Civic and Cosmopolitan Friendship

This article draws out two implications for cosmopolitan or global friendship from an examination of a recent work on civic friendship in the domestic sphere: (1) Insofar as it is the case that civic friendship, as defined by Schwarzenbach (On civic friendship: Including women in the state. Columbia University Press, New York, 2009) is necessary for justice in the state, it is also the case that the absence of global justice can be partially explained by the absence of what might be called cosmopolitan friendship. (2) If we consider the practicalities of civic friendship, we find that cosmopolitan friendship is an even more difficult and demanding project than we might have imagined.