Friendship by Claudia Baracchi

Friendship by Claudia Baracchi

In Friendship, Italian philosopher Claudia Baracchi explores the philosophical underpinnings of friendship. Tackling the issue of friendship in the era of Facebook and online social networks requires courage and even a certain impertinence. The friendship relationship involves trust, fidelity, and availability for profound sharing. Sociologists assure us this attitude was never more improbable than in our time of dramatic anthropological reconfiguration. Research on friendship cannot therefore ignore ancient thought: with unparalleled depth, Friendship examines the broader implications of relationship, both emotional and political.

Today, the grand socio-political structures of the world are trembling. The hold of valued paradigms that traditionally positioned individuals, determined their destinies, and assigned them their roles and reciprocal responsibilities is becoming uncertain. In these many global shifts, previously unforeseen possibilities for individual and collective becoming are unleashed. Perhaps friendship has to do with worlds that are not: that are not yet, and that should be desired all the more. Focusing on the works of Aristotle, Baracchi explores ancient reflections on friendship, in the belief that they have much to teach us about our relationships in the present day.

[Baracchi's] understanding of Greek thought is impressiveHer linking of friendship and justice in the polis is inventive.

Claudia Baracchi is Professor of Moral Philosophy at the Università di Milano-Bicocca. She is the author of various books including Of Myth, Life, and War in Plato's Republic, Aristole's Ethics as First Philosophy, and editor of Bloomsbury Companion to Aristotle. She is a practicing analyst in Milano.