Books

Elaine Coburn dips into different understandings of friendship while John B. Min ponders temporarily stepping away from people for the sake of political understanding.

- Ed. Diane Jeske

The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Friendship Ed. Diane Jeske

WHAT ARE THE DUTIES OF friendship? Can romantic partners be friends? Is it useful to think about political life as animated by civic friendship? How should we understand friendships on social media? Is the love we feel for our friends explicable? Or is each friendship so unique that it is impossible to communicate our love of our friends to others? In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Friendship (2022), Diane Jeske brings together thirty-one short chapters that take up these questions, and more, emphasizing that friendship is worth investigating because it is “one of life’s greatest joys” (p.8). Among many other things, contributors consider the role of self-interest in friendships, whether or not inequalities make friendships impossible, and morally justifiable reasons for ending friendships.

Understanding Friendship

We begin at the beginning of the philosophical discussion of friendship, learning about the meanings of male friendships in Plato’s Symposium, including eroticized male friendships. For Plato, friendship among men is supposed to beget “wisdom and the rest of virtue” (p.28) – in contrast with heterosexual relationships, which (merely) beget children. In the Platonic ideal, as CDC Reeves observes, the older male lover must help the younger beloved to become more virtuous, persuading him to philosophical truths.