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The economic realization of civic friendship theoretical underpinning and grass-roots praxis

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posted on 2023-06-09, 20:10 authored by Areti Giannopoulou
As a solution to the extended poverty and economic insecurity in contemporary societies, care theorists have suggested the alignment of the market economy with the ethic of care. Although they have developed an insightful critique of the neoliberal capitalist order, they have been reluctant to propose a radical re-organization of the economy that would subordinate the economy to the goal of human life’s maintaining and flourishing. Aristotelian “civic friendship”, I hold, could lead to an economy that serves life precisely because it activates citizenship expressed in citizens’ mutual goodwill and reciprocal contribution to one another’s well-being that presupposes political equality and the closing of economic inequalities. Marx’s “social production” constitutes a modern reconstruction of civic friendship which places the Aristotelian ideal in the economy rendering thus the latter a field for enacting politics. Civic friendship, I argue, implies a primordial meaning of the good life derived from its inscription in the political community. This primordial good life could be actualized through virtuous shared praxis which in the economy concerns the production and distribution of social wealth, as well as the caring services. Apart from its implicit content, I further argue, civic friendship embodies an instinctual need for being in common which, in essence, underpins it and which could thrive within a non-productivist economic context. Degrowth movement supporting an economy of a lower ecological footprint delineates such an economic setting. Supplemented by the political positivity of Neurath’s associational socialism, degrowth movement, I propose, could result in a kind of degrowth socialist economic order in which the productive and distributive procedure, as well as direct caring labour, would be organized and performed by citizens-workers in a decentralized, democratic mode, and on the basis of a primordial conception of human well-being. Thus, the economy would realize civic friendship and confirm the political community.

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207.0

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  • Philosophy Theses

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  • doctoral

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  • phd

Language

  • eng

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University of Sussex

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2020-01-08

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