I've a piece on the Guardian's Cif about Cameron and Clegg, friendship and politics. A taster:

Immanuel Kant... believed that friendship was unethical. We don’t act according to moral laws when we act with our friends. We go on how we feel, our whims, or a sense of loyalty. To put it philosophically, friendship is not amenable to universalizable imperatives, precisely because it is partial. If the golden rule is to do to all others as you would have them do to you, friendship contravenes it. Your friend will do far more for you than they’d do for others. Kant went so far as to say that there would be no friendship in heaven, it being a place of moral perfection.

For many today, their dearest are far from being their nearest. Professor Ray Pahl, co-author of Rethinking Friendship, has given the 2008 Eila Campbell lecture at Birkbeck College, London, outlining the complex shifts in society that have led some to feel far less closely identified with their local community than with a very widely dispersed circle of friends and family.

This means that when ‘work rich, time poor’ middle class people move into the pleasanter parts of our towns and cities, they naturally exercise their considerable powers of choice as to how they become involved in the communities around them and often focus their efforts on, say, such matters as to do with the education of their children. Their connection to their place of residence is therefore at least as much instrumental as it is affective.

To put it another way, they gravitate towards ‘people like us’, or PLUs as sociologists put it. As one study of Telegraph Hill in London noted, residents welcome newcomers as long as they are of the ‘right-minded type’. The study continued: ‘there is a lot of genuflection to diversity and difference but it is much more of a kind of checklist of political correctness that, although present in the area, in no way intrudes on respondents’ lives’.

Which is not say that there is no evidence of social support and mutuality amongst PLUs. Whilst not exactly popping in to borrow a cup of sugar, a new arrival to Telegraph Hill once enquired: ‘does anybody need an au pair, we have two’.

That geographical proximity does not imply social cohesion, and may in fact nurture precisely the opposite, has serious ramifications for the civic duties that the government is now linking to citizenship, focused as they are on local voluntary participation. As Professor Pahl said: ‘Even if the colonizers had the time and inclination to behave as a latter day gentry, they now seem to be deterred by the sheer otherness of those in close proximity to them.’ The paradox is that it is the government’s stress on choice that has led to such social silos: ‘The aspirational middle class has been supported by successive governments to exercise more choice. However, the more effectively they seem to exercise such choice, the more they end up in communities of PLUs.’

Against the backdrop of the debate about immigration and citizenship, this important, perhaps determining, factor in the fragmentation of local communities is often lost. Instead, the burden of belonging falls onto groups that are less able to exercise choice, such as working class immigrants. Thus it is said that migrants will have to demonstrate their integration into the local community by engaging in activities from charity fundraising events to running a local sports team.

But can we really expect them to be less time-squeezed? Are they likely to be any less pressured by the demands of the labour market? And what has the government got to say to the aspiring middle classes who can show such little interest in ‘effective and inclusive community partnership’ unless it, say, increases the social capital of their children?

‘One is led to the suspicion, or even the fear, that the (government) sees active communities as a form of social control that will help to keep the lower orders quiescent and better behaved,’ Professor Pahl concluded. ‘If we are truly to come to terms with the idea of community in contemporary society, where mobility, choice and aspiration are widely encouraged, we must build on the reality of people’s personal communities… The (government) idea of community appears to be more for those without choice who have not yet acquired the means for elective belonging.’

My article Civic friendship and the third term has been published in the delayed Think 15, the periodical of the Institute of Philosophy. (So excuse the slightly dated references to Blair not Brown.) A taster:

... if the Labour government is serious about respect, and thus about civic friendship, then the philosophy suggests it needs to commit itself to a wide variety of social and political issues, from closing the gap between rich and poor, and a widespread promotion of life-engaging culture, arts and sport, to ensuring that the economy works for individuals and society, not individuals and society for the economy. Now, that would be a radical political programme ??" perhaps too late for Blair but one to which his successor might warm.

The complete article is available as a pdf here.

I have lived in two communities in my life - communities in the sense of small groups of people, sharing a life with a purpose. The first was under a charismatic bishop, Peter Ball. My year in his community was one of ‘spiritual square-bashing’: we were up at 5am meditating and then following a roughly monastic pattern to the day. At the time for me it was excellent: demanding Christian commitment that was neither ethically prescriptive nor dogmatically rigid. For good or ill - and the bishop’s experiment in community did eventually unravel - it focused on denial of self and participation in the community, focused on the chapel.

