Pints With Aquinas - 63: Aristotle's 3 Types of Friendship, With Emily Barry

Episode Date: July 3, 2017

Today I chat with my pal, Emily Barry, about what Thomas has to say about friendship. --- SPONSORS EL Investments: https://www.elinvestments.net/pints Exodus 90: https://exodus90.com/mattfradd/  Hallow: http://hallow.app/mattfradd  STRIVE: https://www.strive21.com/  GIVING Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mattfradd This show (and all the plans we have in store) wouldn't be possible without you. I can't thank those of you who support me enough. Seriously! Thanks for essentially being a co-producer coproducer of the show. LINKS Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/matt-fradd FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/ SOCIAL Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattfradd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd MY BOOKS  Does God Exist: https://www.amazon.com/Does-God-Exist-Socratic-Dialogue-ebook/dp/B081ZGYJW3/ref=sr_1_9?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586377974&sr=8-9 Marian Consecration With Aquinas: https://www.amazon.com/Marian-Consecration-Aquinas-Growing-Closer-ebook/dp/B083XRQMTF/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586379026&sr=8-4 The Porn Myth: https://www.ignatius.com/The-Porn-Myth-P1985.aspx CONTACT Book me to speak: https://www.mattfradd.com/speakerrequestform

Pints with Aquinas depends on your support. If you're an awesome person and want to prove it, go to pintswithaquinas.com, click the Patreon banner, and there you can learn how to support the show for as little as $2 a month. Every dollar helps, and we are grateful for your support. Welcome to Pints with Aquinas episode 63. That is ridiculous, as if I've recorded 63 episodes. This is the show where you and I pull up a barstool next to the angelic doctor to discuss theology and philosophy and today we're going to ask St Thomas the question. Thomas, what's a real friend? What is friendship? What are the different types of friendship? We live in a day and age where friendship isn't something we all really get. I think there's somewhat of a war on friendship,

be that because of the way we use the term friends, you know, like I've got 5,000 friends on Facebook, or because we live in a culture where you can't even be friends with someone of your own sex without people making some stupid comment, like how you were in a bromance or something. And I think that stinks. So we need to understand more about friendship. Today, my friend Emily Barry is joining us once again to discuss what Thomas has to say about friendship. And Thomas is drawing quite heavily upon Aristotle's work

in Nicomachean Ethics. You're going to get a lot out of this show. So, you know, enjoy it. And then when you're done, go to iTunes and rate the show. Say, and unless you want to give it a one star, if you want to, if you're just upset and want to give something a one star, go to Catching Foxes and review their podcast. But if that was a joke, don't, they're amazing. You should go check out catching foxes by the way do you know what catching foxes is it's a podcast it'll offend you it'll excite you you'll

love it all right i'm gonna shut up here's the interview enjoy the show emily sullivan it's nice to have you back on the show a pleasure a pleasure matt last time you were with us we spoke about the corpus christi hymns written by St. Thomas Aquinas. And today we're going to be speaking about friendship, in particular, what Thomas had to say, no doubt influenced by Aristotle and what he had to say about friendship from the Nicomachean Ethics. So good to have you back. Great to be here. The Nicomachean Ethics is amazing. I'm sure you've already talked about the Nicomachean Ethics. So good to have you back. Great to be here. The Nicomachean Ethics is amazing. I'm sure you've already talked about the Nicomachean Ethics. It's amazing.

Unbelievable. Yes. It's amazing. And it's amazing that what St. Thomas can do with it in light of Revelation. I'm not even making this up. Here's something cool. I've transferred my desk so that I can now stand up. Okay. So I'm not sitting down anymore. In order to do that, I have to like pile books under my mouse and keyboard. And I promise you, I didn't do it just for this show, but I'm literally using St. Thomas Aquinas' commentary on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics to put my mouse on. Gorgeous. I mean, better than using it as a doorstop, right? Totally. Although it would work well as that as well. I love it. I love it. Well, so that's actually a fantastic book. If you want to really understand the ethics well, having St. Thomas as your guide, I mean, you kind of can't do any better. And if you wanted to kill somebody using a book, this would be the book to do it. Just throwing

