Illuminating Friendship

About

The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship
– William Blake

Friendship is at once ubiquitous and shadowed: human lives are full of the relations that might be called friendship, and all of these relations fall short of what such an ideal might be. Philosophical approaches encourage us to see friendship as a moral accomplishment that we can perform successfully, or not. Literature, on the other hand, drags us through the depths of friendship’s contradictions and disappointments. The wild success of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels—the first volume was titled in English, ‘My Brilliant Friend’ —suggests that there is something resonant in the shadow side of these relations. Evolutionary biology casts its view backwards to ask about ‘cooperation’ and social network theory posits we view our relations as ‘connections’. An emerging ‘critical friendship studies’ in social science tells us that our contemporary relations are fraught and dissatisfying, and anthropology and sociology show us how many uses human beings have made of the ambiguous, idealised, and even mystical quality of friendship. In this research network, we will explore the different ways friendship is understood and inhabited, drawing on a diverse range of disciplines and perspectives, and consider the potential moral, political, and social upshots of different ways of theorising this important phenomenon.

This network will consist of regular fortnightly lectures, offered over Zoom and in person, from speakers based in and out of Cambridge exploring different understandings and embodiments of friendship.

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For enquiries contact Networks Programme Manager.