SF-1170 From Philia to Facebook: the Meaning of Friendship
The thematic focus of this seminar will be friendship. Friendship is one of the most important of human relationships; one that every student in this seminar has already participated in for many years. It shapes who we are and helps determine who we may become. And while it is a universal phenomenon, it has been practiced quite differently at various times and places in human history. And while we all have an intimate, personal and practical knowledge of friendship through our own experiences, sometimes things that are so close and so obvious to us can be hard to see. Over the course of the semester we will inquire into friendship from many different angles, trying to gain both a broader and a deeper understanding than our own individual experience allows. We will look at friendship first through the lens of philosophy, particularly through the foundational text of Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics. We will look at other views of friendship from the ancient world, starting in the past to help us see that friendship has not always been thought of the way we think of it now. After this initial foundation is laid, we will examine other writers and thinkers and take up additional topics like friendship in different cultures, friendship and gender, friendship in and through the arts and include an examination of friendship through the lenses of many different academic disciplines to see how other systematic thinkers conceive of friendship. All along we will be comparing and contrasting with our own personal experiences and considering what modern technology, such as social networking sites, has done to influence friendship, in the way we practice it and the way we conceive it. It is the aim of this class that students not just study different academic points of view, but that that they take up the questions and challenges that these thinkers present to them and fully engage with them on a meaningful personal level.