In this paper I will study this apparently strange but seemingly beautiful necessity of friendship first as an intemporal need for human beings, and secondly its maybe specific form it took in the Renaissance with the examples of Thomas More and Michel de Montaigne who have the reputation to have lived true friendships during their life time, in the 16th century, one in England, the other in France.
NATURE OF FRIENDHIP:
To live a friendship is entering the living world of a relation between two or more human beings. Indeed, it is impossible for any human being, unless in the case mental illness, to live without a dialogue established with another one, the other. Actually, this dialogue is a must in order not only to know the other we encounter, but first of all to know oneself. As Martin Buber writes in his book “Je et Tu”, as soon as one accepts the presence of the other, the self is accepted. A conscience is addressing another conscience, and the other is then seen as a conscience being fully a “I”, that is to say a person, to refer to Buber’s language. It is truly in acknowledging each other that both consciences are created and affirm their existence. Therefore one can say that if any true life is the result of an encounter, it is also truly an act. True life is indeed a simultaneous and reciprocal act of two consciences, which, facing each other are involved in the other’s life. This act is the result of a decision, an intuitive movement toward the other. Therefore in an authentic relation, each one affirms the other’s existence in an immediate recognition. Indeed, the other’s real life brilliantly surges because it enters one’s present time. In his book, Buber stresses that any encounter comes up in the present, in the present time (18), and it is indeed this active encounter or meeting which creates the other’s presence, time becoming then a reality. But this rich and productive experience of time being here and now is real only if it is mutual: here nests the wealth of reciprocity. Thus the act of encountering the other is a total act because it recognizes the other in its his/her being’s complex unity. This unity is true not only for the other but also, and with the same strength, for the self, the “I”. Indeed, encountering the other is the result of one’s decision leading to the realization of the self. This realization will effectively construct the subject and the other by the instauration of the “I and You”, “I with You” establishing then a personal relation between two consciences that will construct themselves together. Buber’s analysis led Bachelard to say that one being exists in the world, whom you do not know, and all of a sudden, in one encounter, before knowing him/her, you recognize him/her (25). Thus the relation between I and You is not to be severed as a severed link will always become an idealized link. Instead, this link will help us discover true human characteristics. I am a person, and attach myself to another person. Would I cut the link, I would destroy myself.
This axis “I and You” becomes a person in a dialogue, allowing existence to have another side, a side one might want to discover, bearing the mark of the given and received, even if the dialogue itself is not quite clear. This does not mean that this relation I-You creates a world but instead it helps one to encounter the other and to accept it: even if the other goes away, the “I” will meet the “you” inside whom are all the parallel lines of all relations. Indeed, one’s mind is not in the “I” but in the relation “I-You” and only then can one say that it is only when we know the relation and the other’s presence can we make a decision. Although this process of decision making is at its beginning voluntary, as everything on our road is of the order of the voluntary decision, be it foreseen or unconscious, this decision is deep inside of each one of us, determining us deeply, in a secretive manner. But is this necessary relation between “I” and “You” producing “friendship” between the two subjects/ objects? And if so under which conditions? To briefly analyze this aspect of human relations, we must refer to Ricoeur and Aristotle.
Ricoeur in his book “Soi-même comme un autre » stresses that to establish friendship, one must have first a self-esteem enabling him/her to ceaselessly examine his/her own acts in order to decide what is the best to make one live a good life. Therefore one must be capable to discern and act. So Ricoeur wonders whether one should need the other in order to achieve his/her plans in life (212). To answer this question Ricoeur refers to Aristotle who claims in his book “Ethics of Nicomaque” (VII-IX) that the other is definitely a mediator, and is an imperative part of the building of friendship. But what is friendship for Aristotle? Considering Aristotle’s importance for the humanists of the Renaissance period, we will briefly examine his remarks on the subject in the following paragraph. To do this we have a very good tool in his book VIII titled “Friendship”, especially chapters I to XIII.
