The Form of Politics

Reviews / Votes

"Full of many moving, even beautiful passages, The Form of Politics is a work of first-class scholarship and deep personal meditation. With an exceptional sweep of background material and a sense of abiding relevance and familiarity, von Heyking presents what has obviously been a labor of love stemming from the direct teaching of undergraduate students." -James V. Schall, Georgetown University "The Form of Politics acts like a good friend in exhorting readers to care about virtue. By illuminating what is at stake in practicing and understanding the nature of sunaisthetic friendship and its political counterpart, Heyking does an excellent job of revealing the inadequacies of modern conceptions of friendship and of demonstrating how much the Greeks can help us in recovering a vocabulary for discussing the intellectual component of friendship. The Form of Politics is thus essential reading for any social scientist skeptical of the value of friendship as a political concept." International Political Anthropology "A rich meditation on friendship's role ... past and present, with reference to a variety of political and literary figures. The Form of Politics is well summarized by an epithet Evelyn Waugh attached to a man who never made an enemy nor lost a friend: "Oh dear friendship, what a gift of God it is. Speak no ill of it."" Interpretation "The most intriguing aspect of von Heyking's work is the idea of how the political community comes together and strengthens itself through festivity, an overlooked aspect of political friendship the author brilliantly brings back to the fore." Contemporary Political Theory "The author tells us that he decided to write a book about friendship because there is 'no other topic in politics, or ethics, that really matters.' [Von Heyking] elevates friendship to its rightful place as a topic of proper philosophical speculation. ... [He] exemplifies that shared insight which is the sunaisthetic moment, and that lies at the heart of his thesis: "Our discoveries of fundamental truths coincide with discoveries about ourselves and each other, done together. This, in essence, is what liberal education is about."" Literary Review of Canada "A reconsideration of the relation of friendship and politics is most welcome. And this is what John von Heyking has given us - a moving, learned, yet experiential explication of friendship." New Oxford Review