I

The philosophers of classical antiquity, and the classical tradition at large, gave substantial attention to friendship and its role in the good life and the good city.Footnote ¹ For Aristotle, friendship ‘is virtue of a sort, or involves virtue; further, it is most necessary for life’ (ἔστι γὰρ ἀρετή τις ἢ μετ’ ἀρετῆς, ἔτι δ’ ἀναγκαιότατον εἰς τὸν βίον, Eth. Nic. 1155a3-5), and in the Nicomachean Ethics he goes on to give friendship greater attention than any of the cardinal virtues. Friendship is presented primarily as either a constitutive part of virtue or else as an aid to its attainment and we are told that it is φιλία, over and above everything else (including justice), that legislators are concerned with instituting in a city (1155a22-4). On Aristotle's view, the good person seems to need friends to lead a good life (1097b16-22). A friend helps a person attain things or pursue activities that they could not attain or pursue on their own (1169b6-7); the good person derives pleasure from the virtuous activity of his or her friends (1169b30-1170a4); friends help each other deliberate and attain understanding (1112b8-11, 1155a14-16, 1172a1-8); and since the good person's friend is another self (1170b5-7), awareness of a friend's good activities (somehow) seems to help a person attain self-knowledge (1169b33-1170a1; cf. Mag. mor. 1213a10-26).

While some writers indicated the potential for friendships to lead us astray,Footnote ² most philosophers followed Aristotle's lead in focussing on the benefits of friendship and its place in the virtuous life.Footnote ³ This seems to have been true (as far as we can tell) of both the Epicureans and the Stoics,Footnote ⁴ and the most influential Roman treatment of friendship—that of Cicero—also followed suit. In his mature (but seemingly rushed) De Amicitia, Cicero defines amicitia as agreement on human and divine affairs accompanied by beneuolentia and caritas, and takes friendship (alongside wisdom) to be the greatest of the gifts of the gods (Amic. 20). Like Aristotle, Cicero emphasizes the important role of friendship in the virtuous life and friendship's basis in our natural sociability (Amic. 18–21, 52–4, 86–8). While even false friendships seem to bring benefits and ethical improvement (Amic. 26), Cicero emphasizes that virtue is the root and source of friendship (Amic. 20, 27–8, 100) and that (true) friendship may obtain only among the good (Amic. 18, 36–7, 65–6). Friends share common purpose and activity (Amic. 61), advise each other (Amic. 44) and support each other (Amic. 21, 59). Their virtues are presented as mutually reinforcing and, as Cicero makes clear throughout, friendship was given by nature as an aid to virtue, not as a companion of vice (uirtutum amicitia adiutrix a natura data est, non uitiorum comes, Amic. 83).Footnote ⁵

II

Friendship receives relatively little attention in the Christian scriptures.Footnote ⁶ It first appears as a significant theme among Latin Christian thinkers in the late fourth century in Augustine himself and in his contemporaries: Ambrose of Milan and Paulinus of Nola.Footnote ⁷ Ambrose sought to appropriate classical (especially Ciceronian) views of friendship. Like Aristotle and Cicero (and unlike earlier Christians), he explicitly names friendship a virtue (uirtus est enim amicitia, Off. 3.134) and extols its splendours (nihil est in rebus humanis pulchrius, Off. 3.132).Footnote ⁸ In contrast, Paulinus seems to have found no significant role for amicitia in the Christian life and preferred to use the language of kinship rather than that of amicitia to describe the relation that should obtain among Christians.Footnote ⁹

Augustine wrote no treatise on friendship but discusses the nature of amicitia in a number of his works.Footnote ¹⁰ In his earliest surviving work, Contra Academicos (probably completed by 387), Augustine was happy to quote the Ciceronian definition of friendship and give it his stamp of approval (siquidem amicitia rectissime atque sanctissime definita est, rerum humanarum et diuinarum cum beneuolentia et caritate consensio, c. Acad. 3.6.13; cf. Cic. Amic. 20). Shortly thereafter, in his treatment of virtue in his De Diuersis Quaestionibus Octoginta Tribus (written between 388 and 395), Augustine also follows the early Ciceronian account of De Inuentione (2.166) incredibly closely (often copying Cicero word for word) and focusses on the positive ethical role of amicitia.Footnote ¹¹ However, by the time Augustine came to write an epistle to his acquaintance Marcianus (Ep. 258, probably written around 395),Footnote ¹² he seems to have had the chance to give further thought to the place of amicitia in the Christian life and goes beyond parroting Cicero.Footnote ¹³

