(My) life in a community of friends

Glendinning, Simon ORCID: 0000-0002-2312-1839 (2025) (My) life in a community of friends. Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia, 81 (1-2). 301 - 320. ISSN 0870-5283

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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.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2025 Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia
Divisions:	European Institute
Subjects:	J Political Science H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races
Date Deposited:	22 May 2025 10:42
Last Modified:	30 Oct 2025 20:24
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/128161

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