Civility friendship: an analysis of the impossibility of child friendship as a pedagogical component in Erasmus of RotterdamABSTRACT
Although well established, the current relationship between friendship, childhood, and education constitutes an event in the history of friendship. In the wake of studies seeking to comprehend the emergence of this phenomenon, this article examines the work of the educational theorist Erasmus of Rotterdam, particularly the treatise On Civility in Children, situated at the dawn of modern pedagogy. The objective here is to verify the (im)possibility of juvenile friendship as an element of the pedagogical problematic, analysing the rules of veridiction that underpin Erasmian conceptions of education, humanity, childhood, and friendship. It is concluded that Erasmian friendship, referred here as "civility friendship," which is grounded in reason, freedom, and virtue, is inaccessible to the child due to its incompleteness. Consequently, (child) friendship cannot be present in the pedagogical issues of the author, and perhaps of all Renaissance.
Keywords:
Friendship; Erasmus of Rotterdam; Education; Childhood
RESUMO
Embora bem estabelecida, a relação atual entre amizade, infância e educação é um acontecimento na história da amizade. Na esteira dos estudos que visam compreender o surgimento desse fenômeno, analisa-se aqui a obra do teórico da educação Desiderius Erasmus, especialmente o tratado A civilidade pueril, situado no começo da pedagogia moderna. Objetiva-se verificar a (im)possibilidade de uma amizade pueril como elemento da problemática pedagógica, por meio do escrutínio das regras veridiccionais que organizam as concepções erasmianas de educação, ser humano, criança e amizade. Conclui-se que a amizade erasmiana, nomeada aqui como "amizade civilial," por ser pautada na razão, liberdade e virtude, é inacessível à criança dada a incompletude desta, e, consequentemente, não pode estar presente nas problemáticas pedagógicas do autor e, quiçá, de todo o Renascimento.
Palavras-chave:
Amizade; Desiderius Erasmus; Educação; Infância
RESUMEN
La relación actual entre amistad, infancia y educación, aunque estén bien establecida, constituye un acontecimiento en la historia de la amistad. En la estela de los estudios que visan comprender lo surgimiento de este fenómeno, este artículo examina la obra del teórico de la educación, Erasmo de Rotterdam, especialmente el tratado Los buenos modales en los niños, situada en el comienzo de la pedagogía moderna. El objetivo es verificar la (im)posibilidad de una amistad pueril como elemento de la problemática pedagógica, analizándose las reglas veridiccionales que organizan las concepciones erasmianas de educación, ser humano, niñez y amistad. Se concluye que la amistad erasmiana, denominada aquí "amistad civilial," al estar basada en la razón, libertad y virtud, es inaccesible al niño por la incompletitud de él. Y, por lo tanto, la amistad no puede estar presente en las problemáticas pedagógicas del autor y quizás, del Renacimiento en su conjunto.
Palabras clave:
Amistad; Erasmo de Rotterdam; Educación; Infancia
OPENING: THE STRATEGIC PLACE OF THE RENAISSANCE AND ERASMUS
In the mid-1980s, the sociologist of childhood William A. Corsaro (1985, p. 121) stated that "Interest in children's friendship has increased dramatically in recent years, resulting in a growing number of research studies and several developmental theories of friendship." More than the observation of the growing interest in the theme of childhood friendship, it is important to note how friendship has been subsumed into pedagogical problematization and educational practices, in addition to being taken as an object of scientific studies in such a way that, to someone from the 21st century, there is very little or nothing that is surprising in this topic. Childhood friendship and its pedagogical problematization have become something obvious nowadays and, if there is any strangeness there, it is in the absence and not in the presence of friendship between children. However, when one looks to the history of friendship (Ortega, 2002), there is practically no veridiction of child friendship; that is, until Modernity, the discourses, in their own time and about their own time, do not encompass "true friendship" between children nor refer to truth about friendship based on child relationships.1 Thus, it is an event in the realm of truth — or of the "veridiction" installed in Western Modernity — that the triangulation between friendship, childhood and education has become possible.2
To study this event, the Renaissance occupies a strategic place, since it maintains a considerably important relationship with the experience that contemporaneity has with friendship, as indicated, for example, by the study of the historian Maurice Aymard (2009). The Renaissance was the scene of political, social, and economic transformations that established a complex articulation with the territory of Western philosophy and education (Mialaret and Vial, 1981). During this period, there was "a profound change in the conception of man," which unleashed "consequences, perhaps unwanted, but ineluctable: the scientific spirit of observation, of criticism, the right to full culture, the demand for true freedom of thought, in short, a totally different education that is imposed" (Vial, 2013, p. 37). In this sense, although there is a long process of transformations between contemporary and Renaissance education, the changes initiated in the 15th century undeniably resonate in the constitution of current education (Mialaret and Vial, 1981). Consequently, an analytical look at this period is relevant to investigate the formation of the current relationship between friendship and education.
Among those who summarized Renaissance thought was Desiderius Erasmus or Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466–1536). He was an important theologian and humanist, famous for his book In Praise of Folly (Erasmus, 1986) and author of an extensive work that dealt with the most varied themes, including morals and religion. D. Erasmus — along with other contemporary names such as Michel de Montaigne, Jan Amos Komenský (also known as Comenius) and Joan Lluís Vives — had, in the scope of education, a very expressive production. He was responsible for the elaboration of several school and pedagogical components such as:
school programs, orders of study, arts of teaching and ways of learning, organization of the school into eight classes, master classes… He will even recommend the oratory art of declamatio, in which he himself is a master and which consists in arguing: man, in speaking, imitates God's creative gesture (Vial, 2013, p. 37-38).
In addition, the intellectual work of D. Erasmus covered reflections on the nature of the human being and on friendship (Eden, 2001; Lobis, 2010). Throughout his life, he travelled around Europe, from where D. Erasmus extracted material for his writings and through which he disseminated his thought — including his ideas for a new education (Woodward, 2013). Because of this, his production had considerable geographical reach and social penetration, which is visible in the reflections of the Norbert Elias (1981) about the theme of civility in the work of D. Erasmus. Thus the relevance of taking the thought and work of the D. Erasmus as an object of scrutiny and material for study regarding the theme of friendship in the Renaissance, as well as in the exploration of how friendship does (or does not) relate to education and childhood.
