Mark Vernon links the resources of the philosophical tradition with numerous illustrations from modern culture to ask what friendship is and how it relates to sex, work, politics and spirituality. Unusually, he argues that Plato and Nietzsche, as much as Aristotle and Aelred, should be put center stage. Their penetrating and occasionally tough insights are invaluable if friendship is to be a full, not merely sentimental, way of life for today.

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. (shrink)

This book offers a comprehensive account of the major philosophical works on friendship and its relationship to self-love. The book gives central place to Aristotle's searching examination of friendship in the Nicomachean Ethics. Lorraine Pangle argues that the difficulties surrounding this discussion are soon dispelled once one understands the purpose of the Ethics as both a source of practical guidance for life and a profound, theoretical investigation into human nature. The book also provides fresh interpretations of works on (...) friendship by Plato, Cicero, Epicurus, Seneca, Montaigne and Bacon. The author shows how each of these thinkers sheds light on central questions of moral philosophy: is human sociability rooted in neediness or strength? is the best life chiefly solitary, or dedicated to a community with others? Clearly structured and engagingly written, this book will appeal to a broad swathe of readers across philosophy, classics and political science. (shrink)

Presents the major issues in Aristotle's writings on Friendship.

A superb compilation that explores the history, major topics, and controversies in philosophical work on friendship. It gives an overview and in-depth exploration of the connections between friendship and the history of philosophy, morality, practical rationality, value theory, and interpersonal relationships more generally.

A rich exploration of the idea of friendship and its political consequences, past and future, by the most influential of contemporary philosophers. Until relatively recently, Jacques Derrida was seen by many as nothing more than the high priest of Deconstruction, by turns stimulating and fascinating, yet always somewhat disengaged from the central political questions of our time. Or so it seemed. Derrida's "political turn," marked especially by the appearance of Specters of Marx, has surprised some and delighted others. In (...) The Politics of Friendship Derrida renews and enriches this orientation through an examination of the political history of the idea of friendship pursued down the ages. Derrida's thoughts are haunted throughout the book by the strange and provocative address attributed to Aristotle, "my friends, there is no friend" and its inversions by later philosophers such as Montaigne, Kant, Nietzsche, Schmitt and Blanchot. The exploration allows Derrida to recall and restage the ways in which all the oppositional couples of Western philosophy and political thought—friendship and enmity, private and public life—have become madly and dangerously unstable. At the same time he dissects genealogy itself, the familiar and male-centered notion of fraternity and the virile virtue whose authority has gone unquestioned in our culture of friendship and our models of democracy The future of the political, for Derrida, becomes the future of friends, the invention of a radically new friendship, of a deeper and more inclusive democracy. This remarkable book, his most profoundly important for many years, offers a challenging and inspiring vision of that future. (shrink)

Pangle’s thesis is that Aristotle’s account of friendship in Nicomachean Ethics 8 and 9 addresses multiple audiences. For his ostensible audience, statesmen and other men of action, Aristotle paints an enticing picture of friendship that is based on moral virtue and issues in acts of benevolence. However, he embeds within this analysis subtle “tensions” designed to signal to thoughtful readers the limits of moral virtue and so to provoke them to pursue a philosophical life as well as to (...) provide them the material for philosophical contemplation. Pangle thinks that this second group, potential philosophers, is Aristotle’s principal audience, even if unannounced. (shrink)

For Strasbourg consists of a series of essays and interviews about the city of Strasbourg and the philosophical friendships Jacques Derrida developed there over a period of some forty years. Written just months before his death, the opening essay, “The Place Name: Strasbourg,” recounts in detail, and in very moving terms, Derrida’s deep attachment to this French city on the border between France and Germany. More than just a personal narrative, however, the essay is a profound interrogation of the relationship (...) between philosophy and place, philosophy and language, and philosophy and friendship. As such, it raises a series of philosophical, political, and ethical questions that might all be placed under the aegis of what Derrida once called “philosophical nationalities and nationalism.” The other three texts included in the book are long interviews/conversations between Derrida and his two principal interlocutors in Strasbourg, Jean-Luc Nancy and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe. These interviews are significant both for the themes they focus on and for what they reveal about Derrida’s relationships to Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe. Filled with sharp insights into one anothers’ work and peppered with personal anecdotes and humor, the interviews bear witness to the decades-long intellectual friendships of these three important contemporary thinkers. This collection thus stands as a reminder of and testimony to Derrida’s unique relationship to Strasbourg and to the two thinkers most closely associated with that city. (shrink)