In this letter to Marcianus, which is Augustine's most detailed discussion of amicitia outside of the Confessiones, Augustine emphasizes that Cicero's definition of friendship was incomplete and that, in order for true friendship to obtain, the relevant consensio must be based ‘in Jesus Christ our Lord and our true peace’ (Ep. 258.4; cf. Conf. 4.4.7). Augustine reminds Marcianus that they were not true friends before their conversions because those who are not Christians cannot be true friends (Ep. 258.1–2), and he notes that, in wishing well for him by worldly lights, Marcianus in fact wished ill for him (Ep. 258.2–3). Even though Augustine strongly invokes the language of amicitia through classical quotations and tells Marcianus that they are now friends in a genuine way (Ep. 258.2),Footnote ¹⁴ this letter does not discuss the nature or ethical role of amicitia in any detail nor does it offer us a clear vision of Christian friendship.Footnote ¹⁵

In investigating Augustine's conception of friendship in his various other works (especially in his other letters), scholars have brought attention to the importance of mutual correction and rebuke in Augustine's conception of uera amicitia,Footnote ¹⁶ and also to the complex developments in his thinking concerning the ideal balance between love of neighbour and love of God.Footnote ¹⁷ However, setting aside for now the Confessiones, what is perhaps most striking about the image of amicitia that emerges from Augustine's writings is the attention drawn to friendship's precariousness in this earthly life. Augustine often emphasizes that professions of friendship, like much else, must be taken on trust (for example, Vtil. Cred. 8.20, 10.24, 11.26; F. Invis. 1.2–2.4; Civ. Dei 11.3) and argues that, while one can directly perceive the (putative) friend's acts, one cannot directly perceive their character or will (uoluntas; for instance, F. Invis. 1.2–2.3). Thus one cannot—Augustine thinks—strictly speaking know whether true friendship obtains between oneself and another. It is in light of these considerations that Augustine typically emphasizes the fragility of friendship. Actions intended for the good of another may be misunderstood and characters are prone to change. We cannot be fully confident even of what we ourselves will be like on the morrow, let alone another (Ep. 130.4).

The late-antique epistolary context is important here and informs the worries Augustine often displays about misunderstandings (for example, Ep. 95.4) and his anxiety over absent friends (for instance, Civ. Dei 19.8).Footnote ¹⁸ No doubt his concerns about the volatility of friendship were also influenced by the estrangements he observed between even very eminent Christians, such as Jerome and Rufinus (for example, Ep. 73.6),Footnote ¹⁹ as well as his own experiences of broken friendships.Footnote ²⁰ While Augustine praises friendship as offering consolation in times of hardship and grief (for instance, Ep. 73.10), the uncertainties of friendship seem to have preyed heavily upon his mind; even when praising the solace offered by friends in times of trouble, he typically laments (in the same breath) the anxieties that such friendships produce (for example, Civ. Dei 19.8).

The volatile nature of friendship thus emerges as a consistent theme in Augustine's thought. However, in the Confessiones, which contains Augustine's most detailed—and most philosophically and theologically sophisticated—treatment of friendship, Augustine gives substantial attention to a slightly different topic, namely the capacity for friendship to make us worse and the manner in which friendship both manifests and fosters various vices. This important but neglected topic is my focus here. It is treated in most detail in the early books of the Confessiones (particularly Books 2 to 4), where Augustine carefully examines the various ways in which friendship may prove an obstacle, rather than an aid, to virtue and happiness. In what follows I shall first show how Augustine examines the ways in which friendship may exacerbate weakness of will by impeding practical reasoning and fostering pride (section III). I will then (sections IV and V) show how Augustine thinks that friendship may act not as a locus for caritas, but rather for cupiditas which prevents us from loving God as we ought. Finally (section VI), I will show how Augustine draws a connection between love of self, love of another and desire for immortality (in a manner which finds parallel in Plato's Symposium), and how this grounds his view that friendship may distract us from love of God.

