AMICIZIA. – Reciprocal affection between person and person.
1. IN THE NATURAL ORDER
Friendship (φιλία) was studied by Aristotle, who defines it as “a reciprocal and manifest love prevailing among several persons, consisting in an exchange of gifts and benefits.” The first of all gifts is affection itself (Ethica ad Nicom., 8, 2–3). Not every love, he observes, deserves the title of friendship; this is a love of benevolence, whereby one wills the good of another person, rather than loving that person only in relation to oneself; it therefore differs from, indeed is opposed to, self-love or love of concupiscence. It further requires that this love of benevolence be bilateral or reciprocal. But this is not enough, since even two men who barely know one another may bear mutual benevolence; friendship requires a certain sharing of life, convictus (convivere, συζῆν), a certain communion of ideas, sentiments, and wills. Cicero goes so far as to call friendship “the greatest harmony between all things divine and human, joined by the bond of benevolence and reciprocal love” (De amicitia, 1). A prerequisite for the emergence and flourishing of any friendship is living and conversing together. The dynamic principle of mutual attraction is similarity in nature: “ nihil est enim appetentius similium sui, nihil rapacius quam natura ”. An indispensable psychological foundation of human friendship is conformity of personal tastes and temperaments, since love tends by an innate impulse toward the union of the lover with the beloved object, so as to make the friend another self: “ alter idem ”.According to its end or object, Aristotle distinguishes three kinds of friendship, according as it is founded on the common pursuit of the pleasurable good, the useful good, or the honest good that is the object of virtue. Thus there are friendships of young people who seek above all to enjoy themselves together; of merchants chiefly intent on their material interests; and, finally, of good men who seek above all the honest good, both in individual and social life. But friendship deserves that name only to the extent that it aims at the true and inalienable good, virtue. Therefore true friendship is virtue. The qualities and safeguards of friendship are sincerity, fidelity, and disinterestedness; opposed to it are egoism, pretence, and flattery. Hence true and lasting friendship is extremely rare, like a precious treasure (Eccli. 6, 15–16).
Many among the Greek philosophers wrote on friendship; they have been studied by R. Eucken. Theophrastus, a disciple of Aristotle, composed a treatise on the subject, on which, according to Aulus Gellius, Cicero depends in the Laelius, de amicitia.
2. IN THE SUPERNATURAL ORDER
The concept of friendship was placed on a new foundation by Christianity. The φιλία is transfigured into φιλαδελφία (II Pt. 1, 7), at the school of Jesus (Io. 13, 34; 17, 21), and flowers into ἀγάπη (v. CARITÀ). In the climate of the Gospel, human friendship was corrected and sanctified, and its motives and aims were raised beyond the contingent sphere. But in addition to ennobling human friendship, Christianity inaugurated among human beings a genuine supernatural friendship, consisting in a reciprocal love between God and human beings, and among human beings themselves, whose specific fruit is the exchange of goods of the divine order.According to Sacred Scripture, infused charity is a true friendship between the just person and God, and among the children of God. In the Old Testament Abraham is called “friend of God” (Iud. 8, 22; cf. Iac. 2, 21). Ps. 138, 17, according to the Septuagint and the Vulgate: “ Thy friends, O God, are laden with honors. ”
But above all the New Testament portrays charity as friendship: “ I no longer call you servants, because the servant does not know what his master does; but I call you friends, because everything that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you, ” Jesus said to the apostles (Io. 15, 15). St. Thomas (Sum. theol., 2° 2° 2°, q. 23, a. 1) demonstrates that infused charity cannot in fact exist without mutual benevolence between God and the just person: God wills the good of the just person, while the latter wills the glory of God; and there is a communion of life (convictus) between them, because the just person has received sanctifying grace, a participation in divine life and the seed of eternal life in union with God seen face to face. Through charity there is also a true supernatural friendship among the just, since they are truly children of the same heavenly Father; indeed, they also have friendship for sinners, insofar as they desire their conversion, so that they may become children of God and glorify him eternally. Hence it is said: “ Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, pray for those who persecute and calumniate you ” (Mt. 5, 44).
In this way the various forms of friendship are harmonized and elevated one above the other: human or natural friendship, whose characteristics we have described; Christian friendship, which is a moral virtue and a principle of supernatural love, existing among Christians already bound to one another by human friendship; and divine friendship, which is the theological virtue of charity and has God himself, infinite goodness, as its reference and first object of love.
As regards friendships in relation to the interior life, one should retain what St. Francis de Sales teaches (Intr. à la vie dévote, cap. 20 sgg.): if the sensory element predominates in friendship, one must for a long time renounce every particular relationship apart from unavoidable encounters; if, on the other hand, the spiritual element predominates, friendship may be cultivated by purifying it through custody and mortification of the senses and heart.
Thus teach the spiritual masters, who echo the saying of Eccli. 6, 14: “ A faithful friend is a powerful protection; whoever finds one has found a treasure; he is a remedy for life; those who fear God find him. ” Sirach (like Proverbs) gives many practical counsels concerning relations of friendship: Eccli. 6, 7 sgg. corresponds to Ennius: “ Amicus certus in re incerta cernitur ”; id. 6, 13 is paraphrased by St. Ambrose (De off., 3, 137): “ Inimicus vitari potest, amicus non potest, si insidiari velit ”; elsewhere St. Ambrose (ibid., 128: “ Sunt bonae correptiones et plerumque meliores quam tacita amicitia ”) recalls Prov. 27, 6.
Reinaldo Garrigou-Lagrange – Luigi Ciappi