Abstract
Scholarly curiosity about political friendship (the relationship of mutual care among political fellows) is increasing as liberal democracies around the world face radical polarization. Yet one worry persists: can political friendship really exist in contemporary democracies? The objective of this paper is to answer this question in the affirmative. To this end, I investigate whether members of modern polities have reasons to form friendly bonds with one another. The paper has four parts. The first establishes a fundamental desideratum that any consideration must satisfy to count as a reason for political fellows to partake in political friendship. The second evaluates and rejects a line of argument that presents bonds of mutual identification and belonging among political fellows as reasons for political friendship. The third evaluates and rejects a line of argument due to Paul Ludwig that presents the shared utility of political community as a reason for political fellows to engage in friendly practices with one another. Finally, I introduce my own novel argument—the “argument from membership”—for why political fellows have a reason to care for one another. I argue that membership in a functioning political community is indispensably valuable for any individual in virtue of playing a constitutive role in the individual’s attainment of their final ends. I hold that, as constituent parts of the same political community, political fellows have a reason to value one another and, accordingly, to care for one another’s well-being.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
See Devere et al. (2010) for a comprehensive review of the scholarship on friendship as a political concept. Book-length treatises that pay attention to political friendship in the last twenty years include Allen (2004), Schwarzenbach (2009), Lister (2013) Digeser (2017), Ludwig (2020), Talisse (2019).
Hayden (2015) says “…political friendship in a complete sense also requires befriending the world, namely, cherishing the presence of world as “in-between” and giving it, together with others, the same unfailing interest, concern, goodwill, respect and care for its own sake as we would any friend worthy of the name” (p. 16). I will discuss this view further in the fifth section.
This reason can be overridden by other reasons, of course. Say, if any of one’s political fellows actively harms one, then it is only reasonable for one not to wish-well or do-well for this harmful person. Or one might care to a greater degree for some members of their polity over the others, like their family members and friends.
The argument here is limited to voluntary personal identification. People who are ascribed to a certain identity but doesn’t identify with it probably do not wish-well or do-well to the other members of this identity group.
Ludwig 2020, p. 73.
Ibid.
Rawls, for instance, reserves the term political community for homogenous societies in which citizens endorse a particular moral, religious, or philosophical doctrine and therefore have a shared worldview (1993: 40–43). Political community, defined as such, is incompatible with liberal values: “Liberalism rejects political society as community because, among other things, it leads to systematic denial of basic liberties and may allow the oppressive use of the government’s monopoly of (legal) force” (Rawls 1993: 146n). However, notice that Rawls’ understanding of political community is very specific and narrow, and it has been criticized by Kakuthas (1996) for this reason: “[w]hile collections of individuals must share something to be recognized as communities, they do not need to share as much as a “comprehensive doctrine”” (89). Kakuthas defines ‘political community’ as a “an association of individuals who share an understanding of what is public and what is private within that association” (85). Accordingly, what makes an association a community is the fact that its members have shared understanding of the matters of public concern. More recently, Lister (2013) has suggested that political community is a social group whose members are jointly committed to the public reason (131).
This definition of political community is instance of what Plant (1990) called “partial communities” (13), i.e., groups related by shared interests, as opposed to by shared localities or a direct concern for the common good.
In the second chapter of The Spheres of Justice, Walzer (1983) advocates for a similarly inclusive conception of political membership by drawing on the Athenian ‘metics’ in Ancient Greece, i.e., non-citizen immigrants who lack political recognition but nonetheless participate to the Athenian economics significantly. Walzer draws an analogy between the Athenian metics and contemporary guest workers. He argues the people who make the communal life possible deserve membership rights in that community.
“Despite the notion that, according to Aristotle, friends have something “in common,” and the stress he places on maintaining the norms, laws, and institutions making up a political community as integral to the utility of political friendship, theorists of political friendship have paid the phenomenon of a common world little if any attention” (Hayden 2015: 7).