at them would surely knock them unconscious. Easily four inches long. Some people talk about, I don't want to be hit over the head with the truth. Well, sorry, St. Thomas's commentary on the ethics is coming at your face. It's pretty brutal, but done in love. It's all in charity. We're going to get to charity too, I think today. Oh my gosh. So you probably remember back in book eight of the ethics. So the ethics is all about what you can know about human action, good human action through philosophy, through just using reason. And it's incredible because for a pagan, Aristotle sure does know a lot. So he's gone through talking about what makes man happy, and he concludes that it's the virtuous life.

And then he says, well, what are these virtues? And so he lays out what the catechism talks about as the cardinal virtues, but what Aristotle just refers to as the moral virtues of temperance, courage, or fortitude, otherwise known as fortitude, justice, and prudence. And then he talks about the intellectual virtues. And then in book eight, he talks about friendship. And it might kind of seem like a little out of the blue, like a little out of left field, but Aristotle is convinced that friendship and virtue go hand in hand. You have to understand virtue or right to understand what friendship is all about. So when he gets to book eight, in chapter three, he lays out that there's really kind of three kinds of friendship. The first is kind of a friendship of utility or usefulness. The second is this friendship of

pleasure. And then finally, you have real, complete, authentic friendship. So friendship of utility is usually what we think of as our friends that we have through businesses. We have an acquaintance, and maybe I'm a book publisher, and I'm friends with the fellow in Georgia who owns a lumber mill who provides my paper. We see each other three or four times a year. Perhaps we send each other Christmas cards. And it's kind of a symbiotic relationship. We're useful to one another. But if suddenly I decide to get out of the book publishing business, I probably won't keep this friendship up. I'm no longer useful to this fellow who owns the lumber mill. He's no longer useful to me. And so it will pass away pretty easily. This other friendship, the friendship of pleasure, is usually what we

think of among the college students who like to go to the same bar or play on the same sports team. It's a pleasure kind of based on passion. But again, once I graduate from college, maybe I, you know, I move to another part of the country. Those things that I had in common with those friends that we like to go to the same stores or go to the same restaurant for brunch. We no longer have those things in common. And so those friendships of pleasure will often easily pass away. But this third kind of friendship, what Aristotle thinks of as complete friendship, is built on virtue. And it's characterized by willing the good of the other. Whereas in the earlier two kinds of friendships were really about what can I gain from this friendship? You know, it's fun to go

out with these girls and have brunch with them and we catch up on our favorite shows. There's something good in it for me. Or my friendship of utility. It's advantageous for me to be on good terms with the fellow who owns the lumber mill because I want a good deal on paper because I'm a book publisher. But here we see kind of this reversal. In authentic friendship and complete friendship, it's willing the good of the other. I want the good for the other for their own sake, not for anything it brings to me, any benefit it brings to me, but for them. And there's this idea that we have a shared life together. We inspire each other to virtue. So your virtuous actions, maybe your marriage with Cameron inspires me as someone who hasn't been married for as long to continue persevering and loving my spouse. Or maybe I see you being generous with your children. It inspires me to be more generous with my children.

And so in complete friendship, you have these friends pursuing the life of virtue together, acting in virtuous ways with one another. Maybe we volunteered a soup kitchen together. But we share this life and Aristotle will say this kind of friend is like another self. I love them the way that I love myself in a healthy way, an appropriate way. But how I look out for myself, I look out for my friend and I put their good and their advantage almost above my own. So this is kind of the... Let me just read what he says about this type of friendship and just its rarity. He says, such friendships are of course rare because such men, and he's talking about virtuous men, are few.

