The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Friendship 2017861195, 9781003007012

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THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF PHILOSOPHY OF FRIENDSHIP

The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Friendship is a superb compilation of chapters that explore the history, major topics, and controversies in philosophical work on friendship. It gives both the advanced scholar and the novice in the field an overview and also an in-​depth exploration of the connections between friendship and the history of philosophy, morality, practical rationality, value theory, and interpersonal relationships more generally. The Handbook consists of 31 newly commissioned chapters by an international slate of contributors, and is divided into six sections: I. Historical Perspectives II. Who Can Be Our Friends? III. Friendship and Other Relationships IV. The Value and Rationality of Friendship V. Friendship, Morality, and Virtue VI. New Issues in Philosophy of Friendship This volume is essential reading not only for anyone interested in the philosophical questions involving friendship, but also for anyone interested in related topics such as love, sex, moral duties, the good life, the nature of rationality, interpersonal and interspecies relationships, and the nature of the person. Diane Jeske is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Iowa, USA. She is the author of Rationality and Moral Theory: How Intimacy Generates Reasons (2008), The Evil Within: Why We Need Moral Philosophy (2018), and Friendship and Social Media: A Philosophical Exploration (2019).

ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOKS IN PHILOSOPHY

Routledge Handbooks in Philosophy are state-​of-​the-​art surveys of emerging, newly refreshed, and important fields in philosophy, providing accessible yet thorough assessments of key problems, themes, thinkers, and recent developments in research. All chapters for each volume are specially commissioned, and written by leading scholars in the field. Carefully edited and organized, Routledge Handbooks in Philosophy provide indispensable reference tools for students and researchers seeking a comprehensive overview of new and exciting topics in philosophy.They are also valuable teaching resources as accompaniments to textbooks, anthologies, and research-​orientated publications. Also available: The Routledge Handbook of Liberal Naturalism Edited by Mario De Caro and David Macarthur The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Edited by C.M. Melenovsky The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Sex and Sexuality Edited by Brian D. Earp, Clare Chambers, and Lori Watson The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Friendship Edited by Diane Jeske The Routledge Handbook of Indian Buddhist Philosophy Edited by William Edelglass, Pierre-​Julien Harter, and Sara McClintock The Routledge Handbook of Evolutionary Approaches to Religion Edited by Yair Lior and Justin Lane For more information about this series, please visit: www.routle​dge.com/​Routle​dge-​Handbo​oks-​in-​ Phi​loso​phy/​book-​ser​ies/​RHP

THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF PHILOSOPHY OF FRIENDSHIP

Edited by Diane Jeske

Cover image: © ‘Camp buddies’, August 1943, by Gordon Parks (1912–2006) / Farm Security Administration (US Library of Congress 2017861195) First published 2023 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Taylor & Francis The right of Diane Jeske to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 978-​0-​367-​44002-​2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​032-​30627-​8 (pbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​003-​00701-​2 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003007012 Typeset in Bembo by Newgen Publishing UK

CONTENTS

Contributors

ix

Introduction Diane Jeske

1

PART I

Historical Perspectives

9

1 Friendship in the Confucian Tradition Andrew Lambert

11

2 Plato’s Erotic Friendships C.D.C. Reeve

24

3 Aristotle on the Nature and Value of Friendship Corinne Gartner

35

4 The Stoics and Augustine on Friendship and Altruism Tamer Nawar

47

5 Kantian Friendship Karen Stohr

58

6 Mary Wollstonecraft on “That Simple Food” of Friendship Ruth Abbey

68

v

Contents PART II

Who Can Be Our Friends?

79

7 Friendship between Children Mary Healy

81

8 The Physician as Friend to the Patient Nir Ben-​Moshe

93

9 Can Parents and Their Children Be Friends? Kristján Kristjánsson

105

10 God and Redemptive Friendship Paul K. Moser

115

11 Friendship and Citizenship Jonathan Seglow

126

12 The Animals In Our Living Rooms: Friends or Family? Cheryl Abbate

138

PART III

Friendship and Other Relationships

151

13 Friendship and Family Monika Betzler

153

14 Friendship Love and Romantic Love Berit Brogaard

166

15 Friendship and Marriage Christopher Bennett

179

PART IV

The Value and Rationality of Friendship

191

16 Friendship and Self-​Interest Richard Fumerton

193

17 Friendship and the Personal Good David O. Brink

201

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Contents

18 The Value of Friendship Thomas Hurka

213

19 Friendship and Practical Reason Daniel Koltonski

223

20 Friendship and Epistemic Partiality Sarah Stroud

233

21 Epistemic Partiality and Value Commitments Sanford C. Goldberg

247

PART V

Friendship, Morality, and Virtue

261

22 Consequentialism and Friendship Scott Woodcock

263

23 Partiality to Friends Troy Jollimore

275

24 Friendship and Special Obligations Jörg Löschke

288

25 Are You a Good Friend? Simon Keller

301

26 Friendship and Loyalty John Kleinig

311

27 Friendship and Exploitation George Tsai

321

PART VI

New Issues in Philosophy of Friendship

333

28 Friendship and Personal Identity Katarina Perović

335

29 Friends-with-Benefits: Is Sex Compatible with Friendship? Natasha McKeever

347

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Contents

30 Friendship and Social Media Alexis Elder

358

31 Friendship and Feminist Values in Film Katrien Schaubroeck

371

Index

383

viii

CONTRIBUTORS

Cheryl Abbate is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who specializes in animal ethics. She is particularly interested in ethical questions pertaining to the feline–​ human relationship. She has published over 20 academic pieces on a number of topics in animal ethics, including: abortion and animal rights, animal dignitary harms, meat ethics, the ethics of rescuing obligate carnivores, the ethics of spaying and neutering cats, and the ethics of providing felines with outdoor access. Ruth Abbey is Professor and Chair of the Department of Social Sciences at Swinburne University, Australia. Her most recent book, published in 2020, is an analysis of Nietzsche’s Human All Too Human. Other books include The Return of Feminist Liberalism (2011). Nir Ben-​Moshe is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy and the Carle Illinois College of Medicine at the University of Illinois Urbana-​Champaign. His research in biomedical ethics focuses on the values at play in the physician–​patient relationship. Christopher Bennett is a professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield. He is the author of The Apology Ritual (2008), as well as articles on topics such as blame, forgiveness, and apology; punishment and criminal justice; and moral psychology and philosophy of action. Monika Betzler holds Chair for Practical Philosophy and Ethics at Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) in Munich, Germany. She completed a book manuscript on “The Normative Significance of Personal Projects,” published numerous articles in moral psychology and ethics, and is currently co-​ editing (with Joerg Loeschke) a volume on The Ethics of Relationships (under contract with Oxford University Press). David O. Brink is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of California San Diego. His research interests are in ethical theory, history of ethics, moral psychology, and jurisprudence. He is the author of Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics (1989), Perfectionism and the Common Good:Themes in T.H. Green (2003), Mill’s Progressive Principles (2013), and Fair Opportunity and Responsibility (2021).