The second community was less overtly demanding but still infused with a Christian ethos. For many years, four people lived in a large, very attractive, if slightly run-down, house - looking after each other and leading their separate working lives rather as sisters and brother. For periods of months or years (I was there 5 years) came people to live with them when their work or life brought them to London and they wanted to live a shared life. It involved cooking, cleaning and compassion for each other; the ethos was as much practical as idealistic. It worked, I think, because of the stability brought by the core four.

I am profoundly grateful to both these communities and still sense something that I gave up by moving on from them - though I would count several of the people with whom I lived at those times as my closest friends to this day, and now sense something of being in a community again, living with my partner, though it has the very different dynamic of just two.

‘Utopian Dreams’ by Tobias Jones (Faber & Faber) is a fascinating and challenging account of the author’s life in five different communities over the course of a year. He says that he wanted to find or rediscover imagination not resignation, to not be cynical but idealistic. He also believes that Thatcher’s children have possibly never experienced a sense of community. Or to put it another way, that individualism has bumped idealism off - as if individual rights preclude communal aspirations.

He went to places where people live together because of necessity rather than choice - that is, they would not survive in the world but for their community. And he discovers that there are people living in non-materialist communities all around; living partially outside of mainstream consumerism.

Here is where his book becomes unsettling. Unlike the hippy communities of the 1960s, these communities are not about breaking the rules but obeying very strong rules - from being carbon neutral to consuming no alcohol. He says, though, that they are not reactionary.

What is striking is that he comes close to saying that the only communities that work are religious communities - not necessarily stridently religious communities, perhaps gently so; but with a distinct religious sentiment nonetheless (and Christian in his cases). He notes that this religiousness is different from political communities. The conclusion seems to be that any human society that doesn’t have a further, religious purpose flirts with failure, at least as far as its sense of community is concerned.

One possible root of the word religion is to bind together. And the connections between community and religion have long been noticed. For Durkheim religion is the consequence of community: orthodoxy and orthopraxis define and regulate communities. But Jones felt that actually community is a product of religion because community appears not to work if its sole purpose is to be a community. There has to be a realism, idealism and purpose to stay together - and these things are knit together in good religion.

Jones notes too that today religion is privatised: it is not just that shopping is the new religion but that religion is the new shopping. In fact even believers are often taken as a buyers (as in the spiritual detoxing industry or power of positive thinking/gospel of prosperity churches). The mobilisation of virtual communities - so that people travel to church - has eroded the communal sense of religion too. Even church-goers no longer have sacred canopies, as Peter Berger put it, but sacred umbrellas. And that can exacerbate the sense of isolation.

Jones is not religious; he is uncomfortable with Christianity and churches. But he sees that the church is like a swimming pool where all the noise is at the shallow end. He tries to go into the deep end - and, honestly, feels way out of his depth. He comes away from the book convinced that it is important to build community - the given communities around you as well as the ones that you can, to a degree, choose. Without it the consequences for society are epic.

The book’s conception of community is very striking when placed alongside the Aristotelian idea of the city-state (polis) that provides community - in the sense of togetherness and solidarity (koinonia). Aristotle certainly said that the aim of community is not just to live together, in the sense of having your needs provided for, say by markets. But it is to live together well, by finding happiness and fulfillment in a collective life with others.

I think he also recognised that communities need a higher purpose and idealism. This is what is captured in his use of the word friendship for the nature of communities. Friends find themselves in others - their friends - a first step out of the individualism of the self. And they find themselves best by together pursuing goals, aims and ideals that are beyond them all (unlike lovers who gaze into each others eyes, searching for a fulfillment solely in the other). This is partly why leaders have always been suspicious of friends: together they find a purpose that can overthrow institutions, even states (in the agora of ancient Athens the first statue ever erected of non-deities was one of two friends who were widely attributed with having overthrown a tyrant, bringing freedom and democracy).

Although Jones says that communities need to be religious and not political, I think that the Aristotelian account of the political is different from the modern that he implies, and so perhaps qualifies his thought. In the capitalist, political economy, citizens are treated as potential or actual rivals or enemies: the aim of politics is to manage and, where necessary, enforce cooperation. For Aristotle, the community was one of friendship - ideally at least, an idealism that has been lost not only with the competitiveness of capitalism but also, no doubt, with the conflicts of pluralism and the sheer voluminous scale of modern society. (Incidentally, this also explains why the workplace is not a very successful community, though people can undoubtedly feel very connected to their peers: for one thing, people’s reward for being there is not primarily a higher purpose, but profit and pay; and secondly, it is a community characterised by competitiveness.)