Moreover, they require time and intimacy. This is why you and I develop such fantastic relationships when we both serve with net ministries at different points, right? He says, people who enter into friendly relations quickly have the wish to be friends, but cannot really be friends without being worthy of friendship and also knowing each other to be so. The wish to be friend is a quick growth, but friendship is not. I love that little excerpt. Yeah, my husband actually like highlighted and like triple starred and underlined that exact line in our copy of the ethics that I was looking at this afternoon, prepping for our talk. Yeah, and that's a great example. You know, when you're

living the Christian life and you are working side by side, shoulder to shoulder with other Christians, whether it's in works of evangelization or maybe it's corporal works of mercy, that is a great foundation for friendship. You're becoming, you're sharing one heart and one mind. You're committed to the same things. And again, you're doing virtuous action together. But it takes time. You know, net was almost like a year of your life that you're living in community together and you have to struggle together and inspire and encourage each other. And those friendships are then very, very deeply rooted such that even if I'm sure you have this experience with your net teammates, even if, I mean, you happen to live with one of your net

teammates, so it's a little different for you, but I didn't your uh net teammates even if i mean you happen to live with one of your net teammates so it's a little different for you but i didn't marry my net teammates fyi everybody listening i married my net teammate that's who cameron frat is yeah way to go so i was when i was the recruiter for net i would always say it's not a dating program but we do vet everybody so you know can't hurt. Keep your eyes open. Exactly. I remember actually one of the first conversations I had with your wife was this beautiful conversation. And I had been discerning religious life, but I was asking her about marriage and about how she discerned marrying you, Matt, not to put you on the spot. But she had this great quote from C.S. Lewis about how marriage is best friendship caught on fire. And that's so I think your marriage is a beautiful testament to

kind of what Aristotle is talking about. You have this friendship of being one heart and one mind and serving together. And then when you add love to it, spousal love to it, you have marriage and all the beauty and struggle and sacrifice and growth that comes with that vocation, you know? Yeah, yeah. And see if you agree with this, Emily, even though the friendship of virtue or of the good is the highest form of virtue, that doesn't mean that the other sorts of friendships are bad, you know? It would be inappropriate to try and develop a friendship of virtue with every single person we met because we don't have the time for that. Yeah. And what can be nice is that sometimes those other friendships, the friendships that start in utility or start in pleasure can evolve and deepen into something more authentic and more complete and more beautiful. Maybe that, you know, the lumber owner who I was mentioning before, maybe I realized,

gosh, this man is a really good man. He inspires me to be a more virtuous Christian by his example of the way he sanctifies his work. And so what starts off as something maybe a little bit more selfish, like my girlfriends who I only go to brunch with, maybe we start sharing our hearts with each other and we start sharing about our struggles and we start encouraging each other in our vocations. Like now it can really pave the way to a more complete friendship. So absolutely. That's a great point. You go. Okay. So something else that Aristotle thinks is essential, at least for this complete friendship is there has to be an equality. So an example he'll use is, you know, the master can't be best have complete friendship with his slave because one is superior one is

inferior so this this idea of having equality is really important so two men you know living in Athens who are free men who are pursuing the life of virtue lovers of wisdom maybe even he talks about the kinship like of brothers they've grown up together they've spent time together that's really where you can have the best kind of friendship. And so Aristotle is very specific, still in book eight and chapter seven, that you can't have friendships with the gods. This is impossible because they exceed human beings to the greatest degree. So that possibility is totally off the table for Aristotle. And this is interesting because we often do maybe look down on the idea of a father getting, you know, inordinately or inappropriately chummy with his son. You know, I remember growing up, I heard of a father who would smoke marijuana with his son.

And no doubt he thought he was doing something good or cool, but the rest of us just looked on him, even if we were okay with smoking dope and just thought, that guy's a bit of a loser, you know? Yeah, my mother would always say to me, I am not your friend. I am your mother. Now happily, like we, we truly are friends. I love my mother dearly and we, we have a real friendship. But for that time, when I was a teenager and I was telling her a similar situation, I was telling her about how, well, you know, my friend's mom would let us drink at her house. And yeah, that's because she's interested in being her daughter's friend and not her mother. And if I love you and yeah, yeah, it's real cold water to the face. But if I love you and you're the soul that God has entrusted to me, then my goal, I don't really care if you like me, even if you're angry at me, my goal is to help you make good

