Of Friends and Enemies

Catalog description

“And so will believe in our stellar friendship, though we should have to be terrestrial enemies to one another,” Nietzsche says. How are friendship and enmity construed in the Western traditions? What are the philosophical and ethical implications of dividing one’s personal, cultural, and political world into friends and enemies? What is the elusive relation between friendship and community, hospitality, war, and mourning? We will scrutinize the history and theory of friendship and enmity through close readings of writers such as Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Montaigne, Kant, Emerson, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, Schmitt, Blanchot, Nancy, and Derrida. Students from diverse fields welcome.