Other Selves: Philosophers on Friendship

Came on time. Good purchase

Love

I read this book in conjunction with a Shakespeare course of the tenets of friendship. The philosophers highlighted offer eccentric theories, some of which are applicable even today, and others which are a lot more farfetched. I personally enjoyed reading the selections from Aristole's, "Nicomachean Ethics" and Montaigne's "On Friendship."

Book was as described and delivered on time

This collection contains a spectacular array of short works and excerpts on the question of friendship all in one place. From reading this, it is easy to watch the progression of ideas in the Great Conversation, as each other responds and refines the ideas of the last. This text is invaluable to me for directing my students toward further reading on the topic of friendship after they finish reading Aristotle in class and still hunger for more answers.

I had to buy it for a class I had to take. That pretty much wraps up what I felt about the book.

This is a compact yet wide ranging selection of pieces on the subject of friendship. It begins with Plato’s short dialogue on friendship – Lysis – in the Lombardo translation, followed by sections from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics – Irwin translation, which lead directly to the equally influential Cicero’s De Amicitia. This group assign the subject to the field of Ethics, while others following, including Aquinas, to the idea of spiritual friendship, and then by way of Emerson to Elizabeth Telfer who I had not come across before. Each writer is given an introduction, so the whole collection – which does not pretend to be definitive in any way, can be seen as a dip into book, promoting personal reflection on the significance – personal and social, of something that many of us seem to take for granted far too often.