore attends the encounter
(p.213).30 I am ordered to serve, and to do so I must take on responsibility and take
charge – it is only because I have the power to act that I can serve the destitute Other
– but in doing so I am scrutinised by an audience of humanity overall.31 There is a
divergence in possible interpretations, though, when Levinas says: ‚The poor one,
the stranger, presents himself as an equal. His equality within this essential poverty
consists in referring to the third party, thus present at the encounter, whom in the
28 A news report (Hamilton, 2007) began: ‚The Duchess of Cornwall has pulled out of attending the
memorial service for Diana, Princess of Wales < The Duchess, labelled by the Princess as the third
person in her crowded marriage to the Prince of Wales, had originally agreed to attend Friday’s
service <‛
29 As well as a plea not to be murdered it is at the same time an injunction, and Rosmarin (2001: 11)
points out: ‚It is not necessary for the Other to pronounce this ban in a verbal form. The command
emerges irresistibly from the presence of my fellow being as soon as I look at her closely.‛
30 This is pre-empted to some extent, before the discussion of the third party, by the suggestion that
‚universality reigns as the presence of humanity in the eyes that look at me‛ (Levinas, 1969: 208).
31 Again anticipating the section introducing the third party, Levinas has already said the Other, as
master, gives me ‚the command to command‛ (p.178). Now he repeats the point, asserting that the
Other: ‚commands me as a Master. < this command commands me to command‛ (p.213) – and then
uses almost the same phrase further down the page.
midst of his destitution the Other already serves.‛ (p.213; emphasis in original). The
Other is an equal, but equal with whom? I will begin by taking the first sentence to
mean the Other ‚presents himself as an equal‛ with me. The idea in the second
sentence, then, would be that just as I serve the Other, the Other serves the third
party, and this parallel servitude would set up an equality of sorts between myself
and the Other because we are each in relation with the absolutely other; and the
third party would be present at the encounter by being ‚the other of the other‛,
whom the Other serves and I serve through the Other.
This notion of an equality between myself and the Other seems to be at odds with
the ‘height’ from which the Other speaks to me, but because the equality does not
consist in a reciprocal relation between myself and the Other but, as I have termed it,
two parallel relations, it is plausible enough to merit further consideration. Indeed,
this approach seems to be in keeping with Barber (2008: 635) when he says Levinas
‚hypothesizes stages in which the other to whom I am responsible is also
responsible to others (a Third party) in such a way that it becomes clear that we are
all equal, in sharing mutual responsibility for each other‛ – although for all to share
mutual responsibility would go even further.32 Leaving that issue aside, the
difficulty for this whole approach is in how any responsibility of the Other for the
third party enters into the relation of otherness between the I and the Other. Am I to
‚know‛ the Other serves the third party? That would require me to have a
representation of the relation between the Other and the third party, which cannot
occur through the ethical relation I have with the Other: a relation of otherness
cannot contain information about the Other.33 Another possibility is that, somehow,
it is part of my experience and does not require representation. Lingis (2004: 24)
poses the question: ‚What if more than one faces us at the same time and in the
same place?‛ – adding that Levinas says the third party ‚faces me and the one who
32 At the end of the sentence quoted, Barber (2008) cites the page from ‘Totality and Infinity’ to which
I am referring and also ‘Otherwise than Being’ (Levinas, 1997: 160-1), implying that his interpretation
is consistent with both works. For most of the rest of his discussion of the third party he cites only the
latter, and so I will not take those comments into consideration. I am reluctant to assume the third
party of ‘Otherwise than Being’ (or any other work by Levinas) is the same as in ‘Totality and
Infinity’, and I am restricting my own argument to what is said in ‘Totality and Infinity’.
33 Peperzak (2003: 152) raises a similar objection with regard to knowledge: ‚Attempts to deduce
concern for all from the fact that ‘the Third’ looks at me in the face of the Other, or is the Other of you
who are ‘my Other,’ presuppose that I myself already know that the third is as much Other as you.‛
However, I do not share Peperzak’s belief, referred to earlier, that there is no philosophical need for
the third party – merely that this particular approach is not the way forward.
faces me‛.34 This suggests multiple relations and competing demands, yet any
responsibility of the Other to the third party still could not feature in my ethical
relation with the Other.35 This conception of the third party could also imply that all
the multiple relations would have to be reciprocal relations (although Blanchot
would deny that), and if so the significance of the third party would seem to be in
destroying the whole philosophy of otherness. But we must remember that Levinas
has said the third party looks at me in the eyes of the Other, not separately, so it is
incumbent on us to find an interpretation where a single ethical demand includes the
third party. Finally, an objection whether the third party is physically present or not
is that each relation of otherness would be pairwise, but as we have seen Levinas
describes the third party as the ‚whole of humanity‛, not one at a time (it would
seem) but all together.
Let us turn to an alternative, where the first sentence from the lines quoted above is
understood as meaning the Other ‚presents himself as an equal‛ with the third party.
Then the next sentence, beginning ‚His equality <‛, refers to the Other’s equality
with the whole of humanity, and that fits well with the notion of kinship that
Levinas develops in the remainder of the section.36 Thus in the relation of otherness
34 Frustratingly, there are no citations of particular works by Levinas, so it is difficult to be sure which
he has in mind here. Note also that I am not suggesting Lingis (2004) is advocating the reading of
Levinas I am presently considering; when he says the third party demands that ‚resources be
compared according to justice‛ (p.25) it fits better with the alternative reading I will turn to in a
moment.
35 Multiple relations could lead to the idea of ‘community’ that Blanchot (1993) develops. It may even
explain why Levinas (1969: 84) writes: ‚... I myself can feel myself to be the other of the other‛ –
although he adds immediately that ‚this comes about only across very complex structures.‛ It seems
an odd suggestion for him to make, though; he does so ‚enigmatically‛ and with very little further
development, as Treanor (2007: 132) points out. Irrespective of this passing comment by Levinas, my
objection still stands that the relation of otherness cannot contain information about the Other,
including information about the Other’s relation of otherness with a third party.
36 This reading is supported by Llewelyn (1995: 140) when he writes of the involvement of ‚the other
other‛ in the face to face encounter: ‚Each brother is commanded by the other not only not to kill him.
He is also commanded not to kill any of the other brothers. While I cannot on my own behalf claim
equality with my brothers, for I am immeasurably more culpable than any of them, each of them
makes an equal claim as naked face < that is to say as Other destitute of particular properties and
relations <‛ Thus there is not equality between the I and the Other, as the former approach
interpreted Levinas as claiming; and the ethical demand is free of representations (‚particular
properties and relations‛), the need for which was one of my previous objections. The reading is also
supported by Treanor (2007: 42), who argues: ‚The third’s nudity and vulnerability are just as
destitute as that of the other before me, and the alterity of the third is just as radically asymmetrical.
Given that the other commands me by virtue of his poverty, destitution, and vulnerability, it only
between the I and the Other, the Other would serve the third party by holding the I
to account on behalf of the whole of humanity, and it would be in this sense that the
whole of humanity is present at the encounter.37 The main possible objection to this
is that it apparently involves a common concept: the ‘human’. However, we should
not understand humanity as a ‚biological genus‛ (Levinas, 1969: 213), or any other
category; the kinship of humanity does not consist in resemblance, or in similarity of
origin – there are ‚unicities‛ or ‚individualities‛ whose ‚singularity consists in each
referring to itself‛ (p.214), and yet they stand side by side. In ‚fraternity‛, Levinas
says, ‚the Other appears in solidarity with all the others‛ (p.280). It is because of the
third party that there is a We, and an aspiration to ‚a State, institutions, laws, which
are the source of universality‛ (p.300). Through the Other, my responsibility is a
responsibility to all because the relation, from which the Other is absent, exposes me
to otherness and requires of me that I justify myself and be good, for all.
Conclusion
The significance of the third party is that it makes my responsibility to the Other also
a responsibility to all. We can think of the Other as like an MP in parliament holding
a government minister to account: the MP does so on behalf of all constituents, even
though the constituents are not alike, and indeed will have disparate opinions,
interests and political allegiances. Still the MP, in a sense, speaks ‚for‛ them all –
and, through the MP, the minister has a responsibility to them all. The MP ‚already
serves‛ his or her constituents before a single question is asked, simply by being
there. The minister cannot satisfy everyone’s competing needs but is obliged, by
being answerable to all the constituents through their MP, to take all their needs into
account and act with fairness. Of course, unlike in this analogy the Other before me
has not been elected, and the ‚constituency‛ is all-encompassing, comprising the
whole of humanity. The appeal of the Other originates the meaningful world that I
then inhabit; and it is a world in which not only the Other matters to me, but the
whole of humanity matters equally. That does not remove the necessity for me to
makes sense that the poverty and vulnerability of the third also command me. The autrui and the
third are ‘equal’ in their destitution and vulnerability.‛
37 Similarly, Llewelyn (2003: 115) says: ‚the other speaks not only on behalf of himself but on behalf
too of the other other, the second and the third and the nth other <‛. However, I do not agree with
the implication that might then be drawn, that the ‚whole of humanity‛ is the sum of all these other
others; it is not each human, but all humanity – humanity overall.
make difficult choices – quite the opposite – but it gives all my choices an ethical
grounding.
There is no aspect of life I can set aside as ‚not my responsibility‛. I may, quite
reasonably, argue that not everything that goes wrong is my fault, and I may give
specific reasons why I am not to blame in a particular instance; but to use reason is
to operate at the level of representations in the meaningful world, and it is made
meaningful by ethics, which is to say by my responsibility. So just how wide is the
notion of the ‚whole of humanity‛ to which I have a responsibility? We can see it in
action with an example. An environmentalist could, perhaps, say: ‚We are stealing
resources from future generations.‛ Whether or not we agree with that statement, it
means something, it captures our sense of responsibility: those we have never met,
including those not even born yet, matter to us. As Levinas says, we can do
whatever we choose with the responsibility, but the responsibility itself does not go
away, and as a result of the third party looking at me in the eyes of the Other, it is a
responsibility to all.
References
Barber, Michael D. (2008). ‘Autonomy, Reciprocity, and Responsibility: Darwall and