ix

Notes on Contributors

Berit “Brit” Brogaard is Professor of Philosophy and Cooper Fellow at the University of Miami. Her areas of research include philosophy of perception, philosophy of emotions, and philosophy of language. She is the author of Transient Truths (2012), On Romantic Love (Oxford University Press, 2015), The Superhuman Mind (2015), Seeing & Saying (2018), and Hatred: Understanding Our Most Dangerous Emotion (2020). Alexis Elder is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota Duluth. Her research focuses on interpersonal relationships and emerging technologies, drawing on historical traditions to better understand emerging ethical issues. She is the author of Friendship, Robots, and Social Media: False Friends and Second Selves (2018). Richard Fumerton is F. Wendell Miller Professor of Philosophy at the University of Iowa. He is the author of Metaphysical and Epistemological Problems of Perception (1985), Reason and Morality (1990), Metaepistemology and Skepticism (1996), Realism and the Correspondence Theory of Truth (2002), Epistemology (2006), Knowledge,Thought and the Case for Dualism (2013), and A Consequentialist Defense of Libertarianism (2021). Corinne Gartner is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Wellesley College. Her research interests are in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, with an emphasis on ethics and moral psychology. Sanford C. Goldberg is Chester D. Tripp Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy, Northwestern University, and Professorial Fellow at the Arché Research Center, University of St. Andrews. Recent books include Foundations and Applications of Social Epistemology (2021) and Conversational Pressure (2020). Mary Healy is an honorary fellow at the University of Roehampton, London. Her research and teaching interests lie in the area of “connectedness” in which she has published widely: friendship, social cohesion, loyalty, Fundamental British Values, belonging/​not-​belonging, patriotism and ethics in assessment in HE. She is the author of Philosophical Perspectives on Social Cohesion: New Directions for Educational Policy (2013). She is on the Development Committee for the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain. Thomas Hurka is Jackman Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto, Canada. He is the author of, among other works in ethics, Virtue, Vice, and Value (2001), British Ethical Theorists from Sidgwick to Ewing (2014) and The Best Things in Life:A Guide to What Really Matters (2011). Diane Jeske is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Iowa. She is the author of Rationality and Moral Theory: How Intimacy Generates Reasons (2008), The Evil Within: Why We Need Moral Philosophy (2018), and Friendship and Social Media: A Philosophical Exploration (2019). Troy Jollimore is Professor of Philosophy at California State University, Chico. His publications include On Loyalty (2012) and Love’s Vision (2011). Simon Keller is Professor of Philosophy at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He is the author of The Limits of Loyalty (2007) and Partiality (2013), and coauthor of The Ethics of Patriotism: A Debate (2015). John Kleinig is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Criminal Justice, John Jay College of Criminal Justice and in the PhD program in philosophy, City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center. From 1987 to 2011, he was director of the Institute for Criminal Justice x

Notes on Contributors

Ethics, CUNY, and editor of the journal Criminal Justice Ethics. He is the author/​editor of 23 books, most recently, Loyalty and Loyalties:The Contours of a Problematic Virtue (2014), The Ethics of Patriotism: A Debate (with Simon Keller and Igor Primoratz, 2015), and Ends and Means in Policing (2019). Daniel Koltonski is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Delaware. His main philosophical interests are in moral, social, and political philosophy. Kristján Kristjánsson is deputy director, Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, and Professor of Character Education and Virtue Ethics, University of Birmingham, UK. His interest lies in research on character and virtues at the intersection between moral philosophy, moral psychology, and moral education. He is editor of the Journal of Moral Education. Andrew Lambert is Associate Professor of Philosophy at CUNY, College of Staten Island. His recent publications include “Impartiality, Close Friendships and the Confucian Tradition” and “Love’s Extension: Confucian Familial Love and the Challenge of Impartiality.” He has translated several works in contemporary Chinese philosophy, including Li Zehou’s A History of Classical Chinese Thought (2019). Jörg Löschke is currently Swiss National Science Foundation-​funded professor at the University of Zurich in the Department of Philosophy. His research focus is on value theory and normative ethics, especially the distinction between consequentialist and non-​consequentialist moral theories and the ethics of personal relationships. Natasha McKeever is lecturer in applied ethics at the University of Leeds, UK. Her research interests are primarily in the philosophy of love and sex, and she has published articles on topics including: rape, asexuality, prostitution, romantic love, sexual infidelity, and sexual exclusivity. Paul K. Moser is Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. He is the author of The Divine Goodness of Jesus (2021), Understanding Religious Experience (2020), The God Relationship (2017), The Severity of God (2013), The Evidence for God (2010), The Elusive God (2008), Philosophy after Objectivity (1993), and Knowledge and Evidence (1989); is editor of Jesus and Philosophy (2010) and coeditor of The Cambridge Companion to Religious Experience (2020), and of the book series Cambridge Studies in Religion, Philosophy, and Society and Cambridge Elements: Religion and Monotheism. He is past editor of the American Philosophical Quarterly. Tamer Nawar is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Katarina Perović is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Iowa. She works on issues in metaphysics (properties and relations, philosophy of time, self and personal identity) and in the history of analytic philosophy. C.D.C. Reeve is DKE Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author most recently of Aristotle: Eudemian Ethics (2021) and Plato: Laws (2022). Katrien Schaubroeck is senior lecturer in the Department of Philosophy of the University of Antwerp, Belgium. She coedited the volume Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight:A Philosophical Exploration (2021, with Hans Maes). Jonathan Seglow is Reader (Associate Professor) in Political Theory in the Department of Politics, International Relations and Philosophy at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is the author xi

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Notes on Contributors

of Defending Associative Duties (2013) and more recently (with Matteo Bonotti) of Free Speech (2021), and of articles on free speech in Ethical Theory and Moral Practice and elsewhere. He looks at the ethical issues involved in accessing encrypted data as part of a European cross-​national research project. He has also published extensively on issues of religious accommodation and is coeditor (with Andrew Shorten) of Religion and Political Theory (2019). Karen Stohr is Ryan Family Professor of Metaphysics and Moral Philosophy at Georgetown University. She is the author of three books (On Manners, 2011; Minding the Gap: Moral Ideals and Moral Improvement, 2019; Choosing Freedom: A Kantian Guide to Life, 2022) and a number of articles on Kantian ethics, Aristotelian virtue ethics, and the norms of social relationships. Sarah Stroud is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Parr Center for Ethics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has published widely on moral theory, moral psychology, and practical reason. George Tsai is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hawaii.Tsai’s research interests are in moral and political philosophy, and he has written on rational persuasion, gratitude, blame, being supportive, paternalism, exploitation, global justice, and the state’s expressive powers, among other topics. His publications have appeared in venues including Philosophy and Public Affairs, Journal of Political Philosophy, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, Social Theory and Practice, Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility, Philosophy East and West, and Journal of Chinese Philosophy. Scott Woodcock is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. His primary areas of research include normative and applied ethics, and his most recent publications have appeared in The Journal of Value Inquiry, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, and the Australasian Journal of Philosophy.

xii

INTRODUCTION Diane Jeske

Friendship is often hailed as one of life’s greatest goods, a solace in times of trouble and a joy that makes the good times better and more meaningful. Our friends know, love, and appreciate us for who we are. They are there for us when we need a helping hand or a sympathetic ear. They stick by us when the going gets tough, and defend us against the malice of others. Art, both high and low, is often built on stories of great friendships: Ellis and Andy in The Shawshank Redemption, Huck and Jim in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the titular pair in Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion, George and Lennie in Of Mice and Men, Elena and Lila in the four novels of The Neapolitan Quartet, and many others. While philosophical interest in friendship is just about as old as the discipline itself, there has been, in recent years, a substantial and ever increasing interest in the topic and in interpersonal relationships more generally. Much of the recent interest in friendship has arisen from dissatisfaction with the dominant moral theories of Utilitarianism and Kantianism, and a perception that those theories are simply unable to accommodate either the rational or moral significance of friendship in our lives. And these concerns about the appropriate place of friendship in moral thought and in practical reasoning more generally have naturally led to explorations of the nature and value of friendship, its justification, and its connections to other types of interpersonal relationships. The aim of this volume is to both consolidate and move forward the state of philosophical work on friendship. The authors of the following chapters provide the reader with an understanding of the most important work and trends in the philosophy of friendship while also articulating new perspectives on and evaluations of those works and trends. Thus, this volume should be of interest to the newcomer to the philosophy of friendship, but also to philosophers currently engaged in scholarship in that and in related fields, such as the philosophy of love, the nature of sex and sexual relations, moral theory, practical rationality, value theory, the nature of the person, and so on. In this introduction, I will survey the various chapters in this volume by examining the range of issues covered in this handbook: i. The nature of friendship vis-​à-​vis other interpersonal relationships: How does friendship differ from, and what is its connection to, other interpersonal relationships, especially familial and romantic/​erotic or marital relationships? ii. The nature of friends: Who is eligible for friendship and under what circumstances? DOI: 10.4324/9781003007012-1

1

Diane Jeske

iii. The value and rationality of friendship: What is the justification (if there is one) for making and keeping friends? Does friendship alter the ways in which we should engage in practical reasoning or in which we ought to form our beliefs? iv. The morality and virtues of friendship:What do we owe to our friends? Do the demands of friendship conflict with those of morality or are they themselves moral demands? Does the arena of friendship offer not only special opportunities for the exercise of virtue but also extra opportunities for the exercise of vice or wrongdoing? v. Friendship, Media, and Technology: Do changing technologies have effects on the nature or possibility of friendship? How do media such as film portray friendship?

