Theological Perspectives on Reimagining Friendship and Disability 3031338162, 9783031338168

Table of contents :
Contents
Abbreviations
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Context of Friendship: From Aristotle to Facebook
Friendship Discourses in Antiquity: Aristotle
The Assessment of Forms of Aristotle’s Friendship
The Concept of Unequal Friendship and People with Disability
The Meaning of Philia and the Concept of Happiness
The Grammar of Philia
The Meaning of Happiness
New Testament Insights into Friendship
The Concept, Terminology, and Context of a Christian (New Testament) Friendship
Paul’s Rhetoric of Friendship
The Context of Friendship and Its Terminology in the Gospel of John
The Ethical Assessment of Paul’s and John’s Gospel’s Friendship
Conclusion
Modern and Contemporary Ideas on Friendship
The Rationale of Modern and Contemporary Ideas of Friendship
Academic Field of Philosophy
Jacques Derrida: Friendship, Politics, and Difference
Lawrence A. Blum: Friendship and Altruism
Elisabeth Telfer: Significance of Woman Authors
The Academic Field of Theology
The Academic Field of Sociology
The Outline into the Correlation of Themes Discussed
Facebook (Meta) Friendship
Facebook Friendship Network: Disembodied Human Relationship Lacking Historicity?
What About Facebook and People with Disability?
Concluding Remarks
References
Chapter 2: Disability Studies and Disability Theology Perspectives on Disability and Friendship
Disability Studies Academic Perspectives: The Contexts of Disability Discourses
Medical and Social Models in Disability Studies
Medical–Biomedical–Individual Model
Social Model and Its Various Aspects
Disability in Its Terminology and Definition
Past and Present Perspectives On and Cultural Shifts in the Development of a Definition of Disability
The Rationale for the Academic Field of Disability Studies
Friendship with People with Disability: The Perspective of Disability Discourses
Friendship Relationships Between People with (Intellectual) Disabilities Themselves
Friendship Between People with and Without (Intellectual) Disabilities
Discussion
Disability Theology and Friendship: Context and Academic Perspectives
Disability in the Perspective of Catholic Tradition
The Theme of “Disability” in the Practice and Doctrine of Christian Theology: Past and Present Concerns and Interventions
Theological Discourse on Disability: Why Does Theology Need a Conversation on Disability?
What Type of Theology Is Disability Theology?
Theological Themes
Question on Definition: How Disability Theology Defines Disability
Disability Theology: Perspectives on Friendship
Hans Reinders’s Perspective on Friendship
The Highlights of Receiving
The Question of Equality and Symmetry
The Question of Choice
The Problem of the Contributory View
The Dynamic of Receiving and Giving
Being with and Not Hiding in Strength
John Swinton’s Perspective on Friendship
The “Social Model” of Friendship
Relationality and Personhood
Friendship in the Light of a Christlike Perspective
Alternative Characteristics of Swinton’s Friendship
Discussion on Comparison Between Reinders’s and Swinton’s Conceptions of Friendship
Discussion on Comparison of the Academic Fields: Disability Studies and Disability Theology—Contrast and Complementarity
The Comparison of the Fields’ Friendship Rationales
Disability Studies
Disability Theology
The Proposal of the Field’s Definition of Disability and Friendship
Disability as a Concept and Experience?
The Definition of Friendship: Based on a Perspective of the Two Fields
Notes
References
Chapter 3: Reimagining of an Anthropology of Friendship: The Implication of the Notion of Vulnerability and Solicitude
Vulnerability: Brief Outline of the Meaning
The Perspectives of Academic Discourses
Vulnerability as a Theologically Relevant Notion?
What Vulnerability Is Not?
Vulnerability in Its Implications for the Relationship of Friendship
The Process of Friendship Facing the Anthropology of Vulnerability
The Meaning of Knowing a Friend
The Recognition of the Other as a Friend
Rethinking the Friendship Through the Implication of Solicitude
A Brief Assessment of the Notion of Care: Academic Context and Application
The Meaning of Solicitude Amid Friendship
Paul Ricoeur on Solicitude
Friendship, Solicitude, and Dialectics Between Other and Another
The Complexity of Views Regarding the Meaning of Solicitude in Relation to Philia and Agape
What About Caring Friends?
The Friendship’s Narrative
The Reimagining of the Meaning of Friendship
The Socio-anthropological View on Friendship
Theo-anthropological View on Friendship
References
Final Conclusion
Index

Citation preview

Theological Perspectives on Reimagining Friendship and Disability Martina Vuk

Theological Perspectives on Reimagining Friendship and Disability

Martina Vuk

Theological Perspectives on Reimagining Friendship and Disability

Martina Vuk University of Fribourg Fribourg, Switzerland

ISBN 978-3-031-33815-1    ISBN 978-3-031-33816-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33816-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

“There’s two kinds of poverty. We have the poverty of material where the people are hungry for a loaf of bread—real hunger. But there is a much deeper, much greater hunger; and that is the hunger for love and acceptance, and that terrible loneliness and being unwanted, unloved— being abandoned by everybody.” —Mother Theresa

To (non) vulnerable, vulnerable, and more than vulnerable friendship seekers. Loneliness does not have the last word. It is friendship.

Contents

1 The  Context of Friendship: From Aristotle to Facebook  1 Friendship Discourses in Antiquity: Aristotle   3 New Testament Insights into Friendship  16 Modern and Contemporary Ideas on Friendship  28 References  53 2 Disability  Studies and Disability Theology Perspectives on Disability and Friendship 61 Disability Studies Academic Perspectives: The Contexts of Disability Discourses  62 Friendship with People with Disability: The Perspective of Disability Discourses  73 Disability Theology and Friendship: Context and Academic Perspectives  80 Disability Theology: Perspectives on Friendship  92 Hans Reinders’s Perspective on Friendship  93 John Swinton’s Perspective on Friendship 103 Discussion on Comparison Between Reinders’s and Swinton’s Conceptions of Friendship 110 Discussion on Comparison of the Academic Fields: Disability Studies and Disability Theology—Contrast and Complementarity 113 The Comparison of the Fields’ Friendship Rationales 115 The Proposal of the Field’s Definition of Disability and Friendship 119 References 123 ix

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3 Reimagining  of an Anthropology of Friendship: The Implication of the Notion of Vulnerability and Solicitude129 Vulnerability: Brief Outline of the Meaning 131 Vulnerability in Its Implications for the Relationship of Friendship 139 Rethinking the Friendship Through the Implication of Solicitude 147 Paul Ricoeur on Solicitude 153 The Reimagining of the Meaning of Friendship 166 References 172 Final Conclusion177 Index181

Abbreviations

DS DTh EE MM NE SM PWD

Disability Studies Disability Theology Eudemian Ethics Medical Model Nicomachean Ethics Social Model People with Disability

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Introduction

Friendship is a morally established category that bears universal significance, the human relationship expressing a particular way of belonging. According to modern thinkers, it is a basic human need important for individual well-being. But what does it mean to be human; what does it mean to be a friend; what does it mean to live with disability in a mainstream, high-speed modern society? These questions not only interrogate the meaning of human life and living in the world but also provoke and are provoked by socio-cultural, theological, and anthropological upheavals. Modernity not only underlies the context of moral reasoning but impacts the way we think, argue, reason, and question the establishment of personhood. The recent research within sociology, Disability Studies, and Disability Theology evidences the lack and impossibility of friendship for people with disabilities, which sooner or later brings into question why friendship, as something essentially human, fails to be accessible and realized by certain people. What concerns me even more is the fact that some people are even acknowledged as not having the capacity to participate in a relationship of friendship. Does friendship require particular superhuman skills to be attained and maintained? Or why, as humans, are we vulnerable to the need for friendship relationships, despite the degree of our autonomous self-dependent esteem? If friendship as a concept and a living experience bears universal importance, but at the same time cannot be reachable by all, in what sense does friendship, if at all, remain a universal moral category and a particular way of belonging? When the framework of friendship includes a person with disability, friendship should be realized as a relationship of inclusion, whereas the xiii

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other should be understood more as a subject with an intrinsic dignity, instead of an object of care, pity, and exclusion. This means not only that the practical and conceptual approaches to friendship and disability require integration; also, in order to grasp an adequate approach to a human person in particular and human relationships in general, these concepts require reconsideration. This entails that the theological and ethical reconsideration of disability and friendship, regarding the question of human personhood must be clustered as the key anthropological themes crucial for reimagining the very same framework of friendship and disability anthropology. In line with the presumption of such a statement, this asserts that the key problem in discussing the friendship and disability is in fact anthropological and goes beyond thinking merely of facets of human nature, the human person, and the human being, implying an exploration of anthropological and theological systems regarding the theme of friendship and disability. The renewal of certain anthropological categories in this regard is a search for a deeper understanding of friendship, not apart from but attentive to the lives of people with disability. Once such an anthropology is reestablished, we will be in a position to combat the utilitarian and liberal assumptions which regard the human person first as a dual entity (body and soul) and second as means to some other end. In other words, what this book aims to argue is that the key elements integrated into theological anthropologies and related disability anthropologies should be inclusive of an indispensable respect for the person’s vulnerability as a criterion and condition in rethinking the anthropology of friendship. Thus the intention of this book is to propose a self-critical epistemological suspicion as something beneficial in order to grasp a better knowledge of the concepts associated with the field of disability discourses, the field of theological ethics, and the academic field of theological anthropology in regard to friendship and disability. This book consists of three chapters. The first chapter is a brief analysis of the context of friendship according to selected approaches, definitions, and evaluations from Aristotle, through Scripture, to contemporary discourses on friendship, including Facebook. The second chapter of the book is a conceptual presentation and the critical examination of the academic field of Disability Studies and Disability Theology. These include the evaluation of the conceptual approaches to disability and friendship and the most relevant analyses of dominant sources in discussing friendship and disability. The third chapter of the book is a constructive proposal for the

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reimagining of the anthropology of friendship attentive to lives of people with disability. Besides providing the solution to a more inclusive type of anthropology of friendship redefinition—one that includes the recognition of the element of vulnerability and solicitude—the ultimate aim of the book is to stimulate further discussion on the concept of inclusion, friendship, and disability through the means of its most relevant, common, and challenging questions.

CHAPTER 1

The Context of Friendship: From Aristotle to Facebook

Friendship is among the most discussed themes in the history of moral philosophy and ethics (ed. Canto-Sperber, 1966; Becker & Becker, 1992). It is one of the themes that carry universal application and essential value for the moral development of the human. Since antiquity, thinkers have been debating its true nature. The ancient Greek and Roman philosophers such as Plato (Lysis and Phaedrus), Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics, book VIII and IX; Eudemian Ethics; Magna Moralia), Cicero (Laelius de Amicitita), and Seneca (Epistulae morales ad Lucilium, Epistle IX) were particularly determined to discover the proper meaning and value of friendship. The Biblical scholarship, despite showing less interest in exploring friendship compared to the ancients, invests friendship with a profound and transcendent meaning. Friendship is not only possible between humans, but is possible between man and God: between Jesus and his disciples. There is a special concern for the theme of friendship in Old Testament,1 specifically in the book of Sirach; Exodus 33:11 (Moses was addressed as a friend of God); 1 Sam, 20:1–42 (the friendship narrative between Jonathan and David); and Proverbs, 17:17. Within  the  New Testament, especially in the Pauline and Johannine opera—given is a particular credibility to the notion of friendship. Up until modern and late modernity era the theme of friendship has been reflected among different patristic authors—medieval and scholastic thinkers—culminating in thought of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas (ST IIa-IIae, q.23). The idea © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Vuk, Theological Perspectives on Reimagining Friendship and Disability, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33816-8_1

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of friendship as fellowship continues to bear importance, having been reconfirmed by the historical opening of Second Vatican Council. At its opening in 1962, in the preface of Dei Verbum, it recalls God’s desire for fellowship with human persons (DV, 1,2). Likewise, friendship became an important subject of late modern scholarly discourses on friendship. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy reports a growing body of research since the 1970s concerning questions on the relationship between the phenomenon of friendship and particular moral theories, such as consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics (Stocker, 1981; Blum, 1980; Wilcox, 1987; Friedman, 1989; Badhwar, 1993; Cocking & Oakley, 1995). A great number of modern (referring the historical period orchestrating of the particular socio—cultural norms) and contemporary (more recent) authors within the field of philosophy include commentaries on the subject of Greek and Roman friendship. Moreover, friendship was also reflected in relation to modern and contemporary anthropological and ethical upheavals in thought and in practice. Besides the academic field of philosophy, the contemporary scholarly discourses evidence an increasing body of research in sociology and psychology (Argyle, 2001; Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Myers, 1993, etc.). Friendship has become an important point of scholarly consideration in the psychology of well-being and personality development (Watson & Lee, 1992; Forrester-Jones et al., 2006; Seligman, 2011). Regarding the field of sociology, scholarly work on friendship considers it as an intimate and personal relationship (Willmot, 1987; Spencer & Pahl, 2006; Graham, 1998; Blatterer, 2015). Additionally, the increasing amount of research within contemporary discourses of disability and sociology give evidence of friendship’s significance for people with disabilities (Amado, 1993; Chappell, 1994; Lunsky, 2006; Emerson & McVilly, 2004, etc.). The majority of the scholarly discourse on friendship within the academic field of theology is in Biblical scholarship (e.g., Fitzgerald, 2007; Keener, 2014). The study of Scripture brought a particular novelty in friendship conceptualization, comparing it to ancient friendship, and impacted the further development of theological thinking on friendship. It consists in suggesting a new order of relationships among humans and emphasizes its communitarian character. This is to say that the ethical vision of Bible, particularly the New Testament Johannine and Pauline Letters, differ from those of ancient world—as it includes friendship with God, the love for one’s neighbor and love for one’s enemies (Fitzgerald, 2007; Keener, 2014). Besides this, many of the references,

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commentaries, and discussions in modernity have looked at Augustine’s and Aquinas’s understanding of friendship, who each, by their understanding of human person in relationship with God, broaden the theological discussion on friendship. There were attempts by some theologians to give friendship a more public and political role in the ideas of the common good and political judgment, reflecting certain ideas of Aristotle’s about the polis and Augustine’s civitas dei vs. civitas terrana (De Graaff, 2014; Hauerwas & Charles, 1997). Several studies from the field of ethics and theology have also investigated the possibility of forming a friendship between people living with disability and people living without developmental and intellectual disability (Comensoli, 2018; Reimer Greig, 2015; Reinders, 2008; Swinton, 2000a, 2000b), but besides the fragmentary approach a complete treatise of such a type of friendship has not appeared. As this work is interested in the theological reflection on friendship and disability, my aim in the following discussion is to look at classical, modern, and contemporary discourses and approaches to friendship, assuming that the approaches to friendship within late modernity differs from the ancient approaches. In this regard my selection of classic authors includes Aristotle, New Testament scholarship. The selection of these authors is merely because not only were they among the most cited within scope of theology and moral philosophy, but they were also among the most challenging to the disability discourse on friendship. After the presentation of the main aspect of the classical approaches to friendship and its relation to disability, I will briefly look at mainstream modern and contemporary scholarship on friendship. This includes contemporary discourses on friendship in the academic fields of philosophy, sociology, and theology. My interest is to briefly present the main ideas and approaches of the modern and contemporary understanding of friendship and look at how such a conception of friendship is divergent from or congruent with the previously mentioned classical authors. I will complete my examination of late modern friendship including my own assessment of friendship concerning one of the greatest virtual social media platforms: “Facebook (Meta).”

Friendship Discourses in Antiquity: Aristotle Friendship, besides being invested with a special significance among ancient authors, in the broader picture remains an important moral significance. Although the meaning applied to the idea of friendship sometimes varies, authors have been influenced by each other’s commentaries across

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a wide range of philosophical genres. For instance, regarding its structure, the discussion on friendship in Plato, Cicero, and the Stoics appears in the form of a dialogue, whereas Aristotle gave friendship a prominent place in the form of a treatise (Pakaluk, 1991; Smith, 2003). Although the discussions of friendship by the ancient Greeks were numerous, one of the most influential and cited authors in classical, modern, and contemporary contexts is Aristotle. In this section I will outline the main aspects of the context of his friendship by looking at the treatise of friendship mostly in Nicomachean Ethics, books VIII and IX.2 I will look at the conceptualization and the constitutive elements of such friendship, comparing it with the contemporary ideas of friendship with people with disabilities. Although Aristotle’s idea of friendship opens multiple avenues of inquiry and interpretations—the relation of philia to the notion of virtue, happiness, and well-wishing, and to the meaning of polis, my particular interest in Aristotle’s work in this research is in principle anthropological survey of philia. This means that I aim to take a descriptive and comparative approach to his threefold distinction between the forms of friendship, the main character of the concept of friendship, the meanings that the concepts of well-wishing and well-doing have within his account of friendship, as well as the degree of similarity and equality he ascribes to friends. The reasons I have decided to take a closer look at Aristotle’s friends (instead of, e.g., Plato’s, Cicero’s, or Seneca’s) are twofold. First, Aristotle gives friendship a prominent place within the life of virtue: his friendship embodies pursuit of a good and is an initial element for the constitution of community (MacIntyre, 2007). Such characteristics infuse Aristotle’s concept of friendship with a great value, and are also, to some degree, different from the modern and contemporary concepts. The second reason, which is related to the first, is a frequent critique of Aristotle’s account of friendship described as symmetrical, hierarchical, and exclusive toward differences. In such regard, based on the ancient expressions of deformed bodies, terminologies (Krotzl et al., 2015),3 and the impossibility for creating the perfect friendship when such friendship implies anthropological, social, and class differences, Aristotle’s friendship not only appears to exclude people with disability but impacts the mainstream contemporary rationale regarding friendship between different people (Sticker, 1999). In this regard, contemporary disability theologians, as we will see in the next chapter, are critical of Aristotle’s framework of friendship not only as it is symmetrical and individualistic but also because it excludes persons with disabilities (Swinton, 2016; Reinders, 2008).

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The contemporary commentators on Aristotle, such as for instance Martha Nussbaum in Fragility of Goodness and Michael Pakaluk in Other Selves, address the idea that Aristotle’s friendship has been an important concept within the structure of the polis (the city) in relation to the idea of justice, but it has not been itself political in the way “political” is understood in contemporary culture.4 In that sense, as MacIntyre stated (2007), Aristotle’s friendship was seen as being shared between all, in a common project of creating and sustaining a life of the city, a sharing incorporated in the immediacy of an individual’s particular friendship. As a moral category it has been ordered toward achievement of justice, stability, love, virtue, common good, goodwill, and happiness (understood as contemplation), that in a sense is close to the modern idea of flourishing, but it stays a virtue (close to the meaning of excellence), instead of a component of quality of life, often understood within a contemporary cultural framework (Nussbaum, 1986; Annas, 1995).5 Those who were in the polis perceived as “capable human” and engaged in mutual, benevolent relationships were described in one way or another as friends. The bond between citizens that constitute the polis is the bond of friendship, and friendship is a virtue (MacIntyre, 2007, p.  155). This has been particularly on display within Aristotle’s debates on koinonia (community) and his understanding of a man as a political and social animal. But the unity within the idea of polis for Aristotle presupposes symmetry or some sense of harmony. Difference was something contrary to justice, self-esteem, and a threat to the composure of a virtuous man. Difference destabilizes the harmony of the polis (Cherry, 2006, pp. 563–585) and the friendship that in a larger sense contributes to the stability of the polis must have had similar structure, as his idea of friendship strongly suggests a shared endeavor toward common action. However, despite his idea of friendship applying to a large number of people, only one type of friendship could be described as a true friendship. In order to grasp the whole picture of Aristotle’s idea of friendship, there are elements within his theory that require to be looked at together. In the interest of this discussion, I propose we look at Aristotle’s threefold distinction of the forms of friendship, his characteristics regarding the notion of philia, the sense of the goodwill and wellwishing, the concept of happiness, and the meaning implied in a concept of unequal and subdivided friendship.

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The Assessment of Forms of Aristotle’s Friendship Aristotle’s early work on philia has been grounded in the Eudemian Ethics, (eds. Inwod & Woolf, 2013b) addressed in Magna Moralia (ed. Ross, 1915), developed in the Rhetoric (Furley & Nehamas, 1994) and Politics, (ed. Lockwood 2013a), but culminated in Nicomachean Ethics (eds. Bartlett & Collins, 2011). His concept of friendship according to some scholars’ assessment (Ross, 1951; Cooper, 1977a, pp. 619–648) took a slightly different emphasis in, for instance, Magna Moralia than in Nicomachean and Eudemian Ethics. Friendship in Magna Moralia is about stability and goodwill, it is described as a stable friendship which is founded on virtue and therefore is naturally the surest, the most abiding, and the finest form of friendship (MM 1209b). In other words, the emphasis on friendship as a goodwill implies good-wishing and goodwill for a friend and thus friendship is described as a sort of activity and an act of loving (MM 1211ab), and distinction is made between friendship of equality and inequality (MM 1211b). In Eudemian Ethics friendship has to do with justice and mutual good-wishing: the friendship of a good man is a mutual returning of love and purpose (EE 1236b). A distinction is possible between just and unjust friendships, equality, and inequality (EE 1234), but friendship implies equality as love is equality, meaning that only a friendship that is based on virtue is the ultimate friendship and a reciprocal choice (EE 1237a; 1237b). Keeping that in mind, my reference to his treatise on friendship will be observed from the standpoint of Nicomachean Ethics. The classic treatise on Aristotle’s friendship in Nicomachean Ethics (books VIII and IX) distinguishes among three forms of friendships. These are the friendships of pleasure, utility, and virtue. The notion of friendship has important meaning for his development of virtues. He associates friendship with excellence, which means he sees it as an important element necessary for a good living and as a constituent of achieving happiness (NE, 1155a5). Therefore, friendship is a virtue (NE, book 8–9) and virtue is a form of excellence (NE, book 2–4), the source of life’s vitality. Without friends no one would choose to live, even if he had all other goods (NE, 1155a5). This entails that friendship is not only important for living well but is an important moral category, which requires ethical and moral application and assessment. However, not all of the three types of friendships mentioned carry the same moral significance, or, in other words, not all types of friendship are virtuous. According to J.M. Cooper’s analysis, all three types of friendships—the friendship of pleasure, utility and virtue—are objects of a common principle: well-wishing, understood as goodwill or flourishing (eudaimonia). But in a strictly Aristotelian sense

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friendship is a goodwill when reciprocated (NE, 1155b34). In each particular type there is a specific form of well-wishing that binds or connects one person to another. All three forms of friendship, despite the distinctive kind and degree, reflects a certain aspect of objective or subjective care and good-­wishing. Aristotle repeatedly contrasts the two derivative types of friendship with the basic type by emphasizing the self-centeredness of pleasure and the advantage friends. Thus, he says that in erotic relationships (one class of pleasure-friendships) people love not one another but their accidental features (NE, 1164al0–12)—what gives pleasure to themselves. Similarly, those who are friends for the sake of personal advantage cease to be such at the same time as the advantage ceases, for they were not friends of one another but of the benefit to themselves (NE, 1157a14–16). The problem with good-wishing in pleasure and advantageous friendships is that they may be susceptible, as a friend sometimes may be objectified by another person for his own prosperity or pleasure and vice versa. The true and pure good-wishing to another person, as Cooper indicates, is to be free of one’s prosperity. This entails to be less concerned about one’s own prosperity, and more compassionate and focused at someone else’s good. The types of friendships based on pleasure and utility are mainly associated with each other since they do not include a completely virtuous character but rather sentiments of affection and utility. Only the good-wishing in a virtuous friendship is oriented toward another person’s good. In other words, it is only friendship that is oriented to a person qua person that is called a perfect friendship. Considering NE 1156b10; 1157b3, perfect friends are those friends whose bond is not based on an exterior or accidental quality such as advantage or pleasure but rather an inner quality of a person concerning his or her virtuous character (Cooper, 1977a, p. 635).6 What does Aristotle imply with the term “personal” here? According to Cooper’s analysis, the notion of Aristotle’s true or virtue friendship, contrary to friendships of utility or pleasure, not only presupposes its virtuous character but carries involvement of a meaning of a “personal.” Thus, the friendship that implies two persons of virtuous character is above all personal. Namely, despite all three types of friendship including the form of good-wishing, not all of the three types of friendly relationships are recognized as true or perfect friendships, because friendship is a goodwill when reciprocated (1155b34). In other words, friendship requires at a minimum some effective concern for the other person’s good (including his profit and his pleasure) out of regard for him-self (Cooper, 1977a, p. 644). In the first

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two forms of friendships the other person is a bearer of a certain utility or pleasure. In other words, such friendship is friendship qua some object. In virtue or character friendship, the form of friendship which includes the character is friendship with a person qua person. A friend is thus a personal subject or particular person that addressed within perfect friendship is irreplaceable. The character friendship is true friendship as persons are bonded to each other based on subjective reasons, such as what they essentially are—human beings of virtuous character. From such conception one wishes his friend good without being interested in one’s own prosperity. The good-wishing in character friendship (which also makes a distinction between good-wishing in the other two friendships) is, as Cooper stated, without advantageous qualification (Cooper, 1977a, p. 636). This entails divergence from pleasure and advantageous friendship that is determined and therefore limited. In virtue friendship the good qualities of a person once fully acquired are permanent or nearly so (NE,1156b12), since these properties belong to one’s essential nature as a human being (Cooper, 1977a, p. 636 and pp. 290–315). The true friendship is therefore fixed on wishing good for another person without being concerned for the good-wisher’s benefits and when the goodwill is reciprocated (NE, 1155b34). Instead, a virtuous character friend is focused on goodness of another person, as one loves the other person not for what the person can offer him but for what the other person truly is: a human. Although such logic bears moral significance apart from the Christian idea of social justice, as the persons be morally acceptable must have a degree of equality, which within the idea of the Aristotle’s’ polis, is also an important element for the stability of friendship. Put differently, inequality can easily jeopardize friendship, which is the reason friendship requires highly equal partners in order to maintain stability (Konstan, 1997). This aspect of Aristotle’s friendship made him susceptible to the scholarly critique that it is exclusivist and intellectualist (Reinders, 2008). Namely, despite its broad application and moral significance, Aristotle’s account of the idea of friendship has a terminological gap in applying his idea of true friendship into a discourse that includes unequal people in character, social status, and their physical appearance. This when located in a contemporary context could refer to people with intellectual and profound disabilities, refugees, people of different ethnic backgrounds, classes, nationalities or religions, and sometimes even people with different mindsets.

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The Concept of Unequal Friendship and People with Disability Aristotle’s treatise on friendship in Nicomachean Ethics provides a number of insights about the nature and importance of friendship. This includes friendship’s connectedness with truth, stability, self-knowledge, virtue, flourishing life, mutual valuing, and so on. One of the often-disputed elements of true friendship is its highly symmetrical character. In order to become another self (which often implies the idea of a mirroring self), friends should be persons of equal nature, similar character, and having in common the pursuit of growth in virtue. Marko Fuchs, in his interpretation on the distinction between philia and phileoi in Aquinas and Nicomachean Ethics addresses this by saying that “only the friendship between equally virtuous persons is philia in the proper sense”. It is the character of similarity and equality within Aristotelian friendships that for many Disability Studies and Disability Theology scholars poses a problem, particularly in regard to people with intellectual and profound developmental disabilities. Disability Studies scholars, as we will see, are critical toward master-slave relationship within Aristotle’s friendship, reflect the ancient Greek practice of infanticide of newborns with physical or congenital deformity and related terminology for bodily differences (ugliness, weakness, incompleteness, deformity, infirmity, etc.) (Laes et al., 2013). Hans Reinders and John Swinton among disability theologians address Aristotle’s friendship as “separationist” and symmetrical in form and status, exclusive of difference (Swinton, 2000a, 2000b; Reinders, 2008). But the fact is that it is not only Aristotle’s concept of friendship that is symmetrical and separationist; that is a common characteristic of ancient (and even contemporary) discourses on friendship (Ross, 1951). Symmetry as an initial characteristic of ancient friendship reflects a specific form of composure and self-sufficiency. In addition, the recent interpretation of Richard White suggests that this was a common characteristic of all ancient friendship (White, 1999, pp. 19–34). Accordingly, both Plato in Lysis and Cicero in Rhetoric show that their friendships are exclusively male-­oriented relationships. Other contemporary interpretations claim that ancient friendship does not account for intimacy and emotion in the way that modern friendship does (Nussbaum, 1986) because emotion was, in the Greek world, a sign of weakness. Friendship with women is thus not possible due to their “weaker” and “sentimental” character, which in comparison to man was regarded as a sign of imperfect composure. Aristotle’s forms of friendship developed in his Nicomachean Ethics could not escape

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the abovementioned cultural influences of Greek worlds, both morally and terminologically. This means that the cultural milieu of the ancient Greeks, to which Aristotle belonged, could not depart from its cultural influences. Such a cultural context includes specific moral views and terminologies on impairment and people with mental and intellectual disabilities, perceiving them as different and thus lower citizens. Besides his treatise on the distinction between types of friendships, Aristotle’s treatise on friendship includes certain insights into the concept of so-called unequal friendship. Friendship between man and woman, or a man and slave, or child and parent belongs to this category. The unequal type of friendships that interest me in this regard will be further discussed in looking at Aristotle’s treatise on relationships between master and slave, and woman and man. Unequal friendship implies the possibility of friendship between two people of similar virtue but different nature, or two people of similar nature but different character. For instance, this form of friendship refers to friendship between a perfect man and a perfect woman, or between master and slave, where both woman and slave are inferior to man, as they are less perfect in a character than a man. This is to say that as humans they can be friends with a man, but not in a virtue or character, as slave and woman by dispositions of their character are lower by status than a man. In other words, the character of an inferior person in such a relationship is considered deficient or only imperfectly good. Although the superior person recognizes that the character of an inferior person is not perfectly good, the superior person does like the inferior for the natural human virtues that he has (or some of them), while recognizing that his character is not perfectly good but could improve. […] As a slave then, one cannot be friend with him. But as a man (nature) one can. (NE 1161b6–7). […] One can befriend a slave qua human but not qua slave in which capacity he is a mere to (inferior status). (NE 1161b5)

Only two persons that are similar in status, class, and virtue can be true friends as they are similar in moral goodness and the character of their natural status (Biss, 2011, pp. 125–140). This addresses the impossibility of friendship with woman as woman and slave as slave, but in their humanity one can be a friend of a woman and slave. However, such friendship may never reach the status of the third form of Aristotle’s perfect, virtue friendship, which is to say that friendship with woman as woman and slave as slave fails to be considered as a true friendship. The foregoing discussion

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of the type of unequal friendship in my understanding will be addressed as asymmetrical, which I will also interchangeably use with the alternative phrases “friends among difference” or “different type of friendship.” The account of asymmetry or inequality of Aristotle’s friendship, when applied to the context of contemporary disability discourses, appears exclusive of people with and without disabilities. For instance, people without disabilities are often considered superior to people with disabilities, due to deficiency in the character, cognitive capacity, and social status of the disabled person. For this reason, when Aristotle’s logic on the valuation of friendship is applied to people with disability, there is an obvious conceptual impossibility for the practice of this type of friendship due to the differences between the persons, as is often implied in mainstream contemporary logic regarding human relationship. Such logic, when applied to a caregiver/care-receiver relationship or structures of independent living for instance, creates the impossibility for the care-receiver becoming friends with the caregiver, as their status with respect to ethical boundaries, class, and social status are different. Nevertheless, because women and slaves are considered to have a lower moral status, an incapacity for profound intellectual reasoning, and an incapacity to attain virtue (excellence), they were also deprived of the achievement of happiness (Politics 1260a13–30). Friendship as a kind of virtue in such regard was directed toward its teleological end: achieving perfection in character and happiness (excellence in contemplation). As women and slaves were considered morally inferior due to their lack of a perfect capacity for reason and contemplation, they were prevented from attaining the teleological end of friendship due to their character, not their human nature. Deformed newborns or those born with a congenital or other sort of physical deformity, due to their “different” biological nature or physical appearances, were a threat to stability of the polis: they were incapable of leading a free and full life and meeting the flourishing end of friendship. So the logic of Aristotle’s ethics proposes infanticide and the exclusion of such persons from the polis (Mackelprang & Salsgiver, 1996, pp. 7–14). If, in rare cases, the person was allowed to live, he would be considered incapable of the practice of friendship as physical deformity was a threat to the stability of the ethics of the polis, and therefore also to the ethics of friendship. The overall framework of Aristotle’s friendship that precludes the inclusion of slaves and women in the practice of perfect friendship has been impacted by its static vision of reality, and the desire for the stability and order of the polis. This is also one of the reasons why

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the friendship among those with differences or the friendship between man and God could not be imagined by Aristotle. This changed with the coming of the Christianity and its revolutionary message in John 15:15, which I will examine in a forthcoming section of this chapter. But before we come to that, it is first necessary to outline a few aspects of Aristotle’s idea of philia and happiness and integrate them into his idea of friendship. The Meaning of Philia and the Concept of Happiness Aristotle ethics of philia discusses various elements: philia, happiness, shared activities, reciprocity, justice, love, trust, and living together (NE, 1157b11–13). Although these elements are valuable for the meaning of friendship and require a separate analysis, my aim is to briefly outline a few of the most appealing characteristics of philia and happiness, important elements in capturing the idea of his friendships’ moral significance. One reason for such an assumption is that because philia and happiness within the context of Aristotle’s treatise on friendship have been largely augmented by modern and contemporary scholarship on friendship, remain implicated in almost every discussion of contemporary friendship analysis. Or put slightly differently, the role of philia, according to contemporary analysis of ancient friendship, was largely disputed in relation to the achievement of happiness (eudemonia). The Grammar of Philia I emphasized in the general introduction that the relationships with people with disabilities may suggest another form of philia, or that the notion of philia may be understood differently. This is because what Aristotle could not imagine happening became possible in the practice of friendship in between people with and without disabilities For instance, friendship within communities that include people with and without disabilities, including shared activities, well-wishing, love and trust, that simultaneously remains free from the requirements of equality of intellect or virtue, while drawing on elements specific to Aristotle’s philia (benevolence, shared activities, reciprocity, trust). Does this mean that the Aristotle’s philia, which requires equality, and the philia which allows dissymmetry (difference) are not the same form of philia? What can the grammar of Aristotle’s philia teach us about the nature of friendship?

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First, those who are good and share in the mutual well-wishing, or a reciprocated goodwill, don’t need to become friends. People who are good naturally are not the same people who we choose as friends. These views—wishing good and becoming friends—are in tension, not only because they are governed by the complexity of human logic, but because when in Aristotle’s terms they are adjusted with the meaning of the philia they anticipate tension on distinction between the meaning of philia as ethical virtue and philia as love for another friend. As we know, philia was a common term in the mainstream system of Greek friendship but was also used in the system of reference in a later Greek-Roman and New Testament literature. In his Rhethoric, Aristotle states that a friend (philos) is one who loves someone and is loved in return (Rhet.1381a). In the Nicomachean Ethics, philia has multiple meanings (Ross, 1951; Tracy, 1979, pp. 65–75) among which it is best aligned with the meaning of virtue. So friendship is a virtue (Hughes, 2001; Cooper, 1977a, p. 644) but philia is also something especially important for the maintenance of the communal life. In the Greek worldview, friendship was considered essential, characterized through the achievement of happiness and realized through the school of virtue. Contemporary commentators on philia are divided. Most of the contemporary interpretations of Aristotle’s philia address his use of philia as a term associated with some sort of human sociality within the polis but more basic than justice (De Graaff, 2014). Others would straightforwardly remain loyal to its linkage with the meaning of friendship (Cooper, 1977a; Pakaluk, 2005). In his analysis of philia, Cooper emphasized that the Greek concept of philia is much wider than our modern understanding of friendship. Philia includes diverse sorts of relationships such as intimate relationships between family members as well as civic friendships (common membership in religious, social, and political organizations). Philia implies being together and the verb philein refers to liking, close to the meaning of wishing good to someone. A philos (friend) is then someone who likes another and is liked by that person (Cooper, 1977a, p. 621). G. J. Hughes pointed out that the term philia has connotations of relationships between people, whereas the meaning of the verb philein implies to “get on well with” or to like someone. The verb philein is closer to the implications of the sentiment and emotions such as liking, experience of joy, happiness (Hughes, 2001). This indicates that philia may be a very personal element, but could be something of more general value, naturally inclining each person toward greater sociability. Drawing on Aristotle’s account of virtue and philia in the Nicomachean Ethics and Cooper’s

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interpretation of perfect friendship, Australian scholar David Treanor, in his article, challenges the view that philia implies more than a personal relationship. In his view, philia involves the scope of personal narrative and emotional entitlement that goes beyond the scope of normative account of friendship and opens the place for a mutual interdependence (Treanor, 2014, pp. 1–20). The question Treanor brought to the inquiry first questions the possibility of interactions between different people in settings of Aristotle account of koinonia. The second question would then be, what is the essence of such interaction? In summing up, the most relevant explanation is that Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics classified friendship as one of the virtues, linking it with the term philia. He, however, left us puzzled on whether philia could be a virtue of a certain type, or it is a certain type of sociability within a polis. This according to my understanding of the above interpretations, implies that philia was a term that not only surpasses the idea of friendship within a polis and relates to justice, but shapes discussions about friendship as an activity natural to man, and to some extent more profound than justice. This is to say that philia as friendship and friendship as virtue is not only a concept that implies a specific meaning but is understood as a moral and natural activity between two or more persons in terms of sociability, and implies the knowledge mediated through the experience of activity within the structure of a polis. Virtue friendship indeed includes a complete philia, as virtue forms the heart of such friendship. But in regard to philia, virtue may not be the condition of such a friendship. This nevertheless could leave us with a tension, whereas the true philia when applied into a concept of a true friendship means to love the other friend for the sake of himself or who one truly is (a human person)? Or does true philia implicates loving a friend for the sake of his excellence or virtue? The Meaning of Happiness It is commonly understood that friendship brings people a certain amount of joy, trust, and comfort. The majority of contemporary empirical research in exploring the experience of friendship demonstrates some sort of reciprocal exchange of joy, happiness, or emotional affection within friendship relationships (Badhwar, 1993; Myers, 2000, pp.  56–67; Ryff & Singer, 2001). Is happiness a real constituent for every friendship? How has the

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ancient idea of happiness been conceptualized in its relation to friendship? So far we have noted that in the Greek worldview friendship is thought of as an essential activity between individuals, characterized by the achievement of happiness and realized through the school of virtue. Aristotle classified friendship as one of the virtues by the term philia, whose end is in some sort of achievement of happiness. So friendship for Aristotle is guided by a certain teleology, as is his ethics. The essential elements of happiness, according to the Eudemian Ethics are wisdom, virtue, and pleasure (separately ordered), whereas in the Nicomachean Ethics his discourses on virtue, friendship, and happiness were interwoven. In this regard, being led by his teleological way of thinking, for Aristotle happiness was a complete order of virtues. Moreover happiness, besides being a fulfillment of virtues, implies many other things. A happy life is a virtuous life, and as such it requires exertion in virtue (NE, 1176b28–1177a7). This is to say that not only was friendship for Aristotle considered a virtuous activity, but it was also a necessary constituent for achievement of happiness. As the fundamental question of his general ethical reasoning is the search for the supreme good, the purpose and the end of perfect friendship must be in some degree to attain reciprocal happiness. In other words, the end of human action must be happiness because that is the superior good of human life. […] verbally there is very general agreement; for both the general run of men and people of superior refinement say that it is happiness and identify living well and doing well with being happy. (NE, 1095a15–20)

Because of this, his ethics do not provide moral guidelines that will direct the human will to a perfect achievement of great happiness apart from human nature. It appears that Aristotle is not merely preoccupied with the question of meaning of life but with the ultimate fulfillment of such life and activity. Happiness as a fully human activity helps man to become more fully human. It starts with the human desire to be happy and ends in the achievement of such happiness. But happiness is not an emotion, it is considered a way of contemplation (NE, book X). However, besides being described as contemplation and as a completeness of virtue, happiness cannot be attained through theory alone. It needs to be obtained through activity. This entails that happiness is a vital activity for Aristotle.

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It is that which brings the joy which is the essence of life. For Aristotle, happiness is an activity that stems from logos, and is in accordance with virtue. Therefore, friendship is the practical way to achieve happiness, which remains incomplete without achieving it. As he stated: for the life of the man who is active in accordance with virtue, will be happy. (NE 1179a1–9)

This means that, as already indicated earlier, happiness can naturally be achieved by all, women and slaves included. But when seen from the perspective of friendship, that is virtue, happiness is a complete order of virtues, the life of contemplation; and the achievement of full happiness is the predisposition of a perfect man, not to those who are imperfect in character or, in other words, lacking the capacity to attain moral perfection.

