The distinction between instrumental and intrinsic goods is crucial, because friendship (real friendship, not the ersatz friendship we practice today) is an intrinsic good, while politics is an instrumental good. Thus, to lose a friendship over politics suggests that something is deeply disordered in our souls. […]
When politics is understood as war, genuine friendship becomes difficult because friendship contributes nothing to the cause. What it is replaced with is “allyship” or “comradeship.” And comrades are not, strictly speaking, friends. They are rather partners in a cause. …
[A] culture that views politics as war will inevitably struggle with meaninglessness. Of course, there is some sense of meaning in fighting for a cause. But in pluralist societies like ours, political causes will never be fully achieved, not only because there is no place to dispose permanently of our enemies—every victory is thus subject to reversal over time—but also because what the “warmakers” are ultimately seeking in politics is a resolution possible only on the far side of the eschaton. We are seeking perfect justice, perfect agreement, and perfect stability over time. Because perfection in this world constantly eludes us, politics is like that chain suspended in midair. Each link seems meaningful, but the chain is anchored in nothing. The war to end all wars has no end. What ends is only our healthy relationship to intrinsic goods that bring happiness and meaning to life. […]
Some people I know worry that genuine friendship is less possible in a pluralist age than in contexts where citizens share a robust conception of the good, or of God. But this is not my view. From experience I have learned that friendship does not require that friends love all the same things, much less that they love the same ultimate things. Friendships based on such common loves of course do exist, and perhaps they are of a higher order than those in which ultimate truths are not shared. But friendship is possible where what is loved is simply the person, not the person’s metaphysics or theology. Pluralism thus need not be the death of friendships that are genuine and deep.
But if pluralism does not render meaningful friendships impossible, the tendency to understand politics as a form of war certainly makes them less likely. That was the claim I supported above by distinguishing between friendship and allyship. The second claim I made was that how one understands friendship can affect how one practices politics. Why would this be so? It is because the experience of genuine friendship, which is not merely an intrinsic good but a peak intrinsic good, cannot help but put politics in its place. Politics today makes great claims about its own importance. Yet politics cannot bring meaning to our lives—not deep meaning at any rate—because it is never more than an instrumental good.
Politics is also always incomplete, while friendship is complete in itself, in that it needs nothing else to deliver such satisfaction as is possible here on earth. Of course, friendship is incomplete in its own way, in that it cannot make us perfectly whole. But this incompleteness differs in kind from the incompleteness of politics. Politics is incomplete because its work is never done. Friendship is incomplete only insofar as its complete success intimates something even higher, a kind of friendship with God that awaits us at the end of time. Those who understand what real friendship is, and what it ultimately foreshadows, will place less value in politics because they will have better things to do. They will know through experience where their deepest longings are most fully satisfied.