III

The Confessiones is a unique work: part autobiography, part prayer, part exegesis and part philosophical-and-theological investigation. The first nine books chart Augustine's exitus from and reditus to God over a period of 33 years, but Augustine's reflection upon his life is interwoven with philosophical and theological investigation (the two cannot be disentangled).Footnote ²¹ It is in the early books of the Confessiones, when discussing his wayward youth and puzzling about the nature and origin of evil, that amicitia receives the greatest attention from Augustine.Footnote ²² As quickly becomes clear, the capacity for friendship to lead us astray is an important (yet neglected) theme in Augustine's examination of the origins of evil and sinful action.

Friendship first comes to the fore at the beginning of the second book (Conf. 2.1.1–2.2):Footnote ²³

This passage is significant in marking the first mention of concupiscentia carnis in the Confessiones. For Augustine, the three lusts detailed in 1 John 2:16—concupiscentia carnis, concupiscentia oculorum and superbia uitae (most often ambitio saeculi in Augustine)—are the main sources of wickedness (Conf. 3.8.16; cf. Plotinus, Enn. 3.3.6, 3.5.9). In his subsequent discussion Augustine gives careful attention to how human friendships may depart from the luminosus limes amicitiae,Footnote ²⁴ and it quickly becomes clear that these lusts are intertwined in earthly amicitia. In particular, Augustine reflects over the theft of the pears, a seemingly slight misdemeanour of his younger days, and uses the episode to raise important questions concerning the origins of evil and sin. The allusions to the Fall are clear and the question that preoccupies Augustine here is how and why such sins should occur (Conf. 2.9.17):

In this brief passage, Augustine stresses that had he been alone he would not have committed the sin and that friendship played an important role in bringing about the sinful act. More concretely, he raises three important points: (i) that he loved the theft for its own sake; (ii) that friendship acted as an ‘inscrutable seduction of the mind’; and, the closely related point, (iii) that seemingly spontaneously evil can come about from friendly activities.

As regards (i), what deserves attention about Augustine's own case is that he opted to steal the pears even though he recognized that the pears held no attraction for him and that this was wrong. That is to say, the pears were not the object of his desire and there was no reason to take them.Footnote ²⁵ This, Augustine rightly thinks, renders his action deeply mysterious. No one, not even Catiline, commits a crime (or any other action) without a cause (Conf. 2.5.11). Even in cases of sin, the relevant goal of action is considered under the guise of some good; one pursues something that one has reason to pursue (and this is the cause of one's action). Thus, for instance, adultery might be pursued under the guise of attaining pleasure and theft under the guise of acquiring wealth. However, in stealing the pears, Augustine did not, he tells us, love the putative good which he acquired, but the theft itself—an act he knew to be wrong—for its own sake. We are presented with an account of loving sin qua sin (Conf. 2.4.9)—of performing a wrongful action purely because it is wrong (and not even because one takes pleasure in the relevant activity). This seems deeply odd—a bit like someone believing something purely because they think it is false. In so far as the agent acted with no reason for action, Augustine is faced with a conundrum. Seeking to explain an intentional action without a reason is like seeking to explain an effect without a cause.Footnote ²⁶

While Augustine does not arrive at a satisfactory conclusion concerning the causes of such cases of sin, he does provide a diagnosis which sheds some light on what has gone wrong on such occasions. Crucially, he emphasizes that friendship was a necessary condition of the sin taking place,Footnote ²⁷ and in (ii) he indicates that the sin was occasioned by friendship in some way: that he was seduced by peer pressure into wrongful action (cf. Conf. 2.8.16). The invocation of friendship in order to explain the sin and the offering of friendship as a necessary condition for this sort of sin find parallel in Augustine's discussion of Alypius later in the Confessiones (6.8.13) and in his analyses of the sin of Adam in later works. Thus, for instance, in De Ciuitate Dei, Augustine tells us that in his effort to corrupt humanity, Lucifer began with Eve: non existimans uirum facile credulum nec errando posse decipi, sed dum alieno cedit errori. sicut enim Aaron erranti populo ad idolum fabricandum non consensit inductus, sed cessit obstrictus (Civ. Dei 14.11).Footnote ²⁸