New Testament Insights into Friendship The Biblical vision of reality is evolutionary, different from the static and circular vision of the ancient world. Time in the Biblical perspective is linear, historical, and dynamic because people who are under God’s guidance believe in the fulfillment of God’s promise (Gen, 17; Num 23:19; Deut 1:21; Deut 31:20) and so are oriented toward the future, relying on the hope of such a promise—the eschatological hope in dynamic between “already” and “not yet” (Heb 1,2; 1Cor 15, 52; LG, no. 2). This vision of God for humanity became realized and revealed most concretely in the person of Jesus Christ, God’s most beloved Son. This is to say that the ethical vision of the Bible, particularly the New Testament, is also different from those of the ancient world, giving centrality to love directed toward God, one’s neighbor, and even one’s enemies (Matera, 2012). Moreover, it is an open love toward all people despite their differences. This ethical and moral view offered by God is unique in comparison to other ancient, and even modern, moral, and ethical views. It suggests a new order of relationships among humans, ones that transcend the natural. In this section my aim is to reflect on the New Testament notion of Christian friendship, mainly looking at Paul’s letters and St. John’s Gospel. This does not mean that the Old Testament concept of friendship is of less importance, such as that between God and Moses (Ex. 33:11) or David and Jonathan (1Sam 20:1–42). Neither will I embark on a detailed semantic or

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systematic study of the New Testament references to friendship. Keeping in mind that the New Testament scholarship has been influenced by Greco-Roman culture, my first interest is to examine in what sense biblical New Testament scholarship differs from that of Aristotle and the ancient world in regard to friendship; and second, to determine what this difference consists of. In order to proceed with such an examination I will rely upon the most relevant contemporary interpretations of the foregoing debate, adding my own reading of certain Pauline and Johannine passages. The Concept, Terminology, and Context of a Christian (New Testament) Friendship The Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible says that the biblical usage of the term friend covers a broad spectrum of relationships, from expressing the normal human relationship directed by friendly conventions with neighbors and acquaintances in the Old Testament to a more intimate and trusting relationship in the New Testament, and from a natural relationship between humans—horizontal dimension—to friendship with God— vertical dimension (ed. Freedman & Herion, 1992). The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Theology reckons that the word friend in the biblical usage (the New Revised Standard Version of the Hebrew Bible), occurs about the ninety-five times, whereas the term friendship appears thirty-five times. Embarking upon the examination of the New Testament study of the meaning and implication of friendship, it is important to be reminded that friendship was a part of a particular cultural context and that particular terminology surrounding the meaning of the word friend has been applied in that context. Despite Judeo-Hellenic, HellenisticJewish, and Greco-­Roman interest and influence in the theme of friendship, the New Testament does not present a unified teaching on friendship (John, 1997). The description of Jesus’s friendship in John 15:15 and the friendship described in the Pauline epistles, particularly the letter to the Philippians, not only use a specific vocabulary but set forward an ethical argument for the notion of friendship. The terminology used in the discourse of Paul and John in their references to friendship varies between brotherly love and neighborly love, friendship, and discipleship. Despite this, the present research is mostly focused on the notion of friendship love within Gospel narratives, but it is unlikely to avoid its usage in relation to the other two terms. It is generally agreed that both traditions,

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Johannine and Pauline, as indicated by John T. Fitzgerald and A. Mitchell, were influenced by the Greco-Roman use of the words for friendship. The most common word for a friend in New Testament is philos which in Jerome’s Vulgate has been translated with the Latin word amicus. The Greco-Roman use of the friendship implies a common usage of the term philia or philos, indicating a friend, friendliness or loving spiritual relationship in ancient world  (John, 1997). The Theological Lexicon of the New Testament (Spicq transl. Ernest, 1994) interprets the word philos in John 15:15 (Lk 12:2–4) and in Genesis (Moses to whom God spoke in confidence) as having a specific meaning of one who is a confident and can be trusted. In other places the adjective philos refers to a kin relationship (mother, child, parents); and in other examples, the term expresses greeting one by name, and is associated by the affection for that one (Spicq, transl. Ernest, 1994). According to the Dictionary of New Testament the terms for love for a brother and love for a neighbor were almost used equally, or even as synonymous. The most recent biblical scholarship has shown that Paul’s notion of friendship inclines toward a universal application of friendship closer to the meaning of brotherhood, or it implies love for one’s neighbor. For instance, in Rom 8:29 Paul uses the term brother (adelphoi), the Greek term for the blood relationship, which in Paul’s usage signifies a brother by faith, a relationship that became possible because of the firstborn of the brothers, Jesus Christ, by whose blood comes reconciliation and through whom the people are bound together. In 1 Cor. 15:58 and Phil. 4:1 when Paul addresses Christians as brothers, he linked the word adelphoi with the term agapetoi. What is even more important to emphasize for such a dimension of love, according to the usage of the present New Testament Dictionary agape, demanded for one’s brother involves willingness to share the fate of Jesus Christ, even in a martyr’s death (1 Cor. 8:11). This is to say that for Paul, the coming of Jesus underlines a sharp distinction between relationship to God and relationship by birth (Wright, 2004). Friendship in John’s Gospel is connected to the word agape in relation to philia more frequently than in Paul’s writings. Agape, when related to philos, indicates a more intimate relationship, service, self-giving, sacrifice for another, and also, as already mentioned, trust and confidence. Instead of philia, the verb phileo, according to some New Testament scholars, occurs thirteen times in John’s Gospel but is frequently used interchangeably with the verb agapao (John, 11:3,36; 12:25; 15:19; 16:27; 20.2; 21:15,16.17) (Haraguchi, 2014, p. 250). What was not possible to imagine for Aristotle had been realized

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by Jesus’s gesture of kneeling and taking the role of a servant, by washing the feet of his disciples in Jn. 13:1–20 and 15:12–17. The gesture of washing the feet does not merely express what one, as a follower of Jesus, should do, but it is almost as a “Copernican Revolution” in the thought of Greco-Roman world, impossible to imagine earlier. Jesus’s words in John 15:15—“I called you no more servants but friends”—abandoned the ancient thinking marked by equality in the degree of status and intelligence, expressed in Aristotle’s Politics (Pol 1260a,12; master and slave distinction) and instead proposes the possibility of unity of such different persons through the practice of friendship. In this moment Jesus not only showed what the meaning of true friendship is but removed every categorization and hierarchy between people of different social status, capacities, class, and so on. Paul in his letters, particularly in the letters to Philippians, in a slightly different way demonstrates similar concerns. His list of distinctions between Greek and Jew, master and slave has shown that this distinction has been overcome and reconciled through Christ with God Father. Paul’s Rhetoric of Friendship In the following section my examination of Paul’s friendship will mostly focus on his use of certain expressions and on the context related to the application of such friendship terminology. Several New Testament scholars (Martin & Davids, 1997) indicate that a deep investigation into Paul’s references to friendship only recently brought a comprehensive result. John Fitzgerald, in reference to Paul’s interpretation of friendship, says that one needs to look at the context and the terminology included in the context in order to grasp a full meaning of Paul’s notion of friendship. Following this suggestion, I will briefly look at Paul’s ideas regarding the Greco-Roman context, the applied terminology and its meaning. In his analysis of Paul’s friendship, Fitzgerald lists three characteristics which should not be overlooked. These are: (a) the influence of Greco-Roman culture and Paul’s knowledge of Hellenistic culture as an educated Jew; (b) the importance of the encounter with Christ; (c) Paul’s conversion and his missionary vocation as one who was sent to those who confess Christ and those who do not know God (Fitzgerald, 2007, pp. 284–296). This means that in describing the meaning of friendship Paul, in contrast to Aristotle, uses various interdependent terms and expressions implicitly

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connected with the meaning of friendship, instead of one particular word that explicitly points to the straightforward meaning of friendship. In this regard scholars distinguish between Paul’s usage of topoi and linkage groups. Paul’s phraseology of friendship in his reference to the word topoi addresses Paul’s usage of friendship, which instead of having a strong and direct reference to the standard ancient terminology of philoi or philia uses expressions associated with classical topos and topoi, stemming from a Greco-Roman terminology of friendship. Another characteristic of Paul’s terminology according to Fitzgerald’s interpretation is his usage of the linkage group words. Important concepts that belong to ancient friendship linkage groups, according to Fitzgerald’s interpretation, include meanings such as koinonia (partnership, fellowship, participation); prokope (progress); pepoithesis (trust, confidence); dokime (attestation); axia (worth); autarkeia (self-sufficiency); arete (virtue); eunoia (good will); isotes (equality); synetheia (intimacy); homonois (oneness of mind); eirene (peace); and katallage, diallage (reconciliation). The usage of linkage groups also includes antithetical concepts. This, in regard to friendship, means terms that are opposite to friendship in order to give friendship a more robust and explicit meaning. This includes terms such as enmity (opposes friendship or more precisely friendship with God), flattery (opposite to frankness), or hatred (opposite to love). More precisely, Paul’s emphasis is not on Christ dying for his friends, but Christ dying for the ungodly and sinners. This theme permeates Paul’s discussion of God’s love for his people, ultimately perceived as friendship. This leads to another element related to the previously mentioned emphasis on friendship—reconciliation—as an antithesis to enmity. One of the important concepts that appears in Paul’s letters in reference to linkage group terminology is reconciliation, which means the restoration of friendship. This is particularly implied in Paul’s concept of friendship between God and his people. The terminology shows the transition from hostility and enmity toward peaceful reconciliation through the death of Jesus Christ. And to be reconciled to God means to become the friend of God. Reconciliation establishes a new relationship: one of common friends and fellowship. The question that still remains is who is Paul’s friend that he references? Is this a community, a particular person, or God? The overall evidence of Paul’s use of topoi indicates that his reference to friendship points to an assembly or a broader audience (Winter, 2017, p. 2001). An additional feature of friendship in Paul’s letter is the importance of

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material support for a friend in times of need and the requirement that one distances oneself from one’s enemies. More precise language on friendship has been noted in Paul’s letter to the Philippians. Scholars documented the significance of terms like partnership, one soul, thinking the same thing, and noted the strong reciprocal nature of the friendships discussed. Considering the complex situation in Philippi (Fee, 1995) the two features of the Letter to Philippians that are closely associated with discussions of friendship indicate the importance of providing material and financial support to a friend in time of need (Phil 4:10–20), and the requirement to distance oneself from one’s enemies (see Phil 3:2–3; 18–20). Likewise, an important element is Paul’s acceptance of asymmetry (referring to difference) and transformation of it in Phil 4:10–20, keeping the strong link with the meaning of kenosis. Not only does Paul in his letter to the Philippians indicate the importance of noncomplimentary interaction (read interdependency) between people in the community of Philippi, but what is even more important, following Jesus’s example in Phil. 2:7, he emphasizes a connection between God the Father and his people mediated through Jesus’s descending action toward God’s loving people. The Context of Friendship and Its Terminology in the Gospel of John The Gospel of John has been subject of research for several scholars investigating friendship (Keener, 2014), including theologians engaged in the study of disability searching for the ethical implications of friendship (Comensoli, 2018; Greig, 2015; Reinders, 2008). John’s Gospel indeed adds something new to the understanding of friendship that, within a Greco-Roman context, has been missing. As already stated this has to do with the meaning of the verbs phileo and agapeo, the two expressions of a friendship love in the Greco-Roman context. The verb phileo, despite being employed thirteen times in the narrative of John’s Gospel, is frequently used interchangeably with the verb agapeo (John 13:23; 20:2; 21:7), rather than with a distinct meaning, indicating selfless, sacrificial love. Additionally, a number of Biblical scholars agree that in certain passages of John’s Gospel those verbs are used as synonymous in John 11:5, 11:3, 36 (Culy, 2010; Keener, 2014). In John’s Gospel, chapters thirteen and fifteen are marked by two peculiarities. The first is that a friend is the one who gives his life for his friend

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out of love. The second aspect is the intimate character of the symbolic gesture of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples—this implies not only a self-disclosure, but an exchange of roles. The element of service implied within the first Jn. 13:13 (“Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends”); and the element of recognition of one’s friend’s true identity in Jn. 15:15 (“No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you”), overturn the social relationship from a master-slave asymmetry into a new friendship relationship marked by social and anthropological symmetry. This entails that the new type of friendship is marked by symmetry. “By an act of testamentary manumission, he not only emancipates his disciple—‘slaves’ but elevates them to friendship with himself” (Fitzgerald, 2007, pp. 284–296). The element of such unconditional disclosure noted in Jn 15:13–15 means to act out of love for another. Such love as a self-­ disclosure and service is not merely a friendship of love in its relation to phileo. Such love as related to agapeo implies risk and humility, in that it demonstrates trust and the disclosure of one’s identity. Jesus goes beyond his own dignity as a superior in order to reconfirm the identity of the other (inferior), not in a way that humiliates him but rather to illustrate the nature of self-giving love (Thomas 2014; Culpepper & Black, 1996). This is why Jn 15:13–15 would be incomplete without the account of the foot washing, which is the crux of this scene, in the sense that it fully illustrates the action of love as service and humility and results in a reestablished order of social relationship (Keener, 2014). The gesture of washing the feet reconfirms the abovementioned narrative (Jn 15:13–15) of love, revealing oneself to another intimately and personally, or in other words initiating openness to the possibility of showing one’s vulnerability and being vulnerable through the vulnerable presence of the other. The risk and self-disclosure, as Fitzgerald writes, is based upon a revelation that creates friendship rather than presupposing it (Fitzgerald, 2007, pp. 284–296). The intimacy of this friendship is composed of elements of abiding with, knowing and trusting. The love that is not only a symbolic gesture, but a reality, in this way has absolute fulfillment in giving one life for one’s friends and revealing one’s dignity to the other. The intimacy of this relationship in John’s Gospel, except the abovementioned instance, matters because it emphasizes the notion of the one’s presence, particularly through the gesture of feet washing. The feet washing in such a sense actually embodies and reconfirmed the narrative in Jn 15: 13–15. The

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emphasis on sacrificial love, trust, intimacy, recognition of one’s true dignity, and the act of humble presence, integrated into a narrative of John’s Gospel are intertwined. To lay down one’s life for the sake of one’s friends (Jn. 15:13) is a typical example of the meaning of supreme love as selfsacrifice (Haraguchi, 2014, p. 256). So friendship receives a new dimension, the need to love one’s friends with selfless, sacrificial love. The Ethical Assessment of Paul’s and John’s Gospel’s Friendship St. Paul’s and John’s friendship narratives provide friendship with a particular ethical perspective (See Keener, 2014). My attempt in the present section is to assess this aspect of their friendship narrative, important also for the scope of friendship with people with (intellectual) disabilities. The ethical assessment of friendship not only reveals the implications of a specific terminology but employs particular and often related meanings. What was a common notion of friendship within the Greco-­Roman and Christian contexts was a form of ethical practice with a distinctive identity. In the Gospel of John this is seen in intimate relationships between Jesus and his disciples, stressing the importance of the value of the other to the point that one would give one’s life for one’s friend. In Paul’s analysis of friendship, the emphasis was on reconciliation with God, which creates a new relationship and distinguishes Christians from a non-­Christians (in Paul’s particular narrative, the pagans). Paul’s friendship goes in the direction of an established socio-ethical practice of reconciliation and brotherhood, rather than an intimate, trusting relationship as presented in the Gospel of John. Both Paul and John provide new insights on friendship, different from the ancient concept (Aristotle’s Ethics regarding the master-slave relationship). This also shows their straightforward focus on the person of Jesus Christ, instead of the use of a particular friendship terminology specific to the Greco-Roman context, instead using terms interchangeably in Paul’s and John’s friendship narratives. For instance, although the main Greek word for a friend was philos (also applicable in New Testament literature), the term was in John’s Gospel conjoined with the notion agape. Paul’s usage of phileo or adelpheo was sometimes linked and sometimes contrasted with other words (topoi and a linkage group words). This also shows how the New Testament account of friendship has been anchored into a Greco-Roman cultural context, but also highly influenced by the presence of an earthly Jesus and the rise of the first Christian communities. Likewise Paul, as an apostle of God’s saving grace and not as an original

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disciple of Jesus, may have a strong inclination toward establishing friendship between God and man, emphasizing reconciliation and the common mission of all Christians as brothers and sisters in faith united through the blood of Jesus Christ. This is perhaps the reason why his notion of friendship bears universal application, instead of being a sign of a more intimate relationship. The ethical assessment of John’s friendship, on the other hand, implies a close relationship between Jesus and John the disciple of Jesus, and the witness of His earthly presence, which is perhaps why John’s friendship displays more strongly the elements of intimacy, trust, and selfless love. This does not mean that Paul’s relationship with Jesus is of a lower esteem, or that his account of friendship is of a lower importance. This only means, as I aim to highlight here, that the presence of the earthly Jesus through the direct presence of His body (e.g., confirmed through the gesture of foot washing within John’s narrative implies a stronger emphasis on the elements of trust and intimacy. This suggests the presence of the other matters for friendship, and this may be one of the reasons why Johannine Gospel (if we assume that the writer of John’s Gospel was the living disciple of Jesus) stresses strongly the experience of Jesus’s friendship, as a firsthand witness encountering the earthly Jesus (Martin & Davids, 1997). Related to the above are the two (biblical) elements that in Paul’s epistles and John’s Gospel present a certain novelty in comparison to the previous account of ancient friendship. These are again the possibility of friendship among those with differences and friendship with God. This presents the possibility of a particular asymmetrical relationship such as between God and man (vertical relationship), but it also establishes a new order of a social (horizontal) relationship, including with people of a different status, social class, and rational capacities (bound by friendship love). This, when taken together, constitutes a distinctive characteristic of Christian friendship. There is an evident and obvious thematic resemblance between Paul and John, but also a divergence between their understanding of friendship. The common element points to specific elements of a Christian friendship. Paul’s and John’s friendship is a particularly Christian friendship and as such is open to and inclusive of all. Despite employing similar terminology, as in a common root phil-, the ethical element of this assessment understands friendship in slightly different ways. It is not only that the element of agape attached to the verb phileo sometimes refers to brotherhood, sometimes to neighborliness, and sometimes points to a selfless and sacrificial love, but it also brings into discourse the

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possibility of friendship between social and natural character differences and friendship between God and man. Due to such characteristics, it is not necessary to search for an explicit account of Paul’s and John’s friendship regarding people with disabilities. Grounded in the person of Christ, Christian friendship is inclusive of all. It is not separationist, neither should it be normative or elitist. As inclusive of all, it is also inclusive of people with disabilities. This means that the love, service, self-disclosure, and reconciliation implied in such a perspective are freely given and bestowed through Christ to all. When the perspective of Christian friendship discussed above is applied in the context of disability discourses, it brings a conceptual novelty in that it tends to overcome the boundaries of social status and power imbalances, as well as the dichotomy between disabled and nondisabled, which is often perceived as a master-slave relationship. Therefore, such friendship is a model of true inclusion and deserves to be reconsidered, going beyond the mere possibility of natural intellectual intuitions about friendship. Embarking on a brief interpretation of the forms of biblical New Testament friendship (Paul’s and John’s narrative), I will summarize my assessment by making a few ethical and anthropological remarks on the idea of friendship. The foregoing account of friendship, before all else, demonstrates and recalls friendship with God revealed through Jesus’s earthly presence. One of its primary aims was to reach beyond the socially constructed identity of individuals and enter into a deep and personal relationship with them (Swinton, 2000a, 2000b). Overall, the interpretation of Paul’s and John’s references to friendship points to its dynamic, universal, and transgressive aspects that go beyond the limitations of equal status, intellect, character, and social class. In other words, God’s friendship revealed through Jesus transcends the overemphasized anthropological dichotomy and points to the acceptance of dissimilarity and asymmetry in the parties involved. The notion of Paul’s friendship that is closer to the meaning of brotherhood reveals such asymmetry in its universal application that includes a common mission for those reconciled with Christ. Such reconciliation surpasses the social, natural, and even anthropological differences of the distinction between Greeks and Romans, God and humans, masters and slaves (Gal 3:22–29). Different from Paul’s friendship, in John’s Gospel friendship was perceived not only as an intimate relationship due to the presence of the historical Jesus but was also accepted as a gift. This particular gift embodies love and service. The service in this context implies beneficence and

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benevolence. Jesus’s narrative in John 13:1–20 and 15:13–15 is not only an act of service and a call toward selfless love but an act of trust and recognition of the true identity of the other. This means that Jesus not only confirmed each person’s identity but entrusted others with the practice of a continuous befriending. The appeal to follow Jesus’s example of friendship, consisting in entrusting love and descending character of service and acceptance (foot washing) is one aspect of the possibility of mutual relationship, not based on a strict technical exchange of beneficence and benevolence, but on an act of selfless love for another. The narrative of John’s Gospel, exemplified in washing the feet, not only symbolizes a transformation of roles from being a slave toward being a friend, or from a strict equality toward the asymmetry, but also indicates the presence of another person’s body. The physical presence of another person matters, but in this specific narrative, it does not matter merely as an element forming person’s identity, but rather for the narrative of the friendship. Instead of looking merely at Aristotle’s friendship, characterized by strict hierarchy of roles, the Christian (New Testament) context provides a better solution in overcoming the gap of hierarchical differences. It proposes that friendship and love are interchangeably interwoven and that the process of befriending the other based on selfless love, before all, implies self-disclosure and trust. Conclusion So far I have demonstrated that the main insights of Aristotle’s ethics are understood as real and natural, hence his concern for human morality and happiness integrates the requirement of togetherness with an attachment to reality. For Aristotle, friendship is a natural activity. Being a friend to another person is an essential characteristic of being human. Aristotle’s work on friendship explores what friendship is and what the true or natural essence of this friendship is but does not say much about how this friendship is formed. Accordingly, friendship should be naturally applicable to everyone who participates in shared activities and wishing-well to each other, whatever their degree of personal (family, intimate, kin friendship) and impersonal (civic) engagement. Despite such thinking, it is only a perfect friendship based on equality and similarity that is recognized as true to self-actualization, as only such friends who are similar in character are capable of loving and mirroring the other friend for the sake of himself and reciprocal good-wishing. Thus equality and reciprocity provide

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friendship with a certain stability and justice. We have seen that Aristotle’s ethics of friendship sets down some important principles of the value of friendship, elevating it into the order of ethics and including his emphasis on the notion of personal. His ethics was natural, the leading force was logos and, for this reason, he could not escape a static and circular vision of humanity, also reflected in his treatise on friendship. Because of this, he could not think outside the framework of the idealized, male-oriented (elitist) conceptual order. Difference was a problem, and justice instead of compassion was the governing force of the polis. This is also the reason why his friendship is recognized as hierarchical, in the sense that women and slaves are underestimated as persons (due to a lower degree of character) and their engagement in the life of virtue, sharing in a friendship or achieving true happiness, has been largely undervalued. The account of dissymmetry, instability, or inequality of Aristotle’s friendship, when applied to the context of contemporary disability discourses, appears exclusive of friendship between people with and without disabilities, where, as already mentioned, people without disabilities are often considered superior to people with disabilities, due to the difference of some deficiency in the character, cognitive capacity, and social status of the disabled person. The Biblical friendship that in this approach includes the perspective of Paul’s and John’s Gospel, contrary to ancient friendship, opens the possibility of friendship among those with differences and friendship with God—a supernatural dimension of friendship. As grounded in the person of Christ, this friendship is not only inclusive to all but, because it is Christian, it should not be separationist, normative, or elitist. In such regard its specificity carries an ethical and anthropological dimension. The anthropological and ethical dimension of such friendship consists in that it presents the possibility of a particular asymmetrical relationship between God and man, and also reestablishes the new order of a social (human to human) relationship, including the people of a different status, social class, and rational capacities. In other words, God’s friendship revealed through Jesus transcends the overemphasized anthropological dichotomy and points to acceptance of dissimilarity and asymmetry in the parties involved. The element that includes transcendence in such regard for Paul’s fellowship type of friendship is reconciliation, whereas in the Johannine Gospel this element is exemplified in Jesus gesture of foot washing and in both cases challenges the order of equal reciprocal exchange. Paul’s emphasis on reconciliation surpasses the social, natural, and even anthropological differences integrated into the

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distinction between Greeks and Romans, God and humans, masters and slaves, men and women. The foot washing within the narrative of John Gospel symbolizes not only a transformation of roles, from being a slave toward being a friend, but points to transgression from a strict equality toward asymmetry. When such logic is specifically applied in the context of disability discourses, it brings a conceptual novelty in that it tends to overcome the boundaries of social status and power balances, as well as the dichotomy between disabled and nondisabled, people without disabilities and persons living with the experience of a physical impairment (often perceived as paternalistic, a master-slave relationships). Thus, such friendship represents a model of true inclusion and deserves to be reconsidered in further discourse that is going beyond the possibility of our contemporary natural intellectual intuitions about friendship. The Biblical formulation “I no longer call your slaves, but friends” also incorporated in Aquinas discussion on friendship (ST, q. 23, art. 1, obj. 3) is a new Christian understanding of the order of things and human relationships. The possibility of such a friendship created a reciprocal exchange between people of different statuses and character and friendship with God, impossible to imagine for Aristotle, but possible to imagine for a Christian friendship implying Biblical principles. This most importantly reveals that the supernatural or vertical dimension of friendship overcomes the horizontal natural aspect by expanding the process of dynamic inclusion.

Modern and Contemporary Ideas on Friendship In his book After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre (1981; 3rd edition, 2007) connects the problem of modern friendship with the absence of virtues and the primacy of emotivism. He does not deny the importance of affection, but to him it is only secondary. As he says: in a modern perspective affection is often the central issue; our friends are said to be those who we like, perhaps whom we like very much. Friendship has become for the most part the name of a type of emotional state rather than of a type of social and political relationship. (MacIntyre 1981, p. 156)

What MacIntyre describes concerning the absence of virtue and the occurrence of emotivism echoes the conceptual and practical distinction

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between classical and modern notions of friendship. The classical thinkers, particularly from the ancient period, for whom the discourse of friendship, together with the concept of virtue, was the heart of moral reflection provided the foundation of theories of friendship for later thinkers. After classical times modern theories of friendship did not eclipse these original theories. Yet it seems this was not of their primary importance. With modernity and late modernity, changes across culture, time, society, and religious contexts impacted the patterns of thought and brought substantive changes (King & Devere, 2000). This had an overall impact on thinking about personal moral growth and the ethics of interpersonal relationships. In other words, the changes in circumstances and thought led to changes in personal identity, particularly in terms of moral and socio-psychological development. Such changes created an assumption that friendship in modern and contemporary times concerned a different thematic range of issues than in the classical period. Besides this, the greatest innovation of late modernity regarding friendship is the idea that friendship was developed as a subject of scholarly dispute and analysis within certain academic fields (philosophy, sociology, theology, psychology) and that the new virtual platform of social networking—“Facebook friends”—gave friendship a new context. My aim in the following discussion is to briefly portray the most apparent and essential considerations of late modernity friendship and provide a summary of most recent ideas of contemporary friendship scholarship within the academic humanities (philosophy, theology, and sociology). Finally, with regards to late modernity’s developments in the area of virtual communication and social media, I will portray the process of friendship according to the one of the greatest platforms of social networking: Facebook. My reason for this selective approach to friendship is that a detailed analysis of all the possible ways of interpreting friendship in modernity and contemporary scholarship is beyond the scope of this book. Keeping in mind that the main idea of this book is a reconsideration of friendship with people with disabilities, the interim goal of this section is to provide a brief overview of the concept of modern friendship, and in connection with this to outline the most important themes in contemporary scholarship and its divergence from classical scholarship. Besides the other aspects, the meaning of modern and late modernity friendship is enriched with the contemporary academic scholarship on friendship and my reference to Facebook friendship.

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The Rationale of Modern and Contemporary Ideas of Friendship Friendship in modernity receives different attention than it did in classical times. Except perhaps in the work of Michael de Montaigne (De l’amitié, transl. Screech, 2004), Francis Bacon (Of Friendship), Immanuel Kant (Lecture on Friendship), Ralph Waldo Emerson (Essay on Friendship), and Soren Kierkegaard (Works of Love 1995), no large study on the theme of friendship in modernity has been undertaken. The mainstream significance of modernity friendship according to the Encyclopedia of Ethics (1992) is that modernity friendship became a matter of personal choice and a private affair (Becker & Becker, 1992). Other commentaries regarding the theme of modernity friendship address similar concerns: modernity friendship was an area of tension between the individual and community, lacking the emphasis on the moral side of its virtue character. The revival of interest in friendship within contemporary scholarship emerged around 1970 and 1980 (King & Devere, 2000). Although much of the scholarship still makes reference to Immanuel Kant and his concept of morality, the larger part is still characterized by the references to Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, the Stoics, and other classical authors who wrote on friendship. Moreover, special themes concerning friendship have been developed and analyzed within a certain academic context. Friendship was developed as a response to classical and modern ideas, but there has not been a concerted effort in comparison to classic forms of friendship (Nehamas, 2016; Vernon, 2005). Friendship was, however, a category of interpretation within various contemporary discourses in academia. Although the meaning of contemporary friendship has been influenced by ancient and modern ideas, including the influence of a certain epistemology and hermeneutics of those ideas, the specificity and novelty peculiar to contemporary friendship is its conceptualization and interpretation among different academic disciplines. My intention to look at approaches to friendship within different academic fields, within modernity, and late modernity is based on the assumption that it is difficult to grasp one particular universal definition of friendship, perhaps unlike in antiquity. Nevertheless, the meaning of a friend in sociology, despite sharing some basic features, differs from the meaning a friend in theology or philosophy, and vice versa. Not only does each discipline use its own particular methodology, but it also develops its own particular approach and concept of friendship.

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In terms of original publications, a number of academic resources, commentaries, anthologies, and collections have been reviewed (Treanor, 2020; Nehamas, 2016; Vernon, 2005; Badhwar, 1993; Pakaluk, 1991). However, as already noted, the treatise and style on discussing friendship within contemporary scholarship is different from those that may be found in the classical or even modern period. In The Challenge to Friendship in Modernity (2000) Preston King and Heather Devere bring some important insights about the theme of friendship and its implications for modern thought. In a slightly different manner, Steve Summers in Friendship: Exploring its implication for the Church in Postmodernity (2011). Jean Christophe Merle and Bernard Schumacher (2005), coming from the francophone context, in their work on friendship include various perspectives on the theme of friendship from contemporary authors engaged in this discourse. Although many of these works consist of translated essays, it is nevertheless a valuable guide in assessing the thinking of the contemporary moral and anthropological concerns for friendship. In order to grasp the rationale of contemporary friendship analysis in certain academic fields, I will briefly outline the threefold distinction between the contemporary definition of friendship within the academic fields of philosophy, sociology, and theology. In searching for the so-called nature of friendship, my interest is primarily to look at emerging elements and each author’s specific reasoning with reference to friendship. As a summary of the most appealing ideas, I will outline the most revealing themes on friendship present within these discussions. Academic Field of Philosophy More than in the other academic fields, the reflection on the theme of friendship was among the most dominant in philosophy and most particularly in moral philosophy. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2023) understands friendship as an activity central to the lives of humans, a distinctively personal relationship, mostly grounded in a concern on the part of each friend for the welfare of the other, for the other’s sake, involving some degree of intimacy. A great number of modern and contemporary authors within the field of philosophy include commentaries on the subject of Greek and Roman friendship. Their commentaries make reference to foundational writings in classical era (Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca) where most of the significant terminology regarding the concepts

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of friendship has been clearly articulated by contemporary authors (Konstan, 1997; Pakaluk, 1991; Price, 1989; Cooper, 1977a, 1977b). Most of those authors would stress that the modern idea of friendship in comparison to ancient friendship has been lost or sparsely covered by the literature, giving the governing priority to market exchange as the major principle for the intellectual ordering of the contemporary political world. Other authors have been interested instead in comprehensive commentaries of the patristic, early monastic, or medieval and modern eras’ references to friendship (Nehamas, 2016; Caluori, 2013; Vernon, 2005). Friendship was also reflected on in relation to modern and contemporary anthropological and ethical upheavals in thought and in practice. Such concerns have been stressed in the volume of Merle and Schumacher (2005). Their work in this regard raises concerns for friendship and marital relationships (see Compte-Sponville: 91–113); the phenomenology of friendship (see Sokolowski: 115–135); the relation between friendship and altruism (see Slote: 153–166); the engagement and task of friendship (Schumacher: 167–179); and the loss and absence of friendship (Baier: 137–152). The work of those authors questions the ethical and social implications of friendship. This includes the relationship between friendship and commercial society (Badhwar: 163–208), the importance of the other for the relationship of friendship (Shermann: 209–231), and friendship and solidarity (Gadamer: 233–241). Looking at other themes relevant for discourse on friendship within the academic field of philosophy, I aim to present a few brief details concerning the work of Jacques Derrida (1994; transl., 2005), Lawrence Blum (1980; See also in this chapter: 23–24), and Elisabeth Telfer (1970; See also in Pakaluk, 1991; See also in this chapter: 24) in their reference to the theme of friendship. These authors brought novelty not only to the academic field of philosophy on contemporary friendship, but also in reference to the interest of this book. Jacques Derrida: Friendship, Politics, and Difference Much of the contemporary interest in friendship, both in philosophy and more broadly, has focused on Jacques Derrida’s Politics of Friendship (1994; transl., 2005). In a very brief summary, I will indicate a few important characteristics of Derrida’s concept of friendship, pointing to its most appealing features. Derrida’s Politics of Friendship on the one hand deals with the tension between the universal meaning of friendship and, on the

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other hand, the meaning of modern/postmodern binaries, oppositions of views and counterpoints within the word political (transl. Derrida, 1978). Although, much of Derrida’s thought on friendship diverges from Aristotle’s, it is actually Montaigne who appears as the primary source of reference for Derrida. Indeed, Derrida acknowledges Montaigne’s pivotal role in developing the Western account of friendship. Yet Derrida’s account of friendship traces the return of friendship from private to universal consideration. In other words, Derrida places friendship back onto the intellectual agenda (both political and civil) as an attempt to disrupt Cartesian subjectivity, grounded on the priority of the ego. He elaborates his concept by rethinking the meaning of the political in conjunction with friendship—a minor issue in his political philosophy. He attempts to put friendship back into the conception of modern political theory, referring to the ancient notion of a correlation between the idea of justice, friendship, and polis, where philia plays an organizing role in the definition of political experience. Although many of Derrida’s references are to ancient authors, he problematizes their reducing friendship to sameness and a symmetry of virtue. He moves in the opposite direction, proposing a radical turn toward otherness, a term that he borrowed from both Levinas (1969) and Ricœur. He proposes the concept of good friendship that includes disproportion and demands. Appealing to Kantian philosophy in respect of the other (in a still quite conceptual form), he gives respect a privileged place within the friendship dyad and separates it from love as a feeling. The novelty of Derrida’s thought lies in his proposal of asymmetrical heteronomy as a basic moral criterion for the future of politics that, accordingly, traces the intellectual path for the future reconsideration of friendship. Lawrence A. Blum: Friendship and Altruism A number of references in the account of contemporary friendship have been made to the work of Lawrence A. Blum (See in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2023). Laurence Thomas, in his entry on friendship in the Encyclopedia of Applied Bioethics (Chadwick, 1998) stresses concern as a key feature of friendship and its tension with morality. In an attempt to present the challenge of a contemporary notion of friendship, Thomas distinguishes between the rational concerns for the other grounded on the Kantian morality of the categorical imperative and the personal concerns for the other based on the act of trust and self-disclosure. Trying to

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convey the significance of the latter, he makes reference to contemporary philosopher Lawrence A. Blum (1980). Working in the field of moral philosophy, Blum stresses the importance of morality for friendship, indicating that modern moral philosophy does not show much congruences with its focus on morally obligatory behavior. But unlike those who aim to rehabilitate the concept of virtue within friendship, Blum stresses the importance of a morality based on an altruistic emotion. For Blum morality is based on a beneficence that, in his approach, is congruent with altruism. In other words, friendship for him includes moral excellence expressed through altruistic emotion, but emotion is not morally legitimate itself. Blum’s tendency is to restore altruistic emotion understood as human concerns, sympathy, and compassion, and to demonstrate its moral significance for the relationship of friendship. Through the revival of altruistic emotion, he challenges Kantian morality grounded in the categorical imperative and partial (rationalistic) morality. I am not sure whether Blum succeeds in the revival of altruistic emotion within the concept of friendship, but his attempt to redirect attention to the value of friendship apart from a rationalistic morality was nevertheless a valuable exercise. Blum is neither Aristotelian nor a virtue ethicist. His approach begins with a modern criticism of friendship grounded in Kantian rational principles. The good wished for the other through altruistic emotion, concern for the friend, is based on an intrinsic moral value, not only a motive of a good action. Moreover, the concerns for the other involved in the concept of altruistic emotion signify something of one’s moral character. The moral action of friendship is thus valued according to a good for the other out of altruistic emotion understood as concerns, instead of a duty and obligations, and rather than a sort of emotional sentiment. This does not mean that altruistic emotion distorts the moral relevance of justice within friendship or involves only moral feelings and sentiments, but rather it redirects friendship’s value to moral character, exemplified through altruistic concerns for the other. In other words, the overall direction of Blum’s thinking places a different emphasis on friendship morality. The partiality of altruistic emotion challenges the impartiality of universal principles of rational autonomy grounded into Kantian morality. Blum’s reference to altruistic emotion shows the inadequacy of a strictly Kantian account of morality, but also reopens a possibility of ambiguity in valuing the moral stance of such an altruistic emotion. This ambiguity, in my assessment, is on the one hand a problem of the logical foundation of such emotions, which could lead

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toward radically subjectivist view of friendship, and on the other hand shows the limits of an altruism-based morality, as due to the subjective elements, including trust and self-disclosure, one can be never quite sure about the moral reliability of such a friendship. But is it the lack of strict moral principles a common characteristic in all human relationships? My assessment of Blum’s friendship is positive in the sense that, starting from a critique of Kantian morality, he indeed challenges the idea of a strictly rational morality, deprived of moral concern for the other, besides as a duty. For Kant, feeling and emotion are distinct from reason and are not morally reliable. Such reasoning is thus “blind” toward seeing altruistic emotion as a source of moral motivation inclined toward the good of another. In my assessment Blum, by stressing the importance of the value of altruistic emotion as morally appropriate in a way that is vital for the value of friendship, helps to recognize the other’s need and other’s responsiveness toward such needs. However, his thought places friendship into a position of a moral subjectivism if it is only through altruistic emotion that the moral action of friendship could be attained. Elisabeth Telfer: Significance of Woman Authors Much of the literature in the contemporary period has been characterized by the occurrence of the female authors, which consequently implies the female character in reconsidering the character of friendship. This does not only mean that it is contrasted with the ancient and classical idea of male-oriented friendship, but that within modern period there has been much literature exploring male-female friendship relationships, as well as woman-woman relationships in the ancient and classical period (Friedman, 1994). In this regard, contemporary friendship has been richer in a way that it not only “permits” occurrence of female characters but includes female authors writing on friendship (See Annas, 1995; Badhwar, 1993; Lynch, 2005; Schwarzenbach, 2009; Yalom & Brown, 2015). Philosopher and scholar Elisabeth Telfer deserves academic reference in Michael Pakaluk’s anthology of friendship (Pakaluk, 1991, pp. 248–267). Most of her arguments relate to Aristotle’s friendship in Nicomachean Ethics. In this regard, considering Aristotle’s shared activities, she distinguishes between reciprocated services, mutual contact, and joint pursuits, showing each to be a necessary condition of friendship (Telfer, 1971, pp. 223–242). Although Telfer left particular uncertainties regarding the

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importance of affection in loving one’s friends for their own sake, she developed her own consideration of friendship. In her essay on friendship she addresses three mutually interwoven issues on friendship: the nature of friendship, the importance of friendship for morality (friendship and duty), and, most importantly, the value of friendship. She distinguishes between familial and friendship relationships, ascribing to the latter an element of choice. Contrary to Derrida’s and Blum’s friendship, her view on the importance of friendship is associated with friendship’s contribution to the well-being of society, where she sees the possibility of friendship’s contribution to justice. The Academic Field of Theology The crisis of contemporary global challenges and divisions among people is the crisis of a common human belonging. That the theme of fellowship (either as friends or brothers) has been, and still remains, a core interest of contemporary theological discourses has also been evidenced by the International Congress of the European Society for Catholic Theology held in the 2017 in Strasbourg (https://sites.google.com/site/congresaetcfrance/programme). Despite such initiatives, the contemporary academic field of theology approached the theme of friendship only fragmentarily: a number of commentaries on and interpretations of friendship have been produced, but no larger theme on friendship as existed in the patristic era (St. Augustine), late monasticism (A.  Rievaulx), or in scholasticism (Thomas Aquinas) can be identified. Similarly to the field of philosophy, a number of the contemporary perspectives on friendship orbit around Aristotle’s friendship. The specific theological orientation involves the Bible: the Old Testament (Exodus 33:11 address the vertical dimension of God-Moses; 1Sam, 20:1–42, the horizontal dimension includes friendship between Jonathan and David; Proverbs 17:17) and the New Testament (with the crux in John 15:15) perspectives on friendship. Others’ interpretations include references to fathers of the Church (St. Gregory of Nazianzen, St. Irenaeus of Lyons), Augustine’s treatise on friendship, Aquinas’s notion of charity and amicitia. Reference was also made to various monastic reflections on friendship: I have already mentioned A.  Rievaulx and a mixture of a contemporary reflections on friendship including moral philosophy and ethics (Lewis,1960; Moltmann, 1977, 1981; Meilaender, 1981; De Graaff, 2014, etc.).