In short, the strategic value of the time frame of this article is not only in what has been stated — what friendship is — but in its negativity — what friendship could not be. Therefore, the present analysis of the possible relationships between friendship, education and childhood in D. Erasmus seeks to operate as a reverse mirror — in the style of the painting Not to Be Reproduced (Magritte, 1937) — in which the reflected image is not the face of the present, but its own back: this (close) past capable of producing a strangeness to what is the present. This odd mirror, hence, would make perceptible the set of rules and the veridictional limits of friendship in D. Erasmus, which, in turn, contrasted with the veridiction of the 21st century, the one enunciated by W. A. Corsaro (1985), in which a child friendship problematized by pedagogy is possible.
This article strategically investigates the thought of D. Erasmus, to collaborate with the study of the lines of force that make up this veridiction of friendship and of the breaking points at which such veridiction could emerge, based on two fundamental questions. First, it is asked: what are the conditions for the friendship veridiction in Erasmian thought? And then: would a child friendship be possible as an element of the pedagogical problem in Desiderius Erasmus?
To this end, the work of D. Erasmus is analysed — especially the texts related to education, and utilising texts from scholars of D. Erasmus thought — based on a methodology supported by Foucauldian archaeology (Foucault, 1969), also making use of the notion of veridiction (Foucault, 2008). Thus, the present study is not interested in the question of what is true (in itself), but how something can be, in a given time-space, sayable as true; not as something must be truly said, but as something said gains consistency of truth. In this regard, the methodology of this article is based on the way in which archaeology poses its questions: "if there are things said […], one should not seek the immediate reason for them in the things that were said or in the men that said them, but in the system of discursivity, in the enunciative possibilities and impossibilities that it lay down" (Foucault, 1969, p. 177).
In this article, however, instead of dealing with things said or statements, an analysis of the veridiction is carried out. Thus, when analysing the work of D. Erasmus, the study is concerned with the dispersion, variation and regularity, the circumscribed multiplication, of discursive practices in their regime of truth, in the conditions of consistency of true saying: "the discursive practices that could constitute the matrices of possible knowledge, […] in these discursive practices the rules, the game of true and false, […] these discursive practices as regulated forms of veridiction" (Foucault, 2008, p. 6). Thus, veridiction does not only cover discursive practices, but is also articulated with the constitution of the subject and the institution of the subject capable of telling the truth.
Finally, veridictional analysis is descriptive, rather than hermeneutic, semiological or phenomenological; also it is not a dialectical or structural analysis of the deepest and most secret causes of practices around friendship. In this context, the article is divided into the following sections: an exploration of how the analysed author understood the notions of human being, child and education, as well as their relationship with the formation of a (civil) society; a delineation of the notion of amicitia in the work of D. Erasmus, outside his texts on education; a scrutiny of the notion of amicitia within Erasmian texts on education; an analysis of the relations between friendship, education and child, in order to point out the veridictional possibility or impossibility of a (childhood) friendship as part of pedagogical thought of D. Erasmus.
HUMAN BEING, SOCIETY, AND EDUCATION
Since the Trecento, in Italy, humanism and its educational projects had to deal with a tension between the resumption of a Greco-Latin "heritage" and the prevailing Christian values. In contrast to medieval education — more technical and focused on learning trades —, Renaissance education intended to prepare for life and for humanistic development. However, this new education took at least until the 16th century to extrapolate the Italian Peninsula and reach the lands beyond the Alps (Monroe, 1919).
The way in which D. Erasmus thought about this education was also based on a symbiosis between "enlightened Christianity and the wisdom of the ancients" (Woodward, 2013, p. 72), and sought to overcome medieval "barbarism," ranging from the instruction of the prince to manuals addressed to parents and children not belonging to the nobility. This education aimed at the institution of a "civilized society." Although D. Erasmus (1985; 1986) evoked the Christian sacred scriptures and the knowledge of Christ as founding elements of his pedagogy, it did not have personal salvation in its scope, relegating the role of religion to an often pragmatic and secondary place. In short, "the organised life of the civilised community is to Erasmus the only life worth living: his educational aim, therefore, is a social aim" (Woodward, 2013, p. 73).
D. Erasmus explored the theme of education — from objectives to methods — in a diversity of texts (cf. Erasmus, 1978; 1985; 1986); however, as William H. Woodward (2013) points out, the famous text On Civility in Children (Erasmus, 1530)3 is emblematic for understanding the Erasmian way of thinking about the formation of the individual. In it, the objectives of education are summarized in the following points:
The task of childhood training is made up of several parts, of which the first, and consequently the most important, consists in impregnating the tender soul (tenellus animus) with the seeds of piety; the next, to make the liberal arts loved and deeply learned; the third is to instruct for the duties of life; the fourth is to get used to good manners from the earliest years (Erasmus, 1530, p. 2).
These three points (viz. piety, as a practice of religious laws and devotion, love for the liberal arts, and instruction in the duties of life and good manners) show the moral tonic that constitutes Erasmian education. This education, whose task was the constitution of a society guide in civility, bound the individual to his or her role, both at the community level and at broader levels (e.g., the emerging nation-state). The training of child, therefore, encompassed his or her responsibility to the family and civil society, implying, consequently, the insertion in codes of civility.4 Erasmian education, although it did not completely ignore the relationship between training and trade, paid little attention to professional training (Woodward, 2013).
Erasmus considered it a mistake to suppose that training for practical life came from life itself. He emphasized the need for space, time, and method consistent with the instruction of child, as well as adult supervision. These aspects, in fact, were not a particularity of D. Erasmus, but a transversal character of other Renaissance thinkers (McGregor, 1985). However, the preparation for adult life, in an Erasmian way, did not have books as its fundamentals; on the contrary, there was a certain discredit to dilettantism and bookish education. Thus, the presence of the study of the scriptures, erudition and the liberal arts should be given as a pedagogical tool linked to the child's own life and aimed at the constitution of a civility in the subjectivity of the individual.