I.  The Nature of Friendship vis-​à-​vis Other Interpersonal Relationships As I said, Western philosophical discussion of friendship stretches back to the very beginnings of philosophy itself. Both Plato and Aristotle devoted significant attention to the nature of friendship and to its place in the good life for human beings (See C.D.C. Reeve and Corinne Gartner, this volume). But friendship for these ancient Greek philosophers was understood against the backdrop of a culture very different from our own. The Athenian elite engaged in and commended a practice of homoerotic/​sexual relationships between older men and male youths. As C.D.C Reeve makes clear in his contribution, according to Plato, the ideal of such friendships involves the older member of the pair mentoring the younger and helping to shape him into the virtuous citizen the Athenian Republic requires. And the older lover moves from appreciation of the beautiful body of his beloved boy to an appreciation of Beauty itself, as instantiated not only in the body but also in the soul. While sexuality and eroticism were essential to friendship as understood by Plato, our contemporary Western culture has tended to understand friendship in contrast with sexual and/​or erotic relationships. In fact, in the last 25 or so years, we have started using the term “friends with benefits” to refer to a friendship in which the friends enjoy sex together as they might enjoy playing tennis or watching movies together. The use of that phrase, and of others, such as “just friends,” indicates a background assumption that typical friendships do not involve sex. It is often thought, actually, that engagement in sex is likely to “ruin” a friendship, although Natasha McKeever argues that while sex can pose risks to friendship, it can also enhance it by enhancing the mutual caring and sharing that occurs between friends. She argues, then, that not only is sex compatible with friendship, it can actually strengthen a friendship. For most people, however, sex is understood to exist in the context of a romantic relationship, not in the context of friendship. And, it is often thought that the kind of love we have for our romantic partner (or partners) is different from the kind of love that we have for our friends: “I do not love you in that way,” is taken to mean that while it may be appropriate for us to be friends, it is not appropriate for us to be romantic lovers. But are there different forms of love, or is there only one kind of love that has different objects (romantic lovers vs. friends) and that is sometimes accompanied by sexual desire, sometimes not? Berit Brogaard offers what she calls a “socially situated account of love,” which allows us to differentiate between friendship love and romantic love. If these two types of love differ, is one more valuable or more central to a good life? Our society certainly seems to value romance more, especially given that romance is often taken to be, at least ideally, a prelude to marriage and children, two of the major hallmarks of maturity in our culture. In the Confucian tradition, friendships were also deprioritized, and, in fact, were, as Andrew Lambert discusses, often regarded with suspicion, because the Confucian society was a hierarchical one with strictly defined roles where family relationships were taken as the foundation of society. Friendship, on the other hand, is often understood as very different from familial relationships such as that between parent and child, insofar as friendship is both voluntary and nonhierarchical: we choose 2

Introduction

our friends and friends meet each other on a basis of equality. Monika Betzler accepts this contrast between friendship and familial roles, but denies that one or the other always has the normative upper hand: it will depend upon the details of each friendship or familial relationship as to its degree of normative significance, which will be a function of the relationship goods that it realizes. For many people marriage is the starting place for family: it is common for a person to say that they want to get married and start a family, where that family will involve the married couple and any children they either produce or adopt. Throughout history, however, marriage has been a very unequal relationship, with the husband having almost complete control over his wife, children, and other “property.” Mary Wollstonecraft, like John Stuart Mill later in his The Subjection of Women, argued that marriage ought to be a relationship of equality and respect, i.e. marital partners ought to be friends. Ruth Abbey discusses Wollstonecraft’s claim that friendship should permeate society, from relationships between husband and wife to relationships between citizens insofar as equality and respect should permeate society. Christopher Bennett endorses a view of marriage understood as two people living together as equals, but suggests that married persons need to maintain wider networks of various kinds of friendship in order to avoid the risks that marriage has often posed, in particular, to women. Bennett is arguing against what some psychologists have called “dyadic withdrawal,” that is, the tendency for persons to withdraw from friends and to focus on romantic and/​or marital relationships.

II.  The Nature of Friends While Aristotle’s account of friendship differs significantly from that of Plato, the two agree that friendship of the finest sort necessarily involves two men.Thus, a second important feature of ancient Greek culture, its patriarchal nature, influenced both theories of friendship. For Aristotle, only mature men have the capacity for virtue that is necessary for true, or at least, the best form of friendship. Aristotle famously differentiated between three types of friendship: friendships for pleasure, friendships for utility, and complete friendships. Only in complete friendships do the friends care about each other for their own sake rather than merely instrumentally as a means to pleasure or money or success or some other good. After all, according to Aristotle, only what is lovable in itself can be loved as an end.Virtue is lovable in itself, and so, when a person’s character is virtuous, that person can be loved as an end, that is, for her own sake. Because friendship is a reciprocal relationship, both parties must be lovable for their own sake, and so both parties must be virtuous. (Karen Stohr discusses Immanuel Kant’s similar notion of a “friendship of disposition” in which both parties have Kantian good wills and so an abiding commitment to morality, although Kant, unlike Aristotle, regarded it as a practically unrealizable ideal.) Insofar as only men, according to Aristotle, have the intellectual capacity for both moral and intellectual virtue, only men can enter into complete friendship with one another. (See Gartner, this volume, for a thorough discussion of Aristotle’s theory of friendship, a discussion that offers a broader and less moralized interpretation of Aristotle’s account of friendship than is usually attributed to him.) While Aristotle has influenced Western philosophical thought on friendship to a far greater extent than has any other philosopher, his views about who can enter into friendship relations has often been challenged. Of course, there has been no serious contemporary debate about whether women can enter into genuine friendships, given our rejection of the view that women are intellectually inferior to men. But none of us doubts that there are genuine cognitive and affective differences between mature human adults and both human children and members of other species, such as domesticated animals. While we speak of childhood friends, can we understand such claims in a philosophically robust way or only in a “loose and popular” way, to borrow David Hume’s phrase? Mary Healy argues that friendships between children are not only genuine but (i) may not differ very much from those of adults, and (ii) may even meet some of the criteria of Aristotelian complete (or, virtue) friendship.

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Diane Jeske

We often talk about our cats and dogs being our best friends. Again, can that only be true in some loose or derivative sense? Aristotle’s claim that friends care about each other for the other’s own sake has become almost a truism among contemporary philosophers of friendship. Some philosophers have argued that our cats and dogs can only love us as means to food, comfort, and play, and so the best that we can hope for with members of other species is Aristotelian friendship for either utility or pleasure, that is, something less than complete or the best form of friendship. Cheryl Abbate argues that we ought to view our relationships with our companion animals as friendships (as opposed to familial relationships), because those relationships exhibit the valuable qualities of friendship, among which she includes a respect for differences. But, of course, as Abbate acknowledges, our relationships with our animal companions will only be friendships if we regard and treat animals appropriately. As I mentioned in the discussion of how friendship is understood to differ from familial relationships, it is often taken to be a hallmark of friendship that it is a relationship of equals. Reciprocity and mutuality are paradigm features of friendship, and true reciprocity and mutuality would seem to require that there be no power imbalance between the parties. So, for example, Ben-Moshe, while allowing for a ‘physician-qua-friend’ model of physician–​patient relationships, argues that such a model can only be realized if the patient and the physician are understood to be equals. But some relationships, by their very nature, seem to have a kind of power imbalance built into them.The relationship between parents and their children would seem to be of such a sort. Parents control their children’s lives during their first years and they have the authority to do so. Kristján Kristjánsson argues, however, that the power dynamics during early childhood do not prevent adult children from becoming friends with their parents. Perhaps the most unequal of possible relationships is that between God and human beings, but Paul K. Moser argues that the Christian conception of God as redeemer involves a notion of “offered friendship.”  This notion of friendship may be very different from that at play in human–​human relationships, but, Moser argues, it has enough in common with it to qualify as friendship. It is important that Moser is working within the Christian tradition, a tradition that has a personal conception of God, according to which human persons can interact with God in some way. Friendship is standardly understood as requiring that the parties involved interact with one another directly. The notion of a civic friendship or friendship between fellow citizens, however, has a long history, going back at least as far as Aristotle. But how can we be friends with all of our fellow citizens, given that, in a modern nation, we know and have directly interacted with only a tiny percentage of them? Jonathan Seglow argues that there are at least some important analogies between the relations of friendship and of fellow citizenship: importantly, he suggests, both relations involve an understanding of those involved as having an equal status with one another. (See also Abbey for a discussion of friendship as the basis for political relationships in Wollstonecraft.)