decisions and to grow into a young woman who is happy and healthy and I'm not interested in being your friend. Very good. How does St. Thomas build upon or what insights does he have into what Aristotle has to say about friendship? Yeah, so St. Thomas seems to accept Aristotle's threefold division that we were discussing before. You mentioned his commentary on the ethics. St. Thomas has no problem when he disagrees with you, telling you

you're wrong and pointing it out, but he doesn't seem to do that. And in the Summa, he'll even, he'll use Aristotle's, that threefold division of the friendship of utility, the friendship of pleasure, and then like the complete friendship, the friendship of virtuous men as examples that he'll deal with. And so he seems to be in agreement. And so the first time we see St. Thomas bringing up friendship is in the Prima Pars. It's question 20. Excuse me. It's not the Prima Pars.

Is it? Shoot. It's either the Prima Pars or the Prima Secundae. I think it's the Prima Pars. He brings up, it's question 26. It's Article 4. of bars of the prima secundae i think it's the prima pars he brings up it's question 26 it's article 4 st thomas is trying to distinguish between um what he calls the love of concupiscence and the love of friendship and concupiscence is just the fancy word for like desire right

so what's the difference between how i love gin and tonic and how i love my husband joe and so you'll see that um the love that i have for some good or something, he uses the example of wine. I guess they didn't have gin and tonics back then for them. But so the love that I have for something that brings a good to me is distinctive from love of friendship. And here he's going to use Aristotle's same claim that the love of authentic, complete friendship is desiring a good for another. friendship is desiring a good for another. So I can love, you know, the love I have for a gin and tonic or the, he uses the example of a horse later on in the Summa is very distinct from it's, it's, it's, it's altogether different from a love of friendship where I'm willing a good for another, not for my, my own advantage. But the next time that St. Thomas takes up friendship,

and this is where I think it's really, really critical. I think it really is like a key to the whole of the Summa is when he thinks about charity. So here he's in the Secundae Secundae, the second part of the second part, where it's question 23, it's article one, and he's already discussed the virtues of faith, the virtues of hope, and so now he's coming to charity. And he really asks, is charity a friendship? What does this mean? And here's what should kind of put us on guard. Remember that Aristotle said you can't be friends with the gods because they're infinitely higher than us. They exceed us completely. And we already know kind of as Catholics that charity is our love for God and love for neighbor. So how is this even possible? Is Aristotle wrong or St. Thomas wrong? Right. Yes.

Now, I don't know, Matt, have you helped your listeners when they read the Summa, do you have them read the respondeo first and then go back to the objections? Or do you usually deal with the objections first? I don't necessarily go through everything in the article. Whatever I go through, I cut and paste into the show notes so that they can read along. So whatever you read, I'll throw up there. Okay, sweet. Okay.

So when St. Thomas deals with this question, is charity a friendship? What he really relies upon very beautifully is John 15, 15, when Christ says, I no longer call you servants, I call you friends. And he says that Jesus in calling them friends, this is because of his love for them. So charity and friendship are the same. So here suddenly Thomas is going to do something incredible that would really just shock Aristotle. He says that God wishes to build up a friendship with us. He communicates his inner life to us through the second person, the word, and because the Holy Spirit dwells with us. He communicates his inner life to us through the second person,

the word, and because the Holy Spirit dwells in us. So when we were having that conversation before, Matt, about friendship, the incomplete friendship, we have to be dwelling together and communicating with one another and spending time with one another. So what Aristotle couldn't conceive of is possible now because of the incarnation, because of the Eucharist, because of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. God can communicate His innermost life to us, and it's precisely because of that, what we know through Revelation, that allows for us to have friendship with God. So... Let me just pause there a moment. Okay, so granted we can have friendship with God. Let me just pause there a moment. Okay, so granted, we can have friendship with God in a way, as you say, Aristotle couldn't conceive of, and yet, you know, I think

