ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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Sarah Smith
Editor & Writer
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n recent months, as we prepared to join the University of Dallas community, my wife, Stacey, and I have had a number of occasions to visit campus. During a recent reception, we had the pleasure of meeting many students. One thing struck me about this event. Students almost never approached us individually; instead they came to us in groups, groups of friends spanning different majors and experiences: English majors with physics majors; art history majors with business majors; athletes with nonathletes; even Fromers with Spromers! Among the many ways of describing a UD education, one of the most compelling is to say that it aims to set the conditions for rich and enduring friendships.
This is not to dismiss the practical outcome of an undergraduate education. Indeed, in its acceptance rates for law and medical school as well as its placement rates of recent graduates, UD is doing remarkably well. But, as a recent Wall Street Journal article indicates, what matters for long-term success and happiness is not where students go to school or even particularly what their major is, but the level of engagement, inside and outside the classroom. If the conditions are right, such high-level engagement for groups of students will naturally generate friendships.
Friendship, Aristotle writes in the Ethics, is both noble and useful. “No one,” he says decisively, “would choose to live without friends.” In the ancient world and into the Catholic Middle Ages, friendship was central to reflections on the purpose of human life. It is telling that in Aristotle’s Ethics, two out of the 10 books focus on the topic of friendship, a topic that receives at best negligible attention in contemporary texts in ethics. Modern ethics is largely about rule following, about determining in specific cases of moral perplexity what it is we ought to do. Premodern ethics, by contrast, focus on virtues of character, on the shape of one’s whole life, and on what activities are intrinsically desirable.
Friendship is one of the chief examples of such intrinsically desirable activity. While friendships can be useful and conducive to many good things, it is a mark of true friendship that we enjoy spending time with our friends no matter what else we get out of it. Friendship continues to matter a great deal to us, even if we struggle to say why or fail ever to consider the fact of
its mattering.
In this, we suffer from what the contemporary philosopher Charles Taylor calls “inarticulacy” — from an impoverished vocabulary, from an atrophying of the moral imagination and from habits of distraction that lead us not to notice our lack.
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September 22nd 2017
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By Thomas S. Hibbs, Ph.D.
No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all other things in the world.”
– Aristotle
“
et the impact is clear. Surveys show that while most people in the early 1960s claimed to have just above three good friends, that number has now slipped to beneath two. In fact, Britain recently declared loneliness a public health hazard. Even more alarming is the spike in civic hatred. In the 1980s, less than 15% of citizens said that they hated members of the opposite political party; that number now stands at just under 50%. That’s a shocking decline in civic friendship, the amity and trust across various types of divisions necessary for a society to flourish.
At a place like UD, deep and lasting friendships are forged in an array of contexts — in the science lab, on the athletic field, in late-night discussions of Flannery O’Connor, over gelato in Rome, in service projects in Irving. But at UD, students are also supplied with a vocabulary, a set of stories and arguments, that provide them with a language to articulate how and why friendship matters. As freshmen, UD students are reading Aristotle’s Ethics while they are reading great stories of friendship in Homer’s epics.
As Columbia’s Andrew Delbanco, one of the most perceptive contemporary writers on higher education, puts it, where there is such a shared curriculum, no student is entirely a stranger to any other. Put positively, what he means is that every student is potentially a friend to every other. Why? Because they have endless resources for what C.S. Lewis identifies as the starting point of friendship, the recognition of shared ways of seeing the world captured in the questions
“What? You too?”
Moreover, UD students are exposed to high-level and disciplined disagreement in the books they read and in the way classroom discussion is conducted. They are also introduced to practices of civil discourse, which, if implemented in public life, would increase the prospects for civic friendship.
Now, in both deep personal friendships and in civic friendship, there is present what Aristotle lists as defining features of full friendship: namely, reciprocity and equality. Aristotle poses the question: Is it more of the nature of friendship to be loved or to love? He responds that the activity of loving rather than receiving love goes more to the heart of friendship. One has the sense — and not just here — that Aristotle is on the cusp of insights that exceed the boundaries of his own philosophy.
