# The Friend Zone  ## Metadata - Author:: [[The American Scholar]] - Full Title:: The Friend Zone - Category: #articles - URL: https://theamericanscholar.org/the-friend-zone/?utm_source=email ## Highlights > in France’s national motto, *fraternité* is more like the poor relation that, as the political theorist John Rawls remarks in his 1971 book, *A Theory of Justice,* “has had a lesser place in democratic theory.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gt7f6hb2k5yy62hadvg9pk2z)) > footnote. Rawls nevertheless argues that although friendship is not a democratic right, a democracy worthy of the name is impossible without it. The ideal of fraternity, he writes, implies “certain attitudes of mind and forms of conduct” without which liberty and equality would shrivel. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gt7f7e0adapm705888emyjjp)) > In an era when political divisions harden, gender divisions weaken, and new technologies chip away at our understanding of older values, we might lend an ear to Wollstonecraft’s vindication of friendship. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gt7f8w16jkjrwjc7rg2zty4v)) > Wollstonecraft was scarcely 30 years old when the defining event of her life took place: the taking of the Bastille on July 14, 1789. Fiercely independent and largely self-taught, Wollstonecraft, like so many other English intellectuals, thrilled to the news of revolution on the far side of the English Channel. As William Wordsworth later recalled, “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, / But to be young was very heaven.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gt7fr5rpsbe138vqsvdgx3vh)) > Dissenters’ leading light, the Reverend Richard Price, gave a sermon before the London Revolution Society that spoke for them all: “I have lived to see the rights of men better understood than ever … [and] the ardour for liberty catching and spreading … the dominion of kings changed for the dominion of laws, and the dominion of priests giving way to the dominion of reason and conscience.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gt7fskcr64kd6ee4azs57wvk)) > by making a jaw-dropping claim. Natural rights, she declared, also belong to the other half of humankind: women. “I love man as my fellow,” she proclaimed in the *Vindication of the Rights of Woman,* “but his sceptre, real or usurped, extends not to me, unless the reason of an individual demands my homage.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gt7fwbpzeqv5v8h0he6j9pz9)) > The revolution’s frontline was located at the home front. Political equality begins at the hearth, Wollstonecraft insisted, not on the streets; for a democracy to flourish, we must not only overthrow the monarchies in palaces, but so too the patriarchies at home. Only when a husband cedes his wife’s equal capacity to reason—a capacity formed in the same classroom—will he free them both from the unnatural social conventions that, for generations, have warped their characters and stunted their growth ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gt7fyjy84kqxs9m7n83k1gb9)) > For Wollstonecraft, marriage must be built on a fraternal, not a sexual, foundation. By its very nature, passions of the heart are short-lived and self-destructive. Wollstonecraft had seen the lives of too many women, like her close friend Fanny Blood and sister Eliza Wollstonecraft, destroyed because of unwanted pregnancies or unworthy husbands ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gt7g0srjm1da3pfks8d9knzw)) > Friendship is a serious affection; the most sublime of all affections, because it is founded on principle, and cemented by time.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gt7g1r3cdcy85jvbwbm019e2)) - Note: Wollstonecraft > puriteens, studies do suggest that Zoomers are having less sex than other recent generations. Or, more precisely, they seem to be placing equal importance on friendship as on sex ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gt7g6z8xfnyfrxfybnvn9bwh)) # The Friend Zone  ## Metadata - Author:: [[The American Scholar]] - Full Title:: The Friend Zone - Category: #articles - URL: https://theamericanscholar.org/the-friend-zone/?utm_source=email ## Highlights > in France’s national motto, *fraternité* is more like the poor relation that, as the political theorist John Rawls remarks in his 1971 book, *A Theory of Justice,* “has had a lesser place in democratic theory.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gt7f6hb2k5yy62hadvg9pk2z)) > footnote. Rawls nevertheless argues that although friendship is not a democratic right, a democracy worthy of the name is impossible without it. The ideal of fraternity, he writes, implies “certain attitudes of mind and forms of conduct” without which liberty and equality would shrivel. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gt7f7e0adapm705888emyjjp)) > In an era when political divisions harden, gender divisions weaken, and new technologies chip away at our understanding of older values, we might lend an ear to Wollstonecraft’s vindication of friendship. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gt7f8w16jkjrwjc7rg2zty4v)) > Wollstonecraft was scarcely 30 years old when the defining event of her life took place: the taking of the Bastille on July 14, 1789. Fiercely independent and largely self-taught, Wollstonecraft, like so many other English intellectuals, thrilled to the news of revolution on the far side of the English Channel. As William Wordsworth later recalled, “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, / But to be young was very heaven.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gt7fr5rpsbe138vqsvdgx3vh)) > Dissenters’ leading light, the Reverend Richard Price, gave a sermon before the London Revolution Society that spoke for them all: “I have lived to see the rights of men better understood than ever … [and] the ardour for liberty catching and spreading … the dominion of kings changed for the dominion of laws, and the dominion of priests giving way to the dominion of reason and conscience.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gt7fskcr64kd6ee4azs57wvk)) > by making a jaw-dropping claim. Natural rights, she declared, also belong to the other half of humankind: women. “I love man as my fellow,” she proclaimed in the *Vindication of the Rights of Woman,* “but his sceptre, real or usurped, extends not to me, unless the reason of an individual demands my homage.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gt7fwbpzeqv5v8h0he6j9pz9)) > The revolution’s frontline was located at the home front. Political equality begins at the hearth, Wollstonecraft insisted, not on the streets; for a democracy to flourish, we must not only overthrow the monarchies in palaces, but so too the patriarchies at home. Only when a husband cedes his wife’s equal capacity to reason—a capacity formed in the same classroom—will he free them both from the unnatural social conventions that, for generations, have warped their characters and stunted their growth ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gt7fyjy84kqxs9m7n83k1gb9)) > For Wollstonecraft, marriage must be built on a fraternal, not a sexual, foundation. By its very nature, passions of the heart are short-lived and self-destructive. Wollstonecraft had seen the lives of too many women, like her close friend Fanny Blood and sister Eliza Wollstonecraft, destroyed because of unwanted pregnancies or unworthy husbands ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gt7g0srjm1da3pfks8d9knzw)) > Friendship is a serious affection; the most sublime of all affections, because it is founded on principle, and cemented by time.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gt7g1r3cdcy85jvbwbm019e2)) - Note: Wollstonecraft > puriteens, studies do suggest that Zoomers are having less sex than other recent generations. Or, more precisely, they seem to be placing equal importance on friendship as on sex ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gt7g6z8xfnyfrxfybnvn9bwh))