This civility was the individual behavioural codes by which a civil society was possible. As a theme of Erasmian education, civility was not only a pedagogical component, as it was linked to a transformation in the whole of European Renaissance society. In this context, the treatise on civility in childhood of Erasmus (1530) acted as an initiator of practices, "he obviously expressed in the word [civilitas] something that met a social need of the time;" however, "the concept of ‘civilitas,’ henceforth, was engraved in the consciousness of the people with the special meaning it received from the treaty of Erasmus" (Elias, 1981, p. 97).5
Civility not only inaugurated another mode of relationship with the subject and with his social training, but also took the body as a turning point. The body has become the materiality of gesture, of social behaviour and, therefore, of the "externum corporis decorum" — i.e., "external decorum of the body" (Elias, 1981). However, for D. Erasmus (1530), the formation of the body was subordinated to that of the soul (or spirit). The soul housed the "ratio": a reason in activity, which distinguished the human being from other animals. A ratio was the (divine) gift of thought — responsible for the judgment, ordering and memorization of knowledge —, expressed, concomitantly, in the enlightened reasoning of the teacher and in the reasoning, in the process of enlightenment, of the child. Thus, "The education of ‘the spirit,’ therefore, […] was the natural crown of all sound training" (Woodward, 2013, p. 78-79), for the Rotterdam humanist.
Ratio was a key piece of Erasmian thought, along with two other elements: natura (i.e., human nature) and the exercitatio (i.e., exercise or practice). Natura was about the innate moral and intellectual capacity of the human being, which could be instructed in two ways: the "sciencia" — an ordered or systematized information, aimed at intellectual instruction —; and example and counsel, directed to moral instruction. Such forms of instruction should, at some level, be articulated with each other (Woodward, 2013). These three elements (viz. ratio, natura, and exercitatio) formed the basis of the Erasmian conception of the human being, which, however, was not understood as a formless mass that could be freely manipulated by education. The human being, on the contrary, was a set of virtualities, inscribed in his nature, to be (or not) actualized through the educational process. In this sense, Erasmian thought agreed with his contemporaries, for whom the relationship between human nature and education was within the scope of "nutrition," through example. With this, "the educator did not have to model the child according to his idea but had to help him live" (Viguerie, 1978, p. 8), fully realizing what was virtuous in his nature, promoting the flourishing of civility.
The third element to compose the basis of the human being, the exercitatio (or usus), was the capacity for practice or exercise in life and at school. This exercise allowed us to act on the child's body, to guide their already nourished human nature well, through the repetition of lessons. Therefore, thanks to reason, education could act on the body and soul to guide the child to the "image of God" through the exercises. Moreover, this ability to move towards the divine image (i.e., perfection) had already been virtually allocated to their nature. In summary, the ratio would not only be what makes the human being a singular being, but also what allows one to guide the natura, through the exercitatio, to its ontological fullness (Erasmus, 1985; 1986). Therefore, the Erasmian conception of education was based, especially with regard to child civility, on this triad of the human being.
It is worth nothing that even if the body received some attention, it was not the main object of this education. The status of an indirect object was derived from the body being the vector for expression of the soul: "the external decorum of the body proceeds from a well-ordered soul" (Erasmus, 1530, p. 2). This soul, by its own (divine) nature, was inscrutable, so it was through gestures that the virtue or vice of the subject became perceptible. However, the body did not always express a clear image of the soul, since "we realize that, due to lack of education, this grace is lacking in excellent and cultured men" (Erasmus, 1530, p. 3). Education, then, would have the role of ensure perfection of the body's brightness, where the soul "shines fully" (undique reluceat). In short, the body gives visibility to the soul, whose direct knowledge was impossible, allowing us to perceive an individual's civility and, consequently, his virtue.
When one examines child civility, given the scope of the work of D. Erasmus, not only the social eagerness for new codes, as pointed out by Norbert Elias (1981), but also the force of veridictional cohesion of the pedagogy and ontology of D. Erasmus become evident. In other words, more than focusing on social adherence to the notion of civilitas, it is interesting here to note how Erasmian philosophical thought was prolonged in the pedagogical field: the subordination of the body to the soul in child education came from the ontological subordination between these two elements. In the Erasmian project of child civility, the first and most important part of the training has as its object the soul, as "seeds of piety," and only in the last part does he speak of accustoming the child "to good manners" (Erasmus, 1530, p. 2). In this excerpt, the author also wrote that "the external decorum of the body comes from a well-composed soul (animo bene composito)" (Erasmus, 1530, p. 2), explaining a causal or hierarchical relationship between "body" and "soul." It is possible, from now on, to establish two "Erasmian" pairs body/gesture and soul/virtue, so that the first refers to the second in a game of similarity and continuity, as will be explored later.
On Civility in Children (Erasmus, 1530), therefore, was a unique pedagogical text that, although it did not encompass all the developments of Erasmian education, stood out in at least two points: to synthesize the key elements, in terms of form and purpose, of Erasmian education; to establish something new in the conception and educational practices of his time. The first aspect of this novelty was the fact that the treatise, although dedicated to the son of a prince, was designed for the education of all types of infants, whether noble or not. Another aspect is in what Brian McGregor (1985, p. 271) highlights: "The language of De civilitate is adapted to the youthful reader, being clear and easy to follow, although the occasional rare word taken from patristic or pagan authors does occur." The text, therefore, was also addressed to children and not only to their educators, which does not point to a fragility of the writing, but the opposite, as N. Elias (1981, p. 68) indicates: "it can be said that none of his successors ever equalled this writing in strength, clarity and personal character." A final aspect regarding the singularity of the work concerns the intention of D. Erasmus (1530) to generalize the codes of conduct and meanings so that they were valid for everyone. The writing paved the way for the generalization of the objective of education, since, as Jacques Revel (2009, p. 175) indicates: "True civility consists in getting rid of all idiotism and claiming only those bodily expressions that are recognizable and acceptable to the greatest number. For its only purpose is to unite men more."
