In a little over two weeks (starting July 2), I’ll be once again teaching an online 12-week class I’m very much looking forward to, “Ancient Philosophers On Friendship”. Earlier today, I held a livestreaming event discussing the class in general, then going into a number of specifics about the class, and answering a few questions about what the thinkers we’ll be studying have to say about some tricky matters concerning friendship and other relationships.
The thinkers and texts we’ll be studying in this course have featured not only in the two previous sections of this class I’ve taught, but also in a number of my other classes. I incorporated quite a few of them into my Ethics and Intro to Philosophy classes going back decades, and recently taught a course themed specifically on Love, Friendship, and Desire at Marquette University last fall.
Students often express pleasant surprise over several matters when they study these treatments of friendship, love, and other relationships. One of these is just how much ancient thinkers had to say about these matters, something that often gets passed over when we focus on them with other themes in mind. The other sort of piggybacks off of this first one. Not only do ancient thinkers view friendship as an important topic, and devote a lot of deep discussion to it, much of what they have to say turns out to be very applicable to our present-day situations, problems, and issues.
I spent a good bit of time in the livestream discussing who we would be studying, which texts of theirs we would be looking at, what topics are being examined by them in those works, and why they are particularly interesting or important. If you’d like to know more about those matters, I’ve covered a good number of them here in this post about the class itself.
I will mention before closing this out, that one of the major issues we will be discussing in the class, since it does get framed in certain ways, is whether one person ought to strive to spread themselves out over multiple friendships or to concentrate on one main friendship. It’s not a matter that there’s a one-size-fits-all answer to. It depends considerably on the persons involved, on what they value and are motivated by, and what level of moral development they have attained. Aristotle, Cicero, Plutarch, and Seneca, among others dig into this issue, and so will be in the course.
I hope you find the videorecording interesting and perhaps even thought-provoking. If after watching it, you would like to learn more about the class, here’s the link to the course site, where you can check out the curriculum or get yourself a seat in the class.
Gregory Sadler is the founder of ReasonIO, the co-founder of The Stoic Heart®, a speaker, writer, and producer of popular YouTube videos on philosophy. He is co-host of the radio show Wisdom for Life, and producer of the Sadler’s Lectures podcast. You can request short personalized videos at his Cameo page. If you’d like to take online classes with him, check out the Study With Sadler Academy.