III.  The Value and Rationality of Friendship Friendship is so natural and pervasive a feature of our lives that we rarely stop to ask: Should I have friends? If I should have friends, why is that the case? We all know that friends can provide us with many benefits: they provide a shoulder to cry on, solace in times of trouble, a sympathetic ear, allies when we face threats, a bulwark against loneliness, and their love provides us with the sense that we matter. Perhaps most mundanely, but also perhaps most importantly, we enjoy spending time with our friends: we share activities and interests, laugh at each other’s jokes, and just find peace in each other’s companionship. Aristotle acknowledged such facts, but regarded friendships in which the friends value each other and maintain the friendship merely in order to have such goods as an inferior form of friendship as contrasted with a virtue friendship in which the parties value each other for the other’s own sake. In contrast, Richard Fumerton offers what he calls a “deflationary” conception of friendship. He argues that not only do we have strong reasons of self-​interest to form and maintain

4

Introduction

friendships (and also to terminate some friendships), but that such reasons may be our only reasons to do so without in any way detracting from the value and significance of friendship. David O. Brink, on the other hand, starts from Aristotle’s claim that a friend is another self in order to offer an account of why friendship has not merely instrumental benefits, but is also a good in itself. He argues that we can appeal to the psychological reductionist account of personal identity to show that the connections that bind our temporal stages together into a single person also bind us to certain other people, including our friends. (See Katarina Perović, this volume, for further discussion of the relevance of personal identity to friendship.) So, just as the good of our future selves is part of our own good, so is the good of our friends part of our own good. In his discussion of the value of friendship, Thomas Hurka rejects the type of account offered by Brink, because Hurka sees altruistic concern as one (among many) of the goods of friendship. But how could my concern for my friend be altruistic if my friend’s good is merely an extension of my own good? While many people, including philosophers, see friendship as both good as a means and good for its own sake, and so rational for us to pursue, this view of friendship is not universal. In an oft-​ discussed article, “Friendship and Moral Danger,” Dean Cocking and Jeannette Kennett argue that friendship is a relationship that grounds unique sorts of reasons for its participants, reasons that can conflict with moral reasons. According to Cocking and Kennett, sometimes being a good friend requires acting immorally. They quote the saying that a friend helps you to move house while a good friend helps you to move a body. But if having a good moral character is part of living well for human beings, then, insofar as friendship can demand immorality, friendship can pose threats to our well-​being. I have already mentioned that the Confucian tradition worried about the voluntary and egalitarian nature of friendship insofar as those features threatened the non-​voluntary and hierarchal structure of society. Augustine also, as Tamer Nawar discusses, had his doubts about the role of friendship in the good life. Augustine saw friendship as a potential obstacle on the individual’s path to God, insofar as friends can lead us astray, as Augustine’s friend did in the famous episode involving the theft of some pears. For these and other reasons, Augustine claimed that genuine friendship is only possible with fellow Christians. Apart from questions about the rationality of forming and maintaining friendships, we can also ask about the ways in which friendship might alter or affect how to understand rationality for the agents party to it. If my friend has certain goals or aims, how should I think about her goals and aims? Surely I should not regard them in the same way that I regard the goals and aims of strangers and acquaintances: even Kant, as Stohr points out, thought that while we should be concerned with the ends of all rational agents, we should pay particular attention to those of our friends. Should I adopt her goals and aims as my own? Or should I pursue what I take to be in my friend’s best interests, even if that conflicts with her own understanding of what is best for her? Daniel Koltonski explores the impact that friendship has on how an agent ought to engage in the activity of practical reasoning. (See also John Kleinig, this volume, for a discussion of paternalism in friendship.) It has been argued that friendship may not only affect the ways that we engage in practical reasoning, but that it may do so in ways that conflict with the standards to which we usually hold epistemic agents. As Sanford C. Goldberg points out, it is usually the case that we think that we ought to form our beliefs on the basis of facts relevant to the truth of those beliefs. But, Sarah Stroud argues, in friendship, we ought to exhibit epistemic partiality to our friends. For example, we ought to believe that our friends will succeed in their endeavors in circumstances in which the truth-​relevant factors cannot be taken to support that belief and in which we would not be rational to hold such beliefs about strangers or mere acquaintances. Goldberg replies to Stroud (and to others who advocate for epistemic partiality to friends) that the arguments for such cognitive attitudes with respect to our friends apply equally well in support of epistemic partiality to many other persons/​organizations. Thus, he claims, we must either reject epistemic partiality to friends or we must commit to forming our beliefs on other than truth-​related factors in a very wide range of circumstances.

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IV.  The Morality and Virtues of Friendship We are partial to our friends. This seems obviously true, but it is an ambiguous claim. We can be partial to something in the sense of liking it in preference to certain other options. So I am partial to milk chocolate and prefer it to any form of dark chocolate.We are clearly partial to our friends in this sense: I like, and in some cases, love my friends, and I like them and their company more than I like other people or the company of other people. (See Richard Fumerton, this volume, for a discussion of the importance and perhaps centrality of this feature of friendship.) But to be partial to someone or something is also to exhibit in one’s actions a kind of favoritism with respect to them or it. I act partially with respect to the University of Iowa philosophy department as contrasted with other philosophy departments: I put far more effort into promoting its graduate and undergraduate programs and the research and reputation of its faculty than I do into promoting any such aspects of other philosophy departments. And we are certainly partial in this way to our friends: I use my resources, including my time, disproportionately to benefit my friends in contrast to those persons who are strangers or mere acquaintances. (See Troy Jollimore, this volume, for a discussion of the diverse and complex ways in which we are partial to our friends.) Is such partiality morally justified? Dominant contemporary moral theories –​consequentialism and versions of Kantian deontology –​take as a starting point the moral equality of persons. As Jeremy Bentham (echoing Francis Hutcheson) famously said, “each is to count for one and for no more than one.” And rights-​based versions of Kant’s view accord to each person equal moral rights. How, then, can we morally justify devoting a great deal more of our time, energy, and other resources to some very small subset of persons as opposed to all of the others? This question is particularly pressing for those of who live privileged lives, because our friends tend to also be privileged: it seems morally suspect to devote our time to caring for those who are already privileged when so many people in the world live in absolutely dire circumstances. Consequentialism in its standard versions understands right action in terms of the promotion of the best consequences for everyone affected by the action, where no person’s interests are given greater weight than those of any one else. But “common sense” morality seems to hold that each of us has special obligations to her friends: we have obligations to benefit our friends in ways that we are not obligated to benefit strangers and mere acquaintances, and we are duty bound, it seems, to give priority to our friends. (See Jörg Löschke, this volume, for a discussion of special obligations in the context of friendship.) We would usually judge much more harshly a person who refuses a certain kind of aid to a friend than we would a person who refuses the same kind of aid to a stranger. And standardly an agent will seem morally remiss to us if she does as much good for strangers as she does for friends. Peter Railton in his now classic article, “Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality,” attempted to show how the partial attitudes and behavior that we usually associate with friendship can be accommodated by the consequentialist (even if consequentialism cannot accommodate genuinely special obligations). In the years since Railton published his article, there have been many responses to it, both objecting to his claims that consequentialism is compatible with friendship and attempting to bolster Railton’s project of showing how a good consequentialist agent can act in the ways that we standardly think that a good friend ought to act. Scott Woodcock offers an overview of this give-​and-​take between consequentialists and their critics, ultimately arguing that consequentialism is able to accommodate the commitment and intimacy of friendship. So many people regard a moral theory such as consequentialism as inadequate, because it cannot accommodate the partiality that we regard as part and parcel of friendship. But what, then, does friendship demand of us, over and above what morality demands of us with respect to all persons merely as such? One obvious answer is, loyalty. For many people there is no worse moral image than that of a disloyal friend: E.M. Forster famously said,“If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.” But should loyalty to

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friends extend to acts of immorality, to helping a friend move a body, as it were? Kleinig argues that there is no in principle reason why loyalty to a friend may not trump moral demands, although there will be limits on its ability to do so. As he says, the demands of loyalty may not extend to concealing “one’s knowledge of bloodstained clothes and a knife.” Friendship seems to require loyalty of us, then, loyalty that may require considerable sacrifice on our part. What else does friendship demand of us, both in terms of actions but also in terms of dispositions, attitudes, and emotions? How do I determine whether I am a good friend? Simon Keller argues that we cannot specify what it is to be a good friend simpliciter. Rather, he claims, one is always a good friend to a particular person in a particular set of circumstances. So being a good friend is not itself a virtue, because what is required to be a good friend to, say, Peter, may be very different from what is required to be a good friend to Paul. While friendship can be an arena for the exercise of virtue –​Aristotle said that it is finer, for example, to be magnanimous with respect to one’s friends than with respect to strangers –​it can also be an arena for the exercise of vice. Friendship makes us vulnerable in many ways. As I pointed out in my discussion of Cocking and Kennett, insofar as we take our friends’ aims as our own, we can find ourselves involved in immorality if our friends make morally bad choices. In addition to being vulnerable to doing wrong in concert with our friends, we are vulnerable to being wronged by our friends. Kant warned that “it is very unwise to place ourselves in a friend’s hands completely, to tell him all the secrets which might detract from our welfare if he became our enemy and spread them abroad,” or “who might be capable of sending us to the gallows in a moment of passion” (208). The very intimacy that seems to make friendship so valuable, Kant is suggesting, also poses a danger. George Tsai argues that vulnerability to exploitation in friendship is unavoidable, given the nature of friendship, but suggests some ways in which such vulnerability can be minimized.

