International friendship is often neglected in international relations. The purpose of this paper is to analyze international friendship empirically as a result of the construction of multiple institutional facts. Two main fields are investigated in this study: the development of city twinnings and cultural institutes. Paying attention to emotions, rituals, and unusual events, allows in which to understand the ways friendship is socially constructed. Studying international friendship as a pattern of institutional facts (...) invites attention to the specific contexts in which they emerge. In Europe, after World War II, the embeddedness of friendship politics in local communities has partly gone through a process of invention of communal traditions. European communal history has been a major symbolic resource in this process. The embeddedness of international friendship in local communities has favoured the longstanding relations. Governmental initiatives might have big impacts, but rarely go on without local support or relief. Yet, achieving friendship might not favour a broad and open community but, on the contrary, favour a dense network of closed communities. This is what we may call Tocqueville’s paradox. (shrink)

In The Law of Peoples, John Rawls offers an idea of international public reason that governs the relationship between liberal and decent peoples. This article begins by considering the relationship between liberal peoples and the form of public reason that they would deem acceptable. It ultimately argues that there is an international public reason that is common to minimally just states that is different from what would be found in the law of peoples. The applicability and content of (...) this version of international public reason is governed by the possibility of states associating with one another in what I call an international friendship. Minimally just states would accept the importance of reasons for being attentive to how their actions can affect the just arrangements of other minimally just states. The reason of international friendship presents the possibility of competing international publics with their own form of reason. (shrink)

International Relations scholars have been reluctant to engage with questions of friendship in the international system. This may be a consequence of the predominance of (neo)realism in IR and its implications – to view the international arena as an anarchic, self‐help system, where states are trapped in the security dilemma. However, over the last six decades, some regions have overcome the security dilemma and states have constructed peaceful relationships based on mutual trust and confidence, resembling (...) class='Hi'>friendship at the interstate level. Building upon securitization theory, this essay distinguishes between different perceptions that states may have of their own security, and links them with different types of regional peace. It proposes a two‐phase process whereby relationships may move from negative to positive peace, suggesting different mechanisms for each phase. It illustrates this model by examining the Argentine–Brazilian détente of the late 1970s and the determination to build a zone of positive peace in Latin America’s Southern Cone. (shrink)

In the article, international contacts of Soviet students and teachers of secondary schools at the regional level in the 1950-1970s are considered on the basis of the published literature and new archival sources. In the context of the formation of the socialist community, relations between the USSR and East Germany were regarded as exemplary. Their high importance was determined by the role of the German question in world politics. Socio-economic and cultural rapprochement between the USSR and the GDR over (...) a large period of time formed international cooperation at the local level. Particular attention in the article is paid to advantageous practices of creating special schools, and international friendship clubs in the southern Urals. It is proved that the development of educational relations was conditioned by focusing extracurricular activities of the Soviet school on international education, the availability of highly qualified, enthusiastic organizers of higher education and creative teachers of the German language, with regional connections of the Russian-German friendship. The author noted that the close friendship linking the international students of the Southern Urals and the GDR was considered in the USSR as a part of traditional ideological and moral education. Foreign correspondence and practical cooperation, such as the organization of short-term assignments and trainings for teachers, guided tours for students, joint vacations in summer camps, spiritually enriched students and motivated them to improve their own language skills. (shrink)

Digeser contends that our rich and varied practices of friendship multiply and moderate connections to politics. Along the way, she sets forth a series of ideals that appreciates friendship's many forms and its dynamic relationship to individuality, citizenship, political and legal institutions, and international relations.

Based on a decade of direct diplomatic engagement with the United Nations, a decade of teaching on international relations, and another decade of research and teaching on Islamic and comparative peace studies, this book offers a friendship-related academic framework that examines shared moral concepts, philosophical paradigms and political experiences that can help developing and expanding multi-disciplinary conversations between the Christian West and the Muslim East. By advancing multicultural and inter-religious discourses on friendship, this book helps promoting actual (...) friendships among diverse cultures and peoples. This book has no published parallels, so far, in the current century. Most important, it is not a monologue. Rather, it provides a model of conversations among scholars and political actors who come from diverse international and inter-religious backgrounds. The word "Islamic" should not mislead the reader to suspect that this edited volume delves only into religious discourses. On the contrary, it provides a forum for conversations both within and between religious as well as philosophical perspectives. In short, the book is a forum for friendship conversations both thematically and also in terms of disciplinary and cultural diversity. This volume presents a model for intellectual conversations about friendship. The result of the work of many prominent international scholars and diplomats over many years, it conveys at least one message clearly: friendship matters for not only our happiness but also for our survival. (shrink)

