Love & Friendship #

A philosophical exploration of love and friendship through Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas. These lectures examine love as both passion and choice, analyze its causes and effects, and investigate friendship as central to human flourishing, integrating rigorous analysis with literary examples from Shakespeare and mystical theology.

20 episodes, about 20 hours

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Classes #

Class 1 #

Part 1 of 2 · Loving as Giving and as Undergoing: Shakespeare, Teresa and Thérèse on the Wound of Love #

66 min Is love essentially giving, or essentially being wounded and overtaken? Berquist tests both accounts through Shakespeare’s lovers, Aquinas on the Holy Spirit as Gift, and the mystical writing of Teresa of Ávila and Thérèse of Lisieux.

Part 2 of 2 · Why Love Is Undergoing Yet Called Giving: Aristotle on Truth and Good, and Love in the Concupiscible Appetite #

57 min Berquist asks why Aquinas calls love a “giving” when it’s really an undergoing—being wounded and conformed to the good—resolving the puzzle through Aristotle’s distinction between truth in the mind and goodness in things.

Class 2 #

Part 1 of 2 · Love as an Undergoing: Conformity of the Heart, and Sense Love in Shakespeare #

56 min Berquist reads Aquinas on whether love is a passio, using Shakespeare’s lovers to sort sense love from chosen love before opening the question of amor and dilectio.

Part 2 of 2 · Amor and Dilectio, the Love of Wishing Well and the Love of Wanting #

63 min Berquist works through Aquinas’s treatise on love, unpacking amor, dilectio, caritas, and amicitia against their Greek counterparts, and closes on the division between love of friendship and love of wanting.

Class 3 #

Part 1 of 2 · The Good as Cause of Love: Shakespeare and Aquinas ST I-II q.27 a.1, and Knowledge as Cause of Love in Shakespeare #

65 min Berquist works through Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae I-II q.27 a.1 on whether the good causes love, drawing his examples of soul, body, and fortune as goods from Shakespeare and a line of Jane Austen.

Part 2 of 2 · Knowledge as Cause of Love (q.27 a.2) and Likeness as the Third Cause of Love #

64 min Berquist traces how love is kindled through the eyes in Shakespeare’s comedies and tragedies, then asks with Aquinas whether knowledge is truly a cause of love.

Class 4 #

Part 1 of 2 · Likeness as a Cause of Love: Aquinas on Why Like Attracts Like, and Why Rivals Clash #

57 min Berquist works through Aquinas’s objections and responses on likeness as a cause of love, using Boswell’s Johnson, Jane Austen, and Wuthering Heights to show how similarity both unites friends and sets rivals against each other.

Part 2 of 2 · Hope, Desire and Being Loved: Other Causes of Love, and Whether Love’s Capacity Has a Limit #

65 min Berquist works through Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 27, a. 1 on whether some other act of the will can cause love, then reads through the “Causes of Love” handout on hope, desire, and being loved.

Class 5 #

Part 1 of 2 · Aquinas on Love: Review of the Treatise’s Divisions and Union as the First Effect of Love #

48 min Berquist reviews Aquinas’s treatise on love and turns to union as its first effect, distinguishing union as cause, as identical with love itself, and as love’s real result—illustrated through Shakespeare.

Part 2 of 2 · Mutual Indwelling, Ecstasy and Zeal: Aquinas and Shakespeare on the Effects of Love #

70 min Berquist works through Aquinas’s treatise on the effects of love—mutual indwelling and ecstasy—pairing each distinction with parallel passages from Shakespeare, from Antony and Cleopatra to the Sonnets.

Class 6 #

Part 1 of 3 · Aquinas on Love: Review, and Jealousy and Zeal as an Effect of Love #

52 min Berquist reviews Aquinas’s treatise on love before turning to its fourth effect—jealousy and zeal—drawing the line between desiring a good for oneself and defending it for another.

Part 2 of 3 · Does Love Make the Lover Better or Worse? Love’s Effect on the Lover (Aquinas ST I-II q.28 a.5) #

41 min Berquist works through Aquinas’s question on whether love can harm the lover, distinguishing suitable from unsuitable objects of love and tracing love’s four effects—melting, enjoyment, faintness, and raging—through Shakespeare and other literature.

Part 3 of 3 · Is Love the Cause of All That the Lover Does? Love as the Root of All Passions #

37 min Berquist works through Aquinas’s question of whether love causes everything a lover does, testing Dionysius’s claim that all things act from love of the good against examples from Romeo and Juliet, Troilus and Cressida, and David Copperfield.

Class 7 #

Part 1 of 2 · Aristotle’s Six Reasons to Study Friendship, and Friendship in Shakespeare: Its Excellence, Concord, and Return of Love #

70 min Berquist opens Aristotle’s treatise on friendship, laying out the six reasons the Ethics gives for studying it at length, then turns to Shakespeare, Boswell, and Smollett for living examples.

Part 2 of 2 · Envy, Flattery, Virtue and Self-Love as Tests of Friendship: Shakespeare, the Novelists and Homer #

66 min Berquist takes up envy and flattery as enemies of friendship, reading Aquinas alongside Shakespeare, Homer, and the English novelists to see how sadness at another’s good fortune corrodes goodwill between equals.

Class 8 #

Part 1 of 2 · Self-Love, Likeness, Time and Rootedness in Friendship: Shakespeare, Johnson and Irving #

65 min Before turning to Aristotle’s treatise on friendship, Berquist gathers Shakespeare, Boswell’s Johnson, and Irving to ask whether we are more truly ourselves in reason or in passion, and how likeness and time make friendship real.

Part 2 of 2 · Number and Freedom in Friendship, then Aristotle’s Ethics: What Is Friendship? The Three Lovables and Perfect Friendship #

67 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s definition of friendship as mutual, known goodwill grounded in the good, the pleasant, or the useful, using Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Timon of Athens, and the Achilles-Patroclus bond to test the three kinds.

Class 9 #

Part 1 of 2 · Aristotle on Friendship: Lesser Friendships, Habit vs. Act, and Choice #

64 min Berquist works through readings four and five on friendship in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, contrasting friendships of pleasure and utility with virtue-friendship, and asking whether friendship is a habit or an act.

Part 2 of 2 · Aristotle on Friendship: Who Can Be a Friend, Friends Among Unequals, and God and Man #

70 min Berquist works through Book VIII of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics on why perfect friendship is rare, and opens the question of friendship between unequals—father and son, husband and wife, ruler and ruled.

Class 10 · Summa Theologiae II-II, Q.27, A.1: Loving, Not Being Loved, Is the Act of Friendship #

29 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Book VIII, on why people want to be loved more than to love, and turns to Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 27, a. 1 to argue that loving, not being loved, is friendship’s essential act.