In The Politics of Friendship, Jacques Derrida invokes a statement originally attributed to Aristotle: “My Friends, there are no friends,” capturing something that seems to be fundamental about friendship. Friendship is essential to human thriving, but also difficult, if not impossible, to attain and maintain.

We make all sorts of fine distinctions between friends, “best” friends, acquaintances, colleagues or “work” friends, etc. But what makes someone that you know a “friend” vs. an acquaintance or a colleague? Is that a permanent condition? What do we owe to a friend, and what do they ow us? Is there a political dimension to friendship?

This week, friends of the podcast, we’re talking about friendship: how it’s forged, how it is nurtured and sustained, and how it is broken.

In this episode, we discuss the following thinkers/texts/ideas/etc.:

• The Mission (Film, 1986)
• Ennio Morricone’s full score of The Mission (via YouTube)
• Devo (Documentary film, 2024)
• Jacques Derrida, The Politics of Friendship (Verso, 1997)
• Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity (Duquesne UP, 1961)
• OpenAI’s GPT4o (“Omni”)
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (350 B.C.E.)
• Wrt to pets as “friends,” listen to our Season 9 Episode 134 on “Companion Animals”
• HBS Season 8, Episode 119 in which we discuss the topic of  “Trust”
• HBS Season 8, Episode 107 in which we discuss the topic of “Forgiveness”
• Jacques Derrida, The Work of Mourning (University of Chicago Press 2001)
• Jodi Dean, Comrade: An Essay on Political Belonging (Verso, 2019)