References
Allen D (2004) Talking to strangers. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Brudney D (2013) Two types of civic friendship. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 16(4):729–743
Cooper J (1977) Aristotle on the forms of friendship. Rev Metaphysics 30(4):619–648
Cooper (1987) Political animals and civic friendship. In: Patzig G (ed) Aristoteles’ “Politik”. Vandenhoeck u. Ruprecht, Gottingen
Devere H, Smith G (2010) Friendship and politics. Political Stud Rev 8(1):341–356
Digeser P (2017) Friendship reconsidered: what it means and how it matters to politics. Columbia University Press
Fine K (2020) The identity of social groups. Metaphysics 3(1):81–91
Georgieva M (2015) Stability and congruence in political liberalism: the promise of an ideal of civic friendship. Polit Stud 63:481–494
Gilbert M (1989) On social facts. Routledge, London
Hayden P (2015) From political friendship to befriending the world. The European Legacy. https://doi.org/10.1080/10848770.2015.1069082
Healy M (2011) Civic friendship. Stud Philos Educ 30:229–240
Hope S (2013) Friendship, justice, and Aristotle: some reasons to be sceptical. Res Publica 19:37–52
Jeske D (2008) Rationality and moral theory: how intimacy generates reasons. Routledge, UK
Kakuthas C (1996) Liberalism, communitarianism, and political community. Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation, USA
Kalimtzis K (2000) Aristotle on political enmity and disease. SUNY Press, Albany
Leonstini E (2013) The motive of society: Aristotle on civic friendship, justice and concord. Res Publica 19:21–35
Lister A (2013) Public reason and political community. Bloomsbury, UK
Ludwig P (2020) Rediscovering political friendship: Aristotle’s theory and modern identity, community, and equality. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
MacIntyre A (1981) After virtue. University of Notre Dame Press, Indiana
Mallory P (2017) Political friendship and the social bond. In: Kurasawa F (ed) Interrogating the social: a critical sociology for the 21st century. Palgrave MacMillan, London, pp 37–60
Plant R (1990) Community. The blackwell encyclopedia of political thought. Blackwell, Oxford
Rawls J (1993) Political liberalism. Columbia University Press
Raz J (1986) The morality of freedom. Clarendon Press, Oxford
Sandel M (1982) Liberalism and the limits of justice. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Schwarzenbach S (1996) On civic friendship. Ethics 107(1):97–128
Schwarzenbach S (2009) On civic friendship: including women in the state. Columbia University Press, New York
Scorza J (2004) Liberal citizenship and civic friendship. Political Theory 32(1):85–108
Slomp G (2021) Political friendship: Gardens, bees, and Patrick Hayden. J Int Political Theory 17(1):11–13
Smith G (2011) Friendship and the political: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Schmitt. Imprint Academic, Exeter
Smith G (2019) Friendship as a political concept: a groundwork analysis. Political Stud Rev 17(1):81–92
Talisse R (2019) Overdoing democracy. Oxford University Press
Tamir Y (1993) Liberal nationalism. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Taylor C (1989) Cross-purposes: the liberal-communitarian debate. In: Rosenblum N (ed) Liberalism and the moral life. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, pp 159–182
Walzer M (1983) Spheres of justice: a defense of pluralism and equality. Basic Books, New York
Wellman C (2001) Friends, compatriots, and special political obligations. Political Theory 29(2):217-336
Acknowledgements
I’m deeply grateful to Andrew Butler, Zara Amdur, Charles Griswold, Paul Katsafanas, James Kinkaid, Michaela McSweeney, Darien Pollock, David Roochnik, Susanne Sreedhar, Micah Trautmann and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
Funding
No funding was received to assist with the preparation of this manuscript.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of Interest
The author has no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Hepçağlayan, C. Reasons for Political Friendship. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 26, 343–359 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-023-10375-3
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-023-10375-3