V.  Friendship, Media, and Technology I began this Introduction by mentioning some famous friendships from literature and film. How friendships are portrayed in these media can reveal a lot about the role that friendship plays in culture and society. So, for example, as I began listing examples of fictional friendships, I was struck by how few examples of female friendship came to mind. I was further struck by the number of female friendships portrayed in literature that involve sisters (think of, for example, the novels of Jane Austen). Part of the explanation for this might be that for so many centuries, women’s role was understood in terms of family first and foremost, and many women (at least the upper-​class women so often depicted in novels –​again, think of Jane Austen) went from their families of birth to their families by marriage without the intervening years of, for example, college and early professional life that were such important parts of the lives of men. And those years were, and continue to be, ones in which men (and now, women) form some of the most important and long-​lasting friendships in their lives. Literature and film can also challenge our accepted views of friendship. Huck and Jim, as portrayed by Mark Twain, challenged the view that friendship across the races is either not possible or not desirable. More recently, the friendship of Spock and Captain Kirk illustrates how two people of very different origins and psychological orientations can become friends through mutual respect and shared trials. Katrien Schaubroeck explores the way in which some films involving female friendships such as Thelma and Louise and Heavenly Creatures, challenge C.S. Lewis’s claim that friendship is the one human love that has no survival value. Schaubroeck uses the films that she discusses to suggest that Lewis’s claim seems less plausible when we focus our attention on oppressive contexts, such as those often faced by women in patriarchal societies. While film has, for just over a century now, provided us with a new media for depicting and exploring friendships, new technologies of the twenty-​first century are providing us with new modes of interpersonal interaction. We now have the well-​known notion of a FaceBook friend,

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that is, someone with whom we interact on that social media site. In the years since FaceBook was introduced, many new ways of interacting in virtual space have been created, as Alexis Elder points out. People use these social media sites and other virtual venues in a variety of ways, and recent years have seen a wide range of cautionary literature from many disciplines about the dangers to ourselves and to our relationships from use of them. Elder, however, is cautiously optimistic that these new ways of interacting with and even creating friends can have positive impacts on our lives and on our relationships. While almost everyone agrees that friendship is one of life’s greatest joys, philosophers disagree about how to understand friendship, about who is eligible for friendship, the justification and rationale of friendship, and how friendship fits into the moral life. Understanding these debates is important not only for philosophers but for all of us who give friendship a central role in our lives. The chapters that follow provide a rich and nuanced road map of these debates while helping to guide us forward on that road to a greater understanding and appreciation of our friends and of our friendships.

References Aristotle. 1985. Nichomachean Ethics. Translated by T. Irwin. Indianapolis: Hackett. Cocking, D., and J. Kennett. 2000. “Friendship and Moral Danger.” Journal of Philosophy 97: 278–​96. Kant, I. 1930/​1963. Lectures on Ethics. Translated by L. Infield. Indianapolis: Hackett. Mill, J.S. 1988. The Subjection of Women. Edited by G. Sher. Indianapolis: Hackett. Railton, P. 1984. “Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 13: 134–​71.

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PART I

Historical Perspectives

1 FRIENDSHIP IN THE CONFUCIAN TRADITION Andrew Lambert

Historical Perspectives: Friendship in the Confucian Tradition This chapter examines how friendship has been represented and assessed in the Confucian tradition, and particularly in classical Confucian texts such as the Analects and the Mencius. Several features of Confucian thinking about friendship are discussed. First, friendship in the Confucian and later imperial tradition is sometimes viewed with suspicion, as having the potential to be subversive. In addition, it has been largely subservient to the family, with the latter also influencing understandings of friendship. Next, an influential account of friendship in the classical texts will be explored: friendship as a relationship that contributes to the Confucian ideal of personal cultivation. Finally, I explore how the Confucian tradition might yield novel or neglected conceptions of friendship, and outline one such form: friendship based on shared social events rather than regard for personal character.

Confucian Doubts about Friendship and Its Subservience to Family In the Western philosophical tradition, friendship, however its details are spelled out, is often admired and idealized. Aristotle lauded close friendship based on character, while modern manifestations are valued for their cherishing of individuality, as a liberation from tradition and non-​voluntary social bonds, or as a relationship of equality or sharing.1 In the Chinese literary and philosophical tradition, however, the reception of friendship historically does not neatly align with such positive portrayals. A contemporary cultural theorist in Taiwan observes that, while for many metropolitan audiences around the world “friend” is a ubiquitous and informative designation, “this is rarely the case in the Sinophone world” (Wei-​cheng Chu 2017: 169). In Sinophone cultural contexts, calling someone a friend (pengyou) does not necessarily constitute a satisfactory summary of that relationship; it invites the further question: “What kind of friend?” (Chu 170). Answers often allude to other forms of relatedness, such as former classmate (tongxue), colleague (tongshi), or “brother-​in-​arms” (xiongdi, a term that describes close male relations by analogy with brothers). Two points follow from this dissatisfaction with the term “friendship” and the demand for clarification, and both are helpful in understanding friendship in the Confucian tradition. The first is the emphasis on understanding the individual and their relationships in terms of the social roles and other relationships in which they are embedded. In particular, family (understood broadly, to included extended webs of kinship) and family-​like relationships (including fictive kin) are especially DOI: 10.4324/9781003007012-3

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important in Confucian thought and have influenced how friendship is understood and assessed. Second, friendship, insofar as it is a nonhierarchical relationship that exists outside of the institutions and customs that structure social life, “clearly remains suspicious in the eyes of Sinophone beholders” (Chu 170). The rise of globalization and cross-​cultural exchange means that friendship is increasingly a universally recognized and widely valued relationship. Contemporary China is no exception to this trend. Yet the tradition within China that treats friendship with suspicion has deep roots.2 For example, a popular form of literature, dating back to before the Qin dynasty was founded (c. 221 bce), was “household instruction” (jiaxun). A famous example is “Family instructions of Master Yan” (Yanshi jiaxun) by Yan Zhitui (531–​591) (See Zhu 2008).These texts featured prescriptions about how family members should behave. Friends, considered family outsiders, were usually presented as a threat to domestic harmony (Huang 2007: 2). Friendship aroused concern –​at least in influential written texts circulated among literate elites –​ for several reasons. Poorly chosen friendship could cause harm to oneself. The Analects (Lunyu), a collection of sayings attributed to Confucius (c. 551–​497 bce) and the most canonical of Confucian texts, identifies three types of harmful friendship: “with the obsequious, the double-​faced, and those who use cunning words” (16.4). However, the potential harm of friendship was not merely personal; it was also social and political, affecting family and the state. Ambivalence about friendship’s value can be traced back to the notion of five cardinal relationships (wulun) in traditional thought. Descriptions of a core set of foundational human relationships date back to early Chinese texts, and had far-​reaching social and political implications. Such accounts are found in the Mencius (3A3, 7A15, and 7B24), the Zhongyong or The Doctrine of the Mean, and the Xunzi.3 Although a settled set of five relationships appears only in the Han Dynasty (206 bce–​220 ce) (Hsu 1970), family and kin relationships have been prominent in Confucian discourse across the ages. The first four are the relationships between father and son, ruler and minister, husband and wife, and older and younger brother; friendship is the fifth relationship.The first four relationships were typically hierarchical and integral to orthodox Confucian prioritizing of family and state. Each of these relationships yielded clearly distinguished social roles, with accompanying duties, and which sustained family and state. The place of personal friendship within this social structure was less clear. Although friendship can encompass generic duties or customary norms (e.g., Telfer 1970; Shields 2015: 36), it is often valued because it allows individuals to find meaningful and nurturing relationships beyond the non-​voluntary commitments of kinship. But this lack of customary expectation and normative guidance is a reason why, in the Chinese literary tradition, “friendship was traditionally deemed the least essential” of the five relationships (Huang 2007: 2). But why did the other four bonds traditionally take precedence over friendship in orthodox Confucian thought? One reason is that family and state were traditionally intertwined. In the early Zhou dynasty (c. 1046–​771 bce), for example, a centrally located suzerain emperor usually maintained control by enfeoffing relatives in vassal states, or by marriage, thereby creating a network of loyal rulers sustained by kinship (Pulleyblank 2000: 7–​10; Khayutina 2014). In the later imperial dynastic system, which lasted from the unification of China under the Qin dynasty (221–​206 bce) until the collapse of the Qing dynasty in the twentieth century, the family was a model for the state. The tenets of this system appear in the early Confucian texts. Analects 1.2 stresses filial conduct, while 2.21 reads: “Just being filial to your parents and befriending your brothers is carrying out the work of government”; the Mencius notes, “The empire has its basis in the state, the state in the family, and the family in one’s own self ” (4A5, trans. Lau 2004: 120). This family–​state dynamic is also present in modern history (Yue Du 2021). The Chinese term for a state –​guojia –​is comprised of “nation,” guo國, and “family,” jia家.4 This indicated, ideologically at least, that kinship and the state were closely connected. Within this family-​state, the foundational social bond was the bond between father and son, which “occupies a paradigmatic place among the wulun [five relationships]” (CI Jiwei 1999: 329). Crucial to this 12

