JACEK WORONIECKI MEMORIAL LECTURES 2006/2007
The John Paul II Catholic University Of Lublin
Faculty Of Philosophy

Cicero: "De amicitia"
(On Friendship) - lecture and commentary
30 hour-course, 1 hour credit, 2 ECTS points
April 23 - 28, 2007

Cicero's „De amicitia" is one of the most beautiful philosophical texts devoted to an actually forgotten virtue of friendship. This work has also had its significant contribution to an origin and development of the Western civilization. A main goal of the lecture was to analyze a relation between friendship and human happiness. There were undertaken such issues as role of virtues in the human life, problem of the friendship's essence, and social functions of friendships. The friendship, according to Cicero, is a most important social virtue of man, for it entails establishing a community, and watches over the happiness of its members. Yet, there is a basic condition of the friendship that consists in high moral values of friends themselves, as a quality of social relations explicitly depend on individual dispositions to doing good.

Reading: M. T. Cicero, "On Friendship." The Harvard Classics. 1909-14

(http://www.bartleby.com/9/1/2.html)

***

Coordinator: Fr. Paweł Tarasiewicz, Ph.D. (kstaras@kul.lublin.pl)