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Concerning mainstream thought on friendship in the field of theology, the Encyclopedic Theological Dictionay Staric (2009) explains friendship in its vertical and horizontal dimension, indicating that God’s love for His people is expressed in His “willingness” to have friendship with man. God reveals Himself through various images (God as mother, spouse, and father). One of these images shows God as a friend. The Dictionary continues by pointing out the importance of friendship as a gift and given, and friendship love as gratuitous and benevolent. Friendship love consists in the realization of a person (before all as an image of God) and the continuation of a person’s call to love benevolently and gratuitously, which is the reason this love is differentiated from spousal or familial love. Many of the references, commentaries, and discussions have looked at Augustine’s and Aquinas’s understanding of friendship. Although they spoke from different periods and to different theological contexts, Augustine and Aquinas each, by their understanding of human person in relationship with God, broaden the philosophical discussion on friendship (McNamara, 1964; White, 1992). Much of the recent theological discussion on friendship, brotherhood and fellowship reflects Jürgen Moltmann’s notion of open friendship. Moltmann did not write a specific treatise on friendship, but his ideas associated with friendship have been part of his reflections and public conferences. Moltmann, drawing on insights from the Christian concept of friendship, argues that freedom, openness toward the other, and empathetic love are central elements of an “open friendship.” God’s friendship is characterized by openness toward his people. This follows his explanation of open friendship, which includes friendship with God and presupposes openness to the different other, which is the reason it is an essential precondition for the mainstream account of friendship (Moltmann, 1977, p. 19, 1981). Empathetic love as an element of such friendship not only serves as a tool to protect one from reducing the meaning of God to a concept, but also as a means for acceptance of difference. Accordingly, as Moltmann repeats, open friendship is the place to find hope and an antidote to uniformity. He situates open friendship in the central Church mission, pointing out its openness toward the different and the outcast (Mt. 25) as a sign of hope and acceptance. There were attempts by some theologians to give friendship a more public and political role in their ideas of the common good and political judgment, reflecting certain ideas of Aristotle about the polis and Augustine’s civitas dei vs. civitas terrana. For instance, Guido de Graaff raises theological and ethical questions on these matters, developing his

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core argument around the political significance of friendship (De Graaff, 2014). De Graaff discusses how friendship goes beyond political processes, similarity, and attraction (John 15; Rom 12). Methodologically, de Graaff puts friendship in conversation with political communities and perceived it as a feature of the community that supports the political processes and as the beginning of political dynamics. His structure employs a variety of perspectives, drawing on Aristotle and Hannah Arendt (Villa, 2000), and his notion of political judgment includes reference to Scriptural texts in Jn. 15 and Rom. 12. His discussion on friendship raises the tension and creates a dichotomy between action and thought, giving privilege to the friendship narrative, the story of friendship, which often exceeds thoughts and transcends the nature of political judgment. Like C.S. Lewis in The Four Loves (1960), whose work on friendship explicitly or implicitly raises concern about the lack of consideration in modernity for the virtue character of a friendship, Paul Waddell expresses similar ideas. In his essay Friendship and the Moral Life (Wadell, 1989) Waddell, based on his reflection of Aristotle’s and Aquinas’s ideas of friendship, leaves little doubt about the importance of friendship for morality. He sees within the relationship of friendship a creative community, arguing that through mutual dialogue and the responses of friends to each other, we have the potential to create one another (Wadell, 1989). The field of theology also reopens a discussion of friendship about people with profound physical and intellectual disability, mental illness, Alzheimer’s and the elderly people in the nursing homes. Among the most cited authors on this topic is Hans Reinders (2008) who in his book constructs an anthropology for rethinking friendship with profoundly disabled (Reinders, 2008). Swinton (2000a, 2000b) has a slightly different perspective with his focus on people with mental illness and Alzheimer disease, raising awareness of the importance of friendship for the rehumanization of the person. Reimer Greig (2015) took Jesus’s foot washing and the friendship in L’Arche communities’ narrative as the key to overcoming the medicalizing objectification of people with disabilities within contemporary bioethical discourses. The recent work of Peter Comensoli (2018) recalls for the reimagination of anthropological and a Catholic theological perspective on the recognition of profoundly impaired—a human life lived at extremes—as a person with dignity and evokes a counter argument to Hans Reinders’s ethics of friendship in Receiving the gift of Friendship (2008). The overall importance of their work on friendship lies in its ability to elucidate the humanity of people

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with disability through the relationship of friendship. Such friendship perspectives set out a challenge for theology, Christian ethics, and contemporary culture, to rethink subjectivity and end bias toward and objectification of the disabled. Their work together with theologians of disability influences Pope Francis’s thinking about friendship with people with disabilities and is addressed in his speeches and initiated through his pastoral engagement. The Academic Field of Sociology The last three decades of research in sociology has seen increasing interest in the study of friendship. The contemporary academic field of sociology interchangeably use theoretical (philosophical, sociological, and ethical) and empirical (socio-psychological) methods in examining the social relationships of friendship. Friendship is recognized by mainstream sociological research as a type of informal relationship, often contrasted with other informal relationships such as family ties and marriage. The Oxford Dictionary of Sociology (eds. Scott & Marshall, 2009) describes friendship as a relationship that includes some type of reciprocity and obligation among individuals that are not related by family ties. The systematic study on friendship in sociology includes sociopsychological implications of friendship formation and development (important particularly in childhood), and the patterns of sociability and its focus on class differences (eds. Scott & Marshall, 2009, p. 263). The focus of sociological research implies various perspectives and study groups. The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology (2007) distinguishes between seven different areas of applied research: the study of friendship during the later years; friendship and its interpersonal aspects; friendship within social inequality and social change; structural and contextual characteristics and their effects on friendship; friendship in adolescence; friendship in childhood; friendship of gay, lesbian, and bisexual persons. A number of sociologists refer to the ancient or modern philosophical tradition regarding the conceptual meaning of friendship (Graham, 1989, 1998; Spencer & Pahl, 2006). Sociologist Roy Pahl, referring to Georg Simmel on the sociology of relationships, supports the statement that the ideal of friendship was received from antiquity and that the moral dimension of contemporary friendship has been lost due to the problem and perception of trust. His ideas were later supported and developed by the research of Spencer and Pahl (Spencer &

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Pahl, 2006) whose study of friendship expressed merely a theoretical perspective. Among innovative studies on friendship, besides Spencer and Pahl, the sociological scholarship draws on David Morgan (Morgan, 2009) and Allan Graham (Graham, 1989). Although much of the sociological research is in fact theoretical, their method is distinct from the methods used in moral philosophy or theology. Sociologists look at social, cultural, and economic factors in creating friendships. They also look at the role of biological and sociological identities such as gender (masculinity and femininity), class, age, ethnicity, and emotions (Adams and Graham, 1998; Holmes 2011, pp. 137–148). Instead of taking a conceptual approach to friendship, a number of sociologists are inclined toward an empirical study of the interactions between friends that involves the study of emotions and class differences. Moreover, the value of such research has been expanded within the study of positive psychology, pointing to friendship’s contribution to quality of life and well-being. This is to say that within sociology, the emphasis is not merely on moral dimension of friendship but on examining the interaction among friends, pointing out the involvement of emotions and how friendship is crucial in constructing one’s identity. In this regard friendship was perceived as one dimension of an informal social relationship, or an interpersonal relationship characterized by varying degrees of equality, mutual goodwill, affection, and assistance (Rawlins, 2017). Sociologists also discuss friendship as a relationship of “informal sociability,” as well as a relationship of equality. The notion of equality, however, resonates differently when it is ascribed to a friendship understood as interpersonal relationship. In discussing the characteristics of friendship (e.g., voluntary, personal, mutual, affecting), William K. Rawling emphasized that friends try to treat each other as equals. This equality goes beyond social statuses and personal attributes (Rawlins, 2009). Allan Graham refers to the meaning of equality differently. He points to a cultural understanding of friendship based on equality. This equality includes equal standing, reciprocity, sharing similar interests and activities, as well as economic and social equality. Within the realm of the sociology and the psychology of human relationships the emphasis was not only on friendship as a virtue, but as a relationship involving sentiment, perceiving human beings as emotional. This is not to say that friendship was oversentimentalized, but that the involvement of emotions in a human relationship was of an import in socio-psychological research. For instance, much empirical research on friendship has shown that having friends results in positive feelings such as joy, happiness,

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serenity, or fulfillment (Seligman, 2011; Cohen, 2004, pp.  676–684; Lunsky, 2006, pp. 117–161). On the other hand, research referring to people with disabilities has also shown that the absence of friends and a lack of friendship can cause negative feelings such as negative perception of self-worth, loneliness, anxiety, and isolation (Luftig, 1988, pp. 472–475; McVilly et al., 2006a, 2006b). The loneliness caused by a lack of friendship has been particularly evident in Disability Studies discourses and aging populations. Some scholars have shown particular interest in the sociological research on such types of friends (Bell & Coleman, 1999). In this regard friendship was a significant intersectional topic between the academic fields of disability and sociology. Although various research methods within the field of sociology brought valuable results in discovering friendship, including a variety of parameters that the study of philosophy and theology was lacking, the approach to friendship taken by sociologists lacks a precise and concise definition, and precision in reference to its constitutive elements. As a number of sociologists have indicated, there is a persistent need for a more detailed sociological study of friendship, including the qualitative and ethnographic research on the theme of friendship. The Outline into the Correlation of Themes Discussed The study of friendship in modernity and contemporary scholarship sets forth many different ideas. There is a particular characteristic and emphasis peculiar to each of the academic fields, so a brief comparison and a summary of the connection of emerging themes is necessary in the three abovementioned academic fields: philosophy, theology, and sociology. Within the field of philosophy, friendship was investigated as a part of the critique on the dominant universalistic moral theories of deontology and utilitarianism, as well as the overall idea of emotivism dominant in late modernity (Jeske, 1997, pp.  51–72; Meilaender, 1981; Lynch, 2005). Lawrence Blum’s and Derrida’s work on friendship in the academic field of philosophy, including the emergence of women’s interpretations of friendships, are good examples of such critiques. With the increasing development of psychology and sociology, friendship gained a new perspective—it was not only regarded as a moral concept, but as an important element for a personal growth, self-esteem, and personal well-being. In this regard, it was not merely important to rethink friendship conceptually as a moral category, it was important to look at elements that impact friendship’s motivation, formation, development, and maintenance. These

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are the areas that stress attention upon the importance of friendship with its practical, contextual, and empirical foundation, the involvement of emotions and personal elements. The academic field of theology could not escape the modern or late modern cultural upheavals and influences either. Despite the divisions influenced by global secular liberalism and decreasing numbers of the faithful, modern, and contemporary theological approaches to friendship had some positive characteristics. As noted within contemporary theological scholarship, the attachment to a personal God showed the contemporary Christian desire for belonging with God in a responsive and trusting communion (reception of God’s gifts and “person”). Moreover, theological scholarship integrates horizontal and vertical approaches to friendship. As a means to understand and reconstruct friendship, theological scholarship integrates Scriptural and philosophical insights into its friendship framework. Much of the literature is, however, marked by tensions in opinion between different approaches to morality, the nature of human person, the notions of love and charity, belonging, solidarity, Christian community, and so on. The brief review of the intersectionality of the aforementioned authors and their reflections upon the theme of friendship indicates that philosophy and theology share more common elements with each other than they do with sociology, but sociology is closer thematically to philosophy than it is to theology. Despite sharing the same anthropological basis of friendship, I would ascribe the reason for this divergence to the fact that much of the friendship analysis in sociology departs from empirical data, whereas the field of philosophy and theology is rather oriented toward the metaphysical and conceptual aspects of friendship’s rationale, and thus sometimes lacking the evidence of practical insights. The overall collection of themes among contemporary authors demonstrated tension in thinking about friendship. These include tension in thinking on friendship as something related to virtue and/or emotion, the tension between those who think about friendship as a personal/intimate matter and those who think about friendship as a communitarian or political matter. There is also a tension between those who think about friendship as particular interruption including difference and those who think about friendship in a more universal terms. The very correlation of themes following such tension center on: friendship’s importance for moral growth (philosophy); the meaning of philia (philosophy and theology); the correlation and tension between love as eros, philia and agape (moral philosophy, theology); the place of virtue in friendship (philosophy, ethics); the role of emotion in

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friendship (sociology, psychology); friendship and its connection to the stability of the political community (philosophy); friendship as shared activities, including reciprocity, the meaning of well-wishing (benevolence) and flourishing; woman-woman and woman-man friendship (philosophy, theology, sociology). The question about the correlation between love and friendship or, more precisely, the meaning of love for the meaning of friendship, is expressed through the correlation between the meanings of philia, philos, agape, and amicitia. Those concepts have been continuously discussed among most prevailing contemporary authors regarding the scope of moral philosophy and Christian ethics (Price, 1989; Meilaender, 1981). Additionally, the Dictionnaire Encyclopédique D’Ethique Chretienne (Lemoine et  al., 2013) on friendship (amitié) pointed to the importance of such discourses in its correspondence to the meaning of friendship’s bond. A number of authors in the field of philosophy, addressing Greco-Roman friendship, agree that the terms philia and amicitia, as well as, philia and philos itself, have been misinterpreted or have lost their full proper meaning within the contemporary discussions of friendship. They suggest that the ancient and classical interpretation of the terms gives a better articulation of their meanings (Konstan 1997, pp. 71–94) for instance argue that the term philos varies between ancient and classical theories, signifying something close to the term “dear” in former and something of a more intimate meaning in a latter. Accordingly, the problem of such a biased interpretation actually shows the limitations of a modern languages’ ability to grasp the proper meaning of the ancient terminology when applied to a modern context, which may be a reason for the confused meanings used in modern friendship terminology. Besides the abovementioned, there have been many discussions among theologians and philosophers looking at the relation between agape and philia. They on the one hand point to the eclipse of the meaning of philia due to the overemphasis of love as agape (Meilaender, 1981). Others, such as Kierkegaard (1995), point to the love of friendship as preferential, meaning it would be unjust not to give preference to the agape as the most valuable way to express love for another. Similarly, from the practical point of view, one of the reasons that many scholars ascribe to the real decline of friendship in modernity is the elevated interest in romantic unions (both heterosexual or homosexual partnership) and rethinking of the friendship within marital relationships. This on the one hand implicitly reflects the often-misunderstood conception of love, and on the other hand sees friendship relationships as private and individual, rather than public or of

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social importance. A number of commonly cited commentaries from the field of philosophy, theology, and sociology, each from their own perspective highlight the decline of moral interest in the structure of friendship or moral character of friends. Sociologists and those of a similar academic interest who ground their method in empirical research, such as developmental psychology, do question the meaning of and need for friendship, friendship formation and maintenance, shared activities, measurement of friendship for quality of life, and so on. Considering its moral aspect, friendship in such regard has been perceived as an important element for well-being, trustworthiness, and self-esteem. Sociologist Roy Pahl additionally asserts that the problem of contemporary friendship is a lack of trust. Pahl sees the problem of trust on the one hand, in contemporary man’s need to hide. For him, to trust others is more important than to trust societies or organizations, which is the opposite of the contemporary notion of trust. As he notes: It is strange that political and social theorists have not seen the need to explore the nature of trust empirically by focusing on the deepest and closest forms of friendship. Arguably, this is the locus classicus for the exploration of trust in contemporary society, since social relations and the obligations inherent in them are mainly responsible for the production of trust.

From the theological point of view, the moral dimension of friendship consists of impacting moral growth. Friendship is an important moral and ethical category that shows that the greatest ethical dilemmas are not only those on how to prevent evil and maximize good. Friendship as an ethical category must engage with the task of shifting our morality from the ethics of doing toward the ethics of being. Friendship is the place where achieving good can be possible in regard to how one should live, instead of what one should do. Another theme often discussed on moral dimension of friendship in the academic field of philosophy and theology is its implication for virtue. Those immersed in ancient (Aristotelian) friendship would associate the decline of moral involvement in friendship with the decline of appreciation for a virtue. By their emphasis on virtue, they show the contrast between contemporary friendship’s emotional focus with an approach that is more interested in a social or political relationship (See Hauerwas & Charles, 1997, pp. 61–69). Among other themes developed in late modernity are the possibility of friendship between men and women

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and the implications of female scholars discussing friendship. The occurrence of female friendship helped to overcome the bias of hierarchical differences between men and women’s friendship, as well as the distinction between better and worse persons. Scholarly discourse on friendship between people with and without disabilities continues in overcoming the hierarchical differences based on cognitive capacities. In a particular way such friendship contributes to overcome the barriers of fear and prejudice often twisted in friendship between people with and without disabilities and can be a way toward increasing social justice. This is to say that friendship in modern and contemporary discourses is not determined by the straightforward demands of two persons of great moral character. Despite the classical norm of the idea of friendship based on self-sufficiency, self-­ mastery, and self-dependency, modern friendship is not free from such ideas. Although modern and contemporary friendship includes persons of different moral characters, the role morality plays within the conception of such friendship remains too problematic to bear full univocal understanding. These leave us with a further question: does friendship remain a particular moral obligation and duty related to a social justice discourse, or is it a matter of a living experience and intuition? Which social justice and whose lived experience should one reckon as morally valuable? Facebook (Meta) Friendship Unlike classical friendship, which was in essence dialogical, the concept of friendship in modernity and late modernity has been subject to conceptual fluctuations in interpretation. Not only has the meaning of friendship changed and become virtual and disembodied, but the notion of the other changes as well. Modernity and late modernity brought particular shifts in understanding friendship. This does not mean that modern friendship in comparison to classical friendship is false. It just means that the full meaning and richness of friendship is pushed to the margins. For instance, instead of looking at friendship as something close to the meaning of virtue, in terms of its contribution to moral and personal growth, there is a practical problem with friendship on such basis. This I see in the relocation of friendship’s value from the quality to the quantity of friends, from the pursuit of moral growth to emotional satisfaction or “feeling good,” from flourishing based on mutual interdependency and the discovery of one another’s true selves, to flourishing in terms of a consumerist self-­ dependent pursuit of well-being. Such characteristics contribute to a

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conceptual problem of friendship’s embodiment and its historicity. Besides the already mentioned factors, contemporary friendship has been extended by the emergence of virtual network Facebook friends. Facebook friendship has been one of the important achievements of late modernity and has brought many advantages and disadvantages in terms of social networking and global connectedness. It combines the particular factors of a late modernity idea of friendship with its virtual components. The increasing empirical research on this subject comes from the social sciences and psychology. Sociological research online and a field of developmental psychology explores the influence of online social networks upon personality development, whereas the other areas of academic research, such as theology and moral philosophy, take little interest in exploring online friendship. In this section, my interest is to briefly reflect upon the specific impact Facebook has upon the conceptual framework of contemporary friendship and related friendship networks in the perspective of my own assessment of emerging online social networks. Facebook Friendship Network: Disembodied Human Relationship Lacking Historicity? I assume that if we ask the average teenage or young person (approx. population age 13–26) about their opinion on friendship, their answer, as consumers, may be straightforwardly related to Facebook friendship. The Pew Research Center in survey findings from 2014 on the tenth anniversary of Facebook, describes Facebook as a dominant social networking platform. Besides constant emergence of other social media apps and networks (e.g., WhatsApp, Instagram, Tik Tok) according to 2023 BusinessofApps statistics, the number of Facebook users in September 2018 was 2.32 billion, and in 2023 this number reaches 2.96 billion users (See https://www.businessofapps.com/data/facebook-­statistics/). Opinions about Facebook as a social networking platform for friendship vary between those who see Facebook as useful and those who think that it can be a detrimental for human well-being and socio-emotional esteem. For instance, the research of Parks and Floyd (Parks & Floyd, 1996, https:// doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-­6101.1996.tb00176.x) shows that internet communication with particular reference to friendship has a negative effect on our social life, as it causes personality disorders, hostility, and a nonsocial orientation. Additionally, the research of Lea et al. (1992, pp. 89–112) and Myers (1987, pp.  251–266) has shown that internet social

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networking provides opportunities for false self-presentation and identity manipulation. Others, such as John A. Bargh and Katelyn Y.A. McKenna (Bargh & McKenna, 2004, pp.  573–590), demonstrate the consisting  continuity in liberating interpersonal relations from the confines of physical locality and thus creating opportunities for new personal relationships and communication. Additionally, the research of Bruckman (1992) and Myres finds that social networking online creates an “identity workshop” in which people learn and test social skills, overcome the shyness they feel in face-to-face interaction, and help those who are isolated or disabled in developing their social relationships. Assuming that the overall idea about connecting via social media is beneficial, in my opinion, means giving people a sense of belonging and connectedness. Moreover, there are no limits on the number of “friends” we can talk to, and it is also a “time-­consuming” means of forming friendships, compared to a more natural means (Dunbar et al., 1995, pp. 67–78). This goes hand in hand with the fact that most of us today do have Facebook. However, Facebook friendship expresses the image of the culture in which we are living: global interconnectedness, fast telecommunication, false presentations of oneself, imaginary life of the other, personal contact measurement via cyber communication, global audience, and administration, instead of a true “faceto-face” meeting. Motivation, formation, and even narrative often appear to be missing elements of such relationships. We are on Google, but we are not friends. Facebook friends, and any other social media with a similar agenda, is, by my estimation, a network of disembodied human relationships lacking historicity. By this I mean not only that Facebook friendships are disembodied, lacking face-to face contact, but are also less intimate, unrealistic, and lacking the other person’s presence. All this contributes to the word friend becoming overpopularized and even overconsumed, in that everybody is potentially called a friend without acknowledging its proper meaning. As a social networking platform, Facebook friendship put modern man in an ambiguous social situation: the simultaneous existential exchange of isolation and presence between the other and the self. There is a virtual feeling of connectedness, but not a real presence. Facebook friendship creates a culture of having a friend without knowing how to be a true friend. The formation, shared activities, and face-to-face reciprocal exchanges, as well as embodiment that includes affection and facial expressions, are replaced by its virtual forms. “Likes” replaces affections (human touch and emotions) and create inclusion or exclusion; “celebrity” images become representative of ordinary reality; the number of friends and

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comments are determinative for one’s value; personal appearance is managed through offline and online statuses. Facebook is a great platform for hiding from being one true self. Facebook friends contribute to one’s selfesteem in that the value of a person, instead of depending on people themselves, depends on people liking what one posts, or is determined by the number of likes. This means that a great number of likes or a great number of friends can create positive feelings for oneself and maybe a positive image among others based on the number of likes and number of friends one has. On the other hand, a low number of likes or Facebook friends can lower people’s self-esteem. What I want to convey here is that Facebook could be one useful tool to manage false inclusion or on the other hand to bring about exclusion. There is an obvious difference in how friendship is measured. The distinction between qualitative and quantitative friendship contributes to such. But having a lot of friends does not mean having good reliable friends. This is again evident in relation to Facebook’s friendship platform. People with a large number of likes or friends sometimes portray a false image of themselves and their role as a friend. The number of one’s Facebook friends could say that the person is highly popular or desired as a friend. Whereas the lower number of friends and likes could send to a public a negative image of a person’s social transparency. Thus, the value of the person is measured according to the number of friends and likes on Facebook. In other words, the quantity of friendships becomes more important that their quality. The collection of friends on Facebook becomes similar to accumulation, frequently without a real reason. Dunbar’s research, conducted in 1993 on animals and primates, demonstrated cognitive limits in individuals’ brains on a number of social networks. The research that later became applied in psychology and sociology determined a number of 150 (called Dunbar’s number) as an average number of friends per individual. Similarly, research conducted later in Dunbar, 2016 on the constraints that limit the size of offline social networks concluded that face-to -face encounter and contact are preferable and prevent natural friendship decay in comparison to online friendship, which currently increasing, but departing from being natural. Thus, contrary to Facebook friendship, embodied real friendship is not about liking and having a great number of friends. It is important, indeed, but is rather an illusory friendship, which can be very ambiguous in portraying the notion of otherness and the true value of the meaning of friendship.

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What About Facebook and People with Disability? There are people who freely choose not to have Facebook, but there are also those who are unable or are not in position to create an account by themselves without assistance. Although many people with impairment or physical disability do use Facebook independently, people with intellectual disabilities may need support and occasional guidance in setting up their Facebook page, including privacy settings. They are excluded from independent use of a social network for mainly two reasons. First, as already mentioned, they may need assistance to create an account. Another reason is that Facebook is standardized according to so-called normal settings, which means that many people with intellectual disability are faced with the inability to adapt to such settings. Recent research concerning the foregoing subject evidences a variety of opinions regarding people with disability using Facebook. Firstly, the research of Bricout and Baker (2010) exploring the concerns of disability community report that people with disability are not being included in research conducted by the Pew Research Center (Viluckiene, 2015, pp. 453–459). Secondly, the empirical research of Shpigelman and Gill (2014, pp.  610–624), whose research mostly includes people with physical or mobility disability, demonstrates that on the one hand people with disabilities find Facebook a useful tool in managing inclusion and belonging, but on the other hand they reported concerns about security and discrimination (because of disability). This is consistent with the previously mentioned study of Bock that demonstrated that people with disability found Facebook to be a useful and accessible tool in managing inclusion, and an opportunity to connect with both nondisabled and disabled users. The negative outcomes of Facebook for people with disability have been addressed in studies of Haller (2010) and Taraszow et al. (2010, pp. 81–102), which reported that there is consistent difficulty in understanding and reading text-based communication for people with visual impairments or intellectual disabilities. Similar results about the consistent inaccessibility and lack of integration that persons with disability continue to face have been reported also by Michalko. The overall inclusion of such empirical data in regard to friendship has shown that people with disability confront similar challenges in the use of Facebook as people without disability. There is a challenge for all Facebook users in their loss of privacy, possibility to manipulate and pretend, ambiguous and unclear communication, belonging and connectedness (Danezis & Golle, 2006).

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To sum up, one could say that for people with disabilities Facebook is a means of positive access for managing inclusion and integration into a wider community. It opens the possibility to expand communication with people with and without disabilities. For this reason, it impacts the socio-­ emotional well-being of people with disabilities by creating a feeling of belonging and reducing loneliness. However, Facebook, for people with disabilities and without disabilities alike, does not provide a safe platform of communication and is far from a natural way of building friendship. It lacks face-to-face communication, supports false or imaginary perception of the other because the other is mainly judged by posts, likes, appearances, and text-based communication. This may be an adequate virtual way in managing inclusion, but is far from natural and true friendship where reciprocal exchange, the presence of one’s body and one’s face are not manipulated and judged as social capital, but in presence of the true representation of the other. Therefore, Facebook friendship is not friendship in the sense that we should think about friendship. Instead, it is an excellent tool for (partially) managing social inclusion. Concluding Remarks So far, I have tried to show that the development of friendship consists of different categorizations, conceptualizations, and transgressions. There is a common-sense understanding of the meaning of friendship, but the approaches to friendship change as they are impacted by particular moral traditions and cultural upheavals. Such approaches are also divided between different academic interpretations. The aim of a good life for Aristotle was a virtuous life whose end was achieving (contemplation) happiness. Friendship in this instance was an aspect of common morality and happiness was something that was essentially nonmaterial. The idea of a modernity and late modernity friendship follows this idea, but the modern idea of happiness is rather limited in contrast to Aristotle’s as it overemphasizes pleasure and the material aspect of a person’s well-being. It is impossible not to assume that such influences have impacted the overall condition of modern and contemporary thinking on friendship and its very end. Moreover, the modernity influences of the eighteen and nineteenth century have created a sense of dissolution and the irrelevance of the individual on the one hand, and the celebration of individual independence and autonomy in late modernity on the other, impacting contemporary

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thinking about friendship. This comes with the idea of simultaneous personal attachment and detachment based on a fluctuation of sentiments and emotions specific to late modernity and contemporary reflections. Hence, it appears that conceptual disagreements in opinions and approaches to friendship between those who value friendship based on approval, personal attachment, and intuition and those who fear that such elements lessen the inherent value of friendship is, in my opinion, influenced by acceptance of different approaches to a common morality (Backstrom, 2007; Lynch, 2005). More precisely, divergence in opinions and approaches, besides influences of different ethical systems of thought, implies also a different anthropological basis. Becoming a matter of a personal choice, “applied to everyone” friendship was put outside the context of a common morality. The classical contribution to the idea of friendship remains influential and, more importantly, is examined within contemporary philosophical, theological, and even socio-psychological debates. Despite the influence of ancient and classical authors, friendship in the modern and contemporary context has a significantly different approach and emphasis. More has been written on friendship by modern authors than by classical authors, but friendship has been approached from a different perspective and without attaching to it a precise definition. The modern period, impacted with the recent changes in thought and global communication, not only exhibits greater interest in exploring friendship among those with differences, but also provides a space for the contextualization of friendship, not only within different fields of academia but also in a socio-cultural perspective. This means that nowadays friendship should be thought of as something that consists of both conceptual (theoretical) and empirical (practical) aspects. More precisely, the philosophical, theological, and moral dimension of friendship should be combined with a socio-psychological perspective, as a framework for friendship requires an interdisciplinary approach. The moral conception of friendship supplies friendship with a particular direction, but it is the socio-psychological aspect that adds to a better understanding of the contemporary notion of a friend (the other), and thus the dynamic of the process of friendship. Notwithstanding this, the idea of ancient and classic friendships is different from the idea of modern friendship, particularly regarding the differences in approach to the subject of friendship for morality. This, however, does not mean that modern and contemporary friendship scholarship is limited and inadequate. The modern and contemporary summary of friendship frameworks shows its specific characteristics. This, in

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comparison with classical friendship, means that although much has been said about friendship in the modern period, no similar in style and conception treatise on friendship has been written. However, the emergence of different academic approaches to understanding friendship in late modernity is a novelty that combines the integration and intersectionality of different academic fields, providing friendship with a more comprehensive and valuable outlook. The modern idea of friendship, whose moral ground after Christendom continues to integrate the conception of differences into its friendship framework, became matter of personal choice. The element of personality, on the one hand, creates a strong sense of individualism, which leads to friendship becoming isolated or private in form, whereas, on the other hand, the focus on emotion supplies friendship with a “feeling” of belonging, close to romantic love. Impacted by the apparatus of a techno-liberal approach to person and community, Facebook friendship, as an extended version of late modernity’s friendship, is a rather controversial form of social networking as on the one hand it is a great tool to enlarge inclusion and support privacy, but on the other hand it could also create further isolation and risks false presentation of personality. This in a nutshell means that the pluralistic society, with its mobility and speed, impacted the modern notion of the other, and even more the contemporary networks of social relationships. Not only has the notion of the other been impacted by such changes, but so was the approach to friendship.

Notes 1. As a source of refernece to Scriptural text on English, I will use New Revised Standard Version of the Bible (NRSV), 1989. The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (1989). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers. https:// www.biblegateway.com/versions/New-­R evised-­S tandard-­Version-­ NRSV-­Bible/#copy 2. Although Aristotle treatise on friendship appears in part in Eudemian Ethics, Magna Moralia and in Politics, according to certain contemporary analyists of greek antiquity his main tretment of friendship has prominent place in Nicomachean Ethics. See Mulgan, R. (2000). The Role of Friendhsip in Aristotle’s Political Theory. In The challenge to Friendship in modernity, ed. King P. & Devere, H., 115. Ilford: FrankCass & Co. Ltd. 3. The Greek terminology for physical deformities includes words such as maimed (peros); much-maimed (anaperos) or ugliness (aischos). These terms when attached to person due to some physical deformity, exclude person’s from a full participation in community of polis.

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4. Besides Nussbaum and Pakaluk are here mentioned as contemporary commentators on Aristotle, they have minimally treated Aristotle’s concept of philia. A few others contemporary commentaries in edition of edited books and scholarly articles includes: Sorabji, R. ed. (1990). Aristotle Transformed: The Ancient Commentators and their Influence. London: Duckworth; Sorabji, R. ed. (2016). Aristotle Re–interpreted: New Findings on Seven Hundred Years of the Ancient Commentators. London: Bloomsbury Publishing; Tracy, T. (1979). Perfect Friendship in Aristotle’s ‘Nicomachean Ethics. Illinois Classical Studies 4: 65–75; Walker, A.  D. M. (1979). Aristotle’s Account of Friendship in the ‘Nicomachean Ethics. Phronesis 24 (2): 180–96; Cooper, J.M. (1977). Aristotle on the Forms of friendship. The Review of Metaphysics, 30 (4), 644; Cooper, J.M. (1977). Friendship and the Good in Aristotle. The Philosophical Review, 86 (3): 290–315. https://doi.org/10.2307/2183784; Sherman, N. (1987). Aristotle on Friendship and the Shared Life. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 47 (4): 589–613; Cocking, D. (2014). Aristotle, Friendship and Virtue. Revue Internationale de Philosophie 68, 267 (1): 83–90; Biss, M. (2011). Aristotle on friendship and self-knowledge: the friend beyond the mirror. History of Philosophy Quarterly 28 (2): 125–40, etc. 5. It is important to emphasize that the contemporary idea of flourishing is associated with the idea of quality of life often understood as a subjective element of well-being. According to few contemporary scholars, the idea of happiness in ancient world and in modernity differ, as the idea of quality of life in modernity has been influenced by the philosophy of Jeremy Bentham’s notion of happiness understood as pleasure, whereas the idea of happiness in antiquity was aligned with the meaning of contemplation. See for instance Nussbaum, M. (1989). Fragility of Goodness—Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy. Cambridge: University of Cambridge. Also, Annas, J. (1995). The Morality of Happiness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 6. In Cooper’s analysis on moral virtues, “virtues are essential properties of humankind: a person realizes more or less fully his human nature as he possesses more or less fully those properties of character which count as moral excellences.” (Cooper, 1977, p. 635). In such regard the virtue is perceived as an interior essence and quality that is embedded within a person’s character.

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CHAPTER 2

Disability Studies and Disability Theology Perspectives on Disability and Friendship

In this chapter, I aim to look at contemporary scholarly disability discourses according to two related but distinct academic fields: Disability Studies and Disability Theology. The chapter includes a brief critical examination of the two fields’ main features and evaluations of their approaches to disability and friendship. As each of the fields examined provides a specific perspective on the reality of disability and friendship, my aim is to adequately grasp and evaluate the understandings of disability in their definitions and as living realities. My method includes presentation, comparison, and critical evaluation of the most revealing aspects of each academic field. Regarding Disability Studies, I outline the key features of the models of disability and the definition of disability, and I examine friendship in reference to social relationships between disabled and nondisabled persons as well as among disabled people themselves. Regarding Disability Theology, I bring into focus the field’s main features and perspectives. Concerning the selection of themes, I primarily look at approaches to and perspectives on disability that bear relevant significance for Theological Anthropology and Christian Ethics. This includes the approach to the development of the definition of disability, the past and present approaches to disability, and the theme of friendship within the church realm. The concluding part of the chapter proposes conceptual comparisons and redefinitions of disability and friendship between the two fields.

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Disability Studies Academic Perspectives: The Contexts of Disability Discourses Disability is a complex and contextual phenomenon; not only is it a theoretical concept, but it is also a human condition. Thus, scholars approach it from different social and cultural perspectives. As a human condition it is first and foremost a human experience, integrating bodily and mental (i.e., biological), socio-relational, and socio-cultural dimensions. Conceptually, scholars who study disability utilize a variety of practical and theoretical approaches concerned with understanding and interpreting its meaning. Despite numerous approaches to and conversations about disability, many share the same basic notion that disability is a concept to be understood and a human experience that requires special approaches. Although scholars differ in how they understand disability conceptually, the main differences are between the fields of the Study of Disability and Disability Studies. Though the names seem to suggest the same field, there are key differences between the approaches. For instance, the Study of Disability refers to the work of sociologists, psychologists, medical practitioners, rehabilitators, and special educators. From these perspectives, they understand disability as physically, sensory, emotionally, or intellectually “abnormal conditions” that require prevention, cure, or a commitment to normalcy (Albrecht et al., 2001). Disability Studies, on the other hand, perceives disability as an essential part of the diversity of human life—just as legitimate and valuable to who we are as humans as gender, race, sexuality, and ethnicity (Titchkosky & Michalko, 2009). Contrary to the Study of Disability, Disability Studies does not conceive of disability as a problem in need of a solution but as an occasion to interrogate the concept of normalcy (Davis, 2006). As disability is not only a concept to be understood and defined but also a lived experience, Disability Studies offers a unique approach. It provides stimulating approaches to thinking about disability. In addition to its critique of the medical model of disability, Disability Studies scholars also research the historical, political, social, and professional influences of disability. It includes recent poststructuralist and postmodernist approaches that contribute to the conceptual furthering of the discourse. The following discussion envisages and presents theoretical approaches to disability, which include models of disability, disability terminology and definitions, the rationale for the academic field of Disability Studies, as well as an examination of the rationale for friendship in relation to disability.

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Medical and Social Models in Disability Studies Discourses on disability within the academic field of Disability Studies and Critical Disability Studies are various, drawing upon several academic and cultural contexts. The mainstream past and present approaches to disability within Disability Studies are likewise diverse. Two dominant models are the medical and social models. Like most approaches within mainstream disability discourses, they have influenced socio-cultural responses and attitudes toward disabled people, have had a significant impact on the definitions of disability, and influenced disability discourse within the academic context of Disability Studies. Moreover, these models have also influenced other derivative sub-models. Though the medical and social are the most prevalent models, different interpretations of disability within postmodernity also deserve attention. Besides the broader discussions about disability that have significantly relied on the two former models, other sub-models as well as postmodern and poststructuralist approaches to disability have also provided a comprehensive knowledge of disability while demonstrating complicated and often contrasting discourses. Medical–Biomedical–Individual Model Known by different names such as individual, medical (Mike Oliver, 1990), and biomedical pathology (Rioux, 1997, pp. 102–111; eds. Rioux & Bach, 1994), the biomedical model is a set of frameworks that looks at disability as a physical condition, disease, or individual tragedy that requires remedy or cure by medical intervention. According to the biomedical model, disability has biological causes that disable a person’s normal functional proficiency. Put slightly differently, disability is diagnosed along with disease, illness, deformity, or pathology, and therefore requires medical expertise, rehabilitation, cure, or prevention. The most appropriate contemporary response to such treatments within the medical practice includes prevention through genetic screening and prenatal diagnostic tests. The purpose is fixing the individual and preparing them to function within a society according to notions of normality (Titchkosky & Michalko, 2009; Davis, 2006). Thus, the emphasis on the use of the term individual in the medical model—according to interpretations of early disability scholars—evidences the belief that the cause of disability lies in functional limitations, psychological losses, and biological anomalies. That is, it locates disability as a problem found within the individual. Coming from

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the North American context, the disability scholar Simi Linton, in her article “Disability Studies/Non-disability Studies” (Linton, 1998b, pp. 525–540), addresses concerns related to the idea of overemphasizing the role of medical knowledge in understanding disability. She argues that the medicalization of the different conditions of people with disabilities has resulted in the pathologizing and individualizing of disability. Linton is particularly critical of the established settings that ascribe to the person with a disability the status of a patient who lacks self-determination and self-representation. Other Disability Studies scholars who in their teachings employ Linton’s approach robustly criticize the medical model. They state that the medical model advocates focus on the biology of impairment, perceiving it to be a deficit, loss, gap, and problem to be corrected (“person-fixing”). Thus, disability is the problem of the individual who requires change or cure through professional help within a legalistic and paternalistic frame (“master status of identity”). Despite all this criticism, the medical model has had the most pervasive influence upon cultural and social considerations of disability, healthcare policies, and rehabilitation. It was, however, followed by criticism, which ultimately led to the birth of the social model approach to disability. Social Model and Its Various Aspects The social model emerged as a reaction to the prevailing formula of seeing disability as a physical impairment and limitation on a person. Most of the Disability Studies discourses and discussions are grounded in that model’s rationale, which includes a few versions of the social model’s sub-models and a cross-cultural interpretation of the social model. First launched in the United Kingdom as socio-relational (Thomas, 2004, pp. 22–36), the social model has followed the pioneering work of the Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS, 1976) and has been the great idea of the British Disability Movement (Oliver, 1996; Corker & Shakespeare, 2002; Goodley, 2010). Simultaneously, influential academics such as Mike Oliver (1990, 1996), Colin Barnes (1996), and Vic Finkelstein (1980) have supported the model in their theorizations. Contrary to the medical model, the social model’s rationale is oriented toward people’s experiences and is critical of societal and cultural prejudices toward disabled people. The reduction of opportunities

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for disabled people is understood in terms of social rather than personal deficits. The social model, in this regard, has two main aspects. First, it distinguishes between disability as a social situation and impairment as a physical or bodily disadvantage. Second, it highlights that disability is a societal problem; due to societal and environmental barriers of oppression and limited participation within society, disability is not a personal disadvantage but rather a social problem (social barriers). It is society, culture, and environment that disables the opportunities of people with disabilities by restricting their participation in “normal” societal functioning by limiting access to the public and reducing involvement in social activity. Disability within the social model goes beyond interpreting bodily dysfunction as a disadvantageous medical condition. As such, the social model’s definition of disability has been an important liberating factor in the lives of many disabled people, demonstrating that people with disabilities are not passive subjects of change, and their voice has been finally recognized (Corker & Shakespeare, 2002). Despite the social model being the most leading and in some parts influential model, UK disability studies scholar Carol Thomas addresses that social model has its limitations, as it lost its socio-relational perspectives in understanding disability (Thomas, 2004, pp.  22–36, and pp.  569–583). Thomas argues that not only did socio-relational conception on disability give birth to further developments of the social model, but also the socio-relational perspective in understanding disability obscured during the process (Thomas, 2004, pp. 27–28). This, in other words, means that besides the social exclusions, injustices, and inequalities outlined within social model and contemporary disablism, the socio-­relational perspective within a social model points also to “inside” and “outside” exclusions, based on for instance political, economic, and psycho-­emotional dimensions of disability (Thomas, 2004, pp. 29–33). In other cultural contexts such as North America, the social model has been addressed by alternative names, which include its sociopolitical, environmental, and human rights formulations concerning the socially constructed nature of disability. Some interpretations of the social model of disability emphasize its link with social inclusion, seeing disability through the lens of a human rights approach and, more specifically, participatory disability rights (Rioux, 1997, pp. 102–111). Despite the fact that these approaches slightly differ due to their various anthropological, philosophical, and sociological backgrounds and emphases, the common

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strategy of these approaches aims to address the social, political, and economic inequalities and disadvantages in society people with disabilities face. Thus disability, in this model, pushes toward “society fixing.” Namely, it sees society as a socially constructed process with socially constructed meanings, which exacerbate the conditions of disability. In spite of the medical and social models still being the most cited, referenced, and discussed conceptual approaches to disability, they also have certain limitations. It sometimes appears that disability understood solely within the realm of either the social or medical model cannot be fully comprehensible. Experiences of disability as an individual condition differ per se and evoke a variety of interpretations. In this regard the sub-models provide other perspectives than the social and medical models of disability. They, moreover, expand the comprehension and the meaning of disability to better include the experiences of those living with disabilities. Besides the medical and social model, the sub-models enrich comprehension of disability, demonstrating that the medical and social models, as already indicated, are insufficient in providing a full understanding of disability and point toward differences in understanding disability within various contexts and domains. Among these sub-models are: the affirmation model of disability (Cameron, 2014; Swain & French, 2000, pp.  569–582), rehabilitation model (Edwards, 1997), radical approach (Withers, 2012), human rights paradigm (UN, 2006), adjusted versions of the social model such as the British Social Model (Campbell & Oliver, 1996; Thomas, 2004; Barnes & Mercer, 2010), the North American minority approach (Scotch, 1984), the Nordic relational model (Tøssebro, 2004, pp. 3–7), the environmental approach (Rioux, 1997, pp. 102–111), and bio-socio-psychological model (WHO, 2011). Additionally, recent scholarship by C.  Thomas (2004), L. Davis (2006), Titchkosky and Michalko (2009), Mitchell and Snyder (1997), and Corker and Shakespeare (2002) reveal an interest in postmodernist and poststructuralist approaches to disability. These authors and sub-models find the medical/social model dichotomy inconsistent and therefore instead suggest a renewal of such models’ perspectives, including comprehension of a “disability condition” in light of postmodernist and poststructuralist social or medical analysis or from the perspectives of the various sub-models (Fig. 2.1).

