Friendship: Ancient and Modern
Anna Moreland | June 25 - June 29
Friendship is central to a meaningful life and yet acquiring, keeping, and nourishing friendship is difficult. This course will examine the concept of friendship through the disciplines of literature, philosophy, and religion. We will draw from texts in the Western tradition including Plato’s Symposium, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, C. S. Lewis’s The Four Loves, and Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People.”
Why do certain friendships endure while others dissipate?
What does it mean to choose friendship wisely?
What constitutes a good friendship?
How do we let go of certain friendships?
Meet the Instructor
Dr. Anna Moreland
Villanova University
Anna Bonta Moreland is an associate professor in the Department of Humanities at Villanova University. She received her B.A. in Philosophy at the University of Maryland, College Park, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Systematic Theology from Boston College. Anna Bonta Moreland’s areas of research include faith and reason, medieval theology with an emphasis on Thomas Aquinas, the theology of religious pluralism, and comparative theology, especially between Christianity and Islam. She has written Known by Nature: Thomas Aquinas on Natural Knowledge of God (Herder & Herder, 2010), and edited New Voices in Catholic Theology (Herder & Herder, 2012). She is working on her next book project on prophecy in Christianity and Islam. Dr. Moreland just completed her time as the Mary Ann Remick Senior Fellow at the University of Notre Dame’s Center for Ethics and Culture during AY 2016-2017, and is now back at Villanova.