When I was an undergraduate at Oxford in the 1970s love and friendship did not figure as
topics on the ethics/moral philosophy curriculum. Even when studying Aristotle’s *Nicomachean
Ethics*, which has two books out of ten on friendship, we simply passed over those books. By
contrast, in the ancient Greek world, for Socrates, Plato and Aristotle these topics were of central
importance for ethics (and so too for generations of later philosophers influenced by them). In
recent years they have again received some philosophical attention, but I will suggest we can still
learn a lot by returning to some of the insights of the Platonic/Aristotelian discussions. So I will note
the links they draw between desire, love, beauty, harmony, unity and justice; and between self-love
and love of others. Some of these links will help to explain the importance of habituation in the
formation of the love of which rational beings are capable, and the role of virtue friendships in such
formation.