(My) Life in a Community of Friends



• (My) Life in a Community of Friends

  Item Type	Journal Article
  Author	Simon Glendinning
  Abstract	Taking up Jacques Derrida’s conception of all people’s singularity and working through Bernard Williams’s approach to the idea of all people’s equality, the essay explores a significant changeover underway in our understanding of democracy. Two aspects of this changeover are highlighted. The first concerns a shift from a distinctively modern conception of democracy as having an ideal telos to a variation in which democracy is conceived without a telos at all. The second concerns a shift from a distinctively modern conception of democratic citizenship that affirms the likeness of each citizen to a variation that, paradoxically, stresses unlikeness. These shifts are not conceived as simple departures from previous conceptions of democratic politics but as belonging to a faithful recollection of the very experience that calls for democratic politics in the first place: the experience of the friend. Attempting to develop a compelling conception of life in a community of friends that can do justice to both the singularity of each and the equality of all, the essay explores an outlook on democratic politics that promises a future for democracy beyond its increasingly exhausted modern condition.
  Date	2025
  Language	English
  Rights	© 2025 by Aletheia - Associação Científica e Cultural
  Volume	81
  Pages	301-320
  Publication	Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia
  DOI	10.17990/RPF/2025_81_1_0301
  Issue	1-2
  Journal Abbr	RPF
  ISSN	0870-5283 ; 2183-461X
  Date Added	5/2/2025, 4:39:47 PM
  Modified	5/2/2025, 4:59:56 PM

  Tags:

  • Bernard Williams, democracy, equality, friendship, Jacques Derrida, singularity

  Notes:

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