This online synchronous 10-week class is focused on a topic that many people have found important, and worth devoting thought to, from ancient times down to the present: Friendship. There are a number of puzzles, confusions, problems, and issues that arise concerning friendship. Ancient philosophers were far from the only people who thought that understanding and having friendships was valuable, and there developed a vast literature that engages with friendship in one manner or another.

In this class, we will be focusing on philosophical accounts, analyses, and arguments that bear upon friendship and on other interconnected topics. Thinking about friendship inevitably bleeds over into other related matters, which range from the nature of human beings, to how we ought to live our lives, to obligations we have towards other people, and many other topics and fields of study. Friendship is also connected with the human emotions, particularly those of care, desire, and love.

This class will introduce you to some of these important matters. It will also lead you into a number of well-thought-out viewpoints on the nature, value, and even types of friendships. These perspectives derive from the existing works of philosophers in ancient Mediterranean (sometimes called "Greco-Roman") culture, in which great minds make sense of their own experiences, work through puzzles and problems, reflect upon our social, affective, and rational nature, oriented by the need to understand this common reality of friendship.

We will be studying a number of classic texts by ancient philosophers in this class. The reading selections have been chosen with several goals in mind. One of these goals is to focus upon what have come to be viewed as absolutely central texts in the philosophy of friendship, such as books 8-9 of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Cicero's On Friendship.

Another important goal is to broaden the range of the issues and matters that we consider as we attempt to understand the nature and norms of friendship. What do we owe to friends, and how should we view the opposite of friends, i.e. enemies? How can we tell a genuine friend from a fake friend or a flatterer? How should we deal with changes in the relationship as the friends involved with each other change? These and many other topics are raised and examined in the works we will be reading.

A third goal in selecting the texts was to provide a good range of approaches drawn from the schools of ancient Western philosophy. The Platonic tradition is represented not only by Plato himself, but also by the middle Platonist Plutarch. The Aristotelian, Epicurean, and Stoic schools are also well represented in this class. We will also be engaging with more eclectic thinkers as well, who draw upon multiple approaches, like Cicero, Dio Chrysostom, and Lucian.

One interesting feature of the texts and authors we are engaging with is that they not only approach many of the same issues and questions, but that they also sometimes critically engage with each other as well.

The schedule for study of our texts, authors, and schools is primarily a chronological one. We begin with Plato, then Aristotle, then Epicurus and his followers. The study proceeds from the 4th century BCE to roughly the 2nd century CE (Epictetus', Plutarch's, and Dio Chrysostom's flourishing as philosophers roughly overlap). Philosophical discussion about friendship does not, of course, end there, but that does provide a useful cut-off point for our class.

My hope for this class is that every student enrolled will deepen their own understanding of this complicated matter of friendship through study of and reflection upon the ideas from the texts, in our class lectures and discussions, and through experimenting with applying what they have learned to their own lives, experiences, and relationships.

I look forward to spending a great ten weeks with all of you, centered around our study together of these classical treatments of a very important matter in our lives!