Die Dynamik der Freundschaft

This project contributes to elucidating the modern Western understanding of friendship in its historicity and its positioning within tradition. The objects of this analysis are the conceptions posited by the early modern moralists Michel de Montaigne, François de La Rochefoucauld, and Nicolas Chamfort. The analysis of these conceptions, which are interpreted in respect to each author's overall philosophical outline, shows that the conception of friendship is dynamized in a singular way by moralist thought. Thus a tendency of modern Western philosophical, sociological, and psychological discourse seems to be prefigured in the conceptions of the moralists - to look at friendship as a dynamic, dialogically open phenomenon that is as individual as it is constellative, and therefore cannot be fully grasped by reflection or theory. Accordingly, the analysis focuses finally on a contemporary philosopher who can be regarded as a legitimate descendant of the moralist tradition - Michel Foucault. In his concept of friendship the dynamization that is already implied in moralist conceptions appears to be almost absolutized as the essential aspect of friendship.

Dr. Tanja Zeeb studierte Philosophie, Neuere und Neueste Geschichte und Skandinavistik in Freiburg und Stockholm. Die Promotion im Fach Philosophie erfolgte 2010. Derzeit ist sie Koordinatorin eines in Hamburg ansässigen Bildungsprojekts ().