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Poststructuralist and Postmodern Approaches

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Social Model

Rehabilitation Model

Radical Approach

Socio Relational Model

Charity Model

Environmental Approach

Social Minority Model

Human Rights Paradigm

Bio Psycho Social Approach

Socio Economic Model

Traditional / Religious Model

Social Adaptation Model

Fig. 2.1  Models in—between or sub-models—a few examples

Disability in Its Terminology and Definition Mainstream thinking on the meaning disability is frequently associated with, say, an image of a person in a wheelchair or a person with Down Syndrome. It is less likely that visual, hearing, or other sensory limitations or mental problems (such as anxiety or depression) would be associated with a layperson’s understanding of disability. The confusion in determining what constitutes a disability is even greater between cultures. Due to legal rights to social and healthcare benefits, disability related conditions differ across global cultural, social, and political circumstances. What is considered to constitute a high degree of disability in one culture may not even be considered a disability in another. For instance, what may be

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considered mental illness related disability in North America may not be regarded as such in parts of India or Africa due to contextual differences and socio-political comprehensions of disability and mental illness. This ambiguity leaves scholars puzzled, yet also eager to explore how disability is understood and what the actual meaning of disability is. While I do not intend to explore the meanings of all possible definitions of disability in the world, my aim in the following section is to supply the reader with a sense of its complexity and portray the ways in which different understandings of disability differ by context and in what ways they have influenced the lives of disabled people. I will do this by portraying a few insights from the development of disability’s definitions within historical and contemporary scholarly discourses as well as cross-cultural applications. Past and Present Perspectives On and Cultural Shifts in the Development of a Definition of Disability To grasp a proper and nondiscriminatory view on disability is not merely a task for those in academic disability discourses, but it is a task for society and culture at large. People with disabilities historically have been labeled with different terms of reference. These include terms such as monstrous, idiotic, mentally retarded, and mentally deficient (Shakespeare, 2014; Krotzl et al., 2015). Even within contemporary culture, disabled people have been represented with images of malignant, pitiful, leprous, catastrophic, and/or otherwise abnormal conditions (Mitchell & Snyder, 1997). The meaning of disability within most contemporary dictionaries refers to some extent to biological dysfunction (medical model) and, in most cases, reflects the opposite of ability. The Cambridge Online Dictionary defines disability as an illness, injury, or condition that makes it difficult for someone to do the things that other people do. The Merriam-­ Webster Dictionary defines disability as a physical, mental, cognitive, or developmental condition that impairs, interferes with, or limits a person’s ability to engage in certain tasks or actions or to participate in typical daily activities and interactions. Despite these terminological biases and influences, the meaning of disability within contemporary culture is determined by socio-cultural upheavals and a strong sense of inclusion—which is the reason why disability has become a socially and culturally constructed idea. Attempts to clarify the meaning and determine a comprehensive definition of disability were made following various movements organized by disability activists in the 1970s. The definitions have been subject to

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multiple changes, which have been influenced by disability policy, different human rights movements, shifts in the economy and society, improvements in psychology and health sciences, and so on. Such is visible within the scope of international documents. Acts and organizations—including the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA); the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA); the World Health Organization (WHO); the International Classification of Impairments, Disabilities and Handicaps (ICIDH) in 1980; and the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICFDH)—successfully managed to provide some common language for disability terminology. Whereas the early endeavors in defining disability reveal the wide influence of the bio/medical model in defining disability as physical impairment and functional limitation (International Classification of Impairment, Disability, and Handicaps, adopted by the World Health Organization in 1980), later documentation impacted the social model’s version of understanding disability, thus demonstrating significant shifts. For instance, the previous 2002 WHO terminology distinguishes between impairment (biological condition), disability (functional limitation), and handicap (consequence of impairment), whereas the 2011 WHO report on disability implemented a socio-cultural version of disability. This is to say that the 2002 WHO report on disability still recognizes disability as an interaction between health, a person’s environment, participation in activities, bodily functions, and personal features whereas the 2011 World Report on Disability defines disability in a broader sense as a complex, dynamic, multidimensional, and contested condition of human life. Disability Studies both influences and follows the 2011 WHO distinction. But, due to its inclination toward a social model of disability, Disability Studies acknowledges disability as a form of social oppression, inequality, and exclusion. In a chapter in the Handbook of Disability Studies, Violet Rutkowski-Kmitta and Glenn T.  Fujiura (2001, p.  92) asserts that a Disability Studies perspective on disability shifts the framework from a methodology of classification and measurement to more metaphorical constructions of personal experience amid social and cultural contexts. Despite the endeavors of social model scholars to distinguish between impairment as a medical condition and disability as a problem of society, most of the impetus for establishing a clear disability definition derives also from legal and cultural backgrounds. In order to achieve rights and advocate against disability discrimination, it has been essential for legislation to attain clarity on the definition of disability (Harpur, 2012,

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pp.  325–337). Though such endeavors have been useful in managing social inclusion, the legal definition of disability within a human rights paradigm has become politicized sometimes through the actions of non-­ disabled minority groups. Though well meaning, these political actions have often not utilized more holistic frameworks for understanding disability or leaned into the insights of those people with disabilities themselves. Moreover, the results have often been overly legalistic and therefore confusing to the very people they seek to aid. Frequent changes in disability terminology influence disabled people’s access to health care, social and legal policies, and education. In addition, the terminologies shape their identities. For example often, due to social discrimination, disability is confusingly discussed within the spectrum of other stigmatized and minority identities such as feminist, racial, gender, class, and ethnicity discourses. Disability may similarly be categorized with illness, aging, or mental disorder due to particular impairments or biological conditions (medical model). These imbalances impact the representation of people with disabilities within a framework of social and moral devaluation, thus equating them with other identities and thereby devaluating the personal experience of disability. Transitions in the structural definitions and understandings of disability—from a medical understanding to a more societal (contextual) and cultural definition and, ultimately, to a recognition that dis-ability is an ontological human condition that can impact everybody— changes the regard afforded disabled people (Ingstad & Whyte, 1995). Yet simultaneously, it complicates dialogue on disability. Such dialogue creates the space where disability has become a cultural representation of difference or, more precisely, the reception and construction of a creation difference (Corker & Shakespeare, 2002). This means that disability is not merely a medical or social condition but a highly culturally relevant term as certain definitions are applied differently across socio-cultural contexts. According to the World Report on Disability (2011), 15% of the world’s population has some form of disability. However, only 1% of disabled people in developing countries have access to any form of rehabilitation or disability related services (eds. Barnes & Mercer, 1997). Many sight or hearing impairments or difficulties in reading (dyslexia) are not considered disabilities culturally, but in legal and socio-medical contexts they are considered to be disabling human conditions (eds. Barnes & Mercer, 1997). The most recent poststructuralist and postmodern concerns support

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cross-cultural representation in understanding disability. They emphasize a cultural representation of disability where disability becomes a challenge to normality (eds. Mitchell & Snyder, 1997; eds. Corker & Shakespeare, 2002). Postmodernist and poststructuralist perspectives on disability thus criticize the social model and consider disability the result of bio-psychosocial causes. Moreover, this understanding of disability as a cultural and universal condition (as everyone can be impaired to a certain degree at certain times in their lives) shifts the understanding of the experiences of disability, gaining insights into the distinction between the normal/abnormal dichotomy (Corker & Shakespeare, 2002; Titchkosky & Michalko, 2009). All of this points to mainstream scholarly and socio-cultural inconsistencies regarding the equation of impairment with disability as well as the terminology, images, and language used in historical and contemporary representations of disabled people. This is to say that the definition of disability—besides medical, social, and cultural perspectives—requires further scrutiny. Moreover, its terminological upheavals will become a continuum in future discussions on the definition of disability. The Rationale for the Academic Field of Disability Studies My next step is to outline a few aspects of Disability Studies as an academic field in order to understand its matrix of theories and applications concerning disability. I will briefly present the field’s development, rationale, and purpose. Disability Studies as a distinct academic field has its foundation across different disciplines such as the humanities, social sciences, cultural studies, and others. It began with the Disability Rights Movement in the 1970s (Cameron, 2014). It first imposed a strong critique of the medicalization of disabled people and the conceptualization of disability within society and culture. On the threshold of its development in North America, Simi Linton defined Disability Studies as an interdisciplinary liberal arts field that focuses on the concepts, meanings, and experiences of disability, not just from scholarly points of view but also from the perspective of disabled people. This entails that Disability Studies is not just about studying the phenomena of disability, applying social models, or exploring other models, but it is rather the reconceptualization and reimagination of disability other than as a stigmatized deficit or social construction. Moreover, disability is also a locus from which to speak and learn about the human

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condition, a means of social research, and a cause for political action (eds. Makas & Schlesinger, 1994). Thus, Disability Studies critiques and challenges the established knowledge of mainstream culture regarding the ideal of normalcy or the qualities of the body conceived as normal (Davis, 1996). Unlike other fields of the Study of Disability, for Disability Studies scholars, disability matters in the sense that it is an integral part of the diversity of human life. Accordingly, a number of Disability Studies scholars see disability as a set of meanings involved in the question of what it means to be human. Thus, humanity ought to be perceived as “fluid and shifting” rather than stable, according to cultural ideals of normalcy. As the field developed, Disability Studies departed from a merely social model perspective by beginning to include a matrix of theories, pedagogies, practices, and ideas. More recently, it is moving toward cultural, poststructuralist, and postmodern lines of inquiry that are shaping contemporary culture (See Titchkosky & Michalko, 2009; Mitchell & Snyder, 1997; Corker & Shakespeare, 2002). These recent developments demonstrate interest in the cultural interpretation of disability. They also imply intersectionality with other oppressed groups such as people of color, the queer community, female, and migrants. This means that disability, particularly within a North American context, and critical Disability Studies is approached in line with queer theory perspectives, race, gender, and sexuality. Concerning “disability themes and subjects,” the aforementioned academic contexts demonstrate interest in issues such as normalcy, ableism, and diversity. On the other hand, scholars have given more attention to questions of disabled identity, inclusion policies, and the dichotomy of ableism-disablism (Reeve, 2012, pp. 78–92). Despite disability still being viewed as an unexpected, undesired, asocial, bodily condition, we know more about disability than ever thanks to Disability Studies and other fields such as the Study of Disability and Critical Disability studies. In other words, as Titchkosky asserted, what Disability Studies can offer to the mainstream scope of academia is a disciplined way to study strategies in managing inclusion and a source of critique of culture in regard to normalcy and bodily identity (eds. Titchkosky & Michalko, 2009). Disability Studies is a necessary field for exploring disability and its related issues. However, it is also limited due to missing holistic strategies and practical insights for managing inclusion and rethinking disability identities. By this, I particularly mean integration and interrelation with other academic

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fields and life contexts. I suggest, therefore, an open and complete anthropology that is able to grasp a holistic and integrative understanding of disability and disabled people’s experiences (including sociological, psychological, and medical as well as spiritual and religious perspectives). This will be my task in the next chapter. Now I will present the meaning of the relationship of friendship within the context of most relevant disability discourses.

Friendship with People with Disability: The Perspective of Disability Discourses Friendship as a type of social relationship has a positive impact on people’s self-esteem and moral growth; the impossibility of friendship, on the contrary, has a negative impact on people. The most common issues arising from lack of friendship, poor social interactions, and low-quality social relationships are not only loneliness (McVilly et al., 2006a) but, according to some researchers, further socio-psychosocial conditions such as depression or criminal behavior and even neuro-psychological conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease (Wilson et al., 2007). When disability inquiries address social relationships, debates often concern social inclusion, special education, or independent living as formal types of social relationship. The research on friendship between disabled and non-disabled people as well as between people with disabilities themselves has arrived relatively recently in comparison with some other themes in Disability Studies and related fields such as the Study of Disability. A few reasons why friendship has been marginalized or replaced with some other means of social inclusion has, in my view, to do with the focus on the process of managing inclusion merely via the distribution of rights and citizenship. These have helped include people who previously had limited rights to environmental and public spaces and reduced visibility and opportunity for people with disabilities to freely interact within society. People with disabilities historically were indeed not fully included in society, and their social relationships were poor and limited. In other words, prior to the formation of or even opportunity to establish friendships, people with disabilities needed to be included and visible within society. Despite the fact that modern cultural contexts manage inclusion via the distribution of civil rights and freedoms, little has been said on the importance of friendship as a way of managing inclusion and social participation. Conceptually, the research on friendship

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as an alternative way of managing inclusion within Disability Studies and related disability discourses literature (including the voices of its proponents such as Simi Linton, 1998a; Lennard Davis, 1996; and in edited volumes of, e.g., Mitchell & Snyder, 1997; Titchkosky & Michalko, 2009, etc.) has not been widely addressed. Nonetheless friendship, as a separate theme within Disability discourses, has been given practical credibility through empirical analysis of dyad relationships. The most relevant journals where this theme has been investigated include Disability and Society, Journal of Policy and Practice in Intellectual Disability, Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, British Journal of Learning Disability, Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities, Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities, and Research in Developmental Disabilities. The most common questions in the research on friendship orbit around four types: (a) what is the actual possibility for people with disabilities to establish friendships? (b) what is their response to friendship? (c) who do they choose as friends? (d) to what extent does the established social relationship between people with disabilities and their care workers or personal assistants correspond to relationships of friendship? The context-related settings include mainstream and special schools’ environments as well as the context of household and independent living (care) settings. These environments are interesting as they open real possibilities for friendship formation, enabling social inclusion via participation (school) and empowerment (distribution of care, independent living). Still, they do not provide an exact answer for how social contexts of this type enable friendship formation. Regarding the type of relationship settings, disability discourses distinguish between formal or professional and informal or personal social interactions. The formal type of relationships is mostly professional such as relationships between employers and employees or receivers of care and their personal assistants. The personal or informal relationships include family, school peers, and kinship. Likewise, considerable research on friendship has been conducted by exploring friendship relationships between people with intellectual disability and without disabilities (Pockney, 2006: http://www.socresonline.org.uk/11/3/pockney.html; Pottie & Sumarah, 2004; Lutfiyya, 1991, pp. 233–245). In this regard, research has shown that the friendship relationship between people with and without intellectual disabilities has been considered an extension of community-based services for people with disabilities (Lutfiyya, 1991, pp.  233–245). Recently has research within various associated fields of

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disability discourses gone in a different direction through exploring the meaning of friendships among people with intellectual disabilities themselves (Callus, 2017, pp. 1–16; Brown & Larson, 2009, pp. 219–227; Knox & Hickson, 2001, pp. 276–291). I seek to push further by looking at the theme of friendship and intellectual disability. This in my discussion concerning disability in most cases includes general reference to developmental and intellectual disability, but simultaneously it goes beyond merely these types of disability. Regarding the theme of friendship, I interchangeably present research on friendship between people with and without intellectual disabilities as well as among people with intellectual disabilities themselves. In a further assessment of the practical or empirical data on friendship, I look separately at friendship: (a) between people with intellectual disabilities and (b) between people with and without intellectual disabilities. The selected studies that reveal these experience of friendships (Knox & Hickson, 2001, pp.  276–291; McVilly, 2006a, pp.  693–708, 2006b, pp.  191–203; Lutfiyya, 1991, pp.  233–245; Callus, 2017, pp. 1–16) also demonstrate features of the nature of these friendship, their meanings, and the importance of relationships among people with intellectual disabilities themselves (Knox & Hickson, 2001, pp. 276–291; McVilly et al., 2006a, pp. 693–708, 2006b, pp. 191–203) and between people with and without intellectual disabilities (Lutfiyya, 1991, pp. 233–245; Callus, 2017, pp. 1–16). Friendship Relationships Between People with (Intellectual) Disabilities Themselves Studies involving friendship relationships between people with disabilities, according to S.  Duck et al. (1997) and Chappell (1994, pp.  419–434) have been of less value than those studies of relationships between people with and without disabilities. Despite the lack of research in that area, the reason for this problem, according to many Disability Studies scholars, stems from an exaggerated focus on normalization, particularly within the contexts of friendships between people with and without disabilities. This focus has, first, devalued people with disabilities’ social networks among themselves, disassociating them from one another. Second, it has “forced” them to identify with non-disabled people. The related assumption of many disability scholars is that such relationships can be exploitative to people with disabilities due to the unequal distribution and possession of

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power. This can lead to people with disabilities being manipulated and devalued by people without disability. The valuable research of Knox and Hickson in an Australian context investigates the meaning of close friendship in the views of four people with intellectual disabilities. The research presents people with intellectual disabilities’ participation in and insights into the experience and knowledge of friendship. The participants—the four people with intellectual disability—have described friends with whom they have close nonintimate relationships as “good mates.” The good mate relationships are distinguished from work friends or club friends and are considered as actual friendships. The meanings attached to the “good mate” relationship yielded some common elements such as the meaning of a pivotal relationship (“he is an important friend”), the importance of doing things together (“going out together”), a sense of shared history (“we grew up together”), shared common interests (“we like doing the same things”), helpfulness (“we help each other”), reciprocal support, and the desire to maintain friendship by making visiting arrangements (“working out what we’re going to do”). Except by indicating that friendship was pervasive and pivotal in their lives, the four participants showed a lack of resultant feeling in experiencing connectedness as well as the lack of a frame of reference for understanding friendship and the meaning attached to that experience. A similar approach has been taken by McVilly et al. (2006a, pp. 693–708, 2006b, pp. 124–138) in investigating the friendship experiences of adults with intellectual disabilities. This study engages people with intellectual disabilities as participants looking specifically at their experience of friendship. The study emphasizes that people with intellectual disabilities were not merely participants but were involved in formulating the study’s topic and inquiry as well as reviewing and analyzing the data (McVilly et  al., 2006a, pp.  693–708). The research findings reported the main aspects and qualities of these friendships, the rationale of best friends, the barriers to making friendships, the importance of maintaining friendships, as well as the meaning of assistance and support. The study reported that friendship is one of the most valuable aspects of the lives of people with disabilities. For the four participants, friendship was of a moral importance and a way of managing interpersonal communication. The consensus of all participants was that the most important aspects of friendship include trust, respect, understanding, acceptance of who you truly are (moral standards), talking, sharing, and having fun (interpersonal communication). When defining the meaning of best friends, people with intellectual disabilities

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reported that it is difficult to have best friends outside the group due to the categorical and physical differences that in some way could impact the meaning of similar interests. The reasons mentioned by people with disabilities when discussing a lack of friends outside the group were feelings of stigma and inferiority—such as not belonging to the same level or failing to being equal to the general population (McVilly et  al., 2006a, p.  699). For people with intellectual disabilities, having best friends entailed similarity in terms of sharing the same socio-cultural identity of intellectual disability. Implicitly, this means being on the same path. The inclusive type of forming friendships between people with disabilities seems to be better established because of shared interests and the idea of belonging (a sense of sharing history, sources of support, and common interests). Friendship Between People with and Without (Intellectual) Disabilities Besides friendship between people with disabilities themselves, there is research that shows the value of friendship between people with and without disabilities. For instance, Anne Marie Callus’s (2017, pp.  1–16) research demonstrates people with disabilities’ understanding of friendship in the cultural context of Malta. The participants were seven people with intellectual disabilities. The markers of friendship selected included the behaviors and actions undertaken. Callus’s research shows that people with intellectual disability identified their coworkers, self-advocates, family members, and support workers as friends. Some of the participants identified their girlfriends or boyfriends as best friends. Common activities were seen as important markers of their friendship. These included helping each other, having a good time together, sharing jokes, sharing activities, and behaviors such as spending time together, shared leisure time, and reciprocal help. The negative outcomes of these relationships included undesirable treatment toward people with disability (such as using abusive language from other people with ID) or lack of respect from staff residence, which was identified as unfriendly behavior. This marker demonstrates people with ID have the capacity to distinguish between unfriendly and friendly behavior. The essential element presented within the discussed research is the informal behavior (sharing jokes, spending leisure time) and reciprocity (reciprocal help and leisure) as markers of friendship and a challenge for the established understanding of friendship. Specifically,

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regarding reciprocity, Callus’s research identified that the presence of implicit reciprocity is evidenced in reciprocal help and leisure as an essential, yet not explicitly visible, element of friendship. For instance, reciprocity referred to giving—not just receiving—help (helping friends as much as their friends help them) or spending evening activities together as friends—not in a clear residents/staff dichotomy. These examples of reciprocity were not identified as dependence, but as acts that arise naturally from interactions with friendly others (Callus, 2017, p. 7). Another report from Lutfiyya (1991, pp.  233–245) demonstrated shared characteristics of friendship between four pairs of people with and without learning disabilities. The research addressed the necessity of exploring and promoting friendship between people with and without disability as an actual possibility and realization (Lutfiyya, 1991, p.  234). Contrary to the established opinion of a number of disability scholars (Chappell, 1994, pp.  419–434; Knox & Hickson, 2001, pp.  276–291; McVilly et  al., 2006a, pp.  693–708; Mason et  al., 2013, pp.  108–118, etc.) that friendships between people with and without disability do not correspond to reciprocal exchange and true equality, Lutfiyya’s research (1991) provides robust evidence that friendship, in ordinary definition, applies to both these parties as a dynamic and mutual process. The common features of these friendships include mutuality, a feeling of being connected (breaking rules of formal boundaries), practical assistance and emotional support, inspiration, a voluntary nature (understood as freely chosen and given), assistance and support, responsibility and obligation toward each other, and the emotion of affection. All participants identified themselves as friends, and the friendships were identified as types of interpersonal relationships. Lutfiyya’s research brings up several elements that require closer attention. For instance, reciprocity is not restricted to the straightforward exchange of certain goods. The meaning of reciprocity in Lutfiyya’s research is mutuality. Mutuality in such a perspective includes practical assistance and emotional support, inspiration, rule breaking, and doing away with certain societal norms. It also includes the enjoyment of being together. Reciprocity is not reduced to a strict formula of exchange understood as giving and receiving. The voluntarily nature of friendship in the participants’ responses means that friendship is not controlled, but freely chosen and accepted. The research also reported a number of critical events such as disagreements or critical behaviors which, in the participants’ descriptions, were seen not as obstacles but as opportunities to

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improve the quality of friendship (Lutfiyya, 1991, p.  240). The obligations and responsibilities identified by non-disabled peers underline the importance of assistance and support. For people with intellectual disability, responsibility consisted of an initiative to make a phone call to their friend, suggest activities, or a willingness to spend time together. Discussion After presenting the two case studies of friendship dyads in the two different contexts, I will provide a brief assessment of the employed empirical data. This is necessary in rethinking the concept of friendship with people with disabilities, not merely in theory but as a practice. Both articles present the reason for people with disabilities’ lack of friendship as related to a lack of opportunities to establish such friendships. The reasons listed include people with disabilities’ restricted access to income and residential properties. This results in a lack of autonomy and little control over privacy and choice. Altogether, this reinforces social isolation. The research also pointed to the need for, value, and importance of friendship for people with disabilities and also the impact friendship has upon their social well-being. The common features in both studies were reciprocity and shared histories of rejection and the lack of friendship. Both studies come to the conclusion that people with disabilities may be better integrated with their peers who have the same socio-cultural condition. Although promoting friendship between people with disabilities is valuable, particularly in terms of promoting independence without the support of non-­ disabled people, it appears that this way of forming friendships does not bring about full inclusion. The reason this happens is that exaggerated equality and shared values among people with disabilities could foster further stigmatization and categorization. On the other hand, it could fail to bring about full integration within the scope of the broader community (non-disabled people included). The idea of many Disability Studies scholars to have friends only between people with disabilities can indeed strengthen their capabilities and skills as well as neutralize power balances that sometime can be jeopardized by able-bodied persons. However, each relationship is in some way asymmetrical or dissymmetrical. We are never fully equal to each other. Any asymmetry or dissymmetry within relationships can be a challenge, but it can be also a way to understand one’s own different existence within the world. The study that includes friendship between people with and without disabilities evidences

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the fact that friendship—or “making friends”—is among the most essential goods for people with disabilities. Both studies exploring friendship between people with and without disabilities and between people with disabilities show possible opportunities. Together they brought positive insights, which help reveal people’s aspirations for the experiences of friendship and to foster social inclusion. The emerging elements of both friendships (with disabled and non-­ disabled people) indicate that despite different ways of forming, processing, and experiencing friendship, certain similarities and congruences appear. For instance, participation in shared activities, the process of making friends, communication, and reflection on friendship were common elements in both forms of friendship. Furthermore, more explicit elements present in both friendships include helping each other, spending time together, sharing jokes and common activities, supporting each other, reciprocity, responsibility, and a sense of emotional belonging or affection. All this demonstrates that in order to properly understand friendship or recognize something as friendship, it is necessary to understand the features and characteristics, which these relationships consist of. The conceptual reasoning about friendship is of no less importance, but when such a framework includes people with disability, the approach may be slightly different as friendship in this regard does include a somehow different framework and approach where empirical data are of essential importance.

Disability Theology and Friendship: Context and Academic Perspectives The contemporary cultural framework makes us desire our own health, success, and wealth. It instills in us the need to be seen as overall worthy individuals. Theology supplies us with the knowledge of what it means to be God’s beloved creature. However, even within Christian circles people with disabilities have been marred with inappropriate images of supernatural beings causing sickness and making them non-normal, lesser creatures. Additionally, views regarding people with disability remain pervaded with attitudes of sorrow, pity, and mercy. Therefore, what is really necessary for Christian thinking on disability is a different approach to disability, one that sees in a person with disability the image of God and a fellow creature who shares the same dignity as all persons. The following section aims to

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explore the meaning and application of the subject of disability within the scope of the academic field of theology and Church practice. This includes a threefold examination: First, I will present the view of disability to be found in the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church and Christian theology which, besides contemporary challenges, includes both positive and negative approaches to disability within the history of Christian tradition. Second, I will bring into focus the emergence of Disability Theology as an academic field and its perspectives in dealing with the subject of disability. Third, although the field of Disability Theology offers various approaches, I will primarily look at approaches and perspectives on disability and friendship that, in my opinion, are relevant and significant for the theological account of an anthropology of friendship. Disability in the Perspective of Catholic Tradition The academic field of Christian theology traditionally and conceptually has been constructed without much consideration for experiences of disability (Matthews, 2013; Comensoli, 2018). Recent events show a considerable number of cases involving exclusion of people with disabilities from participation in the holy sacraments and practice of the Church. Most of the reasons for this practice have to do with a lack of conceptual knowledge and cultural biases about disability, often impacting the theological or Christian thinking about disability. Despite the lack of a proper conceptual evaluation and understanding of disability, pastoral concern for people with disabilities was at the heart of the Church’s focus. Pope Francis in his Pontificate since 2013 has shown serious and emphatic concern for people with disabilities (e.g., Pope’s speeches, letters, messages, and reflection as well as pastoral activities). The ongoing process of his pastoral mission raises awareness about respect for each person’s life, value, and dignity. In light of that, on his Twitter in December 2017, he underlined specifically that: “Every person is unique and unrepeatable. Let us ensure the disabled are always welcomed by the communities in which they live” (See https:// twitter.com/pontifex/status). Likewise, at the recent conference in October 2017, “Catechesis and Persons with Disabilities: A Necessary Engagement in the Daily Pastoral Life of the Church” organized by the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization, the Pope criticized the attitudes within the Roman Catholic Church itself and its Catechesis

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that banned and excluded people with disability from participation in the sacraments of initiation on the basis of a person’s cognitive inability to understand the holy mysteries (see www.vaticannews.va). Encouraging Christians to make an effort to respect the dignity and share respectful love, the Pope said: “No physical or psychic limit may ever be an obstacle to the encounter with Christ, because the face of Christ shines in the intimacy of every person” (See www.catholicnewsagency.com). Although the message of Pope Francis addresses a straightforward appeal to welcome and include people with disabilities within the body of the Church and Christian community, his messages not only echo broader implications and concerns, but they challenge the utilitarian and self-centered mentality of modern individuals and society at large. Francis, in his concerns for disability, condemns the mentality of rejection, utilitarian, narcissist, and eugenic attitudes toward disabled people. In this, he follows the line of his predecessors Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI.  His pastoral concerns, in fact, reflect John Paul II’s anthropological understanding in his social encyclicals Redemptor Hominis, Salvifici Doloris, Evangelium Vitae, and Veritatis Splendor and reveal the concerns within the documents of Catholic social teaching (Centesimus Annus). The emphasis of Pope Francis’s message on the pastoral dimension of disability inclusion stresses concerns over the anthropological dimensions of people with disabilities, respect for their dignity, integrity, and capacity to flourish. (Pope’s homily on the Jubilee of Disabled, 2000, p. 7; See also Pope John Paul II, Salvifici Doloris, 1984, p. 30). Yet their concerns also reveal the problem of the interpretation of disability (that often remains a self-interpretation) and the unjust treatment of people with disabilities. It would be wrong to say that Church practices historically and at the present time remain indifferent to the lives of disabled people and have left and leaves them uncared for. It would also be incorrect to claim that the Church has no need to gain fuller knowledge of disability. The real problem in this regard is not merely the entanglements of unjust and maleficent (eugenic) attitudes or charity actions undertaken on behalf of disabled people that often reduce them to the objects of pity; the actual problem, in my view lies in the lack of a view that goes beyond seeing people with disability in the light of the image of God with a potential for relationships and a lack of a proper understanding of disability (See also Comensoli, 2018). In this regard, the Pope’s messages do not only appeal with urgency for the social inclusion of people with disabilities on pastoral or practical levels. Inclusion targets conceptual and theoretical thinking on disability and, more particularly, the integration of

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people with disability into this kind of thinking. The following discussion on disability aims to demonstrate the way for a proper conceptual and theoretical treatment of the subject of disability by situating it within theological anthropology and Christian ethics. The Theme of “Disability” in the Practice and Doctrine of Christian Theology: Past and Present Concerns and Interventions The history of disability has evidenced the exclusion of people with disabilities within the Church and a related lack of proper terminology for disability. A number of cases within the tradition and practice of the Church also show people with disabilities being excluded, oppressed, and sometimes even rejected. Often, without much consideration, people with disabilities have become objects of pity and charity—consequently diminishing their moral status and human dignity (Sticker, 1999; Albrecht et al., 2001). Although such attitudes have fortunately been overcome by recent positive social and cultural upheavals, what still remains are the fearful and biased images of the disabled in the broad contemporary mentality. This mentality needs both a challenge and encounter with the truth about disability by hearing the voices of those whom we called disabled. The early Church fathers insisted that the poor—among whom were certainly people with disabilities—should be at the center of Christian life. The poor were all those who were at the margins of society, facing social poverty, physical deformity, illness, or epidemics. For instance, the common belief of the early church fathers—particularly the Cappadocians (Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianus and Basil the Great)—stated that the poor represent Christ. Wherever there were the poor, there was Christ present; wherever Christ was, there were the poor. (Gregory of Nyssa transl. Holman, 2001; Gregory of Nazianus transl. Daley, 2006). John Chrysostom, in his analysis of wealth and poverty in his sermon on Luke 16: 19–31, followed the same line (John Chrysostom transl. Roth, 1984). Instead of a conceptual interest in explaining disability, the work of the church fathers showed great pastoral orientation and care. They set the ground for Christian philanthropy and humanitarianism: seeing Christ in the poor (Basil the Great transl. Way, 1951). In other words, the regard for disability within the early Christian period was terminologically and socially associated with deformity, disease, poverty, and being a social outcast (for instance, having a disfiguring disease such as leprosy). This

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initiated greater socio-ethical concern in the form of charitable acts to both cure and care as responses to sickness, physical wounds, or suffering. In early monasticism (particularly in the rule of St. Benedict, chapter 36), the care for the weak was among the central activities for the monks (The Rule of St Benedict ch 36/37). The theological work of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas is, however, more ambiguous. On the one hand, their terminology in referring to disability and their lack of conceptual analysis of disability is akin to biological etiology. On the other hand, their theological constructions of the imago Dei, theology of creation, and theological anthropology demonstrate openness and inclusion toward those with disabilities. In a period of Church history when care for the poor declined, it was Francis of Assisi who, through his encounter with a leper, reconstructed Christian charity by placing the dignity of the poor at the center of the Church’s mission. Jesus’s appeal “Go and fix my church” was a call to the internal reconstruction of the Church. Similar is the example of Elizabeth of Hungary in the thirteenth century, who was among those who personally cared for the poor, sick, and marginalized. According to her biography, she was a witness of true love for the weak, deformed, and diseased (Baxter Wolf, 2011). The meaning and flourishing of church charity will perish without icons of saints or those figures who, within the history of the Church, took heroic actions and radical steps toward the care for the marginalized and outcast, risking their status and social security. Stepping from the thirteenth century toward the twenty-first, we need to look at the most recent contemporary figures who, within the Church, reopen new possibilities for rethinking concern for the poor and marginalized—among whom are certainly people with disability. Mother Teresa and various church congregations with similar missions deserve to be placed within this framework—not only because they are appealing and reveal contemporary examples of charitable work but because of their common emphasis on placing true metanoia and the meaning of charity in the encounter instead of an often-misunderstood notion of charity as merely almsgiving, material charity, or formal care. Like the early church fathers, they see in the encounter with the poor, disabled, marginalized, wounded, or thirsty (Mother Theresa) Christ, in light of Matthew 5: 1–12 and Matthew 25:40. Such examples were always an inspiration, but also a sign for the Church to remain intentional and aware of the basis for communal life and shared solidarity with the world. The Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes (no. 24), together with the social teachings of the Catholic Church and the Papal social encyclicals

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such as Rerum Novarum, Solicitudo rei Socialis (para. 39), and Centesimus Annus speak strongly on the love of one’s neighbor, the poor, and the marginalized. The preferential option for the poor set, within this framework, has the particular goal of reminding Christians to look at the world from the perspective of the marginalized and to work in solidarity for justice not for them but with them. Attitudes within the Catholic tradition toward the disabled show positive shifts after the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Church in the Modern World—Gaudium et Spes—had been launched. Its appeal for the respect of the rights and human dignity of every person has been of significant importance in this regard (Gaudium et Spes, 1965). Although Vatican II marked a significant shift in opening up toward the world (and openness often means inclusion), biased prejudices and attitudes on disability remain even within the context of Church practice and contemporary Christian mentality culturally and socially. For instance, in some cultures and societies in Africa, disability is still equated with denigrating images such as sin or even demon possession. Disability, in these contexts, requires healing or exorcism rather than inclusion (StoneMacDonald & Butera, 2012, pp. 393–407; Ingstad & Whyte, 1995). In the West, people with disabilities are still perceived as helpless objects of pity, with a cross to bear, or inspirations for others (usually non-disabled others). Elsewhere, they are perceived with trivializing or divinizing images such as icons of virtuous sufferings, angels or saints (Wannenwetsch, 2007, pp. 60–65). All this demonstrates that despite progress in disability terminology, awareness, and inclusion initiatives, hostile attitudes on a socio-cultural scale toward the disabled have not been eradicated. I will classify these biases into three categories. The first bias is culturally rooted. There are several reasons for cultural hesitance when encountering people with disabilities. The prejudices toward disabled persons as incomplete humans frequently establish boundary lines of interaction between the disabled and the “non-­ disabled.” Related are cultural attitudes often highly influenced by the medicalization of disability. These create assumptions that the disabled ought to be cured and made normal. The first bias also implies charitable or piteous attitudes toward the disabled evident within the scope of social and charitable organizations—even including the framework of the preferential option for the poor within the Catholic Church. Such cultural biases often impact mainstream Christian thinking toward the disabled and for this reason require remedy. Second, from culture flows the psychological bias. The psychological bias embodied

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into “non-disabled” individuals presents fears and prejudices about disabled people. Due to that fear and prejudice, “non-disabled” people often close themselves off from encounters with people with disabilities as others who are equal in rights and dignity. The third bias, as theologian Pia Matthews writes, is a spiritual disembodiment of people with disabilities, especially children. This bias links disabled children with angelic appearances (or angels) as if they do not quite belong in the earthly realm (Matthews, 2013). It views them as if they are angels with crimped wings or—more overtly maleficent—possessed by evil spirits. All this suggests the need for rethinking theological anthropology regarding disability. There likewise needs to be a renewal of moral and ethical principles that Christians must acquire in order to demonstrate the difference that disability presents in itself. To rethink established theological knowledge concerning the theology of creation and theological anthropology above all requires an encounter with the presence of the reality of disability. Theological Discourse on Disability: Why Does Theology Need a Conversation on Disability? Recently a number of theologians from different theological fields gathered to explain the reasons why there is a great need for a theological examination and interpretation of disability. Although there may be many reasons for such an initiative, there are two primary ones that guide these attempts. The first reason, I believe, arises from the intent to look at disability from a perspective different from that of Disability Studies and a socioanthropological evaluation of disability. This, for instance, implies a view of disability that includes but goes beyond its physical and anthropological connotations, attaching to it a theological and spiritual dimension. The second reason is scrutiny of current approaches and the need for a coherent dialogue between different theological traditions and academic disciplines interested in the theme of disability. Dialogue on disability is particularly absent in theological ethics and the already mentioned theological anthropology. Apart from initiatives within the context of pastoral or practical theology, little has been done regarding the conceptual treatment of disability. The multiple positive examples of social activity and care within pastoral theology are insufficient to provide systematic and structural explorations of disability in other theological fields. Therefore, I suggest an open, epistemological, and constructive dialogue with Disability Theology and other disability discourses. This, on

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the one hand, could grasp inclusion and the recognition of disability as an anthropological reality and, on the other hand, lead to recognition of a person with disability as a “different other,” a common companion and friend, equal in dignity and rights. The theology of disability seeks to remedy the “disability challenge” in situating it in theological discourse by clarifying the proper use of disability terminologies within certain historical periods. It also seeks to provide clarification of an often-arbitrary accusation labelled “the Church tradition” within the history of disability in interpreting disability. In contrast to Disability Studies—of which the main concerns revolve around inclusion based on social justice, equal distribution of rights, and empowerment by increasing self-determination and independence—Disability Theology offers an alternative approach. The approach consists of drawing a close link between aspects of Christian tradition and modern theology, which integrate terminological questions on disability, the meaning of these conditions, and its relevance for contemporary theological discourses on the meaning of being human. What Type of Theology Is Disability Theology? The Cambridge Dictionary of Christian Theology defines Disability Theology as an attempt by disabled and non-disabled Christians to understand and interpret the Gospel, God, and humanity against the backdrop of historical and contemporary experiences of people with disabilities. As its definition further says, Disability Theology is informative and transformative. It is informative in that it seeks to raise people’s consciousness of the experience of disability and its significance for the development and practice of the Church, theology, and culture. It is transformative in seeking to challenge the primacy of disabling theological and cultural interpretations, attitudes, assumptions, and values, and in presenting creative theological alternatives to the status quo. It offers a different basis on which to understand God and value human beings (Swinton, 2011, p. 141). Theologians engage the theme of disability from either their own embodied experience of disability or through encounter with a person with disability. For instance, in the light of a direct experience of embodied disability Nancy Eiesland (1994) and Deborah Creamer (2008) stress a strong identification of their physical condition with the image of the suffering Christ. This calls not only for reimagination of the condition of

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disability in the light of a Christlike perspective, but it recalls the Church to a rather radical renewal of views and attitudes toward those living with disability. Those who are not directly affected by disability themselves but are only informally or indirectly share similar views. However, despite the fact that the experience of disability according to particular contexts is important, not all theology of disability is contextual (Swinton, 2011, pp.  273–307). Disability theologians depart from the scope of modern ideas and, as a result, shape theology accordingly or scrutinize the aspects of a forgotten aspect of traditional theological understandings, which in turn challenge modernity (Stanley, 1986). Disability Theology understands discourse on disability from the viewpoint of resymbolizing humanness in the light of what we know of God. Theologians provide a distinguished contribution to the investigation of traditional frameworks of disability. The majority of disability theologians structure their arguments around the concept of God’s revelation to the world in connection with the meaning of disability, the narrative of disability, the question of language, the image of God, the meaning of the body, and otherness. Although Disability Theology is not contextual or an explicit part of the theology of liberation, the common “struggle” of disability theologians is to bring the silenced voices of people with disabilities back into the realm of Church practice and together with these voices reflect upon forgotten and exclusive aspects of the field of theology and Church practice in relation to people with disability. The peculiarity of Disability Theology is distinguished by the fact that not all experiences of disability are projected into activism or immediate definition-making. Instead, the experiences revolve around the question of what disability offers for understanding the meaning of being human. This, in my view, is the key feature. It is the peculiarity of Disability Theology discourse and what distinguishes it from other discourses on disability. Therefore, Disability Theology is one independent theological subject that, within the academic field of theology, initiates a corrective for conceiving the proper use of meaning and experience. The reality of disability is in this way concerned with past and present doctrinal and practical theological discussions. Although the contributors are academics from different theological fields—such as systematic theology, practical theology, ethics, and moral theology—the most important thing is to emphasize that Disability Theology is neither a practical theology (Swinton, 2011, pp.  140–142) nor a specific kind of moral or systematic theology. It is not even explicitly a theological ethics (Brock & Swinton, 2012). In my view, it is an

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intersection of the abovementioned theological fields—practical theology, theological ethics, theological anthropology, and systematic theology—in correlation with disability discourses. Additionally, reflection upon the meaning of disability within the scope of theological anthropology is a distinct contribution to the field of theological ethics and mainstream theology. Theological Themes It is necessary to notice that theologians and thinkers engaged in conversations about disability do not declare themselves to be specifically disability theologians. Rather, most of the dominant voices within Disability Theology share the idea that disability requires a profound conceptual examination within theological discourses and that a person with disability deserves a central place within Church practice and faith communities. Although a number of theologians share the same ideas on the importance of discourse on disability within the academic field of theology, each takes a specific approach and emphasis. The interest of disability theologians in exploring the definition of disability deals with the practical and ethical questions regarding the conditions of the mainstream understanding of human capacities and incapacities. It provides an existential discourse—centering the quest for personal perception and the impact disability has upon human existence (Brock & Swinton, 2012). A number of theological questions concern the historical overview of disability within the church tradition from early patristics till the contemporary era. Disability is also debated within social, practical, and ethical discourses. The discussions also target the Social Teaching of the Catholic Church (Matthews, 2013) the notion of person and personhood (Swinton, 2000a, 2000b, 2011, 2012; Comensoli, 2018; Matthews, 2020) within the dogmatic framework of the most dominant theological texts (Eiesland, 1994; Creamer, 2008; Yong, 2007) and the political, practical, and moral questions relating to the participation of disabled people within the Church and society (Reinders, 2008; Reynolds, 2008; eds. Brock & Swinton, 2012). The themes reflected within the larger ethical and bioethical discourses include (among others) genetic testing, prenatal diagnoses, and the notion of the body (Greig, 2015; eds. Brock & Swinton, 2007). Dominant themes within Christian ethical discourse revolve also around the theme of inclusion, accessibility, hospitality, and belonging (Reinders, 2008; Reynolds, 2008). The most

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intriguing sub-themes imply a definition of disability, the theme of disabled God, and the concept of the body. Despite the fact that Disability Theology offers a number of interesting themes, I will turn my attention in the next section to the theme of disability’s definition. Question on Definition: How Disability Theology Defines Disability The conceptualization of the notion of disability and related definitions of disability have been important to disability theologians. Differently to Disability Studies scholars, theologians engaged in the conversation on disability seek to investigate disability not merely as an anthropological reality but as a subject for theological and moral inquiry. Disability theologians do not provide merely a normative definition of disability, as perhaps disability scholars do or as do most important international documents (e.g., World Report on Disability, 2011), when dealing with disability issues. This means that in their attempt to define disability, disability theologians outline a different emphasis on disability guided by an understanding of the person in the light of theologies of creation and peoples’ experiences of living with disability. The variety of disability definitions arises from the fact that theologians have not established clear biomedical or social norms for reporting different types of disability. A few theological works interchangeably address concerns over intellectual disability, Downs Syndrome, and physical impairment based on their own or their relatives’ experiences of disability (e.g., Eiesland, 1994; Creamer, 2008; Reynolds, 2008; Young, 2014; Matthews, 2013; Brock, 2019, 2021). Other theological works on disability spontaneously reflect upon the mainstream account of disability that interchangeably includes people with intellectual, profound, or severe disabilities (Reinders, 2008: Swinton, 2000a, 2000b; Swinton, 2011, 2012; Greig, 2015; Comensoli, 2018; Kenny, 2022). That the definition of disability is not a straightforward formula has been already addressed in one of John Swinton’s reflections on disability. Swinton, whose interest in the theme “disability” reaches a great number of publications, states: I am still not clear what the term disability actually means. Perhaps it does not mean anything, or maybe it means many different things depending on context and intention. (Swinton, 2012, p. 87)

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Accordingly, one could say that disability is something descriptive, more a reality than an established definitional category. As a reality, it requires a proper response, understanding, and evaluation. As a term, disability is nontheological and unaffected, and in some respects includes a critique of the established definition of disability (eds. Brock & Swinton, 2012; Brock, 2019, 2021). Disability as a political and neoliberal “creation” is, according to Brock, problematic since it targets one group of people in need who are categorized by certain terms such as “limit,” “sickness”, “mental illness,” “physical disability,” “intellectual disability,” or “special needs education.” (Brock, 2019). This means that whereas for Disability Studies scholars, disability is a factor pushing toward inclusion, for disability theologians, however, it symbolizes an appeal for personal change and transformation. This transformation consists in an openness to the challenge of what is different from the “norm” and letting oneself be different. Disability is a difference that makes us look at reality differently (Stanley, 1986). It is not the same as political or social language. Therefore, disability is this difference that requires an approach beyond merely that of disability to seeing a person as God’s creature. Contrary to Disability Studies scholars, theologians look upon difference from a different angle as well as from a quite different context. As Swinton states: “the disability that is the focus of disability studies is not necessarily the disability that is the focus of disability theology” (Swinton, 2012, p. 73). In other words, this difference that disability presents, if positively considered, could create a space for change, recognition of otherness, and a renewed standardized way of living interdependently. In partial agreement with these propositions, I add that disability presents difference, but it is also an embodied difference per se. Every person in the light of the image of God is, above all, a different other. This means that disability understood as difference is not only a different biological interiority or sociological/political exteriority, but it is an ontological and phenomenological difference understood in light of 1 Cor. 12:12–30, “one body many parts.” This is, I assume, the key element in what differentiates the Disability Theology vocabulary of disability inclusion from inclusion within the fields of other disability discourses. However, this does not mean that there should be a lack of academic coherence between the concept and experiences or between the definition provided by disability scholars and theologians. It could rather represent an interdependent challenge to both disciplines for a constant revision and

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rethinking by which, if possible, to reach a proper understanding. In order to propose a more robust answer to the definition of disability, I propose a definition that integrates the views of Disability Studies and Disability Theology yet offers a more nuanced approach. I will come back to that at the end of this section. My task in the next paragraph is to examine the disability theology view on friendship and disability.

