Envy, Flattery, Virtue and Self-Love as Tests of Friendship: Shakespeare, the Novelists and Homer

Orientation #

He does not refer to last time or next time; the class ends when he asks whether to stop at 4:30. The verified sources place the readings in the handout “The Division of Shakespeare’s Plays” (p. 7) and in DHB Vol. III, The School of Aristotle, pp. 1225–1321. He says Aristotle “will” treat the three kinds of friendship and “a friend is another self”, i.e. this class is preparatory to the text. The previous class opened Aristotle’s proemium on friendship; the next continues these literary preparations before the systematic treatment.

The class, in order #

1. Why take up envy in a course on friendship (“envy is defined as sadness over the good fortune”) #

The point: envy is the opposed vice through which friendship is better understood, as Thomas pairs each virtue with its opposed vices.

1. In the Summa, Secunda Secundae, Thomas takes up with each virtue the vices opposed to it, “the same knowledge of opposites”; with caritas he takes up envy.
2. Friendship involves mutual goodwill; envy is sadness over the good fortune of another.
3. So to be sad at a friend’s good fortune is contrary to wishing him well, in which I should rejoice at his success. Examples for the college students: two roommates, one gets the nice guy “who’s going places”; two seniors, one lands the real nice job while the other finds nothing — the students “relate to that”. If the envy became habitual it would destroy the friendship; even the sudden feeling, which is very common, is opposed to it.

2. Three novelists on the prevalence of envy (“no mind was ever wholly exempt from envy”) #

The point: close observers of men agree that envy is nearly universal, though they understand it unevenly.

• Smollett, letter of Matthew Bramble to Dr Lewis: no mind wholly exempt; we palliate it “under the specious name of emulation”; the generous man who cannot hear a friend commended, “every wreath of praise… a garland plucked from his own temples”. He agrees with the last part; he rejects the claim that envy is “an instinct essential to our nature” — rather “ingrained in our fallen nature”. Aside: even St Teresa of Ávila, the “upstart” showered with graces, was envied by older nuns in the convent.
• Thackeray, Henry Esmond, citing La Rochefoucauld: in friends’ misfortunes something secretly pleasant, so their good fortune is disagreeable; adversity “a great reconciler”. “There’s pity and love, as well as envy, in the same heart” — this shows the weakness of the love. He disagrees with Thackeray’s closing “kindness and meanness both manly”, but notes: that he calls it natural shows how ingrained it is.
• Fielding, Tom Jones (in the “great books”, “not so great a book in my opinion”): want of pity is not our general fault; “the black ingredient… is envy”; most defects in friendships “have arisen from envy only”; envy is “a hellish vice” — he alone names it rightly. Distinction drawn from Fielding: pity vs. envy, two forms of sadness — pity is sadness over another’s (especially undeserved) misfortune, a good emotion, applied metaphorically to God (Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison; Agnus Dei, miserere nobis, the Greek and Latin words for pity); envy is sadness over another’s good fortune, a bad one. To lack the one is bad, to have the other is bad. Envy looks upward at those greater, better, wiser, happier; pity looks downward at the mean and miserable.

3. Two uses of envy for the course; the temptation against friendship (“like the temptation against friendship”) #

The point: envy serves the course in two ways, and must be fought like any temptation.

1. By its opposition to friendship you understand friendship better.
2. Its prevalence is a sign of the defect of most existing friendships. The feeling arises when a friend gets the promotion you don’t; it must be fought as temptations against chastity or to anger are fought. Aside: people in church who think everyone in heaven is equal; his old teacher Mr. Tripp: “God hates equality” — first may be last, but they still won’t be equal; the objection to inequality sounds like envy.

4. Irving’s Columbus; pity replaces envy when the great man falls (“the lot of prosperity to awaken envy”) #

The point: the man envied in success is pitied in misfortune. Irving, Life and Voyages of Columbus: San Domingo, hotbed of sedition against Columbus, from which he was hurried in chains “amid the shouts and taunts of the triumphant rabble”, welcomes him shipwrecked; “what had been denied to his merit was granted to his misfortune”; even the envious, appeased by his reverses, “seemed to forgive him for having once been so triumphant”. This says “an awful lot about human beings”: we are more apt to pity than to avoid envy. Parallel: Pilate knows they delivered Christ “out of envy” (some Gospel accounts say so); he scourges him and shows “behold the man” as if to elicit pity, but they cry Barabbas. A student: Pilate also wanted to keep the friendship of the Jews — “maybe involved too”. The enmity toward Christ came from envy (“they were following him rather than me”); the liturgy’s hymns: “the envious crucify him”. Contrast John the Baptist, “he must increase and I must decrease”. Personal aside: De Koninck’s humility when he asked about a thesis question directed by Dionne — “no envy at all”. Student: St Joan of Arc led to the stake, even the English soldiers weeping.