it was C.S. Lewis somewhere talked about how we look, many of us just look at God as, you know, a bigger version of us, as a sort of chap, you know, as a buddy. So what would be the difference between what Aquinas is saying there about how we can have friendship with God as a, you know, as a buddy. So what would be the difference between what Aquinas is saying there about how we can have friendship with God, whereas on the other hand, you've got someone who has this very informal sort of idea, almost that's devoid of any reverence and awe and fear of God? Yeah, St. Thomas probably wouldn't be up with that. You're not chummy with God, who is omnipotent, right? If he forgot about you for a second, you would cease to exist. God, in his beneficence, shares his happiness with us, but that we are totally unworthy of it. It's not something I earn or I merit.

And, you know, I kind of drag God down from the heavens and make him my chummy chum. But rather, God, in his greatness, takes on our—St. Thomas will say somewhere else in the sermon—God shows his greatness by taking on our littleness. somewhere else in the same way, God shows his greatness by taking on our littleness. But that in no way should make us kind of haughty or presumptuous about our relationship with God, because it should remain one of reverence and awe and wonder. But I think that it's precisely that God reaches down to us that should inspire us to greater wonder, but kind of keep us in our place, you know, without getting too, like you said, chummy. Yeah. That makes sense.

Yep. So, as we were saying, in the respondeo to this question, he goes back to Aristotle. He says, Aristotle's account of friendship isn't just one of love, but it's of benevolence, of wishing something good for the other. And so God wishes something good for us, namely himself. He wants us to be able to share in the beatific vision. That beautiful quote of, I think it's St. Irenaeus, right? That the glory of God is man fully alive.

We glorify, I love that one, right? We glorify God by being completely, authentically who God created us to be. And so God wishes great things for us. He wishes us to become saints. He wishes us to become conformed to the likeness of his son. And he gives us the grace, which builds on our nature, our human nature, to become saints. And so there's this communication that happens, and communion is what allows for what Aristotle would have dismissed as impossible.

I have a practical question for you, which you probably didn't expect me to ask, and that's this. It comes from a realization I've been having lately, and that's maybe an obvious realization that I can't have a deep friendship with many people. I don't even know if perhaps neurologically that that may just be an impossibility for a human being, you know, but I can invest in a handful of people. And so over the last year or so, my wife and I have been making a real effort in investing in certain relationships as opposed to trying to invest in many. So we're going for depth, not breadth, as it were. What are your thoughts on that? Because we are told by our social media feeds and by the news that we should care about so much.

But I really don't care about so much because I don't know if I'm capable of caring about so much. You know, like I feel bad perhaps, but I don't invest time in caring for all of these people and all of these tragedies that I'm told about 24 hours a day. for all of these people and all of these tragedies that I'm told about 24 hours a day. But I do know that I can care about my good mate who lives up the road, you know, or, you know, this friend or that friend. And so we're trying to really kind of pull all of our emotional and spiritual resources into willing their good, as it were. Does that make sense? Yes. Yeah. And actually, Matt, that actually really beautifully hits upon the objections that St. Thomas takes up in this very question. So his first question is, the first objection is from Aristotle, that it's appropriate for friends to dwell together, but Daniel tells us that God has no dwelling with man, therefore charity can't be a friendship. And St. Thomas' reply to this is, look, man has a body and a soul. So regarding his bodily life or his corporeal life, he can't have a fellowship with God.

But it's regarding his spiritual life, because we have this immaterial, we have an intellect, we have a will, that we can have an imperfect fellowship here on earth, but that will then be perfect in heaven. And it's precisely that reality, Matt, that I think speaks to your question that we're body and souls. We're not angels. We can't possibly invest in every soul that we come, that we encounter because we have to eat and we have to sleep. And there are certain souls that God has entrusted to us more profoundly, your wife, your children. And so it's a matter of prudence. I can't possibly invest the same amount of time in my husband as I invested in my girlfriends when I was a single woman. That would be impossible, but it would also be imprudent. And this kind of brings us to the second two objections that St. Thomas brings up is that, look, friendship is supposed to be reciprocal, but I'm supposed to love my enemies. So what gives? I can't possibly be friends with my enemies, and yet Christ tells me I'm supposed to have charity towards them.

