Philia

// parler des autres, penser avec eux, poursuivre la discussion //

φιλία : friendship – “It is hard for us to understand the political relevance of friendship. When, for example, we read in Aristotle that philia, friendship among citizens, is one of the fundamental requirements for the well-being of the City, we tend to think that he was speaking of no more than the absence of factions and civil war within it. But for the Greeks the essence of friendship consisted in discourse. They held that only the constant interchange of talk united citizens in a polis. In discourse the political importance of friendship, and the humanness peculiar to it, were made manifest. This converse (in contrast to the intimate talk in which individuals speak about themselves), permeated though it may be by pleasure in the friend’s presence, is concerned with the common world, which remains ‘inhuman’ in a very literal sense unless it is constantly talked about by human beings.” [Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times]