Augustine perceives that in the case of Adam and also that of Aaron, just as in Augustine's own, the agent's freedom and judgement were somehow constricted or curtailed owing to the presence of his friends. In these cases the agent perceives the sin qua sin (he is not taken in) and yet does it anyway. Just as Aaron did not consent to making the idol because he was convinced but rather yielded to compulsion, so too Adam sinned not because he was deceived ‘but because of the bond of fellowship’ (sed sociali necessitudine, Civ. Dei 14.11; cf. Gn. Litt. 11.42.59).

On Augustine's view, friendship somehow constricts our freedom; it overrides conscience and practical reasoning and leads us to sin. The mechanism of friendship's seductio is not entirely perspicuous, but Augustine probes slightly further into its nature in (iii): ‘from games and jokes arises an appetite for hurting another without even personal benefit or a desire for revenge; it is enough when someone says: “come on, let's do it” for one to feel shame at not being shameless’ (Conf. 2.9.17). This element provokes puzzlement (quis exaperit istam tortuosissimam et implicatissimam nodositatem? Conf. 2.10.18), but Augustine proposes that the relevant sinful acts are most plausibly seen as manifestations of the vice of superbia (Conf. 2.6.14).Footnote ²⁹ To understand why, one should recall that a prominent theme of these early books is how friendships wrongly cultivate our sense of pride and shame and that Augustine began this second book of the Confessiones with a discussion of how a desire for the approval of his friends led him astray (Conf. 2.1.1–2.2). Before investigating the origins of sin in the theft of the pears, Augustine had dwelt upon how his desire for praise by his friends led him to evil acts (and the pretence of evil acts) so that he might be accepted by them (Conf. 2.3.7). Subsequently, he established a link between honor temporalis (which can give rise to uindictae auiditas) and amicitia hominum. It is, Augustine says, ‘on account of all these [honor, auiditas, amicitia], and the like, that sin is committed’ (propter uniuersa haec atque huius modi peccatum admittitur, Conf. 2.5.10). Augustine does not give great attention to explicating the relation between honor, auiditas and amicitia, or which might ground the other, but it does seem that certain activities that manifest pride, such as boasting, are facilitated by one's friends being present and that Augustine is concerned by how friendships otherwise encourage and sustain the vice of superbia.Footnote ³⁰

On the account we are presented with here, a person's concern for the opinion of others (particularly their friends) does not restrain them from immoral behaviour, but instead fosters their superbia and seems to make them commit greater evils than they would normally. Here the contrast between Augustine and his classical predecessors is especially noticeable. Whereas Aristotle (for example) focussed on the contribution of friendship to aiding our practical reasoning or sustaining and developing our virtues (see above), Augustine unveils—in a novel and penetrating manner—how friendship may impede our deliberation and encourage our vices, how friendship constrains an agent's freedom in deliberation and occasions sin. Further, friendships may misdirect our sense of shame (peer pressure makes one too ashamed to refrain from sinful actions) and inflate that dangerous vice: pride. This is the closest Augustine comes to untangling the knot. It is the psychologist's rather than the philosopher's mode of explanation but it is none the worse for that. Even though the answer Augustine provides is not complete or systematic, the insight is sharp.

IV

In the fourth book of the Confessiones, Augustine dwells on his Manichaean period and the dangers of false religion.Footnote ³¹ He also moves from discussing a circle of friends to offering a detailed discussion of a close friendship between himself and one dear friend: the sort of friendship particularly prized by the classical tradition (cf. Arist. Eth. Nic. 1171a14-15). The friendship depicted in the fourth book of the Confessiones was intimate and warm (and it has struck many modern readers sympathetically). Accordingly, one might think to find in this discussion an account of how friendship might serve as an impetus to virtue or at least a depiction of a robust concern for the other for his own sake. However, this would, I think, be mistaken. Instead, in recounting this friendship with his unnamed friend, Augustine subtly shows how a close friendship (of the sort usually deemed praiseworthy in antiquity) may lack caritas and further distance the friends from the virtuous path.

