Abstract

This dissertation explores fundamental ethical questions through an examination of the key classical discussions of friendship: Plato's Lysis, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Cicero's Laelius, and Montaigne's and Bacon's essays on friendship. ;Should and can people act selflessly for one another's good? Is our concern for friendship and love rooted in neediness or in strength? Is it possible to love another simply for his own sake, or only because of the benefits that we seek for ourselves? Are the best friendships found between the best individuals, or does the need for friendship wane with increased strength of soul and understanding? ;The author argues that, according to the Lysis, friendship is rooted chiefly in need but also involves a non-utilitarian sympathy for those who are akin. ;Analyzing Aristotle's treatment of the three kinds of friendship in the Ethics, she finds pleasure and utility to be major ingredients in the highest "friendship of virtue," and the affinity of kindred spirits to be a major, neglected theme. Aristotle's exposition of the relationship between friendship and justice reveals the pervasiveness of individuals' concerns with their own good, and the moral confusions that characterize most friendships and that come to light when friends quarrel. Aristotle's comparison between friendship in the various regimes and in the family shows both the injustice of the traditional family and its true source of strength. Love of "being" or of one's own life animates benefactors' love of their beneficiaries and friends' desire to lose themselves in one another's concerns. The theme of friendship is for Aristotle a transition to the philosophic life, in which friendship wanes in importance but does not disappear. Although we are not free to choose anything other than what appears to us to be best, we can include the good of others as a subordinate part of the good that reason seeks. ;The author also provides a critical analysis of Montaigne's claim that friendship is the greatest good in life, and an exposition of Cicero's sympathetic but critical portrayal of a great political friendship and of the deficiencies of both Epicurean and Stoic ideals of self-sufficiency