a post-national ruling class that regards itself as the civilized minority and defines itself against a backward majority. The backwardness of the demos lies precisely in its susceptibility to “love of one’s own,” as against the humanitarian’s principled preference for what is Other.

Aristotle, and the Stoic thinkers as well, refer to civic friendship, and this offers a clue about how to think about the common good. The adage “friends have all things in common” may refer to a community of material property (as in “the commons”), but more fundamentally it refers to the experience of inhabiting a common lifeworld, and the mutual... See more