Levinas on the Second Person’. International Journal of Philosophical Studies,
16:5, pp. 629-644.
Bergo, Bettina. (2005). ‘Ontology, Transcendence, and Immanence In Emmanuel
Levinas’ Philosophy’. Research in Phenomenology, 35, pp. 141-181.
Blanchot, Maurice. (1993). The Infinite Conversation. Susan Hanson (trans.).
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Fergusson, David. (1997). ‘Eschatology’. In Colin E. Gunton (ed.). The Cambridge
Companion to Christian Doctrine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hamilton, Fiona. (2007). ‘‘Third person’ in Diana’s marriage to stay away from
memorial service’. The Times, 27 August 2007. Online version accessed May
2009: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article2332301.ece
Hendley, Steven. (2004). ‘Speech and Sensibility: Levinas and Habermas on the
Constitution of the Moral Point of View’. Continental Philosophy Review, 37, pp.
153-173.
Levinas, Emmanuel. (1969). Totality and Infinity: an essay on exteriority. Alphonso
Lingis (trans.). Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.
Levinas, Emmanuel. (1997). Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence. Alphonso Lingis
(trans.). Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.
Lingis, Alphonso. (2004). ‘Theoretical Paradox and Practical Dilemma’. International
Journal of Philosophical Studies, 12:1, pp. 21-28.
Llewelyn, John. (1995). Emmanuel Levinas: The Genealogy of Ethics. Florence, KY, USA:
Routledge.
Llewelyn, John. (2003). ‘Stay!’. Research in Phenomenology, 33, pp. 97-118.
Peperzak, Adriaan. (2003). ‘Ethical Life’. Research in Phenomenology, 33, pp. 141-154.
Plant, Bob. (2006). ‘Apologies: Levinas and Dialogue’. International Journal of
Philosophical Studies, 14:1, pp. 79-94.
Rosmarin, Leonard. (2001). ‘The I-You Relationship In The Works Of Emmanuel
Levinas’. Angelaki, 6, pp. 7-15.
Treanor, Brian. (2007). Aspects of Alterity: Levinas, Marcel, and the Contemporary Debate.
New York: Fordham University Press.
True friendship in Aristotle’s ‘Ethics’

and the unresisted ethical demand of
otherness
Abstract
I propose that the ethical demand from the relation of absolute otherness is routinely
resisted, because of a fear of loss of selfhood, and only in true friendship is the
resistance removed. Resisting the ethical demand stops me engaging fully with
another person, but if the resistance is removed I can experience life as the other
person experiences it, and access their perspective. This approach is explored
alongside an account of true friendship from Aristotle’s Ethics. I suggest that mutual
recognition of equal goodwill is a mechanism by which the resistance can be
removed, although the resistance – and thus the absence of resistance, true
friendship itself – occurs at a level prior to representations. Removal of resistance to
the ethical demand means I can experience myself, my actions, and even my
otherness to the other, from the other’s perspective. In true friendship I can gain a
closeness to the other without loss of self, and which does not compromise absolute
alterity; I achieve an ethical ‚weightlessness‛, a release from the struggle against the
originary moment of my existence in the encounter with other as absolutely other. It
is liberating and enriching.
Introduction
When I encounter another person I am faced with the absolute otherness of the
other, and thus an ethical demand. Even someone I have met before – even a friend
– is infinitely other. Rather than presenting a problem for an analysis of friendship,
though, I think this offers a useful way forward. I will suggest the ethical demand is
routinely resisted, and only in true friendship is the resistance removed. I will use
this to discuss Aristotle’s account of friendship in the Nicomachean Ethics, although
my aim in doing so is not to reach a better understanding of Aristotle’s theory, but to
use it to help examine this conceptualisation of true friendship. According to this
view, resisting the ethical demand stops me engaging fully with another person, but
if I let go of that resistance I can experience life as the other person experiences it,
accessing their perspective. The value of this is not only the insight it gives me
generally, and the enhancement of my own lived experience with that of my friend,
but also that I can experience myself from my friend’s perspective. Aristotle says the
function of the eye is to see; but however successful it is, however well it fulfils that
function, without assistance it can never see itself. True friendship, I suggest, allows
me to ‚see‛ myself, and my actions, by experiencing my friend’s experience of me.
Furthermore, to resist the ethical demand is to live in constant struggle against the
originary moment of my existence, the relation of otherness arising from the
encounter with the other as absolutely other. Letting go of the resistance releases me
from that struggle. In true friendship I do not hold back, do not seek to preserve
myself as myself against the infinite demand of the other, and can be true to myself
by accepting the infinite demand without resistance. Just as for Aristotle in the
Ethics, my ultimate intention is to propose how to live successfully, and because of
the removal of resistance to the ethical demand I believe the answer can be found in
true friendship.
My main objectives in Part 1 are to show why the relation of otherness is so

