Prijateljstvo građana
Friendship of Citizens

Summary/Abstract: The author advocates a modernization of the antique doctrine of friendship. Friendship understood in the political sense is the friendship of citizens, as a regulative idea of ideal political community. Such friendship is above justice, it implies a permanent and stable mutual benevolence, living together, harmony, mutuality and equality, involvement and compassion, mutual openness in words and deeds, a culture of voluntary cooperation and a spirit of selfaware and self-responsible citizenship. Nowadays, in the global village of the media, we face a major question: should the friendship of world-citizens take precedence over the friendship of citizens? The importance of universalism in the modern world has undoubtedly increased. The right of man has become universal, morality is reflexive and also universal. Still, differences remain between close and remote obligations. Two perspectives are necessary to the individual’s orientation in modernity: the moral perspective and the ethical perspective. The actual ethical and universal moral obligations must be divided into ranks. This can be done only by fulfilling the obligations of closeness and ethics and taking into account the universal requirement. The author concludes that the friendship of world-citizens in modern society can be expressed in a model of graded obligation. In a free community, foreignness and friendship correspond to one another. Foreignness is not destiny. The own and the foreign do not constitute a contradictory opposition. The long stretch between foreignness and friendship of citizens is conceivable only on the basis of the logic of freedom, which does not perceive the freedom of the other as a limitation of and boundary to its own freedom, but as a prerequisite of it.

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