%0 Journal Article
%T Do political theorists have friends? Towards a redefinition of political friendship
%A Harry Blatterer
%J Thesis Eleven
%@ 1461-7455
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/0725513619838664
%X This article suggests a sensitising definition of political friendship with the view of using the concept in empirical research. I begin by identifying three tendencies in the recent literature on political friendship: (1) the tendency to ignore historical developments that rendered modern friendship an intimate relationship; (2) the construction of modern friendship as hermetically sealed in the private sphere; and (3) the conceptual conflation of relationship types. Consequently, friendship is emptied of substantive relational content, while political ¡®friendship¡¯ is promoted from metaphor to denotative concept. I critique that approach by drawing on Maria M¨¢rkus¡¯s account of friendship, which emphasises its historically contingent, ambiguous position between the private and the public spheres whence friendship offers vital utopian potentials in respect of public life: friendship instantiates mutual self-determination and gives experiential substance to ¡®decency¡¯. Combining M¨¢rkus¡¯s with a differentiating approach to friendship that takes its lead from Siegfried Kracauer, I go on to propose a preliminary redefinition of political friendship as a personal relationship, as well as the substitution of political friendship by democratic solidarity with ¡®decency¡¯ its guiding orientation
%K decency
%K intimacy
%K Maria M¨¢rkus
%K political friendship
%K solidarity
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0725513619838664