Table Of ContentREDISCOVERING POLITICAL
FRIENDSHIP
Aristotle's Theory and Modern Identity,
Community, and Equality
PAUL W. LUDWIG
St. John's College
6CAMBRIDGE
• UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Names: Ludwig, Paul W. (Paul Walter), 1963-author.
Title: Rediscovering political friendship : Aristotle's theory and modern identity, community,
and equality I Paul W. Ludwig, St. John's College, Annapolis.
Description: Cambridge, United Kingdom; New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press,
2020. I Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers' LCCN 2019038339 (print) I LCCN 2019038340 (ebook) I ISBN 9781107022966
(hardback) I ISBN 9781139149365 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Civil society. I Friendship-Philosophy. I Political ethics. f Liberalism. I
Polarization (Social sciences) I Aristotle.
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CONTENTS
I think I see this clearly: our nature is to be in a sort of league with Preface and Acknowledgments xi
everyone - the closer the person, the stronger it becomes. Thus
Introduction 1
citizens are preferable to foreigners, and neighbors are preferable to
strangers; for with these, nature herself gives birth to friendship, but The Persistence of Civic Friendship 2
this friendship does not have enough constancy. Why Study Civic Friendship? 6
What Civic Friendship Meant to Aristotle 9
-From Cicero's De amicitia
What Civic Friendship Means for Us 15
PART I Foundations of Friendship 23
1 Friendship from Identity: Recognizing Anger in the
Politics of Recognition 25
1.1 How Identity Theory Came to Seem Accurate (as Well as
Healthy) 27
1.2 Is identity Only a Negating of the Other? 30
1.3 Identity Is Angry: From the Lysis to the Republic and Beyond 38
1.4 Anger and Friendship: Aristotle's Politics 7 43
1.5 A Preliminary Result for Identity Politics 52
1.6 Charles Taylor: Where Is the Anger? 54
1.7 Can Liberalism Accommodate the Politics of Recognition? 60
1.8 What Complicates Liberal Solutions to the Problem of Identity 64
1.9 Conclusion 68
2 Friendships from Utility and Activity: Toward a More Realistic
Social Policy (and More Idealistic Civil Society) 72
2.1 Functional Friends 73
2.2 Goodwill: Agents and Spectators 76
2.3 Active Loving, or What Do Friends Do? 83
2.4 "Whoever Practices Doing Good Comes to Love the Oµe He
Has Benefited" 92
2.5 Self-Love and Other-Love 98
2.6 Disappointed Benefactors: The Persistence of Identity 104
vii
viii CONTENTS CONTENTS ix
2.7 Which Self Should We Love: Character or Intellect? 109 7 Mass Society and Civic Friendship: The Basic Agreement That
2.8 Ethical and Philosophical Friendships 112 Citizens Cherish 253
2.9 Conclusion: What Policymakers and Civil Society-Builders 7.1 Concord as Civic Friendship 253
Should Know 122 7.2 Patriotism? 261
PART II Where Is Civic Friendship Today? 131 7.3 Implications for Liberal Civic Friendship 267
7.4 Many Friends: How Large Can the Polity Be? 275
3 Why Associations Replaced Civic Friendship: Altruism Conspires
7.5 Small Numbers and the Modern State 283
with Self-Interest to Produce the "Free Rider" 133
7.6 Can Mass Friendship Be Passionate? 287
3.1 Questioning Classical Liberalism: Montesquieu 134
3.2 Preliminary Results for Today's Liberalism 144 PART IV Conclusion 295
3.3 Rethinking the Dominant Model: "Collective Action" 147 8 What Is the Use of Civic Friendship? Sheltering Liberal Practices
3.4 Going Back Behind Collective Action: "Self-Interest Rightly from the Effects of Liberal Theory 297
Understood" 154
8.1 Society-Wide vs. Associational Friendship: Differing Uses
3.5 Where Should Political Theory Go from Here? 160 ofEach 298
8.2 Society-Wide Uses: The Esteem-Factor in Earnings 300
4 Why Associations Are Really Civic Friendships: Finding the
Balance between Associations and the State 162 8.3 Just Wage 302
4.1 Involuntary Association: Michael Walzer 162 8.4 Uses of Associational Friendship: The Civic Patron 307
4.2 "Associations" in Aristotle 165 8.5 Immigration 311
4.3 Beyond the Love of One's Own? 169 8.6 Shared Psychology of Patronage and Commerce 315
4.4 Policy toward Groups 173 8.7 National Service 321
