Nussbaum On Civic Friendship: Friends or Gracious Hostesses?

Nussbaum's most elaborate view of civic friendship is presented in her book The New Religious Intolerance (2012), where she defines civic friendship as an ability to imagine the situation of another, or as ‘the imaginative capacity that makes it possible for us to see how the world looks from the point of view of a person different in religion or ethnicity’ (3).² Nussbaum's idea of civic friendship is part of her view on how to confront rising intolerance and phobia of otherness. She considers civic friendship in addition to already established sound principles of equality and ethical consistency because these principles themselves are not enough. To foster toleration of difference, we must have a certain kind of relationship that is impossible to put on paper and promote by law. What is necessary in Nussbaum's view is a relationship of civic friendship understood as a connection developed by the interplay of sympathetic imagination of others. In spite of her Aristotelian roots and the fact that Aristotle also considers civic friendship to address instability in the political community, she does not turn to Aristotle's account, but rather on Roger Williams’ idea that ‘when we encounter people who differ in religion, we ought to focus on ethical virtues of generosity, kindness, and love, leaving the question of religious truth to one side in our civic interactions’ (Nussbaum 2012:165).

She emphasises ‘curiosity, listening, responsiveness, a willingness to acknowledge a full life and world over there’ as ‘the bare bones of friendship’ (Nussbaum 2012: 187). She is primarily focused on cases where we are perceiving others who are different from us and on situations where our inner eye might be obscured by fear, arrogance, and selfishness. Therefore, the inner perception must be properly cultivated, and philosophical arguments as well the use of literature are the best tools for fostering imagination. The process of cultivation is supposed to establish universal ethical principles, which Nussbaum recognises in Kant's, Socrates's, and Christian ethics: treat others as full equals, and do not use the other as a mere means but as an end. Finally, in the process of imagination, civic friends are guided by these principles. Therefore, the goal of Nussbaum's civic friendship is to develop a particular sort of character: one that is able to observe the world and others impartially, be sensitive to contradictions when applying ethical principles, and be open to criticism.

Understood in this way, Nussbaum's civic friendship appears to be more of a process that develops a virtuous character (with both moral and epistemic virtues), which is dependent on a process of self-examination, and as such, is primarily oriented towards ourselves, rather than to others. This is a particularly odd understanding of friendship. In terms of others, in Nussbaum's picture of a society based on civic friendship, the majority will act towards the minority by saying:

“I respect you as an equal, and I know that my own religious pursuits are not the only ones around. Even if I am more numerous and hence more powerful, I will try to make the world comfortable for you”. It is the spirit of a gracious hostess. A good hostess needs a good imagination (2012: 97).

In our view, this sort of relationship towards others, compared to a gracious hostess, is closer to the notion of civility than to civic friendship, where civility is a more neutral term, without further substantive determination that burdens the concept of civic friendship (i.e., emotional concern for others, care for their own well-being, shared interests and values, common good, and reciprocity). It is an act of benevolence or politeness. In order to be more precise regarding this distinction, let us further elaborate the concept of civility.

This notion derives from the tradition of liberal thought. Thomas Hobbes (1994: 75) regarded civility as necessary for life in a political community or, in his terms, a civil association. David Hume, Adam Smith, and other 18th-century thinkers explicitly linked civility with sociability or sympathy. For Hume, ‘civility’ includes positive virtues of ‘humanity’, ‘charity’, and ‘generosity’ associated with the condition of ‘manners’ or ‘politeness’ (cited in Boyd 2006: 864). As Richard Boyd (2006) summarises:

Civility clearly presupposes – and therefore is bundled up inextricably with – such liberal dispositions as tolerance for others, moderation in one's commitment to political principles, an enlightened idea of self-interest that makes one solicitous of the relationship between one's own rights and the rights of others, and an inclination for the peace and security of private life over and against the vagaries of ceaseless public engagement (865).

