Oligarchies: Naming, Enumerating Counting

<p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;">The following text is the first chapter of Jacques Derrida’s book <em>Politiques de l’amitié </em>[The Politics of Friendship], being the exemplary and<em> </em>standard case of deconstruction, in this particular case, of philosophical<em> </em>texts (Cicero, P</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;">lato and, notably, Aristotle). The starting point for<em> </em>the discussion is the performative contradiction inscribed in the wellknown<em> </em>fragment <em>On friendship </em>from <em>Essays </em>by Michel de Montaigne:<em> </em>“O mes amis, il n’y a nul amy” (O my friends, there is no friend). Apparently, everything here is well-known and obvious, even the very<em> </em>notion of friendship, but as we proceed in the argument provided by<em> </em>Derrida, the obvious becomes less obvious to us and takes on new shades<em> </em>and hues in meaning, acquires new values. What is objective mixes in<em> </em>this fascinating argument with what is subjective. What is friendship?<em> </em>What is friendship today? Is friendship limited to just private sphere of<em> </em>interpersonal relations? The answer to the latter question is, according<em> </em>to Derrida, clearly negative. In the course of his argument he states:<em> </em>“There is no democracy without a community of friends”. This argument<em> </em>provides clues to understand a particular archeology of the notion,<em> </em>revealing oblique senses and contexts of the word “friendship”, its</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> istory shown from the antiquity to the present day.</span></span>