I'm reading his Laelius de Amicitia (translated On Friendship usually). Cicero, speaking through the character of Laelius, contends that friendship is higher than family or neighbor (the relations according to nature), for the very fact that it is not indissoluble. This is radically opposed to our culture's understanding, I think.
Among family, there can be breaches in trust, fidelity, and good-will. Family bonds can be played out partly or entirely on use or pleasure. Yet, family is always family, no matter what. This is why family is a baser form of love. In friendship, however, at the very moment good-will ceases in either one of the two, friendship ceases by definition. And, friendship is not even possible in the first place among those who lack virtue or merely seek to use others for pleasure or social advantages. Relationships such as those are not true friendships at all. Thus, for Cicero, friendship is the highest and rarest love among human beings, requiring more from a man than anything else, such that many or most men are not capable of giving or receiving it.
He says that friendships allow a man to thrive and prosper. In friendship, a man's fortune's are doubled (because two share them together) and his sorrows are halved (because the two share them together). However, it is not for any convenience to himself that a man enters into true friendship (this, again, would be a relationship of use, not friendship). Rather, he who is virtuous makes friends by virtue of his virtue itself, and any benefit is as a side effect.
I'm eager to read more.
Among family, there can be breaches in trust, fidelity, and good-will. Family bonds can be played out partly or entirely on use or pleasure. Yet, family is always family, no matter what. This is why family is a baser form of love. In friendship, however, at the very moment good-will ceases in either one of the two, friendship ceases by definition. And, friendship is not even possible in the first place among those who lack virtue or merely seek to use others for pleasure or social advantages. Relationships such as those are not true friendships at all. Thus, for Cicero, friendship is the highest and rarest love among human beings, requiring more from a man than anything else, such that many or most men are not capable of giving or receiving it.
He says that friendships allow a man to thrive and prosper. In friendship, a man's fortune's are doubled (because two share them together) and his sorrows are halved (because the two share them together). However, it is not for any convenience to himself that a man enters into true friendship (this, again, would be a relationship of use, not friendship). Rather, he who is virtuous makes friends by virtue of his virtue itself, and any benefit is as a side effect.
I'm eager to read more.
Truly interesting coincidence that I should be reading the same thing this very week also! One of my favorite used book stores had an old copy of Cicero's writings and letters in the $4 bin on the street corner. Can't resist such wisdom at that price!
ReplyDeleteWas it that bookstore we browsed outside when I visited in November? I can't believe I haven't read Cicero before. His style astounds me. I've got two volumes from the Loeb Classical Library, which includes On Duties, On Old Age, On Friendship, and On Divination.
DeleteI would very much like to hear your thoughts after you finish!
Whew. Finished reading this awhile ago, but I remembered that I hadn't filled you in! I think there is a lot to gain from Cicero's slim few pages. One thing that struck me was his discussion on the ideal boundary of our affection for our friends. For him, loving others as we love ourself was not enough:
ReplyDelete"[...] For how many things there are which we would never have done for our own sakes, but do for the sake of a friend! [...] There are many advantages too which men of upright character voluntarily forego, or of which they are content to be deprived, that their friends may enjoy them rather than themselves."
You wrote elsewhere, I believe, that Cicero nears very closely to the Christian concept of charity. This seems to me that exact point. Self-sacrifice for the sake of another: for Christ says "love others as I have loved you." Cicero called his contemporaries above the standard of what one would do for oneself just as Christ enjoins upon us to follow his example of laying down our lives at the service of others and of God.