The love that we feel for our friends plays an essential role in both our moral motivation to act towards them; and in our moral obligations towards them, that is, in our special duties. We articulate our proposal as a reply to Stephen Darwall’s second-person proposal, which we take to be a contemporary representative of the Kantian view. According to this view, love does not have a necessary role neither in moral motivation, nor in moral obligation; just a complementary one. (...) Yet this proposal faces three difficulties: a psychological problem, a practical problem, and a theoretical problem. In contrast, we argue that both moral motivation, and moral obligations emerge from our interpersonal relations with particular others. We further argue that obligations in the context of friendship are moral because they come with a feeling of obligation and have been internalized. Thus, the three problems raised to the Kantian position are clarified, and the role of love is emphasized in both our moral motivation, and our moral obligations towards friends. (shrink)

World War II broke out as the result of an alliance between Germany and Soviet Union with the aim to conquer and partition Poland. Having broken off the treaty of friendship and co-operation, Germany attacked the USSR in 1941, forcing the Soviet Union to change sides from that of a German ally to the ally of the anti-German coalition. In 1943, following the German discovery of the graves of Polish officers murdered by Soviet forces in Katyń, Stalin declared that (...) the crime had been committed by the German army and broke off diplomatic relations with the Polish Government-in-Exile in London which had requested that an official investigation be launched by the Red Cross committee in Geneva. Some one hundred German officers were sentenced to death for the Katyń massacre as the result of Stalin’s prosecution trials. 50 years later, the world was rocked by the discovery of a document signed by Stalin ordering the execution of Polish officers in Katyń.In a secret meeting in 1943 in Teheran, President Roosevelt and Stalin agreed on the plan to annex Poland’s eastern territories.The decision to stage an independent fight for independence during the Warsaw Uprising was justified by the inevitable approach of the Red Army, the fear of German reprisal actions for disobeying the order to participate in fortification works, the fear of a spontaneous uprising fuelled by a Soviet radio broadcast in Polish which appealed to the people of Warsaw to put up a fight against the oppressor.Stalin’s decision to withhold the Soviet offensive and ban American and British planes carrying humanitarian aid for Warsaw from landing in Soviet airports contributed to the downfall of the Uprising. The Warsaw Uprising was a cue for the civil outbreaks that followed in Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Paris and Prague. The halt on the Soviet Army’s offensive, which enabled the German forces to eliminate the Polish centre of political command subordinate to the Government-in-Exile in London, limited the European territory that fell subject to Soviet supremacy. The memory of the heroic fight put up by the entire population of Warsaw deterred the Soviet Union’s ambitions to curtail Poland’s sovereignty. (shrink)

This study has pursued a microcosmic perspective of the Maximian ethics, the doctrine of love, and friendship and the role of love in the manifestation of virtuosity through ongoing ethical transformation. In Saint Maximus’ view, the internal integrity of the spiritual microcosm is closely connected with the integrity of the interrelations in the new form of politeia. One of the most beautiful ethical themes of this interpretation is the theme of friendship (philia), highlighted by Saint Maximus to demonstrate (...) the integrity of love and, implicitly, of ethical virtue, as an expression of cosmic reconciliation. I have illustrated the interpretation of one of the spiritual models of ethical virtue, namely the spiritual friendship (philia), seen as that state whereby virtue, and also vice, can be surprised directly and can be involved in virtue education. (shrink)

The idea that countries (or nations or peoples) should sometimes be friends is embedded in everyday talk about international relations and receives sophisticated defences in recent works by P. E. Digeser and Catherine Lu. The idea relies upon an analogy between interactions between persons and interactions between countries — an analogy that this article argues to be ontologically and ethically dubious. Persons and countries are very different entities, meriting very different kinds of treatment. The article explores three different relationships (...) between countries that could be understood as friendships, arguing each such relationship is either undesirable or explanatorily impotent. (shrink)