AMICITIA: NATURE, SIMILARITY AND PARRHESIA
In D. Erasmus, the most focused love relationship was marriage; however, friendship did not cease to be an object of reflection (Furey, 2016). In fact, to him, "humans were born […] not for bellum, but for amicitia" (Eden, 2001, p. 165), that is, not only war and friendship were antithetical things, but also amicitia would be basal to human nature. Erasmian friendship, as analysed by Kathy Eden (2001), was the cement of human life in society, both in its aspect of political alliance and that of intellectual search, which points to a connection between amicitia and civility, perhaps in a generic form of this relationship.
In this sense, Seth Lobis (2010) indicated the existence of a relationship between friendship and natural history in D. Erasmus (1997), in a colloquium entitled "Amicitia," pasting it as a kind of line of force that organizes the relationships between living beings, beyond the human being itself. In this text, D. Erasmus (1997) begins his reflection with the idea of a natural attraction between those who are similar, whose strength would lead beings to establish a natural amicitia or, conversely, a natural "enmity." This way of understanding the relationships allowed the author to suggest that between human beings and snakes, there was a "natural enmity," as well as between lizards and snakes; therefore, it was possible to affirm that between human beings and lizards there was a kind of "natural amicitia." The relationships between humans, both those of affinity and those of disaffection, was based on this natural inclination (Erasmus, 1997). However, in human relations, D. Erasmus (1997) added a layer to this inclination, making its establishment less passive, as Seth Lobis (2010, p. 34) points out: "Erasmus crucially introduces a concept of agency. Natural amities and enmities lead a person in one direction or another, but happiness depends on approving or rejecting particular inclinations." Thus, although friendship was formed through a natural inclination, achieving happiness through this relationship depended on the actions of individuals. Furthermore, to correctly follow an inclination, an exercise of reason over human nature is required, making a process of education to the individual indispensable. Educating, therefore, was articulated with human freedom, just as, once again, the latter appears as indispensable to true friendship, alongside reason.
In this colloquium, the Erasmian amicitia was designed, again, in order to encompass a general friendliness, closer to the Christian caritas, which does not mean that the author excluded the idea of friendship as a relationship of love particularized between two people. On the contrary, although D. Erasmus (1997, p. 1046) differentiated between these two things — "Christian charity extends to the whole world; intimate friendship should be restricted to a few" —, the notion of Erasmian amicitia seemed to encompass these two forms of relationship, one more general (with humanity), the other more particular (with individuals). Thus, Erasmian friendship seemed to fulfil the Renaissance proposal of articulating classical Antiquity's conceptual universe and European Christian morality, the central point of this conception being a friendship linked to civility, and to the constitution and maintenance of civil society, so that "concern for the few should not mean neglect of the many" (Lobis, 2010, p. 39).
In fact, in Erasmian writings, friendship was often posited as a generic relationship, in the realm of civility, or treated indirectly, serving as a model for other relationships (Furey, 2016). However, in the context of the encomium, friendship was sublimated, as was the case with other Renaissance artists (Ortega, 2002).6 In Parables (Erasmus, 1978), for example, the author begins the book with a letter dedicated to a friend. In the first paragraph of this epistolary preamble, one reads:
I, whose idea of friendship rests wholly in a meeting of minds and the enjoyment of studies in common, might well greet one another from time to time with presents for the mind and keepsakes of a literary description. Not that there is any risk that when our life together is interrupted we may slowly grow cold, or that the great distance which separates our bodies may loosen the close tie between our minds. Minds can develop an even closer link, the greater the space that comes between them. Our aim would be that any loss due to separation in the actual enjoyment of our friendship should be made good, not without interest, by tokens of this literary kind (Erasmus, 1978, p. 130).
Therefore, the design of a noble and sublime friendship in which the souls of friends could be linked is evident despite distance and loss. To the union of souls in friendship — "men coalesce and are made one by friendship" (Erasmus, 1978, p. 192) — similarity was essential: "every man attracts friends whose character suits his own" (Erasmus, 1978, p. 221).7 This similarity, in turn, carried a kind of narcissism, in which the friend was "another self". In the book On the Method of Study, Erasmus (1978, p. 686) himself employed the figure of Narcissus: "as soon as Narcissus, who had previously shunned every form of friendship, had caught sight of his own reflection on the glassy surface of a pool, he immediately began to burn with an all-consuming passion".
Still in On the Method of Study, Erasmus (1978, p. 683-685) wrote:
friendship can exist only among similar people, for similarity promotes mutual good will, while dissimilarity on the other hand is the parent of hatred and distrust; moreover, the greater, the truer, the more deeply rooted the similarity, the firmer and closer will be the friendship.
In one sentence, friendship would only exist because of the similarity of individuals, having in the latter the guide of the former. Similarity would generate the virtues necessary for true friendship, while dissimilarity would promote vices, separating individuals from a relationship worthy of the name.
This game of mirroring is extended by demanding from true friendship a reciprocity of treatment — "mutual benevolence" — between individuals: "Among the good, love is always mutual, while among the low it is common for one to love, the other to hate, one to pursue, the other to flee" (Erasmus, 1978, p. 686). The author thus intertwined civility, virtue, and friendship, and in this entanglement similarity was the line (of force) capable of sewing the elements of friendship and civility.
This similarity, however, did not have to be absolute, and there was an acceptable or even desirable degree of dissimilarity, even if circumstantial: "a friend whose agreement with us admits an occasional difference of opinion gives us more pleasure than a toady who never disagrees." The inflection point of absolute similarity was found in the problem of parrhesia and flattery, in which friendship and truth would touch each other in an exceptional way. In this context, there was the verification of friendship, discriminating between the friend (i.e., the one capable of speaking frankly) and the one whose attitude would always tend to flattery (Erasmus, 1978, p. 273).8 In D. Erasmus (1978; 1985), it was a profound mistake to act assuming that the friendship was based on farce rather than truth. In a word, since the parrhesiastic friend incarnates the truth, the distinction between parrhesia and flattery was indispensable.9
However, the friend's parrhesia did not only imply that the individual would not miss the truth. Freedom was another essential component of a friend's frank speech. In Parables (Erasmus, 1978, p. 145), one reads: "the flatterer imitates all the characteristics of a true friend, except the freedom with which he points out a mistake." The bond established by the flatterer was based on interest, consequently the fear of losing favour from the flattered took away his freedom to speak frankly. The flatterer prefers the security of the flattering lie to the risk entailed by the truth. Thus, (true) friendship was based on a freedom committed to truth and virtue. Again, in the way of classical Antiquity (Ortega, 2002), true friendship corresponds to a love that is disinterested or that does not have any interest outside the relationship itself, not the kind of love which aspires to any gain with the relationship or out of it.
