On Friendship

Summary

This small volume presents Montaigne's celebrated essay on friendship together with other essays from the Essais in M. A. Screech's translation. The title essay, 'Of Friendship' (Book I, Chapter 28 in modern numbering), was written as a memorial to Étienne de La Boétie, the young magistrate and humanist whom Montaigne met in Bordeaux around 1558 and who died in 1563. Montaigne begins by comparing himself to a painter who fills the borders of a wall with grotesques around a central picture: his essay was meant to frame La Boétie's treatise On Voluntary Servitude, which he decided not to print there because it had been misused by Protestant pamphleteers. He then distinguishes perfect friendship from other human bonds. The relations of parents and children are bound by duty and inequality; brotherhood is complicated by inheritance; erotic love for women is a feverish, fickle fire; and Greek love between men, as the ancients practised it, is unequal and tied to bodily beauty. Ordinary friendships are alliances of convenience, which must be conducted with prudence. The friendship Montaigne shared with La Boétie, by contrast, was a complete fusion of two wills, so that neither could say what belonged to whom; it arose suddenly from their first meeting and lasted only four years. Asked why he loved La Boétie, Montaigne answers that he can say only: because it was he, because it was I. He argues that such a friendship can exist only between two, cannot be divided, and makes ordinary obligations such as gratitude meaningless, since friends own everything in common. He illustrates with classical examples, especially Gaius Blossius's loyalty to Tiberius Gracchus, and with a story of Eudamidas bequeathing his friends the duty of caring for his mother and daughter. The essay ends with a grief-stricken account of the dull, smoky life Montaigne has led since his friend's death, in which every pleasure seems halved. Other essays in This selection (contents vary by edition) extend Montaigne's reflections on affection, solitude and the self.

Plot or Argument

• The frame and La Boétie's treatise

  Montaigne compares his essay to grotesques framing a painting and explains why he will not print On Voluntary Servitude.

• Kinds of human bonds

  Distinctions between friendship and the bonds of parents and children, brothers, lovers and Greek pederasty.

• The perfect friendship

  The fusion of two souls; 'because it was he, because it was I'; indivisibility and the meaninglessness of debts between true friends.

• Classical examples

  Blossius and Gracchus, the will of Eudamidas, and other ancient illustrations.

• Mourning

  Montaigne's description of life after La Boétie's death, a half-life in which nothing is fully enjoyed.

Characters

• Michel de Montaigne, author

  Essayist reflecting on his friendship and his grief.

• Étienne de La Boétie, Montaigne's friend

  Humanist and magistrate, author of On Voluntary Servitude, who died in 1563.

Lessons

• Friendship as union

  Montaigne describes friendship not as an exchange of favours but as a merging of wills. The essay sets a high, perhaps impossible, ideal against which to measure our relationships.

  • Is Montaigne's ideal friendship possible, or even desirable?
  • Why can it exist only between two?
  • What does 'because it was he, because it was I' mean?

• Grief for a friend

  The essay is an act of mourning. It shows how loss can be honoured by writing and how a friendship can shape a whole life afterward.

  • How does grief shape the essay's argument?
  • Is writing an essay about a friend a form of continuing the friendship?

• Comparing loves

  Montaigne contrasts friendship with family duty and erotic passion, revealing assumptions of his time, including about women. Readers can test his distinctions against their own experience.

  • Why does Montaigne think women incapable of such friendship, and how should we respond?
  • Are family bonds lesser forms of love?

Context

Montaigne wrote during the French Wars of Religion, when Catholic and Protestant factions fought for control of France. La Boétie's essay On Voluntary Servitude, written in his youth, was co-opted by Huguenot propagandists, which is why Montaigne withheld it. The essay draws on classical theories of friendship in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Cicero's De Amicitia.

Composition

'Of Friendship' appeared in the first edition of the Essais (1580) and was revised in later editions up to Montaigne's death. Montaigne also wrote a letter to his father describing La Boétie's death in detail.

Reception

The essay became one of the most famous texts on friendship in Western literature. John Florio's 1603 English translation was read by Shakespeare and Bacon, whose own essay 'Of Friendship' engages with Montaigne's.

Comparisons

• phaedrus-and-letters-vii-and-viii

  Plato's dialogue on love between men is one of the models Montaigne discusses and distinguishes from friendship.

• plutarch-essays

  Montaigne's favourite author; Plutarch's essays on friendship and flattery shape his own.

• kokoro

  Sōseki's novel shows friendship destroyed by rivalry and guilt, the opposite of Montaigne's perfect union.

• meditations

  Both are introspective writings drawn from the classical tradition of moral philosophy and the examined life.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The opening image of a painter who fills the borders of a wall with grotesques around a central picture. Ask what the central picture was meant to be and why Montaigne decided not to print it.
• The sorting of human bonds in the middle of the essay: fathers and sons, brothers, love for women, and Greek love between men. Note what flaw Montaigne finds in each before he reaches perfect friendship.
• Montaigne's account of his first meeting with La Boétie at a large gathering in the city, and his claim that they were already seeking each other before they met.
• The classical examples of Blossius answering for Tiberius Gracchus and of Eudamidas leaving his friends the care of his mother and daughter in his will. Ask what each proves about the unity of friends.
• The closing pages on life after La Boétie's death, where every pleasure seems to Montaigne only half enjoyed because his friend has no share in it.