5. God, the devil, and whose vice envy is (“Pride kills the great man, and envy the little one”) #

The point: envy is hellish in origin and the vice of the lowly.

• Aristotle, Metaphysics: it is not possible for God to be envious (against the poets).
• Book of Wisdom: God made man incorruptible, to his own image; “by the envy of the devil, death came into the world” — so Fielding’s “hellish vice” is right: it imitates the devil and is to be extirpated, yet the novelists say how common it is.
• Job: “Pride kills the great man, and envy the little one” — pride the vice of the great, who have contempt for others; envy the vice of the lowly. Sociologists: envy characteristic of democratic times; a student adds the appeal of the Marxists; another the popular fascination with hearing that the famous (e.g. Elvis) are “really just miserable”.

6. Julius Caesar: the conspirators “in envy of great Caesar” (“This was the noblest Roman of them all”) #

The point: Antony’s eulogy shows envy as common and the man free of it as the true man. All the conspirators save Brutus acted “in envy of great Caesar” (Cassius in the play: Caesar bestriding the world, himself halfway down); Brutus alone acted for the common good, fearing Caesar would make himself dictator. “This was a man” — Shakespeare implies the others were not: envy is contrary to the nature of man.

7. Sonnet 37 and Homer: the father’s love as exemplar (“As a decrepit father takes delight”) #

The point: friendship between equals is perfected when it resembles the father’s love for the son, which is naturally free of envy.

1. Sonnet 37: the friend, lame by fortune, rejoices in his friend’s worth as a decrepit father delights to see his active child do deeds of youth.
2. From his own experience: fathers do not envy sons who out-earn or out-play them; they speak with pride. So parent-for-child friendship is naturally more free of envy than friendship between equals.
3. Homer, Iliad: Achilles mourns Patroclus as a father mourns his only son, and as the lioness whose cub is lost — again parent and child. The two greatest poets both see the perfection of friendship among equals as like the father’s for the son, “insofar as free of envy”.
4. The reason: the Greek proverb (in Aristotle) ho philos esti allos autos, a friend is another self; “love your neighbor as yourself”; Shakespeare’s “second self”. The son is a natural continuation of the father — “you don’t reproduce the son; you reproduce yourself” — so the father sees the son as another self more naturally than I see a college equal. Hence father-son love is the exemplar of friendship both in loving another as oneself and in being free of envy. The supreme example: God the Father and God the Son — the Father does not envy the Son’s equal nature. Sonnet continued: “I make my love engrafted to this store”, “in thy abundance am sufficed”, “Look what is best, that best I wish in thee” — supreme wishing well, “ten times happy me”; but how rare, per the novelists.

8. Flattery and friendship (“sweet breath of flattery conquers strife”) #

The point: flattery is opposed to friendship, but less directly than envy.

• Comedy of Errors: flattery conquers strife. Examples: the husband asked who is the most beautiful woman at the party (“of course, my dear”); praising the dinner rather than criticising the cook — you wouldn’t be invited again. Hence flattery seems less opposed to friendship than envy.
• Julius Caesar, Brutus and Cassius: “A friend should bear his friend’s infirmities” / “I do not love your faults” (sinner vs. sin); “a friendly eye would never see such faults” / “A flatterer’s would not, though they do appear as huge as high Olympus”. Distinction: the flatterer’s eye vs. the friend’s eye — if I wish you well, do I gloss over your defects or try to help you rid yourself of them? Aside: the soccer coach “flattering” four-year-olds — “you’ve got to do that”.
• Twelfth Night, the clown: “the better for my foes and the worse for my friends” — foes tell me plainly I’m an ass and I profit in self-knowledge. Possibly inspired by Plutarch’s essay on how to benefit from your enemies. Is a friend then a friend in the true sense? Left as a question.
• Sonnet 138: lover and beloved lie to each other, “in our faults by lies we flattered be” — this is not true or perfect friendship.
• Hamlet to Horatio: “do not think I flatter… why should the poor be flattered?”; “since my dear soul was mistress of her choice… her election hath sealed thee” — this friendship is based on choice, when reason is developed enough to compare men; “Give me that man that is not passion’s slave” — almost the definition of a good man (the coward slave of fear, the drunkard of drink, the irascible man of anger; the virtues concerned with the emotions free us). “Something too much of this”: love likes to be silent. This is the friendship based on virtue, which Aristotle will call the best.
• Cymbeline: the lords flatter the foolish Cloten while mocking him in asides (“his steel was in debt”, “how long a fool you were upon the ground”).
• King Lear, Kent on Oswald: smiling rogues who “bring oil to fire”, follow every gale of their masters “like dogs”. Aside: professors praising a paper they think nonsense, or students, for good reviews. Comparison: envy and flattery are both opposed to friendship, envy more directly (not wishing well), flattery more subtly (not helping the person overcome defects). Christ with Margaret Mary Alacoque: “where do you find a more resourceful lover than myself”, yet no flattery at all — Christ a true friend. Shakespeare uses “lover” for friend; English no longer has a word for the love that goes with friend. Student: the psalm, “if a just man strikes or reproves me, in his kindness”.