And what St. Thomas says is that, look, there are those – he makes a distinction, as St. Thomas often does. There are those people who are immediately our friends, who we have this reciprocal relationship with, who we're called to invest in, like you're talking about. But then by extension, like when I say to someone, oh, any friend of yours is a friend of mine. What I'm saying is that if I have a close friendship with one person, if there's a second or third person who's friends with them, I treat them with kindness. I'm willing to invest in them to some degree in virtue of that first friendship. So it's precisely because I have this friendship with God that I can then have a friendship with my enemies or equivocating on friendship, that I can then have this secondary kind of friendship with people who are sinners, who maybe aren't as virtuous as I am. Again, exploding Aristotle's ideal here.

But it's because first and foremost, because of my friendship with God. And so if I have this charity, first and foremost, this friendship with God, then I can see rightly whom I'm supposed to invest in, in that first way of friendship, like that deep reciprocal, that complete friendship of virtuous men who are striving after the good together, and then who I'm supposed to love as a friend kind of in this secondary way, because I see the image of God in them and because they too are God's sons and daughters. Okay, beautiful. I got one more question for you, and we touched upon it a little bit earlier on.

It has to do with the vocation of marriage. So how does St. Thomas' understanding of the friendship between husband and wife enrich our understanding of the marriage vocation? Yeah. Again, you know, I think St. Thomas is kind of showing a possibility where Aristotle wouldn't have admitted one. So where in the politics, especially Aristotle is kind of laying out this whole idea of that, you know, you have these different relationships and they're often of superior to inferior. So you have the master to his servants, you have the father to his children, you have the husband to his wife. And there was, it was precisely because of this lack of inequality between the husband and wife that in Aristotle's conception wouldn't allow for a complete friendship because in his mind women were kind of secondary or somewhat inferior to to a man and that you know it's just cultural milieu but what Saint Thomas sees is that actually

it is he says specifically this is in the Summa Contra Gentile. This is in the third part. It's question 123. He says that it seems that the greatest friendship is that between husband and wife. My husband and I actually had that on our marriage program. We had this beautiful icon of St. Thomas and then this quote. It seems that the greatest friendship is that between husband and wife. Well, why? He gives kind of this full explanation. He says the greater that friendship is, the more solid and long-lasting it will be. And he's invoking Aristotle here. Again, Aristotle thought that

the most complete friendship, it was long-lasting. It was the most stable, whereas the useful friendship or the friendship of pleasure, those are easily dissoluble when I leave that, you know, I move out of Brooklyn and the place where I used to go to brunch or I end that business relationship. But the complete friendship is stable and it's long lasting. So St. Thomas goes on. Now, there seems to be the greatest friendship between husband and wife, for they are united not only in the act of fleshly union, right, in the marital embrace and consummation, but between, excuse me, but it also produces a certain gentle association. He says this even among the animals, because the husband and wife have this whole partnership in a range of domestic activity. So having to raise children, having to run a farm or keep your house in order, or if you're going to maintain friendships and have people over for a dinner party.

Someone's got to clean the bathroom. Someone's got to prep the hors d'oeuvres. And so it's precisely that you're sharing this activity of domestic life together in union together, that you're becoming more and more one. So it's not just this fleshly union that creates children and the enterprise of raising children together and raising them to know God. But also the whole of domestic life, you have to be one. And so then, of course, St. Thomas invokes Genesis saying this is why a man leaves his father and mother for the sake of his wife. And so it's fitting, St. Thomas goes on to say that marriage, matrimony is completely

indissoluble because, again, it's going back to St. Paul and Ephesians, right? We see that marriage is this echo of Christ's love for the church. This is this great mystery. And the marriage between Christ and the church is indissoluble. They are one. So, too, the husband and wife's love and mutual self-giving and self-sacrifice is supposed to hearken to and image this love that Christ has for his bride, the church. Absolutely beautiful. As we wrap up here, I have a practical question for His bride, the Church. Absolutely beautiful.

