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. en © 2025 Berquist Lectures Wed, 23 Sep 2026 02:54:35 +0000 Fri, 17 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Duane H. Berquist 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. false Duane H. Berquist info@example.com https://berquistcourse.com/images/cover-06.jpg https://berquistcourse.com serial 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. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/001-loving-as-giving-and-as-undergoing-shakespeare-teresa-and/ Berquist opens with a puzzle: is loving an act of giving, like a craftsman shaping material, or a passion—being acted upon and changed by the beloved, as the senses are worked on by their objects? He follows the imagery of boundless generosity through Shakespeare—Romeo and Juliet, As You Like It, Antony and Cleopatra, A Midsummer Night's Dream—against the imagery of love as wound, fire, and overwhelming force in Teresa of Ávila and Thérèse of Lisieux, with Aquinas's treatment of the Holy Spirit as "Gift" standing behind both. He leaves the tension between giving and undergoing open, without yet showing how one account of love can hold both. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/001-loving-as-giving-and-as-undergoing-shakespeare-teresa-and/ https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/001-loving-as-giving-and-as-undergoing-shakespeare-teresa-and/ https://media.juskelis.com/episodes/v1/lf/001-1.mp3 1:06:25 1 full false 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. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/002-why-love-is-undergoing-yet-called-giving-aristotle-on-truth/ Berquist takes up the Prima Secundae's question of whether love belongs to the concupiscible or the irascible appetite, working alongside a parallel passage from Aquinas's Sentences commentary. Love, he shows, is fundamentally passive—a wounding, a transformation, a conforming of heart to its object—yet Aquinas still speaks of it as "giving." He resolves the tension through Aristotle's Metaphysics VI distinction between truth, which resides chiefly in the mind, and goodness, which resides chiefly in things. Along the way he maps the full order of concupiscible passions (love, desire, joy, hatred, aversion, sadness) against the irascible (hope, despair, fear, boldness, anger), drawing on Shakespeare, Mozart, Augustine, and Dionysius. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/002-why-love-is-undergoing-yet-called-giving-aristotle-on-truth/ https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/002-why-love-is-undergoing-yet-called-giving-aristotle-on-truth/ https://media.juskelis.com/episodes/v1/lf/001-2.mp3 0:56:33 2 full false 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. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/003-love-as-an-undergoing-conformity-of-the-heart-and-sense-love/ Berquist works through Aquinas's question of whether love counts as an "undergoing"—a being-acted-upon—and how love as a felt passion (amor) relates to love as a deliberate act of will (dilectio). Drawing on Aristotle, Dionysius, and Augustine, he presents love as a conformity of the heart to its object, the root from which desire and rest follow. He turns to A Midsummer Night's Dream and Hamlet to show how sense-based romantic infatuation differs from love chosen by reason. The class ends mid-argument, on the cusp of the article distinguishing amor from dilectio, to be picked up next time. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/003-love-as-an-undergoing-conformity-of-the-heart-and-sense-love/ https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/003-love-as-an-undergoing-conformity-of-the-heart-and-sense-love/ https://media.juskelis.com/episodes/v1/lf/002-1.mp3 0:56:25 3 full false 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. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/004-amor-and-dilectio-the-love-of-wishing-well-and-the-love-of/ Berquist reads closely through Aquinas's account of love, asking what distinguishes sense-based, emotional love from the rational love of the will, and how amor, dilectio, caritas, and amicitia relate to eros, philia, and agape. The class centers on the article dividing love into "love of friendship"—wishing good to another for the other's own sake—and "love of wanting"—desiring a good for oneself, drawn out through Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Dionysius's Divine Names. Berquist tests the distinction against Augustine, C.S. Lewis, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Teresa of Ávila, and illustrates it with examples from Hamlet, family life, and romantic love. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/004-amor-and-dilectio-the-love-of-wishing-well-and-the-love-of/ https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/004-amor-and-dilectio-the-love-of-wishing-well-and-the-love-of/ https://media.juskelis.com/episodes/v1/lf/002-2.mp3 1:02:45 4 full false 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. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/005-the-good-as-cause-of-love-shakespeare-and-aquinas-st-i-ii/ Does the good cause love, and can something bad still be loved? Berquist walks through Aquinas's article, its syllogistic argument, and its answers to objections about loving evil, self-deprecation, and beauty. He builds the case first, though, with an extended tour of Shakespeare—Much Ado About Nothing, The Merchant of Venice, King John, The Taming of the Shrew, Othello, The Tempest, the Henry VI/Richard III plays, and A Midsummer Night's Dream—plus Jane Austen, showing goods of soul, body, and fortune drawing love, and their absence breeding a sense of being unlovable. A digression into Plato's Meno on knowing simply versus knowing imperfectly explains how merely apparent goods can still be loved. