One of the curious features of modern political life is how quickly a conversation can turn into an argument. We not only disagree with our friends, colleagues or neighbors; we increasingly struggle to understand how decent, intelligent people could possibly hold the opinions they do. Somewhere along the way, a difference of opinion became a judgment of character. To overcome the disagreement, Hannah Arendt argued we should put friendship above truth.
Perhaps the problem begins when we confuse facts with the political judgments we build upon these facts. The Earth is warming, and human activity is a cause. These are questions of evidence. What we should do about it is a different matter. How quickly should we act? What risks should we accept? What costs are justified, and who should bear them? Such questions involve assumptions, predictions, priorities and competing values. Facts are indispensable, but they do not, by themselves, determine the answers. Predictions are notoriously difficult, especially when about the future.
Yet we often believe in our own answers as though they follow from the facts. Those who disagree must therefore be ignorant, irrational or acting in bad faith. We begin to imagine what they want, what they are trying to achieve, and what their opinions reveal about their moral character. Before long, we are no longer debating policies but defending identities. And the other side is no longer simply mistaken; it has become an enemy.
Aristotle understood that a community must find a way to live with disagreement. Hannah Arendt, in her reflections on friendship, recognised something just as important: a shared world cannot be sustained by agreement alone. We need the willingness to speak with people whose judgments differ from our own, to understand how they arrived at them, and to remain open to the possibility that we, too, may be mistaken. Understanding does not require agreement, any more than friendship requires us to abandon our convictions.
Perhaps, then, the principle we need is not friendship above truth, but friendship above opinion. Truth matters, and some claims are simply false. Some actions deserve condemnation. But an opinion, even one we consider profoundly wrong, does not contain the whole of a human being. And there is a further benefit to maintaining friendships across disagreement: those who challenge our views may reveal assumptions we have overlooked or weaknesses in our own reasoning.
If we surround ourselves exclusively with people who think like us, we risk becoming more certain without becoming any wiser. A society in which we can only be friends with those who think like us is not one in which our convictions and policies are likely to improve.
One of the curious features of modern political life is how quickly a conversation can turn into an argument. We not only disagree with our friends, colleagues or neighbors; we increasingly struggle to understand how decent, intelligent people could possibly hold the opinions they do. Somewhere along the way, a difference of opinion became a judgment of character. To overcome the disagreement, Hannah Arendt argued we should put friendship above truth.
Perhaps the problem begins when we confuse facts with the political judgments we build upon these facts. The Earth is warming, and human activity is a cause. These are questions of evidence. What we should do about it is a different matter. How quickly should we act? What risks should we accept? What costs are justified, and who should bear them? Such questions involve assumptions, predictions, priorities and competing values. Facts are indispensable, but they do not, by themselves, determine the answers. Predictions are notoriously difficult, especially when about the future.
Yet we often believe in our own answers as though they follow from the facts. Those who disagree must therefore be ignorant, irrational or acting in bad faith. We begin to imagine what they want, what they are trying to achieve, and what their opinions reveal about their moral character. Before long, we are no longer debating policies but defending identities. And the other side is no longer simply mistaken; it has become an enemy.
Aristotle understood that a community must find a way to live with disagreement. Hannah Arendt, in her reflections on friendship, recognised something just as important: a shared world cannot be sustained by agreement alone. We need the willingness to speak with people whose judgments differ from our own, to understand how they arrived at them, and to remain open to the possibility that we, too, may be mistaken. Understanding does not require agreement, any more than friendship requires us to abandon our convictions.
Perhaps, then, the principle we need is not friendship above truth, but friendship above opinion. Truth matters, and some claims are simply false. Some actions deserve condemnation. But an opinion, even one we consider profoundly wrong, does not contain the whole of a human being. And there is a further benefit to maintaining friendships across disagreement: those who challenge our views may reveal assumptions we have overlooked or weaknesses in our own reasoning.
If we surround ourselves exclusively with people who think like us, we risk becoming more certain without becoming any wiser. A society in which we can only be friends with those who think like us is not one in which our convictions and policies are likely to improve.