There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.”
– Thomas Aquinas
“
Thomas Aquinas would detect in these remarks a truth deeper than what Aristotle could fathom. When he discusses the nature of charity, he states that it is analogous to friendship. This is a bold claim, backed up by the scriptural passage in which Jesus proclaims, “I no longer call you servants but friends.” The assertion that friendship is possible between such vastly unequal beings as the Creator and a human creature is an astonishing one. In loving us, God enables us to love Him. Here, the active love of God seeks out human creatures and offers the gift of communion with the divine persons of the Trinity: friendship with God.
This wondrous love, the love that moves the sun and other stars as Dante puts it, is something students at UD are invited to ponder in texts and conversations, to experience personally through participation in the liturgy, prayer and the sacraments, and to live out in lives of generous service to others. The hope is that it comes to frame the way they understand all other human relationships, not least their friendships.
In a world in which education has been thoroughly commercialized, in which students are reduced to consumers and education touted only as a means to a later payoff, a UD education is a precious gift, for which we should all be deeply grateful.
Thomas Aquinas would detect in these remarks a truth deeper than what Aristotle could fathom. When he discusses the nature of charity, he states that it is analogous to friendship. This is a bold claim, backed up by the scriptural passage in which Jesus proclaims, “I no longer call you servants but friends.” The assertion that friendship is possible between such vastly unequal beings as the Creator and a human creature is an astonishing one. In loving us, God enables us to love Him. Here, the active love of God seeks out human creatures and offers the gift of communion with the divine persons of the Trinity: friendship with God.
This wondrous love, the love that moves the sun and other stars as Dante puts it, is something students at UD are invited to ponder in texts and conversations, to experience personally through participation in the liturgy, prayer and the sacraments, and to live out in lives of generous service to others. The hope is that it comes to frame the way they understand all other human relationships, not least their friendships.
In a world in which education has been thoroughly commercialized, in which students are reduced to consumers and education touted only as a means to a later payoff, a UD education is a precious gift, for which we should all be deeply grateful.
Thomas S. Hibbs, Ph.D., BA ’82 MA ’83
The ninth and first alumnus president of the University of Dallas, Hibbs served as dean of the Honors College and distinguished professor of ethics and culture at Baylor from 2003 to 2019. The Aquinas scholar has dedicated his career to writing and teaching. He has published numerous academic articles, more than 200 movie reviews and dozens of essays and book reviews for publications such as National Review, Catholic World Report, The Weekly Standard and the Dallas Morning News.
“
n recent months, as we prepared to join the University of Dallas community, my wife, Stacey, and I have had a number of occasions to visit campus. During a recent reception, we had the pleasure of meeting many students. One thing struck me about this event. Students almost never approached us
individually; instead they came to us in groups, groups of friends spanning different majors and experiences: English majors with physics majors; art history majors with business majors; athletes with nonathletes; even Fromers with Spromers! Among the many ways of describing a UD education, one of the most compelling is to say that it aims to set the conditions for rich and enduring friendships.
This is not to dismiss the practical outcome of an undergraduate education. Indeed, in its acceptance rates for law and medical school as well as its placement rates of recent graduates, UD is doing remarkably well. But, as a recent Wall Street Journal article indicates, what matters for long-term success and happiness is not where students go to school or even particularly what their major is, but the level of engagement, inside and outside the classroom. If the conditions are right, such high-level engagement for groups of students will naturally generate friendships.
Friendship, Aristotle writes in the Ethics, is both noble and useful. “No one,” he says decisively, “would choose to live without friends.” In the ancient world and into the Catholic Middle Ages, friendship was central to reflections on the purpose of human life. It is telling that in Aristotle’s Ethics, two out of the 10 books focus on the topic of friendship, a topic that receives at best negligible attention in contemporary texts in ethics. Modern ethics is largely about rule following, about determining in specific cases of moral perplexity what it is we ought to do. Premodern ethics, by contrast, focus on virtues of character, on the shape of one’s whole life, and on what activities are intrinsically desirable.