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bond was the Confucian virtue of filial piety (xiao孝). Xiao was important in the Analects (1.6, 2.5–​2.7, 2.21, 4.18–​21, and 19.17.) as well as the later imperial period (Rosemont and Ames 2008; Knapp 2005). While xiao is multifaceted, one prominent demand was respect for seniority, particularly fathers (see, e.g., Mencius 1A7;Yang 1991: 43–​9). The bond between younger and older brothers or between senior and junior exhibited similar dynamics: younger brothers deferred (ti 悌) to older brothers while older brothers nurtured junior siblings.5 The importance of xiao and ti is confirmed in the Analects, which makes them central to the Confucian goal of personal cultivation: “Filial piety and fraternal deference are the root of exemplary conduct (ren 仁)” (Analects, 1:2; All translations based on Rosemont and Ames 2010). The relationship of ruler and minister, although a political relation, resembled the father–​son relationship. It also readily translated into a ruler–​subject relation, in which felt obligation in the family became obedience to the ruler (Ci 1999: 333), who was a father figure to his subjects. Unsurprisingly, some connect such patrilinear family structures with later totalitarianism (Schwartz, 1985: 67–​75; Roetz 1993; Hu Shi 1934), though others deny a link between Confucian familial ethics and the state-​as-​family view (Chan 2004). Setting aside this issue, however, the emperor’s good treatment of his own family both demonstrated his fitness to rule and served as a model that stimulated emulation among the populace.The good ruler also ensured the material conditions that enabled children to care for parents and elders (Mencius 1A7). In contrast, friendship, as a nonfamilial relationship, had little role in sustaining the familial state. It could even obstruct duties to family and states. For example, pursuing the pleasures of friendship could lead to the neglect of filial duties toward parents. The ubiquity of the family –​as both social structure and dominant metaphor of the social imagination –​affected, directly or indirectly, thinking about friendship. As one sociologist observes, “Many non-​family social relationships were patterned after the family system in terms of structures and values” (King 1985: 58). Arguably, this dominance was an obstacle to theorizing friendship as a voluntary relationship between equal and unencumbered individuals. It led, for example, to a view of friendship as fleeting, momentary and intense in nature, or as a bond between outsiders resisting corruption or bad rulership (Kutcher 2000: 1616). Friendship was pulled into the orbit of experiences within the family and often understood as an extension of the affections found in family life (though see Lu 2010 for an independent characterization of friendship). A legacy of this familial sensibility is the use of fictive kinship terms in Chinese social relations. This involved familiarizing acquaintances and generating intimacy by drawing on the expectations and emotions of a familial bond. Fictive kinship was prominent historically, such that “those who lacked family ties invented them” (Mann 1997,: 139), and remains widespread today (Jankowiak 2008: 83). This sensibility is well summarized by the twentieth-​century Chinese thinker Liang Shuming: Chinese culture puts importance on human relationships. It expands the familial relationships into broader society beyond the family. For example, a teacher is called “teacher-​father” [shifu] a schoolmate is called a “school brother” [xuexiong/​xuedi]. In ways like this, a person always has the close, family-​like, intimate feelings. Applying such relationships to society, it seems to bring distant people closer together, to bring outsiders inside. This is the distinguishing feature of China and Chinese culture. Liang and Alitto 2013: 16 The conceptual space for friendship in public discourse was not entirely eliminated, however. Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci’s (1552–​1610) Chinese treatise on friendship fascinated Chinese literati (Ricci 2009). Later, during the decline of the imperial era, friendship became a topic of interest. Some Chinese reformers (e.g., Tan Sitong 1958) looked to the fifth Confucian relationship as the basis for 13

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a new social order, and contemporary political theorists have continued to explore friendship’s place in a modern Chinese polity (Dallmayr 2003). The above discussion highlights some of the obstacles in classical Confucian thought to valuing friendship as a distinct and socially vital relationship. Family and kinship were more heavily theorized and socially more important. However, this does not mean that everyday life did not feature many close friendships that arose as the result of propinquity, shared experiences, and familiarity. Rather, such relationships were not central to the ethics and social structures of Confucian society. Friendship does appear in early Confucian texts, albeit as fragmentary comments and insight rather than as the object of sustained or systematic discussion. The next section surveys some of the ways in which friendship has been conceptualized and related to the core commitments of classical Confucian thought.

Friendship in Classical Confucian Thought Several Chinese terms or characters associated with the idea of friendship appear in the early texts, and in the even earlier inscriptions found on bronze ritual vessels. These include you友, peng朋, jiu 舊, and gu 故. The character you 友 is the term most often associated with friendship. It appears early in the written records, featuring on oracle bone inscriptions from the Shang dynasty (c. 1600–​1050 bce), and on bronze inscriptions from the Western Zhou period (1045–​771 bce) (Vervoorn 2004: 6). The modern character 友is composed of two hands combined, a left and a right hand, indicating cooperation or amity; early forms of this character featured separate hands, suggesting two people acting in unison (Vervoorn 2004: 6). Sociocultural context is important to understanding early uses of terms such as you 友. In early China, especially the Shang and Zhou dynasties, clan-​based forms of social organization were dominant. Networks of patriarchal clan lineages were characterized by ordered webs that combined consanguineal and affinal ties. The later Confucian emphasis on family has its roots in these social structures. During the Western Zhou period, written records on ritual bronze vessels were typically concerned with kin relatives (Khayutina 2003: 121). Consequently, there is broad scholarly consensus that in the earliest texts, from the Western Zhou or Spring and Autumn periods, you referred to both non-​kin friends and male relatives, particularly those of the same generation such as brothers and cousins (Shields 2015: 32; Tong Shuye 1980: 122; Zhu Fenghan 1990: 292–​7; Zhou 2010: 110–​11). Some have argued that you originally referred to the relationship between younger and older brother, with its meaning then extended to cover kinship relationships of mutual support (Zha Changguo 1998; Zhu Fenghan 1990). Others have argued that you was not used exclusively for non-​kin friends until the Warring States period (c. 475–​221 bce) (Wang Lihua 2004: 49). Such observations support the claim that friendship was initially understood as an extension of kinship and family relations. However, some have disputed whether early accounts of friendship were so closely tied to kinship affinities, arguing that the textual evidence is inconclusive (Vervoorn 2004). According to this view, it is implausible that everyday life in early China did not feature relationships of mutual support and sympathy that functioned somewhat independently of the more formal bonds of kinship or clan. Without resolving this larger question of how family relationships shaped perceptions of friendship in the tradition as a whole, we can summarize some features of friendship alluded to in the early literature. The Book of Songs (Shijing), which became one of the five Confucian classics (wujing), is a collection of sung odes that describe everyday pastoral life, and offer eulogies to esteemed rulers. In one ode, a bird calls out for a mate (you), evoking the idea of faithful mates who spend time together (ode 165, Waley trans., 1996: 137). Another intuitive dimension of friendship is conveyed by the character peng 朋. In early Chinese texts and lexicons, this character is typically glossed as two cowrie shells (Sturgeon 2019a), which were used in ritual and economic exchange in early China, or as a flock of birds flying together, suggesting a binding together or the formation of a group (Sturgeon 2019b). 14

