Epictetus Discourses 2.22 - On friendship

Of friendship

Like many companies these days, my office is going through an agile transformation - changing the way we work.  Part of the Agile Manifesto states, "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools."  Epictetus would have similarly said, "friendship over externals."  Let's deconstruct that.

There are people, during Epictetus' time and people today who value things and externals over people and friendships.  He points to the example of two cute, cuddly puppies playing and everyone says, 'awww!  aren't they so cute!'  Then you throw a piece of meat between them and they turn into wolves!

Now, apply that same idea to humans.  He gives examples of a seemingly real friendships which are torn, when it is apparent one or both value the external over the friendship:

• "small bit of land" is comes between father and son (v. 10, p. 128)
• a "pretty girl" divides a father and son (v. 11, p. 129)
• "the throne" comes between two brothers (v. 14, p. 129)
• "a pretty woman" breaks the friendship of Paris and Menalaus (v. 23, p. 130)
• "a necklace" breaks apart a marriage (v. 32, p. 131)

"For as a general rule—and one should have no illusions on the matter—there is nothing that a living creature is more strongly attached to than its own benefit. So whatever seems to him to be standing in the way of that benefit, be it a brother, or father, or child, or lover, or beloved, he will proceed to hate, reject, and curse." (v. 15, p. 120)

"For that reason, if one identifies one’s own benefit with piety, honour, one’s country, one’s parents, one’s friends, all of them will be safeguarded; but if one places one’s benefit in one scale and one’s friends, country, and parents, and justice itself, in the other, the latter will all be lost, because they will be outweighed by one’s benefit." (v. 18, p. 129-130)

"It follows that if I am where my moral choice is, in that case alone will I be the friend, the son, the father that I ought to be. For then it will benefit me to preserve my trustworthiness, my sense of shame, my patience, my temperance, my cooperativeness, and to maintain good relations with others." (v. 20, p. 130)

"Whoever among you sincerely wants to be friend to another, or to win the friendship of another, should thus eradicate these judgements, and despise them, and banish them from his mind. And when he has done so, he will, in the first place, be free from self-reproach, and inner conflict, and instability of mind, and self-torment; and, furthermore, in his relations with others, he will always be frank and open with one who is like himself, and will be tolerant, gentle, forbearing, and kind with regard to one who is unlike him, as likewise to one who is ignorant and falls into error on the matters of the highest importance; and he will never be harsh with anyone because he fully understands the saying of Plato, that ‘no mind is ever willingly deprived of the truth’" (v. 34-36, p. 131-132)

To summarize, if we are to be true friends, husbands, wives, children - we need to value the friendship over externals.  To do so, we ought to come to despise the things over which we have no control.  And instead, we ought to love virtue.  For the virtues we love and adhere to, will benefit ourselves and our friends.