http://cnc.sagepub.

com/
Capital & Class
http://cnc.sagepub.com/content/37/3/477
The online version of this article can be found at:

DOI: 10.1177/0309816813505282
2013 37: 477 Capital & Class
Felix Berenskoetter
Friendship matters

Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com
On behalf of:

Conference of Socialist Economists

can be found at: Capital & Class Additional services and information for

http://cnc.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Email Alerts:

http://cnc.sagepub.com/subscriptions Subscriptions:
http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Reprints:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Permissions:

http://cnc.sagepub.com/content/37/3/477.refs.html Citations:

What is This?

- Oct 9, 2013 Version of Record >>

by Pepe Portillo on July 12, 2014 cnc.sagepub.com Downloaded from by Pepe Portillo on July 12, 2014 cnc.sagepub.com Downloaded from
Capital & Class
37(3) 477 525
The Author(s) 2013
Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0309816813505282
c&c.sagepub.com
Extended book
reviews
Friendship matters
Graham M. Smith
Friendship and the Political: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Schmitt, Imprint
Academic: Charlottesville, VA, 2011; 264 pp: 9781845402464,
17.95 (pbk)
Reviewed by Felix Berenskoetter, SOAS, University of London
Graham Smith has written a valuable book exploring the place of friendship in the work
of thinkers ranging from Plato to Carl Schmitt. The tasks the book sets for itself are, first,
to review ancient and modern accounts of friendship as part of a discussion of political
life and second, to open space for thinking about the connection between friendship and
the political. With this agenda, the book belongs to an emerging literature in social and
political theory that re-engages the phenomenon of friendship to correct the view that it
is a purely private and personal matter, at best irrelevant to the social order, and at worst,
a danger to it. Instead, the tenor of this literature is that friendship matters greatly for
understanding social life and for thinking about political community (see King and
Devere 2000; Von Heyking and Avramenko 2008. Hutter 1978 drew attention to this
link decades earlier).
This is an important agenda because, as Smith points out, friendship has been
neglected, if not ignored, by Western thinkers of modernity. Given this, the books aim
to discern modern transformations of friendship seems counterintuitive, and certainly
makes the reader curious. This curiosity is also fostered by Smiths ambition to trace the
link between friendship and the political across the works of thinkers as profound and
diverse as Plato, Aristotle, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Schmitt. My expertise on these
theorists is not sufficient to evaluate the accuracy of Smiths reading of them; but in any
case, the interesting question is what we can take from the books presentation of their
engagement with friendship. The short answer is: a lot. While I am not sure the book
fully meets its stated objectives, it offers a rich array of thoughtful insights about friend-
ship, emerging from very different bodies of work in a clear and concise (although some-
times a bit too definite) writing style.
The two opening chapters offer a discussion of Plato and Aristotle, respectively. This
is a sensible choice given the central role friendship plays in the writing of ancient Greek
thinkers. These chapters review how Plato and Aristotle grappled with fundamental
questions of what friendship is, why it exists, and in what sense humans find it useful;
that is, what need it satisfies, and how it supports political life. This discussion not only
505282CNC37310.1177/0309816813505282Capital & ClassExtended book reviews
2013
by Pepe Portillo on July 12, 2014 cnc.sagepub.com Downloaded from
478 Capital & Class 37(3)
serves as a reminder of the importance and complexity of pre-modern thinking on the
topic, but also allows Smith to introduce and evaluate some basic approaches to concep-
tions of friendship and the political. In brief, the Plato chapter puts forward the notion
of friends being attracted to a shared sense of the good, allowing for a harmonious life in
the polis by those able to see this good. This conception informs many accounts of
friendship, yet as Smith reminds us here, it also risks creating a closed sense of unity
among friends, with the potential to underwrite elitist and totalitarian views of order.
Aristotles account is more nuanced. Indeed, his careful engagement with multiple forms
of friendship and the ways friends can be useful to each other arguably makes him still
the most profound thinker on the topic. For Smith, the most promising Aristotelian
account is not the true and intimate friendship amongst the virtuous, but the political
friendship amongst citizens of the polis, marked by equality and revolving around the
concord of a shared constitution. He also usefully points out two (related) weaknesses of
Aristotles otherwise rich discussion, namely its over-emphasis on shared activity and the
neglect of emotional bonds underpinning friendship.
Against this backdrop, the book embarks on its main task of discussing modern
transformations of theorising friendship. Smith first turns to Kierkegaard, and uses the
chapter to juxtapose (1) friendship as a particular and personal, or purely human rela-
tionship, with (2) bonds created through spiritual commitment to a broader, metaphys-
ical order specifically the belief in a Christian God. As Smith points out, Kierkegaard
champions the latter; that is, he considers the indirect connection through Christianity
