B. P. McDonald

Looking at two well-known discussions of Kant’s discourse on friendship, namely, the second half of Doctrine of Virtue and his Lecture on Friendship, this paper traces the points of overlap and separation whereby, through the paradigm of friendship, the morals and politics of Kant’s discourse are reconsidered. In what follows, I will show first, how Kant’s theory of friendship plays a role in his conception of social relations and morality and second, how the nature of his concerns with friendship reveals both an insistence on moral duties and, in the spirit of Derrida, a difficult, if not paradoxical, politicization of these same duties. In doing so, I argue that Kant’s ideas on friendship are part of a necessary yet irreconcilable tension between political and ethical obligations. Friendship is thought necessary for the well-being of political states at the same time that its instrumentalization undermines the heterogeneous nature of ethical responsibilities and the call to particularity which distinguishes it from other forms of associations. In the end, I argue that Kant’s theory of friendship is characterized by a fundamental ambivalence whose contradictions do not pave the way for new possibilities for association, community, nationhood etc., but only highlight its aporetic underpinnings.

This essay takes its point of departure from Section 63 of Martin Heidegger’s Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics where, after a remarkable elaboration on the problem of the animal in relation to the question of world, he calls into question the accuracy of maintaining his guiding thesis on the animal: “the animal is poor in world.” 1 Heidegger himself is not only troubled by the manner in which he situates the animal within a duplicitous framework of having and not having world but also by the manner in which he situates the quality of being poor in world as specifically a being deprived of world. He proposes the following objection to his own thesis: It is certainly true that in the case of the animal we find a not-having in distinction from the case of man. And it is equally certain that this not-having on the part of the animal is essentially different from that of the stone. But is this not-having on the part of the animal a deprivation of world, an essential poverty with regard to the world? For the animal could only be deprived of world if at least it knew something of world. But this is precisely what we have denied in the case of the animal – and indeed we must deny this all the more to the animal in view of the fact that man himself, to whose essence worldformation belongs, at first and for the most regard, does not know of world as such. However things may be in this regard, if the world is essentially closed to the animal then we can indeed talk of a nothaving, but we are never permitted to understand this as a deprivation. Consequently the thesis concerning the animal’s poverty in the world goes too far. 2 In what way is Heidegger concerned that his thesis on the animal ex- ceeds what can be rightly said of the animal? For Heidegger insofar as the animal is determined as being deprived, the essence of the animal only ever comes about in terms of its negativity in relation to the positive determinations said to be of the essence of man and its relation and access to world. We should note here, and I hope to eventually come back to this at some stage, Heidegger also adds a statement of caution that inasmuch as the animal cannot be said to be deprived of world because it does not know world as such, we, at the same time cannot properly ascertain the manner in which man knows world either. To repeat from the same quotation: “[F]or the animal could only be deprived of world if at least it knew something of world. But this is precisely what we have denied in the case of the animal – and indeed we must deny this all the more to the animal in view of the fact that man himself, to whose essence world-formation belongs, at first and for the most regard, does not know of world as such.” 3 Here, in a preliminary manner we ask how are we to distinguish between the use of the verbs to have and to know in relation to world and how, if possible, might this complicate the structure of Heidegger’s three theses? What is the difference between knowing and having world? And how does the question of the stone, animal, and man operate within this difference? Which one of us could ever dare to say that they have or know world, and how could one explain this possession-of or belonging-to, if we could call it that or think of it in those terms? These are not easy questions, but nonetheless ones we should keep in mind. At this point, however, let us continue with Heidegger’s objections to his thesis on the animal and bracket these concerns for the time being

This thesis takes issue with the politics and ethics of friendship vis-à-vis the Western philosophic tradition, in particular, the work of Aristotle, Immanuel Kant and Carl Schmitt in the aftermath of Jacques Derrida’s study Politics of Friendship. I consider the relation between philosophy, politics, ethics and friendship and ask in what ways we can use the topic of friendship as grounds for rethinking the demands of ethical responsibility and calls for new political structures of association. Each of the philosophers considered have a particular concern for friendship that is troubled by the reconciliation of politics and ethics. In different ways, each struggle to give friendship a proper place and meaning that could integrate the stakes of politics with that of ethics. As a result I examine what I suggest are the irreconcilable demands of political commonality and ethical responsibility that emerge in their discussions. For instance, in Aristotle, the irreconcilable demands of friendship are the result of his conception of virtue and self-sufficiency, in Kant, the discrepancy between duty and choice and in Carl Schmitt, the distinction between friends and enemies. The difficulty that troubles each of their concerns with friendship is the outcome of a number of aporias that make it difficult, if not altogether impossible, to resolve without admitting contradictions. Consequently I contend that what must be advanced within the history of friendship’s thought is that political belonging and ethical responsibility are founded upon irresolvable binds; binds that frustrate the possibility of founding a politics on or with friendship in any simple or instrumental manner. I conclude by suggesting that in order to play host to future speculations of the relation between friendship, ethics, politics and philosophy what must be understood are the ways in which these contradictions are fundamental to that very possibility. In this sense, I position the politics and ethics of friendship after Derrida within a ‘deconstructive’ framework. The only means by which we can live and imagine new political and ethical practises of friendship are by affirming these aporias as the conditions of possibility.

This paper will address the political and ethical ramifications of Derrida's concern for friendship in relation to his concerns with the future of democracy, rights of hospitality and cosmopolitics. The questions addressed read as follows: Is there a way we can get beyond this stance which not only consolidates a friendship of the ‘perhaps’ with a friendship of the promise, but also implicates their consolidation with the very future of what we today call democracy? Is there a way in which we can substantiate something more than a romanticized call for a future integration of friendship and democracy while avoiding the pitfalls of on one hand, substantiating a model of friendship for politics or, on the other, offering a disguised and naïve return to a metaphysics of friendship as the saving grace of social unity? Through a close reading of the conclusion to Politics of Friendship as well as his concerns with friendship in Spectres of Marx and Rogues: Two Essays on Reason it will be argued that Derrida's insistence on the future of friendship is bound up with the notion of an ethical promise to the thought of friendship as the condition for its political and ethical relevance