Summary: This paper traces the points of overlap and separation whereby through the paradigm of friendship the morals and politics of Kant’s discourse can be reconsidered for its points of tension, undecidability and contradictory demands. Friendship is not discussed as an explicitly political concept in Kant or a form of relations that could be thought to found a politics. It is rather a topic that emerges by way of discussions on respect, intimacy, secrecy, public and private relations and analogically, through his discussion of social physics. Consequently, the paper will show how the question of friendship finds a place in the threshold between morality and politics, and so question the compatibility of Kant’s theory of politics with his claims on morality. In doing so it will look at two well-known discussions of Kant’s discourse on friendship, namely, the second half of Doctrine of Virtue and his “Lecture on Friendship”. Blair McDonald is a PhD student in the Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies, currently researching a thesis entitled Irreconciliations: Friendship and the Political.
