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People / 38m
Aristotle on Friendship
Ancient Lessons on Loyalty, Loneliness, Character, and the Friends Who Matter Most
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People / 38m
Ancient Lessons on Loyalty, Loneliness, Character, and the Friends Who Matter Most
If something went badly wrong tonight, who would you call?
Not a colleague. Not someone from a group chat. A friend who would pick up at two in the morning and say, “Where are you? I’m coming.”
More than two thousand years ago, Aristotle gave friendship an unusually important place in his philosophy of the good life. Out of the ten books of the Nicomachean Ethics, two are devoted to friendship, and he argued that nobody would choose to live without friends even if every other good thing were available.
Aristotle on Friendship turns those ancient ideas into practical questions for modern life.
You’ll discover:
The Salt Test: when did you last spend real time together?
Why friendship cannot be rushedWhat Aristotle meant when he called a friend “another self”Why two or three close friends may matter more than a large social circleGo Uninvited: what to do when a friend is strugglingThe Shared Thing: building friendship through repeated activityHow to repair a friendship that quietly driftedThe Honest Ending: letting some friendships end without bitternessSame Place, Same Time: how to make new friends after fortyWhat Aristotle’s final will reveals about the people who mattered most to himFriendship does not usually disappear because of one dramatic argument.
More often, nobody chooses a date.
The audiobook also includes a practical companion guide to help you identify which friendships matter most and turn good intentions into real time together.
We'll email you the first chapter of Aristotle on Friendship after you confirm your address.
Here is a question most men never get asked, and almost never ask themselves. If something went badly wrong tonight, who would you call? Not your partner. Not your mother. A friend. A man who would pick up the phone at two in the morning and say, where are you, I am coming. If a name came to you straight away, good. Hold on to it. If you had to think, or if the name that came belongs to someone you have not spoken to in three years, you are not alone. You are, in fact, completely normal. And that is exactly the problem this book is about. Around two thousand three hundred and fifty years ago, a Greek philosopher sat down to write about how to live a good life. He was the most systematic thinker the ancient world produced. He wrote about logic, physics, politics, poetry, animals, the weather, the soul. And when he came to the question of what a good life actually needs, he did something surprising. Out of the ten books of his great work on ethics, he gave two entire books to one subject. Not money. Not success. Not even virtue on its own. Friendship. His name was Aristotle. And he said something about friends that sounds simple until you sit with it. He said that nobody would choose to live without friends, even if he had every other good thing in the world.
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