It also plays an important role in Rawls's idea of political liberalism in his characterisation of the moral duty of civility as readiness to ‘be able to explain to one another . . . how the principles and policies they advocate and vote for can be supported by the political values of public reason’. He continues by explaining that this includes ‘the willingness to listen to others and a fair-mindedness in deciding when accommodations to their view should reasonably be made’ (Rawls 1993: 217).³ Nussbaum's civic friendship follows this tradition of thin and neutral behaviour towards others.

However, the weakness of Nussbaum's neutral relationship with others in a political community becomes even more visible when faced with practical implications for overcoming intolerance and politics of fear. First, there is the problem of motivation for participatory imagination, which Nussbaum herself points out saying that ‘it needs something more, a willingness to move out of the self and to enter another world’ (Nussbaum 2012: 140). Why should we, in the first place, act as a ‘gracious hostess’ and be willing to host at all? Where does this willingness come from? Next, can willingness ever become a stable factor that will hold society together, avoid fragmentation, and overcome intolerance? Finally, it is questionable whether such a neutral and impartial concept of participatory imagination will lead to important practical consequences, such as changes in behaviour towards others, social cohesion, and the stability of society. Nussbaum thinks all of these are transformations highly relevant for contemporary societies. After all, her book aims to offer a solution for resolving religious intolerance and to guide citizens to change their behaviour towards others who are different from them by taking an attitude of civic friends. Yet, in our view, the attitude of gracious hostess appears not to be helpful: it is not a genuine friendliness but at best a case of a decent and tolerant attitude of civility that is deeply unequal in its nature. Those who are hosted are always left with a feeling that they are just guests belonging somewhere else no matter how gracious the hostess is. Moreover, if guests are not able to reward the hostess back, they are left with the sense of debt that further nourishes the inequality of the relationship and fosters a feeling of alienation. So, if we want to overcome intolerance, and for minority groups (religious, sexual, national, or any other kind) to feel affiliated to other members of political society, the stance towards them cannot be established on a model of a hostess and a guest.

One could object that the gracious hostess model is not an essential account of civic friendship since it describes behavior in a specific situation where the majority is ‘hosting’ a largely immigrant minority.⁴ According to this objection, what Nussbaum describes in the model is not a true civic friendship but rather a temporary relationship that lasts only until members of the minority group feel fully integrated into the society. However, even if we accept this objection, it is still unclear what Nussbaum considers the essence of civic friendship beyond the gracious hostess model with sympathetic imagination. In other words, it is unclear what kind of relationship we aim for once the ‘hosting’ period is over. Furthermore, it can be problematic to argue that the gracious hostess model is appropriate in certain circumstances involving majority and minority groups but is not essential for civic friendship. In pluralistic societies there will always be majority and minority, and the relationship between these groups is the primary site where civic friendship manifests. This is not a temporary circumstance we aim to overcome but a lasting feature of many societies. Therefore, an important aspect of any account of civic friendship is to precisely describe the relationship between majority and minority group members. Thus, due to these two reasons – the lack of an alternative account of civic friendship provided by Nussbaum and the enduring nature of majority-minority relationships in pluralistic societies – it is plausible to understand her model of the gracious hostess as her account of civic friendship in NRI for which we argue is more akin to civility than to true civic friendship.

The behaviours of a ‘gracious hostess’ are not cases of civic friendship, since they do not share important similarities with those features of friendship like mutual care and support between friends who share interests or values. Namely, someone can be a good hostess to those whom she does not consider as friends at all and has nothing in common with, yet still act politely, emphatically, and charitably with strong ability of participatory imagination. Another rather odd consequence that follows from Nussbaum's account of friendship is that we might act in this manner towards others who do not act reciprocally in return and still be called friends. Finally, it seems a stretch of the imagination to expect that a hostess would be willing to sacrifice her own well-being for others in order to be a good hostess. However, it is not a stretch of the imagination to expect that a friend might sacrifice his or her own well-being for a friend's well-being.

