How do your relationships of love and friendship shape your life? Do they make you a better person? A better citizen? A better neighbor? This seminar examines the way love and friendship have been understood to define—or undermine—our pursuits of the good life.
How do your relationships of love and friendship shape your life? Do they make you a better person? A better citizen? A better neighbor? This seminar examines the way love and friendship have been understood to define or undermine our pursuits of the good life. We will consider the ways different descriptions of love in Western thought—as an ethical ideal, a rational response to value, an unruly force distracting us from the good, and so on—correspond to experiences of love in ordinary life and shape our understanding of how we feel. We will also consider what they reveal about the kinds of problems philosophy and religious thought aim to solve. Readings will include philosophers and theologians such as Plato, Montaigne, C. S. Lewis, Reinhold Niebuhr, Anne Carson, Adriana Cavarero, Martin Luther King, Jr., Harry Frankfurt, Alexander Nehamas, and Byung-Chul Han.
