Bourgeois friendship is offered to a person’s social position, not the person
Evidence
The correct attitude to society is produced if one constantly keeps the following facts before one’s eyes: in today’s society, all human relations are distorted, and nothing across the whole gamut of friendship, approval and goodwill is ultimately meant seriously. The only thing which is serious is the competitive struggle within classes and the struggle between classes … Every friendly act is offered not to a person but to his place in societythis fact is shown in all its brutality when the same person loses his position as a result of minor or major changes in the conditions of the struggle (stock exchange, persecution of the Jews). But it is not a question of an abstract conclusion. Instead, you must constantly be aware that it is you yourself who are at their mercy when all the friendly, benevolent people with whom you are surrounded every day find out that you have become powerless. Conclusion: never on the same footing as the gaolers; solidarity for ever with the victims. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 441
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- DEEPTHINKING: A dense, self-aware doctrine tying class analysis to personal vulnerability, where the observer must internalize that they too are at mercy — a paradigm-shifting ethical-methodological stance rather than a simple observation.
- XREF: Connects to Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical sociology and to critical theory’s social-relation critique in Communication as Culture.