Friendship, Justice, and Aristotle: Some Reasons to Be Sceptical
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Friendship, Justice, and Aristotle: Some Reasons to Be Sceptical Simon Hope
Published online: 19 December 2012 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2012
Abstract It is sometimes held that modern institutionally-focussed conceptions of social justice are lacking in one essential respect: they ignore the importance of civic friendship or solidarity. It is also, typically simultaneously, held that Aristotle’s thought provides a fertile ground for elucidating an account of civic friendship. I argue, first, that Aristotle is no help on this score: he has no conception of distinctively civic friendship. I then go on to argue that the Kantian distinction between perfect and imperfect duties is more useful than talk of civic friendship in capturing the non-institutional demands of social justice. Keywords
Aristotle Civic friendship Imperfect duty philia Solidarity
Introduction Many philosophers have sought to accord friendship an important role in a conception of social justice; and typically try to recover a conception of ‘civic’ friendship (or civic solidarity) as a virtue from Aristotle in order to do so. In this paper, I want to object both to the supposed importance of friendship to social justice; and to attempts at grounding that importance on what Aristotle says about civic friendship. I shall argue for three points: that Aristotle does not endorse a virtue of civic friendship (as he is often taken to); that, regarding the stability of just institutions, all that matters is that citizens do not act in excessively antagonistic ways towards each other; and finally, that instead of emphasising a virtue of ‘civic friendship’ or ‘solidarity’, we should emphasise the importance of imperfect duties in our thinking about social justice. It is Immanuel Kant, rather than Aristotle, who provides the better guide for our thinking here. S. Hope (&) Philosophy, University of Stirling, Stirling, UK e-mail: [email protected]
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Writers from a wide range of different positions in contemporary political philosophy look to Aristotle to emphasise some aspect or other of a useful connection between friendship and justice. An influential strand of modern conservative thinking, focussing on strong social ties of togetherness, finds in Aristotle’s political philosophy the antidote to the hollow atomism of modern liberal political practices. Thus, in the most visible and discussed appeal to Aristotle in modern political philosophy, Alasdair MacIntyre laments that modern liberalism has relegated friendship to the private sphere and lost the tight Aristotelian bond between the individual and his polis (MacIntyre 1985, p. 156). But conservatives are not the only ones to appeal to Aristotle’s conception of civic friendship. Sibyl Schwarzenbach has recently sought to recover from Aristotle’s idea of civic friendship ideas that can ground a modern liberal conception of human dignity and a more engaged liberal citizenry; and the appeal to Aristotle is mirrored by many of the liberals who emphasise the ne
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