4.5 Rethinking Associations as Civic Friendships 175 8.8 Conclusion 324
4.6 More Policy: Associations and Congress 182
Works Cited 327
4.7 Conclusion 185
Index 340
PART III A Different Way to View Liberalism 189
5 From Communitarianism to Civic Friendship: Broadening Out
beyond Associations 191
5.1 Community and Its Frightening Epistemology 192
5.2 Robert Bellah and the Narrative Self 194
5.3 Michael Sandel and the Constituted Self 197
5.4 Backing Out of the Impasse: Recovering Liberal Epistemology 202
5.5 Realism about Civic Friendship: Money and Honor 213
6 Commercial Society and Civic Friendship: Property and Liberty
Are Preconditions of Friendship 222
6.1 Rival Views of Utility: Ancient and Modern Economies 222
6.2 Recovering Forgotten Elements of Classical Liberalism 228
6.3 Is Civic Friendship Legal? 232
6.4 Middle-Class Morality and Civic Friendship 237
6.5 Making Virtue Attractive 245
-
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As this book goes to press, a clear preference for fellow citizens over various
outsiders is flexing its muscles, showing real political power the world over -
from the British vote to leave the European Union to the electoral success of
populists in a number of countries, including the United States. Such collective
expressions of feeling have been misguided, even debased, in many respects.
Their popular resurgence possibly owes something to academic neglect: the
way we downplay and denigrate the love of one's own, implicitly hoping that it
can be suppressed and cease to make demands on us. It is time to think more
carefully about such feelings, not in order to find the right grounds on which
to dismiss them, but in order to understand and to elevate them, countering
them when they cannot be elevated. Since such feelings cannot be extirpated, it
follows that they are a predicament rather than a choice. They can, I hope to
show, be sources of goodness. We can have them in worse ways, or we can
have them in better ways. But we cannot choose not to have them. Let us study
them in hopes of having them in the best ways possible. At their best, such
feelings used to be called civic friendship.
· Our neglect of civic friendship actually goes back hundreds of years: it is the
distant result of decisions made at the founding ofliberalism. One might ask: if
liberal thought sidelined civic friendship, how can we think about it and
continue to be liberal, today? Aristotle captures something essential about
liberalism, a system he never knew, beginning with the fact that citizens simply
care more about fellow citizens than they do about foreigners, an observation
that is a descriptive truth before it is a normative ideal. What moral reason
could there be to show such favoritism? Friends share something, and what
civic friends share is an agreement about a political system, such as belief in
democracy. Citizens of liberal democracies - despite disagreeing on specifics -
agree, for the most part, about the worth and truth of a system based on
freedom and equality.
This insight is deceptively simple because civic frie;,dship is self
perpetuating. A political system, what theorists call a "regime," tends to churn
out citizens of a recognizable type. For instance, liberal democracies tend to
produce the type of person who values freedom and equality. Such citizens
tend to like this type of person - the type they themselves belong to. This
xi
xii PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiii
liking or love is widely shared, cutting across racial and class differences - cannot create. This is partly why influxes of immigrants who bring old-world,
although it is experienced differently by people on different sides of those "family" values have always been so important to liberal democracy. Finding
divides. Crucially, we are often more aware of attachment to family, to party, correct foundations means supplementing liberalism with theories from out
or to an identity group than we are of our emotional attachment to the side it, theories that are nevertheless compatible with liberalism. This is where
political system and to fellow citizens. Civic friendship is pervasive but imbed Aristotle comes in.