a superior way of creating lasting friendly relations with others, because they are less reli-
ant on personal qualities but based on and mediated through the belief in something
higher, universal and eternal, which even allows for the possibility of loving the dead. In
Smiths account of Kierkegaards critique of friendship as a direct and personal relation-
ship, three aspects stand out. First, the notion of friendship as an eternal bond between
humans is an ideal that cannot be reached, because it involves a relationship between
complex, imperfect and incomplete beings that are subject to change. He seems espe-
cially skeptical about friendship as an emotional bond, since feelings cannot be chosen
or controlled. Second, for Kierkegaard, attachment to a friend is not based on an evalu-
ation of the other person as a whole but is selective, limited to particular qualities we like
and which we might even project onto the friend. Finally, the chapter throws a skeptical
light on the role of reciprocity in friendship, and argues that the desire to claim or pos-
sess the other and the expectation of a return of feelings of friendship is a selfish move (p.
110). These criticisms are insightful, yet as Smith notes, they also are informed by
Kierkegaards view that a relationship that fails to place God at the centre is unable to
bring spiritual fulfillment and is, thus, incomplete.
Sharing some of Kierkegaards insights, yet taking them in a different direction, the
chapter on Nietzsche provides the richest discussion. To begin with, it shows that think-
ing about friendship is tied up with the personal experience of the theorist. Smith notes
how Nietzsches initial consideration of friendship was followed by disillusionment and
an intellectual shift into an existential landscape dominated by solitude. In analytical
terms, Smith shows that Nietzsches views of friendship are complex and ambivalent. His
rejection of absolute truth and embrace of a perspectivist stance produces a reading of
the self and the world as multiple and without a central core. Hence, for Nietzsche,
friendship is not about sharing some core qualities, but about the mutual discovery of
by Pepe Portillo on July 12, 2014 cnc.sagepub.com Downloaded from
Extended book reviews 479
different aspects of (self ) knowledge. In this current, and complementing an analysis of
friendship in the narrative of Thus Spake Zarathustra, the chapter highlights two useful
images of friendship deployed by Nietzsche: friendship as a circle; and friendship as a
ladder (pp. 147-56). The notion of the circle, only briefly sketched out by Smith,
describes a constellation in which multiple friends or friendships revolve around a centre,
complementing each other. Smith spends more time on the notion of the ladder, which
depicts friendship as a relationship of (mutual) learning, as well as of transformation and
departure. That is, it suggests that a stage may be reached at which the friendship has lost
its value and is overcome. One reason may be that the friend cannot contribute any
further to the growth of (self ) knowledge. Another, as Smith points out, is that the friend
who gains a deeper understanding of the Self may come to expose tawdry or repulsive
knowledge, which generates disillusionment and leads to the dissolution of friendship (p.
140). This logic of friendship having a destabilising effect seems almost tragic, and is
certainly counterintuitive. Yet in Smiths account, it logically follows from Nietzsches
view that friends initial attraction to each other is based on deception, and that in an
aversion to the Ancient ideal, the best friendship is inherently unstable (p. 154).
The chapter on Schmitt is the shortest, and this is no coincidence. While Schmitt
famously claims that the friend/enemy distinction lies at the heart of political decision-
making, Smith acknowledges that he says little of substance on the friend (p. 190).
Given this use of the friend as an empty category (p. 192), one may wonder why Smith
bothers to engage with Schmitt. To his credit, he justifies this not by trying to recon-
struct a meaning of friendship that Schmitt did not provide. Instead, he points to the
relevance of Schmitts use of the friend as a polemical structuring device for his broader
argument about the nature of the political, and, ultimately, his agenda of creating politi-
cal unity by dividing social relations into Us (friends) and Them (enemies). The dis-
tinction was, of course, Schmitts solution to the problem of the perceived cacophony
and internal division of the Weimar Republic. As Smith highlights, the friend is an
important category for Schmitt, since it has the functional purpose of transporting the
image of the nation and the state as constellations based on decisions of intense associa-
tion and disassociation. In this image, friendship is reduced to the act of identifying with
a particular community and the acceptance of being in conflict with Others. Because
the identification of the friend (alongside the enemy) is the ultimate political act, friends
are implicitly rendered a homogenous, friction-less community devoid of pluralism and
genuine political activity. Hence, while Smith credits Schmitt with bringing the rele-
vance of the friend into the public domain and, thus, to the attention of political theo-
rists, the analytical value of this reductionist account is dubious at best. And he rightly
warns that the notion of friendship as a relationship of intense unity, tied to acts of
opposition and violence, is ethically dangerous. Indeed, Schmitts use of the friend as a
polarising category has identity politics written all over it, yet it is not clear how such a
