Aristotle and the Philosophy of Friendship. By Lorraine Smith Pangle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 255p. $65.00.

Aristotle is not generally regarded as the friendliest of writers. No doubt the starkness and seriousness of his elliptical prose is felt to be less than companionable. Nonetheless, he does devote one-fifth of the Nicomachean Ethics to an analysis of friendship. Moreover, the two books on friendship (VIII and IX) hold the penultimate position, coming right before Book X's concluding assertion of the superiority of the philosophic life. Lorraine Smith Pangle seeks the reason for and the meaning of friendship's privileged position within Aristotle's ethical explorations.