In discussing this close friendship, Augustine makes one think that both concupiscentia carnis and concupiscentia oculorum were involved when he tells us that this friendship had been especially sweet (suaui mihi super omnes suauitates illius uitae meae, Conf. 4.4.7).Footnote ³² However, what deserves special attention is that the friendship, not yet a year long, was a shallow one and an instance of misdirected love. Looking back, Augustine realizes that it was not true friendship, as it was not bound by the caritas of the Holy Spirit (Conf. 4.4.7). This friendship had its origin not in a shared regard for virtue or love of God, but simply in shared hobbies (Conf. 4.4.7), and Augustine strongly emphasizes his role in distancing his friend from orthodoxy and bringing him into the fold of Manichaean heresy (for example, Conf. 4.4.7). That this friendship (and by extension, such friendships) manifested and fostered blameworthy vices becomes especially clear in Augustine's subtle account of his friend as ‘another self’.

Talking of friends as ‘other selves’ was an established literary topos.Footnote ³³ In its common use, ‘another self’ and cognate phrases are used to indicate a friend for whom one has a robust concern, namely a concern for the friend for his own sake—even to the extent that one cares for the friend as much as one cares for oneself. Augustine does not here use the phrase alter ego or alter idem, but does employ cognate locutions which are part of the tradition.Footnote ³⁴ Thus, Augustine writes: mirabar enim ceteros mortales uiuere, quia ille, quem quasi non moriturum dilexeram, mortuus erat, et me magis, quia ille alter eram, uiuere illo mortuo mirabar (Conf. 4.6.11; cf. Arist. Mag. mor. 1213a12);Footnote ³⁵ he goes on to speak of his friend as half his soul (dimidium animae) or of himself and his friend as one soul in two bodies: ego sensi animam meam et animam illius unam fuisse animam in duobus corporibus (Conf. 4.6.11; cf. Arist. Mag. mor. 1211a32-3).Footnote ³⁶ However, while Augustine evokes these notions, it does not seem that he could be said to have treated his friend as another self in the manner that the ordinary sense would have it, that is by showing the same level of concern for his friend as he did for himself, or by caring for the friend for his own sake.Footnote ³⁷ Instead, we find that when his friend lay dying, Augustine rejected his friend's desire to return to Christianity; further, he tells us of his hope that his friend would recover so that he ‘could do with him what he willed’ (distuli omnes motus meos, ut conualesceret prius essetque idoneus uiribus ualetudinis, cum quo agere possem quod vellem, Conf. 4.4.8). Similarly, when telling us how he had turned his friend away from Christianity (Conf. 4.7.7), we find Augustine saying that he had then hoped that his ‘friend's soul would retain what it had received’ from Augustine (baptizatus est nesciens, me non curante et praesumente id retinere potius animam eius quod a me acceperat, Conf. 4.4.8).

Concern for another for their own sake requires desiring what is good for that person and seems to require recognizing the other person as another person: one with their own desires, goals and, crucially, as an agent within their own right. However, in the account we are offered in the Confessiones, Augustine offers us a clear view of how, despite the appearance of a close friendship, one may fall short in this respect and view one's friend as a possession. When the friend, after having been baptized while unconscious, takes issue with Augustine's derision, he acts for the first time as his own person. It is this which shocked Augustine (he tells us he was stupefactus at his friend's mirabilis et repentina libertas, Conf. 4.4.8), and this show of independence immediately prior to the friend's death freed the friend from Augustine's bond. It also seems to have marked the end of their friendship.

Following the friend's passing, Augustine's concern for his friend is further revealed as lacking in caritas. While the unnamed friend's death greatly grieved Augustine (quo dolore contenebratum est cor meum …, Conf. 4.4.9), such grief should not be considered as evidence for a robust concern for his friend. Augustine focusses solely on his own pain in a profoundly selfish manner and he notes that he would not have given his life for his friend in the manner of Orestes and Pylades (Conf. 4.6.11). Instead, wallowing in his sadness, he tells us that his life of misery was dearer to him than his friend: Solus fletus erat dulcis mihi et successerat amico me in deliciis animi mei (Conf. 4.4.9; cf. 4.6.11). Recalling Augustine's earlier account of how he was happy to be sad at the stories of Virgil (Conf. 1.13.21, cf. 3.2.2-4), it becomes evident that, now dead, his friend served as an occasion for grief, just as he had earlier served Augustine as an occasion for other affectations and enthusiasms. In this way then, Augustine reveals the potential for even (seemingly) close friendships to be lacking in caritas or virtuous inclinations.

