Friendship in Plato, Augustine and Montaigne Essay

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Plato, Augustine and Montaigne all define friendship in different ways, though they share many similarities. Augustine, for instance, defined it in terms of the ultimate aim of man as a Christian, which is to be united to God: a friend was thus one who assisted or supported the development of that holy union. Plato viewed friendship in a more philosophical (and less theological vein) but nonetheless defined it as one of the bonds that help to create a strong society based on the pursuance of the Ideals—the one, the good, and true. Montaigne viewed friendship from a political perspective, showing how Aristotle pointed out that “good legislators had more respect to friendship than to justice” (1) in order to show that there is a great deal of good to be said for the charity that is often associated with friendship. This paper will discuss the meaning of friendship as defined by Plato, Augustine and Montaigne and show their different orientations and how, ultimately, they are mainly like-minded.

The characteristic of friendship that links the three perspectives together is the quality of affection or charity that goes together with friendship. A friend is one who wants the other to do well, to be whole, and to succeed in life. A friend is supportive rather than hurtful and is a source of good will rather than ill will. For Augustine, the ultimate or true friend was one who wanted to see the other save his soul. Thus, a seeming friend may have a pleasant demeanor and positive feeling towards one, but unless that friend is able to assist one in moving closer to God, he cannot be counted as a true friend. That is why Augustine writes, “friendship is genuine only when you bind fast together people who cleave to you through the charity poured abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to us” (4,7). In other words, true friendship for Augustine comes from God and has its origins in the charity which flows as a gift through and from the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity.

To support his definition of friendship, Augustine describes how he lured a friend away from the true faith to follow in superstition. He describes his friendship as being rooted in a kind of love (i.e., in misplaced affection rather than in the holy love that leads souls to God) that nonetheless had some of the defining characteristics of genuine friendship: Augustine cared for the person but was blinded himself by superstition so could not be the kind of true friend to the person that God wants all to be. Thus, Augustine described how God took the friend away from Augustine: “You were pursuing close behind us, O God of vengeance who are the fount of all mercy and turn us back to yourself in wondrous ways. You took him from this life after barely a year’s friendship, a friendship sweeter to me than any sweetness I had known in all my life” (4,7).

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While the friend was sick and unconscious, he was baptized—and as he begin to recover a bit he was told as much. Augustine mocked the ceremony to his recovering friend, but the friend now viewed Augustine as his spiritual enemy, which he…

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…think of the other out of the affections and bonds of friendship. There is in this kind of a friendship a deep feeling of loyalty and trust that cannot be violate, broken or betrayed. To betray such a friendship would be worse than death because it would be the betrayal of something sacred, holy and profound. It is this conception of friendship that could be taken as the extreme of friendship in Montaigne’s writings: it is this type of friendship that best represents the ideal that both Plato and Augustine describe in their own unique ways with reference to the Good or to God.

Though the three differ in the particulars about what is friendship, there is a common theme or thread among them all that gets to the heart of what true friendship is or should be, and why lesser friendships or false friendship pales in comparison. For Augustine, the best friendship is that which moves one towards God; yet even a lesser friendship can seed the way towards, God, as Augustine’s early friendship did indirectly by exposing to him the reality of the religious world that he was missing. For Plato, everything is in degrees, and shades of friendship may exist in this world, but perfect friendship is rooted in the perfect love—i.e., the perfect union with or possession of the Good. For Montaigne, there are many different types of friendship and circumstances in which friendship can occur. There are friendships between parents and children, friendships between lovers, friendships at the political level. Montaigne’s practical view of friendship is thus most different from Augustine’s and Plato’s, though he does not deny the….....

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