A philosophical exploration of the meaning and significance of friendship.This book explains the persistence of friendship today in the light of the history of philosophical approaches to the subject. It considers ideals of intimacy and fusion in the context of claims that such ideals are unrealistic and even dangerous. Cicero's scepticism about friendship in the public realm is compared with the Aristotelian view of friendship as a genuine political bond, and with Derrida's development of that view (...) via an exploration of Aristotle's alleged and provocative announcement 'O my friends, there is no friend'. Tensions between love and respect, identity and difference, a focus on the self and a focus on the other are closely examined.From Aristotle to contemporary theorists, the book explores the conditions that enable the development of self-understanding in friendship, the delicate and unstable pairing of concepts like inclination and duty and distinctions between self-love, self esteem and self-concern in relations between friends.Key Features* Recognition of the variety of the term 'friend' in the history of philosophy* The treatment of the tension between identity and difference in relations between friends* Discussion of the contribution of friendship to self-understanding. (shrink)

Surveys the ideals of friendship in ancient Greco-Roman philosophy. The notion of the best friendship inevitably reflects the various conceptions of a good life.

NEITHER in the scholarly nor in the philosophical literature on Aristotle does his account of friendship occupy a very prominent place. I suppose this is partly, though certainly not wholly, to be explained by the fact that the modern ethical theories with which Aristotle’s might demand comparison hardly make room for the discussion of any parallel phenomenon. Whatever else friendship is, it is, at least typically, a personal relationship freely, even spontaneously, entered into, and ethics, as modern theorists (...) tend to conceive it, deals rather with the ways in which people are required to regard, and behave toward, one another, than with the organization of their private affairs. To the extent, then, that one shares this modern outlook one will tend to neglect, or treat merely as an historical curiosity, Aristotle’s efforts to define friendship and to place it within the framework of human eudaimonia, the theory of which is central to moral philosophy as he understands it. Yet in the Nicomachean Ethics the two books on φιλία make up nearly a fifth of the whole, and this seems to me a fair measure of the importance of this subject to the complete understanding both of Aristotle’s overall moral theory and even of many of the more circumscribed topics to which so much scholarly and philosophical attention has been devoted. If, as I suggest, the failure of commentators to appreciate its importance is partly the effect of distortions produced by the moral outlook that has predominated in modern moral philosophy, the careful study of these books may help to free us from constricting prejudices and perhaps even make it possible to discover in Aristotle a plausible and suggestive alternative to the theories constructed on the narrower base characteristic of recent times. (shrink)

The purpose of the paper is to investigate into the ethical significance of friendship, beginning with its origins in ancient Greek philosophy. The first part is dedicated to an interpretation of Plato’s understanding of friendship as a way towards the good. The second part focuses on how Aristotle takes up the thread after Plato and elaborates on the potential of friendship to enhance the good between virtuous people. In the final parts, the paper uncovers Friedrich Nietzsche’s (...) posthumous thoughts on “an ethics of friendship”, which he traces back to ancient Greek philosophy, and it offers a concluding critical commentary on three modern thinkers, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hannah Arendt and Alasdair MacIntyre, who reflect, each in their own way, on the human good in an on-going dialogue with the ancient Greek philosophy of friendship. (shrink)

This collection joins together sixty essays on the philosophy of love and sex. Each was presented at a meeting of The Society for the Philosophy of Sex and Love held between 1977 and 1992 and later revised for this edition. Topics addressed include ethical and political issues (AIDS, abortion, homosexual rights, and pornography), conceptual matters (the nature, essence, or definition of love, friendship, sexual desire, and perversion); the study of classical and historical figures (Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, Kant, (...) and Kierkegaard); and issues in feminist theory (sexual objectification, the social construction of female sexuality, reproductive and marital arrangements). Authors include Jerome Shaffer, Sandra Harding, Michael Ruse, Richard Mohr, Russell Vannoy, Claudia Card, M.C. Dillon, Gene Fendt, Steven Emmanuel, T.F. Morris, Timo Airaksinen, and Sylvia Walsh. The editor, who is the author of Pornography (1986), The Structure of Love (1990), and Sexual Investigations (1996), has also contributed six pieces and an Introduction. (shrink)

