دانلود کتاب سیاست دوستی در اندیشه افلاطون و ارسطو

The political reality of our time is influenced by so-called “fake news” and “alternate facts” in ways that are threatening our very conceptions of reality and truth.1 One might also raise the question of how these phenomena affect both politics and friendship. Even though lies, false rumours, and disinformation have existed since the very first human being whispered an untruth to another, there is something new about what is happening in our societies today. New digital platforms have taken over the role of the agora, or the deliberative public sphere liberal democracies have placed as central to their societies. Generative language models are spewing out information, regardless of truth or with the intention of spreading disinformation. Deepfakes are already affecting political outcomes (Adjer et al. 2019) and are, as formulated, already “interacting in toxic ways with our cognitive biases” (Citron and Chesney 2019). As M. Mitchell Waldrop points out: “today’s technologies, with their elaborate infrastructures for uploading, commenting, liking, and sharing, have created an almost ideal environment for manipulation and abuse—one that arguably threatens any sense of shared truth” (Waldrop 2017, 12,632). The dangers this represents to modern democracies have become evident and thematized, for instance, in the wake of the election in the USA in 2016 and 2024.2 The way in which social media contributes to creating the so-called filter bubbles and echo chambers contributes to ensconce people within different and to a degree separate, news worlds, where the depiction of reality can vary vividly.3 As Eric Jardine claims: “While democracy requires the free exchange of information and ideas, filter bubbles tend to isolate users” (Jardine 2019, 34). The more isolated each member of the society becomes, and the less concrete physical encounters occur between inhabitants of a political community, the less opportunities for them to create friendship between each other will emerge. This is a political problem. It is also a problem connected to friendship and the way in which this has a bearing on the political. Jardine indicates three ways in which the problems that fake news, filter bubbles, and echo chambers represent to democracy can be met.4 The third of these is the one most relevant in connection with the politics of friendship, but let us briefly mention the first two, as well. The first is to reduce the amount of fake news a population is being subjected to. Regulation of social media may be a possible tool in this regard. However, in a democracy, where freedom of speech is a highly regarded and protected value, such a solution will necessarily be limited. Some utterances will fall outside of the range protected by freedom of speech and may consequently be stopped by regulations and laws, but everything that contributes to creating echo chambers and alternate understandings of reality cannot be stopped in this way. The population will be exposed to some of it. The second measure is to build up the resistance in the population towards fake news, to enhance the immunity of the herd towards the phenomena, so to speak. The question is how to achieve this, and what may serve as such a precautionary measure or vaccine against false news and the propagation of alternate, untrue depictions of reality.5 The third way to address the problem is to present counter narratives that argue the truth. This implies imparting true stories that may serve as a correction to the false notions and opinions circulating through society. However, the effect of such counter narratives depends upon the trust of the ones who are supposed to be listening to this, towards the sources that offer such truths. The challenge, then, is how to get people to be willing to listen to that which is being communicated. This is where the importance of friendship may become apparent. If friendship is an important element in building trust in a society, then strengthening the bonds of friendship may be a key to securing the future of the political foundations of democracy. One aspect of social media is that it, at least in part, contributes to creating a more hostile environment. Bullying and degrading comments and unfriendly interactions appear to be more conducive to these media than to in-person communication. If this is the case, and it also is the case that young people today spend less time interacting with their peers in the flesh and spend more time online, this may not be advantageous for the development of their ability to partake of the camaraderie of true friendship. And if it is the case that competence in camaraderie and friendship is connected to creating trust and laying a foundation for becoming a good citizen, this is a problem for the political realm. However, it may be argued, contrary to this more positive view on the significance of friendship for politics, that friendship may lead to corruption and thereby represents a threat to the political community. Friendship may thus be discussed both as an important and, to a certain degree, necessary part of forming and strengthening a political community, but also as something that may act as a detrimental force in society. Civic friendship, which is indeed needed in a democratic society, appears to not be amenable with all forms of friendship. The question of how the various forms of friendship affect not merely civic friendship, but also the political community as such, is something that several chapters in volume discuss in diverse ways. Moving back in time, to ancient Athens, we find examples of how specific relations between human beings who know each other and are friends are described as paramount, not merely for the search for truth, but for the political life in the city-state. This is evident, for instance, in the way Socrates is portrayed by Plato in his dialogues. Here, Socrates is constantly and consistently described as partaking of dialogue with particular persons, as a rule in a face-to-face encounter, with one concrete, specific person at a time. That is to say, there is an inherent element of something profoundly personal, in the form of an individual, particular relationship, in these encounters. This differs in significant ways from the impersonal possibilities opened by our digital world of social media. And even if the encounters between Socrates and his interlocutors may be agonistic and even hostile at times, this banter takes a different form from the anonymous trolling that internet fora make possible. Nonetheless, also in Ancient Greece they were aware of the potential danger of friendship towards the political unit of the citystate. Aristotle, for instance, discusses examples where friendship, with the responsibilities this involves towards our friends, is at odds with our obligations towards the larger political community to which we belong, as Marilù Papandreou describes in her contribution to this volume. Another way to contribute to strengthening the immunity towards the current widening political divide that the development of echo chambers and groups within society that relates to widely different and increasingly more separate depictions of reality creates is to reinforce and accentuate what may serve as a foundational ground for dialogue. What may then serve as such a shared common ground? One factor that can serve as a joint foundation in this respect is the collective tradition that a community is part of. In the Western democracies this is a tradition that stretches back into the ancient Greek world. Or to put this in other words, history plays a part in such a project. Granted this, going back to Plato and Aristotle and considering what they have to say about friendship and politics and the ways in which these two are connected, may serve a double purpose, in that they also form a vital part of the tradition to which our democratic societies belong.