Friendship is one of the chief examples of such intrinsically desirable activity. While friendships can be useful and conducive to many good things, it is a mark of true friendship that we enjoy spending time with our friends no matter what else we get out of it. Friendship continues to matter a great deal to us, even if we struggle to say why or fail ever to consider the fact of its mattering.
In this, we suffer from what the contemporary philosopher Charles Taylor calls “inarticulacy” — from an impoverished vocabulary, from an atrophying of the moral imagination and from habits of distraction that lead us not to notice our lack.
Even more alarming is the spike in civic hatred. In the 1980s, less than 15% of citizens said that they hated members of the opposite political party; that number now stands at just under 50%. That’s a shocking decline in civic friendship, the amity and trust across various types of divisions necessary for a society to flourish.
At a place like UD, deep and lasting friendships are forged in an array of contexts — in the science lab, on the athletic field, in late-night discussions of Flannery O’Connor, over gelato in Rome, in service projects in Irving. But at UD, students are also supplied with a vocabulary, a set of stories and arguments, that provide them with a language to articulate how and why friendship matters. As freshmen, UD students are reading Aristotle’s Ethics while they are reading great stories of friendship in Homer’s epics.
he UD Core has another virtue when it comes to friendship.
As Columbia’s Andrew Delbanco, one of the most perceptive contemporary writers on higher education, puts it, where there is such a shared curriculum, no student is entirely a stranger to any other.
n recent months, as we prepared to join the University of Dallas community, my wife, Stacey, and I have had a number of occasions to visit campus. During a recent reception, we had the pleasure of meeting many students. One thing struck me about this event. Students almost never approached us
individually; instead they came to us in groups, groups of friends spanning different majors and experiences: English majors with physics majors; art history majors with business majors; athletes with nonathletes; even Fromers with Spromers! Among the many ways of describing a UD education, one of the most compelling is to say that it aims to set the conditions for rich and enduring friendships.
This is not to dismiss the practical outcome of an undergraduate education. Indeed, in its acceptance rates for law and medical school as well as its placement rates of recent graduates, UD is doing remarkably well. But, as a recent Wall Street Journal article indicates, what matters for long-term success and happiness is not where students go to school or even particularly what their major is, but the level of engagement, inside and outside the classroom. If the conditions are right, such high-level engagement for groups of students will naturally generate friendships.
Friendship, Aristotle writes in the Ethics, is both noble and useful. “No one,” he says decisively, “would choose to live without friends.” In the ancient world and into the Catholic Middle Ages, friendship was central to reflections on the purpose of human life. It is telling that in Aristotle’s Ethics, two out of the 10 books focus on the topic of friendship, a topic that receives at best negligible attention in contemporary texts in ethics. Modern ethics is largely about rule following, about determining in specific cases of moral perplexity what it is we ought to do. Premodern ethics, by contrast, focus on virtues of character, on the shape of one’s whole life, and on what activities are intrinsically desirable.
Friendship is one of the chief examples of such intrinsically desirable activity. While friendships can be useful and conducive to many good things, it is a mark of true friendship that we enjoy spending time with our friends no matter what else we get out of it. Friendship continues to matter a great deal to us, even if we struggle to say why or fail ever to consider the fact of its mattering.
In this, we suffer from what the contemporary philosopher Charles Taylor calls “inarticulacy” — from an impoverished vocabulary, from an atrophying of the moral imagination and from habits of distraction that lead us not to notice our lack.
This wondrous love, the love that moves the sun and other stars as Dante puts it, is something students at UD are invited to ponder in texts and conversations, to experience personally through participation in the liturgy, prayer and the sacraments, and to live out in lives of generous service to others. The hope is that it comes to frame the way they understand all other human relationships, not least their friendships.
n recent months, as we prepared to join the University of Dallas community, my wife, Stacey, and I have had a number of occasions to visit campus. During a recent reception, we had the pleasure of meeting many students. One thing struck me about this event. Students almost never approached us
individually; instead they came to us in groups, groups of friends spanning different majors and experiences: English majors with physics majors; art history majors with business majors; athletes with nonathletes; even Fromers with Spromers! Among the many ways of describing a UD education, one of the most compelling is to say that it aims to set the conditions for rich and enduring friendships.
