7 - Mass Society and Civic Friendship

Summary

Citizens are civic friends when they agree about the regime, their political system. In liberal democracies there is agreement about the regime, or at least about its presuppositions: freedom and equality. This insight is simple but profound because regimes are self-perpetuating: they mold citizens into a recognizable type, such as the type that loves freedom and equality. Citizens tend to like this type of person—the type they themselves belong to. A “thin” agreement is the core of Aristotle’s teaching on civic friendship. For his immediate audience, he wanted more. Although his best-practicable regime leaves out many features of his best regime, civic friendship is a critical feature. Civic friendship has been transformed by federalism, by modern communications, more recently by the internet and social media. But “the Greek polis was small enough for everyone to be friends” is a modern mistake forgetting that civic friendship is an analogy. We cannot have many friends, Aristotle says, “except in the civic sense.”