The themes of parrhesia, flattery and similarity also interpenetrated Erasmian thought: "the flatterer is never moved by feelings of his own, but is angry when his friend is angry and smiles when his friend is pleased" (Erasmus, 1978, p. 146). The similarity of the flatterer was superficial and secondary, since it lacks freedom, thus amounting to no more than a mimicry subjugated to interest. "That man is foolish who, when he proposes to buy a horse, inspects not the horse itself but its trappings and harness; and he is a great fool who, when he is making a friend, judges him by his wealth or his wardrobe" (Erasmus, 1978, p. 210). Therefore, parrhesiastic freedom and courage are essential to true friendship, as well as deep and true similarity.
However, friendly frankness did not mean careless speaking of truth, for, "like medicine unseasonably taken, which hurts and does no good, is a reproof administered in the wrong way" (Erasmus, 1978, p. 147); a friend "will soften a reproach with kind words" (Erasmus, 1978, p. 149). Frankness, used properly, ultimately generated pleasure for friends, indicating to them, reciprocally, their virtues and their vices. In this way, friendship was inserted in the maintenance of a virtuous life and, therefore, linked to civility.
In view of the characteristics required of true friendship, this relation turned out to be scarce. Furthermore, excess of friendship became a problem: "A mind at the mercy of many friendships is like primal matter, ready to take on any form you please, having none of its own" (Erasmus, 1978, p. 193). Due to this rarity, true friendship had to be distinguished from false friendship, which abounded:
As you examine a coin to see if it is counterfeit before you need to spend it, so you should test a friend before you need him. Like those who bring heedless destruction on themselves by tasting in advance some deadly poison is he who makes a friend of some man he does not know, and learns that man's true nature to his own hurt (Erasmus, 1978, p. 143).
The necessary verification of friendship went beyond parrhesia, having other aspects. One of them, for example, was the observation of an individual's conduct in the face of a friend's misfortune: a true friend would help in a wiser and less interested way, and his only interest would be the good of his friend. Another possibility of testing would be on the occasion of the reunion of friends after a long interval of time, since "we form a more accurate judgment of friends when we see them again after an interval, and we are less good judges of our own selves, because we are never separated" (Erasmus, 1978, p. 198). There also was more strategic and more controlled ways of verifying friendship, so that the test did not depend on a fortuitous moment: "To test a jar we pour in water and not wine; and in the same way we should sometimes trust our friends with a secret of no importance, to test the value of their silence in such a way that we run no risk if they are leaky" (Erasmus, 1978, p. 157).
The test of friendship would not always be easy, especially because false friendship can mislead one using the pleasures it is able to provide. Nonetheless, these pleasures are based on vices, consequently they are momentary, and false; on the other hand, true friendship, despite its circumstantial unpleasantness, makes "the whole of life taste good" (Erasmus, 1978, p. 143). The verification of friendship, therefore, took place through the search for virtue, truth and reason that would underlie them.
The way in which D. Erasmus approached the theme of friendship was not vague, although he explored it in many ways: sometimes as a more generic relationship — including even the relationship with/between non-human animals —, sometimes as a more specific relationship between two people. In addition, the amicitia seemed to be a way for the Dutch philosopher to articulate themes from classical Antiquity with the Christian values of his time. Placed at this point of equilibrium, the Erasmian amicitia was able to go through the other human relationships: from the "caritas generis humani" (general charity for humanity), supported by piety, to society among civilized men, as a reflected choice (Eden, 2001), including also the bonds of marriage, which carry love to the maximum degree of inseparability and indefectibility (Furey, 2016). In addition to indicating a specific relationship, the Erasmian amicitia served as a reference for other relationships, operating as a touchstone of relationships between human beings. However, the question of how friendship, education and childhood are articulated in the work of D. Erasmus remains.
FRIENDSHIP, EDUCATION AND CHILDHOOD
To explore this question, we can begin from On Civility in Children (Erasmus, 1530). The first use of the term "amicus" (i.e., friend or friendly) in this text was made in the first chapter, where D. Erasmus (1530, p. 3-4) addressed issues of body decorum: "For a well-ordered child soul to shine fully, the eyes must be serene, modest and orderly […], it is important that they reflect a peaceful, respectfully friendly (amicum) soul." Although the word "amicum" could designate the subject "friend," in the above quotation its function as an adjective ("friendly") is evident, marking the civility of the child soul. Later, the word was used in the analysis the role of the eyes inside civility codes: "looking at someone, lowering the eyelids slightly, is a sign of politeness and friendliness (amicum)" (Erasmus, 1530, p. 4). Again, the term "amicum" forcibly points to the meaning "friendly," now in a substantivated way.10
The use of the term was quite exiguous in the subsequent chapters, and the absence of the friend figure in the fourth one, whose paragraphs dealt with the feasts, draws special attention since these moments of sociability had a lot of importance in Renaissance society (Elias, 1981), so the presence of the theme of friendship in them would not be out of place. Furthermore, in the sixth chapter, which addressed the conduct in plays and games, the author did not use the word "amicus" nor its derivations. This gap in term usage is quite curious, given that these were situations of patent proximity and conviviality between children; consequently, it would not be strange for friendship to take place or even be the object of problematization.
D. Erasmus (1530) evoked the word "friend" only in the fifth chapter, where he discussed conduct in meetings (congressus). In this section of the book, the author explored civility in encounters, both formal and customary, listing the friend among the titles of treatment that politeness would require in dealing with others:
If you miss the specific titles, all learned persons are [called] teachers, all clerics or monks, reverend priests; all equals (æquales), brothers and friends (amici); in short, all the unknown men, gentlemen, and women, ladies (Erasmus, 1530, p. 24).