important to an analysis of friendship, and to introduce the notion of resistance to
the ethical demand and explain why it arises. I will do this by discussing the
possibility of friendship with myself, which Aristotle (1984) mentions briefly. Thus,
as will be the case throughout, Aristotle’s treatise on friendship is my starting point
and I will set his views alongside, and sometimes integrate them with, the
philosophy of otherness from writers such as Levinas (1969). As this has already
been attempted by Ricoeur (1992), I will refer several times to his work; however,
although there is much of use in what he says, he does not include the idea of
resistance to the ethical demand (or the absence of that resistance), so it will require
additional argument to demonstrate the part that can play.38 I will then turn to
Aristotle’s discussion of mutuality in friendship in Part 2, arriving at the suggestion
that friendship requires mutual recognition of goodwill. The main purpose of this is
to set out the Aristotelian approach to friendship, which I will make use of in what
follows. It will also highlight the importance of the notion of equality, which seems
38As will be seen, the idea of resistance to the ethical demand comes from Bernet (2000), although its
use in the present context, true friendship, is my own.
to present a challenge to my position, because it would appear that the asymmetry of

the ethical demand is antithetical to equality. I will discuss a possible solution, from
Ricoeur (1992), and then describe how I think it should be modified. This will lead
us back once more to my suggestion that true friendship occurs when the resistance
to the ethical demand is no longer there. Finally, in Part 3 I will discuss the friend as
‚another me‛, beginning with an analysis of whether, or to what extent, Aristotle
thinks there needs to be similarity between friends. My main objective, though, will
be to suggest by contrast that the friend can be ‚another me‛ without needing to be
similar, in that I can have access to my friend’s experience, including my friend’s
experience of my absolute otherness from his or her point of view. Here I will
combine ideas from Merleau-Ponty (1962) and Blanchot (1993), adding that this
empathic experiencing from the other’s point of view only occurs if there is little or
no resistance to the ethical demand. Thus we see why true friendship can be so
enriching and is something we should value and hope to achieve.
Part 1: Friendship with myself
In this first part I will show why the relation of otherness plays a prominent part in
my analysis of friendship and explain what I mean by resistance to the ethical
demand, but I want to begin with Aristotle. He suggests that as ‚the extreme of
friendship is likened to one’s love for oneself‛ and ‚in so far as he is two or more‛ it
appears there can be ‚friendship between a man and himself‛ (Aristotle, 1984: 1843;
9.4.1166a33-1166b1). Yet it could be said that one’s love for oneself consists in
wishing oneself well, which could be seen as a desire to live well, in the sense of
living in accordance with virtue – that is, wanting to do what it is best for one to do.
However, a wish or a desire is largely meaningless unless it is acted on, so friendship
(including with oneself) must involve activity; though it cannot simply be the
activity, or it would stop and start with the activity. 39 But could friendship with
myself then just be a self-goodwill that means I act virtuously, given that this would
lead to the best possible life and, we might say, is therefore the greatest kindness I
could show myself?40 If so, however, it is not immediately apparent why in the
39 As Aristotle (1984: 1829; 8.5.1157b8-11) comments: ‚< those who are asleep or locally separated are
not performing, but are disposed to perform, the activities of friendship; distance does not break off
the friendship absolutely, but only the activity of it.‛
40 Support for my comment that it could be the ‚greatest kindness‛ to oneself comes from Aristotle
(1984: 1862; 10.7.1178a5-6) saying ‚that which is proper to each thing is by nature best and most
quotation at the top he thinks I would need to be ‚two or more‛, or why he is

reluctant to declare that friendship with oneself definitely exists. If I wish myself
well, though, there is at least a grammatical difference between the ‘I’ who wishes
well and the ‘myself’ for whom well is wished; and if I say instead that I have self-
goodwill then there would need to be a self capable of accepting the goodwill. Here
we start to see that friendship with myself is not straightforward, which may explain
Aristotle’s tentativeness.
To pre-empt my discussion of mutuality in friendship in Part 2, this is further

complicated by the possible need in achieving friendship with myself for me to
recognise that I wish myself well.41 Perhaps such a recognition could come via a
sense of satisfaction and fulfilment I take from acting in the way it is best for me to
act, and in his discussion of philautia in ‘The Self and the Ethical Aim’, the Seventh
Study in Oneself as Another, Ricoeur (1992) gives a useful meaning to the term ‘self-
esteem’. This, he says, arises from the movement back to its author of the evaluation
of an action ‚judged to be good‛, and it requires ‚reference to others‛ because it has
a ‚dialogic structure‛ (p.172). This would mean other people are a requirement for
me to achieve friendship with myself if it entails recognition of my self-goodwill and
if that recognition comes through the sort of process Ricoeur describes. For his part,
Aristotle says it would be difficult for anyone who is solitary to be engaged all the
time in the activities which constitute living successfully, ‚for by oneself it is not
easy to be continuously active; but with others and towards others it is easier‛
(Aristotle, 1984: 1849; 9.9.1170a5-6). Thus Aristotle is suggesting other people
provide me with opportunities to live the life I should live, and without them it
would be harder to do so, and so presumably also harder for me to be a friend to
myself.
I now want to pursue the notion of a solitary existence, and set the arguments made
so far alongside the philosophy of otherness. Levinas (1969: 117) says: ‚Separation
in the strictest sense is solitude, and enjoyment – happiness or unhappiness – is
isolation itself.‛ It is important to be clear, though, that the importance of what
Levinas calls separation is as a prerequisite for the relation of otherness. Levinas is
pleasant for each thing‛ – although accepting that does not mean such a kindness to oneself is the
same as friendship with oneself, which is what is at issue.
41 And returning to the point about the need for me to be ‚two or more‛, if I say ‚I recognise my self-
goodwill‛, there must be a difference between the ‘I’ who recognises it and the ‘me’ who has it.
not recommending we live alone, as hermits; the words are being used differently.
However, I want to consider what it would be to live, and always to have lived,
alone – a lifelong solitary existence in, for the sake of clarity, an Aristotelian rather
than Levinasian sense of ‘solitary’; so there are no voices for me to hear, and I have
no desire for an other to speak to me because I have nothing on which to base such a
desire, no notion of what it would be as it is completely outside my experience. 42
The brief sketch I am about to put forward will be entirely as if from within the
experience of that lifelong solitary existence. How, then, can I say that I do not have
a desire that it cannot occur to me that I do not have? More than that, with no others
to share meanings with me there can be no shared meanings, so no
cultural/linguistic representations for me to make use of in formulating my
experience, or in describing it.43 For these reasons my sketch is a fiction; it cannot be
otherwise. But it will nonetheless prove very useful in exploring the conditions for
friendship, including friendship with myself.
Sketch 1. Living in solitude, I eat, for example. I experience the food. I taste
it, and am aware of tasting it. To apply a phrase used by Levinas, I am living
from the experience – since this and other such experiences constitute my life –
and the experience is wholly in the moment, now, with no consideration of or
comparison with anything not-now. Yet it involves a transition, let us say
from hunger to the partial easing of hunger, and so the experience of eating is
an experience of change, of becoming. That change is within me. I am always
changing, becoming. But what do I live for? Nothing exists for me beyond
the transition, beyond the moment. My life is one of enjoyment (in the
Levinasian sense, and perhaps in the everyday sense of what Aristotle terms
‚bodily pleasure‛) but I cannot evaluate anything, or seek to achieve a life
lived well. My experience has no shape, no structure, no meaning. I cannot
be a friend to myself, not simply because in the absence of others with whom
to generate shared meanings I have no notions of friendship or goodwill, and
am also without the social context within which to judge my actions, but more
42 Here, though, we already see the paradox of such an approach: to suggest that desire to hear
another speak resides outside my experience is both to position oneself outside of that experience in
order to make the suggestion, and to allow the possibility that an other speaking could become part of
the experience in the future, such that the I of the experience is in ignorance of the possibility but the I
outside the experience is not.
43 Levinas (1969: 100) says: ‚Thought can become explicit only among two‛.
fundamentally I am not prompted to look to myself, not able to represent