V

In the first book of the Confessiones, Augustine remarked that the instincts implanted in him by God were good; his interior sense(s) pushed him towards truth and self-preservation (Conf. 1.20.31). However, this comes with an admonitory remark: hoc enim peccabam, quod non in ipso sed in creaturis eius me atque ceteris uoluptates, sublimitates, ueritates quaerebam (Conf. 1.20.31). Despite our natural desires being good, we are—Augustine thinks—liable to mistake their object(s) or to weigh them inappropriately, for instance by loving God's creatures in place of their creator. It turns out that, like Manichaeism (the overt focus of the fourth book), friendship may act as a kind of false religion, an inferior substitute for seeking and loving God as we ought.

For Augustine, the desire to know and love God is grounded in the human desire for happiness. Augustine takes it to be a fact of human psychology that humans seek to possess happiness eternally and, since possessing happiness eternally requires eternal life, humans desire eternal life.Footnote ³⁸ This desire for eternal life finds itself coupled with an aversion of prospective extinction: fear of death (C. Faust. 21.3-7; Lib. Arb. 3.7.20-8.23). These two together may be seen as a primary (two-part) motivational force in so far as (Augustine thinks) they are crucial to explaining many of our actions.Footnote ³⁹ On this account, humans are deficient and have a fundamental lack within themselves; being conscious of this and that we are unable to secure eternal happiness we are meant to search for a means to do so. Realizing that we cannot do so through our own efforts, we are meant to come to the Church and to God. On such an account, fear of death and perceiving of our own inadequacy are crucial indicators to man that he should seek God. The Confessiones begins, famously, by describing this: et laudare te uult homo, aliqua portio creaturae tuae, et homo circumferens mortalitatem suam … tu excitas, ut laudare te delectet, quia fecisti nos ad te et inquietum est cor nostrum, donec requiescat in te (Conf. 1.1.1).

What becomes clear in the early books of the Confessiones is the manner in which these notions inform Augustine's views on the dangers of friendship. Augustine makes the connection between loving to be loved, as was his habit in his friendships, and the inner lack that humans feel at the beginning of the third book of the Confessiones (3.1.1):

This more hidden lack (secretiora indigentia)—a hunger for inner food—was in fact (as Augustine sees while writing) a desire for eternal happiness, an eternal life of knowing and loving God. As Augustine shows throughout these early books, he felt the hunger but mistook its object. He sought delight in the suauitas of his friend rather than that of God (in whom Augustine should have delighted, Conf. 4.3.4). Taking the object of his natural desires to be other than it was, he focussed his attention not on God but rather on human friendships and sought to fill the void within him with human amicitia. This is one way then in which amicitia can mislead. Feeling a lack within ourselves, we focus our delight on human friendships and do not seek God, as we should (Conf. 2.5.10, 4.7.12-8.13). Augustine seems to think that amicitia deserves special attention (over and above an undue interest in career or wealth) in this regard in so far as it seems especially adept at alleviating the symptoms of the human predicament (which are meant to point a person towards God) while distracting a person from the seriousness of their condition. Amicitia provides a distinctive delight and has the potential to act as a substitute for the love and worship of God.Footnote ⁴⁰

It is in recounting his unnamed friend's death that Augustine remarks on the errors of misplacing love. He notes the misery caused by having a mortal thing as the object of one's delight: Miser eram, et miser est omnis animus uinctus amicitia rerum mortalium, et dilaniatur cum eas amittit, et tunc sentit miseriam qua miser est et antequam amittat eas (Conf. 4.6.11; cf. 4.8.13). To love mortal things in such a way is, Augustine observes, to be pierced by sorrows (ad dolores figitur, Conf. 4.10.15):