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/005-the-good-as-cause-of-love-shakespeare-and-aquinas-st-i-ii/ https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/005-the-good-as-cause-of-love-shakespeare-and-aquinas-st-i-ii/ https://media.juskelis.com/episodes/v1/lf/003-1.mp3 1:05:09 5 full false 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. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/006-knowledge-as-cause-of-love-q-27-a-2-and-likeness-as-the-third/ Berquist opens by following "fancy," or love, as it arises through sight and knowledge of another's goodness or beauty across Shakespeare—The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, and The Taming of the Shrew—pausing over reason, will, and devices like rhyme and alliteration. He then turns to Aquinas's question of whether knowledge causes love, working through objections to Thomas's answer that the good must first be apprehended for love to follow, though love can outrun the knowledge that gives rise to it, as when we love God more than we comprehend Him. He closes by introducing likeness as a third cause of love, setting up the next class. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/006-knowledge-as-cause-of-love-q-27-a-2-and-likeness-as-the-third/ https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/006-knowledge-as-cause-of-love-q-27-a-2-and-likeness-as-the-third/ https://media.juskelis.com/episodes/v1/lf/003-2.mp3 1:04:24 6 full false 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. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/007-likeness-as-a-cause-of-love-aquinas-on-why-like-attracts/ Why does likeness sometimes make people love each other and sometimes make them rivals? Berquist follows Aquinas's Summa treatment of likeness as a cause of love, sorting out the objections by distinguishing actual likeness, proportional likeness, and likeness as shared potential-to-act. He tests these distinctions against literary cases—Washington Irving on Goldsmith, Boswell's Johnson, Austen's characters, and the clashing lovers of Wuthering Heights—to show how the same similarity can bond or divide people. He closes on the theological risk this raises: loving what merely resembles oneself, a neighbor or oneself, more than loving God, who is better. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/007-likeness-as-a-cause-of-love-aquinas-on-why-like-attracts/ https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/007-likeness-as-a-cause-of-love-aquinas-on-why-like-attracts/ https://media.juskelis.com/episodes/v1/lf/004-1.mp3 0:57:27 7 full false 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. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/008-hope-desire-and-being-loved-other-causes-of-love-and-whether/ Berquist takes up Thomas's article asking whether another passion or act of the will can be a cause of love, and works through the objections to his reply: every appetitive motion presupposes some prior love, though pleasure, desire, and hope can occasion further loves rooted in that first one. Reading through the "Causes of Love" handout, he brings in Augustine on love, Aristotle's account of friendship and being loved in the Ethics, and illustrations from Shakespeare and Plato's Phaedo. The class closes on self-love and the commandment to love one's neighbor "as yourself," pointing ahead to Thomas's treatise on love's effects. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/008-hope-desire-and-being-loved-other-causes-of-love-and-whether/ https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/008-hope-desire-and-being-loved-other-causes-of-love-and-whether/ https://media.juskelis.com/episodes/v1/lf/004-2.mp3 1:04:51 8 full false 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. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/009-aquinas-on-love-review-of-the-treatises-divisions-and-union/ Berquist returns to Aquinas's question on the effects of love, asking what it means to call union its first and principal effect. He works out three senses of union: as a cause of love, as formally the same thing as love, and as the real union that love seeks and achieves between lovers. He sets this within Thomas's habitual practice of dividing a topic into twos and threes. To make the distinctions concrete, he draws on Shakespeare—As You Like It, All's Well That Ends Well, Sonnet 36, and "The Phoenix and the Turtle"—showing how love joins lovers across distance and even turns two into one. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/009-aquinas-on-love-review-of-the-treatises-divisions-and-union/ https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/009-aquinas-on-love-review-of-the-treatises-divisions-and-union/ https://media.juskelis.com/episodes/v1/lf/005-1.mp3 0:48:18 9 full false 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. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/010-mutual-indwelling-ecstasy-and-zeal-aquinas-and-shakespeare/ Berquist takes up Thomas's account of love's effects in the Summa Theologiae, moving through the objections and responses on mutual indwelling (mutual inhaesio) and ecstasy as love's second and third effects. He draws out Thomas's distinctions between the knowing and desiring powers, love of friendship versus love of desire, and Aristotle's senses of "in" and "part," testing each against Shakespeare—Antony and Cleopatra, Much Ado About Nothing, Macbeth, Hamlet, the Sonnets—alongside Aristotle, Dionysius, and Scripture. He closes by introducing zeal, the fourth effect, distinguishing it from the first three as the lover's readiness to act against whatever threatens the beloved. