Rediscovering political friendship: Aristotle's theory and modern identity, community, and equality

Aristotle argued that citizenship is like friendship, and this book applies his argument to modern society. Modern citizens may lack the concept of civic friendship, but they persist in many practices and passions that were once considered essential to it. Citizens share many similarities with friends: prejudices held in common, favoritism towards each other, and - despite disagreement on specifics - underlying agreement about what is important, such as freedom and equality. Aristotle's theory reminds us that civic friendship is a factual condition of healthy societies, not a pie-in-the-sky ideal. By recognizing when it occurs and understanding it, we can build on it to counteract societal polarization. Civic friendship offers an alternative to populism and nationalism by engaging some of the same passions. In an era increasingly marked by tribalism and identity politics, this timely study will be of interest to a wide range of readers in political science, classics, and philosophy.

Cover -- Half-title -- Title page -- Copyright information -- Dedication -- Epigraph -- Contents -- Preface and Acknowledgments -- Especially for Theorists -- We All Have a Stake in Theoretical Debates -- People -- Introduction -- The Persistence of Civic Friendship -- Why Study Civic Friendship? -- What Civic Friendship Meant to Aristotle -- Utility -- How People Actually Think -- A Real-World Good -- What Civic Friendship Means for Us -- How Did We Lose the Theory? -- How Would a New Theory Help? -- Would Specific Policies Follow? -- Part I Foundations of Friendship -- 1 Friendship from Identity: Recognizing Anger in the Politics of Recognition -- 1.1 How Identity Theory Came to Seem Accurate (as Well as Healthy) -- 1.2 Is Identity Only a Negating of the Other? -- The Mystery of Personal Identity: Plato's Lysis -- Utility vs. Personal Identity -- Group Identities - Less Mysterious? -- The Negative Approach Clears the Ground -- 1.3 Identity Is Angry: From the Lysis to the Republic and Beyond -- Anger and the Self: The Psychology of the Republic -- 1.4 Anger and Friendship: Aristotle's Politics 7 -- Aristotle's Claim -- Criticizing Republic 2 -- The Anger Is Only Political? -- Explaining Away the Anger -- Other Works of Aristotle Corroborate the Angry Connection -- A Case for ''Irascible'' Friendship -- Conclusion -- 1.5 A Preliminary Result for Identity Politics -- 1.6 Charles Taylor: Where Is the Anger? -- 1.7 Can Liberalism Accommodate the Politics of Recognition? -- Conclusion -- 1.8 What Complicates Liberal Solutions to the Problem of Identity -- 1.9 Conclusion -- 2 Friendships from Utility and Activity: Toward a More Realistic Social Policy (and More Idealistic Civil Society) -- 2.1 Functional Friends -- 2.2 Goodwill: Agents and Spectators -- 2.3 Active Loving, or What Do Friends Do? -- Meeting the Challenge of the Delian Inscription.

"Liberal democracy has always relied on civic friendship without acknowledging it. Though lacking the concept, modern citizens persist in many practices and passions once considered civic friendship: prejudices held in common, favoritism for each other and, despite disagreeing on specifics, overwhelming support for the assumptions of our regime: freedom and equality. Aristotle's theory reminds us that civic friendship is a factual condition of healthy societies, not a pie-in-the-sky ideal. Liberal civic friendship finds identity in vocations instead of ethnicity or class. It moves beyond communitarianism, which is limited by geography and religion. Civic friendship opposes economic models of society, joining hands with later classical liberals to criticize "rational self-interest" as an ideology that obscures the emotional attachments at work under its guise. Civic friendship is simultaneously progressive and socially conservative. Treated cautiously, it offers an alternative to populism by engaging some of the same passions. By recognizing and understanding civic friendship, we can build on it to counteract the current polarization"--