On Friendship

There are few relationships in life more formative than friendship. But friendships can form us for good and for ill. They can inspire us to bravery, push us to think for ourselves, and instill deep loyalties; but friends and friendships can also tempt us toward bravado, swamp us with the desire to ‘fit in,’ and infect us with envy.- In this seminar, we will examine the paradoxes of friendship with help from philosophy and literature, exploring fundamental questions about the nature, practice, and meaning of friendship, e.g.: Can a good person and a bad person truly be friends? What kind of friendships form through competition? Does friendship help promote public-spiritedness or do friendships naturally form us into cliques and clans? Finally, how can we befriend and be friends in a culture which has degraded what it means “to friend” and “to like”?

Dr. Nick Curry

Dr. Nick Curry has taught a wide range of courses on philosophy, religion, literature, and music at many colleges across the midwest, including in the Asian Classics program at the University of Chicago, in the philosophy department at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and in the Interdisciplinary Humanities department at the University of Louisville. He holds an M.A. in Eastern Classics from St. John's College, Santa Fe, and a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Dr. Ruth Martin Curry

Dr. Ruth Curry is a postdoctoral scholar at Northwestern University's Center for Civic Engagement, where she strives to make higher education more civic-minded. She's taught college courses connecting humanistic study and civic engagement to both traditional and non-traditional students. She studied philosophy and literature at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University, where she received her PhD in Comparative Literary Studies.

On Friendship

Dr. Nick Curry

Dr. Ruth Martin Curry

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