Montaigne and La Boétie: A Perfect Friendship

One of the most renowned intellects of the late Renaissance, Michel de Montaigne, was deeply influenced by friendship

One of Michel de Montaigne's (L) greatest essays was "On Friendship." Though Étienne de La Boétie was immortalized in Michel de Montaigne's essays on friendship, he was a writer, poet, and political theorist in his own right. (Public domain, P. Eoche/Getty Images)

Personal tragedy can often be a catalyst for change and growth. While we don’t envy people who experience it, we admire those who bear it well and are able to transmute their pain into something good or beautiful. For example, “The Divine Comedy” exists because Dante suffered the double misfortune of losing his beloved Beatrice and being exiled from Florence for life.

Abraham Lincoln is another case in point. Over the course of his life, he endured the death of numerous family members, including his second son. Later, while in the White House, his third son died and he witnessed the mental deterioration of his wife, Mary Todd. Then, he was assassinated. Lincoln, one of the most esteemed men in history, lived one of the most unenviable lives imaginable. But where would the world be without such melancholics?

When Michel de Montaigne’s best friend, Étienne de La Boétie, died tragically at the age of 32, Montaigne was grief-stricken. He retired from public life and locked himself away in his tower. Over the next 10 years, this period of solitude produced one of the world’s most original literary products: “The Essays.”

Kindred Spirits

One of history’s great literary friendships began when two young government officials met at a town festival in Bordeaux. Montaigne had heard of La Boétie through an early tract on civil disobedience he had written, “Discourse on Voluntary Servitude.” Montaigne, as yet, had written nothing, but was locally known as a lawyer. They immediately hit it off.

“We embraced each other by repute,” Montaigne said, and “discovered ourselves to be so seized by each other, so known to each other and so bound together that from then on none was so close as each was to the other.”

La Boétie was only a few years older than Montaigne, but because he had grown up an orphan, more mature. He was a hard worker, married, and a more distinguished member of the Bordeaux Parliament. They shared an interest in literature and philosophy and were committed to living “the good life,” as espoused by ancient Greek and Roman writers.

La Boétie assumed the role of the wise mentor. He was a talented poet, and three of his poems are addressed to Montaigne. In a Latin satire, La Boétie described his gifted but inexperienced friend as having a “winged foot already near the goal, alert to pluck the crowns,” and exhorted him to find support in seeking virtue and purpose.

Elsewhere, La Boétie prophesied: “There is no reason to fear that our descendants, if only the fates permit, will begrudge placing our names among those of famous friends.”

Their friendship lasted just four or five years before La Boétie caught the plague in 1563. With Montaigne at his bedside, he died a stoic death worthy of Socrates. Afterward, Montaigne shut himself away and, following a period of idle depression, began writing as a therapeutic outlet. Early titles such as “To Philosophize is to Learn How to Die” express a morbid stoic resolve and indicate that his friend was often on his mind.

‘On Friendship’

One of Montaigne’s greatest essays is “On Friendship.” He opened up about La Boétie, describing his friend’s many virtues and distinguishing their attachment from acquaintanceships rooted in practical ends other than the relationship itself. Their alliance was one of brotherhood, but being free to choose their association, they lacked the rivalry of natural brothers. While Montaigne hoped to forge another such bond in his life, he had low expectations: “So many fortuitous circumstances are needed to make it, that it is already something if Fortune can achieve it once in three centuries.”

What was it, ultimately, that drew Montaigne to La Boétie? In one of the most famous sentences Montaigne ever wrote, he found himself incapable of explaining their mysterious tie:

“If you press me to tell why I loved him, I feel that this cannot be expressed, except by answering: Because it was he, because it was I.” This sense of wordless wonder is hardly demystified by the general definition of friendship Montaigne extracted from his experience: In true friendship, “souls are mingled and confounded in so universal a blending that they efface the seam which joins them together so that it cannot be found.”

Defending Male Camaraderie

Such lofty eloquence has led some suspicious scholars to claim that Montaigne and La Boétie were more than “just” friends. Formerly a fringe view, this position has become increasingly mainstream over the past few years. The claim is disturbing not only for misrepresenting Montaigne, but because it points to a larger issue: Why is it no longer acceptable for a man to be great friends with another man, and nothing more? When platonic male relationships aren’t being attacked for their “toxic masculinity,” they are hypersexualized.

To examine this claim, let us refer to Montaigne. The essay’s title “On Friendship” is a bit of a misnomer. The French title is “De l’amitié.” As translator M.A. Screech notes in his Penguin Classics edition of “The Complete Essays” (London, 1993), “amitié” includes many affectionate relationships and several terms are required to render all of its different senses: friendship, loving-friendship, benevolence, affection, and love. Love in the sense of “amour,” however—romantic love—is excluded from these meanings.

Within the essay itself, Montaigne compares his experience of soulful friendship with romantic love. He admits that “the flames of passion are more active, sharp and keen.” But it is a fickle fire that quickly burns out. Being an attack upon the body, it never captures the innermost part of us. Lust doesn’t represent the whole person as true friendship does.

“The love of friends is a general universal warmth, temperate moreover and smooth, a warmth which is constant and at rest, all gentleness and evenness.” Montaigne’s own “perfect friendship,” which he describes as “indivisible,” is higher than simple romance—or any other type of close relationship. “Let no one place those other common friendships in the same rank as this,” Montaigne wrote.

Some scholars are so keen to be audacious that they will twist evidence for any assertion to uncover the “hidden meaning” of a text. (Another argument, which has also gained ground in recent years, is that Montaigne was the real author of La Boétie’s works.) This approach ignores the possibility of frankness, one of the qualities Montaigne most admired. In “The Essays,” he never fails to come across as genuine and sincere. Truth is “the first and fundamental part of virtue.” The man’s depths are all on the surface—there is little to uncover.

In an age in which the spiritual is reduced to the material and physical urges have become the essence of identity, it’s important to stress the crucial role of male camaraderie. When boys and young men forge strong bonds with other males of their age group, it helps them develop confidence, trust, loyalty, and a competitive spirit. Emotional health is the positive side effect achieved by any young man lucky enough to forge a friendship, as Montaigne put it, “with no ideal to follow other than itself.”