Disability Theology: Perspectives on Friendship So far the academic discourse on disability within the field of Disability Theology revolves around specific theological themes but also entangles its field’s subjects such as theological anthropology, pneumatology, ecclesiology, the social teaching of the Catholic Church, and pastoral or practical theology. The specific themes considered in these discourses, as we have seen, involve the concept of the definition of disability, the concept of disability in relation to solidarity and social justice, the concept of the imago Dei, and the notion of the body. Besides these, a discussion on disability within the scope of theology also concerns the meanings of inclusion, relationality, and belonging. In this, Disability Theology discourses challenge the fields of medical ethics, political and liberal disputes on the categorization of disability, and the social implications for the integration of people with disabilities into society. When the academic discourse on disability concerns the inclusion of people with disabilities into society and Church, the most common theme employed is the concept of friendship. The main distinction between Disability Studies and Disability Theology scholars, in my view, is that disability theologians undertake the following distinctive approach to friendship: first, it includes addressing the relationship to the Divine where God is an actor in the process of friendship formation; second, a person with disability is often perceived as a spiritual agent—a gift and a creature, not only a subject of social policy. Despite theological work on disability reflecting friendship as one of the prevailing themes in discussing inclusion (e.g., Swinton, 2000a, 2000b; Yong, 2011; Reinders, 2008; Reynolds, 2008; Young, 2014; Greig, 2015; Comensoli, 2018; Brock, 2019), only a few scholars provide a more structured rationale on the theme of friendship within the discourse on disability. The theological work of Hans Reinders and John Swinton have been among the most cited referring to friendship with disabled people (See Comensoli, 2018). Through comparative analysis, my attempt further presents the

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perspective of Hans Reinders and 1John Swinton on the theme of friendship in rethinking friendship’s anthropology. In this regard, I will describe the work of Hans Reinders’s outstanding contribution to this topic in Receiving the Gift of Friendship (Reinders, 2008) and John Swinton’s interlocking ideas on friendship in his three works Resurrecting the Person (Swinton, 2000a, 2000b), From Bedlam to Shalom (Swinton, 2000a, 2000b), and Becoming the Friends of Time (Swinton, 2016). After presenting each authors’ ideas separately, I will compare their ideas as well as the two academic fields’ views on friendship and disability. I intend to explore whether their views on friendship involve ideas crucial for reconsidering an anthropology of friendship which, in my view, is crucial to rethinking friendship with disabled people and which, for this reason, I will specify as an anthropology of relational interdependence.

Hans Reinders’s Perspective on Friendship The value of Hans Reinders’s approach to friendship in Receiving the Gift of Friendship (Reinders, 2008) integrates theo-anthropological and ethical perspectives, and as actors in his rationale of friendship, he addresses people with profound intellectual disabilities. In the ongoing assessment of Reinders’s thoughts on friendship, I will set out the recurring elements that most strongly characterize his argument for reconsidering friendship as a relational participation beyond inclusion. These are the themes of receiving, giving, and the gift (Reinders, 2008, pp.  279–374). Other themes that vividly resonate in my reading of Reinders include friendship vs. citizenship (Reinders, 2008, pp. 340–345); being with (Reinders, 2008, pp. 312–322); and not hiding in strength (Reinders, 2008, pp. 279–378). The dialectics of this discourse in Reinders’s account include an outline of a dialogue between a person with disability and God’s friendship with his people. In a further section, I will elaborate on these notions. The Highlights of Receiving The general significance of Reinders’s ethics of friendship, developed in the third chapter of Receiving the Gift of Friendship, is rooted in a Christian anthropological perspective on God’s intervention for his people, and it shares the dynamic between giving and receiving (Reinders, 2008, pp. 335–367). Highlighting receiving as a common concept to re-reflect on friendship with God and friendship with a person with a disability not

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only leads one to critique the Disability Rights Movement but also expands the social inclusion approach to disability by suggesting that receiving is also an important element in the revision of the modern idea of the ethics of friendship. But what does it mean to receive the other? How can friendship be perceived as receiving and receiving as a gift? Discussing friendship, Reinders links his conceptual argument on the ethics of friendship to the description of his friendship with Ronald. Ronald is a man with an intellectual disability whom Reinders met in a social institution in the Netherlands. After a few visits, his friendship with Ronald enabled him to develop many interesting insights about friendship, concerning things such as shared interests, spending time together, arguments, and dialogue. The main component of Reinders’s description of his friendship shows not only the process of the development of his friendship with Ronald but reveals something of the mainstream societal prejudices regarding the meaning of sameness as well as societal and cultural biases, concerning difference and otherness. Though Ronald is Reinders’s friend, he has an intellectual disability which, as we might assume in the view of mainstream society, makes him look different, act differently, maybe even speak loudly in public, or be stigmatized because he lives in an institution. How could this man be someone’s friend? Or what “unusual” person would have chosen Ronald—a person with an intellectual disability to be his friend? Based on the description of his friendship, Reinders reveals three cultural biases toward friendship with people with disabilities. For Reinders, the reality of societal and cultural boundaries which arise when discussing friendship with disabled people reveals problems of equality and symmetry, the importance of choice, as well as benefits and contribution. These three elements on a wider societal scale not only make it difficult for people with disabilities to build friendships, but they also shape a mainstream sense of the meaning of friendship with disabled people. As he puts it: When I tell people that I consider Ronald to be my friend, they are often surprised—even skeptical. ‘Oh really?’ they say. Their apparently Aristotelian intuition suggests to them that you cannot really be friends with someone so unlike yourself. After all, I am an academic: I am presumed to embody intellect, which is about the opposite of what Ronald is presumed to embody. This is why friendship is not the word that seems to come to mind when people see us together. (Reinders, 2008, p. 355)

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The Question of Equality and Symmetry The citation from a previous section exemplifies not only the actual problem of contemporary anthropological understandings of friendship but also the concept of receiving that is often eclipsed by a problematic perception of sameness and difference. Such a perception lies in the highly Aristotelian logic of contemporary modern culture that influences the value of reciprocity and the exchange of moral benefits, reducing the other’s value to similarity of character. According to Reinders, this posits a problem in imagining friendship between people of unequal character, intelligence, social status, class, or sometimes even religion. The even greater problem regarding such arguments arises when equality and symmetry—calculated according to the late modern understanding of rationality and intellect—is often equated to IQ level. The relevant example for this discussion again is Aristotle’s and Aquinas’s notions of friendship. Here Reinders’s critique of Aristotle’s idea of friendship between equals demonstrates not only a critique of equality that places people with disabilities at the margins of moral and social personhood, but it shows the Aristotelian influence on the contemporary idea of friendship. Describing Aristotle’s ideas of friendship as intellectualist and exclusive, he comments that not only is Aristotle’s friendship intellectualist but so is Aquinas’s (Reinders, 2008, pp. 289–296). Reinders is furthermore critical of those aspects of the Thomistic tradition within Catholic theology that focus on the human person as rational and intellectual and forget about other aspects of human integrity such as a (disabled) person’s potential for relationships. Reinders is correct in observing that certain concepts of contemporary reasoning emphasize the criteria of reason and intellect over a person’s relational capacity. He is also right in saying that becoming a friend of virtuous people on account of their virtue could be seen as consumption of others. His formulation, however, according to the Catholic theological understanding of charity, is rather incomplete and requires reformulation. It includes only a partial reading of charity with considerable emphasis on a concern for rational capacity. Second, the hermeneutics of rationality practiced by, for instance, Thomas Aquinas in Summa Theologie STh q.23 differ from a modern understanding, which has been largely formulated by Enlightenment ideas of rational autonomy. The problem with Aquinas regarding his concept of intellect and rationality is

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not based on Aquinas himself but rather on later interpretations of his work. Additionally, not all Catholic tradition is keen on a straightforward emphasis on the intellectual capacities of a person, which may sideline other aspects of personhood. Thus, in order to grasp the complete meaning of the foregoing statement, I suggest we need precision in looking at different interpretations of charity. Yet Reinders raises important concerns that demand reevaluation and rethinking of the traditional theological approaches to disability inclusion even within the mainstream perspective of Catholic moral theology and tradition. To remedy this situation, he addresses receiving as a strong argument in reformulating the idea of interdependency within the anthropology of friendship. The Question of Choice For the second problem that, in my understanding, applies to friendship with people with disabilities, Reinders raises the question of choice. Namely, the mantra of many inclusion initiatives within modern democracies states that everyone should have freedom and choice. This may not be the case for many people with disabilities; often they are therefore left out of mainstream conceptions of freedom and choice. It is not necessary to emphasize that choice is an important element of friendship through which people enter into friendship. However, frequently it is presupposed that choice implies a process of freely and willingly entering into friendship. If this is so, friendship is not possible in staff-resident relationships or between caregivers and care-receivers due to the power imbalances and the lack of the freedom to choose. If this applies to relationships between people with and without disabilities—as is this book’s primary research subject—then together with Reinders one can ask, did Ronald have the privilege of choosing Reinders to be his friend or vice versa? Rights and choice, says Reinders, do not make one the other’s friend. As he addresses: If friends are not chosen but found, how did I find Ronald? Well, I did not. He found me. I was visiting one institution for disabled people with my wife, when she was approached by a bold-looking young fellow. ‘I know you!’ he exclaimed. That fellow turned out to be Ronald. He was not just being bold, however, because what he said was true. They had lived in the same town years before that and had occasionally met. So, they had a little chat, during which Ronald and I were introduced to each other. When we were saying our good-­ byes, he made me promise to come back and visit him. That is how Ronald

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found me. (Reinders, 2008, pp. 355–356). Choice is important but is only relevant to friendship when it communicates that love as choice is not other-dependent. This further entails that we can choose someone to be a friend because we like this person as a person, but it is not our choice to make the other person our friend. This reveals the third boundary that Reinders raises concerning receiving and, at the same time, increases my interest in rethinking the anthropology of friendship: the type of benefits or worth placed upon people with disabilities. The Problem of the Contributory View In caveats around the contributions and benefits of people with disability toward the non-disabled, Reinders addresses the contributory view (Reinders, 2008, pp.  315–322). The contributory view, according to Reinders, questions if our engagement with people with disabilities is for our increased moral esteem in the eyes of others (utility) or is recognized as equal participation2 for both. The theme of contribution that Reinders proposes questions the Aristotelian premises on relation dissimilarity-­ similarity within the contemporary model of friendship. In this, Reinders stresses whether the ends of friendship are for one’s own moral good or one’s own moral benefits. Are these not often conditioned by similarity or, in Reinders’s words, sameness? The contributory view, according to Reinders, is perceived in the perspective that disabled people contribute to the moral satisfaction or personal growth of temporarily able-bodied people, or, in other words, they contribute toward making us normal people better. Looking at this discourse from the perspective of moral judgment means looking at people with disabilities as means to other people’s ends. It means that looking at disabled people as contributors is not only morally problematic but, according to Reinders, morally dangerous as it not only instrumentalizes the value of a person as an object but deprives friendship of its true moral worth—that is, interdependency and reciprocity. Drawing on participation, Reinders not only counterbalances the contributory view but emphasizes that by participation people with disabilities remind able-bodied people to understand disability and friendship differently. Participation consists in revealing the personal within the process of friendship, revealing each other above the importance of embrace, smile, being there for each other, valuing the presence of each other, valuing the other not as simply other but as a gift, and so on. Or as Reinders says:

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[P]eople with disabilities teach us a few things about ourselves that we “temporarily able-bodied” have a hard time understanding on our own, for example, the fact that being accepted by God does not depend on our goodness (Reinders, 2008, p. 320). The meaning of receiving within the participatory understanding of friendship with people with disabilities, according to Reinders, not only reveals the true meaning of a person’s being, but it contrasts the contributory view and sameness by seeing the truth of disability differently. A person with a disability is not only a giver of a free gift or a contributor to some (moral or material) end of a non-disabled person. The person by his/her participation in a society by the means of his/her existence reveals that every person and friendship is before all a received gift from the other toward another. However, when in line with a contributory view, this requires a small remark for precision. Namely, the problem of the contemporary perception of contribution first lies in its overemphasized materialization of goods and benefits or the instrumentalization of the person as some kind of utility. This applies to all relationships, not only relationships with people with disabilities. Second, saying that, for some, non-disabled people are friends with disabled people for the sake of their own moral benefit or appraisal could be a puzzling statement. If human relationships are structured with an other-dependent dynamic, then every human relationship we are experiencing or are called to enter entails reciprocal contribution to each other’s moral growth. We always have to be careful not to objectify any (friendship) relationship because it can, in return, become a relationship close to contributory worth, which means that there is a danger to perceive a value of person not as a subject with intrinsic dignity, but as an object of contributory worth. Thus the greater problem of contributory worth does not invoke the problem of when people with disabilities contribute to our moral growth, but it rather suggests the question of how we as self-dependent agents can contribute to the growth of others. Are we all called to contribute reciprocally to each other’s moral flourishing instead of demoralizing each other’s status, worth, and inner dignity? How, finally, can people with disabilities be reciprocal contributors within the dynamics of friendship or vice versa? Addressing this question will be the task of the next section. The Dynamic of Receiving and Giving In the following discussion on rethinking friendship’s anthropology, I will look at a notion of reciprocity that conventionally and also within the

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perspective of this discussion is understood as the dynamic of receiving and giving. However, when reciprocity is applied to disabled people, within the purview of contemporary culture, disabled people are often reduced to some form of instrumentality, perceived as passive recipients of care, charity, or almsgiving, and they are often regarded as having no potential for giving themselves. The appraisal of highly materialized ends in our contemporary moral systems impacts the dynamic of friendship reciprocity which, in my view, has resulted in a contemporary culture that emphasizes highly materialized ends for receiving and giving. The dynamic of receiving, therefore, sees within it the idea of technical exchange of certain (material) benefits. In other words, a modern culture that leads us to an opposite understanding confuses the human ability to freely give or, more importantly, our understanding of receiving. Being reduced to the value of instrumental reciprocal exchange often excludes certain categories of people, such as people with disabilities, the elderly, people with Alzheimer’s disease, and newborns. Looking from the perspective of Reinders’s view on reciprocity, people with profound intellectual disabilities are often perceived as passive agents of constant receiving. But friendship is not merely giving; it must be receiving and giving at the same time. The question, however, that Reinders asks in his book on friendship—and that I will highlight as a strong implication for the theme of friendship with people with disabilities—concerns the extent to which people with disabilities and particularly those with profound disabilities can participate as reciprocal agents in human and divine friendships. In what does their capacity for giving consist? In explaining this, Reinders suggests looking at reciprocity first from the perspective of God-human friendship and, second, in contrast to a commonly understood notion of giving and receiving. The meaning of giving suggested by Reinders does not imply beneficent actions in the first place but rather a free act of receiving the other (Reinders, 2008, pp. 340–345). Concerning the capacities of people with intellectual disabilities, it is their gift of free giving and free receiving that matters in this discussion. Receiving and giving, in this regard, are not only matters of technical exchange. Reinders situates them in the very process of friendship itself by understanding receiving and giving as simultaneously a personal exchange. To understand this process, he stresses attention to the meaning of receiving in recognition of a gift. The meaning of the gift first proceeds from God’s free inclination toward humanity understood within a process of reciprocity. As a gift, it is initiated by God as a giver, whereas the receiving and giving in this regard are perceived as

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free gifts from one to the other. He expresses it thus: “The gift of friendship is received as a gift for the sake of our own person, as all true friendship is. God does not love us in order to get something from us. Likewise, we do not extend friendship in order to get something from the other, because the result would not be friendship but self-love” (Reinders, 2008, p. 348). According to this reasoning, people with profound disabilities are also givers because friendship is not located in a strict reciprocal exchange but rather in a free gift from one person to another. Following this logic, I assume that Reinders tends to see friendship as a gift within a process of encounter where one is capable to receive the other as a gift. When a person is acknowledged as a gift, the process of giving and receiving becomes a possibility for a personal interdependent exchange. This is where I see the crux of his argument on reciprocity, which includes people with disabilities as givers and participants in the processes of friendship exchange. According to such reasoning Reinders claims that only a person who can receive friendship knows how to offer this friendship back and, in such a way, a person that first receives is gifted with the possibility to accept and to give (Reinders, 2008). This is also to say that if people with disabilities are, in the eyes of mainstream society, perceived as recipients of care, then by receiving care they also know how to accept the giver together with accepting care. And once they know how to receive, they know how to give back—which answers the above question concerning whether people with disabilities are capable of reciprocal exchanges within relationships of friendship. Or put differently, people with disabilities are not solely receivers nor ought those who participate in their friendship be merely givers. Receiving and giving, in this perspective, contrasts the instrumental value of reciprocal exchange within contemporary culture regarding people with disabilities. Receiving implies God’s free gift of himself toward people as it is his desire to abide in friendship with common humanity. This means that a gift—not a quality or achievement of certain goods—can better explain the true meaning of free giving which, with regard to people with profound intellectual disabilities, is of particular importance for the development of an anthropology of mutual interdependency. Following a similar rationale, another interesting point of Reinders’s account of friendship and disability is the contrast between friendship and the idea of citizenship. Friendship that represents a type of (personal) inclusion counterbalances the (nonpersonal) socio-political inclusion within a social body based on the equal distribution of rights and freedoms. He highlights that those rights and choices are law-dependent.

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They, as a result of social policies, make people comply with their individual needs and depend upon the approval of those wants. This, for instance, includes access to transportation, work, and education. On the contrary, love and friendship embody a different type of dependency— namely, participation. Stressing that friendship and love appear almost synonymous is, for Reinders, an important element that implies a free gift of one person to the other; whereas in the case of the distribution of rights and choices, inclusion fails to be completely fulfilled as it is missing a source of other-dependency. Citizenship indeed enables the distribution of rights and freedoms, but only friendship enables true human flourishing. Friendship implies participatory inclusion based on personal elements and objects to the nonpersonal element within social inclusion policies. The ongoing discussion highlights that, contrary to the idea of citizenship achieved through social policies and legislation, friendship should not be confused as a right. Neither do the equal distribution of rights fulfill complete human flourishing. I agree with Reinders that rights and choices cannot bring what friendship as a free gift can for people. The former is law dependent while the latter is person dependent. Friendship, moreover, is a way of managing inclusion through belonging. Such reasoning suggests that friendship and citizenship for people with disabilities must be seen from the perspective of “cooperation” instead of as distinct categories. In order to bring about complete inclusion into a human community, people with disabilities require legal (citizenship) and what I would call participatory (relationships of friendship in this case) acknowledgment. In the following discussion I will highlight themes integral to Reinders’s anthropology of friendship that he borrowed from communities of L’Arche and independently develops within layers of his understanding of free giving and free receiving. These include “being with” and “not hiding in strength.” Being with and Not Hiding in Strength My intention in highlighting the theme of being with and not hiding in strength relates to earlier statements about revealing the value of true friendship understood as gift, giving, and receiving. The theme of being with intends to highlight the value of one’s presence. For Reinders, the idea of being with first contradicts human passivity and puts value on a person’s presence (Reinders, 2008, pp. 335–340). This entails that being with as anchored and exemplified in the L’Arche community where people

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with and without disabilities live together explains the idea that being with or living with is more important than doing things for the person. In other words, being is more important than doing. The idea in this context emphasizes the importance of one’s presence instead of being preoccupied with doing things for another. Regarding a person with profound intellectual disabilities or any person who is lacking verbal capacity for communication, this emphasis on presence carries a more important message than the work of doing. In other words, spending time with people with disabilities makes one attentive to one’s true presence not only as another subject of care but as a true person whose presence matters. According to this logic, the disabled are not only served but so are those who serve in a spirit of mutual interdependence with the ones for whom they care. Thinking about friendship as being with matters as a natural place of encounter where two people meet or where the one meets the other—face to face or side by side. With this emphasis, the contemporary contributory view that, as indicated earlier, looks upon the disabled person as some sort of a passive agent that requires care can be replaced by the reverse understanding where a person’s presence matters more than his/her actions. In my evaluation of this rationale, being with is a key element important for not only understanding receiving and giving within the scope of interdependent relationships, but it prioritizes the meaning of caring over being reduced to acts—that is, doing things for a person. Being with as respecting and valuing a person’s presence means not only doing things for a person; it has a moral impact on persons involved within interdependent relationships as it reopens the possibility for a discourse that prioritizes the respect for the disabled person’s intrinsic dignity over discourses that see in a disabled person only his/her disability. Being with means not only doing things for disabled persons. What is most important is overcoming the division of roles. First, a disabled person has a moral impact upon non-­ disabled people; second, giving care—being with—becomes an important rather than marginal aspect within the dynamic of a friendship relationship. This opens the possibility for rethinking caring as an interrelation. When the person realizes that her/his presence matters—not only doing things for the other—the true meaning of the encounter matters by simply being with that person. This, in the light of Reinders’s idea of friendship, highlights receiving before giving within the friendship dynamic. Another element closely related to being with is the notion of not hiding in strength. Not hiding in strength underlines a person’s capacity in revealing one’s true self (Reinders, 2008, pp.  340–345). Drawing on the idea of not

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hiding in strength, Reinders refers to Henri Nouwen’s friendship narrative with his intellectually disabled friend Adam (Nouwen, 1997). Looking at Nouwen’s narrative, Reinders highlights that, at first, Nouwen did not see Adam as a real and true person but only as a person in need. Therefore, running the daily tasks of the daycare program neither allowed Nouwen to see Adam’s true face nor himself (Nouwen) as a person with limitations. Being confronted by the “vulnerability of his [Adam’s] body” and way of communication pushed Nouwen back to himself, to his own being, that consists not only of living with strengths but living with his own (hidden) vulnerability. This resulted in what he explains as beginning to see Adam’s presence differently. Or, in other words, it opens another perspective of regard for a person. The performance of daily activities enables the transformation from hiding toward the discovery of the true self. Why is not hiding in strength therefore important for reconsidering the relationship of friendship? I would first say that the meaning of not hiding in strength is a challenge as it not only means being afraid of exposing oneself as one truly is, but it entails revealing to another person the truth about oneself. But is not a friendship relationship an interdependent process whereby one is becoming a truer self? On the contrary, the expression not hiding in strength revealed through interdependent interaction means seeing the other and oneself as persons with true dignity and as persons capable of giving, not merely doing. The result of not hiding in strength, when integrated into a process of receiving and giving, portrays friendship with respect for another person’s dignity instead of hiding behind one’s good works or charitable activity. The theme of not hiding in strength thus supplies friendship with a manifestation of truth and reveals more straightforwardly its interdependent character.

John Swinton’s Perspective on Friendship The theme of friendship was not an explicit focus of the work of the practical theologian John Swinton, yet it was an important subject of his study. Different from Reinders, who examined friendship in the light of an ethical perspective, Swinton’s approach to the theme of friendship was a practical activity important for the re-humanization of a person. This first involves thinking that friendship is primarily understood as a practice or a type of interpersonal relationship. Or, more precisely, friendship is an aspect of the re-humanization of a person (Swinton, 2000a, 2000b). This first means that Swinton, like Reinders, opposes Aristotle’s definition of

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friendship due to its highly symmetrical and instrumental relationships. He rather gives insight into personal narrative, but he does not develop a structure of analysis with regard to particular themes and concepts. Yet, I see his approach to friendship as a valuable basis for reconsidering friendship’s anthropology. For instance, Swinton does not pay much attention to the importance of elements often involved in friendship such as the meaning of emotional support, the understanding of reciprocity, common interest, common activities, maintenance of friendship, and the purpose of friendship. Instead, he offers a practical analysis of friendship as a relationship of interpersonal communication important for the re-humanization of a person and situates it within the context of practical theology. In my analysis of his notion of friendship, I use three of his books where friendship is a matter of particular concern. These are From Bedlam to Shalom (Swinton, 2000a); Resurrecting the Person (Swinton, 2000b); and—the most recent one—Becoming the Friends of Time (Swinton, 2016). The common idea that connects his arguments in the selected books underlines not merely the similar logic involving his research subjects (people with mental health problems, people with Schizophrenia, and people with disabilities) but the structure of the theme of friendship itself. This first includes the idea of a common stigmatization attached to people with mental illness, schizophrenia, and disability within the history of medical care, which I term the social model aspect of friendship. Second, I determine his friendship in line with an aspect of his idea of relationality, personhood, and re-humanization which, in my approach, will be addressed under the aspect of relationality and personhood. Thirdly, his idea of friendship addressed from the perspective of Jesus and Christlikeness will be described under the aspect of Jesus friendship rationale. The threefold distinction will be used strategically as my approach to reading Swinton’s perspective on the anthropology of friendship. In the following section, I approach each of these aspects separately. The “Social Model” of Friendship Addressing Swinton’s perspective on friendship within the perspective of a social model, I want to highlight common reasons for the lack or impossibility of friendship and social exclusion that people with mental health problems as well as those with disabilities have faced within the institutional medical healthcare system. This, at first, includes common attributes of all the relevant subjects referred to in Swinton’s work such as

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labels or stigmas due to medical or social mental health conditions. This label particularly includes a lack of social integration and poor social relationships as well as deprivation from the “norm of normality”—a historical mark attached to people with mental health problems and people with disabilities. Emphasizing the importance of social relationships for people with disabilities and mental health problems, I will first reveal the constant problem of the lack of social interaction that prevents such people from developing friendships. Second, setting out the critique of mental care as highly medicalized, I see a channel where Swinton sets his approach close to a framework of the social model. In this regard, as do many other Disability Studies scholars, Swinton points out dehumanizing conditions, social degradation, and the devaluation of people with disabilities and people with mental health problems within institutional care settings. Besides this, looking at friendship within the perspective of a social model indicates the actual problem of neglect that has been detected not only within the context of the pastoral ministry of faith communities but as something typical of mental healthcare systems. Based on both his previous experience as a psychiatric nurse and his theological knowledge, Swinton suggests a model that can remedy such situations. This model, in my understanding, points to a personalization of medical care, which further entails the process of the re-humanization of a person, achievable through human relationship or relationship with God. Relationality and Personhood The second aspect of Swinton’s perspective on friendship that I want to highlight is the aspect of friendship rethought within the perspective of personhood and re-humanization. According to this perspective, I want to emphasize Swinton’s thinking on friendship intertwining the ideas of personhood and re-humanization. This, regarding friendship relationships, leads toward the rediscovery of often “forgotten” dimensions of a person such as a person’s capacity to relate with others. The final end of such friendship is the re-humanization of a person. In this perspective, Swinton’s approach to friendship does not, in the first place, perceive friendship as a moral category. For him, it is clear that friendship is a practical category with the potential to bring the marginalized back into the center of society (Swinton, 2000a, 2000b). But in what way, one could ask, is re-­ humanization the result of friendship, and in what way does friendship form part of the redefinition of personhood? The process of bringing the

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marginalized back into the center of society means not only social inclusion but an acceptance that opens the door for re-humanization. It is this—the process of re-humanization—that entails individuals’ acceptance and acknowledgment as relational subjects with the potential for interdependent communication. One of the key characteristics of Swinton’s approach to disability is his emphasis on relationality. What I intend by this is to show how friendship involves re-humanization and how, for Swinton, there is an obvious link between relationality, re-humanization, and healing. A person is, for Swinton, first of all God’s creature and a relational subject (Swinton & McIntosh, 2000, pp. 175–184). This means that re-­ humanization is achievable through relationships with God and fellow humans. The idea of re-humanization, when put into the context of mental healthcare, implies healing because the person is first of all accepted as a person rather than merely because of his/her physical condition (e.g., a person as a patient). Thus, when applied to the context of medical health care, friendship is a particular aspect of relationality that can bring re-­ humanization. Swinton not only aims to demonstrate an intertwined link between personhood, re-humanization, and friendship, but he emphasizes that a person with a disability is primarily a relational subject and therefore capable of friendship (Swinton, 2000a, 2000b, 2012). It is the relationships of friendship that reveal that the other person is a relational subject and that communication with such a person is possible. This claim opposes the ideas of, on the one hand, the nonpersonal and the personal and, on the other, one person’s characteristics from the characteristics of the other person. This means that in the process of re-humanization, the importance of friendship as a form of relationality influences the redefinition of personhood understood within the process of re-humanization. He states: “Friendship plays a positive role in the ‘reconstruction’ of persons after loss or change of social status, allowing them to experiment with new roles and ways of understanding self and others and to discover new ways of seeing themselves and construing their situations”. (Swinton, 2000a, 2000b, p. 97) The re-­ humanization also entails participation in relationships in which the final end is the healing of the one who has been depersonalized. Suggesting friendship as the principle for re-humanization, according to Swinton, thus entails the possibility of releasing a person from false attitudes and attaining personhood with the value of belonging. Contrary to classic thought on friendship, Swinton does not associate the purpose of friendship with the achievement of a certain amount of happiness. The end or purpose of friendship is rather the liberation or the re-humanization of a

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person. Notwithstanding, re-humanization is part of personal interdependent relationships such as friendship and is often portrayed as its end. However, in my opinion, the interchangeable use of friendship and liberation, healing, and re-humanization is a conspicuous aspect of Swinton’s description of friendship, referring to people with mental health problems. Alternatively suggested is the process of friendship as a key toward understanding re-humanization—a process of resocialization and repersonalization—simultaneously relevant for a discourse on disability inclusion. For instance, people with disabilities who, historically, have been deprived of social interactions could experience friendship as healing in terms of being resocialized and perceived as a person. By resocialization I mean one aspect of re-humanization that implies more strongly the experience of liberation through social contact, acceptance, and belonging. Understood within a process of re-humanization, resocialization is, for me, also an aspect of friendship, the emphasis of which is on receiving social support, embracing positive self-esteem, and adding personal value. Thus, re-­ humanization and resocialization result from relationships where friendship is above all—and in Swinton’s view—a dignifying process, establishing one’s personal worth and reconfirming the person as a relational subject. Friendship in the Light of a Christlike Perspective In this section, I will describe a shalomic and Christlike perspective on friendship. But what does this entail? First of all, it is the friendship of Jesus—perceived as radical and shalomic—that is a practice of openness and contrasts the western account of friendship marked by strong sense of hierarchy. Thus, the friendship of Jesus as shalomic and radical proposes a new aspect of friendship: friendship among different people. The themes to which Swinton refers in his theological account of friendship first include the interchangeable use of Christlike friendship (See “Using our Bodies Faithfully: Christian Friendship and the Life of Worship,” 2015, pp. 228–245); radical friendship (Resurrecting the Person, 2000b); shalomic friendship (From Bedlam to Shalom, 2000a); and friendship of Jesus (Resurrecting the Person, 2000b). Shalomic friendship signifies a form of God’s coming shalom, and Jesus’s model of friendship with the different and the outcast is described as radical. This is particularly emphasized in Resurrecting the Person and From Bedlam to Shalom. Both the radical and shalomic aspects are components of Jesus’s and God’s friendship. Swinton sees the Gospel passages in Matthew 11:19 and John 15:15 as paradigms

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for such a radical friendship since they imply friendship with the rejected, marginalized, and outcast. Considering Jesus’s radical friendship with outcasts, Swinton underlines difference as an important element of friendship. With reference to Christlike friendship that is radical and shalomic, I want to emphasize Swinton’s ideas about the importance of openness and freedom present within his Christlike perspective on friendships. God’s openness toward the other not merely overcomes social and class differences, but it transcends social and cultural prejudices as well as labels and attitudes attached to certain groups of people. This again is the reason why friendship, perceived as radical, not merely transcends anthropological impediments but heals a person’s broken dignity (re-humanization) and brings him/her peace (shalom). This thinking on friendship transcends the principle of likeness and instead implies openness to those who are different. However, it is from the perspective of Christlike friendship in particular that a mode of re-humanization attaches to the experience of friendship with people with disabilities. Additionally, the idea embedded within Christlike friendship means not only doing things for people but being someone who accepts and understands them as a person. This idea is based on and follows Jesus’s example of being with and for people and, through his example, reveals the true nature of God. Following the same line, friendship with Christ is also catalytic as it enables re-humanization and brings salvation to people by simply being present or being there. Swinton finds examples of this in the Gospel passages of Jesus meeting the Samaritan women (John 4:7), the Gerasene man (Luke 8:26), and Zacchaeus (Luke 19:2). Although these examples reveal a catalytic dimension to friendship, the parables do not show the presence of friendship. However, the point I want to emphasize here is that Swinton is describing the encounter with Jesus (Christ) as liberation because it goes beyond the socially constructed identity of individuals and implies meeting with a person despite that person’s attributes and reputation. This is what I think Swinton means by saying Jesus’s friendship was radical and catalytic. Instead of providing evidence that the friendship relationship is an instance of this, he supplies the reader with a conceptual and psychological view of the possibility of this liberation and relates it to his idea of friendship developed within the perspective of Christlikeness. In sum, Christlike friendship is radical, according to Swinton, a transcendence of relational boundaries that are constructed by contemporary tendencies to associate with others on the basis of likeness, utility, or social exchange. The moral significance of Swinton’s friendship situates virtue in the person of Jesus instead of the quality of the

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other person. The value of this virtue, associated with the whole person of Jesus, is the capacity that friendship as a virtuous act has for bringing the marginalized back into the center. Thus friendship perceived as a virtue, according to Swinton, refers to friendship with Jesus. The act of being virtuous, from this viewpoint, implies being more Christlike, which means being open to the marginalized and different. Or, in my understanding of this perspective, the friendship that reaches beyond culturally constructed barriers and false understandings seeks to resurrect the person who has become engulfed by their mental health problems is a powerful form of relationship. Alternative Characteristics of Swinton’s Friendship In this section I intend to make a few more remarks about Swinton’s thought on friendship concerning the notion of interdependency. The general characteristic of Swinton’s methodology and approach to friendship is, in my opinion, a conceptual reflection on friendship as a practical activity. Hence friendship themes are sometimes used interchangeably or as subthemes; for this reason, they require subtle terminological distinctions. For instance, Christlike friendship is frequently replaced with “Jesus friendship” since both imply elements of healing and justice in which the final end is the re-humanization of a person. The common characteristic of shalomic and radical friendships communicate openness toward the other as well as difference and liberation that such openness brings. Apart from Jesus or Christlike friendship, other characteristics of Swinton’s friendship imply the notions of freedom, care, intimacy, difference, reciprocity, love, respect, and acceptance. Acknowledging love, difference, reciprocity, and acceptance as elements peculiar to friendship, in my view, still does not say much about the meaning of these themes for the development of a more robust idea of friendship. Swinton does not supply the reader with a definition of what, for instance, the meaning of freedom is, in what sense intimacy is applied to it, or how reciprocity is managed within friendship dyads. However, one of the recent themes that has captured my attention regarding friendship and disability is his thinking on timeful friendship presented in Becoming the Friends of Time (2016). In this, he reflects on disability in the light of the perception of time, and he further reflects on the perception of time for the disabled and the dementia patient’s situation within modern culture. The idea of time affects understandings of disability, friendship narratives, and the dynamic of

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love. It counterbalances the relationship between being led by speed and power and being led by love and slowness. Thinking about time differently in this way opposes western capitalist culture based on speed and efficiency, which relegate relationships to a secondary status. People with disabilities, because they are “slow” and thus considered “nonproductive,” are placed at the margins of a high-speed society. Swinton attempts to demonstrate that the actual problem with such thinking is that people with intellectual disabilities experience time differently. This means that the first characteristic of this experience is that it draws the person out of instrumentality. Being in a friendly relationship with people with disabilities also means inhabiting time differently. This particularly means being able to see a person beyond his/her intellectual achievement and working activity and instead emphasize the value of one’s presence, the notion of love, and the wisdom of the heart. The indication that the perceptions of time differ for the, let’s say, autonomous person and for the highly dependent person underpins the narratives of friendship that employs a different kind of time. Yet the reflection of friends on time as a category can, within our contemporary notion of friendship, be reconsidered as beneficial for both the meaning of the human and understanding friendship as an interdependent relationship process.

Discussion on Comparison Between Reinders’s and Swinton’s Conceptions of Friendship In this discussion I intended to examine how in Reinders’s and Swinton’s interpretation of friendship regarding disability, one can find a framework to rethink friendship. In these remarks, I make claims about an anthropology of friendship more straightforward by comparing two approaches to friendship. While both Swinton and Reinders see friendship as an important aspect for constructing an anthropology of interdependent relations, their approaches to friendship differ slightly. Before discussing the points of distinction, I will select a few common ideas in their approaches to friendship. First, a common characteristic of their accounts of friendship is a theological and anthropological revisioning of friendship. In other words, for both authors discussed, friendship is not only anthropological but also a theo-anthropological category. The theological value, for both Swinton and Reinders, implies God’s friendship, which includes justice and, above all, a Christian understanding of the human-Divine relationship. Friendship is, for Reinders, a relationship freely given and received,

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inclined toward the happiness that is friendship with God. For Swinton, friendship brings shalom (healing and peace) and re-humanization grounded in a Christlike paradigm. Furthermore, their understandings of friendship include anthropological aspects and reject the depersonalization and instrumentalization of people with disabilities. They imply difference and are therefore asymmetrical, open to the possibility not only for different people to engage in friendship but also to overcome differences in social, economic, and class status. Based on these interpretations, they contrast the classic forms of equality and similarity involved in the idea of a common understanding of friendship, which is present in contemporary culture. Grounding his arguments close to the perspective of a social model, Swinton contrasts the medical model, medical healthcare context, and cultural attitudes toward people with disabilities. He further emphasizes the priority of a person’s value as a relational being over a person’s attributes. Likewise, with a slightly different emphasis, Reinders, in a critique of the social minority model and the Disability Rights Movement (which both empower people via the distribution of rights and equal participation in society) admits the value of an element of flourishing and growth but also departs from it by aligning himself somewhat with a view closer to an ecological perspective. Considering the anthropological perspective of his approach, the value of Swinton’s treatment, in my view, lies in his understanding of the human being as a person in relation (Swinton, 2000a, 2000b; Swinton & McIntosh, 2000, pp. 175–184). A similar position on equal participation can be found in Reinders’s relational anthropology in Receiving the Gift of Friendship. In this way, Reinders emphasizes a turn from a strictly substantialist understanding of the human being in terms of capacities and contributions toward a more relational view, inclusive of people with profound intellectual disabilities. For Swinton, friendship remains a rather practical activity important for re-­ humanization (particularly when it includes people with disabilities and people with mental problems). In other words, the end of friendship for Swinton does not lie in achieving happiness—as it may for Reinders—but in the liberation of a person’s relational potential as well as re-humanization as an act of doing justice. Recognizing dependency and interdependency as emerging elements when approaching people with disabilities still does not clearly show how the dynamic of their interdependent relationship occurs within processes of friendship. For Reinders, interdependency is considered within a process of receiving and giving or within his theme of not hiding in strength. For Swinton, mutual interdependency is acknowledged

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as an element of earthly creatureliness as part of the human condition but not as an indicator of dyad relationships in the first place. The real question that remains for me in this regard is whether friendship is seen as a relationship of interdependent anthropology or as a way of moral empowerment—both for disabled and non-disabled people in the process of moral transformation. The reason for this idea is that disability theologians, when discussing friendship, give priority to emphasizing inclusion, through normalization and equalization, without showing how and where aspects such as, for instance, inclination toward being dependent emerge within friendship dyads. Considering the meaning of relational interdependency involved in the discussion of friendship in this particular approach has not involved further exploration of the topics arising therefrom. In other words, although interdependency described as a process of mutual belonging or reciprocity within a process of friendship was recognized as an important element, it was neither discussed as a separate theme nor was given an explicit explanation of its meaning within friendship dyads. Despite the above distinctions, Reinders’s and Swinton’s accounts of friendship do recognize interdependency as an important element within processes of friendship and, for this reason, it is a valuable statement for rethinking friendship with people with disabilities. Thus it is an attempt to reconstruct an anthropology of friendship in which the central element is the recognition of interdependency. This means first that each person in relationship is recognized as a person, precious for who s/he is, not for what they do. Such statements not only oppose the utilitarian logic of self-sufficiency, but they suggest friendship as a covenant (receiving and giving) between two persons. This means that mutual interdependency not only reveals the recognition of the real presence of the one and the other but centers relational interdependence not solely in the contours of intellect but in the counters of a person’s heart and through dynamic of receiving and giving. For this reason, the aspect of an anthropology of relational interdependence within a friendship relationship is not only applied and recognized, but it is this anthropology of interdependent relationality that, on the one hand, challenges the contemporary view of friendship and, on the other hand, is inclusive of people with disabilities. The following section follows the comparison between the fields of Disability Studies and Disability Theology. I will distinguish between its most apparent and appealing elements and characteristics. This, in the context of the following assessment, first outlines each field’s rationale and secondly, each field’s characteristics and approaches to friendship.

