The Morality of Friendship

Moral Maze

BBC

Religion & Spirituality, Society & Culture

4.5 • 609 Ratings

🗓️ 29 November 2018

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s the time of the year to dust off the Christmas card list and perhaps delete one or two of the names on it. Who’s been naughty and who’s been nice? Who should never have been on the list in the first place? The Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell has made the honest admission that he can’t be friends with his Tory colleagues, saying he can’t “forgive them for what they’ve done” to the country. And yet Tony Benn was friends with Enoch Powell. Tee-shirts with the slogan ‘NEVER KISSED A TORY’ have been popular this year, but so have those that read ‘EMPATHY IS NOT ENDORSEMENT’. When it comes to friendship, where should we draw the line? Some believe it is morally corrupting to befriend, date or marry anyone with different values, beliefs and lifestyle to their own. For others, friendship trumps morality, and we should do everything in our power to remain friends with others, short of those who have committed an irredeemably evil act. This goes beyond personal relationships. Many have voiced the concern that hatred is infecting public discourse, where ‘opponents’ who are ‘wrong’ become ‘enemies’ who are ‘evil’. Is this the sign of a more morally-empowered society, or are we are losing the ability to debate and disagree? Do we have a moral duty to befriend those who hold views and values we don’t share?

Producer: Dan Tierney

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to a programme from BBC Radio 4.
0:03.7	Good evening. I suppose with all Conservative MPs are dealing with at the moment,
0:07.8	the news that any lingering hopes they may have had of being chums with the shadowed
0:11.4	John McDonnell had been dashed was not the ghastly blow it might have been.
0:16.2	Mr. McDonnell was pretty firm about it. Under no circumstances, he said this week,
0:20.1	could he ever be friends
0:21.2	with a Tory? The Conservatives hid their disappointment well, but there was some nostalgia for
0:26.1	the days where even politicians could manage to like those with whom they disagreed. And much more
0:31.5	serious concern about what many see as a new intolerance in our public discourse, an increasing
0:36.9	tendency to regard those
0:38.4	with a different point of view as not just wrong, but ill-intentioned, even downright evil.
0:44.5	Brexit is the obvious example, where even family members on opposing sides aren't talking to
0:49.0	each other. The transgender kerfuffle is another, with activists refusing to be in the same Radio 4 studio this week with even moderate opponents,
0:57.6	so toxic to they regard the views of those who don't think the way they do.
1:01.9	Is it morally corrupting to befriend, date, marry even, someone with different principles?
1:07.8	Or have we lost the ability to debate and disagree, even be civil to those
1:12.2	with different ideas? That's our moral maze tonight. Our panel, Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive
1:17.0	of the RSA, the priest and polemicist, Giles Fraser, the historian Tim Stanley, and new to the panel,
1:23.4	Laura Perrin's former barrister and co-editor of the website, Conservative Woman.
1:29.6	Laura, has Conservative woman got any lefty friends?
1:33.6	It has some lefty friends, but I agree with Socrates and he says,
1:38.7	be slow to fall into friendship, but when you were in, continue, firm and constant.
	...

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