Friendship

There are three ways of approaching a philosophical study of friendâ ship which would be of value: an historical survey of the occurrence of the notion in philosophical thinking; a scholarly interpretation of the neglected writings on friendship, in particular Aristotleâs treatment of the subject; and a direct attempt to provide a theory of friendship as a peculiarly neglected moral phenomenon. In this thesis I shall concentrate on the latter two tasks, though necessarily in an incomplete way. A full treatment of any one of these project would involve work and space beyond the scope of such a thesis. Thus the bulk of what follows consists of a study of Plato's Lysis, Aristotle's discussion in Books VIII and IX of the Nicomachean Ethics, and direct treatment of the theory of friendship and its relation to moral philosophy. Taken from Introduction; continued in thesis ...