The series friends, rivals, enemies is a seemingly ‘natural’ classification for the relations of states, while the parallel series kin, neighbors, strangers functions as an informal classification system for social relations in general. That we may owe foreigners the hospitality due to strangers has become a matter of discussion among normative theorists, thanks to Kant's Perpetual Peace. Thus the conjunction of friendship and hospitality calls for a conceptual assessment. This assessment uses Aristotle's treatment of friendship (and Derrida's treatment (...) of Aristotle's ‘familial schema’) to establish three primary models of social relations (father to sons, husband to wife, brother to brother). Only ‘brothers’ (agents modeled as brothers) can be friends, rivals, or enemies. Only ‘fathers’ can be hosts who offer strangers the hospitality of the household. By the same token, only ‘fathers’ can be guests or take hostages. Such an assessment brings the conceptual concerns of two fields — international relations and political theory — closer together. In so doing, it rejects anarchy's conceptual hegemony in the field of international relations. (shrink)

In international relations theory, there is a long history of Richardson-like modeling of the evolution of military capability. Usually, such models are deterministic and predictive and do not allow for the representation of the transition from competitive peace to shooting war. More recently, models have been developed which attempt to represent the evolution of relationship between nations. The relationship between nations, varying from friendship to hostility, is taken to be synonymous with the intent of nations towards each other, (...) varying from good will to malice. Generally, these relationship models do not include capability though common sense would indicate that capability and mutual intent should profoundly influence each other. A model is presented here which combines these two fundamental attributes of international relations and attempts to represent the outbreak of war in the world system by the onset of deterministic chaos in the extended model. (shrink)

In Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, Kant outlines a system of church government that strikes many as an unworkable ideal. The “invisible church” is to be structured according to four basic principles that correspond directly to the categories from the first Critique. Whereas ordinary political systems must involvecoercion, a church is to be a free association of persons governed by non-coercive, internally legislated moral laws. Is this a realistic blueprint for church government? Kant’s metaphor of a “household” as (...) the best way to regard the relationship between the “People of God” provides a much-neglected key to understanding how Kant’s ideal can be implemented. A new and technically more accurate definition of “theocracy”, as a system not of humanly-headed religious despotism but of divinely protected autonomous friendship, clarifies how Kant’s plan is not only realistic but currently implemented in some religious communities today. (shrink)

According to Aristotle’s reply to what I call the divine wish aporia (NE VIII.7 1159a5–12), perfect friendship entails wishing many great goods for one’s friend, but precludes wishing that one’s friend become a god—“the greatest of goods”—for the realization of this wish would destroy the friendship. Counter both to this reply and to the slim body of existing commentary, which appeals to the external criterion of equalizable reciprocation, I demonstrate how the perspective internal to the virtuous activity of (...) perfect friendship affords properly Aristotelian grounds for retaining the divine wish as its constitutive limit. While the practicable scope of perfect friendship remains circumscribed within human limits, its characteristic wishing at once reaches beyond the human—and the friendship. (shrink)

In the context of a symposium on enmity, this article—the product of extensive research done by a group of colleagues in St. Petersburg—concerns characteristic types of friendship in Russia. The author distinguishes in particular between instrumental political friendship, which Russians tend to scorn, and the intensely emotional and intimate sort of friendship, usually shared in a group rather than a dyad, that Russians consider uniquely their own. Both types, however, have long histories in Russia, which this article (...) undertakes to trace. Intimate friendship appears to be an overlay of attitudes and characteristics, originating in the age of sensibility, onto medieval notions about friendship in Christ. An argument is made for a more general acceptance by Russians of instrumental friendship, since even friendship in Christ can be shown to depend extensively on things held in common. The essay argues too, however, for bringing some of the peculiarities, especially the linguistic peculiarities, of intimate friendship to Russian political friendship, in both domestic and international contexts. (shrink)

The rise of populism and nationalism in the West have raised concerns about the fragility of liberal political values, chief among them tolerance. But what alternative social resources exist for cultivating the interpersonal relationships and mutual goodwill necessary for sustainable peace? And how might the lived practices of religious communities carry potential to reinterpret or re-circuit these interpersonal tensions and transform the relationship with the cultural "other" (Fremde) from "foe" (Feind) to "friend" (Freund)? This volume contributes a unique analysis of (...) this shifting discourse by viewing the contemporary socio-political upheaval through the lens of Friedrich Schleiermacher's theology, with a focus on the themes of friendship, interpersonal subjectivity, and sociability as a path beyond mere tolerance. Each of the essays of the volume is written by an internationally recognized scholar in the field, and the volume examines Schleiermacher's novel reflections across multiple social contexts, including North America, Great Britain, western Europe, and South Africa. As these essays demonstrate, the implications of this conversation continue to resound in contemporary religious communities and political discourse. (shrink)

