ABSTRACT
I conclude by locating Addams’s political friendship practices in discussions of Aristotelian political friendship to clarify her contributions both to that tradition, and to contemporary democratic political thought. Addams’s experiential accounts, and the lessons about de facto organization gleaned from them, fill in details about political friendship among unequals that Aristotle leaves in the realm of theory and that contemporary democratic thinkers do not entertain. Addams expands the concept of political friendship beyond contemporary applications to equal citizens in democratic society—in fact, beyond the boundaries of any formal association. Addams’s pragmatist approach to political friendship makes it useful for developing political friendships with and among unequal parties, transnationally as well as locally.
