Political friendship, respect, community: Hannah Arendt’s de-materialization of Aristotelian political friendship

Abstract

In this article I demonstrate how Hannah Arendt both appropriates and transforms Aristotle’s view of political friendship. I argue that the brief discussion of Aristotelian political friendship in The Human Condition relies on an earlier de-materialization of Aristotle’s work on friendship. This de-materialization of Aristotle’s view of friendship allows Arendt to discuss Aristotelian friendship as a kind of ‘respect’, where ‘respect’ is a philosophical notion unavailable to Aristotle. Ultimately, for Arendt, the experience of friendship opens up a space for human beings to begin to practice a distinct way of seeing one another – a ‘respect’ – that can in turn be practiced in public, making the experience of friendship an important precursor to action.