In this article we argue that the worries about whether a consequentialist agent will be alienated from those who are special to her go deeper than has so far been appreciated. Rather than pointing to a problem with the consequentialist agent's motives or purposes, we argue that the problem facing a consequentialist agent in the case of friendship concerns the nature of the psychological disposition which such an agent would have and how this kind of disposition sits with those (...) which are commonly thought proper to relations of friendship. To the extent that we are right, then, the rejoinders which indirect consequentialists have offered to the problem of alienation are ill directed and so do not succeed in meeting the real problem. In articulating what we see as the source of the alienation problem which friendship poses for consequentialism, we also hope to clarify the general distinction between dispositions and motives and to show how certain kinds of guiding internalized normative dispositions help us to define and therefore distinguish between various types of relationships. Undertaking this task may also help to identify some of the crucial issues for an adequate moral psychology of friendship and its place in any plausible ethical theory. (shrink)

The attempt to recuperate the efficacy of utopia from critics of its blueprint variants has seen the emergence of critical utopias.1 According to critics, the problem with "traditional" blueprint models lay in their production of "a closed, static, authoritarian society that negates temporality and does violence to plurality and individual singularity."2 Critical utopias sought to internalize such critiques in order to rescue utopia, resulting in a heightened attention to the problems of the dialectic of emancipation, plurality, and temporality. Consequently, critical (...) utopias contain a self-reflexive approach that aims to foreclose any authoritarian regression via an internalization of the preliminary and... (shrink)

B a c k g r o u nd. The article critically examines the concept of peace in the context of the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance. This study delves into the historical, diplomatic, and philosophical dimensions of the Treaty between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China in the mid-twentieth century. M e t h o d s. The study is based on a systematic analysis of the original documents of the Sino-Soviet Treaty (...) and other primary sources that record the context and content of the agreement. The article uses a comprehensive analysis of primary sources, diplomatic correspondence, political discourse, and philosophical narrative to illuminate various interpretations and implementations of the treaty's peace provisions. Analyzing the philosophical basis of the agreement, it is taken into account how the ideas and concepts of friendship, union and mutual assistance were interpreted in the philosophical context of both countries. The article uses methods of comparative analysis to establish common and distinctive features between the ideology of the Sino-Soviet Treaty. Re s u l t s. The study provides valuable information about the geopolitical dynamics of the 20th century, shedding light on how the two major communist powers managed their diplomatic relations. By examining the ideological underpinnings and practical implications of the Treaty's peace-oriented provisions, the article contributes to understanding the broader landscape of international relations in this dynamic period. C o n c l u s i o n s. The study provides important information about the geopolitical dynamics of the 20th century, revealing how the two leading communist states managed their diplomatic relations. The article also considers the prospects for the development of dynamics between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, examining the difficulties and problems that arose in maintaining peaceful relations between powerful states with common political ideologies based on the principles of Marxism. Analyzing the ideological foundation and practical consequences of the peacekeeping principles in the treaty, the article contributes to a better understanding of the broad context of international relations and philosophical narrative. (shrink)

Unlike mainstream Cyrenaics, the Annicereans deny that friendship is chosen only because of its usefulness. Instead, the wise person cares for her friend and endures pains for him because of her goodwill and love. Nonetheless, the Annicereans maintain that your own pleasure is the telos and that a friend’s happiness isn’t intrinsically choiceworthy. Their position appears internally inconsistent or to attribute doublethink to the wise person. But we can avoid these problems. We have good textual grounds to attribute to (...) the Annicereans a doctrine of “non-hedonic habits,” which allows them to abandon psychological hedonism while still maintaining hedonism regarding well-being. (shrink)

One arguably unwelcome consequence of social inequality is that it impedes friendships between persons of unequal status. The central aim of this essay is to identify the circumstances in which friendship gives people reason to reduce status inequality in society. I start by assessing the impact of inequality of status on friendship by focusing on its adverse effect on the friends’ similarity. Next I discuss the claim that if people of upper status would ‘uplift’ modest‐status people to their (...) rank for the purpose of making them apt for friendship, this would reduce inequality in society. Assisted by J.S. Mill’s arguments for equality between the sexes, I then identify the circumstances in which people of upper status have reason to seek to equalize people of modest status so as to make them apt for friendship with them. Having shown that friendship does not generally give reason to introduce equality of status I close by arguing for the opposite view: equality gives reason to encourage friendship as a replacement for less egalitarian forms of relationship. (shrink)