ded in the fabric of our lives in such a way that it rises to our consciousness Aristotle is a philosopher for all seasons because of his willingness to argue
mainly when we hear of fellow citizens who are suffering, or when the system "from presuppositions" - by which he means false presuppositions, for
I does not work to deliver on its implicit and explicit promises. Rediscovering example, that freedom and equality are more important than virtue. Part of
I political friendship means first restoring it to its place in our thinking, tl1at is, the job of political science, as he conceived it, was to investigate the best that
to our theory of politics. can be made out of diverse real-world conditions. Sometimes the conditions
are democratic (there might a large populace of approximately equal social
standing), other times aristocratic or monarchical. Lawmakers need to know
Especially for Theorists
how to establish the best regime possible, not the best regime overall, that is,
Irritated by the communitarian movement, a graduate professor of mine once the best regime imaginable under some other, rare, conditions. This realism on
said that every political alternative comes around again, usually in about thirty Aristotle's part makes him a uniquely valuable resource for liberals because he
years. You have to live long enough to see the periodic nature of the returns. connects his down-to-earth description of political phenomena with his nor
This is because the political problem is unsolvable: there are better and worse mative vision: civic friendship is a descriptive feature of many regimes less
solutions, but no finality. Thirty years previously, he asserted, communitarians than the best. For example, liberal democracies are based on a shared idea (all
would have been considered obscurantist, illiberal. But with the waning of men are created equal) rather than shared race or ethnicity, as most nations
confidence in liberalism, people became intrigued by the idea of community. have been. It seems almost uncanny that Aristotle, opposing the verdict of the
We are living through another such change. The idea of community is back: ages, would agree with the founders ofliberal democracy: likemindedness, not
a few short years ago, in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse, liberalism was racial alikeness, is the most solid political foundation. In these and other ways,
triumphant. It was "the end of history." Now, important segments of both Left he is able to meet us on our own terms and with our assumptions relatively
and Right have turned against liberalism. Resurgent nationalism and socialism intact while also helping us to a better form of realism.
are examples. Catholic "integralism" is another. The clock itself seems to say If the ideal of community has come around again, this time its theoretical
that community is arriving on schedule: Michael Sandel began the last round foundations must give assurances that "community" would never take on a
of communitarian discourse with Liberalism and the Limits of Justice in 1982. cl.ark or rigid form. Communitarianism missed its moment, last time around,
Community was due for another comeback. because there was no way to integrate its important contributions, except on
This time around, community needs to get its theoretical foundations right. an ad-hoc basis. It missed its moment to improve liberal society for all of us.
Sandel's community relied on a historicism that had lost confidence in pro We can do better this time.
gress. The foundations were not liberal, and Sandel spent some of the ensuing
years showing how liberal-progressive outcomes were compatible with his
We All Have a Stake in Theoretical Debates
theory. Liberalism, in contrast to any theory of community, is in a unique
position. As a realized idea it has been one of the world's greatest benefactors, Identity politics, the involuntary (unfair) nature of inherited associations, the
increasing the well-being of millions of persons, whom it has raised out of place of economics within politics, self-interest's inability to solve problems of
poverty and to whom it has given dignity - the dignity of rights. It has also collective action, classical liberalism versus recent liberalism: all these contro
I increased the anxiety of many of the same people, by giving them a freedom versies that animated theorists of community have now trickled down from
1
they often do not know how to use, a freedom to "pursue happiness" without theory into practice. Yesterday's sown theories are today's sour harvest. By
any guidance about what happiness might consist in, other than the pursuit of studying seminal texts of the original arguments, we can see, in hindsight, how
wealth and the retreat from associations, starting with family, that might lend we ended up at our current impasses. Theorists of community believed, at
life meaning. Such critiques of liberalism are all too familiar today. times correctly and at other times not, that their embrace of the passions of
What appears true in these critiques is that liberalism requires sustenance "affiliation and combat," in Michael Walzer's phrase, were compatible with
from outside itself, because liberalism feeds on moral capital that liberalism liberalism. Part of my intention is to retail their contributions for new
-
xiv PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xv
audiences, in a fresh light, to show how pieces of each can be fitted into a cautiously, offers an alternative to populism by engaging some of the same
larger theory of civic friendship. passions. By recognizing and understanding it, we may be able to build on it to
But the overarching aim is to study ancient texts with the urgency and counteract the current polarization.
