3 - Fellowship’s Forefather

Summary

Chapter 2 concluded that liberal democracy must be supported by a sense of unity that is oriented toward the preservation of liberal democracy and that does not suppress difference and disagreement. Chapter 3 explores what this unity ought to look like by engaging with Aristotle’s notion of political friendship. For Aristotle, citizens who belong to different factions are political friends when they share a commitment to preserve the regime, provided that the regime is “correct” or not excessively “deviant.” The chapter determines that the unity we seek should assume the form of a culture of trust where citizens believe that their fellow citizens probably value the continuation of their civic relationship, where citizens share a commitment to liberal democracy, and where they can nonetheless debate the meaning of equality and justice. Such trust, however, faces an initiation problem by virtue of presupposing a broad commitment to liberal democracy. This chapter concludes that citizens must either first develop a preliminary sense of trust on top of something other than a commitment to liberal democracy or be able to contribute to liberal democratic trust without realizing it.