9. Useful friendship (“who not need shall never lack a friend”) #

The point: the lowest of Aristotle’s three kinds lasts only as long as the usefulness. Hamlet, the play within the play: “even our love should with our fortunes change… The great man down, you mark his favorite flies.” Inherit money and you have friends; lose it and they vanish. Henry VI, marrying for love not wealth (“worthless peasants bargain for their wives”). Timon of Athens: “such summer birds are men” — summer friends.

10. Virtue and friendship (“How many friendships have you known formed upon principles of virtue”) #

The point: friendship based on virtue is the highest and the rarest.

• Hamlet’s “not passion’s slave” is a negative way of saying a virtuous man. Cicero’s treatise says this is the only friendship; Aristotle says we use the word for lesser kinds too, so he distinguishes friendship in the full sense from those that have a likeness to it.
• Johnson to Boswell: “I love you as a kind man, I value you as a worthy man… in my heart of hearts” (Boswell rascally, Johnson a good effect on him). Boswell, May 19: the death of friends a consolation since one may have more friends in the other world; Johnson “with heat” (his fear of death): how can a man know where his friends are, or whether they will be his friends there? Most friendships “formed by caprice or by chance, mere confederacies in vice, or leagues in folly” — “a lot of truth”.
• Iliad 18: the message of Patroclus’ death, “the black cloud of sorrow”; “whom I love beyond all other companions, as well as my own life”; the bearded lion whose cubs are stolen; Achilles’ empty promise to Menoetius — he is indirectly responsible, having left the battle after the quarrel with Agamemnon: “that’s why it’s a tragedy”. Book 23: no water near his head until Patroclus is on the pyre, “no second sorrow like this”; the father mourning as he burns the bones of a newly married son. Book 24: after the games, only Achilles wept, “nor did sleep, who subdues all, come over him”, remembering all they had done together. Two men in the prime of life, many battles together: a friendship based on courage, the virtue that stands out most to the Greeks (manhood = virtue, especially courage), the first virtue Aristotle takes up.
• Irving, Life of Washington: Washington to Knox, the army “a band of brothers” (the movie title) — friendship makes brothers, as in religious life; aside, the natural friendship of cousins and brothers, his own childhood Christmases. Officers at the end of the war: eight years of shared danger “had welded their hearts together”; Knox proposes a society to perpetuate the friendships — the Society of the Cincinnati, named after Cincinnatus who returned from war to peaceful citizen life. Washington’s farewell letter to Lafayette, “bordering more upon the sentimental than almost any other”: “whether that was the last sight I ever should have of you… my fears answered yes”; Washington’s agents in France with money during the Revolution; Lafayette’s later visit.
• Jane Austen on Wickham and Lydia: no permanent happiness for a couple “only brought together because their passions were stronger than their virtue” — the two kinds, friendship based on passion vs. on virtue.

11. Self-love and friendship (“Richard loves Richard. That is, I am I”) #

The point: love of self is the source of loving a friend as another self, yet self-love in the bad sense impedes friendship, and self-love is itself ambiguous.

• Richard III, the dream before the battle: “Richard loves Richard, that is I am I” — Thomas: likeness causes love, and you are more than like yourself, so you naturally love yourself. Then “I rather hate myself for hateful deeds committed by myself” — as the psalm: he who loves iniquity hates his own soul. You love yourself, but having chosen bad things you in a way don’t. “Fool, of thyself speak well. Fool, do not flatter” — “very subtle”. Aside: lights burning blue, Shakespeare’s sign of ghosts (also Brutus and Caesar’s ghost).
• The procreation sonnets: “No love toward others in that bosom sits / That on himself such murderous shame commits” — how love another if you don’t love yourself, and how love yourself if you don’t reproduce yourself?
• Richard II, the Duchess of York: “Love, loving not itself, another can” — he doesn’t love his son, how can he love you?
• Julius Caesar, Portia to Brutus: “make us one… your half”; “Dwell I but in the suburbs of your good pleasure?” — “Portia is Brutus’ harlot, not his wife”; he eventually tells her.
• Two Gentlemen of Verona, Valentine banished: “to die is to be banished from myself, and Sylvia is myself”; “my next self”. All these phrases (another self, second self, next self) and the commandment “love your neighbor as yourself” imply love of self has to do with love of friend.
• Polonius: “to thine own self be true… thou canst not then be false to any man” — vs. Proteus, who thinks he can’t be true to himself without being false to Valentine and Julia. Presented as a dispute, “the opposite is useful”: who’s right? left open.