In recent years feminists have begun arguing for various political conceptions of ‘care’. I have argued, by contrast, for the intimate connection between the women’s movement of the last half century, and the growing realization of the necessity of civic friendship as a condition for genuine justice. I only repeat the outlines of my argument here, for my goal is to look at various institutions which might help realize not merely ‘public care’ – contemporary theories of which I argue (...) need a far more careful normative account – but a civic friendship between all citizens. Indeed, I argue that the ideal of civic friendship provides that normative account of political care lacking in contemporary theories. (shrink)

Does the concept of political friendship make sense, and does cultivating political friendship among peoples strengthen universal peace? This article provides an Aristotelian account of political friendship as distinct from but analogous to personal friendship. Political friendships, founded on mutual recognition and respect, are characterized by consensual agreement about the fundamental terms of cooperation. While promoting such political friendship at the global level would be a measure to strengthen universal peace, another form of friendship, (...) politicized friendship, is to be avoided, as it is driven by rivalrous rather than equitable self-interest, and breeds political enmity and strife. Taking Aristotle's insights about political friendship to the global arena, the article considers Rawlsian peoples to be suitable subjects for political friendship. The duty of assistance and the duty to oppose outlaw states illuminate demands of political friendship among Rawlsian peoples that entail equity, power sharing and even sacrifice. (shrink)

One can expect a scientific journal to fulfill the purpose of disseminating research results, spreading works and new ideas and, now more than ever, franking space for the fruitful exchange among institutions under the dictum of the knowledge’s internationalization. Honoring its commitment as an academical philosophy journal, the present issue of the Aoristo - International Journal of Phenomenology, Hermeneutics and Metaphysics assumes the three afore mentioned missions, with emphasis on the last one.

From the seventeenth century onwards, English Reformed ministers engaged in lively correspondence and publishing exchanges with men from different countries and Protestant traditions. In the eighteenth century, appreciation of their shared intellectual and cultural heritage and a desire to sustain the patterns for religious living it encouraged inflected the content and style of textual interactions among Halle Pietists, English dissenters and New England Congregationalists. Interest in the present state of religious life was also important, and therefore news about awakenings and (...) materials for pastoral care circulated around Europe and North America through existing channels and by new means. Their encounters and the texts that they produced were mutually generative, and the language and manner of the participants' personal interactions were important features of published works. These personal associations, publishing activities and discursive styles can be understood as aspects of the literary sociology of a religious culture that valued intellectual and emotional engagements and sought to inculcate religion through education and friendship. (shrink)

Instrumentalism about moral compromise in politics appears inconsistent with accepting both the existence of non-instrumental or principled reasons for moral compromise in close personal friendships and a rich ideal of civic friendship. Using a robust conception of political reconciliation during democratic transitions as an example of civic friendship, I argue that all three claims are compatible. Spouses have principled reasons for compromise because they commit to sharing responsibility for their joint success as partners in life, and not because (...) their relationship involves strong affective attitudes of goodwill, solidarity, trust, and the like. Since shared responsibility for ends is an inappropriate element in the political relationship between citizens, the members of a divided society may manifest the constitutive attitudes of political reconciliation without any commitment to principled reasons for moral compromise. (shrink)

This essay appraises the history of the International Academy of Practical Theology, arguing that competing aims have pulled it in different directions. The essay arose initially out of a roundtable on IAPT at an international congress in São Leopoldo, Brazil, in preparation for the next biennial conference there in 2019. Why is there a need for the IAPT? What are some of its developments? Why is it important for South America and Brazil? In response, the essay suggests that (...) the IAPT has struggled to sustain at least two prominent commitments - a desire to enhance practical theology's scholarly visibility and acumen and a real need to become a genuinely international organisation in terms of representation and inclusion. A secondary argument woven through the essay is that collegial friendships across complicated differences of location and perspective have the capacity to moderate and even heal conflicts. (shrink)

(1999). Hume, Smith and Ferguson: Friendship in commercial society. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy: Vol. 2, The Challenge to Friendship in Modernity, pp. 33-49.

