The problem with Nigel Farage is that he seems to be something of a chancer and, as a result, tends to attract chancers to his cause. The notion that ‘like attracts like’ goes back to the ancient world.
It first occurred in Homer’s Odyssey, and was picked up by Plato, for whom good people are naturally attracted to other good people. The philosopher Democritus even observed how mixed pebbles of different types, when agitated, naturally resolve themselves into groups of the same size and shape.
Aristotle saw three categories of friendship. One sort is driven by usefulness, the advantage that two people can bring each other. But once that mutual benefit disappears, the friendship disappears with it. The second sort is driven by pleasure in another person’s company and behaviour. But again, there is no guarantee that this pleasure will last forever, as one’s interests change. His third sort is based on the other person’s goodness of character, or virtue as it used to be called (how old fashioned that word sounds now).
For Aristotle, this is the highest form of friendship, because both people love each other for their own sakes, seeing each other as an admirable ‘second self’ in whom they can place an absolute trust. He did not regard such a relationship with many people as feasible, because it requires such an emotional investment.
Cicero’s view was that true friendship is not a matter of mutual benefit but exists only on the strength of a profound moral alignment between two individuals. Friends demand high standards from each other, together with empathy, honesty, shared values, mutual affection and willingness to correct one another. ‘We do not hire out our favours and charge interest for them. The reason we count friendship as a blessing is not because we are hoping for a material return; it is because the union in itself is quite enough profit.’
No doubt the crypto millionaires agree in theory. But think of the chancers who will join Farage’s ‘research’ team – and reflect on Elon Musk’s Doge’s dinner.
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