Until relatively recently, Jacques Derrida was seen by many as nothing more than the high priest of Deconstruction, by turns stimulating and fascinating, yet always somewhat disengaged from the central political questions of our time. Or so it seemed. Derrida's "political turn," marked especially by the appearance of Specters of Marx, has surprised some and delighted others. In The Politics of Friendship Derrida renews and enriches this orientation through an examination of the political history of the idea of (...) class='Hi'>friendship pursued down the ages. Derrida's thoughts are haunted throughout the book by the strange and provocative address attributed to Aristotle, "my friends, there is no friend" and its inversions by later philosophers such as Montaigne, Kant, Nietzsche, Schmitt and Blanchot. The exploration allows Derrida to recall and restage the ways in which all the oppositional couples of Western philosophy and political thought--friendship and enmity, private and public life--have become madly and dangerously unstable. At the same time he dissects genealogy itself, the familiar and male-centered notion of fraternity and the virile virtue whose authority has gone unquestioned in our culture of friendship and our models of democracy. The future of the political, for Derrida, becomes the future of friends, the invention of a radically new friendship, of a deeper and more inclusive democracy. This remarkable book, his most profoundly important for many years, offers a challenging and inspiring vision of that future. (shrink)

IN THIS ESSAY, WE WILL USE ARISTOTLE to bring out some important features of friendship and of moral action in general; we will show that friendship is the highest kind of moral excellence. We will then make use of phenomenology to determine the kinds of intelligence that provide the substance of both moral conduct and friendship. Moral action and friendship are defined by special kinds of rational form, and it will be our goal to describe these (...) forms. (shrink)

Recorded in Ithaca, NY by Cornell University., Sponsored by: Andrew D. White Professors-At-Large Program., Speaker: Professor of the History of Philosophy, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large., Lecture, October 3, 1988.

Taking as the background the discourses on friendship initiated by ancient Confucian and Greek philosophers, this article is focused on Xunzi’s perspective on friends by examining where and how he engages effectively ethical justifications of friendship. It will be argued that although Xunzi shows a kind of consistency with Confucius and Mencius, he comes to justify friendship through his own deliberations on human nature, on learning and education, and on the nature and function of human community. We (...) will then proceed to examine the three perspectives Xunzi takes to highlight the ethical value of friends: friendship can be justified as it is needed in overcoming the inborn tendencies towards competition and strife; friendship can be justified because it is taken as supplementary to learning and education where friends are made equivalent to teachers in terms of moral influence and exemplary models; friendship can be justified because it is necessary for communities to function well and for individuals to lead a good life. We will finally come to the conclusion that these justifications constitute a unique ethics of friendship, which is not only significantly divergent from Greek propositions on friends but also differentiable, one way or another, from those proposed or presumed by Confucius and Mencius, and that the Xunzian philosophy of friendship is still an invaluable resource for us to draw on in the age of globalisation and de-globalisation. (shrink)

The majority of theologians, philosophers, and religious leaders have, during the past five decades, either argued or taken it for granted that the primary aim of interreligious dialogue is mutual understanding and that the purpose of realizing this aim is mitigation of alienation, hatred, and violence between the religions and cooperation on worthwhile projects. On the contrary, the author of this paper argues that the primary aim of interreligious dialogue should be to create a bond of friendship between the (...) various religions of the world. In his attempt to establish the validity of this proposition, the author, first, advances a concept of "collective subject" as a condition for the possibility of friendship primarily because friendship is viewed as a relation between two human subjects; second, he introduces a general concept of friendship whose main elements are good will, mutual affection, and social service; and, third, he argues that religions can, qua collective subjects, establish a bond of friendship between them. (shrink)

One WHY LOVERS CAN'T BE FRIENDS James Conlon That one's spouse is also one's closest friend is a common claim and seems innocent enough. ...

25 years after the publication of Derrida’s Politics of Friendship (Politiques de l’amitié, 1994), this edited collection gathers 23 critical chapters that revisit this underappreciated text. Engaging closely with Derrida’s text, the contributors analyse, extend and critique the work. They reconsider the place this book occupies in Derrida’s political philosophy and its potential for contemporary politics, when the promises and perils of political friendship have reappeared.

What is common to all instances of friendship? Given their seemingly heterogeneous character, Phelan (2019. “Rethinking Friendship.” Inquiry) suggests that friendships are relationships that result from collaborative norm-manipulation. In this paper, I suggest that this proposal fails to account for all friendships without relying on the notion of some kind of care.