To conclude, Nussbaum's account of civic friendship is too weak to provide the sort of transformation of relationship within political society that she advocates, a transformation towards ‘a more inclusive and political definition of national belonging, in which land, ethnicity, and religion would be less important than shared political ideals’ (Nussbaum 2012: 18). Moreover, since she insists that the biggest problem with the rising intolerance is an ethical failure ‘to acknowledge the equal reality of others’, we claim that her notion of civic friendship cannot fulfil this sort of equality. The fact that Nussbaum uses the language of civic friendship strongly suggests that she accepts the idea that ‘shared political ideals’ cannot be established only upon formal rules of justice but requires friendliness and an affective relationship between citizens. However, friendship, personal or civic, is clearly a stronger and more substantial relationship than in Nussbaum's account, based on specific emotions of care for the well-being of others, some shared things in common, interests, values, or common good that must be reciprocal in order to secure equality. Thus, we claim that two things are missing in Nussbaum's account of civic friendship: (a) a notion of common good, that is, an elaborate explanation of the things civic friends share, and (b) an account of affective relationship of mutual care between citizens, which is necessarily reciprocal and as such provides an equal sense of affiliation or belonging. Without these two conditions, we will argue, minority groups remain outsiders and alienated from other members of political society.⁵

These are the reasons why we turn to Aristotle's discussion of civic friendship, which provides a valuable map to follow in describing reasons for why good relations between citizens must be established primarily upon what members of a political community have in common. Even though the political landscape has severely changed from Aristotle's time to ours, we still believe that this map can be helpful for thinking about an appropriate relationship of concern towards others in a political society that will help us to solve the challenge posed by Nussbaum: solving an irrational fear of difference that leads to intolerance, radical divisions in a society, and instability. In order to keep the map analogy, we will not go into deep and detailed analyses of Aristotle's text but will determine Aristotle's key concepts and theses that can serve as landmarks for an Aristotelian account of civic friendship suitable for plural and diverse societies, which will help us to find an appropriate balance between individualism and collectivism.

Aristotle On Civic Friendship

Aristotle's account of friendship is deeply related to his understanding of human nature and its main characteristics: rationality and sociability. For the purposes of this paper, the latter is the fundamental one, especially because we can derive a further characteristic from it: vulnerability. Let us briefly elaborate them. It is well known that Aristotle famously claims in his political and ethical treatise that a man is zoon politikon, which is usually translated as political or social creature. In the context of politics, the importance of others for humans is emphasised through comparisons with non-political creatures, like gods or beasts who are able to live a life of solitary self-sufficiency, unlike human beings who are social creatures (Pol. 1253a25-28). One of the most important bonds with others is friendship (philia).

Friendship, for ancient philosophers, however, is a much wider concept than the present one that stands for a private and intimate relationship that we choose ourselves. Philia also includes relationships that we do not choose, such as family relationships, together with those that are not necessarily intimate, like relationships with colleagues from work or those with our fellow citizens. As such, philia has a central role in human flourishing and the development of our nature as rational and social beings. This dependency on others, however, has an important consequence: it presents, what Nussbaum (1986) calls in her earlier works, ‘needy and risky elements of our “human condition”’ (341). The condition in question is human neediness that reveals the depth of vulnerability of human beings. Aristotle claims that living well consists of doing things virtuously that human beings are highly capable of, but in order to be able to manifest virtue, human beings need to be appropriately equipped with external goods, such as health and wealth, but also friends, since they are ‘the greatest of external goods’ (NE, 1169b10). However, the position of external goods sometimes is beyond our control. Since we can easily lose friends, due to many contingencies like friends’ departure, moral failure, or inevitable death, living well becomes fragile and contingent.