seriousness of recent politics in mind. A brief explanation of this twofold aim
is in order. If the study were to be published as two books, in separate
People
disciplines of classics and political theory, I doubt whether as many readers
would be interested in the ancient arguments as they will if they can see the Such a joint venture of political theory and classics incurs an unusually broad
applications and relevance to modern democracy as they go along. The range of debts to mentors, colleagues, and other scholars who have influenced
dialogue with Aristotle is carried out not in the spirit of attempting to it. Needless to say, I owe first a debt of gratitude to my interlocutors, even - or
implement his moral prescriptions but rather of understanding his descrip especially - when we fiercely disagree. They represent some of the best of
tions of the political psychology of friendship and seeing how they affect our recent political and social theory. Helping to shape the book were audiences at
assumptions about what is possible and practical within liberalism. Aristotle's the University of Toronto's Political Science Department, the Committee on
comparative advantage is descriptive above all: he saves some phenomena that Social Thought's John U. Nef Lecture Series at the University of Chicago, the
we are liable to neglect under the influence of modern theory, which has Political Theory Workshop at the University of Chicago, American Univer
become ideology. This advantage comes with disadvantages: for example, any sity's Political Theory Institute, the Tikvah Fellowship Program, Colgate Uni
way we translate Aristotle's term "politike philia" creates a partial and mislead versity's Department of Classics, the Catholic University of America's School
ing impression. Regime-friendship sounds sinister. The "political" friendship of Philosophy, St. John's College both in Santa Fe and in Annapolis, as well as
in my title could have amoral connotations, like an alliance between polit audiences and panels at several meetings of the American Political Science
icians. Civic friendship, the term I prefer, is off-putting, dull, and staid, in part Association, the Midwest Political Science Association, and the American
because it seems to presuppose moral virtue (it does not, but that is a longer Philological Association/Society for Classical Studies. The project took its
story). The linguistic difficulty goes back to a real difference: our modern present shape as a series of lectures for a graduate and undergraduate course
liberal distinction between state and society, unknown to Aristotle. Civic in Harvard's Department of Government in spring 2008. For that opportunity,
friendship is not easy to pigeonhole because it cuts across our categories, for many insights, and for hospitality, I am grateful to Harvey Mansfield.
requiring caution in any application to modern systems as well as providing For commenting on drafts or other help with the ideas presented here, I am
a different way of viewing liberalism. grateful to Basmaa Ali, Danielle Allen, Ryan Balot, Elizabeth Belfiore, Brendan
To minimize potential confusions, arising from studying contemporary and Boyle, Eva Brann, Montgomery Brown, F. H. Buckley, Paul Carrese, Daniel
ancient politics at once, I have made a stylistic choice: a front-loaded, journal Doneson, Christopher Faraone, Mera Flaumenhaft, Katherine Heines, Zena
istic format. Practically every section and subsection advertises its wares in its Hitz, Leon Kass, George Kateb, David Konstan, Gabriel Richardson Lear,
opening paragraph rather than letting the argument unfold. In the body of Ralph Lerner, Nelson Lund, Harvey Mansfield, Gerald Mara, David McNeill,
each chapter, long portions are dedicated to the task of interpretation and to Thomas Merrill, Lorraine Pangle, Terry Penner, Uzma Qureshi, Paul Rahe,
arguing on behalf of the interpretations. But the reality is that not every James Redfield, Adam Schulman, Walter Sterling, and Nathan Tarcov, among
general reader, political scientist, social theorist, or classicist can be equally others. Special thanks are due to Alan Levine, who helped with many ideas and
interested in each part. Section titles are intended to give an outline for those with the overall architecture, and to Harvey Flaumenhaft for several timely
who want an overview with the privilege of occasionally dipping down into interventions. I am perhaps most grateful of all to Leon Kass, whose remark
more detail. The introduction is intended to perform the same function: too able teaching first introduced me to the Nicomachean Ethics. The mistakes
much information, perhaps, for those who wish to await the careful accretion are mine.
of evidence, but a needed abbreviation for readers without the time for it. My One of the privileges of teaching at St. John's College is excellent colleagues;
hope is to entice casual readers into a deeper engagement; as is always the case my ideas were influenced by conversations with Jonathan Badger, Kathleen
with Aristotle, surprising and fascinating insights are in store, and these Blits, David Bolotin, Gary Borjesson, Eva Brann, Michael Dink, Robert
cannot possibly be reduced to the formulas of the introductory summaries. Druecker, Harvey Flaumenhaft, Mera Flaumenhaft, Michael Grenke, Katherine
In sum, Aristotle's theory reminds us that civic friendship is a factual Heines, Joseph Macfarland, Jacqueline Merrill, Carl Page, Gabriel Pihas, Eric
condition of healthy societies rather than a rallying cry or pie-in-the-sky ideal Salem, Adam Schulman, Walter Sterling, Lise Van Boxel, and others. Cara
Nevertheless, civic friendship is also a normative good, which, treated Sabolcik and Jasmine Johnson provided me excellent and timely library
xvi PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
services. Another privilege is capable students, including Zihan Mei, a fine
language student, who prepared the index, as well as students in a graduate
course on philia in Aristotle and Sophocles: Charlotta Beavers, Nathan Betz,
Thomas Bevan, Darrin Broadwater, Joshua Cohn, Sabrina Frank, Daryl Li, and
Introduction
Amy Sandefur, and in an undergraduate course on the Lysis: Anna Ahem,
Shilo Brooks, Mary Davenport, Thomas Dyer, Jennifer Fait, Jordan Gannon,
Lee Goldsmith, and Matthew Reiner. Students and attendees of the Harvard
course helped shape the book more directly: Lois Beckett, Jonathan Bruno,
Rachel Friedman, Julius Krein, Martha Martini, Gladden Pappin, and
Jordan Teti.