Juxtaposed to "brother," the term "amicus" served the treatment to civility between equals, being separated from the sense of a subject for whom one has a particular feeling of love. This friendship veridiction linked to civility is further manifested in the last mention of "amicus" made in the treatise: "By following the principles I have described, one will receive praise without envy and win friends (amicos)" (Erasmus, 1530, p. 25). In summary, the internalization of civility would lead the individual to earn friends. The veridiction of Erasmian friendship, articulated by the question of civility, was not allocated to the field of feelings (irrational) or intimacy (private), where friendly love was placed from the 19th century onwards, according to F. Ortega (2002). On the contrary, Erasmus (1530) placed friendship in the realm of the public, of civil society, and not in the private sphere, as well as in the field of rational conduct, rather than in the "irrational" territory of feelings.
However, it is worth noting that, although this Erasmian friendship resulted from the education of civility in children, true friendship was not necessarily accessible to children. D. Erasmus (1530, p. 24) pointed out that, "coming out of the mouth of a child, an oath sounds clumsy, be it a joke or something serious." Furthermore, while the "civilized" were the incarnation of good, in Erasmian thought, the child's "uncivilized" state was not, a priori, an incarnation of evil, but a distinct stage of human educational development (Elias, 1981). Therefore, the child's turpitude would derive from their incomplete state of formation, in which civility was in a process of subjectivation. The child's incivility would not imply the presence of a vice, but a stage of morality in formation, so the child was incapable of certain practices, at least without doing them in a poor, incomplete, or improper way, requiring the direction of an (educated) adult. At this stage, the soul would gradually progress to maturity, in which vice could take place.
Although D. Erasmus (1530) did not explicitly state the impossibility of true friendship between children, the interdiction of this relationship as part of civility in children is deducible from this text, since, for being "uncivil," the child does not have the degree of morality and rationality required for such a friendship.
Apart from this treatise on civility in children, friendship appears in another educational text: A Declamation on the Subject of Early Liberal Education for Children (Erasmus, 1985). In this text, published in 1529, the figure of the friend was placed at the centre of a scathing critique:
There are also parents who are willing to exercise some judgment in their selection of a teacher for their children, but who nevertheless allow themselves to be influenced by the canvassing of their friends. So it happens that a teacher who is qualified to instruct the young is passed over, while an incompetent person is hired, for no other reason but that he bears the recommendation of a friend. […] If your horse is sick, would you hire a doctor solely on the basis of a friend's recommendation rather than on the basis of his medical skill? Is your son worth less to you than your horse? Or rather let me say, are you worth less to yourself than your horse? (Erasmus, 1985, p. 314).
A friend's recommendation, therefore, was not a valid or sufficient criterion in the choice of a child's teacher.11 The tutor's qualification came from his characteristics, his methods and his knowledge, which were validated by his moral aspects, and not by the friendship between the parents and the person who recommended him. Renaissance education, although it was nourished by Greco-Latin philosophy, in which friendship enjoyed a very high moral status, does not seem to have simply absorbed the values of classical Antiquity. Erasmian friendship, and perhaps Renaissance friendship as a whole (Marlow, 2003), does not seem to have inherited the egregious place that relationship had, especially in Ciceronian and Aristotelian thought, with regard to the good direction of the soul, the path to virtue and the search for the good (Konstan, 1997; Ortega, 2002).
Still in A Declamation (Erasmus, 1985), friendship appeared during the discussion of how a tutor should behave. The relationship between Cato the Younger, a Roman politician, and Sarpedon, his instructor, served as an example:
The instructor, I agree, must show restraint in his kindness; otherwise familiarity will breed contempt and destroy all shame and respect. He should be the type of instructor whom Cato the Younger is said to have enjoyed in Sarpedon. Through his kindness he won Cato's complete friendship (Erasmus, 1985, p. 333, emphasis added).
The proper balance between familiarity and kindness was at the heart of the discussion in which friendship appears. Then, the author explains the place of friendship and kindness: "thanks to his moral integrity, he won the boy's respect without any resort to threats of punishment" (Erasmus, 1985, p. 333-334). In this last quotation, the author did not focus on the theme of friendship, evoking this image in order to point out a necessary balance in the tutor's posture. On the one hand, there was the absence of violence, especially physical, as a pedagogical strategy, seeking that the tutor assume a kind or gentle posture in relation to the student. On the other hand, it marked the limit of this closeness or affection, at the risk of becoming "contempt" and lack of necessary decorum. Although, beyond this gloss on the limit of the relationship between tutor and apprentice, the author did not delve into friendship between young people or children, friendship was still affected, albeit in an underlying way, by the question of civility.
PERORATION: CIVIL FRIENDSHIP AND CHILDHOOD
The Erasmian conception of education had civility as a crucial element, so that the formation of the individual, regarding behaviour and the use of reason, allowed community life, in the form of a civil society (Erasmus, 1978; 1985; 1986). By scrutinizing how D. Erasmus explored the theme of friendship, it is possible to see that the amicitia was part of the more general humanist project of a society of rational individuals guided by civility. This Erasmian friendship, therefore, assimilated elements of the Greco-Latin tradition and associated them with Christian values, but without being restricted to the degree of impersonality present in the "amicitia christiana" (Ortega, 2002). From the same source, a true, rare, and particular friendship, as well as the amicitia that was at the base of the society idealized by humanists, would emanate; simultaneously, the sense of "familiaritas" and "caritas" was there. Nevertheless, the "concern for the few should not mean neglect of the many" (Lobis, 2010, p. 39), so that an abandonment of the impersonality of "Christian friendship" did not mean an abandonment of civil society and, consequently, of Renaissance civility. On the contrary, the constitution of a society based on civility binds the individual both to family, friendship, and parochial duties, as well as to those linked to broader levels of the collectively. In short, friendship — in which freedom, reason and virtue were articulated — was balanced between two extremes: a natural and generic love for humanity and an individualized, rare, and elective love (i.e., resulting from the free and rational action of the individual).
