Friendship: Philosophical Explorations

Friendship has been a central topic for philosophical reflection ever since philosophy itself was born in the circle of friends who gathered around Socrates to follow his probing examinations of how we should live.

In this outstanding collection, which takes its lead from the work of Alexander Nehamas, a distinguished roster of contributors examines the many dimensions of the philosophy of friendship. They broaden the discussion beyond common questions about friendship obligations and their relation to the claims of morality to explore a much wider set of issues, including:

• friendship in the context of Plato, Aristotle, Montaigne, Kant, Goethe, William James, and Nietzsche
• the darker side of friendship and “frenemies”
• friendship in literature and film, including André Aciman’s Call Me by Your Name and Andrey Zvyagintsev’s The Return
• dogs and friendship
• friendship and aesthetic judgment
• Nehamas’s own distinctive analogy between the value of friendship and the value of beauty.

Friendship: Philosophical Explorations will be of interest to those in philosophy studying and researching ethics and aesthetics, as well as students and scholars in related disciplines such as literature and film.