Identidad y amistad

In one of the most exciting moments of the Iliad, Priam claims the body of his son Hector from Achilles. In the tense dialogue between the two, a glimpse of humanity emerges and Achilles honors the dead hero by offering hospitality to the elderly father. Despite the war, Emilio Lledó tells us, Homer lets us glimpse the horizon of friendship, "which welcomes and sublimates the pain of death." The freedom of people is closely related to the freedom of words, since it implies the possibility of thinking, the possibility of being. In this marvelous essay, Lledó plays and talks with the many terms that Greek culture has left us, stopping at friendship, a key concept when it comes to exploring who we are. He contrasts it with another essential notion, that of identity, today so hackneyed and vitiated, which, originally, far from alluding to what differentiates us, referred to our human gaze on the world and on ourselves, and is a component foundation of democracy.