B a c k g r o u nd. The article critically examines the concept of peace in the context of the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance. This study delves into the historical, diplomatic, and philosophical dimensions of the Treaty between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China in the mid-twentieth century. M e t h o d s. The study is based on a systematic analysis of the original documents of the Sino-Soviet Treaty (...) and other primary sources that record the context and content of the agreement. The article uses a comprehensive analysis of primary sources, diplomatic correspondence, political discourse, and philosophical narrative to illuminate various interpretations and implementations of the treaty's peace provisions. Analyzing the philosophical basis of the agreement, it is taken into account how the ideas and concepts of friendship, union and mutual assistance were interpreted in the philosophical context of both countries. The article uses methods of comparative analysis to establish common and distinctive features between the ideology of the Sino-Soviet Treaty. Re s u l t s. The study provides valuable information about the geopolitical dynamics of the 20th century, shedding light on how the two major communist powers managed their diplomatic relations. By examining the ideological underpinnings and practical implications of the Treaty's peace-oriented provisions, the article contributes to understanding the broader landscape of international relations in this dynamic period. C o n c l u s i o n s. The study provides important information about the geopolitical dynamics of the 20th century, revealing how the two leading communist states managed their diplomatic relations. The article also considers the prospects for the development of dynamics between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, examining the difficulties and problems that arose in maintaining peaceful relations between powerful states with common political ideologies based on the principles of Marxism. Analyzing the ideological foundation and practical consequences of the peacekeeping principles in the treaty, the article contributes to a better understanding of the broad context of international relations and philosophical narrative. (shrink)

In this paper I investigate Socrates as a friend in Plato's 'Phaedo'. I begin by setting out his friends' request for reassurance of how they will fare after Socrates dies. I argue that by structuring the discussion as he does, Socrates provides one final opportunity for his friends to prepare themselves for life without him, thus offering them the best kind of reassurance they could ask for.

Is friendship a more important value than honesty?

In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle offers a solution to the problem of motivating morality based on his distinction between three types of friendship. I consider Aristotle's argument in detail, placing it in a context of similar concerns about the question of why we ought to be moral that ranges from Socrates' discussion of the ring of Gyges in Plato's Republic to Wittgenstein's distinction between internal and external rewards and punishments for action in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Contrary to J.O. Urmson's conclusion that (...) Aristotle's discussion of the highest form of friendship is an editorial insertion in Book VIII of the Ethics, I attempt to show, by filling in the necessary steps in Aristotle's inference, that the treatment of friendship is an integral part of what Aristotle considers a complete moral philosophy. According to the interpretation that I propose, Aristotle's account of being worthy of the highest form of friendship is indispensable to his explanation of an internally rewarding reason for being moral. (shrink)

When considering the value of friendship, most philosophers ignore the negatives. Most assume that humans need friends to flourish, and some argue that friendships can be good, no matter the risks entailed. This makes conversations about the value of friendship one-sided. Here, I argue that Cynics and Pessimists have an important view on friendship, despite it being ignored. They hold that: (a) friendship is unnecessary for flourishing, and (b) friendship presents ethical risks, especially to one’s (...) own self-sufficiency. I defend these views. Then I conclude with reflections on why Cynics and Pessimists actually make great friends. By helping people to focus on vulgar human nature and the flaws that humans have, they create an unpretentious basis for friendship. (shrink)

_Charts the stages of the history of friendship as a philosophical concept in the Western world._.

What makes a friendship a good friendship? One way of answering that question, taken by Aristotle and many philosophers since, is to describe an ideal friendship, and then say that a friendship is a good friendship insofar as it resembles the ideal. An ideal of friendship, so presented, is intended to capture the qualities that all good friendships share, regardless of who the friends are and regardless of their circumstances. This approach to good (...) class='Hi'>friendship, I argue, fails to capture the variety of good kinds of friendship and the role of friendship in real human lives. I propose an alternative approach, on which a good friendship is one that improves the lives of the friends by bringing to those lives some of the many disparate values especially associated with friendship. On this view, there are many forms of good friendship, often mutually incompatible; no single kind of friendship is a model for all others; and the point of friendship is to improve the lives of humans as they are, with all their distinguishing weaknesses, limitations, and needs. (shrink)