Friendship and the City: Exercises in Social and Political Philosophy (Syllabus, University of St. Gallen, Fall term 2019) (original) (raw)
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ABSTRACT: What is friendship? Does the word “friendship” have the same meaning, the same concept in different cultures? And if not, what are the differences? There is no doubt that abstract notions in various cultures and traditions refer to different meanings. This paper tries to study the difference between the notions of “friendship” in two traditions. The approach is neither philosophical, nor sociological; rather a glance to literature is proposed. A comparison between two literary traditions: the Iranian one and the ancient classic literature, that is to say Greek and Roman traditions. In European tradition, it is insisted that man should have friends who are good and wise and he can trust them. Here, related to friendship, what are highlighted are the concepts of “Benevolence” and “Virtue”. But in Iranian tradition, besides encouraging having social relations and making friends, it is suggested to avoid getting close to the other. Here, friend is not defined as a human being to whom one tries to get close; friend is the “other”, the one that you should try to keep far enough from yourself. In Iranian tradition, this insisting on beholding the limits and boundaries with the “other”, that is “friend”, may be a result of the historical events.
Friendship : a philosophical reader
1993
Copyright © 1993 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage ...
Problems with representing friendship in painting and the novel and its more successful displays in drama reflect the fact that friends seldom act as inspiringly as traditional images of the relationship suggest: friends' activities are often trivial, commonplace and boring, sometimes even criminal. Despite all that, the philosophical tradition has generally considered friendship a moral good. I argue that it is not a moral good, but a good nonetheless. It provides opportunities to try different ways of being, and is crucial to the processes through which we establish our individuality.
INTRODUCTION: The Work of Friendship
GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 2004
Often those who come forward to speak, to speak publicly, thereby interrupting the animated whispering, the secret or intimate exchange that always links one, deep inside, to a dead friend or master, those who make themselves heard in a cemetery, end up addressing directly, straight on, the one who, as we say, is no longer, is no longer living, no longer there, who will no longer respond. With tears in their voices, they sometimes speak familiarly to the other who keeps silent, calling upon him without detour or mediation, apostrophizing him, even greeting him or confiding in him. This is not necessarily out of respect for convention, not always simply part of the rhetoric of oration. It is rather so as to traverse speech at the very point where words fail us, since all language that would return to the self, to us, would seem indecent, a reflexive discourse that would end up coming back to the stricken community, to its consolation or its mourning, to what is called, in a confused and terrible expression, "the work of mourning."-Jacques Derrida, The Work of Mourning It is hard to speak properly of the dead-most of all, perhaps, of a dead friend. So, anyway, Jacques Derrida argues in a volume that both theorizes and performs the work of its title, The Work of Mourning. 1 Collected in this volume are eulogies for friends and "masters"-I will return in what follows to the seemingly odd, seemingly inevitable conjunction of those terms-from Louis Marin to Paul de Man, from Sarah Kofman to Michel Foucault. Scattered throughout these pained and deeply personal expressions of loss and remembrance are reflections on friendship, mourning, work, and survival, reflections that offer a meditation not on what
Rethinking Friendship, 2019
Philosophers have tended to construe friendship as an intimate relationship involving mutual love, and have focused their discussions on this ‘true’ form of friendship. However, everyone recognizes that we use the word ‘friend’ and its cognates to refer, non-ironically, to those with whom we share various relationships that are not terribly intimate or which do not involve mutual love. I argue that there exists no general reason to restrict our philosophical focus to ‘true’ friendships, and allege that we can gain important insights if we broaden our perspective to include lesser friends. I contend that friendships, in the broad sense (encompassing both ‘true’ and lesser forms), are necessarily relationships that are the product of significant collaborative norm manipulation. And I argue that understanding friendship in this way helps explain important features, including the difference between friendships and familiar relations, the non-fungibility of friends, and why friendships are often in flux.