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In some poems in the Book of Songs, peng indicates identity or equality, based on the similarity of the shells (odes 17, 154, 300;Waley 1996).The same text also portrays friendship as a relationship between brothers, and as the experiences and commitments of brotherhood (odes 92, 241). How is friendship portrayed in the Analects? The historical Confucius, as recorded in the Analects, is sometimes thought to mark a shift in worldview, away from a world of clan organization and rigid social structures, and their morality and social norms. As this form of social organization broke down with the disintegration of the Zhou dynasty and the onset of the Warring States period, the individual became more prominent. The Analects, for example, is often read as a study in character cultivation. Arguably, this explains why friendship in the Analects is often associated with the virtue of trust (xin信); trust is particularly relevant to personal relationships governed more by personal responsibility and discretion rather than adherence to public and shared communal standards. This has led some scholars to claim, “Confucius conceived of a socio-​political system ordered by affinity, if not instead of consanguinity then certainly in addition to it” (Vervoorn 2004: 13). This view is at least consistent with the interpretative tradition, which holds that the historical Confucius offered a new vision for society. A popular and concise way to express this change is as a shift in emphasis from being a nobleman, hereditary nobles holding official title, to being a noble man, that is, someone of good character worthy of official position and public emulation. This idea of Confucius as an innovator, who identified a new ethical basis for society and was concerned with personal cultivation and not merely correct ritual form or social duty, also confirms Confucius as a philosophical figure worthy of study (Hall and Ames 1987; Tu Wei-​Ming 1985). If, despite his modest claims to the contrary (Confucius declared, “I transmit but do not initiate,” Analects 7.1), Confucius was an innovator concerned with cultivating individual character and not simply defending tradition, then reading into the Analects familiar voluntary friendships of affection and mutual liking becomes more plausible. As the individual became a key unit of social analysis so friendship between individuals, independent of kinship or clan ties, could also emerge as an important social bond. Indeed, some have argued that such friendship is important in early Confucian thought, and that friendship in early Confucian thought is roughly comparable with how “early Greek and Roman philosophers” understood friendship (Vervoorn 2004: 18). Indeed, Vervoorn claims that Confucius “was working at least semi-​consciously towards what may be called a friendship theory of society” (Vervoorn 2004: 13). However, the claim that Confucius represents a significant departure from earlier values and social ethics (and so offered a more individualistic, affinity-​based view of friendship), is disputed. Some argue that the Analects remains rooted in a preexisting culture and value system (Li Zehou 2019); this a world constituted by clan social structures. Furthermore, this residual culture need not be reactionary and oppressive, but instead might yield an alternative and philosophically distinctive worldview. This is characterized by, for example, an ethical vision built out of a concern with ritualized behavior, a heightened concern with human relatedness, and an interest in music as a means to cultivate character and regulate society. I return to this point in the final section, when considering a novel conception of Confucian friendship. Here, let us simply note the following. The idea that the early Confucians offered a universal or generic ideal of voluntary friendships of affinity, or treated friendship with the same importance as family relations, is difficult to sustain given the scattered and disparate comments on friendship found in texts such as the Analects, the Mencius, and the Xunzi (the three most influential classical Confucian texts). In the Mencius, for example, 5B3 offers perhaps the clearest account of friendships based on virtue, independent of status. But it must be balanced against other attitudes toward friendship in the same text. These include friendship being conditional on family life (4A12), conflicting demands of friendship and family (4B30), and official position limiting the possibilities for friendship (5B7). Thus, claims of a “friendship view of society” are too strong. Personal friendship –​beyond family commitments –​was undoubtedly common and important to people in early China, as it probably has been in most times and places. However, while this might be true on the everyday folk level, such 15

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a view was not clearly theorized in the early Confucian tradition. As seen in the above discussion of ambivalence toward friendship in the later tradition, themes of family life and familial roles continued to dominate Confucian social life. Even though the early Confucian texts do not offer an explicit theoretical account or definition of friendship, several features of the early Confucian approach to friendship are noteworthy. For example, in contrast to the modern hope that parent–​child relationships mature into a friendship relation (English 1992), the Confucians seemingly discouraged parents from trying to befriend their children. For example, Mencius’s account of the father–​son relationship is more structured around social roles, with little emphasis on ideals of intimacy and caring (Lambert 2016). Fathers do not teach their sons, for example, because this leads to anger and resentment (Mencius 4A18). In the Analects, there are warnings against “fake” friendships –​appearing to befriend someone while harboring resentment (5.25). There is also awareness of both good and bad forms of friendship (16.4), and encouragement to reflect daily on conduct in relationships, including friendship (1.4). Another feature of Confucian friendship is the value of personal recognition or understanding, and often in ways that strangers and even family cannot manage. In the Analects and beyond, this feature is often associated with the term zhi (知 knowledge, acquaintance, understanding, realization) (Henry 1987; Harbsmeier 1993; Lu 2010: 236–​8), although this term has a range of meanings beyond personal recognition. The demand to know people or recognize others (zhiren知人) is widespread in Confucian texts; it applies in both personal life and political rulership, and covers both empathy and also the more pragmatic notion of knowing how to get along with others. The value of finding a friend who appreciates one’s true character is a recurring theme in the tradition. Several terms for friends incorporate the term for knowing or recognition, zhi 知: zhixin知心 lit. knowing one’s heart, zhiji知己, knows oneself, and zhiyin 知音, a musical allusion, “appreciating the same tune.” Indeed, the Confucian corpus features several paradigmatic stories of friends who appreciate each other or remain loyal in the face of hardship. Famous examples include Guan Zhong and Bao Shuya in the Records of the Grand Historian or Shiji (62:7 2131; see Wang 2017: 47); the Liezi (trans. Graham 1990) records the legend of blind zither player Yu Boya and Zhong Ziqi. Boya refused to play his zither again after the death of his friend Zhong, because he believed Zhong was the only person who could fully appreciate his music. These examples show that close friendship was appreciated in the Confucian literary tradition.

Confucian Friendship and Personal Cultivation Although not systematically laid out, one particular conception of friendship does permeate the Analects. This is friendship as a relationship that furthers the Confucian goal of personal cultivation, often with a view to taking an official post (12.23–​24, 13.28, 15.10, 16.5). Consider the opening passage of the Analects, which famously enthuses about friendship: The Master said: “Having studied, to then repeatedly apply what you have learned-​is this not a source of pleasure? To have friends come from distant quarters-​is this not a source of enjoyment? To go unacknowledged by others without harboring frustration-​is this not the mark of an exemplary person?” Analects 1.1 Some have suggested that friendship’s appearance in the first passage signifies the importance of the topic to the Analects’ worldview. Whether true or not, this passage is traditionally viewed as a comment about personal cultivation. The three statements indicate three distinct kinds of enjoyment or personal satisfaction that accompany three levels of cultivation (Lu 2010: 236). Practicing what one has learned is pleasurable, discussing what one has learned with friends and sharing in the process of 16