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/010-mutual-indwelling-ecstasy-and-zeal-aquinas-and-shakespeare/ https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/010-mutual-indwelling-ecstasy-and-zeal-aquinas-and-shakespeare/ https://media.juskelis.com/episodes/v1/lf/005-2.mp3 1:09:57 10 full false 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. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/011-aquinas-on-love-review-and-jealousy-and-zeal-as-an-effect/ Berquist opens by recapping the structure of Aquinas's treatise on love in the Summa Theologiae: its nature, its causes, and its effects. He then takes up the fourth effect, jealousy or zeal, working through the objections and Thomas's response article by article. The key distinction is between jealousy proper to the love of desire—guarding a good one wants for oneself—and zeal proper to the love of friendship—defending a good one wishes for someone else. He fills out the distinction with examples drawn from Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Smollett, and Cooper, alongside stories from his own experience. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/011-aquinas-on-love-review-and-jealousy-and-zeal-as-an-effect/ https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/011-aquinas-on-love-review-and-jealousy-and-zeal-as-an-effect/ https://media.juskelis.com/episodes/v1/lf/006-1.mp3 0:52:22 11 full false 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. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/012-does-love-make-the-lover-better-or-worse-loves-effect-on/ Does loving make a person better, or can it corrupt him? Berquist takes up the closing articles of Aquinas's treatment of love, turning from how love relates to the beloved to what it does to the lover's own character. He draws Aquinas's key distinction: love of a suitable good perfects the one who loves, while love of an unsuitable good corrupts him. He then walks through love's four proximate effects—melting, enjoyment, faintness, and raging—testing each against scenes from Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona, Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Merchant of Venice, along with passages from Cooper's The Spy and Eliot's Silas Marner. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/012-does-love-make-the-lover-better-or-worse-loves-effect-on/ https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/012-does-love-make-the-lover-better-or-worse-loves-effect-on/ https://media.juskelis.com/episodes/v1/lf/006-2.mp3 0:41:06 12 full false 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. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/013-is-love-the-cause-of-all-that-the-lover-does-love-as-the/ Berquist takes up Aquinas's question of whether love is the root cause of all that a lover does, weighing the objections against Dionysius's claim that everything acts from love of the good, and tying this back to the good as "that which all desire." He shows how hate, fear, hope, and anger all presuppose some prior love, drawing on Romeo and Juliet, Troilus and Cressida, and Dickens's David Copperfield to make the point concrete. The class closes by turning to Bernard of Clairvaux's stages of love and how these relate to the order of faith, hope, and charity. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/013-is-love-the-cause-of-all-that-the-lover-does-love-as-the/ https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/013-is-love-the-cause-of-all-that-the-lover-does-love-as-the/ https://media.juskelis.com/episodes/v1/lf/006-3.mp3 0:37:08 13 full false 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. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/014-aristotles-six-reasons-to-study-friendship-and-friendship/ Berquist begins the Nicomachean Ethics' proemium on friendship, working through Aristotle's reasons for devoting such extensive treatment to it: its kinship with virtue, its necessity at every age, its natural roots in parent-child and kindred bonds, its role in holding cities together, its superiority to mere justice, and its intrinsic nobility. He introduces the older quarrel among Euripides, Heraclitus, and Empedocles over whether friends are drawn together by likeness or by opposites. He closes by turning to the handout "Effects of Love" and to Shakespeare, Boswell's Life of Johnson, and Smollett for concrete illustrations, tying the discussion back to Aquinas's commentary and to caritas as a form of friendship. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/014-aristotles-six-reasons-to-study-friendship-and-friendship/ https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/014-aristotles-six-reasons-to-study-friendship-and-friendship/ https://media.juskelis.com/episodes/v1/lf/007-1.mp3 1:10:07 14 full false 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. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/015-envy-flattery-virtue-and-self-love-as-tests-of-friendship/ What makes envy so destructive to friendship, and why is flattery a subtler danger? Berquist starts from Aquinas's definition of envy as sadness at another's good fortune, treated alongside charity, and asks why friendships between equals are most exposed to it while parent-child love—and supremely the love within the Trinity—tends to escape it. He tests the distinction against a wide sweep of literature: Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Hamlet, King Lear, and the Sonnets, Homer's Iliad, and scenes from Smollett, Thackeray, Fielding, and Washington Irving, using their portraits of jealous rivals and flatterers to show how each vice works against real goodwill. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/015-envy-flattery-virtue-and-self-love-as-tests-of-friendship/ https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/015-envy-flattery-virtue-and-self-love-as-tests-of-friendship/ https://media.juskelis.com/episodes/v1/lf/007-2.mp3 1:06:22 15 full false 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. