Love and Friendship in Plato and Aristotle

Reissued in 1997 with corrections and a new Afterword, this book fully explores for the first time an idea common to Plato and Aristotle, which unites their treatments– otherwise very different–of love and friendship. The idea is that although persons are separate, their lives need not be. One person’s life may overflow into another’s, and as such, helping another person is a way of serving oneself. The author shows how their view of love and friendship, within not only personal relationships, but also the household and even the city-state, promises to resolve the old dichotomy between egoism and altruism.