In Solidarity, Hauke Brunkhorst brings a powerful combination of theoretical perspectives to bear on the concept of "democratic solidarity," the bond among free and equal citizens. Drawing on the disciplines of history, political philosophy, and political sociology, Brunkhorst traces the historical development of the idea of universal, egalitarian citizenship and analyzes the prospects for democratic solidarity at the international level, within a global community under law. His historical account of the concept outlines its development out of, and its departure (...) from, the less egalitarian notions of civic friendship in the Greco-Roman world and brotherliness in the Judeo-Christian tradition. He then analyzes the modernization of Western societies and the destruction of the older, hierarchical solidarities. The problems of exclusion that subsequently arose -- which stemmed from growing individualization in society as well as from the exclusion of certain groups from the benefits of society -- could be solved only with democratic solidarity in the form of its "institutional embodiment," the democratic constitution. Finally, Brunkhorst examines the return of these exclusion problems as a result of economic globalization. Analyzing the possibilities for democratic self-governance at a global level, Brunkhorst finds in recent global protest movements the beginnings of a transnational civic solidarity. Brunkhorst's normative and sociological account, mediating between these two perspectives, demonstrates the necessity of keeping normative requirements systematically attuned with conditions of social reality. (shrink)

This essay aims at defining to what extent our friends are involved in our personal identity. Our thesis is that friends share a common identity which occupies a larger or smaller part of their personal identity, depending on the depth of their relationship. Yet, friendship does not merely consists in the shaping of ourselves: as it appears more obvious, we remain separate entities and my friend can help me in the understanding of my own self thanks to what he (...) has learnt in our intimate and long-lasting relationship. The other consequence of this individuation is that friendship is based on a metaphysical desire which cannot be fulfilled: I will never be able to feel exactly what my friend feels, even if I rationally come close to it by sharing his life. (shrink)

In the Hellenistic world, both in Greece and in Egypt, friendship was a current and popular topic. This no doubt has influenced Ben Sira, a Jewish author from the second century bce, who in his book of wisdom has included no less than seven passages on different aspects of friendship. As a keen observer he lays stress on the sociological, or rather the socio-ethical foundations and implications of being one's friend. Over and above this, it always is fear (...) of God which directs one's friendship aright. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to consider both Schmitt’s polemical and his analytical claims in dealing with a concept which is central to his theory and yet strangely overlooked by the secondary literature: the concept of friendship. The essay proceeds in three steps; first it makes some textual claims about the meaning and role of friendship in Schmitt’s writings; secondly its puts forward an interpretation of the significance of friendship in Schmitt’s political thought; finally, it tries (...) to disentangle polemics from diagnostics in Schmitt’s discourse and draws some tentative conclusions. (shrink)

This volume celebrates the remarkable career of Dr. Preston King, an African American political philosopher with an international reputation. King's first degree was from Fisk University (1956). He moved directly to the London School of Economics (LSE), completing his M.Sc. (Econ) in 1958 with a Mark of Distinction. He taught at LSE for the next two years. A scrap with Jim Crow America kept him in exile for the next 40 years. Major friends and influences at LSE were Professors (...) Sir Karl Popper, Michael Oakeshott, and Dr Bernard Crick. King took up subsequent lectureships at the Universities of Keele, Ghana, and Sheffield. He was Senior Research Assistant at the Acton Society Trust (London), then professor at the Universities of Nairobi, New South Wales (Sydney), Lancaster, returning at last to the USA as joint Woodruff Professor at Emory and Distinguished Professor at Morehouse. The essays comprising this volume are by internationally renowned figures. They creatively explore History, Toleration, and Friendship, as three seminal themes running through Preston King's sizeable oeuvre. This book's first third consists of essays on Time and History, with brilliant contributions by Professors Browning, Lawson, Moore, and Cherribi. The second third consists of essays on Time and Toleration, with memorable and penetrating analyses by Professors Jones, Read, Modood/Dobbernak, and Brown. The third part consists of essays on Time and Friendship, with offerings - both charming and insightful - by Professors Devere, Smith, and Coleman. The book concludes with a novel and captivating chapter by King himself, on the philosophy of time, which constitutes the substratum of so much of his work and reflection. (shrink)

