You rarely hear about political friendship these days. It is not a topic of media writing on politics, it is rarely mentioned by politicians in public and it has all but disappeared in political discourse.
Though friendship was widely discussed in classical political discourse (eg.,Aristotle), it was replaced by the modern turn in philosophy that premised politics on individual self-interest, deadly competition with others for what we desire, cold calculation and the antagonistic relations of self interest being contained by law and regulation.
That is the modern liberal project. It acknowledges the intimate ties of erotic love and the family, but it excludes these from the public sphere. Friendship is based on self-interest and in a utilitarian society friendship is simply utilitarian as one seeks it for the sake of advantage to oneself. Friendship is an instrument: a hedge agaisnt misfortune, or a leg up the ladder of success.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at February 1, 2005 12:56 PM | TrackBack