When we enter into this decision with other people, both parties inevitably bring different sets of values to the table. Can you still be someone’s friend if they highlight your faults? Do you have to love every part of someone? At what point do you dismiss someone for their faults - when they “practice them on me,” as Brutus says? In fact, he says, someone who ignores faults is a flatterer, not a true friend.Ĭassius and Brutus deal with the problem of taking sides. They are there, but they aren’t a problem. He acknowledges that as long as he doesn’t bear the negative outcome of one of these faults, there is no harm done if he doesn’t ignore them. It is an all or nothing game to him.īrutus, however, seems better able to separate what he loves about Cassius and what he does not.
Because he makes his faults seem worse than they are, Brutus must not love Cassius. Cassius thinks a friend should “bear his friend’s infirmities” - given that he later insists that a friend “could never see such faults,” it probably makes sense to assume that he means, rather than “put up with,” something more like paper over or even ignore rather than highlight and “make greater” as Cassius insists Brutus does. The two men seem to have different definitions of friendship. How Our Moral Views Shape Our Judgment of Characters in Julius Caesar by Jennifer Giarrusso Introductionĭazed by a rebuke from someone he considers a dear friend, Cassius has this exchange with Brutus on the battlefield in Act IV of Julius Caesar:Ī friend should bear his friend’s infirmities,īut Brutus makes mine greater than they are.īrutus: I do not, till you practice them on me.Ĭassius: A friendly eye could never see such faults.īrutus: A flatterer’s would not, though they do appearīrutus and Cassius struggle here, in a way that all of us do daily as we decide who to count among our friends, who to trust and when we may have to disengage from a relationship because we can no longer do that.
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