Dio Chrysostom On Friendship And Expanding One's Self

how we become something more through our friendships

For eight weeks I have been teaching an online class titled “Ancient Philosophers On Friendship” in my Study With Sadler Academy. We have looked at a number of authors and texts who discuss various topics, arguments, ideas, and problems associated with friendship, broadly speaking.

One of those is Dio Chrysostom, and we read and worked through selections from his Orations last week. Quite a few of the things he has to say about friendship, while interesting, are not particularly original. That’s not a great surprise, since he is writing in the wake of earlier thinkers examining friendship: Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Lucretius and Seneca, and thoughtfully reprises and reinterprets what they had to say about the topics.

It occurred to me, as I was teaching my online class session, that there was one idea that I did see Dio Chrysostom explore that I don’t recall seeing developed in any earlier writer’s work in the same way and to the same extent. Since that might also be of interest to you, I thought I might write a bit about it. The idea gets expressed in Oration 3, which was addressed to the Roman emperor Trajan.

The general idea itself can be expressed pretty simply. What friendship affords is an augmentation and expansion of one’s capacities, even of one’s self. And this happens precisely through our friends. Dio’s points about this have the “king” or “ruler” in mind, but the arguments and explanations would seem to apply just as well to our own more humble lives.

The first interesting passage runs:

[N]o one, of and by himself, is sufficient [hikanos] for a single one of even his own needs; and the more and greater the responsibilities of a king are, the greater is the number of co-workers [sunergountōn] that he needs, and the greater the good-will [eunoia] required of them, since he is forced to entrust his greatest and most important interests to others or else to abandon them. (87)

Now while that may be an exaggeration, claiming that nobody suffices for even a single one of their needs, it is correct to note that we do need the cooperation of other people in order to accomplish what we aim to do. Note as well that it isn’t enough just to have other people one can use as tools. Good-will on their part, as well as loyalty (pistis), is needed in order to consistently get things done well and right.

A bit later on in the Discourse, Dio makes a very interesting claim about the organs of our bodies:

If eyes, ears, tongue, and hands are worth everything [tou pantos axia] to a man that he may be able merely to live, to say nothing of enjoying life, then friends are not less but more useful [khrēsimoi] than these members. (104)

He then runs down through a list of separate organs, each of which does something for us, and then points out how having friends extends those capacities for us. Presumably this is in part because we not only rely upon our own organs, but also benefit from the friend(s) using theirs in ways that help us. We start with senses that provide us with information:

With his eyes he may barely see what lies before his feet; but through his friends he may behold even that which is at the ends of the earth. With his ears he can hear nothing save that which is very near; but through those who wish him well he is without tidings of nothing of importance anywhere. (105-6)

Then we shift to our capacities for communicating and for engaging in action

With his tongue he communicates only with those who are in his presence, and with his hands, were he never so strong, he can not do the work of more than two men; but through his friends he can hold converse with all the world and accomplish every undertaking, since those who wish him well are saying and doing everything that is in his interest. (106)

Up to this point one could say that the extension and augmentation of our own capacities though having friends doesn’t necessarily involve doing so by extending and augmenting our self through our friends, just making use of what they see, hear, say, and do within the framework of our relationship. What Dio says next moves us beyond that.

The most surprising thing [paradoxotaton] of all, however, is that he who is rich in friends [poluphilos] is able, although but one man, to do a multiplicity of things at the same time, to deliberate about [bouleusethai] many matters simultaneously, to see many things, to hear many things, and to be in many places at once — a thing difficult even for the gods — with the result that there is nothing remaining anywhere that is bereft of his solicitude [tēs . . . pronoias].

Whether this is meant as a metaphor or more literally, it reads as saying that through the network of our friends, we overcome barriers of space and time and act, think, see, hear, and be in multiple places at the very same time. It is worth stressing that Dio does think this is something that other people will find paradoxical, not least because even the gods can do things like this only with difficulty.

His considerations about pleasure and joy reinforce this point

[T]he happy experiences of his friends are bound to delight a good man no less than some joy of his own. For is that man not most blessed who has many bodies with which to be happy when he experiences a pleasure, many souls with which to rejoice when he is fortunate? (108)

Dio is even more explicit here. I don’t just get to see my friend enjoying something. I have their body or their soul (and presumably they have mine. A bit later, discussing how friends benefit each other in giving or doing favors, he asserts:

[H]e who shows his friends a favour rejoices both as giver and as receiver at the same time. (110)

Why is that the case? Because the friend is, as earlier philosophers discussing friendship had pointed out, “another self”. Dio, however, seems to develop this notion further than his predecessors. It isn’t just one friend that we do this with, but rather an entire circle of people who are all presumably linked with each other in that very friendship.

How should we ourselves interpret this idea Dio puts forward? When we have deep relationships with other people, marked by abiding loyalty, care, respect, solicitude, do we really extend and augment ourselves into the other person(s)? Or is this just an extended and complex metaphor, a piece of artful hyperbole, that he develops here? I don’t have that figured out myself at this point, but I do find it a fascinating idea. And so now, like humming a song that proves to become an “earworm” to someone else, perhaps I’ve now implanted it into your mind to mull over as well.