Sex, love, and friendship play an integral role in Immanuel Kant’s conception of human life. Against common prejudices, Kant provides substantial contributions to the philosophical discussion of these topics. This unique collection of essays sheds light on how the notions function in Kant’s philosophy, both individually and in conjunction with each other. The essays examine intertwined issues such as theory of sexuality, marriage (including same-sex marriage), morality and sexual objectification, love and autonomy, love of human beings, the conceptual structure (...) of love, friendship, misanthropy, and the highest good. The contributors include internationally well-known experts in the field. They approach the topics diversely from historical, philosophical, critical, and interpretative perspectives. The collection will be an invaluable resource for Kant scholars and for anyone interested in affective social relations in the history of philosophy and beyond. (shrink)

In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle offers a solution to the problem of motivating morality based on his distinction between three types of friendship. I consider Aristotle's argument in detail, placing it in a context of similar concerns about the question of why we ought to be moral that ranges from Socrates' discussion of the ring of Gyges in Plato's Republic to Wittgenstein's distinction between internal and external rewards and punishments for action in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Contrary to J.O. Urmson's conclusion that (...) Aristotle's discussion of the highest form of friendship is an editorial insertion in Book VIII of the Ethics, I attempt to show, by filling in the necessary steps in Aristotle's inference, that the treatment of friendship is an integral part of what Aristotle considers a complete moral philosophy. According to the interpretation that I propose, Aristotle's account of being worthy of the highest form of friendship is indispensable to his explanation of an internally rewarding reason for being moral. (shrink)

Certain relationships generate associative duties that exhibit robustness across change. It seems insufficient for friendship, for example, if I am only disposed to fulfil duties of friendship towards you as things stand here and now. However, robustness is not required across all variations. Were you to become monstrously cruel towards me, we might expect that my duties of friendship towards you would not be robust across that kind of change. The question then is this: is there any (...) principled way of distinguishing those variations across which robustness of the disposition to fulfil duties of friendship is required from those across which it is not? In this paper I propose a way of answering this question that invokes distinctions concerning how we value friends and friendships, and how persons and friendships possess value – distinctions that are central to the project of specifying not only the limits of robustness, but also the source of duties of friendship and associative duties more generally. (shrink)

In this article, we address the problem of how technoscience knowledge and practices are translated when they are relocated during the highly organized, international encounters between cultures, often called “development.” We examine efforts to build a “model” Australian dairy and instantiate Australian dairy practices in East Timor following East Timor’s recent emergence as a nation-state. Through this ethnography of development’s construction of a heterogeneous sociotechnical assemblage, we show how knowledge and power inform the practices that enable Western models of (...) production and exchange to be reassembled in postcolonial spaces. In aiming to conduct a symmetrical anthropology of development based in the actor-network approach, we follow development’s actors and actants as well as its epistemic divisions—nature and culture, human and nonhuman, us and them—into East Timor, arguing that the politics and agency of technology transfer is distributed among discourse, epistemology, and human and nonhuman actors. (shrink)

