Mary Wollstonecraft on Politics and Friendship
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2007.00670.x |
| Author | Elizabeth Frazer |
| Published date | 01 March 2008 |
| Date | 01 March 2008 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Mary Wollstonecraft on Politics and
Friendship
Elizabeth Frazer
New College Oxford
How, exactly, might friendship be relevant to politics? Friendship between political actors can be
hypothesised to havespecific effects; friendship between individuals in society can be hypothesised to have
specific political outcomes; or friendship and politics can be understood to be conceptually connected.
Mary Wollstonecraft makes friendship a central concept in her political theory of social justice and good
government. This article analyses how politics and friendship are related in her texts, exploring her
arguments that friendship in society is a condition of just government, but also suggesting that for
Wollstonecraftfr iendship and citizenship are congruent with one another,and hence that the connection
between politics and friendship is conceptual as well as causal.
There is an extensive and growing contemporary literature in political theory and
philosophy regarding friendship in relation to political power and public life. I aim
in this article to make a limited contribution to those now wide-ranging debates,
responding in particular to the puzzle about what, exactly, the relationship is of
friendship between individuals at the level of personal dyadic or network rela-
tions, and stable, flourishing, just government and political life. I propose here to
set out Mary Wollstonecraft’s complex response to that question.Fr iendship is,of
course, only one out of many notable themes in her political philosophy and
moral vision, although it is one that, on my reading, is more prominent than
readers of commentary on and criticism of her work might gather it to be.1I aim
to show how significant ‘fr iendship’ is to Wollstonecraft’s political theory of
justice and citizenship, and how it is also a crux in her fiction.
To begin, and in order to frame the analysis of Wollstonecraft’s texts that follows,
I shall set out a range of possible ways politics and friendship might be related.
Friendship, we can take it, is a relationship centred on affect, which involves
goodwill and sociability.2First, we can think of ‘political’ as a modifier of
‘friendship’; political friendship is simply one species of fr iendship. Following
Aristotle, we may distinguish between kinds of friendship according to who are,
or perhaps the roles of, the parties – fellow citizens, fellow voyagers, lovers, or
parent and child,even states (Aristotle, 1934, 1161b15, 1157a25–30)3– as well as
according to the quality of the exchange which is the basis for the friendship:
utility, pleasure or virtue (Ar istotle, 1934, 1156a–1156b).‘Political fr iendship’ then
is just the friendliness between fellow citizens, or between people in other
political roles, such as fellow party members, or candidates for office. There are
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2007.00670.x
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2008 VOL 56, 237–256
© 2007The Author.Jour nal compilation © 2007 Political StudiesAssociation
two matters for further inquiry here – the nature of these friendships as such, and
their relationship with and effects on other political phenomena.4
Second, it can be hypothesised, or argued, that friendship is instrumental for, or
causally connected with, republican, liberal democratic or otherwise virtuous
politics. Individuals who value friendship, and conduct themselves well as friends,
will be people who make good citizens of republican or democratic states –
sociable, open, with a capacity for critical loyalty. And social formations – soci-
eties, networks, organisations – based on friendship relations are more likely to be
governable by and to participate effectively in democratic or republican polities,
by contrast with organisations, networks and societies based on hierarchical
authoritarian relations, on patronage or patriarchy. According to Aristotle, in the
polis citizens desire to live together for the sake of living together and well – the
polis is not simply a market, nor mere coexistence in a territory – and this
friendliness is the basis for concord (Aristotle, 1932, 1280b35–1281a; 1934,
1155a).5
The third and fourth possible relationships are variants on this causal model. It
can, third, be argued the other way round, that liberal ‘democratic’ states and
commercial societies both generate and demand particular patterns and kinds of
friendship. Associated particularly with thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment,
the idea is that because ‘colleagues in office, partners in trade’ need the coopera-
tion of other s (Smith, 1970 [1776], pp. 118–9; 2002 [1759], p. 263), civility,
friendliness, egalitarian attitudes, and the capacity and inclination to interact
sociably are materially rewarding in open and market-based societies,so that the
‘self-interested commerce of man ... does not entirely abolish the more generous
and noble intercourse of friendship and good offices’ (Hume,1962/72 [1739/40],
p. 249). Critics of market society, by contrast, argue that competitive economic
relations drive out and destroy the bonds of trust,civility and concer n for others
that support true friendship.6
By contrast, fourth, it can be hypothesised that the effects of friendship are
morally and politically negative – because friendship is a particularist relationship
it equates to the factional and inimical aspect of politics; to competition and
rivalry,at best, and to the corruption of public resources and decision-making, at
worst. Law and justice, both premised on universally applicable values and
principles, on impartial application of rule, are the mechanisms for peaceful living
together. Friendship, accordingly, should be privatised, and its direct impact on
political and public life minimised. Concomitantly, the rivalry and hostility of
political life should not be allowed to destroy the intimate and lasting bonds of
personal friendship.7
Fifth, though, it might be thought that there is a deeper, conceptual (rather than
causal) connection between the two. Friendship just is a political relationship in
contradistinction to the deeply personal and involuntary nature of kinship,and to
the highly impersonal and legally enforced nature of market exchanges. In
238 ELIZABETH FRAZER
© 2007The Author.Jour nal compilation © 2007 Political StudiesAssociation
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2008, 56(1)
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