myself to myself. I am adrift, bereft<
This sketch indicates that friendship with myself is impossible in an existence of

lifelong solitude. The question then arises of what is required for friendship with
myself – of when it becomes possible. In answer we need another sketch, another
fiction addressing another paradox: a ‚first‛ encounter with an other, as if it were a
single event that could be isolated and described, before any shared meanings. It
will be based on what Levinas (1969) espouses with regard to the absolute alterity of
an other, who other defies all description or thematisation.
Sketch 2. In the instant of the encounter with an other, the other calls on me
to respond and punctures my cosy narcissism. I am faced with an other who
is infinitely other and mortal. I am called into question and called to
responsibility. As infinitely other the other before me is irreplaceable and more
precious than a great work of art, and as mortal the possibility of the other’s
death is always present; the obligation on me comes from that combination of
vulnerability and preciousness. Confronted now with that ethical demand,
for the first time I acknowledge an ‘I’ whose actions and whose very being is
open to challenge: it seems that everything I am should be directed towards
preserving the other, to serving the other’s needs, and so I crave to justify
myself (before I even have words to deploy in seeking to do so), and hence a
‘myself’ for me to endeavour to justify arises, newborn. At once I am afraid to
lose the possibility of a ‘myself’ and so I resist its subsumption within the
other, as if being entirely for the other would occasion my incorporation into
the other and stop me being me. My resistance is the silent cry: ‚I am me; I am
not you.‛ But it does not weaken the ethical demand; and nor can anything I
do in service of the other free me of my responsibility, for the other always
remains vulnerable. As the otherness I experience is infinite, so too is the
demand. I respond to it and resist it.
At the (fictional) moment of the first encounter with another I do not yet have words
to apply to myself; but henceforth there is a ‘me’ to apply the words to when I
acquire them, and the process of generating shared meanings can begin. Because of
the encounter with the other, there is a ‘self’ for me to direct goodwill towards, and
so friendship with myself can become possible. We have not yet established
whether friendship (with myself or with another) requires recognition of goodwill,

and that is something I will return to. I will not develop this analysis of friendship
with myself any further here; I introduced it first to set Aristotle’s ideas about
friendship alongside the philosophy of otherness, secondly to show why the relation
of otherness is central to my account of friendship, and third to establish the notion
of resistance to the ethical demand, all of which I have now done. As has been seen,
it is in the encounter with the other as absolutely other that the self emerges, and my
fictional ‘I’ went from existing adrift and bereft in Sketch 1, to having selfhood in
Sketch 2 – which I immediately fear I will lose in living for the other, so respond by
resisting the ethical demand, although the ethical demand remains in place. In his
work concerning the ‚traumatised‛ subject, Bernet (2000: 160) uses ‘resistance’ in a
similar way when he says: ‚I am a subject to the degree and so long as I resist my
fading away.‛ He goes on to point out that my responsibility to the other occurs
‚despite‛ myself, that for Levinas this indicates it comes from the other and not from
me; but that when in Otherwise than Being Levinas (1981: 86) says I do not ‚suppress
myself in the other‛ this can also be thought of as the result of an opposition to the
ethical demand, and in that respect Bernet’s remarks are in keeping with what I said
in my second sketch. He concludes: ‚The resistance of the self, far from entailing the
renunciation of the duty to respond, is, on the contrary, what endows it with its
value.‛ (Bernet, 2000: 178). Nevertheless, I will explore the possibility, and value, of
the removal of this resistance because I see its removal as a liberation, and because I
believe once it has been removed it is possible to experience from the other’s point of
view, and achieve true friendship.
Part 2: Mutuality in friendship
Aristotle’s account indicates that for friendship to exist between two people they
must each wish the other well, and this goodwill must be mutually recognised
(8.2.1155b27-1156a5). He suggests that we do not use the term ‘friendship’ for the
‚love of lifeless objects‛ (Aristotle, 1984: 1826; 8.2.1155b28) because it is not mutual,
and because we do not wish the object goodwill. Using his example, we can say that
although I may love wine in this bottle, it does not love me; and my love of it does
not mean I wish it well, other than in the sense of wishing it will keep well, which is
not for the wine’s sake but for my own. On the other hand, I wish a friend well for
the friend’s own sake, and the friend wishes the same for me. Moreover, we are
each aware of the other wishing us well; if I heard about and admired someone, I
could wish them well without meeting them, and they could similarly admire and
wish me well, but this would not be friendship. Thus the mutuality has two parts to
it: each wishing the other well for the other’s sake, and each recognising this. In the
case of true friendship, which is what is under discussion, this mutuality takes time
to develop because each has to come to recognise the good qualities of the other and
trust the other (8.3.1156b26-32) and it is by spending time together that this has the
opportunity to occur.
This is a description of friendship I think we should accept; if friendship involves