This is not to dismiss the challenge of the community-making power of religion, which I too find uncomfortable as an agnostic. I think, though, that Jones’ book is actually a challenge to the church-going religious of today too. It is questionable how much they live in community: perhaps because of the distance they live apart; perhaps because church-going is relatively undemanding - and where it is demanding, in more dogmatic churches, the demand is upon what you believe not what you practice - that is what you think, not what you do - and surely the doing is what counts for community.

According to an article in the New York Times, American's friendship with its allies in the war on terror is costly - perhaps too costly.

In May 2005 Congress created a $200 million Coalition Solidarity Fund. Estonia received $2.5 million to support 40 troops in Iraq and 80 in Afghanistan. Albania, with its 120 troops in Iraq and 35 in Afghanistan, received $6 million, as did the Czech Republic, which has 100 troops in Iraq and 60 in Afghanistan. Poland received $57 million, plus the cost of airlifting its 2,400 troops to Iraq.

All this cash flow leads Patricia Weitsman, a professor of political science at Ohio University, to make an argument for unilateralism: 'The United States should use coalition warfare when it reduces the costs of prosecuting war, not when it greatly increases them,' she says.

Or, of course, one could ask the obvious question: why is America having to pay so much for support from its friends?

I read that Tony Blair and David Cameron seem, when making speeches, to be talking with friends. This is the oratorical gift that Gordon Brown lacks.

Shakespeare: 'Most friendship is feigning.'

Online poll.

I always thought that the ancient Greeks would have thought the idea of having a friendship with God ridiculous; the gap between the divine and mortal spheres is simply too great. However, reading about Socrates' religion, it seems that the relationship between cities and their gods was commonly thought to be a friendship of sorts - a bit like political alliances; a citizen or city could make an offering to a god, perhaps of material goods or fidelity, and putting the god in its debt, would hope for, or even demand, support in some endeavour (usually war against a neightbour).

Incidentally, Socrates was against this notion of bargaining with gods, for the same reason he rejected the idea that the gods could be fickle, argumentative and malign. What good is a god that is not good? But then, that also appears to put friendship with such a god out of reach, since, being a god, his or her goodness must be supremely so in all respects - not just morally but in terms of, say, intellect too. That makes them seem rather lonely beings.

Political friendship is, I tend to think, an unconvincing conjunction of words. So, on the day of the former British foreign secretary Robin Cook's funeral, it is good to read that his successor, Jack Straw says: 'Robin and I had been good friends for nearly 30 years and that friendship survived our policy disagreements over Iraq.' Straw says he is 'devastated' by Cook's death. I believe him.

America's Senator John McCain says that a quid pro quo is not the basis of (political) friendship. Well, it is true that Aristotle said the scales do not take centre place in friendship. But he was referring to scales that measure money. When it comes other qualities respected between friends, notably virtues like judgement, it seems to me that a quid pro quo is perfectly fitting. Blair trusted Bush's judgement on Iraq. Is it not time that Bush trusts Blair's judgement on climate change? Surely, such a move would be a reflection of friendship. That Bush will not move is to my mind just more proof of the shallow nature of political friendship.

There is a lot of talk about friendship in Europe in the papers this morning. The basic point is that following the acrimonious bust-up at the European summit, a lot more of it is needed, particularly between Blair and Chirac. For example, it is said that Blair will need as many friends in Europe as possible if he is to make anything of his 6 months as president of the European Union, starting July. Alternatively, it is noted that Chirac and Schroeder pulled off a 24 to 1 pact against Blair over reform of the European budget, isolating him in the European playground. But when the politicians and the press talk about friendship in politics, do they really mean just allies or partners? What extra thing does a friendship add? Presumably, it would oil the wheels of negotiation with personal affection. Or, more negatively, political friends might come together because they have a common political enemy. But the friendship only lasts as long as the mutual advantage does. So, a few years back, it was widely reported in the press that Tony Blair's son gave Jacques Chirac a picture as a present; a perfect image of personal friendship. Now, they are spitting fury at one another, not in the way that Blair and Brown do (who fight but only because their past and futures are bound up with one another), but as political enemies (both Chirac and Blair are counting the days until they depart the European stage). Or as Andrew Rawnsley has it, in today's Observer, Blair 'has never been one to let a past friendship get in the way of making a new ally'. In other words, it is right to be cynical about the rhetoric of friendship in politics. The political imperative always trounces the demands of amity. Friendship is to politics what hospitality is to business: relational vaseline.