Friendship: Ethics, Community, Modernity

1 Course Unit

Friendship is a global keyword and a major ethical concept in various traditions. Given its distinct grammars and histories, friendship is impossible to define once and for all. Instead of reducing this multifaceted category to a set of definitions, this course explores the following overarching questions: What sensibilities and practices has the notion of friendship articulated in different societies—past and present? How did dominant ideas about what constitutes friendship change historically in the West? Given friendship’s capacity to forge strange affections and experimental modes of sociality, in what ways can it provide alternatives to, and challenge, the more standardized bonds of kinship and the modern nation? We will ponder these and other questions related to friendship by engaging with anthropology, philosophy, and film. Spring 1 Course Unit