Schedule 9th International Degrowth Conference

The objective of my paper is to show how a contemporary account of political friendship could provide the ethical grounding and contribute to the realization of an economy in the service of human flourishing. I start from the fact of the lack of friendship in the public sphere as this is reflected in the huge economic inequalities in contemporary capitalist societies, and I argue for the need for conceiving an alternative economy that would enable citizens to see and treat one another as friends and develop a harmonious relation with nature. The Aristotelian political friendship incorporating genuine concern for the others’ well-being could allow us to identify the pathology of the capitalist market economy and envision a socially and ecologically sustainable future. Hence, I update the Aristotelian principle of political friendship by developing a primordial conception of the good life and I explore economic proposals, such as market socialism and Otto Neurath’s associational socialism which are compatible with the content of my account of political friendship. Then I turn to the degrowth environmental movement which by proposing the downscaling of economic production and the abandonment of empty materialism, in effect, favours the instinctual substratum of political friendship namely human sociality, and I maintain that the call for genuine political – economic praxis that political friendship encapsulates could enable the degrowth movement to retain its radical character and establish an economy that affirms life.

Info

Day: 2023-08-30
Start time: 12:30
Duration: 00:15
Room: ZV-8-2
Type: Paper Presentation
Theme: Degrowth as a political project?

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