Augustine takes the lesson to be drawn here to be clear. Such love and delight should not take as its object something mortal but rather something eternal, which cannot be so lost: God (nam unde me facillime et in intima dolor ille penetrauerat, nisi quia fuderam in harenam animam meam diligendo moriturum ac si non moriturum? Conf. 4.8.13). In focussing on the beauty of the creator's creatures, Augustine forgot to seek the beauty of the creator that such beauty was meant to point him towards (Conf. 4.10.15).Footnote ⁴¹ Thus amicitia may alleviate our spiritual hunger but it provides no nourishment. Human friendships may distract us from the poor state of our souls (which we would realize were we alone) and this leads to a failure of self-knowledge. Friendships lead us to (mistakenly) ignore our inner hunger and to believe that we are fine as we are; thus we do not seek God, as we should.

VI

A careful reading of the friend's death also reveals another aspect of Augustine's thought concerning the dangers of friendship. The death of his close friend marks Augustine's first true confrontation with death in the Confessiones.Footnote ⁴² As a result of the friend's death, Augustine tells us he saw death everywhere (quidquid aspiciebam mors erat, Conf. 4.4.9) and was consumed with a fear of death (sed in me nescio quis affectus nimis huic contrarius ortus erat et taedium uiuendi erat in me grauissimum et moriendi metus, Conf. 4.6.11). Augustine notes that he should have placed his trust and hope in God (Conf. 4.5.9); however, he once again sought out earthly friendships to fill the void in his life (Conf. 4.8.13). Talking, making jokes, reading books, and debating with friends (Conf. 4.8.13) all serve to distract humans from their wretched condition (cf. Arist. Eth. Nic. 1166b13-17).Footnote ⁴³ However, it is what Augustine goes on to say next that is especially interesting. From discussing how friendship may have acted as a distraction from the condition of one's soul, Augustine goes on to draw connections between concern for self, concern for another, and desire for happiness and immortality. He begins by considering the nature of parts, wholes and identity over time (Conf. 4.10.15):

A whole is thus constituted of temporal parts. These parts are transient (in illis autem non est ubi, quia non stant: fugiunt, Conf. 4.10.15). As time flows, each part is successively replaced but the parts are linked together to form a (diachronic) whole by a thread of continuity (Augustine provides the helpful example of the syllables of a word spoken aloud). Being creatures of time, Augustine observes that we are limited to only being able to perceive the parts and not the whole at a time (Conf. 4.11.17; cf. Conf. 11.15.20).

One may find puzzling the inclusion of a discussion of diachronic identity and temporal parts within a discussion of friendship. However, there is a neglected but illuminating parallel (whether or not Augustine was aware of it) to be found, namely that of Diotima's speech in the Symposium and the connection proposed there between concern for oneself and another.Footnote ⁴⁴ A brief consideration of the thoughts expressed there does, I propose, reveal a further dimension of Augustine's thought as to why (and how) friendship may distract us from becoming closer to God.

In the Symposium, we are told that mortal things do not maintain (qualitative) identity with themselves across time; rather, they are always changing (Symp. 207d4-208a3).Footnote ⁴⁵ What persistence mortal things have is attained by means of propagation or reproduction (γέννησις): by an individual leaving behind things that resemble themselves (208a7-b2; cf. Arist. Pol. 1252a26-30). ‘Mortal nature seeks so far as possible to live forever and be immortal. And this is possible in one way only: by reproduction’ (207c9-d3).Footnote ⁴⁶ The appeal to flux and worries about identity over time are raised in the context of discussing our love for others: how concern for others is connected to concern for our future selves. On Diotima's view, humans (often, it seems, subconsciously) seek immortality or some suitable substitute; it is for this reason that they seek honour and fame: they seek to live on in the memories of others (208c1-e1). Some are pregnant in body and seek to produce children (208e1-5); others are pregnant in soul and seek to produce legislation, poems and the like (209a1-8).

