A Ferment of Existence: On the Spectacle of Friendship is an extended meditation on the nature of friendship. Through short essays, aphorisms, and scholarly contestations, I argue that friendship provides vital goods including {1} companionship, which is a primary need of social animals; {2} concrete, believable recognition, which helps secure a sense of self and the action orientations that such a sense underwrites; {3} support in the form of reassurance, material care, and exhortation, which dependent social beings require; and {4} provocation, which spurs personal growth. I further argue that friendship exposes dynamics essential to ethical life and provides a mature model of a goodwill that is preferable to models derived from a sense of duty to juridical orders. While friendship has far less political value than many have suggested, however, it remains essential to human well-being and moral growth.