If we follow Ricoeur’s point of view that one does need the other as a mediator to achieve his plan, we must consider Aristotle’s point of view that there are three forms of friendship: one based on the principle of utility , another one based on a moral hierarchy, and a third one based on a shared virtue. So we observe that friendship is never some sort of pure happening, but requires a dialogue to build it, be this dialogue interested in a social scope like utility or hierarchy or on a sort of acknowledgment of a shared way of life. If Aristotle does put some limits to the first two cases of friendship, he stresses the strength and durability of the third one founded on similar virtues. Indeed, he writes that the perfect friendship is lived by good and alike men who desire only good things for their friends as they are very good and well minded themselves. This quality of goodness is essential, writes Aristotle as desiring only what is good for your friends is being at the top of friendship. (Bk 8, chap. 3). Indeed, good people show themselves worthed to please, and worthed to please each other. Of course, this type of friendship is rare because such men are few, and this relation needs time and a shared way of life. This means that although desire for friendship is quickly born, friendship itself requires time and it must be based on identical qualities between the two friends. One of the consequences of such feeling is that one will find a mutual trust between the two friends, and that none of these friends will wrong either one. Therefore, friendship among good people is certainly the most secure one, and the other two cases of friendship exist only by analogy to this one. Although to love your friend, adds Aristotle, is again to love yourself, a man of quality when he becomes a friend to another becomes good to his friend. Both men exchange to each other their qualities, building up a kind of common good, a common personality as Buber suggested in his analysis of “I-You”. But Aristotle remarks that one can see among powerful people two kinds of very distinct friendship: some help the others, some give agreeable gifts to the other, and very rarely are these two advantages to be found in the same people. (Bk VIII, chapter. 6).
So Martin Buber and Paul Ricoeur stressed the necessity for any human being to establish a true dialogue with the other in order to develop him/herself, and Aristotle gave us the indispensable elements, according to him, to build friendship. Let us see now how the Renaissance people lived friendship.
RENAISSANCE AND FRIEND
To speak of friendship during the Renaissance makes it necessary for us to take Aristotle’s definitions as well alive in this time, although his point of view of true friendship to be found only among good people is very attractive, but of course not absolutely true. As Ricoeur writes in his book “Histoire et vérité”, during the Renaissance people became aware of the pluri-dimensional forms of truth. These forms underline that the development of our civilization is linked to a sociology of knowledge, then friendship is part of this development of knowledge.
Of course, scholars of this time, discovering Ancient literature, therefore Aristotle, seem to have adopted, for most of them, his definition of friendship as being a social link, a kind a cement of any human society. But they go further than that and analyze it as a tool to analyze political events of the time. So, we must readily suggest, following Michel Rey in his unpublished thesis, that there has been a territory called “friendship” covering justice, politics, and social life. Rey quotes Pierre Charron who says “friendship is one among general duties of justice, which should be clearly understood, and duties of exchanges among people”. Therefore, according to Charron, friendship is a list of social links including home, work, religion, and government. Charron sees society as a unique ensemble, complex and hierarchized of which friendship is the cement enabling exchanges from one level to another one. From this approach, we see friendship as a large territory, nurturing the whole society preserving States and polices. Therefore, there are civil friendships, political and economic friendships. We of course sense here that these kinds of friendships are superior to the individuals bringing to them duties and rights. Of course in France , at the end of the Renaissance this ideal of friendship as cement of a universal statu quo was badly weakened by the religious and political civil wars. Consequently, friendship in the Renaissance, especially in France, was heavily depending on daily circumstances. Friendship is not then seen as a sentiment, but rather a will to act every day. And it exists on the concrete repetition of days and gestures or actions. A good example of this is Hamlet who does not confide in Horatio his wishes in his great monologues, but asks for assistance, for advises. Horatio has the obligation to offer the consilium. Generally speaking, but maybe emphasizing the English Renaissance, and following G. F. Lysle, let us say that during the Renaissance, friendship was a fundamental value as well as an essential social relation. Authors used it repeatedly in many works be them poems, art works, plays, homilies and so on, without forgetting private letters. So a friend could be a soul mate, a boss, a client, a relative, a lover. Friendship could be also an intense devotion to the other, without any idea of gain or personal interest. On the other hand, friendship could be public, useful, interested, help from a friend or a boss. In the Renaissance society friendship was a combination of all the above, thus reflecting a permanent interaction between political, economic, and social realities, together with its own system of values.