As we wrap up here, I have a practical question for you today, all right? So we live in a culture where all of us are distracted, choose to be distracted by many things, and consequently it's difficult to develop deep and meaningful friendships. Perhaps from your own experience, what would be some suggestions you might give to help people do that? We might need a whole other podcast for that, Matt. Oh my gosh. No, give me bullet points. Give me Twitter points.

Yeah, bullet points. Okay, we'll keep it quick. I think what you brought up before is really essential to see, right? That social media inclines us to think, oh, I have a thousand friends. Like, no, that's a total equivocation. You have a thousand acquaintances, but those aren't real friendships. And to be able to become, Aristotle sees this, St. Thomas certainly sees this, that friendship, that complete friendship, the good friendship, it relies on growing in virtue and in communicating with one another and spending time with one another. So I have to be willing to put other distractions aside. When I'm at the dinner table with my friends, I have to be willing to turn my phone off. Oh my goodness. I'm sure you know this, but some of our listeners may not. When you get together with your friends,

you sit down for a meal, get everybody, if they have no self-control, to stack their phones on top of each other. And the first person who has to reach for their phone has to pay for the dinner. I love that. I love that. And even just, we'd mentioned before, I think in our previous podcast, Joseph Pieper's Leisure, the Basis of Culture, being able to have time to think deeply about things without something distracting me, without a text message coming in or a new song to listen to or keep, you know, a 24-hour news cycle and what's the most outrageous thing that someone said today and how did the media respond to it? If I get caught up in all of those things, I'm not leaving energy and I'm not having what, a soul that's at peace and a soul that's at repose that can stop and pause and enjoy the beauty of nature or enjoy a deep conversation or a piece

of art or a beautiful poem or just time with my husband. And so I think it really is important to kind of divest ourselves of those things that are a constant call for attention so that I have my attentive powers at the ready for persons and not technology or digital media. Yeah. Amen. Here's a suggestion for what it's worth, dear listeners. Good food, good alcohol, and a good space. That is often very conducive to deep conversation, which leads to a deepening in friendship. I think another thing that I've learned, Emily, is that in a sense, if you take my meaning, we have to be willing to settle because it feels like when we were kids,

we would just become best friends with whoever was at our playground or at our school or if they had the same shoes as us or if they liked the same basketball team as us. Sure, yeah. And as you get older, you have all this experience of friends and you tend

to be a lot more picky. You know, this guy talks too much or he doesn't talk enough or she speaks too closely or why does she always talk about this? And surely we should be looking for virtuous individuals, but there are no perfect individuals. And so in that sense, we just have to recognize that our only option for meaningful friendships is with broken, annoying people just like me. And that's okay, right? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. But continuing to, what, encourage them to holiness? Like we were saying before, the good and complete friendship is one where we're inspiring each other to virtue. So if I love you, I don't, I love you enough not to leave you like that. Like my husband, I will often say to each other, you know what? I want to call you to holiness on

something. You speak too close to me. Yeah. Yeah. And when I back away, when I back away and give you the benefit of the doubt, you keep coming towards me and it's sort of freaky. You know, those people. Yeah, absolutely. I live with some of those people, actually. Thanks so much for listening to this week's episode of Pints with Aquinas. Do us a favor, follow Pints with Aquinas on Twitter, join the Pints with Aquinas group on Facebook. Let us know what you thought about these episodes. These episodes are fun to listen in isolation, but they're way more fun if you can join an online community and begin discussing them. So be sure to do that. And a huge thanks to everyone who has supported Pints with Aquinas on Patreon. If you're sitting out there today and

you're like, man, Pints with Aquinas is amazing and it's blessed me and I would love to give back, that's what you would do. Go to pintswithaquinas.com, click the Patreon banner and support the show. And look, can't tell you how happy it makes us. We really appreciate your support and we're humbled by it. God bless you. Chat with you next week. whole life to carry you, to carry you, to carry you, to carry you.