TY  - JOUR
TI  - Gadamer on Friendship and Solidarity: The Increase in Being in Communal Human Life
T2  - The Russian Sociological Review
IS  - The Russian Sociological Review
KW  - Gadamer
KW  - philosophical hermeneutics
KW  - friendship
KW  - solidarity
KW  - increase in being
KW  - understanding
KW  - practical philosophy
AB  - This article discusses Gadamer’s conception of friendship as a part of his draft of a conception of practical philosophy. His starting point is Greek philosophy, specifically Plato’s and Aristotle’s views on friendship. He adds significant nuances to the understanding of friendship that were first laid down in his doctrine of philosophical hermeneutics. It allows him to place the notion of friendship in the context of modern philosophical debate and social criticism, and thus to make an original contribution to the discussion. Gadamer understands friendship as a necessarily reciprocal struc-ture. He emphasizes the fact that only reciprocity or a kind of relation to someone other than "me" can serve as a suffi-cient basis for the explanation of the possibility of a community, as opposed to neo-Kantian and a phenomenological adherence to self-consciousness. The notion of friendship is closely connected to the notion of solidarity. The first one is considered as a more universal and thus grounding type of interpersonal communication, whereas natural solidarity is a specific kind of bond that can grow into the true friendship. Furthermore, friendship is seen as an accession of being (Zuwachs an Sein) from a teleological point of view, i.e., the true friendship is a contribution to and the realization of life. The outcome of this practice cannot be differentiated from its process.
AU  - Alexandra Makurova
UR  - https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2016-15-4/199669921.html
PY  - 2016
SP  - 146-161
VL  - 15