move can generate friendship at all. Thus, Smith concludes, Schmitts voice lures us to an
island where friendship meets its undoing, and Schmitt himself must be considered no
friend of friendship (p. 223).
As this truncated summary indicates, the book offers competent and insightful dis-
cussions of different facets of friendship. What is more, I am not aware of another work
that does so by engaging this particular group of thinkers, which makes it rather original
and a fine achievement. That said, one wishes Smith had carried some of the insights
by Pepe Portillo on July 12, 2014 cnc.sagepub.com Downloaded from
480 Capital & Class 37(3)
beyond the context of the respective thinkers and their work. Perhaps this is too much to
ask, but it points to a shortcoming of the book. Any project of this nature faces the chal-
lenge of not merely discussing thinkers side by side, but also of finding points of connec-
tion. This requires a compromise between, on the one hand, paying attention to the
intellectual and socio-political context within which each writer approaches the topic (of
friendship), while on the other, carving out general lines of thought, similarities and
areas of comparison. While the book does the former quite well, it is less successful in
linking the chapters and offering an overall analytical narrative to tie the book together.
This is visible in three ways. First, as interesting as the selection may be, the rationale
for engaging the three theorists composing the main part of the book is not entirely clear.
And it would have been useful if Smith had explained more carefully in what sense
Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Schmitt offer modern transformations; what this means for
the place of friendship in the project of modernity; and whether there are points of con-
nection with postmodern thought.
Second, the concern with the political and its link to theorising friendship is not
pursued throughout, or at least it is done very unevenly. The opening pages offer suf-
ficiently vague yet plausible definitions of the two key terms: friendship is defined as
a (multifaceted) bond between person and person, which falls into the domain of the
political, understood as dealing with the question of order and value in a world of
self and others. The first chapters on the Greeks engage this link through, for instance,
the issue of justice; yet the link then moves out of sight in the discussion of Kierkegaard
and Nietzsche. One reason may be the presentation, at least in parts, of bonds of
friendship as emotional bonds, as bonds of love. While this is a common view, the
book gives little guidance on whether and how to place love into a political theory of
friendship. The concern with the political takes centre stage in the Schmitt chapter,
but for reasons noted it does not (cannot) provide a link to a substantial theorisation
of friendship. Thus, by the time we arrive at the final chapter, the reader is not quite
sure what to make of the claim that friendship is coterminous with the political. The
one inhabits the space of the other: they are aspects of the same concern all forms
of politics are dependent on friendship (p. 226). Because these claims do not really
come alive in much of the analyses, the connecting thread goes missing. This is unfor-
tunate, as it also diminishes the books force in persuading political theorists to take
friendship seriously.
One also gets the impression, paradoxically, given the aim of the book, that the three
main chapters give only a lukewarm endorsement to the analytical and ethical value of
friendship. To be sure, each of the three thinkers recognises the relevance of friendship as
a means for self-discovery or selffulfillment, and thus as tied up with questions of ontol-
ogy and identity. And yet the overall tone emerging from the discussion is skeptical.
Kierkegaard rejects the notion of direct and personal friendship; Nietzsche comes across
as ambivalent and disillusioned; and Schmitt uses it as an empty category for forging
sovereignty through antagonism. For theorists of friendship, little that is positive seems
to come out of these modern transformations.
To clarify whether and why this might be the case, third, one wishes for a final
chapter pulling the main insights together under the common theme of friendship
and the political, tackling the difficulties and paradoxes head on. Smith presents a
final chapter, which does raise interesting issues of how friendship fares with tyranny,
by Pepe Portillo on July 12, 2014 cnc.sagepub.com Downloaded from
Extended book reviews 481
its relevance for identity, and the structure of the bonds holding friends together.
However as useful as these pointers are for expanding thought on friendship and
political community, it is not apparent how they flow out of the preceding discussion.
To be sure, these shortcomings do not diminish the value of presenting a rich discus-
sion of friendship in different bodies of thought, and perhaps it should be left to the
reader to draw the links. Similarly, some of the insights the book does not exploit,
such as Nietzsches view of friendship as a relationship of power, are still very useful
as invitations for further exploration.
Most importantly, perhaps, the book encourages a revisiting of the view that the
theoretical exploration of friendship died with Hobbes. Rather than assuming that theo-
ries of modernity are intellectual deserts when it comes to friendship, the book should
motivate us to probe how the theme is present in the work of other political theorists: we
might be surprised by what we find. One candidate would be Marx. Given his lifelong