His words #

• envy — sadness over the good fortune of another; opposed to mutual goodwill.
• pity — sadness over the (especially undeserved) misfortune of another; a good emotion; Kyrie eleison / miserere nobis.
• emulation — the “specious name” under which envy is palliated (Smollett).
• hellish vice — Fielding’s name for envy, justified by Wisdom (“envy of the devil”).
• our fallen nature — where envy is ingrained, against the novelists’ “natural”.
• ho philos esti allos autos — a friend is another self (Greek proverb, in Aristotle); Shakespeare’s “second self”, “next self”.
• reproduction — you reproduce yourself, not the son; why the father sees the son as another self.
• exemplar — the father’s love for the son, for friendship.
• flatterer’s eye vs. friend’s eye — Brutus’ distinction.
• not passion’s slave — Hamlet’s phrase; “almost the definition of what a good man is”.
• lover — Shakespeare’s word for friend; English lacks a word for the love that goes with friend.
• useful friendship — the lowest of the three kinds; lasts while you are useful.
• summer friends — Timon’s “summer birds”.
• band of brothers — Washington; friendship makes brothers.
• manhood — English for virtue, meaning especially courage.

Texts #

Read in class

• Smollett, letter of Matthew Bramble to Dr Lewis (envy passage)
• Thackeray, Henry Esmond (envy / adversity passage)
• Fielding, Tom Jones (envy the black ingredient)
• Irving, Life and Voyages of Columbus (return to San Domingo)
• Shakespeare, Julius Caesar (Antony on Brutus; Brutus–Cassius on flattery; Portia–Brutus)
• Shakespeare, Sonnet 37; Sonnet 138; a procreation sonnet (inferred, unnumbered)
• Shakespeare, Comedy of Errors (flattery conquers strife); Twelfth Night (clown and duke); Hamlet (to Horatio; play within the play; Polonius); Cymbeline (Cloten and the lords); King Lear (Kent on Oswald); Henry VI (dower speech); Timon of Athens; Richard III (dream); Richard II (Duchess of York); Two Gentlemen of Verona (Valentine banished)
• Boswell, Life of Johnson (letter; conversation of May 19)
• Homer, Iliad, Books 18, 23, 24
• Irving, Life of Washington (letter to Knox; Society of the Cincinnati; farewell letter to Lafayette)
• Jane Austen on Wickham and Lydia (Pride and Prejudice, inferred)
• Book of Wisdom (envy of the devil); Job (pride kills the great man)

Mentioned

• Thomas, Summa Theologiae, Secunda Secundae, treatise on charity (envy opposed)
• Aristotle, Metaphysics (God not envious); Aristotle on the three kinds of friendship and “another self”
• Cicero, treatise on friendship
• Plutarch, essay on how to benefit from one’s enemies
• Gospel accounts of Pilate and envy; liturgical hymns (“the envious crucify him”); Psalms (loves iniquity, hates his soul; the just man reproves)
• Autobiography of Margaret Mary Alacoque; St Teresa of Ávila’s convent; St Joan of Arc

His questions #

• Don’t you feel a little envy when your roommate gets the nice guy, or the nice job? Yes — and that feeling is opposed to friendship, and habitual would destroy it.
• Why bring envy into a friendship course? By opposition you understand friendship better; its prevalence shows the defect of most friendships.
• The man you envy in success — what do you do in his misfortune? You pity him (Columbus, Christ before Pilate).
• Why is the father’s love for the son free of envy? The son is a natural continuation of the father, another self.
• “A friendly eye would never see such faults” — is that true? No: “a flatterer’s would not”; the friend’s eye sees them to help.
• Is the foe who tells you plainly you’re an ass the friend in the true sense? left open.
• How many friendships have you known formed upon principles of virtue? Few; most by caprice or chance — the best things are rare.
• Are you like yourself? More than like: you are yourself, so you naturally love yourself.
• Polonius or Proteus — who’s right? left open.