Dependency on others in Aristotle's view reveals to the most extreme human beings as deeply vulnerable creatures whose needs have to be protected, according to Aristotle, by a political community whose main function is to secure a good life. In order to secure the needs for the whole life and make human flourishing stable, human beings as social and vulnerable creatures start to cooperate and form political communities (polis). In other words, members of a political community, given their rational capacities, recognise that the polis is a framework for realising the good life. So, for Aristotle, the polis serves as some kind of safety net for vulnerable human nature and the context where needs for flourishing can be secured. Cooperation with others is obviously motivated by an advantage we get through it: our own flourishing. However, the quality of the relationship with other members in the political community becomes a core component of each person's good. In order to achieve a good life for ourselves, we start to cooperate with others in a specific way: a part of our own well-being becomes our aim to enable our fellow citizens to flourish as well. In order to flourish, we care for them, and we expect the same in return. Aristotle thinks that this is possible only if the bonds between fellow citizens in a political community are those of friendship, which is why he claims:

Friendship seems also to hold cities together, and lawgivers to care more about it than about justice; for concord seems to be something like friendship, and this is what they aim at most of all, while taking special pains to eliminate civil conflict as something hostile. And when people are friends, they have no need of justice, while when they are just, they need friendship as well; and the highest form of justice seems to be a matter of friendship (NE, 1155a22-28).

This passage reveals Aristotle's main idea: civic friendship serves as a necessary condition for the establishment of a political community whose function is to enable a good life. Also, it serves as a source of motivation for cooperation with others, given the advantage such a relationship secures, where each member recognises the common goal of living together: living well.

Civic friendship for Aristotle is just one form of friendship, and it belongs to the class of advantage friendship, since it is based on the recognition of the utility or advantage we get from the relationship (EE, VII.1242a5-10).⁶ Yet it shares common characteristics with other forms of friendship: (i) concern for a friend's well-being, as an essential condition without which no form of relationship will be regarded as friendship that is goodwill, eunoia (NE, VIII.1156a9-10); (ii) reciprocity and awareness of mutual feelings (NE, VIII.1155b27-1156a5); (iii) shared interests and activities by living together, which constitutes the common good (EE, VII.1241a12-18). However, civic friends do not use each other simply as a means to achieve benefit, but where they genuinely care for their fellow citizens. According to Keimpe Algra (2003), this aspect ‘involves the notion that others – or at least some others – are regarded as belonging to us, that their wishes and interests, and their happiness and pain, are regarded as our own’ (268). He claims that such other-regarding behaviour is characteristic for philia and calls it the model of solidarity or social appropriation. In other words, the basis for the mechanism of solidarity is the fact that we recognise others as human beings (as vulnerable creatures with the same needs and capabilities as our own, which makes them familiar to us) sharing the same common goal: living well. We want our fellow citizens to be able to choose and to live a good human life, while we expect the same thing in return because we recognise them as rational and social beings. This is the reason why reciprocity in goodwill or well-wishing (eunoia) and concord or like-mindedness (homonoia) are the main characteristics of Aristotle's civic friendship. Let us analyse them in more detail.

Goodwill or well-wishing (eunoia) is an essential condition without which no form of relationship will be regarded as friendship. This means that friends always care for each other's well-being, but in the case of civic friendship, mutual well-wishing is motivated first by a recognition of the advantage they get from it, through to the recognition of a lack of self-sufficiency and their social nature. Of course, levels of care will come in degrees, so in the case of intimate or perfect friendship, friends will love each other and care for one another's well-being regardless of any benefit. On the other hand, in the case of civic friends, the bonds of love will be replaced with a mutual concern that arises from the advantages they get by living together and ‘sharing lives’. However, Aristotle claims that friendship goes beyond mere goodwill and need to be accompanied with reciprocity and mutual awareness of this relation (NE, 1155a). In the context of political community, reciprocity is achieved through sharing in political activity of governing and judging that aims at the common good: living well for each member. This means that each member in the process of deliberation on political issues has to take into consideration the extension of interests of fellow citizens and promotion of their own good in order to achieve his or her own flourishing and expect that in return. Nussbaum (1986: 355) stresses this characteristic in her Fragility of Goodness saying that there are two requirements for philia: mutuality, ‘philia is a relation, not a one-way street’ and independence, ‘the object of philia must be seen as a being with a separate good’. This aspect of mutual concern for others, and reciprocity in Aristotle's civic friendship is particularly important for the discussion regarding Nussbaum's account in NRI. Namely, in contrast to Aristotle, her ‘gracious-hostess’ model of civic friendship ignores reciprocal relation with others and as such is based on superiority in the hostess–guest relationship. This is the main reason why we think Nussbaum's civic friendship is not the case of friendship at all, rather a relationship of benevolence that grants superiority to the benefactor.

