Plato, Augustine, and Montaigne on the Nature of Friendship

Introduction: Three Perspectives on Friendship

Plato, Augustine, and Montaigne each define friendship differently, though they share many important similarities. Augustine defined friendship in terms of the ultimate aim of the Christian person: union with God. A friend, in his view, was one who assisted or supported the development of that holy union. Plato approached friendship in a more philosophical—and less theological—vein, yet still defined it as one of the bonds that help create a strong society built on the pursuit of the Ideals: the one, the good, and the true. Montaigne viewed friendship from a political perspective, noting how Aristotle pointed out that "good legislators had more respect to friendship than to justice" (Montaigne 1) in order to show that there is a great deal of good to be said for the charity often associated with friendship. This essay discusses the meaning of friendship as defined by all three thinkers, examining their different orientations and showing how, ultimately, they are largely like-minded.

The characteristic of friendship that links the three perspectives together is the quality of affection or charity that accompanies it. 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 goodwill rather than ill will.

Augustine: Friendship Rooted in Divine Charity

For Augustine, the ultimate or true friend was one who wanted to see the other save his soul. A seeming friend may have a pleasant demeanor and positive feeling toward 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, Augustine describes how he once lured a friend away from the true faith and into superstition. He characterizes his affection for this friend as rooted in a kind of love—that is, in misplaced affection rather than in the holy love that leads souls to God—which nonetheless had some of the defining characteristics of genuine friendship: Augustine cared for the person but was blinded by superstition himself and therefore could not be the kind of true friend that God wants all people to be. Augustine then describes how God took that friend away from him: "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).

While the friend lay sick and unconscious, he was baptized. As he began to recover, he was told as much. Augustine mocked the ceremony to his recovering friend, but the friend now viewed Augustine as his spiritual enemy—which, in Augustine's own reckoning, he was. Augustine plotted to win the friend back once he regained his health, but God saved the friend from what Augustine himself called his "mad designs." The lesson Augustine draws is this: love can bloom between people, but unless it is ultimately rooted in Christ, it is misplaced love. And since love is the basis of friendship, friendship must root itself in God or it is faulty by design.

Plato: Friendship as Union with the Good

Plato's perspective on friendship is naturally somewhat different, since he was writing in the pre-Christian era. Nevertheless, Plato held a clear conception of the nature of love and of how love, as the essence of friendship, connects to the transcendental. In the Symposium, Diotima asserts that the characteristic of love is being in possession of the good without end—that is, being united to the transcendental Good and never being separated from it. This is essentially the same vision as Augustine's, except that Augustine identifies the ultimate source of the Good as the Triune God and names the Second Person of that Trinity: Christ. The Platonic conception of friendship resembles Augustine's, only without the sense of supernatural gifts flowing through the Trinity when true friendship, grounded in love and union with the Good, is established. As Augustine's story of the baptized friend illustrates, union with the Good is really what matters in life—and a friend who would lead one away from that Good is no friend at all.

Diotima's characterization of love in the Symposium suggests as much when she describes love as perfect possession of the Good. She also indicates that love produces fruit—and so too must friendship produce fruit. The reason Socrates is put to death is precisely that the Athenian jury does not approve of the fruit he is producing: they want it to stop. In effect, they do not want true friendship—the kind that draws men toward the Good—in their city-state, because it is generating too much aspiration among citizens to be better than the state wishes them to be. The case of Athens, then, represents a conflict between state control and friendship with the Good.

Conclusion: A Common Thread

Though the three thinkers differ in the particulars about what friendship is, there is a common theme among them all that gets to the heart of what true friendship is or should be, and why lesser or false friendship pales in comparison. For Augustine, the best friendship is that which moves one toward God; yet even a lesser friendship can seed the way toward God, as Augustine's early, misplaced friendship did—indirectly exposing him to the reality of the religious world he was missing. For Plato, everything exists in degrees, and shades of friendship may exist in this world, but perfect friendship is rooted in perfect love—that is, in perfect union with or possession of the Good. For Montaigne, there are many different types of friendship and many different circumstances in which friendship can occur: friendships between parents and children, between lovers, and at the political level. Montaigne's practical view of friendship is thus the most different from Augustine's and Plato's, though he does not deny the ideal either. All three, in the end, converge on the conviction that genuine friendship is distinguished by deep affection, loyalty, and an orientation toward something greater than mere self-interest.

Works Cited

Augustine. Confessions. Translated by Maria Boulding. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2003.

Montaigne, Michel de. "On Friendship." Digital File.

Plato. Symposium. Translated by Paul Woodruff and Alexander Nehamas. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989.