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/016-self-love-likeness-time-and-rootedness-in-friendship-shakespeare/ Berquist opens with Aquinas on the Magi and shepherds before turning to friendship itself, using literary examples to prime students for Aristotle's systematic treatment. Reading from the "Causes of Love" and "Effects of Love" handouts alongside Two Gentlemen of Verona, Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, Midsummer Night's Dream, and Sonnet 62, he asks whether one is more truly oneself through reason and will or through passion. Passages from Boswell's Life of Johnson, Washington Irving, and Jane Austen show how likeness causes friendship and how shared time and history give it a maturity and rootedness that sudden romantic love lacks. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/016-self-love-likeness-time-and-rootedness-in-friendship-shakespeare/ https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/016-self-love-likeness-time-and-rootedness-in-friendship-shakespeare/ https://media.juskelis.com/episodes/v1/lf/008-1.mp3 1:05:13 16 full false 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. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/017-number-and-freedom-in-friendship-then-aristotles-ethics-what/ Berquist opens with a handout on the "Effects of Love" before turning to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, asking what friendship actually is and why it must involve mutual, known goodwill rather than one-sided affection. He walks through Aristotle's division of friendship into three kinds—based on the good, the pleasant, and the useful—arguing that only friendship grounded in virtue is stable and complete. Shakespeare supplies running examples: Hamlet and Horatio for true friendship, Julius Caesar and Timon of Athens for its failures, alongside Boswell's "friends but no friend" story about Garrick and Homer's Achilles and Patroclus. He closes by noting Aristotle's remarks on how rare the highest friendship is and how friendship works between unequals. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/017-number-and-freedom-in-friendship-then-aristotles-ethics-what/ https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/017-number-and-freedom-in-friendship-then-aristotles-ethics-what/ https://media.juskelis.com/episodes/v1/lf/008-2.mp3 1:06:34 17 full false 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. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/018-aristotle-on-friendship-lesser-friendships-habit-vs-act-and/ Berquist takes up Aristotle's account of friendship, first distinguishing the imperfect friendships of pleasure and utility from perfect friendship grounded in virtue, weighing their durability and asking whether even bad men can be friends, and why only virtuous friendship escapes suspicion and rests on trust. He then turns to whether friendship is a habit or an act, arguing it survives absence unless neglect wears it away, that living together matters to it, and that real friendship comes from reasoned choice rather than passing feeling. He draws on history, politics, Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, and his own experience to make the distinctions concrete. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/018-aristotle-on-friendship-lesser-friendships-habit-vs-act-and/ https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/018-aristotle-on-friendship-lesser-friendships-habit-vs-act-and/ https://media.juskelis.com/episodes/v1/lf/009-1.mp3 1:04:23 18 full false 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. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/019-aristotle-on-friendship-who-can-be-a-friend-friends-among/ Berquist asks in whom and how fully each kind of friendship can actually be realized, working through Book VIII of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. He argues that friendship grounded in virtue is inherently rare and usually confined to a single person, given its intensity, the difficulty of pleasing another in countless small ways, and the time required to build shared experience—unlike friendships of utility or pleasure, which spread more easily among many. He then turns to friendships between unequals, such as father and son, husband and wife, and ruler and ruled, showing that these require a proportional rather than strict equality, differing from the equality proper to justice. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/019-aristotle-on-friendship-who-can-be-a-friend-friends-among/ https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/019-aristotle-on-friendship-who-can-be-a-friend-friends-among/ https://media.juskelis.com/episodes/v1/lf/009-2.mp3 1:10:22 19 full false 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. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/020-summa-theologiae-ii-ii-q-27-a-1-loving-not-being-loved-is/ Berquist takes up Aristotle's claim that most people prefer being loved to loving, tracing it to the desire for honor and to flattery's appeal. Against this, he draws on Aquinas's Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 27, a. 1 to show that loving is the truer perfection: it is an act of the lover, while being loved is only an external sign of one's worth. He tests the distinction against Aristotle's example of mothers who hand children over to wet-nurses or give them up for adoption yet keep loving them, since real love seeks the other's good rather than a return of affection. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/020-summa-theologiae-ii-ii-q-27-a-1-loving-not-being-loved-is/ https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/020-summa-theologiae-ii-ii-q-27-a-1-loving-not-being-loved-is/ https://media.juskelis.com/episodes/v1/lf/010-1.mp3 0:29:14 20 full false