Portraying Friendship

One of the great achievements of Alexander Nehamas's book on friendship is the emphasis he places on the particularity of friendships. He draws from his study of Montaigne, and from his reflections on what is most important in his own friendships, the centrality of occurrences that display something quite idiosyncratic. I elaborate this theme, first in terms of the ease between two people displayed in incidents quite lacking in the qualities to which philosophical theories have typically pointed. Portraying friendship, I suggest, is a matter of making these revelatory moments vivid. Nehamas uses an elegant narrative style in presenting this important point. I try to show how poetry can contribute to its appreciation, first in offering a multi-part poem about a deep friendship of my own, and then in a brief analysis of some of its features. My conclusion is that general philosophical theories of friendship receive crucial supplements from the kinds of individual portraits Nehamas and I attempt to paint.