Political Friendship

Abstract

In the last twenty-five years we have witnessed a revival of the Aristotelian concept of ‘friendship’ in political theorising. Friendship has become the topic of an increasing number of books and articles, of journals’ special issues (CRISPP, JIPT), of seminars and conferences (ECPR, PSA) both in Political Theory and in International Relations. A new journal devoted to this topic (Amity: The Journal of Friendship Studies) has recently appeared on the scene. Supporters of this trend have claimed that the friendship tradition in western political thought is both long and rich; they have reminded us that in the Greco-Latin world friendship was the building block of the political, the cement of democracy, the essence of civic virtue, the precondition of governance. Critics of the revival of friendship, by contrast, have dismissed the new discourse as a form of ‘utopianism’ and have pointed out that friendship cannot explain human history- a history of power struggles, hostility, violence, terror and wars. The proposed panel explores the claim that the concept of ‘friendship’ needs to be resurrected not out of nostalgia of the past nor for the sake of same utopian project but to address the challenges of post-modern multi-cultural and multi-ethnic societies. The panel lies at the junction of important strands of contemporary Political Theory and International Relations: (i) the recent resuscitation of the ‘friendship’ tradition in communitarian and cosmopolitan debates; (ii) the dramatic topicality of security studies; (iii) the search for an alternative way (not ‘vertical’ but ‘horizontal’) of conceptualizing political associations; (iv) the recognition of the array of problems (identity, integration, governance, etcetera) created by ‘globalization’.

Title	Details
Befriending the World: An Alternative Approach to Political Friendship	View Paper Details
International Friendship and Ontological Security	View Paper Details
Political Friendship and its Modes	View Paper Details