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Discussion on Comparison of the Academic Fields: Disability Studies and Disability Theology— Contrast and Complementarity Disability Studies as an academic field provides a robust empirical and theoretical reflection on understanding disability. The regard for disability within the domain of this academic field includes a framework of discourses on various models, the formulation of a definition of disability, and the ideas of empowerment, inclusion, and citizenship. The main critique of the field concerns cultural and contextual inconsistencies and the injustices experienced by those living with disabilities (social model) and the medical treatments of people with disabilities’ physical conditions (medical model), which are understood as impairments. This further means that Disability Studies scholars are not only critical toward the treatment of the condition of disability as merely a medical, tragic, or individual problem, but they are critical toward the treatment of disability as an abnormal condition, disease, or pathology from the perspective of mainstream society. They are also critical of eugenic practices within the medical model and societal treatments of disabled people that reduce them to objects of cure and charity—or the most evil one—preventing them from living. From this perspective, Disability Studies, in exploring the theme of charity and dependency, reacted to the history of the objectification of people with disability within medical and care settings, portraying charity and dependency as negative aspects of care. Through the perspective of various models and approaches, Disability Studies focuses on the reconstruction of the cultural images of disabled identities, instead of looking at their complete personhood. They prioritize managing inclusion as segregated and mainstream in terms of equal participation, distribution of rights, and civil freedoms. They also emphasize the idea of empowerment (Paralympics, education, independent living) in promoting a person’s strengths, autonomy, and self-dependency with little intervention in exploring social relationships in terms of valuing one’s personhood. Despite the reasoning of many Disability Studies scholars in criticizing the social and medical models, it does not exceed the concept of a modern liberal framework. This, for instance, means that liberal bioethical practices based on individualism and utilitarianism that look at persons merely within the perspective of the body as physical entities and objects of legal rights remain integrated within Disability Studies’ rationale. Such logic often reduces a person’s dignity and empowerment

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through the distribution of rights instead of seeing it in a person’s capacity for relationship. To transcend such reasoning, Disability Theology proposes a different view—one that, instead of promoting a person’s dignity in terms of rights and freedoms, sees a person’s values in their capacity for relationship. This traces the distinction between the approaches of Disability Studies and Disability Theology. In other words, the key distinction in approaching disability between Disability Studies and Disability Theology is in essence anthropological as the idea of inclusion understood as empowerment and the idea of inclusion understood from the perspective of promotion of one’s personhood differ. Disability Studies and Disability Theology are both critical of social constructions and attitudes within society, culture, and church practices that oppress and limit equal access and participation for people with disabilities. Both disciplines also have raised awareness for rethinking the adequate treatment of and attitude toward the disabled within society and Church. The difference is that Disability Studies scholars look at external realities—physical mobility, access, participation, and transportation within social environments. Disability theologians, on the other hand, look at the problem not merely from the external but also internal realities. This means that their approach implies metaphysical knowledge of a person which transcends the visible or external appearances and defines a person not merely as a citizen, but as God’s creature and spiritual agent. Disability Studies as a field provides valuable data on historical treatments of disabled people’s identities and the identification of people with disabilities, with their disorders and inabilities. Like Disability Studies, Disability Theology goes beyond merely the disabled identity and situates disability in relation to God’s creative act within the Christian community. The overall critique of the liberal premises which have placed the value of the person on its physical components have been contrasted by Disability theologians in emphasizing the spiritual dimension of the person. With such an emphasis, the dominant attitudes toward people with disabilities are redirected from biological to biographical, from material to personal. The values which arise from such articulations within Disability Theology contrast those values of liberal, capitalist society that only look at attributes rather than entities. Thus, disability within theological anthropology implies a person’s encounter with the Divine—a possibility denied within a liberal framework. Disability theologians do not deny such an open possibility of Divine encounter, including God as an actor within friendship relationships. This, in a nutshell, separates theological anthropology from the mainstream

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anthropological premises integrated into a Disability Studies framework. People with disabilities, through the emphasis on the relational aspect of human capacities, reveal some aspects of inner self-knowledge and the knowledge of God. In this way, they oppose the one-dimensional sight of a person through his/her physical embodiment. However, the physical body is not the end in itself. After Resurrection, its telos is given a linear approach persuaded with a renewed hope.

The Comparison of the Fields’ Friendship Rationales Within the general comparison between Disability Studies and Disability Theology, I will now look at Disability Studies and Disability Theology approaches to friendship. Both Disability Studies and Disability Theology regularly claim that the number of relationships for people with disabilities is low. Both disciplines emphasize the objectification of people with disabilities either by seeing them as objects of pity and shame or avoiding the encounter with them due to their attributes. Not only were relationships few, but the conditions for encounter were minimalized or—sometimes—impossible. Disability Studies For Disability Studies scholars, friendship is a way of managing social inclusion and a stimulus toward achieving independence and well-being. Friendship has been discussed as a civil right within policy documents or as a source of well-being within perspectives on the quality of life. Besides such interventions, the approach of Disability Studies scholars regarding friendship has shown great interest in the empirical instead of the conceptual meaning of friendship. Stressing interest in the prevalence of qualitative research—as this could have been seen within dyad relationships—disability discourses question not only the conceptual meaning of friendship but have shown that friendship consists of empirical elements constitutive to its full framework. Regarding the very meaning of the query on friendship, disability discourses on the theme of friendship question whether friendship with people with profound and intellectual disability is possible and the very purpose of friendship on regard of a person’s well-being (Harrison et  al., 2021, p. n.p.; Callus, 2017, pp.  1–16; Griffiths & Smith, 2014, pp.  124–138; Lutfiyya, 1991, pp.  233–245). Such questions more profoundly tackle the theme of friendship formation (how people with

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disability choose their friends), the very processes of friendship (how they act and react), friendship maintenance, and the impact friendship has on a person’s self-esteem (McVilly et  al., 2006a, pp.  693–708, 2006b, pp. 191–203; Knox & Hickson, 2001, pp. 276–291). There is a distinction between a caring relationship understood as formal and a friendship relationship understood as informal when such relationships include the element of care and caring. Similar to caring, Disability Studies scholars have stressed emphasis on the distinction and value of friendship formation for people with intellectual disabilities themselves and for people with and without disabilities. This results in separate approaches between those Disability Studies researchers that I address as valuing symmetrical (Knox & Hickson, 2001, pp.  276–291; McVilly et  al., 2006a, pp.  693–708, 2006b, pp. 191–203) and others who value asymmetrical (Callus, 2017, pp. 1–16) friendships. Symmetrical friendship includes people with disabilities themselves and appears, in this regard, to be more inclusive due to—as disability researchers would indicate—reduced pressure regarding the power balances or often applied “normalization” in cases between people with and without disabilities. Moreover, such scholars share the opinion that friendships between people with and without disabilities promote better inclusion as the voices of people with disability are included, recognized, and heard. This means that for Disability Studies scholars, friendship is in fact a practical process and includes various socio-psychological components. Disability Studies provides a detailed description of friendship development and the nature of friendship formation. Friendship is a way to achieve justice, quality of life, and wellbeing. It is, furthermore, the way toward social inclusion. Yet it is still highly impacted by the rationale of the medical and social models which, on the one hand, push toward better inclusion in terms of citizenship and independence—the two elements that, in their thinking, lead to flourishing—but, on the other hand, it deprives friendship of the framework of spontaneous participation. Rethinking inclusion regarding friendship in this way seems to limit the full recognition of a person’s dignity and, in my view, goes beyond the framework of social policy and citizenship. Disability Theology Disability Studies is concerned with the relationships between persons with disabilities and their inclusion in society. Disability Theology—in order to manage social inclusion—is rather concerned with the question of

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relational participation, moral agency, and personhood including relationships between people with disabilities and people with and without disabilities. Disability theologians have pointed to the deinstrumentalization of friendship, noting the distinction between activities and the importance of the value of one’s presence. Such logic contrasts with the view that sees people with disabilities merely through their attributes and civil rights. Disability theologians or those scholars engaged in the discourse of theology and disability have provided an important contribution to the analysis of friendship regarding people with disability, and have integrated the theological, ethical, and anthropological dimensions of friendship relationships. The general approach of disability theologians in this particular case—Swinton’s and Reinders’s accounts of friendship—recognizes dependency, interdependency, otherness, love, and flourishing as important and positive elements of such relationships. However, they do not provide a practical framework for its application and meaning as Disability Studies scholars do. For instance, the elements of belonging, dependency, and receiving within Disability Theology balances the rights, freedoms, and equality within Disability Studies discourses. Contrary to Disability Studies scholars, Reinders’s and Swinton’s friendship analysis is rather straightforwardly conceptual. Their framework, however, emphasizes the aspects of relationality and interdependency as important aspects of friendship. In other words, the very purpose of friendship is the discovery that every person is a relational subject and as such has the potential to relate. Linking their arguments with the perspective of theological anthropology, their friendship permits a divine element, which is friendship with God. Such a view is possible first of all as it is open toward the Divine and, in light of that, every person is a spiritual agent open to friendship with God. Disability theologians offer a Trinitarian and communitarian aspect of friendship that distinguishes them from Disability Studies’ socio-­ psychological perspective. Instead of assessment of power balances, the emphasis rather criticizes symmetrical friendships that imply strict equality within the framework of modern liberal premises and emphasizes individual rational and cognitive human functions. Besides the abovementioned, their inclination toward a conceptual perspective means that although their friendship implies certain personal narratives, it does not provide significant evidence about the nature and characteristics of the formation and development of friendship dyads. For instance, Reinders makes room for the possibility of friendship with people with profound disabilities but does not supply the reader with a method for its actualization. Swinton, as

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a qualified researcher, looks at personal narrative; however, he does not give much evidence about the interaction and occurrence of elements within these friendship dyads in the literature. The friendship dyads of their narratives imply friendship with people with and without disabilities but still do not supply the reader with more robust practical possibilities of it. Their friendships, in comparison to Disability Studies scholars, focus merely on friendship between people with and without disabilities themselves, which may be one of the shortcomings of their analysis of friendship. The Disability Studies perspective regarding empirical evidence of friendship dyads is much larger in such a perspective. To sum up, Disability Studies provides an empirical narrative on character and the nature of friendship formation. Their discourses are overconcerned with the meaning of independence, power imbalances, and the distribution of equal rights. Their language is formal and prefers an informal interaction that will shed light on stimulating the discourses on dignity and the integrity of people with disability. Disability Theology, for instance, brought the spiritual element into a perspective of friendship, which allows one to see a person as a spiritual agent and opens a possibility for friendship with God. This means that such a friendship framework is open to transcending the barriers of natural and character differences and, as such, is more equipped to rethink interdependency. Being considered a spiritual agent opens the possibility for communication with God but does not say much of how a person, as a spiritual agent (for instance, a person with profound disabilities), can process communication with other spiritual agents. A limited amount of empirical analysis on this has been evident in theological and ethical discussions of friendship. As we have seen within the ongoing analysis of the two academic fields, people with disability are open to having friends. Moreover, having or desiring friends is not merely a fundamental need of some but of all people as social and spiritual agents. For this reason, I suggest a further look at friendship not as a universal right or a quality of life but as a reality that places value upon human interdependency. Eventually, after the presentation, comparison, and critical assessment of disability and friendship within Disability Studies and Disability Theology, in the following section I propose my own ideas on the redefinition of disability and friendship. My proposed redefinition not only integrates the views of Disability Studies and Disability Theology but provides a more nuanced, integrated approach. In this rethinking, I will address the notion of disability as a concept as well as a specific and unique human condition.

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The Proposal of the Field’s Definition of Disability and Friendship Disability as a Concept and Experience? Although the social model was in opposition to the highly medicalized judgment of disability, it became imprecise and deterministic by neglecting the complexity of biological and psychological conditions that follow disability. I would argue that the robust distinction between disability as a medical or social condition together with (sometimes negative) cultural prejudices and biased assumptions about it should be avoided. I do not think that our physical existence is merely social, it is also biological; but biology should not be a mere existential or a personal determinant. Therefore, I would follow the approach where the notion of disability should be regarded as interpretative and a conversational phenomenon, which means that, besides the medical and sociological models, it includes other interpretations. What, then, is a disability? My suggestion for redefining disability is descriptive in that such rethinking interchangeably intertwines disability as a concept, a condition per se, and the particular human experience marked as difference. Thus disability, in my opinion, is a human experience of the embodied condition understood as difference. This assumes that my thinking on disability integrates biomedical and social approaches; however, it departs from it as it does not seem sufficient to rethink disability only through the lens of the biomedical or social models. Disability is something personal and existential. Despite disability causing certain disadvantages, I emphasize that it is not merely a disadvantage, but a particular difference. What I mean by this is that this difference first emerges (as already indicated) due to particular biological or genetic factors that later apply to social causes and particular personal disadvantages (social exclusion, reduced opportunities, lack of mobility, socio-relational poverty, etc.). Second, when I say that disability is a difference, I mean this in regard to the human givenness. Namely, PWD has a different way of performing certain activities or engaging in daily life. For instance, someone who is severely disabled still is eligible to connect with others in his/ her appropriate, particular, or different way. The way a person with disabilities exercises his/her way of being or agency and how s/he connects with the environment or other human beings may not correspond to mainstream thinking about the capacities or abilities of people with disabilities. Rather, the capability here can be replaced with the meaning of a

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gift and givenness that s/he has to offer to a wider community. This entails that a gift has particular strength that lies in its givenness, not necessarily in its performance. For this reason, my thinking on difference is rather inclined toward rethinking the concept of disability in terms of the interrogation of the category disability as existential givenness and an interpretative condition of a temporal physical limit or the dysfunction of all, instead of in terms of a fixed ontological determination or category of particular persons. This means that disability as a concept and a condition per se carries of a certain interpretative disadvantage, but as understood in terms of dis-ability could reflect a remedy for putting forward other interpretations as a way of partaking in human heterogeneity. In other words, disability as a concept and a condition per se understood as dis-ability could be associated with the medical model of impairment, yet what I actually mean by such a notion is to address the meaning of a concept of an embodied ontology of everyone. It is correct to interpret disability in ontological terms (Shakespeare, 2014)—that everyone at some point in their lives becomes disabled without having Down Syndrome or Autism, or as a socio-relational disadvantage (Thomas, 2004), but not everyone embodies a biological condition specific to Down Syndrome or other forms of disability. Thus the difference I have in mind not only departs from the experience of some normal, typical species of condition or functioning, but such a departure actually constitutes this difference. Related to such thinking, this difference posits a challenge not only to think differently about the social norm but also about disability itself and the difference implied within the concept of the body of the Church. Following the assumption that different anthropological aspects, models, and approaches to the same human reality do not completely explain phenomena in themselves (in our case disability) but rather help us understand them, the strict divisions between the social and medical models or robust divisions between different anthropological approaches (such as theological, biomedical, and sociological) to one reality seem insufficient. Disability as the condition per se does belong to one’s person’s experience. This entails that the impairment and/or disability will always be a personal experience no matter how much we want to project it on a disabling society or explain its phenomena through the lens of the definition of disability. Yet when disability and/or impairment embedded into a person’s experience are perceived as personal disadvantage or considered as a subject only of medical intervention or Church charity, this indicates the “Zeitgeist” of the society we are living in, the socio-cultural and medical practice we have. This I

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highlight to first reveal social and anthropological limitations and barriers if accepting disability as a form of a different existence in the world presents a problem. Second, it indicates the limits of mental comprehension in articulating diversity, difference, equality, and acceptance. Society is rather focused on fixing those parts, those bodies, those wheelchair users, instead of accepting such ways of existence as given and functional in their own way of being in the world. Living with (accepting) instead of fixing, eliminating, eradicating, or changing it is, in my opinion, a more effective and durable way of managing progress and development than the other way around. This means that we can offer multiple and various definitions of disabilities, but we can only make a change by accepting such conditions as given and different as parts of the heterogeneity of the human race or indispensable parts of the body of Christ. The Definition of Friendship: Based on a Perspective of the Two Fields So far we have noted that friendship in this analysis consists of anthropological and theological elements, and it has practical and conceptual elements in its meaning. As we could have noticed, friendship is not merely a concept for rethinking common belonging and a path toward “moral growth” or quality of life but a reciprocal way of exchange in human communication and interdependency. This means that friendship is a process that includes friendly communication, interaction, activity, and achieves certain ends. It implies closeness and spontaneity, as well as mutual exchange and concerns. But it also demonstrates human complexity and the rupture within the processes of friendly interaction. Friendship is not only a human need or a way to inclusion, but it inspires and enlightens a person’s existence and participation in the world. The reimagine of friendship based on the examination of two academic fields suggests that friendship is a personal, informal, natural, supernatural, spontaneous, voluntary, and sometimes involuntary participation. It is a freely given interaction and exchange between the two individuals involved. It has its moral purpose which, on the one hand, is realized as the socio-psychological aspect of a person’s self-esteem, contributing to his/her social empowerment and realizing their personhood. On the other hand, the moral aspect of friendship is realized by first revealing a person’s relational capacity and expressing the human need and desire for a close encounter

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and belonging and, second, it is the ultimate fulfillment of such a need and desire. In other words, friendship is indeed a freely given and freely received gift, and has to do with acceptance of one’s existence as a relational human being. It is a way of achieving justice in terms of combating social inequality between different persons grounded in the mutual exchange of love-­ giving and love-receiving. Thus it is a way to belong interdependently; its main purpose is not merely to contribute to one’s well-being or empowerment. In this way friendship is openness toward difference in a way that a friend could be someone whom one may not independently choose but who may be given to one in common belonging together (Swinton, 2000a, 2000b; Reinders, 2008). In such a perspective, friendship is both an inclusion and participation in terms of the fulfillment of one’s desire for love and justice. Although the examination of the two academic fields’ notions of friendship recognizes the occurrence of elements such as mutual dependency, care, love, and justice, it does not provide its actualization in the very process of friendship. Disability Studies and Disability Theology, each in a distinct way, integrate conceptual and practical elements of friendship; friendship within this framework still remains a puzzling concept as certain anthropological elements (e.g., care, dependency, love, and charity) are not completely articulated and thus require further examination and application (Comensoli, 2018). This means that we need to be confronted with rethinking such notions either as distinct anthropological and ethical entities or as constitutive elements of the reality of being human.

Notes 1. In God’s Image bishop Peter A.  Comensoli elaborates on notion of personhood and friendship with people with profound disability. Referring Hans Reinders and John Swinton perspective on friendship, Comensoli addresses the need for the recovery of theological account of friendship anthropology mindful of the profoundly impaired. Among many remarks, Comensoli, emphasizes that despite its wide references within a moral framework, the theme of friendship with people with disability as a way of inclusion has been neglected in theological circles (Comensoli, 2018, pp. 63–110). 2. Amos Yong addreses importance of antropology of interrelationality and interdependence. Similarly as Reinders he addreses friendship as a form of participation. However, the aspect of relationality suggested by Yong

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implies strong pneumatological reasoning. Namely, as he explains, God is giving us the breath of life, which is the possibility for interpersonal and intersubjective engagements (Yong, A. (2007). Theology and Down Syndrome: Reimagining Disability in Late Modernity. Texas: Baylor University Press, 184). Distinguishing between interpresonal (involving non-self conscious persons) and intersubjective relationships (relationships that involve self-consciously engaged persons), he implicity suggested self identity of profoundly disabled expressed through relationships of interdependence with others and vice versa. Despite such valuable contribution, I would make distinction between intrinstic dignity of one person’s worth and interdependent attachment or in other words—the capacity for relationship and human interdependnecy—as our relationships with others, despite impacting our self identity, cannot completely determine our dignity.

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Callus, A. M. (2017). Being Friends Means Helping Each Other, Making Coffee for Each Other’: Reciprocity in the Friendships of People with Intellectual Disability. Disability & Society, 32(1), 1–16. Cameron, C. (2014). Disability Studies—A Student’s Guide. SAGE. Campbell, J., & Oliver, M. (1996). Disability Politics: Understanding Our Past, Changing Our Future. Routledge. Chappell, A.  L. (1994). A Question of Friendship: Community Care and the Relationships of People with Learning Difficulties. Disability & Society, 9(4), 419–434. Comensoli, A. P. (2018). In God’s Image: Recognizing the Profoundly Impaired as Persons. Cascade Books. Corker, M., & Shakespeare, T. (Eds.). (2002). Disability/Postmodernity— Embodying Disability Theory. Continuum. Creamer, D. B. (2008). Disability and Christian Theology: Embodied Limits and Constructive Possibilities. Oxford University Press. Davis, J. L. (2006). Disability Studies Reader. Routledge. Davis, L. J. (1996). Enforcing Normalcy: Disability Deafness and the Body. Verso. Devlieger, P. J. (1995). Why Disabled? The Cultural Understanding of Physical Disability in African Society. In B. Ingstad & S. R. Whyte (Eds.), Disability and Culture (pp. 94–106). University of California Press. Duck, S., West, L., & Acitelli, L. K. (1997). Sewing the Field: The Tapestry of Relationship in Life and Research. In S.  Duck (Ed.), Handbook of Personal Relationships: Theory, Research and Interventions (pp. 1–23). John Wiley & Sons. Edwards, S. D. (1997). Dismantling the Disability/Handicap Distinction. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 22(6), 589–606. Eiesland, N.  L. (1994). The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability. Abingdon Press. Finkelstein, V. (1980). Attitudes and Disabled People: Issues for Discussion. World Rehabilitation Fund. Goodley, D. (2010). Disability Studies: An Interdisciplinary Introduction. Sage Publication Ltd. Gregory of Nazianus. (2006). Oration 14. In B.  E. Daley (Trans.), The Early Church Fathers. Routlegde. Gregory of Nyssa. (2001). On the Love of the Poor, 1: On Good Works. In S.  R. Holman (Trans.), The Hungry Are Dying (pp. 193–199). Oxford University Press. Greig, J. R. (2015). Reconsidering Intellectual Disability: L’Arche, Medical Ethics, and Christian Friendship (pp. 114–201). Georgetown University Press. Griffiths, C., & Smith, M. (2014). Attuning: A Communication Process Between People with Severe and Profound Intellectual Disability and Their Interaction Partners. Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities, 29, 124–138.

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Harpur, P. (2012). From Disability to Ability: Changing the Phrasing of the Debate. Disability and Society, 27(3), 325–337. Harrison, R.  A., et  al. (2021). Social Networks and People with Intellectual Disabilities: A Systematic Review. Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities, 34(4), 973–992. Ingstad, B., & Whyte, S. R. (Eds.). (1995). Disability and culture. University of California Press. Kenny, A. (2022). My Body Is Not a Prayer Request. Disability Justice in the Church. Brazos Press. Knox, M., & Hickson, F. (2001). The Meanings of Close Friendship: The Views of Four People with Intellectual Disabilities. Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities, 14(3), 276–291. Krotzl, C., Kuuliala, J., & Mustakallio, K. (2015). Infirmity in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Social and Cultural Approaches to Health, Weakness and Care. Ashgate. Linton, S. (1998a). Claiming Disability: Knowledge and Identity. NYU Press. Linton, S. (1998b). Disability Studies/Not Disability Studies. Disability & Society, 13(4), 525–540. Lutfiyya, Z.  M. (1991). A Feeling of Being Connected: Friendships between People with and Without Learning Difficulties. Disability, Handicap & Society, 6(3), 233–245. Makas, E., & Schlesinger, L. (1994). Insights and Outlooks: Current Trends in Disability Studies. Society for Disability Studies, Edmund S. Muskie Institute of Public Affairs. Mason, P., Timms, K., Hayburn, T., & Watters, C. (2013). How Do People Described as Having a Learning Disability Make Sense of Friendship? Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities, 26(2), 108–118. https://doi. org/10.1111/jar.12001 Matthews, P. (2013). Pope John Paul II and the Apparently “Non-acting” Person. Gracewing. Matthews, P. (2020). Discerning Persons: Profound Disability, the Early Church Fathers, and the Concept of the Person in Bioethics. Franciscian University Press. McVilly, K. R., Stancliffe, R. J., Parmenter, T. R., & Burton-Smith, R. M. (2006a). Self-advocates Have the Last Say on Friendship. Disability & Society, 21(7), 693–708. McVilly, K. R., Stancliffe, R. J., Parmenter, T. R., & Burton-Smith, R. M. (2006b). ‘I Get by with a Little Help from My Friends’: Adults with Intellectual Disability Discuss Loneliness. Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities, 19(2), 191–203. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-­3148.2005.00261.x Mitchell, D. T., & Snyder, S. L. (Eds.). (1997). The Body and Physical Difference— Discourse of Disability. The University of Michigan Press. Nouwen, H. J. M. (1997). Adam. God’s Beloved. Orbis Books.

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Oliver, M. (1990). The Politics of Disablement: A Sociological Approach. The Macmillan Press Ltd. Oliver, M. (1996). Understanding Disability: From Theory to Practice. St. Martin’s Press. Pockney, R. (2006). Friendship or Facilitation: People with Learning Difficulties and Their Paid Careers. Sociological Research Online, 11(3) https://www. socresonline.org.uk/11/3/pockney.html Pope John Paul II. (1984, February 11). Apostolic Letter of His Holiness Pope John Paul II on the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering: Salvifici Doloris. St. Paul Editions. Pope John Paul II. (2000, December 3). Homily Jubilee of the Disabled. Pottie, C., & Sumarah, J. (2004). Friendships between Persons with and Without Developmental Disabilities. Mental retardation, 42(1), 55–66. Reeve, D. (2012). Psycho-emotional Disablism: The Missing Link? In N. Watson, A. Roulstone, & C. Thomas (Eds.). Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies, pp. 78–93. Routledge. Reinders, S.  H. (2008). Receiving the Gift of Friendship. Profound disability, Theological Anthropology and Ethics. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. Reynolds, E.  T. (2008). Vulnerable Communion: A Theology of Disability and Hospitality. Brazos Press Grand Rapids. Rioux, M.  H. (1997). Disability: The Place of Judgement in a World of Fact. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 41(2), 102–111. Rioux, M.  H., & Bach, M. (1994). Disability Is Not Measles: New Research Paradigms in Disability. Roeher Institute. Rutkowski-Kmitta, V., & Fujiura, G. T. (2001). Counting Disability. In Handbook of Disability Studies (p. 92). SAGE Publications, Inc. Scotch, R.  K. (1984). From Good Will to Civil Rights: Transforming Federal Disability Policy. Temple University Press. Shakespeare, T. (2014). Disability Rights and Wrongs Revisited. Routledge. Stanley, H. (1986). Suffering Presence: Theological Reflections on Medicine, the Mentally Handicapped and the Church. University of Notre Dame Press. Sticker, H. J. (1999). A History of Disability (W. Sayers, Trans.). The University of Michigan Press. Stone-MacDonald, A., & Butera, G. (2012). Cultural Beliefs and Attitudes about Disability in Sub-Saharan Africa. Review of Disability Studies, 8, 62–77. Swain, J., & French, S. (2000). Towards an Affirmation Model of Disability. Disability & Society, 15(4), 569–582. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687590050058189 Swinton, J. (2000a). From Bedlam to Shalom: Towards a Practical Theology of Human Nature, Interpersonal Relationships, and Mental Health Care. Peter Lang International Academic Publishers. Swinton, J. (2000b). Resurrecting the Person. Friendship and the Care of People with Mental Health Problems. Abingdon Press.

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Swinton, J. (2011). Who is the God We Worship? Theologies of Disability. Challenges and New Possibilities, 14(2), 273–307. https://doi.org/10.1515/ ijpt.2011.020 Swinton, J. (2012). From Inclusion to Belonging: A Practical Theology of Community, Disability and Humanness. Journal of Religion, Disability and Health, 16(2), 172–190. Swinton, J. (2015). Using our Bodies Faithfully: Christian Friendship and the Life of Worship. Journal of Disability & Religion, 19(3), 228–242. Swinton, J. (2016). Becoming Friends of Time. Disability, Timefullness, and Gentle Discipleship. Baylor University Press. Swinton, J., & McIntosh, E. (2000). Persons in Relation: The Care of Persons with Learning Disabilities. Theology Today, 57(2), 175–184. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/004057360005700203 Thomas, C. (2004). How Is Disability Understood? An Examination of Sociological Approaches. Disability & Society, 19(6), 569–583. https://doi. org/10.1080/0968759042000252506 Titchkosky, T., & Michalko, R. (2009). Rethinking Normalcy, A Disability Studies Reader. Canadian Scholars’ Press Inc. Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS). (1976). Fundamental Principles of Disability. UPIAS. United Nations. (2006). Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). UN. Wannenwetsch, B. (2007). Angels with Clipped Wings: The Disabled as Key to the Recognition of Personhood. In J.  Swinton & B.  Brock (Eds.), Theology, Disability and the New Genetics (pp. 182–200). T&T Clark. Way, A.  C. (Trans.). (1951). Basil the Great, “Letters 1-185”. In Fathers of the Church (Vol. 13). Catholic University of Amercia Press. World Health Organization (WHO). (2011). Mental Health. http://www.who. int/disabilities/world_repor/2011/en/ World Health Organisation, World Report on Disability, Geneva. (2011). Wilson, R. S. et al. (2007). Loneliness and Risk of Alzheimer Disease. Arch Gen Psychiatry, 64(2): 234–240. https://doi.org/10.1001/archpsyc.64.2.234. PMID: 17283291 Withers, A. J. (2012). Disability Politics & Theory. Fernwood Publishing. Yong, A. (2007). Theology and Down Syndrome: Reimagining Disability in Late Modernity. Baylor University Press. Yong, A. (2011). The Bible, Disability and the Church—A New Vision of the People of God. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. Young, F. (2014). Arthur’s Call: A Journey of Faith in the Face of Severe Learning Disability. SPCK Publishing.

CHAPTER 3

Reimagining of an Anthropology of Friendship: The Implication of the Notion of Vulnerability and Solicitude

The scope of analysis within ongoing discussion implied different approaches to friendship that gradually display a vision of friendship. In the first part, friendship was considered an important moral and ethical subject, discussed among different academic disciplines including philosophy, theology, and sociology. It includes horizontal, vertical, and virtual perspectives. It is important for one’s personal development and one’s moral growth. It is incomplete in that it is lacking a true embodiment and the overcoming of symmetrical and asymmetrical division. The academic field of Disability studies and Disability theology provides a view grounded in a comparative assessment of friendship. Their thinking on friendship implies empirical (Disability studies) and theoretical (Disability theology) approaches. The common elements of their thinking on friendship perceive friendship as a personal relationship, as the way toward inclusion and deinstrumentalization, in terms of participation and re-humanization. Friendship contrasts with objectification and fear, aiming to overcome biased attitudes toward the disabled. This is to say that friendship is not only a necessary factor of empowerment but brings development of personhood through participation and belonging. All this suggested a rethinking of the form of friendship, its elements, and its credibility. Thus to reimagine friendship is an uneasy and a complex task, and so is the rethinking of the notion of friendship in its very structure. However, the particular elements integrated into a practical and conceptual analysis of

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friendship do enable the rethinking of a reformulation of friendship. The reimagining of anthropology of friendship according to my assessment in this approach includes rethinking friendship as a relationship dynamic of interdependent participation. The constitutive elements of such a reimagine of friendship imply the aspects of vulnerability and solicitude. Vulnerability and the solicitude (understood as concern for the other), I prescribed as disinterested givenness integrative of such a rationale for friendship. The integration of this element into the structure of rethinking of the relationship of friendship is to reaffirm friendship from (a) being reduced to the desire of utilitarian consumeristic morality, materialized pleasure, or the intellectual property of some; (b) reopen its structure toward the acceptance of difference, vulnerability, and interdependency. The element of vulnerability and concern, understood as solicitude, is a way in which direct friendship toward authentic relationship is open to all persons capable of relationship and longing to belong as relational beings. My idea of such reimagine suggests that friendship is before all a relational anthropology and an interdependent participation that includes the other, acknowledged as a creature, constitutive of an intrinsic dignity and capacity for relation. This also means that to reimagine of friendship is here seen as a relational dynamism including openness toward the other who at the very first place is not perfect in a virtue and, besides this, includes acceptance, integrity, and value of a person as relational subject in search for a common belonging. Such rethinking of the definition of friendship is in dialogue with the voices of people with disabilities, particularly intellectual disability, not without them. That is to say that I intend to portray friendship as a highly inclusive relationship, where inclusion is congruent with the view that friendship is the universal category applicable to all. Differently, if friendship is exclusive of certain categories of people because they are considered vulnerable or more than vulnerable, people of different social classes, nations, economic statuses, religions, or intellectual or cognitive capacities, it fails to be open and, so to speak, remains closed in a framework of partial intellectualist morality. The elements of vulnerability, interdependency, and solicitude integral of my proposal are not specific to the friendships of disabled people but are the elements which provoke stability of and a form of a perfect form of friendship as they address the question of dissimilarity. However, in one way or another they are constitutive elements of every friendship, people without (intellectual) disabilities included. This entails that the friendship that includes people with (intellectual) disabilities does not require a completely new philia. It

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requires a reimagined notion of philia that includes something of equal value shared by and constitutive of all humans. This does not mean that people with disability are a cause of such change. They are reminders that the mainstream understanding of friendship is over-conceptualized, and intellectualist rational comprehension cannot fit with a framework of contemporary morality, nor can the redefined notion of friendship can completely be deprived from its traditional interpretation. I suggest that with an alternative anthropology that, in my view, is a relational anthropology of mutual interdependency and inclusive of the notion of vulnerability and solicitude, it is possible to reimagine friendship firstly as an open participation in relationship, and secondly as a moral category. My aim in this chapter is to explain vulnerability and solicitude as necessary elements for the reconsideration of the definition of friendship. I will first look at the notion of vulnerability in the perspective of the renewal of an ethics of friendship, interdependency, and true otherness. After this I will look at solicitude, understood as concern and responsiveness, in rethinking friendship.

Vulnerability: Brief Outline of the Meaning Recently the notion vulnerability has been a highly discussed concept and human experience, but the mainstream discussions remain either the terminus technicus of vulnerable individuals or a puzzled and ambiguous term of scholarly discourses (Ruof, 2004, pp.  411–425; Schroeder & Gefenas, 2009, pp. 113–121; Burghardt, 2013, pp. 556–568; ten Have, 2015). In some contexts, it is described with a negative meaning, whereas in others with a positive meaning. This ambiguity matters as it leads toward a further query regarding its implication for the relationship of friendship. From such a reason and looking at the purpose of this discussion, I intend to first address and clarify its meaning and the implications of the etymology of the notion, and then briefly outline its appearances within academic discourses. I will provide a response to vulnerability outlining its theo-­ anthropological relevance and a few aspects of what vulnerability is not, then present a brief distinction between its positive and negative aspects. After that I will suggest vulnerability as an element crucial to rethinking the definition of friendship. From there I will emphasize the notion of vulnerability in light of its anthropological perspective, crucial for one’s self-disclosure and self-discovery within the relationship of friendship. The

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anthropological perspective will be a basis for reconsidering the relationships of friendship in an ethical perspective. The notion of vulnerability has, in recent decades, increasingly drawn socio-cultural interest and expanded the boundaries of academic research. According to Google Scholar, between 2020 and 2023 the number of articles concerned with human vulnerability has been larger than previous years.1 However, the definitions of the term vulnerability still vary and the concept itself remains elusive. There are layers to understanding the notion of vulnerability (Luna, 2009, pp.  121–139), as well as ambivalences in opinions and distinctions in approaches (Springhart & Gunter, 2017). In entries on vulnerability, the major contemporary dictionaries rely on its Latin origin: the noun vulnus (wound) or verb vulnerare (to wound) and adjective vulnerabilis (vulnerable). Most modern dictionaries use the Latin root of the word vulnus for vulnerability (the English “vulnerable,” Italian vulnerabile, and French vulnérable) and define the term as the ability to be wounded or a synonym for being weak, fragile, or damaged. English dictionaries such as Merriam Webster, the Oxford Online Dictionary, and the Cambridge Online Dictionary define vulnerability as openness to harm; the possibility or potential of being easily influenced; attacked; or hurt physically, emotionally, or mentally. They list synonyms for “vulnerability” such as “defenseless,” “imperfect,” “fragile,” “sensitive,” “weak,” “helpless,” and “open to risk.” The French dictionary of Christian ethics— Dictionnaire Encyclopédique D’Ethique Chretienne—(Lemoine  et  al., 2013) is a little richer with respect to the distribution of concepts and thus provides a three-dimensional understanding: vulnerability as a concept, manifestation, and structure. According to this understanding, vulnerability is an integral part of human existence: vulnerability is manifested by sad emotions (anxiety, despair, and repulsion) in a period of insecurity, violence, or death. At the structural level, the notion of vulnerability is often used as a synonym for fragility, weakness, and suffering—although it differs from these concepts due to the obvious conceptual difference between them. Some scholars have developed a more detailed approach. For instance, Maillard (Maillard, 2011) address types of vulnerability: corporeal, socio-relational, and anthropological. Accordingly, the corporeal type of vulnerability signifies biological corporeality; socio-relational vulnerability considers human dependency and interpersonal social relationships; the anthropological type designates the inherent fragility of the body, physical and emotional integrity, as well as other human capacities. Similarly, the mainstream socio-cultural account of vulnerability addresses

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it as a human category of being wounded or exposed to harm, and the adjective vulnerable—as many dictionaries indicated—often indicates one’s weakness, limitations, or wounds (Gilson, 2011, pp. 308–332). The Perspectives of Academic Discourses The context of scholarly discourses concerning the notion of vulnerability provides multiple and diverging analyses and approaches. Until 1970 the word vulnerability appeared within contexts of medicine (ten Have, 2015, pp. 395–408) referring to bodily and psychological conditions. After 1976 the term was used in a broader sense. Since then (especially the early 1980s), actual awareness of the occurrence of vulnerability within daily living and interest in exploring its meaning in the scope of academia emerged rapidly (Matthews & Tobin, 2016, pp. 1–7). The implication is that the meaning of vulnerability, originally a subject of marginal academic interest, has moved to the center stage of anthropology, moral philosophy, sociology, feminist and care ethics, economics, as well as theology. Since each of these disciplines operates differently, the notion of vulnerability has been conceptualized in various ways and approaches.2 Major arguments within biomedical discourses discuss vulnerability within the context of disease (e.g., corporeal and biological fragility, susceptibility to illness, or to be operated upon, manipulated, or influenced). Although the term vulnerability includes the concept of the human body and corporeality, susceptibility to illness, and the physical condition of the patient, authors such as Callahan (Callahan, 1984, pp. 40–42) and Kottow (2005, pp. 460–471), for instance, underline the notion that vulnerability is universally essential to humans. Rendtorff in Basic Ethical Principles in European Bioethics and Biolaw recognizes vulnerability as a basic moral category, a universal and existential component of every human being (Rendtorff, 2002, pp. 235–244) and not merely a condition of medical patients. Like in biomedical settings, the care ethics and nursing ethics approaches go beyond merely corporeal understandings of vulnerability by stressing the context of lived experience and the relation of vulnerability to the principle of justice (Tronto, 1993; Gastmans, 2013, pp. 142–149). From the philosophical point of view, vulnerability is the ontological (existential) category of humans (Hoffmaster, 2006, pp. 38–45). It is, furthermore, often discussed in relation to autonomy and physical embodiment (Maillard, 2011; Pelluchon, 2011), or as a category for certain groups of

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people who require adequate protection (Ruof, 2004, pp.  411–425; Turner, 2006). Sociologists distinguish between vulnerabilities impacted by the social environment and vulnerable social groups that need protection (e.g., people with disabilities, migrants, women, newborns, children, the elderly).3 Social vulnerability refers to the characteristics of a person or group in terms of their capacity to anticipate, cope with, resist and recover from the impact of a natural hazard or social environment (Wisner et al., 2004). Accordingly, vulnerability is not only a social matter, but distinctive social vulnerabilities arise within social environments and society at large because of social incompatibilities and social oppression (Ruof, 2004, pp.  411–425; Nussbaum, 2006). Additionally, social philosophers and feminist theorists, besides acknowledging vulnerability as a fundamental condition of human interiority, focus on external social, environmental, and economic factors that cause or exaggerate one’s vulnerability (e.g., poverty, exclusion due to race or gender, additional harm, and mutilation of women). Such arguments can be found in the work of Martha Nussbaum (2006), Eva F. Kittay (1999), Ruth Macklin (2003, pp. 472–486), Mary C. Ruof (2004, pp. 411–425), and Robert Goodin (1985). The Disability Studies discourse on vulnerability distinguishes between its positive and negative meanings. One camp of researchers sees “vulnerable” as an oppressive category for people with disabilities which threatens their existence (Marks, 1999; Shildrick, 2000, pp.  215–227), while others follow its broader application by acknowledging that vulnerability is part of the universal human condition (See Burghardt, 2013, pp. 556–568). Contemporary theological discussions associate vulnerability with human creatureliness (Reynolds, 2008), woundedness, and brokenness (Culp, 2010; Brock, 2019) and, otherwise, as a human condition that is contrasted with the Enlightenment principles of autonomy and selective projection upon others (Reynolds, 2008; Tonstad, 2020). As a theoanthropological concept vulnerability is often associated with the meaning of suffering or is understood as a form of transformation that pushes one individual toward its acceptance, recognition, and affirmation (Gandolfo, 2015; Dell’Oro & Taylor, 2006). But the question one could ask here is, “Is vulnerability really a study phenomenon, the theologically relevant notion or is it rather a substitute to explain disability, human suffering, or moral failure?” In the following discussion I would like to briefly address some additional aspects of this perspective as well as my stance of what vulnerability is not.

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Vulnerability as a Theologically Relevant Notion? What difference would it make for theology if vulnerability were among the central concepts in rethinking human nature? None, I think. Vulnerability, within the Scriptures, has already been distinguished as an aspect of God’s love toward humanity, a sign of humanity’s dependency upon God, as well as his/her creaturely given nature, and a lament for salvation. Yet in the interest of a modern conception of humanity, the theological significance of vulnerability has been obscured by perceptions of humans as self-­ dependent animals or as structural multitasking machines (MacIntyre, 1999, Singbo, 2021). My intention with this approach is to portray a fundamental perspective on vulnerability where vulnerability is taken as a theologically relevant concept, emphasizing its relational specificity. 4 I will suggest a view of vulnerability that looks at its close relation with the theology of creation and thereby emphasizes its theo-anthropological aspect. This, in other words, requires a clarification on vulnerability as something that belongs to humanity from the beginning of creation. When God the Creator created humans (Gen 1:26–27) as the image and likeness of the Triune God he formed the man from the dust of the ground (Gen 2:7), breathed into him the breath of life, and the man became a living being (Gen 1:26–27). The Catechism of the Catholic Church (hereafter CCC) concerning human nature addresses the above concept in explaining equality and difference among humans created in the image of God and equally endowed with rational souls. All humans have the same nature and the same origin (CCC n. 1934). Redeemed by the sacrifice of Christ, all are called to participate in the same divine beatitude; all, therefore, enjoy equal dignity. The man being formed from the dust of the ground (emphasis mine) gathers in himself the elements of the material word (Gaudium et Spes n.14; hereafter, GS). That notion, in my opinion, highlights the baseline of the discussion distinguishing between the human as a creature and God as his/her Creator. Furthermore, the dust signifies an element that addresses humanity’s earthly limitation and bodily creatureliness. Despite humanity being made from a different (material) nature than God, within the order of creation the composition of the nature was, in fact, something good (Gen, 1:31). Additionally, looking at Thomas Aquinas’s interpretation of human nature in Summa Theologiae (I, q.91, a.3), Aquinas emphasizes that God fashioned the human body in that disposition which was most befitting the soul and its operations. This idea, adopted through the teaching of the Second Vatican Council (GS n. 14),

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expressed slightly differently, reconfirms that a human, since he/she is created out of the love and goodness of the Creator, is not allowed to despise bodily life. Instead, one is obliged to regard his/her body as good and honorable since God has created it and promises to raise it up on the last day. The Catholic doctrine expresses a distinctive understanding of human nature and its origin that, in my reading, underpins the affirmation of a congenital (innate) vulnerability comprised in the biblical statement man being formed from the dust of the ground (Gen. 2:7).5 This natural condition ultimately stimulates one’s need for other human persons. That is to say that the theo-anthropological concerns of vulnerability, besides its ontological implications, include a socio-relational aspect. Identifying vulnerability from a theo-anthropological perspective includes, as already mentioned, both an ontological aspect (creaturely vulnerability) and a socio-relational aspect. Humanity is not only vulnerable by virtue of its creaturely given nature but, because of that nature, he/she is wounded by its creaturely-established need for the other. Thus, in my opinion, vulnerability in a theological perspective points to the human need for other humans—in terms of being vulnerable naturally and, at the same time, being vulnerable by this need for the other. The respect for the other as another self (CCC n. 1939 in the context of human solidarity) indicates that the theo-anthropological aspect of vulnerability is rooted in human ontological nature and is expressed through the lived experience of one’s need for the other human being. That is to say that common belonging is a result of humanity’s interdependency. The above discussion, in a nutshell, indicates that reflection which rethinks vulnerability as a theological notion is a real possibility despite caveats surrounding the concepts’ separate meanings. Whether vulnerability is articulated as a creaturely given existential category encountered within social context and life circumstances or as a threat or oppression, vulnerability cannot be reduced to suffering, tragedy, or moral failure. Despite inconsistency in concepts of the notion of vulnerability within academia and even popular culture, there is still an obvious contemporary “push” expressed in the human need for the recognition of vulnerability as a lived reality. This is to say that, besides vulnerability being a subject of academic discourses, it is also a part of every person’s daily experiences and life circumstances. Every human person lives in a particular social environment consisting of interdependent relationships where one’s own vulnerabilities and the vulnerabilities of others are part of everyday life. For this reason, vulnerability besides conceptual, requires a pragmatic approach.