friendship with Engels, Marx was obviously well aware of the experience and its produc-
tive power. And it is not difficult to envision the notion of friendship as intrinsic to the
notion of class solidarity and comradeship, where bonds are formed by the shared com-
mitment to, and striving towards, a communist order. At the same time, Marx might
have held that the (socialist) ideal of treating all persons as equals holds little space for
particular bonds of friendship. Furthermore, we should be probing the treatment of
friendship in non-Western thought. For instance, suspicion of intimate personal ties as
subverting and corrupting the order of things is also found in neo-Confucianism, where
friendship is considered harmonious only if it is supportive of hierarchical structures of
the family and the state (see Kutcher 2000). The Confucian view of emotional ties as
dangerous to hierarchy fits, in turn, Aristotles insight that friendship is the one relation-
ship capable of overcoming formal inequalities, hinting at interesting parallels in Eastern
and Western thought.
Many insights presented in this book can also be fruitfully applied to our understand-
ing of transnational ties. While scholars of International Relations have analysed trans-
national ties for a while, only recently have they begun to look at them as possible
phenomena of friendship (see Berenskoetter 2007; Oelsner and Vion 2011). Smith does
not address this here (though he does elsewhere: see Smith 2011), yet once we view
friendship as a force capable of constituting or contesting ideas of order within a political
community, there is no reason to stop looking for it at the national level. Kierkegaards
notion of universal neighbourly bonds finds its echoes in liberal cosmopolitanism and
ideas of global citizenship. Nietzsches notion of the circle and the ladder might also be
applied to configurations and developments in inter-state relations; and the friend/
enemy distinction as a tool for unifying a particular community is, unfortunately, a
familiar sight in foreign policies around the world. So there is much to explore. And,
who knows, theorists of world politics might even come up with their own (post)modern
transformations of the theme.
References
Berenskoetter F (2007) Friends, there are no friends? An intimate reframing of the international.
Millennium: Journal of International Studies 35(3): 64776.
Hutter H (1978) Politics as Friendship. Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.
King P, Devere H (eds.) (2000) The Challenge of Friendship to Modernity. London: Routledge.
by Pepe Portillo on July 12, 2014 cnc.sagepub.com Downloaded from
482 Capital & Class 37(3)
Kutcher N (2000) The fifth relationship: Dangerous friendships in the Confucian context.
American Historical Review 105(5): 161529.
Oelsner A, Vion A (eds.) (2011) Special issue on Friendship in International Relations.
International Politics 48(1).
Smith G (2011) Friendship and the world of states. International Politics, 48(1): 1027.
Von Heyking J, Avramenko R (eds.) (2008) Friendship and Politics: Essays in Political Thought.
Indiana, USA: University of Notre Dame Press.
Author biography
Felix Berenskoetter is a lecturer in international relations at SOAS, University of London. He
specialises in international theory; concepts of identity, friendship, and power; politics of space and
time; and European security and transatlantic relations. Felix has published articles on these sub-
jects in various outlets, is a former editor of Millennium: Journal of International Studies, and co-
editor of Power in World Politics (Routledge, 2007). He is co-founder and current chair of the
theory section of the International Studies Association (ISA).
Valuing the value of Marx
George Henderson
Value in Marx: The Persistence of Value in a More-Than-Capitalist
World, University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, 2013; 208 pp:
9780816680955, 50.50 (hbk)
Reviewed by Noel Castree, University of Manchester, UK
George Hendersons monograph is the latest addition to a steady stream of books
designed to demonstrate the enduring relevance of Marxs thinking. Many of these
publications are for aficionados Fredric Jamesons Representing Capital (2011), for
example though not a few are targeted at general reader, a signal example being
Terry Eagletons Was Marx Right? (2011a). They appear at a time in which far more
people are receptive to the name Marx than might have been the case 25 years ago,
a moment when actually-existing communism collapsed overnight, and free-market
capitalism seemed to be the only game in town. Writing ten years later, in the wake
of the fin-de-millennium anti-globalisation protests, Randy Martin asserted that cap-
italisms problems augur Marxs perpetual return (2002: xix). Had these problems
disappeared during the 1990s, arguably the first decade since Marxs death in which
his ideas no longer seemed serviceable to a large number of erstwhile radicals?
Certainly not. Ever present, they manifested spectacularly in 2008-9, leaving a myr-
iad of major economies in recession, and saddled with huge debts as well as large
unemployment rolls. Unsurprisingly, the financial crisis and its aftermath have
reopened the age-old question of whose ideas get to count. The political economic
instability and fragility defining the present moment has given Marxs writings,
already rescued from a decade of relative obscurity by authors like Martin, an extended
opportunity to return from exile so that a younger generation of analysts and activists
might benefit from them.
by Pepe Portillo on July 12, 2014 cnc.sagepub.com Downloaded from