This is not to dismiss the practical outcome of an undergraduate education. Indeed, in its acceptance rates for law and medical school as well as its placement rates of recent graduates, UD is doing remarkably well. But, as a recent Wall Street Journal article indicates, what matters for long-term success and happiness is not where students go to school or even particularly what their major is, but the level of engagement, inside and outside the classroom. If the conditions are right, such high-level engagement for groups of students will naturally generate friendships.
Friendship, Aristotle writes in the Ethics, is both noble and useful. “No one,” he says decisively, “would choose to live without friends.” In the ancient world and into the Catholic Middle Ages, friendship was central to reflections on the purpose of human life. It is telling that in Aristotle’s Ethics, two out of the 10 books focus on the topic of friendship, a topic that receives at best negligible attention in contemporary texts in ethics. Modern ethics is largely about rule following, about determining in specific cases of moral perplexity what it is we ought to do. Premodern ethics, by contrast, focus on virtues of character, on the shape of one’s whole life, and on what activities are intrinsically desirable.
Friendship is one of the chief examples of such intrinsically desirable activity. While friendships can be useful and conducive to many good things, it is a mark of true friendship that we enjoy spending time with our friends no matter what else we get out of it. Friendship continues to matter a great deal to us, even if we struggle to say why or fail ever to consider the fact of its mattering.
In this, we suffer from what the contemporary philosopher Charles Taylor calls “inarticulacy” — from an impoverished vocabulary, from an atrophying of the moral imagination and from habits of distraction that lead us not to notice our lack.
In a world in which education has been thoroughly commercialized, in which students are reduced to consumers and education touted only as a means to a later payoff, a UD education is a precious gift, for which we should all be deeply grateful.
n recent months, as we prepared to join the University of Dallas community, my wife, Stacey, and I have had a number of occasions to visit campus. During a recent reception, we had the pleasure of meeting many students. One thing struck me about this event. Students almost never approached us
individually; instead they came to us in groups, groups of friends spanning different majors and experiences: English majors with physics majors; art history majors with business majors; athletes with nonathletes; even Fromers with Spromers! Among the many ways of describing a UD education, one of the most compelling is to say that it aims to set the conditions for rich and enduring friendships.
This is not to dismiss the practical outcome of an undergraduate education. Indeed, in its acceptance rates for law and medical school as well as its placement rates of recent graduates, UD is doing remarkably well. But, as a recent Wall Street Journal article indicates, what matters for long-term success and happiness is not where students go to school or even particularly what their major is, but the level of engagement, inside and outside the classroom. If the conditions are right, such high-level engagement for groups of students will naturally generate friendships.
Friendship, Aristotle writes in the Ethics, is both noble and useful. “No one,” he says decisively, “would choose to live without friends.” In the ancient world and into the Catholic Middle Ages, friendship was central to reflections on the purpose of human life. It is telling that in Aristotle’s Ethics, two out of the 10 books focus on the topic of friendship, a topic that receives at best negligible attention in contemporary texts in ethics. Modern ethics is largely about rule following, about determining in specific cases of moral perplexity what it is we ought to do. Premodern ethics, by contrast, focus on virtues of character, on the shape of one’s whole life, and on what activities are intrinsically desirable.
Friendship is one of the chief examples of such intrinsically desirable activity. While friendships can be useful and conducive to many good things, it is a mark of true friendship that we enjoy spending time with our friends no matter what else we get out of it. Friendship continues to matter a great deal to us, even if we struggle to say why or fail ever to consider the fact of its mattering.
In this, we suffer from what the contemporary philosopher Charles Taylor calls “inarticulacy” — from an impoverished vocabulary, from an atrophying of the moral imagination and from habits of distraction that lead us not to notice our lack.
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