The second important characteristic of civic friendship is concord or like-mindedness (homonoia). For Aristotle, concord is the mark that holds a political community together. Members of a political community recognise that their flourishing depends on specific social relationships necessary for the realisation of their natural capacities as rational and political animals. Given the advantage they will acquire, they are motivated to actively support institutional arrangements that will enable them to fulfil their needs. In other words, they recognise that only this type of community provides the stability necessary for the pursuit of eudaimonia as a long-term good, which is something that, in the end, makes such a community valuable by itself and recognised as a common good. Nevertheless, concord does not imply that they have to agree on every aspect that concerns the ways in which living well can be pursued by each individual, but only on the important aspects of the constitution. In other words, this practical aspect of concord regarding constitutional issues, such as how the polis should be governed and by whom, has to be deliberated over in accordance with the achievement of the long-term good: living well for its members. This still leaves space for individualistic conceptions of a good life even within Aristotle's eudaimonistic concept of the good. Despite allowing for diversity, reliance on the common good represents a potential danger to the liberal framework within which Nussbaum operates. So, is Aristotle suitable for such a framework?

We can derive certain lessons from Aristotle's conceptual framework for civic friendship. Let us start with those that are less problematic. First, Aristotle shows that our focus should be on the vulnerability of individuals, primarily on the vulnerability to external circumstances. This implies that in devising our political community, we should not focus on citizens as isolated and atomised persons who are independently and completely on their own capable of following their own conception of a good life, but as beings who depend on external goods and the work of other persons in their striving. Second, we should see external goods as material goods (which is an important aspect of distributive justice narrowly understood), but not only as material goods. Namely, as Aristotle points out through his discussion, friendship is also an external good, which suggests that social or relational goods – goods that cannot be divided – are of equal importance as material goods. This is already recognised in current discussions about the nature of egalitarianism, which argue that egalitarianism should be concerned with the quality of relations between citizens, based on mutual respect and self-respect, not only with the ideal distribution of some currency of justice.⁷ Third, the nature and the quality of the relations between citizens are not attitudes of benevolence or mere goodwill, but mutual and reciprocated well-wishing based upon mutual awareness, shared interests and common good. This last lesson, however, appears to be the most controversial and unsuitable for contemporary plural societies. So, the main question is whether it is possible to find a common good that is not based on shared national, religious, ethnic, cultural, or any other shared values that are incompatible with the value of pluralism.

It is certainly clear that this notion of common good cannot be focused on resources since in any even remotely Aristotelian approach, resources cannot be the final aim of policies. The reason is that resources are important only as means to more important goals that are connected with flourishing, not with possessing. But equally, the final aim of policies cannot be Aristotle's own highest good: eudaimonia. The reason is that the core of the modern understanding of pluralism is that conceptions of a good life differ among persons, and eudaimonism is just one idea about what constitutes a good life among many other reasonable conceptions.

Our proposal is to find a common good somewhere between resources and welfare. This something in between is precisely, in contemporary discussions, a domain of capabilities. Capabilities refer to our ability to convert resources into states and actions we value, that is according to our own conception of a good life. A capability approach takes material goods as a subset of necessary goods for a good life, but it sees them only as means. Nevertheless, they also place great emphasis on the social environment for the development of capabilities; they require a certain notion about the quality of relations among citizens and a particular institutional arrangement that mirrors such relations. This relation, we want to argue, is civic friendship as a specific aspect of affiliation, understood as the social bonds that support the achievement of capabilities. Recognising capabilities as a common good is in accordance with two elements Aristotle mentions as relevant for civic friendship: vulnerability and reciprocity. Concerning vulnerability, capabilities help us to recognise various aspects of us as human beings, from physical fragility to emotional distress. Concerning reciprocity, it is clear that ensuring capabilities empowers citizens to be more equal in their social standing and social relations.