Values…
The notion of value, more than a concept, can it be limited to the spiritual sphere? If so friendship could be seen only as an object on the background of a pair like private/public, devotion/interest, values/realities or values/needs. But if this were the case, friendship would be seen as extravagant by the witnesses or deeply framed in a historical context.
This context is the Renaissance society, a period between feudalism and capitalism, between personal leadership and resurgence of enlightened despotism. Friendships in this context covered relationships between masters and clients for example, although G. F. Lysle observes that both fields of friendship were often mixed up either in everyday language or in the lords’ exchanges with the vassals. Therefore, in the English Renaissance, friendship seems to follow one of Aristotle’s pattern: friendship between unequal partners or interested ones. In that case, one can speak of more general relationships and use the term in general: the friendships. In fact, for Lysle, we have still three types of friendship, as for Aristotle: virtuous, agreeable, and useful: these three types are not opposed, and do not enlighten each other: if there is tension it is between interlocutors, in the space between emission and reception of the message: in this situation, signs can have lost some of their clarity.
In the Renaissance France, contemporary historians immediately saw friendship as a rather secondary element in a debate on power relations inside the political field. Thus friendship is seen in a kind of crossroad between social and political links showing the opposition between sentiments and interests. On the other hand, R. Mounier and his followers supported the idea that there were links of faithfulness between powerful people and followers. In this condition, given and received services were less important than the relationships from man to man. But Anglo-Saxon historians working on this period in France stressed the flexibility and the number of links of dependence and one single person could change these relations according to his/her own interests. These scholars included friendship in a vast field of research focused on the clients. Without entering in the discussion led by Mounier on faithfulness and sentiment, let us say that he acknowledges that both parties can change their contract if one of them has not fulfilled his/her part. Often times it was the case of followers breaking out a contract when the lord did not fulfill his involvement. Of course, one could get the wind of a shade of love relationship within these faithful links in the contract. This could explain the specific relationship between favorites and prince to govern the country. Nonetheless, for authors like Charron in the 16th century, friendship is duty of heart, while the others are of words and acts. Although the word “sentiment” is not often used in the 16th century. Moreover, we must consider that any letter coming from a prince or a very high ranked personage transforms the receiver’s identity by giving him a superior value than his/her basic one. This shows that friendship in the French 16th century implies an equality, if not social, at least virtuous and of quality. As a matter of fact, friendship was quite important in this period in France among aristocrats. The language includes a rich vocabulary reflecting the awareness of friendship in daily life. This underlines J.-M. Constant’s remark that one important characteristic of the social life of the nobility is the moral supremacy given to the man to man relationships on more abstract engagements. In any way, be it in England or in France, language is definitely the medium of friendship, and its use depending on the circumstances of the interlocutors it gives each time a definition of friendship, and a definition of the people using it. Let us see now, how Thomas More and Michel de Montaigne lived friendships in their particular period and country.
