ABSTRACT
Friendship is the cause of all good, tranquillity, and felicity. From its early introduction in France by Symphorien Champier to the Neoplatonic inflections in Michel de Montaigne to efforts by humanists to assimilate Plato's dialogues Lysis and The Symposium into the canon, friendship opened unsettling ambiguities in Renaissance France. Because humanism and politics were closely linked, these ambiguities shaped not just the reception of Plato, but also royal policy and court strategy. Ambiguity around the implications of male-male friendship did not create the violence and disruption that eventually led to Henri III's assassination, but the politically fraught environment could not sustain Marsilio Ficino's buoyant optimism. Plato proffered a more exteriorized, social ethics of friendship that could speak to political circumstances and social structures, as exemplified in construction and content of early dialogue, Lysis. Moreover, Montaigne and the other Platonic interlocutors contributed to the archive of uneasy ideas about friendship, public context of which took on significant political implications.
