The Promise of Friendship : Fidelity Within Finitude

Argues that friendship is the gift of a world that is not one's own and that transforms one's world in unforseeable ways. Contents Acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction: Can One Write of Friendship? Chapter 1 At the Origins of Friendship: Initial Displacements The Dangers of Philotes Philia and the Polis Rereading Aristotle Otherwise Amicitia between Amor and Caritas Amicitia and the Kingdom of God The Origin of Philosophia: Heidegger on the Fall of Philein to Sophon Philosophia, Eros, and Grace Chapter 2 The Ethical Challenge of Friendship Ethics without Friendship? Friendship after Levinas: Beyond Presence The Singular Individual Encountering the Friend: Beyond Preference Encountering the Friend: Beyond Ethics Mutual Friendship Friendship without Ethics? Friendship between Singularity and Universality Chapter 3 Within Finitude, Bearing the Infinite Does Friendship Arise from Lack? Finitude as a Positive Good Finitude and Mutability Friendship as Transformation within Finitude Self-Sufficiency and Friendship in Plato’s Lysis Friendship’s Infinity: The Challenge of Impossible Fidelity Fidelity in Translation Infinity at the Heart of Finitude Fidelity at the Heart of Failure Chapter 4 The Writing of Friendship: Reading Proust’s In Search of Lost Time Friendship versus Art The Force of Eros Friendship versus Eros The Dangerous Friendship of Writing Writing and Linguistic Hospitality Involuntary Memory and the Dispossession of the Self The Fidelity of Translation Writing to the Friend Chapter 5 Fidelity in the Dark: On Presence and Knowledge Being-There-For Fidelity in Separation Knowing the Other through Empathy: Edith Stein’s Account On Not-Knowing and Knowing the Other The Beginning of Philosophy Discerning in the Dark Chapter 6 The Creation of Impossible Friendship The Promise of Fidelity as the Ground of the Self The Self’s Creation through Friendship On the Friend’s Absolute Alterity The Promise as Origin Destruction and Creation in Translation The Fidelity of Unfaithful Translations The Fidelity and Infidelity of Memory To the Unknowable Friend Conclusion: Risking Friendship in the Twenty-First Century Friendship and the Facebook Friend Beyond Calculation Notes Bibliography Index The Promise of Friendship investigates what makes friendship possible and good for human beings. In dialogue with authors ranging from Aristotle and Montaigne to Proust, Levinas, and Derrida, Sarah Horton argues that friendship is suited to our finitude—that is, to the limits within which human beings live—and proposes a novel understanding of friendship as translation: friends translate the world for each other so that each one experiences the world not as the other does but in light of the friend's always-unknowable experience. The very distance between friends that makes it impossible for them to know each other wholly also makes it possible for them to be transformed by friendship. Friendship, then, is possible and good for those who love precisely that they can never wholly know the friend. Friendship is a profound, mutual self-giving that highlights the irreplaceability of each person, fundamentally shapes the self, and is one of the greatest joys of human existence.