Friendship (philia) is a complex and multi-faceted concept that is frequently attested in ancient Greek literature and thought. It is also an important social phenomenon and an institution that features in classical Greek social, cultural, and intellectual history. This collected volume seeks to complement the extensive modern scholarship on this topic by shedding light on complementary representations, nuances and tensions of friendship in a range of different sources, literary, epigraphic, and visual. It offers a broad overview of the contours of this important social phenomenon and helps the reader get a glimpse of its depth and richness.

This edited volume seeks to examine the complex and multi-faceted concept and social phenomenon of friendship by shedding light on the way it is represented in a range of ancient Greek literary, historical, and philosophical sources.

An examination of the nature of friendship in Greece and Rome from Homer to the Christian Roman Empire of fourth century AD.

Focusing on Plato and Aristotle, the Stoics and Epicureans, and early Christian and Medieval sources, Ancient and Medieval Concepts of Friendship brings together assessments of different philosophical accounts of friendship. This volume sketches the evolution of the concept from ancient ideals of friendship applying strictly to relationships between men of high social position to Christian concepts that treat friendship as applicable to all but are concerned chiefly with the soul's relation to God—and that ascribe a secondary status to human relationships. The book concludes with two essays examining how this complex heritage was received during the Enlightenment, looking in particular to Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Hölderlin.

McCoy examines how Greek epic, tragedy, and philosophy offer important insights into the nature of human vulnerability, especially how Greek thought extols the recognition and proper acceptance of vulnerability. Beginning with the literary works of Homer and Sophocles, she also expands her analysis to the philosophical works of Plato and Aristotle.

In this book Lars Hermanson discusses how religious beliefs and norms steered attitudes to friendship and love, and how these ways of thinking also affected people’s social identity and political action behaviour in medieval Northern Europe, c. 1000-1200.

This book fully explores for the first time an idea common to Plato and Aristotle, which unites their treatments - otherwise very different - of love and friendship. The idea is that although persons are separate, their lives need not be. One person's life may overflow into another's, and as such, helping another person is a way of serving oneself. The author shows how their view of love and friendship, within not only personal relationships, but also the household and even the city-state, promises to resolve the old dichotomy between egoism and altruism. - ;Friendship and desire in the Lysis; Love in the Symposium; Love in the Phaedrus; Perfect friendship in Aristotle; Aristotle on the varieties of friendship; The household; The City; Epilogue; Appendices; Homogeneity and beauty in the Symposium; Psychoanalysis looks at the Phaedrus ; Plato's sexual morality; Aristotle on erotic love; List of modern works cited. -