This book is about Socrates and the place that friends play in his life of philosophy. Through friendship we experience both our own as not wholly our own and another as not wholly other. It is such an experience, I argue, that characterizes philosophy. Only by experiencing our own as other do we become aware of our need or incompleteness that leads us to pursue wisdom; only by experiencing another as our own do we have any reason to suppose that learning is possible. This twofold character of friendship not only connects it to philosophy for Plato, but means that friendship can serve as a model for a political community where there is both a common bond among citizens and recognition of their separate identities. This view of Socrates and friends, with its implications for philosophy and political life, emerges from my analyses of Plato's Symposium, Phaedrus, and Lysis.

Since at least Hegel, however, Socrates has been presented less as a proponent of friendship than as an alienated and alienating figure, even when his freedom has been a source of admiration. This is true of the interpretations of both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments contrasts the universality of the truth to which Socrates led his interlocutors with the Christian demand for faith in a God who enters time or history. Whereas Socrates presents philosophy as drawing us away from temporal life, the god redeems human life by becoming man himself.