wishing each other well (and, presumably, acting in accordance with that, as from an
Aristotelian stance it would be meaningless to have one without the other) it would
indeed seem incorrect to say two people are friends unless they are each aware of
the goodwill of the other person towards them. As I have just referred to, Aristotle
mentions that there could be people ‚they have not seen but judge to be good or
useful‛ and so wish well, and who ‚might return this feeling‛ (Aristotle, 1984: 1826;
8.2.1156a1-2), but that this would not be called friendship. I think we can go further.
Even two people who have spent time together could possibly be unaware of their
mutual goodwill, and in such circumstances would not be friends. This is an
important point I will return to shortly. First, though, let us consider a closely
related issue Aristotle discusses, which is to do with equality. As he says:
[I]n loving a friend men love what is good for themselves; for the good man
in becoming a friend becomes a good to his friend. Each, then, both loves
what is good for himself, and makes an equal return in goodwill and in
pleasantness; for friendship is said to be equality < *Aristotle, 1984: 1829;
8.5.1157b32-1158a1; emphasis added]
There is already a sort of equality between people who are ‘good’ in the Aristotelian
sense, because they are ‚alike in excellence‛ (Aristotle, 1984: 1827; 8.3.1156b8) and as
friends they wish well to each other in a way that is alike, that is, based on virtue.
One way to understand this is to say that if I am someone disposed to act as I should
act and with the necessary judgement to do so, and see another person acting as they
should act, I will have goodwill towards them and my actions will demonstrate that
goodwill. If that is reciprocated in the actions of the other person it will lead to
mutual recognition of the goodwill we will share, and thus to friendship; and we
will both benefit. So far, that is entirely in keeping with the notion of mutuality set
out above. However, the passage quoted introduces a new element, which is that
there is an equal return. We need to be cautious about what Aristotle means by
‘equality’, though. It could imply a reciprocal relation (Figure 1), although that is not
the approach I will adopt. Referring to friendships based on pleasure or utility, he
suggests it means wishing the same things for each other and getting the same
things from each other, or making an exchange, such as of pleasure for utility
(8.6.1158b1-3). This could suggest that equality is achieved as long as both parties
benefit, and either do so in the same way, or in different ways if an exchange is
involved. He then discusses friendship based on an inequality, and introduces the
need for proportionality where the friends are not equals, saying that goodwill
should be in proportion to the merit of the person it is directed towards, bringing
about the equality which characterises friendship (8.7.1158b24-28). This could also
be thought of as reciprocal relation, but one where there is unequal status (Figure 2),
though again I will not take this approach. There is a further twist to the account,
however. After reiterating that proportionality to merit achieves equality and so
sustains the friendship (8.14.1163b11), he concedes that it is not always possible for
someone to return what is due to the other, such as when it is to the gods or to
parents, but that a good person will offer as much as is possible (8.14.1163b13-18).
As he has already outlined, there is a point at which such an inequality will mean
friendship is not possible, and although that point cannot be established precisely, it
occurs when ‚one party is removed to a great distance, as God is‛ (Aristotle, 1984:
1831; 8.7.1159a3-5).
Figure 1 Figure 2
Hence ‘equality’ has a number of different connotations. There are the separate
questions of whether the people are equals and whether there is equality of goodwill
between them (and wishing the other well is only meaningful if it is enacted). With
regard to the latter, for friendship to exist each must receive something, and what
they receive must either be the same thing or an appropriate exchange of one thing
for another. In addition, if they are not equals they should, as far as possible, each
try to offer what the other merits; and it seems friendship depends on the attempt to
do so, not necessarily its achievement, but that past a certain undefined point the
attempt will fall so far short that friendship cannot exist. It is possible to think of this
as a relation splitting to become two broken relations, with a shortfall in the
goodwill on one side (Figure 3).44 We can say, then, that ‚equal return‛ means first
that both parties benefit from the friendship (this follows logically from the notion of
a return, because if one person gives and gets something back then for that to occur
the other person must also be getting something, i.e. what the first person gives, and
giving something, i.e. what the first person is getting back; and so it is a reciprocal
relation, and in that sense ‚equal‛); second that the way they benefit is either the
same or an appropriate exchange, and in the case of friendships based on virtue
what each gives and receives will be based on virtue; and third that the ‚amount‛
they receive will be the same if they are equals, or will be aimed at being in
proportion with what the other merits if they are not equals. Given this meaning of
equality, we can extend the definition of friendship to say that it comes from mutual
recognition of equal goodwill. Now the challenge is to see whether this fits with the
notion from Part 1 of the other person as absolutely other, and to whom I have
infinite responsibility (Figure 4; and we can see why Figures 1 and 2, and even
Figure 3, are all unsatisfactory because they are in contradiction to this infinite
responsibility).
44In Figure 3 (and also in Figure 2) I have labelled the ‘self’ as lower in status. This is only for
consistency through the sequence of diagrams, and the labels only really start to be of relevance from
Figure 4 onwards. For Aristotle it could just as well be the other way round, with the side labelled
‘self’ of higher status than the side labelled ‘other’.
Figure 3 Figure 4
Let us again turn to Ricoeur’s (1992) Seventh Study. He suggests that the mutual
nature of friendship Aristotle describes occurs as a precarious balance between
giving and receiving, found at the middle of a range whose ends are marked by the
initiative being taken by the self or by the other. In the latter case, citing Levinas, he
says it is the other of absolute exteriority and separation who instructs the self,
calling it to responsibility, and thus initiating a relation that is not a relation, an
irrelation, because the other is absolved from it; but that by the self recognising the
pre-eminence of the other there is a ‚reverse movement‛ (p.190) from the self, so
from a starting point of dissymmetry the exchange of giving and receiving is
established. Alternatively, if the initiative is taken by the self in sharing the pain of
an other who is suffering – and Ricoeur sees suffering as a diminution, even to the
point of total disappearance, in the other’s ability to act – then the return takes place
‚in the shared whisper of voices or the feeble embrace of clasped hands‛ (p.191),
where there is a recognition that the self is vulnerable too, engendering
compassionate feelings in the self towards the other that are only possible because of
the weakness of the other. Friendship, he says, is equidistant between these two
extremes, and ‚the self and the other share equally the same wish to live together‛
(p.192) which is in line with the result we are seeking to arrive at since it also follows
from mutual recognition of equal goodwill: if two people are aware of their
goodwill for each other, they will want to share their lives, and if the goodwill is
equal, so will be the desire to live together.
There is, then, much of value in Ricoeur’s account. However, as it stands it falls
short of the Aristotelian conception of friendship, for while it shows how there can
be a return in both the situations Ricoeur describes, and thus how there can be
shared (and, at the midpoint, balanced) goodwill, it is unclear how this can be
mutually recognised. If I encounter an other and so am faced with an ethical
demand whose content is the infinite otherness of the other, for the other to address
me is perhaps recognition of a sort, but my goodwill-conferring recognition of the
authority of the other to command me does not indicate that my goodwill has in
turn been recognised by the other. At the opposite end of Ricoeur’s ‚spectrum‛, if I
see an other suffering and reach out with compassion, when my hand is clasped it
returns recognition of a sort, but whether it returns goodwill remains uncertain and
is not something I can recognise in that clasp. As discussed above, friendship in
Aristotle’s account does not only require mutual goodwill, it requires mutual
recognition of goodwill. Ricoeur could object that I am concentrating on the extremes
while friendship is achieved at the midpoint. Still, it seems that the goodwill that
comes from me, in recognising the authority of the other to command me or in
showing compassion for the suffering of the other, is apparent (to me), while any
goodwill returned by the other is not something I seem to have access to, and I
would have no greater access to it at the midpoint between. Furthermore, as soon as
I did recognise the goodwill of the other towards me it would compromise the
dissymmetry, because it would introduce a degree of reciprocity. This is potentially
a serious problem for the position Ricoeur is advocating, so I will examine that now
and set aside for the moment the issue of how an other’s goodwill may be
recognised. I want to suggest two refinements to Ricoeur’s account, starting with his
notion of friendship at the ‘midpoint’.
The difficulty can be stated quite simply. Ricoeur’s use of the word ‘spectrum’
implies a scale, and travelling along the scale away from the end where the initiative
comes from the other suggests a reduction in the other’s absolute authority to
command me. Yet as an infinite demand it can undergo no reduction. So is there
another way to achieve balance – and friendship? An equilibrium will be reached if
two opposite processes are happening simultaneously and at the same rate. In a
reversible chemical reaction when the ‘forwards’ direction (formation of products)
and the ‘backwards’ direction (return of the products to the starting chemicals, the
reactants) occur at the same speed the proportions of reactants and products will
remain constant. This can be likened to walking up an escalator just as fast as it goes
down, and so staying in the same place. Appropriating and adapting this idea
would require, first, that the two ‚ends‛ of Ricoeur’s ‚spectrum‛ could instead be
thought of as opposite processes which occur simultaneously, and secondly that,