The ancient Greek philosophical discourse harbors an anthropology radically discontinuous with the framework of modernity. Rather than emphasizing the tension between the individual and community, and far from understanding the political on the ground of instinctual sacrifice, Greek thought illuminates the interdependence of ethics and politics, and situates the human being in a cosmos in which the human is neither central nor prominent. In particular the reflection of philia, most notably in Plato and Aristotle, calls for the exploration of human (...) potentiality with outstanding vigor and visionary audacity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Honoring, Listening, and Fostering Peace through Friendship:SBCS Annual Meeting November 17–18, 2023, San AntonioSandra Costen KunzThe Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies (SBCS) held its annual meeting the weekend before Thanksgiving in conjunction with the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) as one of its "related scholarly organizations." Three important decisions that the board of directors made are:1. the approval of a new publication agreement with the (...) University of Hawai'i Press (UHP) that journal co-editors Thomas Cattoi and Kristin Largen and treasurer John Sheveland spent many hours working out with UHP's staff,2. the creation of a new standing committee: Oral History and Archives. It will record long-time members's memories of their involvement with society and collect photos and documents pertinent to the society's history,3. the decision to hold an online board meeting before AAR's annual meeting to complete as much routine annual business as possible so that our once-a-year, face-to-face time together can be devoted to more in-depth planning and problem-solving and spending more time listening to, and learning from, each other.Three other highlights of this year's meeting were: (i) honoring long-time interreligious peacemaker Thich Nhat Hahn at our Saturday morning session, (ii) listening to Won Buddhists describe their interreligious peacemaking practices at our Saturday afternoon session, and (iii) committing ourselves as a board to be more faithful in following the practices of the founders of the society by setting aside more time to foster interreligious peace not only through careful scholarship but also through caring friendships.In its early decades, the society spent much of its time and income hosting multiday international conferences that provided much more time for developing friendships and learning from each other than our board meetings and paper sessions at AAR have provided. We have sometimes planned field trips to local temples or churches or dinners at restaurants, but these "extra programs" were always an ad hoc add-on. This year, the board committed itself to reviving the friendship-building and learning-from-each-other priorities of our predecessors in the society and to discerning how to embody them in SBCS programming. [End Page 219]Since I see this year's meeting as something of a watershed moment for the society, I've devoted more pages to this annual meeting article than usual to share more fully with our members and other readers of Buddhist-Christian Studies the work that we did and the possibilities that we discussed.friday board of directors meetingPresident's Opening RemarksPresident Mark Unno called the meeting to order with these words: "The main thing I want to say is: 'Thank you to all our board members for an amazing year!'" Noting how many AAR-related societies struggled through the digital transition and then the pandemic, he expressed gratitude that the SBCS sustained robust activity through the heavy lifting by many board members.After welcoming at-large members Gloria Chien from Gonzago University and Trent Pomplum from Notre Dame to their first in-person board meeting, Mark relayed at-large board member Victor Gabriel's regrets for being unable to attend. After each person had updated everyone with whatever seemed most pertinent, we moved to the international advisors's, officers's, and committees's reports.International Advisor ReportsElizabeth Harris from the European Network of Buddhist-Christian Studies began by announcing that the papers from their 2022 conference, "Euro-Buddhism and the Role of Christianity," will be published in 2024 by EOS Verlag. Our journal coeditor, Thomas Cattoi, contributed. Their next conference, titled "A Buddhist-Christian Dialogue on the Body," will be at St. Otillien Benedictine Abbey in Bavaria on June 27–July 1, 2024. She reminded us that they issue an open call for papers that supplement their invited keynote addresses, in part to help scholars get travel funding. The network's conference in 2026 will be held at the Protestant Academy for Mission Studies (EMW) at the University of Hamburg to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the network's founding there by Rev. Gerhard Köberlin.She noted that, in the UK... (shrink)

In this article, I attempt to explore the relation between two sets of terms in Derrida's work: friendship and democracy, and ethics and politics. On the basis of a reading of Derrida's interpretation of Blanchot in The Politics of Friendship, I argue that Blanchot's notion of a non-traditional conception of friendship is a reconstruction of Levinas's notion of the ethical relation to the other, which in turn provides the basis for the formalistic ethical affirmation of Derrida's work, (...) an affirmation found most clearly in his remarks on justice. I then move from the The Politics of Friendship to Derrida's more recent text on Levinas, Adieu, and try to explore the relation between ethics and politics in Derrida's work, with particular reference to the question of democracy. My concluding thesis is that Derrida's recent work is attempting to articulate, through notions such as democracy to come and the new international, what I call 'a repoliticization of Marxism'. (shrink)

This research explores the complex relationship between criminal courts, both national and international, truth and reconciliation commissions (TRC), and the Truth and Friendship Commission (TFC) in the context of resolving gross human rights violations in Indonesia. Examining the legal frameworks, the study delves into the dilemma surrounding the prosecution of perpetrators versus the forgiveness approach adopted by TRC/TFC for the sake of national unity. Drawing on Geoffrey Robertson's perspective, it questions the feasibility of pardoning heinous crimes and emphasizes (...) the role of courts in establishing democratic legitimacy. The research aims to clarify criteria for utilizing ad hoc Human Rights Courts and TRC, considering provisions from MPR Decree No. V/MPR/2000 and Law No. 26/2000 on Human Rights Courts. Understanding TRC/TFC as extra-judicial institutions, the study discerns their limitations, specifically addressing human rights violations predating Law No. 26/2000. The research utilizes legal analyses and explores the implications of different approaches on justice, societal trust, and democratic consolidation. Ultimately, it seeks to contribute insights into the effective resolution of past human rights abuses and their impact on Indonesia's legal and social fabric. (shrink)

This article attempts to explain the value that we assign to the presence of friends at the time when life is ending. It first shows that Aristotle’s treatment of friendship does not provide a clear account of such value. It then uses J. L. Austin’s notion of performativity to supplement one recent theory of friendship – given by Dean Cocking and Jeanette Kennett – in such a way that that theory can then account for friendship’s special value (...) at our time of death. (shrink)