In Praise of Friendship

We are living in the age of decline, or at least crisis, of what might be called a 'culture of friendship'. Our existence as social beings is constricted in a triangle whose three apices are: the alienated work, subjected to the principle of ruthless competition, the closed, isolated nuclear family and the national or 'cultural' community constituted in the act of aggression towards a common enemy (the 'alien'). It is precisely this constriction that makes the culture of friendship decline, and vice versa: it is this decline that seems to make any other way of life increasingly harder to imagine. However, if we are to resist the temptation of returning to the logic of clashing, violent particularisms and defend ourselves against fascist or fascistoid tendencies that appear on the political horizon, some kind of opening must occur, we must once again be able to experiment with new forms of being together, despite divisions resulting from territorial and cultural identities or family relations. What we need is a renaissance of the culture of friendship. Originally published in Poland, this edition from Zero Books is the first English language publication of In Praise of Friendship.

Author: Micha Herer
Publisher: Zero Books
Published: 03/01/2021
Pages: 112
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.45lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.40w x 0.30d
ISBN13: 9781789043891
ISBN10: 1789043891
BISAC Categories:
- Philosophy | Social
- Philosophy | Criticism
- Social Science | Anthropology | Cultural & Social

About the Author
Michal Herer is an assistant professor in the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Warsaw. He has been on research scholarships in Germany and France and held lectures at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. His 2006 doctoral dissertation Gilles Deleuze. Structures - Machines - Creations, received an award from the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education, and his essay on Friendship, published in Poland in 2017, won the Barbara Skarga Prize. Michal works as a translator of philosophical and sociological books from French and German into Polish. He lives in Warsaw Poland.