unlike in the chemical reaction, one is constant (because of the infinite demand) and
it is solely by the increase of the other process that balance is reached. My other
refinement is to replace Ricoeur’s notion of suffering related to the other’s lack of
ability to act with one of vulnerability as a result of always-present mortality (as
mentioned in Sketch 2 of Part 1). Then, in an encounter with an other, the absolute
otherness of the other puts me in question and calls on me to respond, and in
recognising this ethical demand, this responsibility, I recognise the other’s absolute
authority to call me to responsibility; and this is the first process. At the same time,
the source of the infinite demand is a mortal other, and in recognising the other’s
vulnerability to death I can reach out with compassion; this is the second process.
As Derrida (1991: 112) says: ‚This responsibility to the other, for the other, comes to
[the subject], for example (but this is not just one example among others) in the
‘Thou shalt not kill.’‛ Not killing presupposes the possibility of killing, the
possibility of death, the vulnerability of the other, and thus creates the opening for
compassion. However, my compassion and therefore its balancing effect are limited
by the ‘resistance’ discussed in Part 1. Only the total removal of resistance to
compassion will allow the second process to balance the first. Only when I recognise
your absolute authority to call me to responsibility and, equally, through unresisted
compassion, recognise your mortal vulnerability, can that occur. Only when there is
no barrier from the ‚I am me, not you‛ can true friendship be reached. That will be
discussed in Part 3.
Part 3: The friend as another me
I began, at the start of Part 1, by quoting Aristotle. I now want to return to what he
says in the discussion leading up to that passage (9.4), and elsewhere, with regard to
the friend being ‚another self‛.45 A view of friendship based on similarity could be
fundamentally opposed to my approach based on the notion of infinite otherness,
yet at times it seems the former is Aristotle’s position. Nonetheless, I will set out an
account in which a friend can be thought of as another ‘me’ while preserving
absolute alterity, and which I believe is in keeping with Aristotle’s analysis. As
Lippitt (2007) points out, there is an ambiguity to the phrase ‚another self‛, and no
45Ricoeur (1992: 185) says the friend is described as ‚another self *allos autos+‛ at 9.4.1166a32 and as
the ‚other self *heteros autos+‛ at 9.9.1169b6-7 and 1170b6; and that in both phrases the word ‘self’ is a
translation of the nonreflexive ‘autos’.
consensus has emerged about how it should be interpreted; we may be influenced

by what Aristotle writes elsewhere, and Lippitt quotes a passage from the Magna
Moralia about gaining knowledge of myself from my friend just as I would by
looking into a mirror, concluding: ‚The overall idea is that I can see myself in the
mirror of my friend only because my friend is in the critical respects like me.‛
(Lippitt, 2007: 15; emphasis in original).46 The idea of a mirror will be of use in my
concluding remarks to this final part, but for now I want to restrict what I say to
Aristotle’s Ethics. He starts 9.4 by saying: ‚Friendly relations with one’s neighbours,
and the marks by which friendships are defined, seem to have proceeded from a
man’s relations to himself.‛ (Aristotle, 1984: 1843; 9.4.1166a1-2). This could easily
take us back to the ‚friendship with myself‛ I wrote about in Part 1. Yet the next
sentence begins: ‚For men think a friend is one who wishes and does what is good,
or seems so, for the sake of his friend, or one who wishes his friend to exist and live, for
his sake <‛ (Aristotle, 1984: 1843; 9.4.1166a3-5; emphasis added). It would therefore
be a mistake to interpret Aristotle’s view of the friend being ‚another self‛ as
meaning my friend is somehow an extension of myself, or a proxy for myself, and so
not an individual in his or her own right; then, wishing well for my friend would
not really be for the friend’s sake.47 That said, it is quite possible for my friend to be
very similar to me without being me. Pangle (2002: 153) says: ‚no degree of
similarity can erase the ultimate separateness of two individuals. The paradox of the
phrase ‘another self’ points to the fact that even if a friend were identical, he would
never be interchangeable with oneself, since it would never cancel the pain of
personal catastrophe to know that there is someone else, just like oneself, still faring
well.‛48
46 The lines he quotes from the Magna Moralia are as follows: ‚we are not able to see what we are from
ourselves < as then when we wish to see our own face, we do so by looking into the mirror, in the
same way when we wish to know ourselves we can obtain that knowledge by looking at our friend.
For the friend is, as we assert, a second self. If, then, it is pleasant to know oneself, and it is not
possible to know this without having some one else for a friend, the self-sufficing man will require
friendship in order to know himself.‛
47 Although I stand by this argument, against my interpretation it should be noted that Pangle (2002:
152), while again noting that the phrase is ‚ambiguous‛, suggests it should indeed be seen as
meaning the friend is an extension of myself; she cites evidence from other places it is used in the
Ethics and concludes that ‚the friend who is loved as another self is, in some important way,
cherished as an extension of oneself, an extension that can tempt one into the delusion that this other
really is still oneself<‛. However, she concedes that if the friend were not also distinct, and loved as
such, then friendship would not be possible – so the friend is loved ‚both as other and as same‛
(Pangle, 2002: 153).
48 This notion of not being interchangeable is similar to Ricoeur’s (1992: 193) description of
‚nonsubstitutability‛. He says that ‚even when I place myself in the place of the other in imagination
The issue, then, is why similarity could be important in friendship. Is it so my friend