I am indebted to the Law and Economics Center at George Mason Univer Standing in an early morning queue for tickets to go up in the Washington
sity for two summer stipends, to Earhart Foundation for two summer stipends, Monument, my young son and I found ourselves thrown together with a
and to the National Endowment for the Humanities for a summer stipend. family from Utah. Forced to speak to them by boredom and lack of alterna
Any views, .findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this pub tives, we struck up a conversation about where they had visited in the nation's
lication do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the capital. The conversation became animated and heartfelt and lasted for two
Humanities. hours (though no longer than the queue). We did not exchange addresses or
become personal friends. But if the Utah family had needed help, I probably
would have gone out of my way to help them. Why? Modern theories might
attribute it to morality or common humanity - it would be almost embarrass
ing to admit I was readier to like and to help the Utahans than the other
tourists, many of whom were foreign and thus, in a sense, our guests. Modern
theories might also take note of our shared interest in patriotic monuments
and government buildings (Rousseau famously thought the bourgeois loves his
country, not the people in it).
Why did we like each other? Ancient Greek theorists might have answered
my question by invoking civic friendship. The Utah people were my civic
friends, even though we had never met. Ancient citizens were not always
personal friends and usually did not know each other well (thinking they
did is a modern mistake about civic friendship). But friends share something,
and what I shared with the Utahans was a love of the political system, the
regime - a love we did not share, or not in the same way, with the many
foreign tourists around us.
Across the centuries, this explanation - civic friendship - still seems
accurate today. Other explanations are certainly possible. Both families were
white and middle class. But what both families loved was the American
political system, which had worked well in our cases. If we had become better
friends, and talked much longer, critical differences in the way the system had
worked - e.g., for once-persecuted Mormons - might have become salient.
And it might be objected: What if we or the Utahans had vislted Washington
on a different day, and chance had placed us next to people assembling for a
march or rally? We or the Utahans might have disagreed with the marchers
about the means of achieving freedom or equality. Yet here, too, the bedrock
love of freedom and equality would have been common to all parties.
l
I
! I
2 REDISCOVERING POLITICAL FRIENDSHIP INTRODUCTION 3
Marchers cherish, like nearly all Americans, their First Amendment freedoms friendship is intellectually respectable; we should all strive to be good citizens
of assembly and speech, i.e., they cherish prominent features of our regime, of the world. By contrast, a strictly civic friendship would appear to pit nations
liberal democracy. against each other. Notice that this objection to civic friendship does not deny
According to Aristotle's theory, citizens are civic friends when they share an that stronger affinities exist between fellow citizens; it only insists that they
agreement about important practical matters: preeminently, they agree about ought not. It would be a mistake to let moral aspiration influence accurate
the regime, their political system. This is not quite patriotism, or not merely so, description. Ancient theories of civic friendship presuppose the existence of
because regimes have the tendency to mold citizens into a recognizable type international friendship, a generic bond between humans and humans, which
(recent immigrants lack the obvious "stamp," but their children, who grow up is merely regarded as weaker than civic friendship because it is based on less
in this country, often have it to a remarkable degree). Citizens tend to like this need.1 Appreciating both international friendship and civic friendship is a way
type of person - the type they themselves belong to. Now, it must be admitted of coming to grips with the concentric circles of affinity the ancients called
that such liking is not very salient in modern thought. I did not expect the Utah stronger and weaker friendships (in ilie Epigram of this book).