MORE & MONTAIGNE
Although More and Montaigne lived in the Renaissance period, they were one at the beginning of it in the case of More in England, and the other in its full bloom and close to its end in the case of Montaigne in France. The other point while comparing them is their personality and life style: Thomas More was a public man implied in politics be it the city’s or the King’s of whom he became the Chancellor; Montaigne, although a member of Bordeaux Parliament and Mayor of the city for a rather short time, lived a private life, that of a lord on his land as Desan says. But both men studied law, although this study led More to the Bench in the city of London, while Montaigne used it in Bordeaux as a member of Bordeaux Parliament and Mayor, without great ambition to become close to the King of France in Paris. From the spiritual point of view, we can observe that even in this area of their life these two Renaissance men were almost at the opposite extremes of the spectrum of religious lives. Indeed, while More lived a deep faith, having considered as a young man to become a Carthusian monk, and basing almost all his decisions as a family man, a lawyer and a political man on the Scriptures, Montaigne was a Christian as it was said to be in the 16th century in France, more an Aristotelian philosopher than a deeply faithful man. Another element differentiating these two exceptional men in this field, is the fact that although More had to face the coming into England of the Reform, Montaigne lived in a country concretely and violently shaken by religious wars. If More, as a Chancellor in the Privy Council had to take a stand regarding the spread of the Reform -as a Chancellor and as a truly faithful Catholic- Montaigne, on his side, could retire on his land and sort of cut out himself from these bloody troubles. The more so that, for whatever reason probably linked to the family reputation in the country, Montaigne’s estate and its people were never, or quasi never, threatened by the surrounding troubles. Which does not mean that this unrest did not influence his analyses in the “Essais”. Nonetheless, these two men lived strong friendships, Renaissance friendships, but not only. Both More and Montaigne were deep thinkers, true philosophers, although the bases of their philosophy of life were somehow different due to their education and personality.
Thomas More was a man in the hinge of medieval education and the Renaissance new cursus. He definitely agreed with the Thomist’s philosophical concept of the “natural and universal law” constituting all human beings, gifted with a rational mind, therefore being free. This natural law founded man’s freedom, his free conscience. Indeed, Thomas More’s aims in life were justice and peace, which suppose that truth was deeply ingrained in himself, ingrained in the conviction of man’s dignity, never to be despised or ignored. These convictions of truth in himself and dignity of the other one were certainly key elements of his friendship with Erasmus. A friendship which ended only with More’s brutal death in 1535.
Although, it seemed impossible for these two men to meet because of their origins and ways of life, they did in 1499, and Erasmus speaks of a true love at first sight as Ganne says. Erasmus was 32 and More 22, and he writes he had been stricken by More’s harmony between mind and body, although this has not been the unique element to create a strong friendship. We must indeed stress that both More and Erasmus, shared a specific form of piety tinted of laicism and clericalism, which has been a kind of intermediary as Aristotle would say. They sort of lived, both, the religion of a spiritual elite of an educated middle class. And they both had a common objective: the defense of the “belles lettres” in England, with what they thought the support of Henry VIII who was their humanist hero at the time. Indeed, Henry, to both of them, was to establish peace among Christians. To this, we must add that Erasmus was much in need of a prince to give him a rent, and he knew very well the know-how. But Thomas More used him too when he published Utopia through Erasmus’ links with publishers, while the latter dedicated his Eloge of Folly to More, although not without More’s grinding teeth. Their correspondence is limited, if we consider 35 years of a relationship, and Erasmus spends much time in it complaining about the lack of answers of his friend, who was so much involved in public life. But when Erasmus visited his friend in England, he stayed a long time, as it was customary to do then, to the point of having Lady Alice complaining. So we see here that More’s friendship with Erasmus was spiritual, intellectual. If one took advantage of the other it was more Erasmus than Thomas More. But the latter was used to this aspect of friendship: as a public man he was often solicited to grant advantages or help people, and he was also the head of a large family group. Then More’s life as a friend was also based on hierarchy, with the weaknesses of such bond. Nonetheless very much aware of that type of link, he never hesitated to take a risk, to make a decision based on his true Christian faith, and to stand ground for it as his death proved it. What was the case of Montaigne?