can somehow be a proxy for myself (in spite of remaining an individual in his or her
own right), and thus be more of a friend, or more effective as a friend, the more
similar to me he or she is? As already referred to in Part 2, Aristotle sees it as more
difficult for people of different status to be friends (and impossible beyond a certain
point), and perhaps this could extend to differences not just in status but more
generally; however, we could counter that a friendship that is difficult to form or
maintain is not necessarily a lesser friendship. Aristotle discusses differences and
their equalisation, and while difference can present problems, he concedes that these
difficulties may be overcome. For me the key point is about living together – that is,
taking part in common activities – and the complementary roles that friends may take
on, which cannot be explained if friendship is understood in terms of similarity. For
example, my friend may enjoy telling jokes and I may enjoy listening to them, and it
is this difference that makes the common activity succeed. Finally, we need to tackle
what Aristotle says about the similarity specific to true friendship: ‚Perfect
friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in excellence.‛ (Aristotle,
1984: 1827; 8.3.1156b7-8; my italic). In my view this does not mean Aristotle is
saying true friendship can only occur between people who are very similar to each
other in all respects. The similarity is in their excellence (also translated as virtue) –
that is, they are similar in that they both do what it is best for them to do. 49 For
Aristotle, however, humans all belong to the same category, and so have a common
function in much the same way as the function of all eyes is to see, leading to
similarity in carrying out that function. By contrast, for Levinas (1969) being human
implies precisely the impossibility of belonging to any category, or ‚common
concept‛ (p.213). I want to return later to the idea from Aristotle of friends who are
‚alike in excellence‛ and so do what it is best to do, but without maintaining any
commitment to the use of ‘human’ as a category.
and in sympathy‛ I do not become the other: as he puts it, ‚I do not leave my place‛. The idea of
putting myself in the place of the other will feature in my discussion shortly. Ricoeur continues:
‚Solicitude adds the dimension of value, whereby each person is irreplaceable in our affection and our
esteem.‛ Irreplaceability, though, returns us to Levinas’s notion of the unicity of the other, which is
what I am espousing.
49 And as Pangle (2002: 57) says: ‚Aristotle has stressed repeatedly that the perfect friendship of virtue
will be a friendship of equals, each fully worthy of the other’s confidence, trust, and generous
support.‛ This, also, does not imply that these equals must be similar people, other than in their virtue.
However, I will now set out an entirely different way in which a friend can be
thought of as another ‘me’. In the Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty (1962)
gives the example of a fifteen-month old baby copying the actions of an other
without a need for reasoning by analogy; the other’s body does not become an
object to the baby but is experienced in terms of its behaviours, allowing imitation. 50
As adults we also experience others through their behaviours and our own, and as
Dastur (2008: 31) puts it: ‚*the other’s+ behaviour could have been mine, because it is
for me a familiar way of dealing with the world.‛51 It seems I do not need to
distinguish between my perceptions and the other’s perceptions; and yet I privilege
my own, so there is a ‚solipsism‛ that is ‚insurmountable‛ (Merleau-Ponty, 1962:
358). I experience others’ emotions through their behaviours, but their emotions do
not mean the same to me as my own – my own anger has a personal significance in a
way that an other’s anger does not – and therefore ‚I do not experience a reciprocity
which could really give me an access to an alter ego.‛ (Dastur, 2008: 32). However,
what I have called the privileging of my own perceptions – of my own embodied
experience – can be understood as an expression of the resistance to the ethical
demand of the other, as set out in Part 1. My reaction is a wordless: ‚I am me, not
you.‛ As such, if the resistance can be reduced considerably, or even removed
entirely, it may be possible for the other to become an alter ego, to use Dastur’s term;
in other words, for the other to be ‚another me‛. This could give me access to an
experience through the other as the other, rather than as simply an extension of
myself.
My suggestion, for instance, is that while it is not possible for me to experience what
it is like for me to have grown up as a woman, in the right circumstances it is
possible for me to experience what it is like for another person to have grown up as a
woman. Importantly, this does not compromise the absolute alterity of the other
person, because such experiences do not enable me to define her or to anticipate
what her future choices will be; and nor does it remove the absolute separation
between us. I am not her, but I can experience what it is like for her. To the extent
that I can experience things from the point of view of the other, that other can be said
50 Martin and Dawda (1999) write about what they call ‘interpersonal understanding’, including
empathy, and although the context of their discussion is psychotherapy it was their remarks about
Merleau-Ponty that led me to investigate his views further.
51 Langer (1989: 100) says the adult is able to reason by analogy, but that is ‚the exception rather than
the norm‛.
to be another me; but not a copy of me, remaining absolutely other. This opens up
some interesting possibilities for true friendship, as will be seen. To explore what
the ‚other me‛ as genuinely other would mean in terms of the ethical demand, let us
turn to what Hill (1997: 176-177) says is Blanchot’s reconfiguration of the ‚relation of
non-relation between the Same and the Other‛ as set out by Levinas in Totality and
Infinity, such that it now goes in two or more directions. Hence, just as the other is
infinitely other to me, I am (it is supposed) infinitely other to the other. Importantly,
Blanchot (1993: 70-71) insists:
[T]his redoubling of irreciprocity – the reversal that makes me apparently the

other of the other – cannot, at the level we are describing, be incorporated into
any dialectic, for it does not tend to re-establish any equality whatsoever; on
the contrary, it signifies a double dissymmetry, a double discontinuity, as
though the emptiness between the one and the other were not homogeneous
but polarised < and such that one should call it neuter, so long as it is clear
that the neuter does not annul or neutralise this double-signed infinity, but
bears it in the manner of an enigma.
Blanchot’s reference to the ‚level‛ at which this takes place is a key point, and one I
will return to. However, the immediate stumbling block is that I cannot
acknowledge, even as a possibility, any responsibility of the other for me, as that
would compromise my infinite responsibility to the other (Figure 5); so how can I
assert that I am ‚apparently‛ the other of the other?52 Iyer (2003: 230) comments:
‚What is crucial for Blanchot is the fact that the Other is another human being who
will likewise respond to the Other. Even as I am exposed and obliged in my relation
to you, you can be exposed and obliged by me.‛ He says it is ‚not a reciprocal
relation‛ but a ‚criss-crossing of relations‛; yet it is still not clear how this can work
in light of the objection I have raised, where the obligation must remain one-sided:
all mine. Nevertheless, he helpfully contrasts it with Hegel’s view of the ethical life
in the Phenomenology of Spirit, according to which ‚it is essential to the achievement
of the selfhood that we are recognised, that is, positively valued by the Other.‛ (Iyer,
2003: 231; original emphasis). So I would have to be accepted by others as on a par
52If I owe you absolutely everything, you cannot at the same time owe me anything at all because any
debt you would have is already cancelled out in my infinite debt to you. Elsewhere, Blanchot (1988:
43) nicely describes the Levinasian notion of my responsibility to the other as ‚a responsibility that
cannot limit itself and exceeds itself without exhausting itself‛.
with, or equivalent to, themselves – and this would lead to a mutuality starkly
different to the stance I am advocating. Hegel’s approach does not offer a way
forward in the present context because it precisely does not preserve the irrelation, it
seeks to establish reciprocity.
Figure 5 Figure 6
My solution is instead to integrate Blanchot’s reconfiguration with my preceding

