De Amicitia - True Friendship

One of the basic coordinates enabling friendship to occur and to develop is to acknowledge friendship, to search for it and to be willing to assume it. Some people value other things instead of friendship, such as riches, health, honors, power, or their very own pleasures. But, pleasure is typical for animals while the other things mentioned above can be quite uncertain. So, most of these things do not depend on our will or our decisions, but rather on our own destiny and on the uncertainty of life.

According to Cicero, the subject of friendship is the good man, called in Latin "homo bonus" who is both wise and capable of attaining virtue. This human type is par excellence capable of developing true friendships with other. In the philosopher's vision, such a man can be found in "vita comunis", in ordinary life so to say, such an individual does not belong to some ideal, unreachable world. So unlike Greek philosophers, Cicero does not consider that the wise and virtuous man is merely an unreachable ideal. Of course, the phrase "vita comunis" points out the pragmatism typical for the Roman mentality, at which Cicero adheres without any hesitation or reserve, especially when it comes to moral issues. He clearly states that when it comes to morality, Rome is highly superior to Greece.

Another defining feature is that friendship is not caused by weakness or by searching for one's very own personal interest. Moreover, friendship results from our human nature, not out of privations and develops through spiritual attachment, through love, and not at all by thinking of all the benefits might come out of that special relationship.

So, the major link for true friendship is love, and its firmament is mutual trust; the character of a true friend should be common, simple, to feel the same way as the other: "simplex, comunis, consentiens", and these aspects can be crystallized through trust. On the contrary, somebody who is complicated and has many faces - "multiplex et tortuosum", one who does not share the other person's feelings, is in fact instable and incapable of genuine friendship.

Friendship is strengthened through time and by pragmatic proofs, a fact which is illustrated by Cicero through his appeal to proverbs, aphorisms and sentences, a concise and clear way of expression, which seemed to prefigure Seneca: "Amicus certus in re incerta cernitur" (ID 64) meaning "The true friend is recognized in uncertain times".

Cicero had a very strong view on friendship and what it implies. Thus, he very clearly and decidedly states that without friendship, there is no life: "Sine amicitia vitam esse nullam." These words are part of Cicero's letter to Laelius. Of course, we as humans, are social beings who cannot lead isolated lives, we need to share most anything with others, otherwise we might feel something is missing in our life, without even knowing what or how to obtain that particular thing. The same idea was expressed for instance in the movie called "Into the Wild", where the main character, alone in some wild place in Alaska, realizes that "happiness is only real when shared". That is perhaps one of the "secrets" of a happy, fulfilled life. That is why parents devote themselves and their resources so much to their children, and that is why people like to share their good things with friends. By doing so, their happiness becomes real and almost touchable.

There are many famous and cute quotations on the topic of friendship, mostly belonging to celebrated writers or thinkers. For instance, here is what the French writer Victor Hugo has to say on this topic: "Friendship means being brother and sister, two souls that touch each other without mixing, two fingers of the same hand. "And perhaps because of that, another French writer names Honore de Balzac says that "It is impossible to reach despair if you have a true friend close to you."

However, there is another quote belonging to the Romanian historian and thinker named Nicolae Iorga, who says that "One good and certain friend is your very own conscience: do not kill it, but rather let it die with you." In other words, it is important to keep one's conscience alive for as long as that person lives; by doing that, he/she can be sure of being a truthful friend.