First of all, to clearly differentiate the two men, let us say that Montaigne built a wall between his intimate being and his life as a member of Parliament. And he tends to have a relativist point of view on ethic things stressing that “For the good of men, it is absolutely necessary to deceive them”. He clearly believed that man is full of contradictions. His humanist education led him to the feeling that knowledge was unstable and relative and bearing a salutary doubt. In this context, Montaigne considers that friendship is a frame, a series of preliminary sketch and is destined to disappear, which make his friendship with La Boétie all the more remarkable, almost a bond that goes against his nature considering that this one is so little inclined to social and familial obligations. Montaigne conceives friendship solely as a gift, without the slightest hint of a profit. Indeed, it is supposed to be the expression of a voluntary servitude in which the master consents to put himself at the slave’s level. This voluntary servitude has no obligation, it is freedom. As we stressed above, in the Renaissance, friendship remained above all a topos: the point of departure for the discourse on friendship is the tripartite distinction presented in Aristotle’s Ethics, that is friendship in relation to utility, pleasure, and virtue, and for the Greek philosopher only friendship in relation to perfect virtue is a true friendship. In the Renaissance this definition was very probably more an ideal than lived, although the friendship between Montaigne and La Boétie seemed to have been quite close to the ideal, at least as Montaigne describes it in his Essays: “The friendship I speak of, our souls mingle and blend with each other so completely that they blur the seam that joined them, and cannot find it again.” Not quite like the meeting between More and Erasmus, Montaigne and La Boétie met in a party at the Parliament. Montaigne knew, up to then, La Boétie through his manuscript titled “Voluntary Servitude” which was circulating among the members of Bordeaux Parliament. La Boétie had no intention to publish this manuscript, written when he was 18. But La Boétie attracted attention and respect in the assembly, so one can guess that Montaigne heard about him, the more so because La Boétie was three years older than Montaigne and already a full member of the Parliament when they met. Nonetheless, Montaigne felt during this first encounter “a divine inspiration”, “love at first sight”. Nothing in the correspondence between More and Erasmus gives us such an analysis of the relationship between the two men as Desan writes about Montaigne and la Boétie: “they got talking, and found themselves ‘so taken to each other, so well acquainted, so bound together’ that, from the moment on, they became friends. That short period bound them to each other so tightly as a lifetime of shared friendship.” Although this “lifetime” was going to last only 3 years for La Boétie, it has been a true lifetime for Montaigne: the Montaigne of the 1570s and 1580s looked back with sorrow and longing for his lost friend -La Boétie died in 1563. Like More and Erasmus -but to a lesser point from my point of view fort these two- Montaigne and La Boétie shared many important things: subtle thinking, a passion for literature and philosophy, and a determination to live a good life like the classical writers and military heroes they had grown up admiring. Indeed, the background of the French men was quite different from the English’s and Dutch’s men. Moreover, Montaigne and La Boétie were not the spiritual men More and Erasmus were and the French pair seemed to have thought of their relationship above all by analogy with one particular classical model: that of the philosopher Socrates and his good looking young friend Alcibiades – to whom La Boétie compares Montaigne in a sonnet. Of course, the fact that Montaigne has been the only one to write about this friendship can make it a kind of transcendent mystery reflected in a surge of love that swept them both away. As a consequence, Montaigne’s attachment to moderation in all things fails him when it comes to La Boétie in the “Essays”, and so does his love of independence. In fact, the “Essays” became a monument to La Boétie in more than one way. Although La Boétie on his death bed wanted Montaigne to burn the manuscript of “Voluntary Servitude”, he did not: instead he published it giving La Boétie an intellectual posterity as Erasmus helped More to publish his “Utopia”, and More helped Erasmus to keep writing thanks to his relationships in England. With the difference that More did not refer to Erasmus’ influence in his spiritual development. Should we say, then, that More and Erasmus lived a hierarchical friendship, based more on utility than Montaigne and La Boétie’s ? Maybe. But as Renaissance friendship was supposed to be chosen in the clear, rational light of the day that is why it could be of philosophical value for both pairs. But in Montaigne’s lived friendship we observe a vision of “interlinked ‘I’s which, according to Leonard Woolf was the essence of civilization, point which does not appear as evident in More and Erasmus’ case.
CONCLUSION:
We saw in this brief paper that friendship in the Renaissance was nurtured, or built upon two seemingly opposed bases: the spiritual one from the medieval period and the Ancient one from the discovery of the Greek and Latin philosophers. But we stressed also that friendship is the consequence of the absolute necessity to build psychological and social structures not only for the individuals but also for societies in order to live together a good life. It was true during the Renaissance, it is true today, and isn’t what many of us are looking for with the new communication technologies? The fruitfulness and the limits of these are another field, to be studied.