Promise of Friendship

Sarah Horton is pursuing research in philosophy at the Institut catholique de Paris.

"In this impressive new book, Sarah Horton examines the enigmas, paradoxes, and aporiae of friendship. Through her engagement with a full cast of philosophical, theological, and literary thinkers, she makes a compelling case for friendship as a possible impossibility. This is an important new work—and an important new voice—in Continental ethics and philosophy of religion. Scholars of French phenomenology and deconstruction will be particularly interested in this work, since Horton's discussion is oriented around the philosophy of alterity found in thinkers like Ricoeur, Levinas, and Derrida, as well as current authors like Richard Kearney and Emmanuel Falque."— Brian Gregor, California State University, Dominguez Hills

• Acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction: Can One Write of Friendship? 1. At the Origins of Friendship: Initial Displacements 2. The Ethical Challenge of Friendship 3. Within Finitude, Bearing the Infinite 4. The Writing of Friendship: Reading Proust's In Search of Lost Time 5. Fidelity in the Dark: On Presence and Knowledge6. The Creation of Impossible Friendship Conclusion: Risking Friendship in the Twenty-First Century Notes Bibliography Index