Aristotelian Civic Friendship and a Capability Approach

Nussbaum's capabilities approach has the resources to embrace a more substantive account of civic friendship. However, this creates certain problems when attempting to simultaneously uphold political liberalism, which insists on neutrality regarding the good. We now turn to this problem. In her capability theory, capabilities stand for ‘what people are actually able to do and to be, in a way informed by an intuitive idea of a life that is worthy of the dignity of the human being’ (Nussbaum 2006: 70). Here, she develops a list of central human capabilities ‘as central requirements of a life with dignity’ (Nussbaum 2006: 75), which is compatible with a pluralistic society having no metaphysical grounding.⁸ Her version of a capability approach is attractive since it shares many of the important concepts we emphasised as the landmarks of Aristotle's account, starting from the recognition of the sociability and vulnerability of human lives, and the importance of society for securing the conditions for a dignified human life, which lead to her list of capabilities – central elements without which any life would be less human. This list presents a substantive account of the good life that is still compatible with pluralism. Namely, each person freely chooses which capabilities she aims to develop and how to organise them according to her own conception of a good life. This is why Nussbaum claims her capability approach does not go against pluralism.

Still, when it comes to civic friendship, Nussbaum sacrifices her Aristotelian roots for political liberalism. Namely, it seems that she accepts Aristotle's premises regarding human sociability, vulnerability and necessary role of society and its institution in securing basic human capabilities but is reluctant to accept that this is the essence of civic friendship since such a conclusion allegedly go against central liberal values. We aim to show that, on the contrary, the capability approach opens the door for an Aristotelian concept of civic friendship based on Nussbaum's list, particularly the capability for affiliation, where the list of capabilities serves as a shared good between civic friends. In other words, we claim that Aristotelian human flourishing within Nussbaum's capability approach is the development of central human capabilities, whilst a common good for political purposes requires having secured central human capabilities. It is necessary to provide an explanation of what is good and why, something political liberalism typically avoids but more perfectionist liberalism can accept. Our sociability is not only an empirical fact but also something that is essential for a good life, which extends beyond merely treating others as free and equal. As mentioned earlier, if Nussbaum's capability theory is just one among many political conceptions of justice within political liberalism, it must refrain from making judgments about the good life, as such judgments are likely to be controversial in pluralistic societies. However, we believe that a more substantive account of our sociability, and thus civic friendship, is needed. While Nussbaum's account of capabilities can provide this, it would create tensions with her preferred framework of political liberalism. First, we will explain how her capability theory can offer an account of sociability, and then we will identify where the resulting tensions arise.

Sociability in Nussbaum's (2006: 77) list is emphasised in her capability for affiliation, defined in the following way:

 A) Being able to live with and toward others, to recognize and show concern for other human beings, to engage in various forms of social interaction; to be able to imagine the situation of another (Protecting this capability means protecting institutions that constitute and nourish such forms of affiliation and also protecting the freedom to assembly and political speech);

 B) Having the social bases of self-respect and non-humiliation; being able to treated as a dignified being whose worth is equal to that of others. This entails provisions of nondiscrimination on the basis of race, sex, sexual orientation, ethnicity, caste, religion, national origin.

The definition of affiliation is very broad, so it includes various aspects of intimate or personal affiliation, such as families or personal friends, but also some kinds of non-intimate belongings, like business relationships, or various relationships at the level of political society that can be labelled as a social or political affiliation. Our focus is on social or political affiliation, that is, the relationship between fellow citizens in a political community.⁹

If we start from the central notions mentioned in the definition, freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, and non-discrimination, we can see that, for Nussbaum, social affiliation in a political community clearly refers to the capability to join and form various associations or organisations. She does not specify this in more detail but leaves it neutral enough to be a social entitlement that still protects central liberal values: autonomy and freedom. Of course, this definition does not lead us directly to civic friendship, so we need to carefully clarify various forms of social affiliations that must be distinguished from civic friendship.

