Friendship, Love and Politics

The literature on friendship reveals particular tensions within the notion of friendship; tensions such as that between the significance of similarity by comparison with difference within the relationship; or the tension between liking a friend for his traits and qualities and liking him uniquely. The work of Jacques Derrida in The Politics of Friendship helps to elucidate the first of these tensions, beginning with an examination of the claim sometimes attributed to Aristotle: ‘O, my friends, there is no friend’ to argue that friendship as fraternity can become the schema that democracy adopts for the future. This paper explores and argues for the inter-relatedness of two questions about friendship in the context of politics: Can friendship act as a model for political community? And is friendship itself a political relationship? It argues that while both these questions can be answered in the affirmative, those answers create value by providing a guide that can support the development of our complex identities as mature individuals and citizens.