discussion: if I can adopt the point of view of the other – of the friend who is
‚another me‛ – then I can experience my own otherness from the other’s perspective.
Then, from my point of view I would experience my infinite responsibility to the
other (and no responsibility of the other to me in return), and from the other’s point
of view I would experience the infinite responsibility of the other to me, and I would
be the other to the other (Figure 6).53 According to my conception, this would not
happen widely but only in true friendship where there is no (or very little) resistance
to the ethical demand. The question then arises of how the resistance could be
reduced, possibly even to the extent that it is no longer there at all. I suggest there is
an interplay between different levels, such that the resistance can be affected by and
can affect what occurs at higher levels, with those higher levels extending from the
pre-representational (such as with the baby Merleau-Ponty mentions) to the level at
which recognition and dialogue occur. In his discussion of the suffering of the other,
mentioned in Part 2, Ricoeur (1992) makes a distinction between pity and sympathy.
53It is important to note that Figure 6 is somewhat misleading because it appears I am looking at it
from ‚outside‛; I am not entitled to claim a standpoint outside lived experience, and Levinas (1969:
251) mentions the ‚impossibility of the exterior point of view‛. This is necessary to attempt to show
the irrelations on a diagram, but it should be viewed with caution.
In ‚simple pity‛, he says, ‚the self is secretly pleased to know it has been spared‛,
but in ‚true sympathy‛ it ‚finds itself affected by all that the suffering other offers to
it in return‛ (p.191). Perhaps the way the self is affected could include a lowering of
the resistance to the ethical demand; and, perhaps, as I experience greater
compassion the resistance gets lower, and (as proposed in Part 2) as the resistance
gets lower I experience greater compassion, so there is a ‚feedback loop‛ and the
resistance continues to diminish over time. 54 Furthermore, I have already referred at
length to Aristotle’s suggestion that friendship requires mutual recognition of shared
goodwill, but perhaps this does not define true friendship but rather is how true
friendship can be formed. Perhaps it is this mutual recognition that allows the
resistance to diminish, and thus for true friendship to become possible. This reading
is consistent with what Aristotle (1984: 1828) says of true friendship, that it ‚requires
time and familiarity‛ (8.3.1156b26), that it cannot occur until ‚each has been found
lovable and been trusted by each‛ (1156b29-30), and that: ‚Those who quickly show
the marks of friendship to each other wish to be friends, but are not friends unless
they are both lovable and know the fact; for a wish for friendship may arise quickly,
but friendship does not.‛ (1156b30-32). To ‚know the fact‛ will happen at the level
of representation, where recognition is possible, yet this could feed into a gradual
reduction of the resistance to the ethical demand, eventually bringing about true
friendship.55
Finally, we can perhaps also see why it is necessary for true friends to be ‚alike in
excellence‛. If I do what it is best for me to do, my friend will respond in a way that
is in keeping with the ‘rightness’ of my action; and so I can experience my own
action from my friend’s point of view, gaining self-esteem because of its rightness as
revealed by my friend’s response to it.56 Rather than being like a copy or mirror-
54 I am not suggesting that once this begins it will inevitably read to the removal of all resistance to the
ethical demand, and I think it is much more complex than implied by this simple ‚feedback loop‛ on
its own. However, my purpose is not to give a detailed account here of the removal of resistance to
the ethical demand, but merely to illustrate my argument with some plausible suggestions.
55 This may also answer the difficulty raised by Webb (2003: 122) when, in discussing Derrida, he
points out that although Aristotle says the ‚constancy‛ of true friendship arises when it has been
‚tried and tested‛, giving it ‚immunity to time‛ as if after sufficient testing the friendship is then
completely secure, ‚one can never say that the passage to stability is complete‛. Under my approach,
the degree of resistance to the ethical demand can vary, and even if the resistance is removed entirely
it could be reinstated, so there is no intrinsic permanence to true friendship.
56 Lynch (2005: 103) makes similar points, saying ‚self-worth and self-knowledge are enhanced
through friendship‛ (and citing 1171b16-1172a6 of the Ethics), and for friends ‚the deep affinity
between them allows them to act as what we might call ‘mirrors’ to one another‛ (citing 1169b11-35).
image of myself, the friend who is ‚another me‛ and remains absolutely other could
be like the mirror itself, providing a reflection that is unique because it comes from
that other’s unique perspective (just as mirrors at different angles will all give
different views) and which is ‘true’, in the sense of undistorted, to the extent that the
other is also virtuous – that is, also lives according to what is best for him or her.
Alike in excellence, we each experience our own excellence, and our own otherness,
from the other’s point of view. This, I suggest, is what happens in true friendship.
Conclusion
I have set out a view of true friendship as occurring when the ethical demand from
an other as absolutely other is unresisted. Thus true friendship is prior to
representations. The resistance, I have said, arises as a response to the emergence of
selfhood in the encounter with the other, because of a fear of loss of selfhood in
living for the other, but that in resisting the ethical demand I am engaging in a
constant struggle against the originary moment of my existence. I have discussed
this alongside Aristotle’s treatise on friendship in the Ethics, and although there are
areas of incompatibility between his approach and the philosophy of otherness –
such as Aristotle conceiving ‘human’ as a category, and Levinas conceiving it as the
impossibility of belonging to a category – I have been able to show where the ideas I
have developed (from Levinas, Ricoeur, Merleau-Ponty, Blanchot and others) are
consistent with Aristotle’s theories. My aim in doing so was to examine the
conceptualisation of true friendship I have put forward. I have suggested that
equalisation in friendship takes place when infinite responsibility is balanced by a
compassion which becomes unrestricted because the ethical demand is not resisted.
I have also proposed that mutual recognition of shared goodwill, at the level of
representations, could play a role in the gradual reduction of resistance to the ethical
demand, and thus to the formation of true friendship when the resistance has been
removed. Without the resistance we are able to experience from the other’s point of
view. If we are both doing what is best for us to do, we can both experience the
rightness of our actions from the other’s perspective and thus gain self-esteem – not
by being told ‚well done‛, but by experiencing for ourselves, through the other, that
we have done what is right. I can even experience my own otherness to the other
from the other’s perspective; yet the other’s perspective remains distinct from my
own, so it does not become a reciprocal relation, the irrelation of infinite
responsibility goes in both directions.
What does this mean for our lives? Once I am liberated from the resistance to the
ethical demand I can experience a closeness to the other person characteristic of true
friendship, which is not a loss of individuality but the dropping of barriers resulting
in access to experience from the other’s perspective. My resistance is like a fight
against the pull of gravity, and when it is gone I feel an ethical ‚weightlessness‛.
And, like an object in orbit around a planet experiencing ‚free fall‛, there is no
collision once the resistance has gone: I do not become the other, and the other does
not become me, we remain separate but no longer faced with the fear of loss of
selfhood or the struggle it has led to. In free fall we are free. Although true
friendship is rare, I believe we can all experience glimpses of it – perhaps just
moments of closeness, liberation and enrichment. The notion of true friendship can
apply to us all, even if not always to its full extent, and is something we can all
aspire to.
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Brian Robinson Level 3 Philosophy Page 1 of 48

Level 3 Philosophy Work

3-13 The importance of the imagination in the Transcendental Analytic: The

15-22 A responsibility to all: Levinas, the ethical relation, and the

24-44 True friendship in Aristotle’s ‘Ethics’ and the unresisted ethical

46-48 References (combined)

The importance of the imagination in the

My suggestion will be that the importance of the imagination is in spontaneously

translator’s footnote (number 166) as a clarification of ‚synthesis of apprehension‛ (ibid.: 269;

There is a problem with this interpretation, though: the possibility of allocating

experiential object whatsoever be thought at all‛ (ibid.: 148; A93=B126). So the

Underlying the imagination’s ability to generate instances of a concept according to

Finally, I want to turn to whether the imagination is constrained in its operations,

To recap, a group of empirical information is only applicable within experience if it

Because experience depends on the object-form, however, I cannot experience its

wishes. Instead, it is as if I choose to make my experience possible, and thus to make

Allais, Lucy. (2003). ‘Kant’s transcendental idealism and contemporary anti-realism’.

A responsibility to all: Levinas, the

Levinas first mentions responsibility in the Preface, as part of a discussion of

Mishnaic Treatise ‘Sanhedrin’‛.

If the responsibility is infinite, and is something I am ‚unable to shirk‛ (p.245), it

The third party

Reminding us of the ‚non-postponable urgency‛ of the Other’s requirement that I

Barber, Michael D. (2008). ‘Autonomy, Reciprocity, and Responsibility: Darwall and

True friendship in Aristotle’s ‘Ethics’

My main objectives in Part 1 are to show why the relation of otherness is so

to present a challenge to my position, because it would appear that the asymmetry of

Part 1: Friendship with myself

quotation at the top he thinks I would need to be ‚two or more‛, or why he is

To pre-empt my discussion of mutuality in friendship in Part 2, this is further

fundamentally I am not prompted to look to myself, not able to represent

This sketch indicates that friendship with myself is impossible in an existence of

whether friendship (with myself or with another) requires recognition of goodwill,

Part 2: Mutuality in friendship

This is a description of friendship I think we should accept; if friendship involves

thought of as opposite processes which occur simultaneously, and secondly that,

Part 3: The friend as another me

consensus has emerged about how it should be interpreted; we may be influenced

The issue, then, is why similarity could be important in friendship. Is it so my friend

[T]his redoubling of irreciprocity – the reversal that makes me apparently the

My solution is instead to integrate Blanchot’s reconfiguration with my preceding

Langer, Monika M. (1989). Merleau-Ponty’s ‘Phenomenology of Perception’: a guide and

Allais, Lucy. (2003). ‘Kant’s transcendental idealism and contemporary anti-realism’.

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