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What Vulnerability Is Not? The majority of approaches and meanings discussed above inclined toward valuing vulnerability either as an existential condition for all (Hoffmaster, 2006, pp.  38–45; ten Have, 2015, pp.  395–408) or as a condition for only a few vulnerable individuals who require adequate protection (Ruof, 2004, pp. 411–425; Schroeder & Gefenas, 2009, pp. 113–121). Historically, people with disabilities have been considered “vulnerable”. (Stiker, 1999; Kittay, 1999). More precisely, vulnerability has been ascribed to their identities (Linton, 1998; Davis, 2006). They remain classified as a vulnerable group of individuals even within International United Nations documents. This particularly includes the United Nations Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights (art. 8), the Document on Biomedical Research Involving Human Subjects (CIOMS, 2010), and the Report of the International Bioethics Committee of UNESCO on the Principle of Respect for Human Vulnerability and Personal Integrity (IBC, 2013). The problem of such categorization does not only imply a biased anthropological position toward people with disabilities but also tends to undergird a lack of social relationships such as friendship for people with disabilities marking them as vulnerable. Besides this, such thinking indirectly and additionally vulnerablizes people with disability and other subjects classified as vulnerable, creating an overall anthropological dichotomy between the vulnerable who need protection and nonvulnerable who do not need to be protected. In addition, on a socio-cultural scale, it creates offensive and exclusive attitudes toward people with disabilities—one of which is whether or not they can participate in friendships. This is to say that besides being attached to people with disabilities and other vulnerable groups (e.g., minors, women, migrants) there are layers in understanding vulnerability, and there are also ambivalences and inconsistencies in opinion as well as distinctions in approaches (MacIntyre, 1999; Hoffmaster, 2006, pp. 38–45; Luna, 2009, pp. 121–139). For this reason, the broad discourses on vulnerability remain divided between those who consider it to be positive and those who see in it negative connotation or even a threat. Because of this, the meaning of vulnerability fails to be applied univocally with either positive or negative connotations and the conceptual division in opinion between its positive and negative sides continues. Additionally, I would like to emphasize a use of vulnerability that is not always straightforwardly agreed on. This first includes distinction between

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sentimental or instrumental views on vulnerability. I would be hesitant to approaches on vulnerability that romanticize it as a sentimental emotion or emotional expression. This could mean that vulnerability is a result of sentimental instability or exchange of a positive and negative emotional fluctuation. Vulnerability would, in this perspective, either be fragmentary or could fall apart from its broader meaning such as is a human condition. Instrumentalizing vulnerability, on the other hand, would be close to using its meaning for manipulation or the justification of unethical purposes or evildoings. For instance, the inclination toward vulnerability as anthropological state of being vulnerable cannot be an excuse to justify certain unethical or immoral behaviors and attitudes in such a way that it would be confused with the meaning of moral failure (e.g., violence, crimes against humanity), undignified treatment of others (e.g., sexual abuse, rape, exclusion, and torture), or the conception of sin (e.g., acts against conscience objection). By contrast, when vulnerability is considered a socio-relational category or as condition, its most proper meaning carries both positive and negative connotations. This is because the challenge of an encounter with the other is always twofold. It reveals not only the vulnerable face of the other human being, or the exposure of his/her vulnerability, but also the other person’s uniqueness. Thus referring to vulnerability as a socio-relational category outlines its positive and negative connotations, interchangeably intertwining the risk and openness.6 As a risk it presupposes openness that culminates in embracing and accepting the vulnerability of oneself and the other. The risk, however, can presuppose a closure, which is associated with a negative meaning. This underpins protectiveness or a fear of being exposed to the vulnerability of the other or showing one’s own vulnerability. Looking at the positive side of vulnerability, the encounter with it entails acceptance, openness and could be a source of recognition of true otherness within the reciprocal dynamic of relationship. The relationship in this a regard is rather a dynamic moral exchange between two subjects who are becoming more similar to each other through the discovery and possible acceptance and recognition (Haker, 2021, https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12070467) of a mutual human vulnerability that is both their strength and weakness. Such thinking on vulnerability applied to a dynamic of relationship outlines the way of discovery of oneself.

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Vulnerability in Its Implications for the Relationship of Friendship Friendship is universally recognized as a mutual goodwill, but does the friendship presuppose that two friends engaged in the relationship of mutual giving and receiving are also vulnerable persons? Is friendship as human relationship of interdependent belonging deprived or encompassed of vulnerability? Let me explain this a bit further. Friendship relationships can help in the re-co-creation of human dignity, not in terms that it defines the human, but that it reconstructs moral and socio-­ relational status of the human person. The lack of the relationship of friendship, on the contrary—as seen in narratives associated with the history of disability—can diminish one’s dignity and one’s sense of moral wholeness and self-worth. Therefore, the impossibility of and lack of access to friendship is a matter of particular moral injustice whereas, on the contrary, the opportunity and possibility of friendship contribute to one’s human and moral growth. For this reason, friendship matters as the dynamic of mutual exchange and leads toward the rebirth of human dignity and one’s moral value. But does the relationship of friendship, understood as a mutual well—wishing between two different human persons (ontologically vulnerable), imply the rupture of vulnerability? My rethinking on friendship first of all implies a distinction between its anthropological and its relational character. This means that the moral value and the importance of friendship first consist in reestablishing one person’s dignity and second, one’s capacity for relational participation. Thus friendship presupposes the anthropological ground that stimulates openness and one’s disclosure toward the other. The element of self-­ disclosure in this regard is the notion of vulnerability considered as an openness toward and the risk of the possibility of self-disclosure. The reimagine of friendship in this approach suggests that friendship is before all a relational anthropology of interdependent participation. It is a process of dynamic participation and belonging through which the intrinsic potentiality of every person per se to relate with others is called to be realized. Looking at the notion of a person’s identity from the theological perspective, human identity implies human dignity. This entails that relationships with others can help in reestablishing human dignity but can never be determinative of such dignity. Human dignity is an intrinsic category given and realized within a person’s inner disposition. This, according to Gen 1:26, implies being made in God’s image. God imprinted his own image on

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man, conferring on him incomparable dignity. This dignity is not only a gift, but is a man’s essential right before any other right can be distributed to man (Centesimuss Annus no. 11). This is important to keep in mind, before reaching the following discussion on man’s relational identity, and particularly when this relational identity concerns people with intellectual disability or profound intellectual disability. Now, in order to enable the possibility of friendship one needs to be acknowledged as a human person (Comensoli, 2018; Matthews, 2020). In other words, one’s being must be realized, not only within the terms of existential ontology, but also as a person with the potential for relationship. Every human being is a person, and every person made in the image of God is a human being and is able to communicate with the inward and outward word. Every person in such regard is also a vulnerable (ontologically) or has a natural capacity toward being vulnerable to something. Yet there are degrees of vulnerability, which means not every person is vulnerable in the same way or according to the same dispositions. Being a person also includes people with profound intellectual disabilities, mental illness, and different types of neurodiversity who, as creatures—theologically speaking—also belong to the species of homo sapiens. No other species according to God’s creation plan were called to participate in the relationship of friendship besides man (John 15,15). From such a reason, friendship in my opinion is a category peculiarly given to the human, regardless of one’s differences in mental capacity or his/her physical deformity. In this regard it reaches its dynamic participation through which the intrinsic potentiality of every person per se is called to relate with others. In other words, friendship is a process that enables a person’s realization of personhood in the sense that a person can reveal, exercise, and develop his/her identity as a relational being. Or put slightly differently, the intrinsic gift to relate with others is enabled through participation in a process of relationship. The realization of this potentiality within the scope of this discussion corresponds to the meaning of friendship. The relationship of friendship is the dynamic of giving and receiving, but, as Reinders (2008) correctly observed, it is firstly a receiving. Borrowing the term receiving the gift of friendship from Reinders, I add that not only does this remind us that friendship between God and man was initiated by God and received by man, but that prior to receiving the gift of friendship, man as God’s creation and as an image of God received its dignity and—related to this—its capacity for relationship. This, translated into contemporary language, means that friendship as a

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dynamic relationship of mutual goodwill, the mutual receiving, and giving can contribute to the reconstruction of oneself and the other’s intrinsic need to belong. Nevertheless, though the nature and quality of relationships with others can impact one’s character, it cannot completely define a person’s identity. The notion of vulnerability as an element of disclosure of relational interdependency between friends can add to such thinking. The notion of vulnerability implied within friendship not only contributes to disclosure and acceptance but is an element that can combat the stigmatization of disabled people prescribed as vulnerable. By acknowledging that as humans we all are vulnerable at some point in our lives and as such are also vulnerable by our ontologically created need for the other, the vulnerability often ruptures within interdependent relationships. In this a way the implication of vulnerability in such discourse and its recognition are here of crucial importance. Though friendship has been universally acknowledged as an important element of the development and moral growth of the human, not all people have equal access to it or possibility for it. What concerns me even more is the fact that some people are even deprived from being acknowledged as having the capacity to participate in a relationship of friendship. Additionally, research within sociology, Disability studies and Disability theology evidences the lack and impossibility of friendship for people with disabilities, which sooner or later brings into question why friendship as something fully human fails to be accessible to and realized by certain people. Does friendship require particular human skills to be attained and maintained? Or why, as humans, do we still have a need for friendship relationships, despite the degree of our autonomous self-dependent esteem? Put slightly differently: if friendship and vulnerability are both seen as categories that bear universal anthropological application, then how on the one hand are there people who are deprived from participation in friendship (possibly because of their more than a vulnerable natural condition or vulnerablizing identities), and on the other hand why does being vulnerable fail to bear universal moral recognition? Distribution of rights as a way of social inclusion and in certain types of formal relationships shows its limits, as it does not respond to a deeper human need, not only a need to acquire citizenship but to be acknowledged with a certain type of interpersonal belonging. This is to say that there is something more profound that passes a mere distribution of civil rights. This also means that friendship should not remain something elitist, only a privilege for some. Understanding friendship as a relational

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anthropology of interdependent participation means that the anthropology of friendship based on the recognition of vulnerability in my rethinking of friendship does not only provide a reminder of something ontologically human, but implies the reconsideration of the anthropology of friendship. The revelation of vulnerability within an interdependent process of friendship is therefore a source to reveal one’s true self, and a source that stimulates moral growth, despite ones vulnerability. The Process of Friendship Facing the Anthropology of Vulnerability Friendship, like most human relationships, begins with the encounter. People with disability are among those categories of people that have few friends or are seen by mainstream contemporary culture as incapable of friendship. The encounter points to a dynamism or irruption that comes from the other, and that is simultaneously caused by the other. Every encounter, therefore, presupposes a risk. When Francis of Assisi encountered the leper, he was first shocked by the appearance of the leper; but soon after the encounter (embrace) the barriers of fear present within himself disappeared. St. Bonaventure, the author of his biography, informs us that this encounter was a focal point in the life of St. Francis, as it caused douceur. The fruit of this encounter was not merely a grace that he received. Francis of Assisi was transformed, and the transformation was not only visible as an outward change. It was an inner process that impacted his personality and in the life of the leper. I do not propose or make any parallel between leprosy and disability, nor a categorical distinction between suffering and nonsuffering people, illness, and health. What matters in this narrative is to highlight the conditions before (the fear) meeting the leper, and the outcome of this meeting (douceur), which was the grace and transformation he received after encountering the leper. What really happens when we become aware of our embodied vulnerability, revealed through encountering the vulnerability of the other, is of what Emmanuel Levinas addresses about the vulnerable face of the other: the relation with the other is a face that heals allergy (Levinas, 1969). What happened in the story of Francis of Assisi is not only the encounter with himself, but was the beginning of something new. So the encounter with that other reveals the encounter with the often invisible vulnerability of the other. It matters not only as a beginning of relationship; it is a part of a relationship dynamic between the two persons involved. Understanding

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the person as an integrated whole and a subject of vulnerable interdependency redirects our established way of thinking from a merely material understanding of the biological body, or utilitarian or consumerist perspectives of a person, toward the more essential and forgotten invisible realities within humanity. The Meaning of Knowing a Friend Jewish philosopher Martin Buber in his masterpiece I and Thou argues that the discovery of mutual relationship includes not merely the affection of both subjects involved, but that the true relationship includes an element of knowing based on the principle cognosco ergo sum instead of cogito ergo sum, as suggested by Decartes (Buber, 1973). He further explains that cognosco ergo sum does not imply the primitive function of knowledge, such as is the case with Decartes’s postulation of “cogito ergo sum,” but the true knowledge of oneself and the other implies two subjects interacting (Buber, 1973). Friendship relationships that include the recognition of the mutual vulnerability are a way toward the discovery of one’s true self and the better knowing of one’s friend. In order to become a true self, one needs to be willing to accept the onto-anthropological condition that is being vulnerable. Contrary to the view of the contemporary utilitarian thinking that supports self-dependency, individualism, and self-­ centeredness, the friendship inclusive of the anthropology of vulnerability implies dependency and need for the other. In other words, the friendship relationship grounded in the recognition of mutual vulnerability has the potential to confront utilitarian thinking about the other and can reopen the possibility of seeking true inclusion. The element of vulnerability exposed within the dynamic of friendship in this way is a possibility to direct oneself into one’s true knowledge as addressed by Cicero in his dialogue on friendship: friendship reveals something about a person’s character (Pakaluk, 2005, pp.  77–116). Friendship as a process of dynamic interdependency exposes one person to the other person, where two people encounter each other’s (possible) vulnerability and uniqueness. The implication of vulnerability in the dynamic of friendship stands as a corrective to the contemporary view that reduces friendship to something of a used and consumeristic morality. The need for friendship expressed as a human need for dependency and belonging is something that points to the relational character of human existence. Being dependent means being

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vulnerable, because one is not only in need of the other, but vulnerable by that need. Locating vulnerability in the process of a dynamic of friendship brings value for the retrieval not only of relationship, but of the structure of friendship. This means that when vulnerability is implied in a dynamic of friendship it can bind together people of different statuses, classes, and intelligences, and at the same time requires from friendship the exercise of the virtues of patience, love, and fortitude. Moreover, the implication and recognition of vulnerability in the process of friendship includes dynamic exchange. A person may not be conscious of his/her vulnerability until the encounter with the other reveals to him/her their own true face. This is according to assumptions of this discussion a relational dictum within friendship as the two persons entering a relationship of friendship are not just the two autonomous beings, where one’s autonomy may be more dominant or revealing than the other. They are also two contingent beings, inclined to being vulnerable and, as with autonomy, the degree of their vulnerability varies. The process of friendship can totally lack the exchange of autonomy and vulnerability. Yet, contrary to mainstream thinking on friendship, this work offers a slightly different approach—an emphasis on the importance of vulnerability for the unmasked relationship of friendship—but it does not claim that autonomy does not matter within a friendly relationship. The reason I decided to engage in conversation on the implications of vulnerability has to do with the fact that vulnerability, in comparison to autonomy within major mainstream discourses on friendship, has been either neglected or misinterpreted. Or put slightly differently, the relationship of friendship measured according to the principle of autonomy is often in danger of becoming instrumental and elitist. Friendship relationships based on reception of vulnerability challenge the anthropology of friendship based on self-sufficient autonomy of a self and the other and is thus an anthropology more inclusive to all, particularly to people with disability. The result of acknowledging vulnerability within a process of relational interdependency (friendship) results in the acceptance of oneself and the other, as well as recognition of a person’s true identity. The recognition of oneself in this perspective contrasts with the consumeristic consumption of friendship, reducing its value to instrumental or utilitarian purposes. The real condition of such friendship is recognition of the other, it is the presence of a person that matters and not its utilitarian and often material merits. Being recognized as another self means being treated as a person. Being treated as a person means being accepted as an embodied self in

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relation to the other. The implication of vulnerability in the relationship of friendship is therefore a valuable corrective for or prevention of the one self-sufficient or elitist understanding of the other which can put the other in danger of being exposed to the material use by the other. The exposure of vulnerability or the recognition of vulnerability in friendship relationships matters as it first supplies friendship with the view that the other is equal to me in my ontological and socio-relational esteem. Second, it detaches a friend’s need for the other, from false consumeristic or utilitarian motives, and refocuses on its true moral end, that is the opposite of the false recognition of the other and disembodiment. If friendship is a certain type of disclosure, then the recognition of vulnerability through the dynamic of relationship exchange is the essence of such disclosure. The awareness of vulnerability as a human condition shared by all could eventually be a matrix of exposure of a socio-relational vulnerability. The anthropological fact of being vulnerable per se is the cause of or a factor for the revealing of its socio-relational aspect. Assuming vulnerability as a category shared by all humans, the accidental differences among humans such as social status, intellectual capacity, and class will be less emphasized when we realize that as humans we share in the same human vulnerability, which nevertheless does not take anything from our (autonomously perceived) human dignity. Vulnerability balances inequalities. Friendship that implies vulnerability as something shared by all is an opportunity to acknowledge difference as something positive, instead of a threat. For such reasons the value of friendship between people with and without disability is not of less importance than the friendship between Aristotle’s friends. The only difference between these two types of friendships is that this version of friendship bonds people together, not by natural motives of their virtue character or what they have achieved (Aristotle), but because of who they are as God’s creatures and as humans. The Recognition of the Other as a Friend One of the results of the friendship relationship that includes vulnerability is recognition. Recognition in this perspective results from a process of acknowledging the condition of vulnerability as a distinctively human category. Recognition affirms the respect for the other person before all as a person. The online Cambridge dictionary relates the meaning of recognition with acceptance, appreciation, knowing, and knowledge of something or someone as true or legal (See https://dictionary.cambridge.org/

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dictionary/english/recognition). Axel Honneth in Struggle for Recognition (1995) addresses that not a struggle for self-preservation, but the struggle for the establishment of relations of mutual recognition, is a precondition for self-realization. Similarly, in The Course of Recognition (2005, pp. 150–247) Paul Ricoeur interprets recognition not merely as something that implies the identification of a particular person but recognition understood as approbation, including approval of the other person’s existence. For Ricoeur, recognition is a demand and expectation from the other (passive voice) to be recognized and is a responsible response from the other— active voice. (Haker, 2021). Though the Ricoeurean concept of recognition has been the subject of concern within the scope of care ethics and feminist studies, it also has valuable contributions to make in rethinking the relationship of friendship. Recognition applied to the scope of friendship includes mutual respect and responsibility that the relationship of friendship cannot be deprived of. Within a friendship relationship both friends desire and expect to be respected and affirmed as people with dignity and equal identity. They express their concern for each other. Vulnerability as an element within a process and the recognition as a result of friendship create unity between people despite their differences. The type of recognition discussed in this section, which also draws on Ricoeur’s suggestion of mutual recognition (including respect and responsibility), places the element of the personal in the center of the discourse of recognition. This means that recognition is a personal category and an element of friendship in a way that goes beyond a commercial reciprocal exchange of goods (normative dimension) by highlighting regard for who the other person is, instead seeking the interest of the other’s person. Jesus’s friendship in John 15:15 and the feet-washing narrative (John 13) is the best example of such friendship, as it is a corrective for the misrecognition of the other person’s identity and value. The narrative in John 13:15 demonstrates the “descending” character of Jesus that goes from God to the human person. He not only exposes his vulnerability by expressing need for others, but by such need he recognizes the other person’s need to belong. Through the exchange of roles (master—slave) he shows that humility is an important element of the recognition of others and by such recognition He, in the act of washing the feet, elevates the other (Apostles) and places Himself in a descending (slave) role position (analogically speaking). Jesus’s friendship expresses concern for equality (equal treatment) between persons, recognizes the other’s identity (personal treatment) and reveals something of his

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shared human vulnerability—the need for and love of the other. It also reconfirmed the person’s identity in terms of seeing the other as one truly is. Both vulnerability and recognition understood in terms of having worth and being accepted for who one is are essentially human characteristics. People with and without disability, in order to fully function as human persons, are inclined toward a disclosure of vulnerability and a need for being recognized in terms of being seen as one truly is—a person with intrinsic dignity and the potential for relationship. The proposal to rethink friendship that includes the notion of vulnerability is not only a way toward managing the inclusion of people with disabilities who, due to misrecognized identities, have been deprived of the relationship of friendship. People without disabilities also desire recognition, one that values of their presence. The acceptance of vulnerability as an anthropological category revealed within the relationship of mutual giving and receiving stimulates mutual recognition. Such friendship is a corrective for the individualism and utilitarianism of late modernity that is motivated by the priority of external appearances (culture of the body) in searching for the moral, frequently materialized end of friendship. Friendship that includes vulnerability as a so-called disinterested value matters as it shows that one’s concerns for the other do not proceed from one’s personal interest, but out of the value for the other person’s presence. In this regard, value is put on one’s presence and one’s being with, instead of doing for. In other words, the acknowledgment of vulnerability as a distinctively human category goes beyond false representations and results in recognition and a true seeing of the other as they truly are.

Rethinking the Friendship Through the Implication of Solicitude In a previous section on the implications of vulnerability for rethinking the definition of friendship, I suggested vulnerability as an element of confrontation with one’s personal limits as a living being or, in other words, the element of one’s self-disclosure. At this point I intend to examine how benevolence as goodwill and beneficent love understood as well-doing, when implied in the relationship of friendship, can refigure the way of thinking about friendship. My intention is to show that the meaning of concern and solicitude integrated into the dynamic of friendship interlocks with the meaning of well-wishing and the ethical imperative of reciprocally

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doing good. Mutual goodwill (NE 1155b34) and mutual well-doing were of significant importance for Aristotle’s understanding of friendship (NE, 1168B). In fact mutual goodwill and well-doing not only require a reciprocal exchange in this regard. For Aristotle, the person is most truly a friend to another if s/he wishes well or cares about his friend for their own sake. Going into more detail, exercising the friendship of mutual well-­ wishing among friends means not only making a distinction between true friendship and a derivative or incidental friendship; Aristotle made a distinction between true friends and those who are well disposed toward the other, but are not friends.7 In addition, a fully-fledged friendship will exist when such intentions—reciprocal goodwill—are recognized by both parties as existing reciprocally. Thus, to qualify something as a true friendship for Aristotle implies concern for the other or good wishes for the other (NE 1155b34; NE 1168b). It is therefore clear that the degree of mutual concern for each other in so-called derivative friendships is less, except for the subjective benefit to oneself. This is to say that in the cases where the so-called hidden subjective self-centeredness prevails above mutual well-­ wishing, one cannot speak about the true telos of friendship. Being perceived as another self-entails reciprocal goodwill, but also some level of doing good for the other person’s sake. When the principle of well-­wishing applies in Christianity it often refers to the idea of a Golden Rule. The Golden Rule, understood as the universally accepted ethics of reciprocity (Wattles, 1996), sets the requirements of consistency and an equal basic worth for each individual. However, when set in the context of Christianity, the idea of reciprocal well-wishing in the perspective of the Golden Rule eventually prevails in the imperative of doing good to one’s neighbor (Mt 7,12; Lk 6:31) but, ethically speaking, does not fully abandon the framework of well-wishing. This, nevertheless, within Christendom, became enlarged by Jesus’s imperative to love each other and God, as one would like to be loved in return (Mk, 12, 29–31; Rom 13, 8–10; Gal 5:14). The idea of the Golden Rule since then (“Do to others what you would like that the others do to you,” Mt 7,12) has been the subject of interpretations among many philosophers, theologians, and ethicists, not merely within Christianity. Among contemporary authors, the Golden Rule principle was well interpreted by, who expresses with it not only the idea of reciprocity but also principle that embodies the notion of justice and one’s aim at a living well (Ricoeur, 1992). When the principle of the Golden Rule is applied in the context of friendship, it not only exceeds Aristotle’s claim that “it is finer to benefit friends, than to benefit stranger” (NE 1169b10),

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it also interlocks and actualizes benevolent and beneficent love amid the relationship of friendship. The problem of well-wishing related to the discourse among ancient philosophers and the Christian idea of reciprocally doing good for one’s neighbor implies a distinction between love as philia and love as agape. Now, when applied to the context of a caring relationship, doing good underpins the meaning of beneficence; and well-wishing when applied to a friendship relationship (philia) underpins the meaning of benevolence, but often appears exclusive of such meaning, due to a strict distinction of contemporary interpretations between love as philia and love as agape. The love of philia within modern discourses is not only conditional, but also accompanies one’s free choice, whereas love as agape is unconditional as it expresses one’s moral obligation toward the other without much consideration for one’s own choice. This further creates a problem, not only among Christian theological discourses in terms of looking at inclusion merely through the lens of solidarity, participation, and Catholic social teaching; but also posits a problem to academic fields of Ethics of care discourses. The emphasis on agape love often prevailing within the domain of Christian theological discourses, became detached from thinking about friendship love. Friendship, on the other hand, was understood as separate from agape, reduced to private reciprocal exchange, whereas agape understood as love for one’s neighbor became associated with a universal nonreciprocal moral obligation from one toward the other. It is clear than when such discourses imply the meaning of agape they become a charitable axiom within Christian charity and solidarity. Simultaneously, when love as philia is implicated in a process of a formal caring relationship, frequently it is replaced with a notion of love as sacrificial love and falls into one’s moral obligation toward the other. What change does it make to friendship if solicitude understood as concern for the other impacts the process of rethinking the anthropology of friendship? A Brief Assessment of the Notion of Care: Academic Context and Application Before entering into a further discussion on the relevance of the notion of solicitude for the relationship of friendship I would like to clarify a few important points on the meaning of care applied in the context of the ethics of care, indicating its distinctiveness from and similarity with the meaning of solicitude. My interest in first exploring the meaning of care stems from the two reasons: first I am interested in portraying the meaning of

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care and its distinction from the meaning of concern and the solicitude implied in the relationship of friendship; second, I would like to search for its link with the concept of interdependency applied in a relationship of friendship. As has been noted in a previous discussion, goodwill and well-wishing were important elements of not only of Aristotle’s friendship but was present as a general feature in understanding the relationship of friendship. The conceptual analysis of the academic field of Disability studies has shown that care implies negative connotations, due to people with disability being reduced to the object of medical interventions or care of charitable associations. However, the research on friendship within Disability studies discourses identifies “helping each other” and the notion of “support” not only as emerging elements of friendship but also as elements specific to taking care of another friend. On the contrary the caring relationship that includes the care giver (personal assistant) and the receiver of care, in research on caring relationships (Willmott, 1987), is undecided on prescribing caring as an element of friendship. Rather, the care was identified as an element of a formal (professional) caring relationship, instead of an element of friendship. What exactly is implied in the meaning of the notion of care and how is it different from the meaning of solicitude suggested as an element of the friendship relationship? In the contemporary Dictionary of Ethics, care is prescribed as a distinct moral sentiment, the emotional attitude embedded in a relationship with another person—yet, by some theorists, it is seen as structuring an entire moral outlook. The Dictionary adds that caring implies concern for the other in a way that implicates caring for another out of desire, inclination, or well-wishing good for another (feeling, emotional concerns), not primarily as a recognition of a duty toward another or a reason to help another (the cognitive dimension). When the concept of care is raised in academic settings most of the scholarly discourses on a theme arise from care ethics and feminist authors. They nevertheless indicate that care as a social concept must be approached as a matter of social justice, as it involves a social relationship characterized by giving and receiving, vulnerability, dependency, and empowerment (Vuk, 2020). The academic field of the ethics of care or care ethics drove a distinction between the discourse on the meaning of care as a moral duty in responding to need, and as a concept (Noddings, 1984; Tronto, 1993; Sevenhuijsen, 1998). Beside that the baseline of the ethics of care applied in an academic discourse

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orbits around the very meaning of care, it does not stay there; it goes further in enlarging its meaning and application. This means that the ethics of care discourses do not only apply in the context of biomedical ethics, as often perceived, but the notion of care is also applied in the discourse of moral education, and different contexts such as motherhood, nursing, friendship, disability, and old age. Nel Noddings sets forward the understanding of care, with a meaning that goes beyond one’s attitude or one’s moral obligations. According to Noddings (1984), care involves a receptivity or openness—a responsiveness toward the other as other, not assuming that one knows what the other’s good consists of. Instead, one’s actions are guided by the actions and views of the other’s own reality. The view of care proposed by J.  Tronto (1993) encompasses much broader settings. Tronto’s foundation of care consists of three general orientations. Accordingly, care implies: (a) the relationship with others (care for others in dyadic relationships); (b) the institutional orientation of care which considers social and political functions; and finally (c) care as an ongoing activity rather than a theory. More specifically, Tronto adds that in its very basis, the concept of care implies selflessness and action to respond a particular human need. To answer that need is understood as one’s moral motivation and responsibility toward the other. This means that, in a nutshell, care requires that morality be regarded in a broader context and perspective, not solely from principles and abstractions, but rather from concrete living situations. The research on the ethics of care approach has been further expanded by feminist authors whose approach to care emphasizes relational interdependency. For instance, Eva Feder Kittay in Love’s Labor (1999) raises awareness of the tensions between the language of care, disability, and dependency, demonstrating concerns for the importance of power imbalances and protection from the exposure of already inflicted vulnerabilities. Kittay’s approach to care departs from relational dependency and challenges the content of social and political theories within democratic institutions, which acknowledge the model of self-independence and individual-based equality (Kittay, 1999, pp. 75–99). Moreover, Kittay is motivated by the agenda of moral and political theories of justice making the shift toward the recognition of human vulnerabilities, the requirements of basic needs, and dependency relations, which are of crucial importance in her model. Therefore, her model of care implies a dependency relation and is founded on the assumption that care stems from the recognition of human need as a fundamental aspect of human existence, and as such it reaffirms human interdependency. The

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relational aspect of care bears moral responsibility in that it emerges as a consequence of the caring processes—giver of care and receiver. As a social concept, care denotes the concept of social justice, and as such it is prescribed with tasks, activities responding to a person’s needs. However, as acknowledged above, care is a complex concept in that it involves characteristics that extend its relationship with physical activity. In other words, sometimes it is difficult to look at care merely as a formal welfare service and not be aware of a particular narrative involved in the process of caring. This is to say that the matter of care as a personal communication is determined by certain dialectics of giving and receiving, and the shared narrative between the subjects involved. This means that caring as a social relationship includes interdependent and dependent relationships with others. Or, in other words, the process of care constructs a particular type of social interdependence. Departing from the aspect of justice, the main understanding of care within the care ethics approach addresses care as an element of dialogue and a lived experience. The care in such an aspect is considered as part of daily experience in responding to a person’s needs, implying a moral response and moral responsibility. Though it implies its interdependent character, caring for another still remains conceptually attached to a formal, professional, and caring type of relationship. My intention in the next paragraph is to expand the framework of a concept of care, by looking at its interdependent character and its reference to the meaning of concern and solicitude. The Meaning of Solicitude Amid Friendship The meaning of the notion of concern often associates with the meaning of care and caring. The concern related to caring in Disability studies discourse attaches to the framework of a formal or professional caring relationship. Very rarely, the meaning of concern implied in the context of such discourses points to the relationship of friendship. Similarly, the philosophical and theological discourses on friendship referring to concern for the other show ambiguity in aligning concern with the meaning of love as philia and love as agape often implicated within a mainstream comprehension of benevolence and beneficence. This puzzling situation regarding the meaning of concern invites further questions: where is the limit of the caring relationship and where does friendship begin? Can friendship be deprived of concern for the other? Or more importantly, can friendship love be detached from love as agape? What is the actual meaning of the

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notion of concern when applied to a framework of friendship relationships? The Cambridge Online Dictionary defines concern as something that does not only imply worries, but something that is of importance to someone, or something that is involved in something (See https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/concern?q=concerns). This, further, indicates that the meaning of concern transcends the meaning of care as a straightforward concept of the distribution of physical care within the context of caring. Concerns, related to the notion of responsiveness to and reception of the other, applied to interdependent relationships does not eliminate otherness, in terms of perceiving the other merely as a subject of moral obligation. Instead, it demonstrates that such relationships are not merely reduced to the morality of rational decision making, but imply an aspect of relationality. This means that the application of concern to a friendship relationship could not only supply friendship with recognition of mutual interdependency but also opens the possibility of rebalancing the power of a so-called unequal relationship. This entails that when mutual or reciprocal concern is applied to the relationship of friendship, caring surpasses the notion of duty, the power imbalance, or the respect for ethical boundaries. Instead, it shows that friendship is not only about its ends, but also about the process. This process then includes the concern, responsiveness, respect, and well-being of the two persons involved. Additionally, it points to an understanding of concern as an aspect of care and aligns with Paul Ricoeur’s account of the notion of solicitude in One self and another. This means that proposed understandings of care will depart from the strict notion of care applied within professional formal settings, but will share with care ethics an understanding of responsiveness as an element of recognition of not merely the other person’s needs, but as an aspect of respect for a person’s vulnerability and applied asymmetry. This will be my task to explain in the following paragraph.

Paul Ricoeur on Solicitude Paul Ricoeur, who did not write an explicit treatise on friendship, gives attention to the matter on various occasions. The most relevant contemporary dictionaries, such as Dictionnaire d’ethique et de philosophie morale and Dictionnaire Encyclopedique D’Ethique Chretienne (Lemoine et  al., 2013) in addressing the notion of friendship (amitie) both refer to Paul Ricoeur’s address on benevolence in his book One self as Another (1992). Ricoeur’s view on friendship implies Aristotle’s view, but he also adapts

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and exceeds it interchangeably through his references to Edmund Husserl (2007) and Emmanuel Levinas (1969). The most general inquiry in my reading orbits around the question: Who am I, or What is the I, and Who is the self? What corresponds mostly to the interest of such queries is not only the question of Whom am I or Who is the self. Besides establishing a philosophical anthropology grounded in such a query, Ricoeur’s postulation interrogates the framework of practical philosophy, best corresponding to concerns for the other, and the other within a friendship framework. The ultimate purpose of this postulation is not only to rethink the established knowledge of the other and friendship relationality, but also through his relational principle integrated into his dialectic of one self and another. In my understanding, the link between the Ricoeur’s reflection on the meaning of the other and friendship does not only consist in the conceptual framework of its rationale. Ricoeur’s attachment to friendship hermeneutics is of a practical importance in that it says that friendship is not only about discovering the meaning of the other (human self); its (friendship) importance lies in its process, including shared activities understood as human actions and a friendship narrative understood as a friendship’s testimony (Ricoeur, 1992). As friendship within the scope of this book is thought of as relational anthropology and interdependent participation, and the notion of solicitude is understood as an intertwined exchange of the meaning of concern and responsiveness, my key focus in One self as Another with regard to the idea of friendship involves looking at the notion of solicitude and the dialectics of Ricoeur’s use of oneself as another. To understand the implication of Ricoeur’s anthropology (the meaning of the other) for an ethics of friendship (in this particular perspective, his notion of solicitude) and vice versa, I will arrive at the notion of solicitude by first departing from his insight into a knowledge of the other. Friendship, Solicitude, and Dialectics Between Other and Another Ricoeur’s thinking on friendship integrates an anthropological and an ethical perspective. This means that his meaning of friendship includes aspect on the meaning of the other and his reflection on friendship underlines the aspect of a good life on an individual level and the notion of justice. In this regard, he differentiates between the notion of reciprocity and mutuality. The notion of reciprocity that he adapts from Aristotle relates to the logic of justice, while his notion of the term mutuality

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corresponds to the notion of gift. This is to say that he departs from Aristotle’s reflection on friendship but does not remain attached to such thinking either. Considering the anthropological aspect of his rethinking of friendship, it is important to first mention that, according to Ricoeur, the meaning of selfhood refers to the identity that belongs to an individual person not the another. This through the lens of a Biblical terminology means that before God no one is the same, as each person carries a unique identity that, theologically speaking, refers to the meaning of a person’s dignity. This is to say that friendship is never between two equal persons with equal identities. It is always between two different persons with asymmetrical identities. The dialectics of self and the other in Ricoeur is interesting as it says that selfhood refers to the other, which further means that another as oneself and oneself as another are important ethical identities, as seeing the other as oneself implies being concerned about the other. Thus, another as oneself and oneself as another corresponds to the dialectics of united ethical identity. It is important to notice that for Ricoeur friendship, though implying justice, also implies a certain amount of love. This is to say that the meaning of justice considered is not strictly a legal type of justice. It is before all a justice based on a reciprocal dissymmetrical exchange between giving and receiving. This means that justice when applied in a framework of friendship does not correspond to a strict exchange governed by certain proportions. Instead, Ricoeur’s justice applied in a friendship framework implies a certain amount of responsiveness and love that best corresponds to the meaning of mutuality. It is exactly the solicitude that when applied in Ricoeur’s framework of friendship challenges the Aristotelian notion of justice integrated into a process of reciprocity as a strict sharing between equals. This is to say that in my reading Ricoeur’s notion of friendship poses the question to the status of reciprocity and the status of dissymmetry between the persons involved. Such reflection also challenges the moral or ethical aim of the friendship rationale. The ethical, according to Ricoeur, is not separated from the anthropological. In other words, the concept of friendship is not a separated category, distinguished from the process of practical (that includes a mutual exchange between the two persons involved). In fact, it integrates the human subject and human action, whose anthropological composition is based on a dialectic between the other and another. In line with such a view of friendship, the other is not simply an alter ego, but the true other. The love of one neighbor (agape) and the love for one friend (philia) in my assessment of Ricoeur thought, are interchangeably interwoven and

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are best exemplified within the notion of solicitude. Solicitude, departing from the original idea of friendship, is a form of foundation of connection between oneself and the other. In other words, concerns for the oneself make one self-attuning to the other. Solicitude in this sense is not merely a concern in its strict sense, but it underpins empathy and responsiveness for the other (Ricoeur, 2007, pp. 72–90). As he put it: Solicitude adds the dimension of value, whereby each person is irreplaceable in our affection and our esteem. In this respect, it is in experiencing the irreparable loss of the loved other that we learn, through the transfer of the other onto ourselves, the irreplaceable character of our own life. It is first for the other that I am irreplaceable. In this sense, solicitude replies to the other’s esteem for me. But if this response were not in a certain manner spontaneous, how could solicitude not be reduced to dreary duty? (Ricoeur, 1992)

When solicitude is applied to a context of friendship rationale, its meaning departs from a strict obligation and is inclined toward more spontaneous benevolence. Namely, the notion of solicitude when applied to the context of friendship is a reminder that friendship cannot be deprived from its component of living well in the sense that it contributes to one’s personal self-esteem. But concern for the other and about the other is not only a service to the other but implies the notion of justice and complementarity in a friendly face-to-face encounter. Concern understood as solicitude matters for friendship not only because it supplies friendship with a certain “duty” toward the other, but also because it “saves” the friendship union from becoming individualized and utilitarian. Differently, it also “prevents” the concept of solicitude from being reduced to a pure obligation. The sense of justice in such a perspective is applied to the notion of the other and from another toward the other (Ricoeur, 1992, p. 21). When such solicitude is applied to the context of friendship, the ethical aim and moral aim of concern for the other are used inter alia. This means that the moral aim of friendship precedes the ethical aim. Being concerned for a friend means recognizing the other as the other, but also means that the other realizes that s/he is recognized by the other as a true self. Being concerned for the other out of solicitude and not merely duty or obligation has a moral character and an ethical aim. This is to say that friendship is a moral category because it concerns one’s being, and one’s ethical aim that is the good of the other. In my observation of such dialectics, it is impossible to separate the moral dimension of friendship from its

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ethical aim, or anthropology of friendship from ethics. This implies the meaning he ascribes to solicitude: that solicitude is not simply a duty or certain moral obedience. It transcends it as its status lies in benevolent spontaneity which includes one’s self-esteem and one’s aim for the good life (Ricoeur, 1992). The moral and ethical aim of concerns, according to Ricoeur, does not lie in the obligation of one to respond to the vulnerable face of the other, as this was for Levinas (1992). Instead, his focus is motivated by the orientation of one toward the other out of regard for the other. This means that the ethical aim of the action within interdependent human relationships for Ricoeur is not invoked by the norm or obligation, but out of benevolent spontaneity that is fundamental in understanding concern for the other and solicitude (Ricoeur, 1992, p.  89). Ricoeur’s thinking on friendship adds Levinas’s relation to the face of the other, but also distinguishes from Levinas in that he put the notion of face into the dynamic of solicitude based on benevolent spontaneity. Benevolent spontaneity when put into the context of interdependent relationships, according to Ricoeur, includes receiving and giving. Receiving in this sense equalizes responsibility and recognition in accordance with love and justice. The benevolent spontaneity proposed by Ricoeur matters for friendship in that giving stems from sympathy and is located in a dissymmetry of the mutual exchange of receiving and giving. Sympathy is not reduced to pity even when it includes the other’s person suffering but is governed through the recognition of the value of other and the value of one-self. It comes from the self and extends to the other, and in this way it reestablished equality through the shared admission of fragility and finally of mortality (Ricoeur, 1992, 2007). Put into a relationship of friendship which in this regard implies a recognition of vulnerability, the concern means that one does not act toward the other by being affected by the other’s pity, weakness, and suffering, but through acceptance and recognition of oneself as the other and the other as another other. The dissymmetry here is not expressed via an exchange of an unequal power. It lies in recognition of each person’s uniqueness that departs from first acceptance of the same ontological nature, which in my perspective is already a sufficient anthropological basis for forming the relationship of friendship. Related to this, we can admit that when friendship presupposes dissymmetry it means that the giving and receiving constitutive to friendship are not measured by equality, but by inequality. Aristotle’s treatise on perfect friendship, grounded in the strict equal exchange of giving and receiving, excludes slaves and women as they could never reach the strict proportion

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of an equal reciprocal exchange. By the implication of solicitude and benevolent sympathy, Ricoeur demonstrated the limitation of such a view, adding that the proper equilibrium or symmetry between friends does not consist only in sharing the pleasure or respect of one’s virtuous character but, as he adds, sharing pain of suffering is not symmetrically opposite to sharing a pleasure (Ricoeur, 1992). This entails that the notion of concern understood as solicitude implies the context of a friendship relationship, it can never equalize the proportion of receiving and giving exchange. Friendship cannot be deprived of the implication of benevolent spontaneity, due to the assumption that there is always a dissymmetry between the two people involved, as two persons are always asymmetrical in themselves, because they are unique creatures. The dissymmetry in light of asymmetry means that each person possesses an intrinsic dignity and possesses a distinct subjectivity. Solicitude thus unites and justifies the ethical aim with spontaneous benevolence. It adds to spontaneity dimension of the other’s value, saying that each person is irreplaceable: I cannot myself have self-esteem unless I esteem others as myself (Ricoeur, 1992, p. 192). The value is projected into the irreplaceability of the other, which is to say that the emphasis is on the response to the other because the other carries value. Friendship permits that benevolent spontaneity is reversible as it permits the exchange of roles, which means that it removes the strict hierarchical role exchange and is non-substitutive of the persons involved. The importance of solicitude for the relationship of friendship I will summarize in what Ricoeur has claimed: to self-esteem, understood as a reflexive moment of the wish for the “good life”, solicitude as essentially, the dimension of lack, the fact that we need friends; as a reaction to the effect of solicitude on self-esteem, the self perceives itself as another among others. (Ricoeur, 1992, p. 192)

Friendship should not be merely an intellectual meeting of minds (although friendship sometimes includes that) but, as has been seen so far, the priority of friendship lies in the meeting of the heart. Concern understood as solicitude and put into the dynamic of benevolent spontaneity underpins reciprocal sense (attuning) and empathic knowledge from one person toward the other and vice versa. It is the reciprocal exchange of emphatic knowledge, but sensitivity at the first place that fits into the framework of spontaneous benevolence, and ultimately corresponds to the meaning of solicitude and benevolent spontaneity.

