Comparative Sociology 18 (2019) 849-851

C OMPARATIVE
SOCIOLOGY

brill.com/coso

Book Review

⸪
Alberoni, Francesco, 2017. Friendship. Leiden: Brill. vi + 134 pp., ISBN
9789004288393, €102.00/$122.00 (e-book)

Friendships are part of the microlevel of society based on direct personal re-
lationships bound by mutual interests. These reflect freely chosen relation-
ships, more so than the loyalties, partly hereditary in origin, of family life, and
lacking the emotional intensity of romantic pairs. They are unlike somewhat
anonymous macro social structures like the nation-state, and meso, commu-
nal, social structures. According to Alberoni, groups without a purpose pro-
duce friendly interactions that tend toward the banal and mundane, unlike
true friendships where the interests remain spontaneous and authentic.
In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle already distinguished friendship based on
utility or pleasure as inferior to friendship based on mutual goodwill that re-
flects appreciation of common values. In such friendships people appreciate
each other for their own sake rather than for ulterior purposes. Nevertheless,
friends have different combinations of reasons (and feelings) for bonding,
which is why they are not ordinarily absolutely loyal in a familial sense, and
are lacking the passion of romantic love.
Alberoni understands friendship not as being based on exchange, but as
being an encounter that repudiates the logics of the market, the deperson-
alizing norms of modern bureaucracy, and the objectives of collectivities.
Summarizing some ideas in the book with a little elaboration, friendship is the
ethical form of love, which differs from the abstract sense of duty that is forced
by bureaucratic imposition in more anonymous social settings. Romantic love,
like the rise of a social or political movement, can initially reflect a feeling of
transfiguration, which might eventually become routinized and somewhat
banal. But true friendship knows neither a nascent state of excitement nor
solidification in institutional form. Friendship remains grounded in the real,
which is why there is no feeling of exaltation, unlike in romance.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/15691330-12341519

850 Book Review

There is no passion without pain, since love can be mistaken or betrayed.

Love is talked about, as feelings rise to the surface and are expressed. Friendship
is acted upon without such preliminaries, and is barely self-conscious. Talk in
romantic love is commonly in reference to mutual feelings, resulting in feelings
of fusion that result not only in partnership (characteristic also of family life
that have common experiences but in institutionalized so less self-conscious
form), but in adoration, as lovers complete each other. Talk between friends is
about separate experiences that are commented upon, because their different
perspectives are of interest to each other.
Friendship is a just relationship because it is not based on desire, but on
respect, care, and affection, though cultural expectations are also present. An
example are modern economies where professional services are based on im-
partiality, and not on friendship. Both family feelings and romantic love can be
weakened by envy or ambivalence, while friendships either do not have them
or are easily destroyed when they occur. Thus, ordinary coupledom and famil-
ial relationships are more likely to be unjust. Nevertheless, friendships can be
stressed in circumstances like workplaces where there are requirements be-
yond sociability.
Friendships are based less on mutual identifications than romantic relation-
ships where the identifications arise through mutual passions that are exciting
because unconscious needs have finally found an outlet. These unconscious
needs color whatever appreciation there is. Friendships thus are based on mu-
tual appreciation that are validated through encounters, not through merging.
This is just a summary of a book that has a richness that makes it com-
parable to the writings of Georg Simmel. The reader may not agree with the
opinions of the writer, for this is a book of opinions, such as that friendship
is not tested as much as repeatedly experienced, while romantic love is tested
because if it is not a devouring passion (for mutual connection, but not merely
erotic), it may be based on a lie or merely an infatuation. That the passion of
romantic love has little room for friendship may reflect a common belief in
Italy, and less in Britain where companionate marriages that include friend-
ship are often sought out, possibly reducing the amount of passion. Readers
therefore must test the experiences of the author against their own.
Alberoni does not like the way American sociology applies cost-benefit
analyses to close interpersonal relations, particularly friendships, since this as-
sumes people know who they are and what they want. Alberoni believes this is
often not the case, but friendships help fill in these gaps. Because overcoming
obstacles is inherent to understanding the nature and limitations of desires,
such encounters are also inherent to developing knowledge of morality.

Comparative Sociology 18 (2019) 849-851