people to be my friends. Almost nobody today has a concept of civic friendship; By far the biggest reason for the eclipse of civic friendship in our thinking
in the absence of such a pre-formed category to explain what happened that appears to be the economic basis of our politics, as for example in the famous
day, other categories (e.g., morality, patriotism) tend to take civic friendship's statement of Adam Smith: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the
place. And that is a problem: if we have civic friends, if we are civic friends, we brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner but from their regard to their
have them and are friends thoughtlessly, without realizing it. own interest."2 Though Aristotle knew about "economic growth," he was
premodern in a decisive sense: he would not have accepted the argument of
John Locke, that acquisitiveness produces an expanding pie that justifies it, an
The Persistence of Civic Friendship
argument very much alive in today's liberalism. Aristotle would have ques
Citizens of modem democracies often behave as if we expect fellow citizens to tioned the moral character of buyers and sellers whose exchanges did not
be our friends. When abroad, for example, we often gravitate toward fellow contain the seeds, at least, of friendship. Surprisingly, Aristotle located his
countrymen. We privilege fellow countrymen over foreigners in many ways, for most widespread form of civic friendship in commercial relations - commerce
example, in the debates about out-sourcing jobs. As in most countries, major being the most common civic activity for the vast majority of citizens, who
ities of Americans still believe that we should take care of our own citizens first. lacked leisure to pursue political ambitions. Perhaps the most striking legacy
In a real sense, Americans value Americans - even ones we have never met - of classical liberal theory is the fact that economic exchanges are no longer
more highly than foreigners. To be sure, other affinities - such as cosmopolitan considered friendly or the occasion for friendship.
ones or personal friendships with foreign nationals - can override the affinity Today, an unadulterated utility or self-interest, unmixed with friendly
for fellow citizens. But it would be a mistake to think the latter affinity is not feeling, is thought to run the engine of market capitalism ("let the buyer
present. Here, too, we explain this affinity as something other than civic beware"). Yet economic exchanges assume prior friendly relations in the
friendship: it is not a case of well-wishing toward the individuals themselves obvious sense that enemies do not exchange or rarely do so. We come closer
but a case of wanting to live in the kind of society that takes care of its own to acknowledging Aristotle's view of this when we boycott the products of
people. For, such a society (we reason) satisfies two concerns: our compassion someone whose moral stands we cannot stomach. We do not wish to "help"
for others who are suffering, and our self-interest should we ourselves ever be them. But then, is ordinary exchange a form of helping, doing someone a
suffering. Friendship falls somewhere between this compassion and this self favor, as Aristotle would say? There can be little doubt of the fact of friendly
interest. Friendship is a favoritism based on something shared. Do modern passions, operative even in the most crass and hypocritical of economic
citizens favor their fellow citizens - and feel extra compassion for them because encounters, such as sales. Anyone who would doubt the power of friendly
of such favoritism? I think the answer is Yes, and that what is actually civic passions ignores the first principle of salesmanship. And yet many would
friendship has undergone a redescription or reimagining in modern tl1ought - recoil from such appeals to our feeling when they are revealed to be a
or such is the larger contention of this study. Despite having no concept of civic commercial strategy. Once again, then, it is crucial to notice th3-t our objection
friendship, modern citizens persist in some practices, passions, and even some
of the beliefs that used to be considered civic friendship.
1 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 8.1, l 155al9-22.
Why might civic friendship be unfashionable in our thinking (as opposed to 2 Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 26-27 (J.il). Cf. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral
our practices)? Internationalism seems to be one reason. Cosmopolitan Sentiments, 85-86 (II.ii.3.2).
4 REDISCOVERING POLITICAL FRIENDSHIP INTRODUCTION 5
to this type of civic friendship is normative rather than descriptive: not that Today, in contrast to classical liberalism, we are much less likely to grant the
friendly feelings play no role in such encounters, but that they ought not. We name "friendship" to such constrained partnerships at all. Such colleagues and
prefer our utility and our friendship separated, each pure - whether or not partners may of course also choose to become friends. But the constraint of
such purity is often readily available in the world. necessity, which obviously derives from self-interest, seems a poor motive for
Perhaps it is the selfish element in citizen behavior that deters us from friendship. Emotional attachments constrained by necessity continue to exist
thinking of civic friendship as an accurate description of citizenship. If citizens in modern liberal societies, but the partners often explain their relationships in
were friends, they would not need to take each other to court, for example. If terms of pure self-interest, avoiding passion-laden terms such as brotherhood.
citizenship were a form of friendship, those who foolishly leave business In one way, such explanations are more realistic because business and political
transactions at the level of "friendly agreements" would not become disgrun partners are not in fact brothers; disappointment may lie in store for those
tled when they fail to reap benefits equal to the favors they perform for their who presume upon a friendship that is not really there.