Key terms and names

Étienne de La Boétie

The young magistrate of the Bordeaux parlement whom Montaigne loved, and who died in 1563 after about four years of friendship. The whole essay is a memorial to him.

On Voluntary Servitude

La Boétie's youthful treatise on why people submit to tyrants. Montaigne first meant to set it at the heart of his book but withheld it because Protestant partisans had published it for their own cause.

Grotesques

Fanciful decorative paintings with no fixed shape, used to fill the margins of a wall. Montaigne compares his own essays to them, calling them shapeless pieces framing his friend's work.

Common friendships

Ordinary alliances formed by occasion or advantage, which Montaigne says must be handled with prudence and reserve. He contrasts them with the single perfect friendship that admits no reserve.

Blossius and Gracchus

Gaius Blossius, questioned before the Roman consuls about what he would have done for Tiberius Gracchus, said he would have done anything Gracchus asked, since Gracchus would never ask a wrong thing. Montaigne defends the answer as proof that the two wills were one.

Eudamidas

A poor Corinthian who, in his will, left to his two rich friends the duties of supporting his mother and dowering his daughter. Montaigne praises the will because it treated his friends' wealth as already shared.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension Why does Montaigne say his essay is like the grotesques around a painting, and why does he decide not to print La Boétie's treatise in its place?
2. Comprehension What objections does Montaigne raise to calling the bond between father and son, or between brothers, a perfect friendship?
3. Comprehension How did Montaigne and La Boétie first meet, and how long did their friendship last?
4. Interpretation Montaigne says he can explain his love for La Boétie only by answering that it was because it was he, and because it was himself. Is this a refusal to explain, or the best possible explanation?
5. Interpretation Why does Montaigne insist that perfect friendship can exist only between two people, and that gifts and thanks between such friends make no sense?
6. Interpretation Why does Montaigne defend Blossius's answer about Gracchus when the consuls found it alarming? What limits, if any, does his defense place on a friend's loyalty?
7. Big Question Is a friendship in which two wills become one the highest form of love, or does love require that each person remain distinct enough to correct the other?

Faith Connections

• 1 Samuel 18:1-4 (Scripture)

  The soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. Montaigne's description of two souls mixed so completely that the seam cannot be found is very close to this account.

• 2 Samuel 1:26 (Scripture)

  David mourns Jonathan by saying his love surpassed the love of women. Montaigne's closing pages are a similar lament, and he too ranks this friendship above the love between men and women.

• John 15:13-15 (Scripture)

  Jesus calls his disciples friends rather than servants because he has shared everything with them. Montaigne's claim that friends hold all things in common, including their secrets, fits this pattern, though Jesus extends friendship to many and Montaigne limits it to one.

• Augustine, Confessions IV (Church Fathers)

  Augustine describes the death of a young friend at Thagaste and says he felt that his soul and his friend's had been one soul in two bodies, so that he hated to live as half. He later judges that his grief was disordered because he loved a mortal as if he would never die, a judgment that sets up a conversation with Montaigne's undiminished mourning.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Every human bond has a measure of friendship in it, but bonds of nature, law and desire are mixed with duty, inequality or passion. Perfect friendship arises only from the free meeting of two souls who become one will. Since such friends own all things in common, ordinary duties of gratitude and exchange no longer apply between them, and the friendship cannot be divided among several people. Such a friendship is rare, perhaps once in three centuries, and Montaigne had it with La Boétie; therefore its loss leaves a half-life that no other relationship can fill.

Rhetorical device: isocolon. Montaigne's answer about why he loved La Boétie, which the record gives in Florio's English as "Because it was he, because it was my selfe" (Essays I.28), sets two clauses of equal length side by side. The balanced form enacts the equality and union of the two friends.

Debate: Resolved: A person can have only one true friend in the sense Montaigne describes.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Montaigne ranks friendship above the bonds of parents and children, brothers, and husbands and wives. Reconstruct his reasons for each ranking and argue whether his account of perfect friendship can survive his own admission that it was granted to him only once.

Comparison with The Nicomachean Ethics: Aristotle in Books VIII and IX distinguishes friendships of utility, pleasure and virtue, and Montaigne cites him in this essay. Compare Aristotle's friendship of virtue with Montaigne's union with La Boétie and argue which account better explains why a friend is another self.

Medical Lens

The essay is primarily a meditation on friendship but closes as a document of bereavement, describing a lasting dulling of pleasure after La Boétie's death. Montaigne's separate letter describing La Boétie's death (from an illness often described as dysentery or plague) is a valuable early account of a deathbed. Elsewhere in the Essais, Montaigne writes extensively on his kidney stones, physicians and the practice of philosophy as preparation for death, but whether those essays appear in this volume depends on the edition.

• 'Of Friendship', closing pages

  Montaigne's description of the dull, half-life he has led since his friend's death.

  Grief

Creative Prompts

• Essay

  Write an essay on a friendship of your own in Montaigne's manner, beginning from 'because it was he, because it was I'.

• Dialogue

  Imagine La Boétie replying to the essay. What would he say about Montaigne's portrait of their friendship?

• Classroom

  Compare Montaigne's essay with Cicero's De Amicitia and Bacon's 'Of Friendship'.

Further Reading

• How to Live: A Life of Montaigne, Sarah Bakewell

• On Friendship (De Amicitia), Cicero

• Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, Étienne de La Boétie

• Essays, Francis Bacon

  Includes 'Of Friendship'.