This kind of polysemic breadth of Erasmian thought in the scope of friendship was not dissonant from his time, since it was based on the "monodic soil of similarity" (Cardoso, 1987). This core of similarity made several terms in his grammar (e.g., "æqualis," "similitudo," "benevolentia," etc.) orbit or even inhabit friendship. In the words of Sérgio Cardoso (1987, p. 169, emphasis added):
Thus, the universe covered by the empire of friendship goes from the ties of blood (cognatio) and physical resemblance that unites the family to the great kinship between all men, the natural affinity that nourishes "philanthropia" — the Caritas generis humani of the Christian humanist — and welds the social bonds […]. It is from this natural sympathy towards man as man that friendship stands out in its narrowest sense.
Similarity, as a nodal point of the Renaissance veridiction, permeated the "Renaissance episteme" (Foucault, 1966). Friendship in D. Erasmus did not escape this basal element of Renaissance truth, being conceived as a relationship between equals. The articulation between friendship and similarity was able to encompass both very particular and rare relationships, as well as the conception of rules for a very general friendship, to which all affinity (human and often non-human) could be likened. In the end, any relationship that had some degree of similarity could be compared and valued in relation to true friendship.
Not only was friendship composed from similarity as a relationship between two equal subjects, but similarity was also part of the Erasmian desire to constitute a community life through amicitia as a generalizable relationship of friendliness linked to civility. In the field of veridiction, this emphasis given to the function of friendship within civility did not point to a less true friendship, because it is more generic, but indicated that the veridiction of this friend was inserted in the game of conduct and production of self-image of Renaissance civility. This Erasmian friendship, closely related to the subjectivation of a civility, could therefore be called "civilial friendship." It is worth noting that the term "civilial friendship" does not appear in the author's texts, being a creation of this article to particularize the conception of Erasmian friendship. Furthermore, with the neologism "civilial," it is intended to escape the ambiguity contained in the word "civilized." Therefore, "civilial" refers strictly to something that operates from the rationality of civility (civilitas), and not to that which is in a state of "civilization."
The themes and notions scrutinized earlier in this article aimed to delineate and delimit the terrain on which the friendship-education-childhood triangulation was based. Here, then, are some considerations on the issue of civil friendship and the child, within Erasmian thought.
Civilial friendship, although it allowed for varied forms and different scopes, did not encompass each and every individual. On the contrary, it had, in this sense, extremely strict limits, since it required a minimum degree of equality, freedom, rationality and morality. In a word, civilial friendship presupposed the true friend as a virtuous individual — i.e., an adult and well-educated man. This requirement of virtue, consequently, excluded the possibility of certain individuals to constitute something that was, at the time, taken as a true friendship. Among these excluded individuals was, therefore, the child.
Although, in the texts analysed, D. Erasmus did not make explicit that the child was incapable of friendship, the opposite assertion was not made by him either. The child's inability to truly constitute such a relationship, however, would be deducible in Erasmian philosophy, given that the child was conceived as an individual who did not yet carry what was essential for true friendship. Friendship was, it is worth emphasizing, founded on similarity and, as D. Erasmus (1978, p. 686) writes, "if such a likeness is rooted in the goods of the soul — the only true goods — that is, piety, justice, and temperance, then the resulting friendship is based on those qualities by which it was promoted, that is, it is honest, true, sincere, firm, and eternal." Taking this into account, how could the "roots of friendship" be established in the soul of an individual still in formation? How could friendship take place between children, if, in childhood, the individual did not have civility fully inculcated yet? When was the child not yet fully free, rational, and moral?
In addition to the logical impossibility, friendship and the child figure were separated in Erasmian thought, except for the moments when they were placed in parallel, as can be seen only once in the book Parables (Erasmus, 1978, p. 148):
When a child has fallen down, the nurse does not upbraid or punish it; she runs to it and picks it up, and upbraids it afterwards. Similarly a friend should be given aid and support in his affliction, and be upbraided and admonished after that, if the calamity that befell him was his own fault.
In the example, although the relationship with children and the relationship with friends may be reflected, to some extent, in each other, the lines of the figures (i.e., child and friend) do not touch each other properly. The game of similarity exists, but with a distanced specularity.
The similitude of the child, however, went against the question of incompleteness or appeared as a virtual similitude, to come, to be realized with the proper moral education (Erasmus, 1530). The distance between child and similarity was evidenced by the length from the infant to the idealized human being — civilized, adult and male — who inhabited Erasmian thought, as well as Renaissance thought as a whole. In the educational reflections and pedagogical projects of D. Erasmus (1978; 1985; 1986), the fundamentally rational character of human nature was evidenced and, unfolded from the relationship between reason and education — the important place that freedom occupied.
With regard to friendship, child incompleteness reverberates precisely in the point of reason and freedom, especially if one thinks about the rational use of freedom, which was lined with virtue, another component of true friendship. For D. Erasmus, reason was conceived as divine substance, that is, transcendent and prior to the being of the human. Consequently, virtue, education and civility had the effect of bringing the human being closer to God, to what perfection was (Erasmus, 1985; 1986). In the face of this kind of virtuality of the adult human, the child appeared as an incomplete human being and, therefore, the incarnation of the incompleteness of the incomplete. This redoubled incompleteness of childhood — in the face of reason, freedom, and virtue — consequently represented an impediment, at least temporary, to the child's access to true friendship.
In Erasmian pedagogy, even if children were given a privileged place, they were subjects marked by the stigma of incapacity. Nevertheless, although Erasmian education was a work of nourishment of what the human soul already contained (virtually), the pedagogical work, in the field of morality and civility, aimed to make the child cross this abyss of ignorance, which separated him or her from the status of being fully human. Education was an important factor so that the incompleteness of the child became the fullness of the adult. It was not enough, however, that the child grew up and became an adult to truly practice friendship. Only after the proper process of education (i.e., after inculcating civility, obtaining full use of reason, freedom and becoming a virtuous individual) and overcoming incompleteness could the individual be a true friend.
