A Philosopher Looks at Friendship

Préface
Philosophers often treat friendship as something systematic and earnest. For Chappell it is neither, yet still central to human experience.

Auteur
Sophie Grace Chappell is Professor of Philosophy at The Open University. Her philosophy books include Ethics and Experience, Knowing What to Do, Epiphanies, and Trans Figured. She is also a published poet (Songs For Winter Rain, 2021).

Résumé
What is it to be a friend? What does the role of friend involve, and why? How do the obligations and prerogatives associated with that role follow on from it, and how might they mesh, or clash, with our other duties and privileges? Philosophy often treats friendship as something systematic, serious, and earnest, and much philosophical thought has gone into how 'friendship' can formally be defined. How indeed can friendship be good for us if it doesn't fit into a philosopher's neat, systematising theory of the good? For Sophie Grace Chappell, friendship is neither systematic nor earnest, yet is certainly one of the greatest goods of life. Drawing on well-known examples from popular culture, and examining these alongside recent philosophical, political, social, and theological debates, Chappell demystifies and redefines friendship as a highly untidy and many-sided good, and certainly also as one of the most central goods of human experience.

Contenu
Contents; Acknowledgements; Prelude: eighteen aphorisms; 1. Three friendships, and lots of questions; 2. Philosophers of friendship: an apology; 3. Why I don't start with a formal definition of friendship; 4. Examples of friendship; 5. Beginning the natural history of friendship; 6. Deepening the natural history of friendship; 7. Being with others; 8. Lewis's Four Loves-and Nygren's two; 9. Aristotle's three kinds of Philia-and Aristotle's will; 10. Friendship, love, and second-personality; 11. Friendship as an unemphatic good; 12. Bertrand Russell and his over-emphatic 'German' friend; 13. Sensitivity to tacit knowledge; 14. Innocence; 15. Moralism; 16. Roles and spontaneity; 17. The benefits of friendship; 18. Eighteen quick questions and eighteen quick answers; Notes; References; Index.