One kind of such associations is those organised according to our conception of the good life with people who share our interests, activities, and values, such as religious views or political values. As such, we can have clubs or organisations at the level of civil society or political parties where affiliation is based on strong like-mindedness and very narrow conceptions of the good. These cases of social affiliation are in accordance Aristotle's view, yet they are not cases of civic friendship. Namely, they operate with like-mindedness and the reciprocity in well-wishing that is based on a strong and narrow identity that cannot be expected between fellow citizens in the circumstances of pluralism. For the same reasons, bonds between fellow citizens based on national identity are also not civic friendship, promoting just one value. These kinds of association have one dominant comprehensive doctrine of the good or dominant value. The common goal and the shared good in these associations, like religious ones, political parties, or simply in national identity, are too narrow, which is why these forms of affiliation cannot allow value pluralism.¹⁰ The civic friendship we argue for must include all members of a political community and allow value pluralism. But what is their common goal?

In our view, it must involve genuine concern for our fellow citizens. In large-scale plural societies (i.e., a nation state), such forms of concern must go through institutions because through the support of institutions that manifest such concerns, we can contribute to the well-being of others. Thus, it is important to see the impact that civic friendship can have precisely on laws and institutions – that is, on the domain of justice – which are important for human flourishing. Starting from Aristotelian lessons, an affiliation appropriate for a liberal society can be taken as a specific capacity to act towards others where we (i) regard others as having the potential to develop central human capabilities, (ii) show mutual concern for the development of central human capabilities, and (iii) support a society that is established in order to give people what they need in order to develop central human capabilities and function in a truly human way. In order to secure capabilities as real opportunities, it is necessary to secure a collective action of individuals to support an appropriate institutional arrangement. This includes more than just tolerating difference and more than just the distribution of material goods. It includes various policies of education, training, social inclusion, and other means to mitigate the vulnerabilities that people face. Therefore, an institutional arrangement of society that promotes capabilities and ensures the conversion of capabilities to functioning to each member of society is the framework that fellow citizens, as civic friends, support as their common interest.

So let's clarify what we see as problematic with Nussbaum's thin account of civic friendship. It is not simply that we put emphasis on affiliation as a capability necessary for civic friendship and she does not. She clearly does, since one important element of her capability for affiliation is being able to imagine a situation of others, and that is the ability of sympathetic imagination that for her is civic friendship. The problem in her account, also recognised by Deneulin (2013), is that for Nussbaum, affiliation plays the role of primary good as in Rawlsian theory. Primary goods are goods needed regardless of the conception of the good a person has. Understood in this way, they serve just as means to realise our conception of the good that is formed independently of primary goods. And here lies the problem.

In her turn from Aristotelianism to political liberalism, Nussbaum embraced the need for complete neutrality between conceptions of the good and promotion of certain values that can be labelled as perfectionist. Such neutrality implies that we should also be neutral towards a conception of the good that is not oriented towards the well-being of other citizens and usage of the capability for affiliation. Whether we will use this capability in Nussbaum's account thus depends on an individual's conception of the good. Someone might use her imagination but still remain indifferent to intolerance or exclusions of minority groups. Only if her conception of the good contains appropriate values may she use this capability to change the position of those excluded. But there is no prior way to evaluate conceptions of the good as long as they respect principles of justice because of the aforementioned neutrality. What we claim is that civic friendship cannot be based upon such individualistic imagination with complete neutrality towards the conception of the good that persons will adhere to, of course as long as it respects reasonably just laws. Rather, to overcome intolerance and social exclusion of certain minority groups, its basis must be recognition of a certain common good where reciprocal concern for the well-being of our fellow citizens is its key element.

