In Socrates, Arendt went as far as saying that “seeing the world from the other fellow's point of view”, as it happens in friendship, “is the political kind of insight par excellence”. Many years before the flourishing of friendship studies and the thought-provoking analysis developed by Derrida in Politiques de l’amitié, Arendt proposed to re-image the political by focusing on the link between friendship and politics. Scholars have already clarified that friendship, for Arendt, rests on the sharing of the world, not on the sharing of selves in intimacy (Chiba 1993, Gottsegen 1994, Nixon 2015). In my paper I will try to shed light on two different models of political friendship, according to which friendship is constitutive of politics as it is the social bond that joins the members of a political society together. The former emerges from the passages of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics from which Arendt drew to show how “Socrates tried to make friends out of Athens's citizenry”. The latter comes to light in Rousseau’s Nouvelle Héloïse, which can be read as the novel that adds the ideal of fraternity to the ideal of liberty and equality he used to define the society arising from the social contract (Starobinski 1993 and 1994). This model of political friendship is intriguing not only because Arendt opposed Lessing’s view of friendship and Rousseau’s ideal of fraternity in Humanity in Dark Times, but also because it is a female model and is ambivalent. If one focuses on Julie, the society of Clarens described in Rousseau’s Nouvelle Héloïse is a society with a holistic structure, in which the possibility of establishing fraternal and friendly bonds depends on the mutilation of the self (Pulcini 2012). By contrast, if one focuses on Claire, in the society of Clarens described in Rousseau’s Nouvelle Héloïse friendship is necessary to cope with the world on its own terms (Morgestern 2002).

Rethinking friendship and politics : two models of political friendship / A. Ceron. ((Intervento presentato al convegno Re-imaging the political : a research seminar tenutosi a Verona nel 2016.

Rethinking friendship and politics : two models of political friendship

A. Ceron
2016

Abstract

In Socrates, Arendt went as far as saying that “seeing the world from the other fellow's point of view”, as it happens in friendship, “is the political kind of insight par excellence”. Many years before the flourishing of friendship studies and the thought-provoking analysis developed by Derrida in Politiques de l’amitié, Arendt proposed to re-image the political by focusing on the link between friendship and politics. Scholars have already clarified that friendship, for Arendt, rests on the sharing of the world, not on the sharing of selves in intimacy (Chiba 1993, Gottsegen 1994, Nixon 2015). In my paper I will try to shed light on two different models of political friendship, according to which friendship is constitutive of politics as it is the social bond that joins the members of a political society together. The former emerges from the passages of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics from which Arendt drew to show how “Socrates tried to make friends out of Athens's citizenry”. The latter comes to light in Rousseau’s Nouvelle Héloïse, which can be read as the novel that adds the ideal of fraternity to the ideal of liberty and equality he used to define the society arising from the social contract (Starobinski 1993 and 1994). This model of political friendship is intriguing not only because Arendt opposed Lessing’s view of friendship and Rousseau’s ideal of fraternity in Humanity in Dark Times, but also because it is a female model and is ambivalent. If one focuses on Julie, the society of Clarens described in Rousseau’s Nouvelle Héloïse is a society with a holistic structure, in which the possibility of establishing fraternal and friendly bonds depends on the mutilation of the self (Pulcini 2012). By contrast, if one focuses on Claire, in the society of Clarens described in Rousseau’s Nouvelle Héloïse friendship is necessary to cope with the world on its own terms (Morgestern 2002).
nov-2016
Settore SPS/01 - Filosofia Politica
Settore SPS/02 - Storia delle Dottrine Politiche
Settore M-FIL/06 - Storia della Filosofia
The Hannah Arendt Center for Political Studies. University of Verona
Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics. University of Brighton
http://www.arendtcenter.it/it/2016/11/13/258/
Rethinking friendship and politics : two models of political friendship / A. Ceron. ((Intervento presentato al convegno Re-imaging the political : a research seminar tenutosi a Verona nel 2016.
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/2434/521469
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