In each case, it seems, the product has something of its producer in it and this form of propagation or reproduction is, we are told, ‘what mortals have in place of immortality’ (206e7-8). Within this context, φιλία seems desirable because it presents a way of filling a lack within human beings: a lack owing to their mortality. This account finds echoes elsewhere in Plato,Footnote ⁴⁷ and in later philosophical discussions (notably in Aristotle and Cicero),Footnote ⁴⁸ and also finds parallel in Latin literature.Footnote ⁴⁹ On such an account, humans desire immortality but the best they can do is to live on either in their handiwork (for example, Arist. Eth. Nic. 1168a5-8), or in the memory of others (notably their friends), or indeed in others (Cic. Amic. 22–3).Footnote ⁵⁰

It seems a similar sentiment may be found in Augustine. Noticing this also casts further light on how the meditation on death and transience in the Confessiones is connected to the discussion of friendship (and its dangers). We have seen above how Augustine takes fear of death and a desire for continued existence to be primary motivators of human behaviour. We have also seen that it was the death of his close friend, a part of him (Conf. 4.6.11), that occasioned Augustine's fear of death and also how Augustine's friendships distracted him from fear of death. Further, we find that Augustine thinks that it is the ‘making of one out of many that we love in friends’ (… quasi fomitibus conflare animos et ex pluribus unum facere. hoc est quod diligitur in amicis, Conf. 4.8.13-9.14; cf. Cic. Amic. 92). Out of disparate elements, friendship establishes some sort of unity and such a unity is what we desire. Amicitia quoque hominum caro nodo dulcis est propter unitatem de multis animis (Conf. 2.5.10; cf. Ord. 2.18.48; Cic. Amic. 92). This desire for unity may, in part, be explained aesthetically—as a desire for beauty (Conf. 2.5.10); however, it is also (as Augustine tells us in another work) a manifestation of the desire for continued existence (Lib. Arb. 3.23.70):Footnote ⁵¹

Drawing the strands so far identified helps us, I think, make sense of Augustine's discussion. Like those artisans seeking to live on in their products and those who seek to live on in copies of themselves, Augustine's account shows a man attempting to leave some trace of himself in his friend (thus he talks of hoping his friend ‘retaining what he had received from me’, Conf. 4.4.8; see above) in a manner similar to that in which the Phaedrus talks of the lover ‘moulding’ the beloved (Phdr. 252d5-e1, 276e4–277a4) and later accounts talk of shaping a friend or beloved (Cic. Amic. 23; Plotinus, Enn. 1.6.9).Footnote ⁵² It seems that Augustine, somewhat conscious of his own mortality and insufficiency, but not yet conscious that he should turn to God to remedy these conditions, was driven by fear of death to seek immortality by other means and that he sought to do so by making his friend over in his own image. It was only at the death of his friend that the finality of death and the poverty of this sort of immortality by proxy became clear. Accordingly, Augustine's discussion warns us that friendship offers a mirage of the sort of unity and permanence we are naturally oriented towards. While some of Augustine's classical forebears seemed content with the sort of survival offered by living on in another's memory (for instance, Cic. Amic. 22–3), Augustine manages to subtly show what a poor substitute this sort of immortality is for the real thing (which is to be attained only within the Christian God's embrace).

VII

While Augustine envisioned a positive role for amicitia within the Christian life (see section II above),Footnote ⁵³ he often emphasized the obscurity of the human heart and the fragility of friendship. In the early books of the Confessiones he goes beyond discussing friendship's fragility and instead gives significant attention to a topic neglected by his philosophical predecessors, namely the potential for friendship to make us worse and to distance us from happiness. Augustine's account shows not only how amicitia may manifest various vices but also how it may foster and encourage them. Friendships can act as a seductio of the mind, constricting our practical reasoning and spurring that most dangerous of vices: superbia. Further, Augustine indicates how even a close seemingly benign friendship (such as that between Augustine and his unnamed friend) may be lacking in caritas (and instead dominated by concupiscentia). Further, while friendship may assuage some of the symptoms of our fallen condition, it does so in such a way that we no longer seek God as we ought. Finally, I suggested, Augustine's discussion of the dangers of friendship is intertwined with issues of self-concern and self-identity over time and his discussion subtly shows how those who think we may attain some sort of immortality by means of close friendships are deluded. While Augustine is far from forbidding friendship (for example, Ep. 130.13), straight is the gate and narrow is the way. Augustine's careful attention to the potential for the love of friendship to breach the luminosus limes amicitiae and to lead us astray brings into relief, in a novel fashion, the dangers of friendship.