In short, the insurmountable distance between the subject-child and the subject-friend was that of the absence of the full use of reason, which was the distance of the learning path to virtue. Despite the parabolic and metaphorical association of the child with friendship, the present investigation indicates that, in its truth and fullness, friendship was irreconcilable with the child in Erasmian thought.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the presence of friendship with regard to childhood and children's education was marked by littleness and extraordinariness. Its appearance, dissolved in amicability as a conduct of generic civility, only indicated the flickering of the ideal or the exemplary character of friendship in the field of education. Therefore, it was not something fully practicable or desirable, as is the case with friendship as related to issues outside education that are addressed by Erasmus (1978; 1985; 1986). Grosso modo, the closer friendship came to child education, the more it moved away from the child itself. In this context, there also existed friendship as a metaphor, allegory, or utopian reference — desirable, but intangible until adulthood. Consequently, friendship did not make up the pedagogical problem of D. Erasmus. However, this certainly does not mean an end point in the present theme, but represents a reticence to the study of this problem, leaving several questions open. For example: would the child appear as being related to friendship in Erasmus’ writings that were not focused on education? Might this kind of ontological-moral impossibility of child friendship be considered a mark of Erasmian thought or of Renaissance as a whole? At what point did friendship and childhood become intertwined in the inseparable, indispensable, and irremediable way that contemporaneity testifies?
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
Funding:
Data availability statement:
Research data are available within the article.
References
- AYMARD, Maurice. Amizade e convivialidade. In: CHARTIER, Roger (org.). História da vida privada 3: da Renascença ao Século das Luzes. Tradução de Hildegar Feist. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2009. p. 439-481.
- CARDOSO, Sérgio. Paixão da igualdade, paixão da liberdade: a amizade em Montaigne. In: CARDOSO, Sérgio. Os sentidos da paixão São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1987. p. 159-194.
- CORSARO, William A. Friendship and peer culture in the early years. Norwood: Ablex Publishing Corporation, 1985.
- DONZELOT, Jacques. La policie des familles Paris: Minuit, 2005.
- EDEN, Kathy. Friends hold all things in common: tradition, intellectual property, and the adages of Erasmus. Londres: Yale University Press, 2001.
- ELIAS, Norbert. Über den Prozeß der Zivilisation: soziogenetische und psychogenetische Untersuchungen – bd. 1: Wandlungen des Verhaltens in den weltlichen Oberschichten des Abendlandes. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1981.
- ERASMUS, Desiderius. De civilitate morum puerilium Antuerpiæ: Michaelem Hillenium, 1530.
- ERASMUS, Desiderius. La civilité puérile Tradução de Alcide Bonneau. Paris: Isidore Liseux, 1877.
- ERASMUS, Desiderius. Collected works of Erasmus: literary and educational writings 1–2. Toronto: University of Toronto, 1978. v. 23 e 24.
- ERASMUS, Desiderius. Collected works of Erasmus: literary and educational writings 3–4. Toronto: University of Toronto, 1985. v. 25 e 26.
- ERASMUS, Desiderius. Collected works of Erasmus: literary and educational writings 5–6. Toronto: University of Toronto, 1986. v. 27 e 28.
- ERASMUS, Desiderius. Collected works of Erasmus: colloquies. Toronto: University of Toronto, 1997. v. 39 e 40.
- FOUCAULT, Michel. Les mots et les choses: une archéologie des sciences humaines. Paris: Gallimard, 1966.
- FOUCAULT, Michel. L’Archéologie du savoir Paris: Gallimard, 1969.
- FOUCAULT, Michel. Sécurité, territoire, population: cours au Collège de France (1977–1978). Paris: Gallimard, 2004.
- FOUCAULT, Michel. Le gouvernement de soi et des autres: cours au Collège de France (1982–1983). Paris: Gallimard; Seuil, 2008.
- FOUCAULT, Michel. Discours et verité; précédé de La parrêsia Paris: J. Vrin, 2016.
- FOUCAULT, Michel. Histoire de la sexualité 4: les aveux de la chair. Paris: Gallimard, 2018.
- FUREY, Constance M. Bound by likeness: Vives and Erasmus on marriage and friendship. In: LOCHMAN, Daniel T.; LÓPEZ, Maritere; HUSTON, Lorna (org.). Discourses and representations of friendship in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1700 Londres: Routledge, 2016. p. 29-43.
- JAEGER, Werner. Paideia: a formação do homem grego. Tradução de Artur M. Parreira. 6. ed. São Paulo: WMF Martins Fontes, 2013.
- KONSTAN, David. Friendship in the classical world Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1997.
- LOBIS, Seth. Erasmus and the natural history of friendship. Erasmus of Rotterdam Society Yearbook, v. 30, n. 1, p. 23-39, jan. 2010.
- LOCKE, John. The works of John Locke Londres: Thomas Tegg & Co., 1823. v. 9.
- MAGRITTE, René. La réproduction interdite [S.l.]: [s.n.], 1937. 1 original de arte, óleo sobre tela, 79 × 65,5 cm.
- MARLOW, Christopher. Friendship in Renaissance England. Literature Compass, v. 1, n. 1, p. 1-10, 2003.
- MCGREGOR, Brian. Introdutory note. In: ERASMUS, Desiderius. Collected works of Erasmus: Literary and educational writings 3–4. Toronto: University of Toronto, 1985. v. 25-26. p. 270-272.
- MIALARET, Gaston; VIAL, Jean. Histoire mondiale de l’éducation 2: De 1515 à 1815. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1981.
-
MONROE, Paul. A Cyclopedia of Education Nova York: MacMillan Company, 1919. v. 5. Disponível em: https://archive.org/details/cyclopediaofeduc05monr Acesso em: 10 nov. 2021.
» https://archive.org/details/cyclopediaofeduc05monr - ORTEGA, Francisco. Genealogias da amizade São Paulo: Iluminuras, 2002.
- PLATÃO. Œuvres complètes Paris: Flammarion, 2008.
- REVEL, Jacques. Os usos da civilidade. In: CHARTIER, Roger (org.). História da vida privada: da Renascença ao Século das Luzes. Tradução de Hildegard Feist. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2009. v. 3. p. 169-210.
- VIAL, Jean. Histoire de l’éducation 4. ed. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2013.
- VIGUERIE, Jean de. L'institution des enfants: l’éducation en France, XVIe-XVIIIe siècle. Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1978.
- WOODWARD, William H. Desiderius Erasmus concerning the aim and method of education Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2013.