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The Complexity of Views Regarding the Meaning of Solicitude in Relation to Philia and Agape Being concerned for the other as one would like to be concerned about by the other in return, is in my view, a strictly moral, even virtuous, activity in the sense that it not only demonstrates the person’s outward reality, but moreover his/her inward moral dispositions. Such thinking, however, posits a challenge first to a care ethicist and to moral philosophers in responding that the concept of caring can exceed the formal relationship of caring and locate it in a friendship relationship. The second challenge of such suggestions concerns theological discourses that attach the meaning of solicitude or the concern for the other with the meaning of social solidarity—placing it into a realm of a neighborly love and simultaneously detaching it from the scope of friendship. Agape as a love for one’s neighbor and philia as a more specific love for one’s friend, despite their conceptual differences, have a common purpose: this is good for the other human person. Though these two loves are often regarded as distinct, they cannot be straightforwardly separated from each other. Rather, as I already implicitly suggested earlier, they need integration. The field of Theological Ethics and Catholic social teaching concerning a “theme of disability” gave little attention to the relationship with people with disabilities as potential friends, apart from the realm of neighborly love. In other words, within a major theological discourse—Catholic social doctrine, including teaching on the preferential option for the poor—the disabled were given attention within charitable love. The personalistic relational aspect in this perspective has often been marginalized. Theologian Pia Matthews (Matthews, 2013) referring to the story of the Good Samaritan interrogates this question in a slightly reverse dialectic regarding the aspect of reciprocal love. Matthews, pointing to the reciprocal character of love as agape, questions the reversal action of interdependency, saying that often it is not only a good Samaritan as the one who helps the Jew. Instead, it is a Jew as a good Samaritan helping a Samaritan (Matthews, 2013, p. 155). Applied to the discourse including people with disability, Matthews’s argument actually says that within the context of mutual care exchange, it is the people with disability that are often acting as good Samaritans toward nondisabled people, instead of nondisabled people being the first-­ line carers for the disabled. The process Matthews indicates reveals the reversal act of giving and receiving applied either in the relationship of friendship or the relationship of caring. Accordingly, the personalistic

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aspect of mutual exchange says that the acting person (care giver) and apparently nonacting person (care receiver) are mutually involved and intertwined, as the very same process is sometimes governed, not through the exchange between giving and receiving, but also the exchange between love as philia and love as agape (Matthews, 2013). If the action from one toward the other is guided merely by a moral obligation or a duty to act out of charity, instead of a benevolent responsiveness, then such action is limited. People with intellectual disability, like every other person, should be regarded not merely as those toward whom the action of love as service is directed, but from a personalistic initiative of free love as an encounter with another other as one true self. The meaning of beneficence in this regard exceeds the relationship of giving and receiving within the context of care, whereas the meaning of benevolence surpasses the context of merely a relationship of friendship. The perplexity of such roles means that the person is regarded as either another self or, according to Paul Ricoeur, the another other. Caring for another in terms of a formal relationship includes provision of physical care. When care is applied to a relationship of friendship, it does not only imply physical care. The meaning of care within such discourses exceeds the provision of physical care and implies concern for the other in terms of one’s psychological and spiritual needs. My point here is to indicate that caring applied within formal and informal relationship implies the meaning of benevolence and beneficence, as the person is not merely reduced to the object of care but, before all, s/he is a subject of responsive action, seen as another other. From the reason above, I suggest solicitude not only be regarded in light of benevolent spontaneity but related to the meaning of concern and responsiveness as two elements of friendship relationships. This is not only to straightforwardly challenge the meaning of utilitarian friendship but, moreover, my suggestion sees within it an important moral concept, understood as an inward disposition toward the other in terms of a hidden attuning for the well-being of the other and the one’s dependent need for the another other. More precisely, the suggestion I propose underpins the meaning of solicitude with a relationship of friendship and aims to demonstrate that friendship as one type of interdependent relationship based on giving and receiving cannot be completely detached from the notion of philia, nor can philia be fully deprived of the meaning of agape. Solicitude in this research refers to a disinterested gift of friendship whose focal point is to reaffirm the stability of friendship from being reduced to the desire of utilitarian consumeristic morality or materialized pleasure. The friend is

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not only the one that is concerned for the other, but as one that needs to permit/accept being concerned. This is to say that all the types of interdependent relationship mentioned above are before all the interdependent relationship based on giving and receiving, specific to humans. Those interdependent relationships understood as relationships between humans are disposed toward each other through affection that facilitates certain types of concerns for the other. The subjects involved in the relationship of friendship enjoy equal empowerment, instead of the distinction between those of low cognitive capacity and those of higher cognitive capacity, or those of being less or more human alike. What friendship is about in the first place and what I aim to emphasize is that friendship is before all a moral relationship, not an intellectual property in itself. This is to say that there is nothing wrong with being concerned for the other on the level of a reciprocal caring relationship or being concerned by and for the other within a relationship of friendship. But it could be a moral failure for such a type of relationship and failure of love as agape and philia if solicitude is completely deprived of the relationships of friendship. Instead it is the agape love and philia love that became united in solicitude toward the other friend. What About Caring Friends? The ancient notion of friendship, despite being highly symmetrical, stresses the importance of the idea of reciprocal goodwill understood as being concerned with the other person’s good (NE 1168b). That friendship is a goodwill when reciprocated (NE 1155b34) expresses the disposition of one wishing good to the other. The late modern example of concern expressed in light of altruistic emotion addressed by Lawrence Blum (1980) means being concerned with the moral value of friendship and contrasts with Kantian rationalistic morality (See Sensen, 2013, pp.  143–160), but it is actually Paul Ricoeur, in One self and Another (transl. 1992), who displays the idea of well-wishing in the sense of an ethical demand of benevolent love. Though Aristotle and ancient friendship set forward the aspect of goodwill their friendship, as well as certain friendships in modernity, remain not only symmetrical or normative, but address a moral closure of friendship, where friendship is perceived as a movement between those similar in virtue, status and character, or emotion. In other words, despite Aristotle’s friendship acknowledging an aspect of caring, it remains exclusive to those similar in character. The two

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friends care for each other, not just because of some pleasure (fun or fulfillment of sentiments) or utility (money or prosperity), but because they accept the other person as he/she is. The difference/asymmetry in this relationship is not an obstacle, but an opportunity to meet another person as a true other, capable of a friendship relationship. Such concern or care in my perspective places the dynamic of friendship reciprocity into an economy of hospitality, instead of strict reciprocal exchange. The friendship that implies concern or solicitude for the other friend means caring for the other out of recognition that the other is a person who shares with me an intrinsic dignity and the same ontological nature, and for such a reason s/he is worthy of my concern. This, in other words, means that I primarily care for a person who is my friend, independent of my motivation or orientation toward the achievement of certain goods. Caring friends are bound together out of independent interdependency, not the other way around. Thus the explanation of why I care and why I am a caring friend involves my motivation in a reference, not to a person’s character or achievement of a certain good, but to what we share as humans: that we are both vulnerable and that we both interdependently need each other. Such reasoning allows friendship among differences. Being concerned for the other and responsive to the other’s needs is a way toward flourishing. As an interdependent relationship, in such understanding friendship helps people understand self-worth and wellbeing whereas concerns and responsiveness as interrelational categories fluids from the other toward another. Concern for the other and responsiveness in addition to friendship is interrelation and as such is a necessary indicator of the renewal of a relational anthropology of friendship impacting one’s self-esteem and combating the utilitarian and consumeristic ideas implicated, but often hidden, within a relationship of friendship. If friendship as a concept of universal importance cannot be reachable by all (for instance people with disability in our case), can at least concern, responsiveness, and recognition of common vulnerability between one and another remedy such a situation? From such reasons, my suggestion is that solicitude as concern for the other and related responsiveness are the two key elements for the renewal of a moral stance of friendship. This also means that, in the first place, care is not a process merely to satisfy the other person’s needs, as is often understood within disability and rehabilitation or within the scope of a charitable initiative such as the preferential option for the poor. Neither the concern nor caring implied in a friendship relationship be confused with the traditional notion of the distribution of care as one’s

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moral obligation toward the other. This means that the true recognition of the other’s identity steams from who one is before God and one loves the other more than one should love oneself. It does not only imply a one-­ way process, but a dynamic of mutual recognition and exchange out of love. This further means that the demand for the notion of caring friends has been set forward by Jesus himself in John 15, 15. It was the paradigm of Jesus’s example of true friendship in John 15, 15 that contradicted Aristotle’s notion in NE 1161b: that the master sees the slave as an extrinsic good for himself, a commodity, he cannot see slave’s self as an extension of his own self (NE 1161b). In a slave as another, one can only see the slave qua slave not the other slave. It is the version of a true Christian friendship in John 15, 15 that best integrates recognition of a person qua person, and places the concerns and recognition, the acceptance and responsiveness in the center of the framework of friendship. From the perspective of moral and ethical reasoning, John 15, 15 demonstrates Jesus’s gesture of breaking down the hierarchical tendency, not only between the master-slave dichotomy but breaking the “world composition” in terms of one self over the other. John 15, 13–15, indicates a direction that supplies friendship with a reversal in terms that brings friendship a new category, the category of inclusion and befriending. The friendship in John 15, 15 and the previously mentioned account of Ricoeur’s dialectics between the other and another, when put together indicates the common element: the value of friendship is put on the recognition of and love for the other, not out of one’s self-centered egocentric interest and purposes (purchase of certain good), but out of the love and care for the other. The other is not perceived as a commodity, or as an extension of his own self (NE 1161b), but is recognized within the interdependent participation of an interrelational exchange of mutual concerns and responsiveness. The difference between Aristotle’s friendship and Jesus’s friendship is in the form of participation, where the pyramid (hierarchy) is replaced by the presence of one’s body, the exchange of identity recognition and is an appeal toward the maintenance of such a reestablished friendship. Jesus’s friendship represents a newly established covenant of friendship. This friendship not only expresses solicitude as responsiveness (“Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets,” Mt, 7:12), but shows how friendship is a movement toward the other and from the other toward the another. The implication of vulnerability and solicitude in the revision of the definition of friendship aims to challenge the friendship framework

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grounded in an equal exchange of giving and receiving. As the main interest of this discussion includes the perspective on disability, the friendship based on a relational anthropology and interdependent participation is inclusive and an important part to people with profound and intellectual disability. More precisely, the suggestion of an element of vulnerability and solicitude challenges the universally accepted friendship framework often governed by power and hierarchy whereas, looking from a different angle, it offers an open possibility for people with disability in partaking in friendship in a reconsidered framework. Vulnerability and solicitude are the modes which impact the practice of friendship and determine the truth and falsity of a friendship’s intentions, its value, and the moral character of the persons involved. When different people recognize each other and when their relationship implies reciprocity, they became bearers of equality. Therefore, friendship that implies recognition of vulnerability and an implication of solicitude is not only asymmetrical, but it confronts the symmetrical vision of friendship and places friendship’s orientation toward the concerns for other. The otherness in relation to friendship points to a dynamic form of respecting and valuing another person vis a vis the other person. The Friendship’s Narrative The very process of friendship provides the answer of how experience of friendship is developed. It consists of shared activities, equal respect and value for each other, affection, a certain spontaneity, shared interest, shared vulnerability, particular benevolence and beneficence, and personal growth. The importance of the narrative within a process of friendship supplies friendship with a specific meaning which consists not only of conceptual discourses around the theme of friendship; it includes communication, activities, attuning, bodily expressions, and the encounter between the persons involved. It is precisely the friendship narrative, consisting of friendship’s foundation, process, and development, that creates a dialogue of friendship and brings into reconsideration the very friendship definition. The assessment of friendship demonstrates that friendship is a spontaneous process that requires formation and development. The development and formation of friendship thus underlines a particular narrative integrated into its very process. My aim in the following discussion is to portray the notion of narrative as something central to process of friendship and peculiar to each friendship dyad. This is to say that every

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friendship understood as an interdependent relationship between two subjects implies a particular narrative, which contributes to the comprehension of the universal meaning of friendship; however, it is not reduced to merely verbal expressions. The narrative of friendship creates the body of friendship, and in reverse, posits a challenge to a disembodied form of friendship, such as for instance Facebook friendship. But what exactly, does this friendship narrative involves? The narrative implies verbal communication and other forms of human intercommunication and interdependency, including the body language, facial expressions, and gestures. For such reasons the narrative includes a broader understanding, the story which does not underpin merely a story but is rather a foundation and a process of formation of a particular friendship between the two persons. Narrative reveals a form of relationship, type of friendship, and the identity of a person. It demonstrates that friendship is full of a different situation, that friendship is a complex process, and that a particular narrative of friendship does not correspond merely to a possibility to share a personal life story within a process of friendship itself, but that the narrative also means creating a particular friendship uniqueness. The narrative surpasses the conceptional structure of the meaning of friendship as such, providing a practical insight into not only the friendship formation, but the true knowledge of two friends, as the other and the another. This means that narrative demonstrates what is at the heart of friendship, it invites toward the liberation of the friendship relationship from the false prejudices, enabling the mutual respect and a way to flourish. In other words, the narrative enriches friendship in the way that it challenges its structural expectations and predictions, bringing into the context a dynamic of nonexpectancy (e.g., a surprise!). For instance, the narrative of people who are different in social status, character, or cognitive capacities demonstrate different characters of friendship, by involving a different narrative of friendship. Despite a person’s lessened capacities to speak or even a noncapacity to express oneself verbally, people involved in a certain friendship narrative of this type create something that adds meaning to the universality of a friendship. Moreover, friendship narratives reveal human need for the other. However, despite revealing the need for other, narrative does not mean that every person involved in a process of friendship is a true friend. For this reason friendship must include a special kind of human experience recognized as friendship foundation. The foundation of friendship does not always depart from reciprocal choice, interest, or sentiment, as the mainstream account of friendship suggests. Sometimes

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friendship is simply a given; it is an involuntary choice from one toward the other. In this regard the involuntary element involved in a process of friendship in my opinion refers to the previously addressed disinterested gift of friendship, because a relationship that starts as involuntary often implies a strong friendship narrative. For instance, the case of caring communities where people who are involuntarily brought together into a process of relationship—through a dynamic of relationship, sharing of activities, stories, similar interests—shows not only interest for another person’s wellbeing, but discovers the potentiality of reciprocal well-­ wishing. The mutual well-wishing and well doing that gradually develops through the process of friendship cannot be the foundational factor of friendship, besides being gradually developed within for instance friendship narrative. These characteristics bring to the dimension of friendship the openness and solidarity in terms that the very content of friendship implies lived reality and personal exchange between the friends involved into such a friendship narrative.

The Reimagining of the Meaning of Friendship Looking at the hermeneutics of friendship from the theological and socio-­ ethical perspectives distinguishes between its twofold meaning: its socio-­ anthropological and theo-anthropological significance. Saying that friendship consists of its socio-anthropological as well as its theo-­ anthropological character does not see the two separate entities or approaches to friendship. The distinction refers to implications of a different argument. Within a closure of this discussion on the proposal for rethinking friendship, I will separately look at a socio-anthropological and a theo-anthropological meaning of friendship as already portrayed through the approach undertaken. Friendship as a socio-anthropological and theo-­ anthropological dimension, integrates theological and anthropological perspectives and the very end of friendship. For a complete view on friendship, the theological (supernatural) and anthropological (natural) aspect of friendship must be intertwined. The Socio-anthropological View on Friendship In setting the framework for a socio-anthropological understanding of friendship, I aim to draw upon the importance of socio-anthropological elements of friendship, where friendship is not only a highly virtuous

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moral activity created to achieve a moral good but primarily a human activity, integrated in a person’s need for the other. It is a form of belonging and a participation, crucial for the “normal” development of a person. The empirical research within the field of Disability studies and the psychological and sociological literature previously examined has shown that the lack of friendship can have damaging consequences for a person’s socio-psychological and physical functioning. People with disabilities due to isolation and unjust treatments in the history of disability have been those who were deprived of a possibility of friendship. The constant isolation, vulnerablizing, and stigmatization resulted in damaging consequences, increasing the loneliness and risk of so-called iatrogenic diseases. On the contrary, the possibility of a friendship relationship creates positive impacts on people’s functional behavior and psycho-social development. Moreover, a friendship relationship is a necessary requirement in creating an emotional dependence different from family ties and for this reason friends play key roles in a person socio-emotional growth. The most relevant socio-psychological literature on friendship describes friendship as an informal interaction between two persons involved. A friend is a person other than family or staff with whom a person looks forward to spending time with or participating in some common activity together). Friends are thought of as significant others, in affirming the sense of the self and the other. Despite different social, material, cultural circumstances, as well as age, gender, and social class can impact the quality of friendship relationship in terms of its formation and maintenance, the key elements that in the psychological and sociological study of friendship prescribe to the anthropological importance, add to rethink the meaning of friendship as acceptance and recognition. Friendship is not merely a need, but is a relationship of acceptance and recognition of such a need (Bogdan & Taylor, 1987, pp.  34–39). My point in prescribing friendship its socio-­ anthropological understanding is to highlight that friendship matters for the development of personal and sociological character of people. It is not merely a moral category important for the development of one’s character, but also for the socio-psychological functioning of a person, despite a person’s rational capacities. If the person is deprived of the possibility of friendship, s/he is excluded from the possibility of not only developing the intrinsic capacity for relationship, but also one’s social, psychological, and cognitive capacity. The relationship of friendship or the presence of a friend in one’s life impacts the socio-psychological character of normal

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functioning and communication with the surrounding world, and for this reason, friendship carries socio-anthropological importance for the development of a person. Theo-anthropological View on Friendship In addition to socio-anthropological reasoning, friendship as a theo-­ anthropological concept includes also a spiritual and supernatural character. This first means that the character of theo-anthropological reasoning, besides seeing friendship as natural activity, supplies friendship with a supernatural end and a possibility to reconsider God as an acting agent within the very process of friendship. Most of the arguments in such discussions are rooted in a Scripture or refer the Fathers of the Church and early Christian theologians’ interpretations on friendship. When friendship is approached from the theological point of view then most of the time it appears that friendship before all is not a choice, but a gift; it is not an individualistic or utilitarian interest of self for the other and vice versa. Rather, it is a community which integrates the aspect of the love as philia and love as agape. As a gift, friendship does not only mean that it is the friendship that is a gift; but because the other is a gift so is the friendship. This means that friendship is conditioned by the other who is the gift, revealed within the dynamic of friendship understood as an interdependent relationship. This supplies friendship with a communitarian character and also means that, theologically speaking, friendship is a community of two persons and a community of the unity of love. When the two people enter into a relationship of friendship they build a particular narrative. They not only depend on each other, and become themselves, but they create unity. To become oneself or to create unity is a process not of a straightforward relational harmony of equality, as with Aristotle’s friends (NE 1157b36). The unity is marked by a certain ambivalence and rupture, meaning that a faithful friend considers the misfortunes of his friend and bears them together with him, even their suffering. This means that harmony in friendship depends on eruptions or particular disclosures of oneself toward the other. Such eruption is caused by the exposure or implication of a common human vulnerability, first as an anthropological condition and secondly as relational category, revealed and exposed through the very process of friendship. A community of friendship is not a typical unity of feelings, will, self-interest, opinions, or even sympathy. Nor is it the dissolution of individuality. Instead, the communitarian aspect

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of being together simply shows that friendship is belonging, and not a disembodied and virtual, but embodied relationship, as physical presence matters. From this reason it bears moral significance. In other words, being together strengthens the relationship of friendship as an embodied relationship and as a community of love. Friendship as the community of being together demands further explanation, completed in the assumption of the unity of love. This addresses the distinction between love as philia (friendship love) and love as agape (love as a service and sacrifice). The contemporary changes in thinking about people, impacting the conceptual thinking on friendship and progressively shifting the understanding of friendship, resulted in confusion and ambivalences between use of a love as philia and the love as agape. Although the mainstream notion on the distinction between philia love and agape love indicates the character of friendship or a preferential and particular character of love (philia), or underlines the impartial and universal character of love (agape), the suggestion that stems from this discussion points to integration of these two loves as a relationship of interdependent participation. The idea of integration of these two loves as united in the relationship of friendship could be a problematic issue in contemporary discussions in ethics of care and a process of formal relationship (relationship between people with intellectual disabilities and their support workers), as well as the mainstream account of friendship between equals. Yet, theologically speaking, it may have roots in the New Testament dictum which Jesus revealed to his disciples in Jn 15, 13–15. Accordingly, the proposal of such friendship love interchangeably uses philia alongside and agape. Church Fathers such as St. Clement of Alexandria and St Basil the Great also stress direct attention to the importance of and the parallel between the love as agape and love of friendship within the friendship relationship, referring to Jn 15, 13–15 and Lk 16:9 (ed. Roberts, 1867). A number of theologians, in their attempt to explain the relation between love and friendship, commonly accepted St. Thomas’s doctrine (ST II, II, q.23)—who was inspired by St. Augustine, the Fathers of the Church, and Scripture—writing that charity is supernatural friendship with God and one’s neighbor, understanding friendship as mutual well-wishing, sharing of a common life, and having the same end. Coming to the modern and contemporary idea of friendship, particularly when the discourses include discussion within the academic field of Disability studies or Disability theology, the integration of love as philia and love as agape within relationship of friendship present a challenge. The challenge lies in the conceptual difficulty of separating the

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sacrificial, service or caring (love) from the relationship of friendship depending on a straightforward interpretation of philia. My suggestion in perceiving friendship as a relationship of interdependent participation suggests that in order to make a friendship a dynamic and vivid process of mutual exchange, the integration of the two loves is a necessary condition in order to rethink a friendship. In order to achieve the end of philia love, that within the reconstruction of a definition of friendship, includes the recognition of one’s true identity, the love as agape (including solicitude and openness toward disclosure of vulnerability) became a means in achieving the true end of a perfect philia. The very nature of philia in Greek signifies a friendly relation that often refers to inner dispositions. In contrast to philia, agape (in relation to the verb agapeo) points to rational love with fewer sensations and a direct inclination. Put in the context of modern languages, agape is closer to the meaning of conviction, whereas philia is closer to the meaning of tender love. Agape and philia paralleled each other in many ways. In order that the friendship became not overcomfortable, utilitarian, or individualistic, the love of agape is a necessary condition for the trustworthiness of friendship, which reveals its moral significance. The integration of philia and agape into a dynamic of friendship unites the two persons in a unity of friendship in such a way that it protects friendship from, on the one hand, becoming a romantic or consumeristic community; and, on the other hand, from becoming impartial, or rational—close to an obligation conception of morality. Based on such an exchange of two loves within the relationship of friendship, friendship is a dyad unity that involves co-rejoicing and co-­suffering. Being together in creating the community as a unity of two loves does not mean being enslaved, possessed, or immersed by friendship. Rather, being together as a unity of love discovers in the another other one’s own actualized human and relational potentiality, becoming who one truly is at the condition of being accepted by another friend. The antinomy of agape and philia is inseparable from the community of friendship as it does not only give value to relationship of friendship, but it also shows value and appreciation for the other friend as a different other. Friends are unequal, different persons who together process the actualization of the community of friendship, and they are gifts as friendship is a gift. Friends’ disposition toward love as agape and love as philia, is not only the relationship of interdependent participation, but creates interdependent unity instead of

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merely one’s moral obligation toward another. Being together not only refers to the meaning of friendship as relational anthropology of interdependent participation but creates unity of belonging where each of the person remains themselves in relation to the other.

Notes 1. According to Google Scholar the use of the term human vulnerability from 2020 until 2023 was about 82,800, and the term life related to vulnerabilities has appeared around 108,000 times in review articles including Social Sciences, Medicine and Health; Business, Economics, and Management, as well as Humanities and Arts. 2. In this approach, I briefly present the main ideas about notion of vulnerability in selected academic fields that have impacted larger discourses on vulnerability in popular magazines and academic discussions. It is beyond the scope of this analysis to include all possible approaches and interpretations of the notion. 3. The factor to categorize the socially vulnerable groups according to selected socio-cultural index includes poverty, class, race, ethnicity, religion, gender, age, disability, poor health, literacy, etc. 4. For a more robust comprehension theologically, this distinction requires implication and integration between not only various theological disciplines, but an interdisciplinary approach for which the space within the contours of this approach is limited. 5. The implication of the wounds of sin and stirrings in his body, as indicated by GS (n.14), requires further examination in searching for the grounds for considering vulnerability as the consequence of humanity’s fallen nature. I would hesitate to describe human vulnerability as the straightforward or direct consequence of sin. Rather, my suggestion aims to rethink vulnerability as an additional consequence of humanity’s fallen nature; it was “added” to the already-created human nature. Yet it is not the failure of human nature that damages or interrupts itself but rather sin that corrupts and damages humanity’s God-given, creaturely nature. Therefore, vulnerability is not a direct consequence of sin, neither is disability. For more on such discussion see Vuk, M. (2022). A Theological Challenge to the Notion of Vulnerability—a hypotheses. In Robert Petkovšek and Bojan Žalec (Eds.). Ethics of resilience: vulnerability and survival in global uncertainty, 87–95. LitVerlag Series: Berlin.

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6. I thank Thierry Collaud to address this in “La vulnérabilité nécessaire au bien commun” (Paper Presented at Colloque International Personne vulnérable et société de performance, Institut Interdisciplinaire d’Ethique et des Droits de l’Homme, Université de Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland, April 2, 2014). 7. For instance, Cooper in his analysis on forms of friendship (Cooper, 1977, p. 624) highlihted that friendship exists only where one wishes to the other party what is good for him, for his own sake, and when this well-wishing is reciprocated. People say that one ought to wish to a friend what is good, for his own sake; but those who wish what is good [to someone else] are well-­ disposed (evvov) and not friends. For friendship is a goodwill (evvota) when reciprocated (NE, 1155b31–34).

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Final Conclusion

The proposal to rethink the anthropology of friendship as interdependent participation open to people with disability is a reminder of often forgotten anthropological frameworks of human communication and belonging. The way toward reaching equality in human interrelations first includes renewal of forgotten realities: that as humans we are interdependent and vulnerable. The examined concepts suggest that friendship as a category of universal importance, based on the acceptance of vulnerability and common interdependency understood as solicitude of benevolent spontaneity, is actualized as relationships of recognition, acceptance, and responsiveness. For these reasons, addressing friendship as a relational anthropology of interdependent participation, despite being an uneasy task is, in fact, necessity. Vulnerability and solicitude applied to the framework of friendship are the modes which change the practice of friendship, and also determine the truth about friendship’s intentions, value, and moral significance. Therefore, friendship that implies the recognition of vulnerability and the implication of solicitude not only is an open and inclusive narrative but also confronts the symmetrical gap of exclusivist friendship. The proposal to reimagine friendship as a theo-anthropological category contributes to rethinking the concept of the imago Dei and asks for a renewal of Christian solidarity, suggesting seeking charitable love in a different perspective, one that surpasses the formality of charitable activism and instead practices © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Vuk, Theological Perspectives on Reimagining Friendship and Disability, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33816-8

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charity within a “face-to-face” encounter demanding participation in relationships. This also entails that besides the specific outcome and the abovementioned impact, the purpose of this examination was to find the way in which the openness and recognition of a true self in the experience of mutual relationships transcends the boundaries of cognitive differences, social status, likeness, or utility and, based on such rationale, suggests a redefinition of friendship. For this reason it was important to provide an accessible and inclusive model of friendship open to people with disability. The historical context of the development of friendship has shown how complex it is to define friendship when only following one perspective or one moral view. The very definition of friendship explored in the first chapter orbits around its forms and varieties that are not only the varieties based on a particular historical view or academic perspective. These varieties and forms integrated into the very definition of friendship are also impacted by socio-cultural determinants of modern society. As such they are integrated into the very structure of friendship embodied and revealed in a particular narrative of friendship. Friendship, besides being a personal and moral matter, consists of different categorizations, conceptualizations, and transgressions. The analysis of different approaches has shown that friendship was and remains a valuable and meaningful anthropological, spiritual, and moral category. Aristotle’s treatise on friendship, the most dominant among ancient thinkers and the most cited among modern thinkers, supplies friendship with a moral framework important for the development of human character and distinct from the framework of modernity. Yet his ethical framework remains symmetrical and exclusive to only a few. This is to say that friendship, besides its moral significance (important for the development of human character), carries a political dimension important for the stability of the Greek polis and so for the stability of friendship. The biblical, New Testament perspective in this particular research, including Paul’s Letters and John’s Gospel, strives to fit friendship within its universal framework, surpassing the natural finality of friendship, impossible to imagine for Aristotle. The Christian idea of friendship, contrary to Aristotle, makes a turn and opens a possibility to rethink friendship not merely in its horizontal, but also in its vertical dimension. The great contribution to rethinking friendship in this perspective was the Christian approach to the notion of love, based on the interchangeable use of philia and agape. Contrary to classical and Biblical friendship, modern friendship shows a certain discontinuity in comparison to the classical. Friendship loses its proper value, not merely because it

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became a marginalized concept, but within modernity it loses its moral and spiritual importance crucial for the development of the human. With the advent of the Enlightenment, not only did the dichotomies regarding metaphysical constructs create certain disagreements between thinkers, but also the very project of late modernity perceived human nature in light of reason and the other in the form of a self-dependent individual. This rational subjectivity not only deprived certain people from the relationship of friendship, creating further power imbalances, but also detached justice, love, and trust from the very definition of friendship. The positive aspect of modern friendship, nevertheless, thanks to research in psychology and social science, opens its telos toward encompassing difference. This, for instance, means that the science of socio-psychology brought into friendship the emotional aspect, which provides friendship with insights of importance for one’s wellbeing and one’s self-esteem. “Facebook friendship” as an extended version of late modernity’s form of friendship is a controversial form of social networking as, on the one hand, it is a great tool to enlarge inclusion, but on the other hand it creates further isolation and risks false presentations of personality. “Facebook friendship” is a platform which best shows how the approach to friendship and the other has been changed. This, on the one hand, implies virtual transparency of communication, but on the other hand, impacts suspicion toward trustworthiness and stability of open communication. The overall meaning of friendship within examined disability discourses defines friendship as social inclusion, caring, and flourishing. A particular complexity, the notion of a need, re-humanization, interdependency, inclusion, and participation have been emphasized. Yet it seems that for Disability Studies friendship is a relationship of empowerment and inclusion, whereas for Disability Theology friendship is also inclusion, closely related to one’s confirmation of personhood. Rethinking the anthropology of friendship as a relational, interdependent participation sets forward the implication for the aspect of vulnerability and solicitude as two often disinterested elements of the rationale of friendship. The aspect of vulnerability and solicitude integrated into a framework of rethinking friendship offers the possibility for every person to relate with others on the level of respect for a person’s intrinsic dignity. In other words, to rethink friendship in reference to disability including the elements of vulnerability, interdependency, and solicitude is constitutive of perceiving friendship as the universal inclusive of people both with and without disability. The inclusion of the voices of people with

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disabilities into the analysis of friendship stressed attention on the notion of difference, and based on the implication of such a difference resulted in rethinking the concept of an “alter ego” meaning of the other. This means that, contrary to the friendship grounded in a high appreciation of similarity, the difference and uniqueness embodied into reimagined friendship anthropology evokes inclusion. The real possibility of perceiving the other who is different and unique requires integration of various anthropological perspectives. When such a view includes a person with disability, it in fact requires exploration of theo-anthropological systems for mainly two reasons. The first reason relates to thinking on the “disabled person identity.” The second reason considers the impact modernity has upon disability and friendship. This recalls the position which firstly sees a human person as a human being and vice versa; secondly, which sees not only a rational and independent, but also a vulnerable and interdependent, individual. Such anthropology challenges liberal ethical praxis and utilitarian principles regarding the person’s value. The depths of such anthropology open the possibility to understand friendship differently, beyond being guided by principles of mere contingency, similarity, equality, and utility. Consequently, such anthropology revalues the premises for an ethics of being, instead of being guided by aspects immersed in an ethics of doing.

Index1

A Acceptance, 21, 25–27, 37, 51, 76, 106, 107, 109, 121, 122, 130, 134, 138, 141, 144, 145, 147, 157, 163, 167, 177 Agape/agapeo, 18, 21–24, 42, 43, 149, 152, 155, 159–161, 168–170, 178 Anthropology, xiv, 38, 73, 83, 84, 86, 89, 92, 93, 98, 100, 104, 110–112, 114, 117, 122, 130, 131, 133, 139, 142–144, 154, 164, 171, 177, 180 Anthropology of friendship, xiv, xv, 81, 93, 96, 97, 101, 104, 110, 112, 129–171, 177, 179 Antiquity, 1, 3–16, 30, 39, 52n2, 53n5 Aquinas, Thomas, 1, 3, 28, 36–38, 84, 95, 96, 135 Aristotle, xiv, 1–52, 95, 103, 145, 148, 150, 153–155, 157, 161, 163, 168, 178

Aristotles’ friends, 4, 145, 168 Asymmetry, 11, 21, 22, 25–28, 79, 153, 162 Attuning, 158, 160, 164 Autonomy, 34, 50, 79, 95, 113, 133, 134, 144 B Belonging, xiii, 36, 42, 47, 49, 50, 52, 77, 80, 89, 92, 101, 106, 107, 112, 117, 121, 122, 129, 130, 136, 139, 141, 143, 167, 169, 171, 177 Blum, L. A., 2, 32–36, 41, 161 Body, xiv, 2, 4, 24, 26, 50, 72, 82, 88–90, 92, 100, 113, 115, 120, 121, 132, 133, 135, 136, 143, 147, 163, 165, 171n5 Buber, Martin, 143

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INDEX

C Care, xiv, 7, 70, 74, 83, 84, 86, 99, 100, 102, 104–106, 109, 113, 116, 122, 133, 146, 148–153, 159, 160, 162, 163, 169 Character friendship, 4, 8, 11, 25, 28, 35, 38, 44, 118, 165, 169 Charity, 36, 42, 82–84, 95, 96, 99, 113, 120, 122, 149, 160, 169, 178 Christlike friendship, 107–109 Classic, 3, 6, 30, 51, 106, 111 Comensoli, Peter A., 3, 21, 38, 81, 82, 89, 90, 92, 122, 140 Concern, xiii, 1, 7, 19, 26, 30–35, 38, 49, 64, 70, 73, 81–87, 89, 90, 92, 95, 96, 99, 104, 113, 121, 130, 131, 136, 140, 141, 146–154, 156–164 Contemporary friendship, xiv, 3, 4, 9, 12, 28–52, 95, 97, 110, 112, 140, 142, 169 Contributory view, 97–98, 102 Cooper analysis, 6, 7, 53n6, 172n7 D Dependency, 101, 111, 113, 117, 122, 132, 135, 143, 150, 151 Derrida, J., 32–33, 36, 41 Disability, xiii, 2, 9–12, 49–50, 61–122, 129, 177 Disability definition, 61, 63, 65, 67–69, 89–92, 113, 119–122 Disability studies (DS), xiii, xiv, 9, 41, 61–122, 129, 134, 141, 150, 152, 167, 169, 179 Disability theology (DTh), xiii, xiv, 9, 61–122, 129, 141, 169, 179

E Emotion, 9, 13, 15, 34, 35, 40, 42, 47, 51, 52, 78, 132, 138, 161 Eudaimonia, 6 Eudemian Ethics, 1, 6, 15, 52n2 Exclusion, xiv, 11, 47, 48, 65, 69, 81, 83, 104, 119, 134, 138 F Facebook friendship, xiv, 29, 45–48, 50, 52, 165, 179 Flourishing, 5, 6, 9, 11, 43, 45, 53n5, 84, 98–101, 111, 116, 117, 162, 179 Foot–washing, 19, 22, 24, 26–28, 38, 146 Friends, xiii, 1, 74, 139, 143–147, 161–164 Friendship, xiii–xv, 1–52, 61–122, 129–171, 177–180 Friendship in modernity, 29, 30, 41, 43, 45, 46, 50, 52, 161, 179 Friendship with God, 2, 17, 20, 24, 25, 27, 28, 37, 93, 107, 111, 117, 118, 169 Friendship with Jesus, 17, 24–27, 38, 107–109, 146, 163 G Gaudium et Spes, 84, 85, 135 Good doing, 148, 149 Goodwill, 5–8, 13, 40, 139, 141, 147, 148, 150, 161, 172n7 Gospel, Johannine, 1, 16–18, 21–28, 87, 107, 108, 178 Greek friendship, 2, 4, 13, 15, 31, 178 Greek polis, 178

 INDEX 

H Happiness, 4–6, 11–16, 26, 27, 40, 50, 53n5, 106, 111 Hierarchy, 19, 26, 107, 163, 164 History of disability, 83, 87, 139, 167 Honnet, Axel, 146 I Imago Dei, 84, 92, 177 Inclusion, xiii, xv, 11, 25, 28, 47–50, 52, 65, 68, 70, 72–74, 79, 80, 82, 84, 85, 87, 89, 91–94, 96, 100, 101, 106, 107, 112–116, 121, 122, 129, 130, 141, 143, 147, 149, 163, 179, 180 Interdependency, 21, 45, 96, 97, 100, 109, 111, 112, 117, 118, 121, 130, 131, 136, 141, 143, 144, 150, 151, 153, 159, 162, 165, 177, 179 Interdependent participation, 130, 139, 142, 154, 163, 164, 169–171, 177, 179 L L´Arche community, 38, 101 Levinas, E., 33, 142, 154, 157 Linkage groups, 20, 23 Linton, Simi, 64, 71, 72, 74, 137 Loneliness, 41, 50, 73, 167 Love, 2, 5–8, 12–14, 16–18, 20–26, 33, 37, 42, 43, 52, 82, 84, 85, 97, 100, 101, 109, 110, 117, 122, 135, 136, 144, 147–149, 152, 155, 157, 159–161, 163, 168–170, 177–179 Lutfiyya, Zana Marie, 74, 75, 78, 79, 115

183

M Magna Moralia, 1, 6, 52n2 Master, slave, 9, 10, 19, 22, 23, 25, 28, 146, 163 Matthews, Pia, 81, 86, 89, 90, 140, 159, 160 Medical model (MM), 62–64, 66, 68–70, 111, 113, 120 Mutual goodwill, 40, 139, 141, 148 Mutual reciprocity, 154 N NE 1155b34, 7, 8, 148, 161 Nicomachean Ethics (NE), 1, 4, 6–10, 12–16, 35, 52n2, 148, 161, 163, 168, 172n7 Nussbaum, C.M., 5, 9, 53n4, 53n5, 134 P Pakaluk, Michael, 4, 5, 13, 31, 32, 35, 53n4, 143 Participation, 20, 52n3, 65, 69, 73, 74, 80–82, 89, 93, 97, 98, 101, 106, 111, 113, 114, 116, 117, 121, 122, 129–131, 139–142, 149, 154, 163, 164, 167, 169–171, 177–179 Pastoral theology, 86, 92 Paul, Apostle, 1, 16–21, 23–27, 178 Paul friendship, 16–21, 23–27, 178 People with disability (PWD), xiii–xv, 2, 4, 9–12, 25, 27, 29, 38, 39, 41, 49–50, 64, 65, 73–80, 82, 84, 88, 97, 113, 116–119, 122, 131, 137, 142, 144, 150, 159, 162, 164, 177, 178 Perfect, 7, 10, 11, 15, 16, 130, 170 perfect friendship, 4, 7, 8, 10, 11, 14, 15, 26, 130, 157

184 

INDEX

Personhood, xiii, xiv, 89, 95, 96, 104–107, 113, 114, 117, 121, 122, 129, 140, 179 Philia, phileo, 4–6, 9, 12–15, 18, 20–24, 33, 42, 43, 53n4, 130, 131, 149, 152, 155, 159–161, 168–170, 178 Philosophy of friendship, 3, 32, 36, 41–44 Pleasure, friendship of, 6–8 Polis, Greek, 178 Pope Francis, 39, 81, 82 Profound disability, 8, 9, 38, 89, 90, 99, 100, 115, 117, 118, 122, 164 R Radical friendship, 107–109 Receiving, 78, 93–98, 101–103, 107, 111, 112, 117, 139–141, 147, 150, 152, 155, 157–161, 164 Reciprocity, 12, 26, 39, 40, 43, 77–80, 95, 97–100, 104, 109, 112, 148, 154, 155, 162, 164 Reconciliation, 18, 20, 23–25, 27 Re-humanization, 38, 103–109, 111, 129, 179 Reinders, S. H., 3, 4, 8, 9, 21, 38, 89, 90, 92–103, 110–112, 117, 122, 140 Reynolds T. E., 89, 90, 92, 134 Ricoeur, Paul, 33, 146, 148, 153–166 Rioux, M.H., 63, 65, 66 Ross, W. D., 6, 9, 13 S Similarity, 4, 9, 26, 38, 77, 80, 95, 97, 111, 149, 180 Slave, 10, 11, 16, 19, 22, 25–28, 146, 157, 163 Social model, 63–67, 69, 71, 72, 104–105, 111, 113, 116, 119

Socio-ethical, 23, 84, 166 Sociology of friendship, 2, 3, 29, 31, 39, 41–43, 141 Socio-relational, 62, 64, 65, 119, 120, 132, 136, 138, 139, 145 Solicitude, xv, 129–171, 177, 179 Sticker, H. J., 4, 83 Sub-models, 63, 64, 66, 67 Swinton, John, 3, 4, 9, 25, 38, 88–93, 103–112, 117, 122 Sympathy, 34, 157, 158, 168 T Telfer, Elisabeth, 32, 35–36 Theo-anthropological, 93, 110, 131, 134–136, 166, 168–171, 177, 180 Theological anthropology, xiv, 83, 84, 86, 89, 92, 114, 117 Theology, 2, 3, 29–31, 36–44, 46, 61–122, 129, 133, 135 Topos, 20 U Users/useful, 46, 48, 49, 70, 121 Utility friendship, 6–8, 108, 178, 180 V Virtue, 2, 4–16, 20, 27–30, 33, 34, 38, 40, 42, 44, 45, 53n6, 95, 108, 109, 130, 136, 144, 145, 161 Vulnerability/vulnerable, xiii–xv, 22, 103, 129–171, 177, 179, 180 Vulnerablizes, 137 W World Health Organization (WHO), 66, 69