January 3rd– Treatises on Friendship and Old Age- Cicero

 Today's excerpt

You Got a Friend In Me

Summary: Cicero explains why he values friendship, how friends should treat each other, and what is required for a strong friendship.

Commentary: I was excited when I saw this section. My exposure to the classical philosophers is fairly minimal, but I wasn't led to believe they'd bother with anything as "petty" as friendship. From what I read, I don't think most of them were likely to have many friends, since their writings were 90% complaining about everyone else in the world being an idiot. I suspect this is more my Intro to Philosophy prof's fault more than theirs. That's the point of this, isn't it? To read this stuff firsthand instead of skim it and rewrite whatever a professor said to get the gen ed credit.

I assume many others in the last hundred years have had a similar "stuffy" impression of the  philosophers, so having a nice personal piece early in the year as an introduction is smart. I also appreciate some light shit talking about prior philosophers and their "irritating" use of words differently than most people.

I was less enthused with Cicero's repeated insistence that friends need to be in agreement about everything. This is shortly after several paragraphs on how you have to be a good person to have friends, so I hope he's merely referring to "big" things like morals, not what kind of fish (the Romans ate a lot of fish, right?) you prefer. He later says its nearly impossible for friends to have complete wisdom of each other, which would make knowing you were in "complete accord" about everything impossible.

He then spends some times extolling the virtues of having and being a good friend, "How can life be worth living, to use the words of Ennius, which lacks that repose which is to be found in the mutual good-will of a friend?" Again, I appreciate the good will here.

I was amused, a page or so later, when he said he had nothing else to say about friendship. Today's selection goes on for several more pages, and only covers two thirds or so of the total piece. I skimmed the part after the selection ended, and found it mostly repetitive, but still amusing.

It was interesting to see how much of what he says is repeated today by self-help authors and the like. On the whole, I think his phrasing is generally more healthy/practical (people are good friends when they the like themselves vs you can't like other people if you don't like yourself).

I was amused by his anecdote about burning down the capitol if your friend asks. I don't really believe in unconditional love, and often ask my wife if she'd still love me if I was a serial killer. She is very sure I am not, and says that if I was I'd be deceiving her, which means she can stop loving me without it counting as conditional, since I am not the person she loved. I don't think I agree with her, but it's interesting to see modern questions repeating (backwards) in antiquity.

He follows this up by saying that you shouldn't be friends with anyone who asks you to betray the republic. On the one hand, I largely agree with not being friends with people who try to overthrow democracy. On the other hand, it's rare to see someone say "put loyalty to your country/government above loyalty to your friends." I think we all do so, whether we admit it or not, though the exact extent varies. For some people, it's even the opposite, they wouldn't want to be friends with you if you don't hate your country as much as they do.

In the next to last paragraph, he talks about needing to be honest, even sharply critical, with your friends if they are making a mistake and says you should listen to your friends when they do. I think we hear the first often today (even if we don't always practice it) but the second half is good advice as well that is rarely said.