This book contains readings on a wide spectrum of topics on love and friendship, beginning with a primarily sociological section on love in popular culture. In addition to treating romantic love and friendship, it includes readings on agape-love versus eros-love, the role of emotion in loving, and the nature of caring. The work contains classical as well as contemporary sources, argumentative as well as descriptive pieces. Opposing viewpoints are well represented, and each subject is given equal treatment. The editor has meticulously chosen readable, yet philosophically substantive selections for this anthology and has included pertinent art and poems. The result is a finely balanced, unified, and integrated anthology aimed primarily at undergraduate philosophy courses on love and friendship, ethics, and special topics.
Clifford Williams is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Trinity College in Deerfield, Illinois. His blog on death, suicide, and the meaning of life is at http://www.cliffordwilliams.net/thoughts