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Rights and Obligations of friendship
Jul. 9th, 2005 09:44 pmWe went to see Edward Albee's "The Goat, or Who is Sylvia" the other night. One of the things that happens during the play is that one character (Martin) confesses something to his best friend (Ross). Ross ends up telling Martin's wife.
That got me thinking as to what our obligations towards our friends really are. It's easy (and simplistic) to say simply that Ross was wrong for exposing the secret to Martin's wife. There's much more going on.
People often feel somewhat better when they can share a secret with a friend, but keeping that secret may put a burden on the friend -- they then are "supposed" to keep the secret. If that is the case, then the person who has "shared" the secret has gotten something from the interchange, and has actually added a burden to his/her "friend"; that seems somewhat counter-intuitive to the notion of friendship.
Often the friend doesn't know what the secret is (duh), and might not have agreed to keep such a secret. For instance, what would you do if someone you considered a friend told you that they had murdered someone in cold blood? Now your "friend" has essentially made you an accessory after the fact.
The law has strict rules about interchanges between spouses (and one spouse can't be forced to testify against the other), but there isn't anything like that for friends. You've got to decide for yourself what you think is right, and be willing to defend your own actions (or inactions) in court.
In the case of this play, Ross actually invoked his "right" as a friend to know what was going on, so Ross is responsible in ways that an unsolicited secret sharing wouldn't entail. But, in my mind, that just brings up the question of what "rights" does a friend have? After all, if there are obligations of friendship, it is only fitting that there be rights as well. Was Martin "obligated" to tell Ross, or was he really more obligated to not tell Ross if he believed that telling Ross would add a burden to him?
That got me thinking as to what our obligations towards our friends really are. It's easy (and simplistic) to say simply that Ross was wrong for exposing the secret to Martin's wife. There's much more going on.
People often feel somewhat better when they can share a secret with a friend, but keeping that secret may put a burden on the friend -- they then are "supposed" to keep the secret. If that is the case, then the person who has "shared" the secret has gotten something from the interchange, and has actually added a burden to his/her "friend"; that seems somewhat counter-intuitive to the notion of friendship.
Often the friend doesn't know what the secret is (duh), and might not have agreed to keep such a secret. For instance, what would you do if someone you considered a friend told you that they had murdered someone in cold blood? Now your "friend" has essentially made you an accessory after the fact.
The law has strict rules about interchanges between spouses (and one spouse can't be forced to testify against the other), but there isn't anything like that for friends. You've got to decide for yourself what you think is right, and be willing to defend your own actions (or inactions) in court.
In the case of this play, Ross actually invoked his "right" as a friend to know what was going on, so Ross is responsible in ways that an unsolicited secret sharing wouldn't entail. But, in my mind, that just brings up the question of what "rights" does a friend have? After all, if there are obligations of friendship, it is only fitting that there be rights as well. Was Martin "obligated" to tell Ross, or was he really more obligated to not tell Ross if he believed that telling Ross would add a burden to him?