It is thus clear that the conception of the good a person has cannot be independent from the capability of affiliation; rather, it must be an integral part of a person's conception of the good. If Nussbaum's capability theory is a political conception, then it must rely on an account of the good human life that is necessarily thicker than other political conceptions in the family of non-perfectionist political conceptions within political liberalism. Thus, if Nussbaum wishes to adhere to her political liberalism, she must accept that her account of civic friendship is actually liberal civility, with all its associated problems. Conversely, if she wishes to maintain a more substantive view compatible with civic friendship in the Aristotelian sense, it becomes difficult to see how she can remain within the boundaries of political liberalism. To develop a more substantive account of the relationship we can call civic friendship, we need a more substantive account of the common good that the neutrality of political liberalism can accommodate.

The starting point in account of this common good is awareness of our common vulnerability and the fact that some are exposed to various kinds of disadvantages due to these vulnerabilities. We see ourselves as part of a common political body that should hold governments responsible and accountable for protecting our entitlements. Thus, in this way, being a good citizen certainly imposes some responsibilities and restrictions on our conceptions of the good. Individualism that does not refer to these aspects of our sociability is not an equally good conception as those that do take them into account. Of course, it presupposes recognition of a common good – our capabilities and social environment necessary for their development. Together with Aristotle, we conclude that this can be achieved in a community of civic friends. We hope that so far it is clear why the gracious hostess model does not function as civic friendship: it is not established upon reciprocity and remains a relationship of caregiver and caretaker. Civic friendship in our account is rather a relationship of free and equal citizens cooperating to ensure an institutional framework where each can have free choice to choose his or her functionings. In this sense, civic friendship is part of the partial theory of justice: it is our capacity to perceive disadvantages of others as a capability deprivation above legal rights and our readiness to change formal and informal structures to overcome these adversities.¹¹

Consequently, if we go back to Aristotle's theses to reshape them into an Aristotelian account of civic friendship that is appropriate for a liberal framework, the result would be the following: human flourishing is the development of key human capabilities; being concerned for the well-being of others means being concerned for the capabilities of others (and reciprocally, expecting that in return), or to put it differently, in organising our various functionings, we are concerned with doing it within an institutional arrangement where the capabilities of others have been secured. Such a community, organised with a specific institutional arrangement that supports the development of capabilities as entitlements, becomes our shared interest and common good. Civic friendship, as in Aristotle's account, is a necessary condition manifested in our support of such institutions.

This Aristotelian civic friendship therefore does not depend on any comprehensive doctrine, such as shared religion or nation, but is focused on shared institutions that promote capabilities. On the other hand, even though it does not depend on comprehensive doctrine, it relies on a specific ethical view that goes beyond our reasonableness manifested as treating others as free and equal. It articulates a substantial idea of what constitutes a good life in a political community. Our sociability is not just a sociological fact but a normative claim about our well-being, which some reasonable citizens might find controversial. Nevertheless, this claim must be part of our theory if we aim towards civic friendship. This does not mean that Nussbaum cannot remain within liberal camp. As we noted, we hold that this Aristotelian account is compatible with liberalism, though not with strong neutral claims of political liberalism. To accept the importance and promotion of civic friendship, we can still stay within liberal framework, but we lean towards a moderate perfectionist variant of liberalism that allows for a thicker account of human good.

Conclusion

The concern for the capabilities of others is the main pillar of our version of civic friendship. Civic friendship is an aspect of the capability of affiliation that enables us to belong to a wider society and works as a mechanism of solidarity and trust, not simply as a cultivation of the inner eye to see how the world looks from others’ worldview. Aristotelian civic friendship established within the capability approach is a disposition that enables us to act towards others in order to deliberate and develop institutional arrangements that will provide conditions under which each member of a political community will be provided with opportunities to develop their capabilities. As such, it is not focused only on aspects of our differences in religion or ethnicity that are supposed to be overcome, but it can be used as a solution to a problem of social exclusion or social alienation caused by socio-economic inequalities. Deprivation of capabilities is a primary problem of institutional arrangement, but also fellow citizens must actively support such an arrangement oriented towards capability development (Wolff 2020; Wolff and De-Shalit, 2013).