Nietzsche on Friends Growing Apart

If you consider the closest friendships in your life, it’s likely they share a common ingredient: time. “For perfect friendship you must get to know someone thoroughly,” ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle tells us in his Nicomachean Ethics, “and become intimate with them, which is a very difficult thing to do.”

The length of a relationship indicates its stability, as well as the commitment of each party. Some friendships might burn brightly for a few years, only to fizzle out as each party advances to a different phase of life.

Had circumstances been different, maybe such relationships could have progressed to a rewarding and lifelong closeness, what Aristotle describes as a “friendship of virtue”.

But someone moves away, or their time is taken up by a new partner or family, or they begin a new career that changes their priorities…

A friendship may fade due to circumstances outside either party’s control.

Years down the line, we may meet and discover we have grown apart to the extent that, had we not a common history, there would be nothing to connect us today.

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, in his 1882 work The Gay Science, describes such relations as “Star friendships”.

Like two ships resting at harbour, the relationship begins in a shared sunshine; but, after setting out from port, “our exposure to different seas and suns has changed us.”

Dealing with different challenges, pursuing our own courses, we have become estranged; but this is no reason to feel ashamed. The memory of our former friendship can remain sacred.

Though we each live in accordance with different values today, we may remain aligned to a greater pattern neither of us can quite see, Nietzsche reflects:

There is probably a tremendous but invisible stellar orbit in which our very different ways and goals may be included as small parts of this path,—let us rise up to this thought! But our life is too short and our power of vision too small for us to be more than friends in the sense of this sublime possibility.— Let us then believe in our star friendship even if we should be compelled to be earth enemies.

Even if distance now lies between us, even if rivalry or resentment has crept in, the potential contained in our former friendship can still bond us.

Perhaps a quiet, background kind of friendship thus persists: the thought or company of the other helps unlock memory, provides access to the glorious promise of past days, stirs bittersweet reflections on how our lives might have turned out differently…

If Nietzsche’s concept of star friendship resonates with you, the passage in its entirety, from his 1882 work The Gay Science, makes for splendid reading:

Star friendship.— We were friends and have become estranged. But this was right, and we do not want to conceal and obscure it from ourselves as if we had reason to feel ashamed. We are two ships each of which has its goal and course; our paths may cross and we may celebrate a feast together, as we did—and then the good ships rested so quietly in one harbor and one sunshine that it may have looked as if they had reached their goal and as if they had one goal. But then the almighty force of our tasks drove us apart again into different seas and sunny zones, and perhaps we shall never see one another again,—perhaps we shall meet again but fail to recognize each other: our exposure to different seas and suns has changed us! That we have to become estranged is the law above us: by the same token we should also become more venerable for each other! And thus the memory of our former friendship should become more sacred! There is probably a tremendous but invisible stellar orbit in which our very different ways and goals may be included as small parts of this path,—let us rise up to this thought! But our life is too short and our power of vision too small for us to be more than friends in the sense of this sublime possibility.— Let us then believe in our star friendship even if we should be compelled to be earth enemies.

What do you make of Nietzsche’s passage?

• Does the concept of ‘star friendship’ resonate with you?
• How might friendships persist even as each party changes and develops through life?

To inform your answers, you might enjoy the following related articles:

• Aristotle On the 3 Types of Friendship (and How Each Enriches Life)
• Simone de Beauvoir on What Makes a Healthy Relationship
• Aldous Huxley: Other People’s Lives are Ultimately Unknowable
• Friedrich Nietzsche’s Life, Insanity, and Legacy
• Friedrich Nietzsche: the Best 9 Books to Read

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