"friends" - a difficulty Aristotle makes all too apparent in his Ethics. Reasoning In another way, an emotion-free description is less realistic insofar as it fails
from these same failures, Aristotle drew the conclusion that some friendships to account for emotion that is present. Business arrangements in which the
are close, others more distant. Some are only "friendships based on utility," principals forge personal links continue to exist. Emotional bonds also exist
and this is the class into which civic friendship falls. without being personal: as mentioned above, most citizens "favor" fellow
Can any sense be made of utility-based friendship? Regard for mutual citizens whom they have never met, for example by believing that inter
interests -preserving and enhancing win-win situations in which the partners national trade should help enrich their fellow citizens, rather than helping
share - tended to be the ancient view of utility-based friendships. Such another country or enriching a few at the top. The globalized-wor!d argument
mutually interested relationships are more prevalent today than ever before, does not quite work either. Political communities, rooted in nation-states,
because modern economies have made citizens (and noncitizens) more inter have yet to wither away in the face of economic globalization. The utility of
dependent than at any time in history. And yet, our dependence on others is common defense continues to take precedence over the utility of international
often impersonal. Even a privately owned business may depend on suppliers in trade. Finally, there is the utility of sharing in a regime: a sharing that
far-flung regions of the country or the world - too many and too far away to Canadians, for example, do collectively among themselves yet from which
know or care about. Precisely this global character of our interdependence, they exclude Americans, along with everyone else. The question is whether any
coupled with its impersonality, make economic relations seem neither civic of these utilities creates a kind of friendship. Does a "favored conception" of
nor friendly. Have such economic changes rendered civic friendship passe? To fellow citizens, in Daniel Brudney's language,4 play a role in the maintenance
what extent do objective realities cause our neglect of civic friendship, and to and improvement of any of these partnerships? There is an issue here, and it is
what extent is ours a new taste, perhaps a theoretical prejudice? an issue rarely explored or even noticed in recent thought.5
Classical liberal thinkers still recognized utility friendships even as they This book aims to bring civic friendship to the attention of concerned
ushered in a new order that would eclipse civic friendship. Adam Smith citizens, political scientists, social theorists, classicists, academic philosophers,
captures it well:3 and policymakers. Above all it is a plea to empirical social scientists to study
civic friendship.6 I regard civic friendship as a testable hypothesis, in part, one
Colleagues in office, partners in trade, call one another brothers; and
which should stand up to empirical verification just like self-interest, compe
frequently feel towards one another as if they really were so .... The
tition, and other hypotheses. It is a hypothesis that has not been sufficiently in
Romans expressed this sort of attachment by the word necessitudo,
vogue, ever since the rise of empirical social science, to gain a hearing. I am not
which ... seems to denote that it was imposed by the necessity of the
situation.
4 Daniel Brudney, "Two Types of Civic Friendship."
5 After Brudney, a second exception is Martha Nussbaum, Political Emotions: Why Love
3 Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 223-24 (VI.ii.1.15). More generally: " ... the Matters for Justice. Nussbaum is a cosmopolitan (see, e.g., Martha Nussbaum, For Love of
necessity or convenience of mutual accommodation very frequently produces a friendship Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism) who came, late and reluctantly, to acknow
not unlike that which takes place among those who are born to live in the same family." ledge the work that parochial attachments do in preparing us for a larger humanism.
Smith draws a firm distinction between voluntary and constrained friendships. Voluntary 6 In keeping with Ian Shapiro's tenet that one of the tasks of the political theorist is to supply
friendships "arising . . . from a natural sympathy" are clearly superior to friendships hypotheses for empirical political scientists to test (Ian Shapiro, The Flight from Reality in
arising from a sympathy which has "become habitual for the sake of conveniency and the Human Sciences). On strategies for empirical study that could apply to civic friendship,
accom1nodation." Ibid., 224-25. see especially Samuel Bowles, The Moral Economy, discussed in Chapter 3, Section 3.3.