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cultivation is enjoyable; and the individual can then remain content and unperturbed by the attitudes of others. The passage thus connects friendship to the goal of personal and moral cultivation that characterizes classical Confucian philosophy. The Analects makes clear that cultivation is challenging –​“the burden is heavy and the way is long” (8.7) –​and requires sustained application (9.11, 9.19; 9.22). It requires immersion in the classic literature of the tradition (e.g., studying the Odes, 17.9), immersion in music (3.23, 8.8), and training in ritualized behavior that cultivates appropriate social conduct (3.4, 6.27,8.2) and bodily comportment (10.2–​4), while also upholding familial roles and due concern for parents. The outcome is an exemplary or cultivated person (junzi), who is ren (humane, virtuosic, and exemplary), and who thereby acquires a kind of power or charisma (de) that transforms the world around (2.1), an effect like ripples on water, involving an ever-​wider circle of effect. The classic statement of this radial model of personal cultivation occurs in the Great Learning or Daxue (Chan 1963: 84–​7; also Analects 2.4). Friends help in propelling a person along this Confucian path of personal cultivation. Indeed, the Analects is an illustration of the mentoring friendships between Confucius and his students, to whom he often responds with personally tailored advice. That advice also includes how to treat friends. Confucius says, “Do your utmost to exhort them, and lead them adeptly along the way (dao)” (12.23); also, be “critical and demanding with their friends” (13.28). Possibly speaking of Confucius, his follower Zeng Xi declares, “The exemplary person (junzi) attracts friends through refinement (wen), and thereby promotes authoritative conduct (ren)” (12.24) –​suggesting that friends serve the goal of becoming authoritative or exemplary (ren). This friendship is rooted in the desire to learn from those further advanced on the Confucian way. The Analects exhorts the reader to dwell among the exemplary (ren) (4.1) and “befriend those scholar apprentices (shi) who are most authoritative in their conduct” (15.10). The drive to seek out those from whom one can learn leads Confucius to declare: “in strolling in the company of just two other persons, I am bound to find a teacher. Identifying their strengths, I follow them, and identifying their weaknesses, I reform myself accordingly” (7.22). Similarly, 16.4 mentions three kinds of beneficial and three harmful friendships and conveys the importance of carefully choosing friends; and 16.5 describes the joy of being surrounded by “friends of superior character (xian).”This drive to learn and improve leads to a striking demand:“Do not have as a friend anyone who is not as good as you are” (1.8), advice repeated in 9.25. However, this emphasis on friendship as a relationship of self-​improvement gives rise to a tension within the text, an apparent paradox (Wing-​tsit Chan 1963: 20). The imperative of 1.8 seems to contradict another passage, 8.5, in which Confucius’s follower Zeng Xi exhorts followers to learn from a range of people, including the less accomplished or knowledgeable. On the one hand, friendship should be exclusive and not extended to anyone inferior; yet, 8.5 commends someone who was “superior” and yet humbly engaged with others. How might this tension be resolved? At the textual level, several interpretations might be considered. One reading, based on Mencius passage 7B37, is that if those of higher character are not available, then associating with those of lesser character might sometimes be necessary. One might still learn from the interaction. However, 7B37 seems to be directed to teachers selecting students rather than the friendship relation. Alternatively, the exclusionary tone of 1.8 might, in fact, be limited in scope. In the commentarial tradition, 1.8 has been interpreted as referring only to particular virtues not personal character in toto –​specifically, loyalty and trustworthiness as prerequisites for friendship. If so, friendships could tolerate other differences in character or putative inequalities. Yet others have read 1.8 as simply advising caution when choosing friends. Another solution is to read 8.5 as not referring to friendship but to an attitude toward learning. One should be willing to learn from anyone, but this does not require befriending them.Yet others have taken the identity of Confucius’s interlocutor –​the differing temperaments of his students –​to be significant, and indicative of which passage offers the more literal understanding of Confucian friendship (Ames and Hall 1997: 262). 17

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At this point, it is helpful to recognize that this sparse and aphoristic text underdetermines possible meanings, and declines to offer precise definitions.This explains why the commentarial tradition is so important in Confucian thought, since it adds a rich web of interpretation that extends and deepens the original insight across different eras. Taken by itself, the Analects invites the personalizing of suggestive passages through imaginative appropriation, and this struggling to “make the text one’s own” exemplifies the effort-​filled Confucian approach to personal cultivation. When shown “one corner” of the square, students must then return with the other three (7.8). What is clear is that friendship functions within this paradigm of self-​cultivation as a means to further personal enrichment and refinement. A traditional gloss on peng 朋, found in the Book of Rites (Liji), is “those of the same gate are friends” (同門為朋): peng-​friends are those who share the same school (“gate”), that is, teacher. Hence, this term for friendship was associated with the Confucian demand for learning via the appropriate mentor. Similarly, you 友 is glossed “those with the same aspirations are friends” (同志為友), suggesting a shared sense of vocation and relevant intention as conditions of friendship. The ideal of upward progression, leaving behind those who cannot contribute, is extended even to the point where one runs out of possible friends. Mencius 5B8 famously describes “making friends with history.” This calls for the befriending of the most virtuous person in one’s village, and when one can no longer learn from them, one befriends the most outstanding people in the state, and then the world. And if that is insufficient, one is to go back in time and befriend worthy people from antiquity. At the extreme we find Confucius: “Confucius is […] peerless and hence, friendless. To assert that Confucius had friends would diminish him” (Hall and Ames 1997: 266). In summary, friends serve as stepping-​stones toward ever more cultivated states. Aside from the textual considerations, this view of friendship also raises some philosophical issues. One should not befriend those less cultivated than oneself. But this means those who are superior should not befriend those below. This leaves only peers, who are one’s equal. Broadly, this means people who have attained the same degree of personal cultivation. But if they already possess similar levels of refinements, then how can befriending them improve one’s degree of cultivation? This would leave one unable to make friends to advance the process of personal cultivation. In response, a friend could be more advanced in some areas and less in others, making possible mutual learning alongside peers. Nevertheless, this kind of friendship appears to be predominantly a one-​way relationship. The senior party might have some kind of positive attachment to the junior, but this is not typically friendship.This is consistent with the tone of the five cardinal relationships, in which each party in each of the hierarchical and dyadic relationships is guided by a different virtue or different norms: children are filial (xiao), while parents are benevolent (ci), and so on. Befriending another, or at least seeking to be in their presence, for the sake of cultivating oneself, seems also to make such friendship utilitarian –​a case of treating someone as a means rather than an end, and so a poor example of friendship as idealized in contemporary times. Indeed, awareness of the need for “useful” friendships is a theme in later Confucian literature (Kutcher 2000: 1618). But if true friendship entails the rejection of such instrumental reasoning, then can befriending for the sake of self-​cultivation be a true form of friendship? Accepting that this mentoring conception of friendship is prominent in the Analects, a qualified defense of it can be offered. First, it confirms the importance of self-​cultivation in the tradition, particularly as the expansion of the self through engagement in an ever-​wider range of roles and relationships. Some see the self to be cultivated in early Confucian thought as social and relational (Ames 2011; Kim 2010; Lai 2016; Li 2014). If so, the contrast between self and others, including a distinct notion of self-​interest that others can instrumentally further, is muted. Accordingly, personal cultivation is not intended as a private or “selfish” benefit; rather, its fruits are a communal resource. Ideally, it produces those who take responsibility in the interests of all, and to greater effect than uncultivated leaders –​against whom the Confucians railed. Furthermore, the aspirational and upwardly directed nature of this friendship confirms the importance of hierarchy and its ubiquitous presence in Confucian social thought. In contemporary 18

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liberal society, hierarchy can be an uncomfortable topic, and raises concerns of oppression or domination. But the Confucian tradition generally does not view hierarchy as pernicious. Confucian thought recognized natural differentials and inequalities as a basic fact of life, and the family was paradigmatic of the benign presence, and even need for, hierarchy in human life. Much human development arises through various forms of hierarchical relatedness: parents raise children, elder siblings nurture younger, teachers educate students, et cetera, and the five cardinal relationships sought to capture this. The integration of this natural plurality into a well-​functioning organic whole, however difficult to realize, is expressed in the Confucian ideal of harmony (he). This idea of closeness in the context of difference or unequalness informed the Confucian conception of friendship, since friendship involves people who are nominally equal relating to each other under conditions of moderate de facto inequalities –​of life experience, skills, financial means, and so forth. Within this framework, the Confucian ideal of ongoing learning (xue) (from others) might be understood as guiding such friendship. While this ideal does not preclude the affection and respect found in most friendships, it does challenge the idea that friendship requires equality. The portrayal of friendship as a learning or mentoring relationship reveals, by way of contrast, what is missing from a canonical text such as the Analects, namely, the familiar ideal of friendship as a close relationship between two autonomous and equal individuals who befriend from choice, not from a position of need or instrumental benefit, and on the basis on mutual liking or admiration. Such relationships are not of sustained interest to the compilers of the texts. Perhaps an account of close friendship based on personal character can be distilled from various passages in the classical Confucian texts (e.g.,Vervoorn 2004). However, rather than look to Confucian texts to find confirmation of the familiar, we might instead think about informative differences –​specifically about alternative conceptions of friendship and forms of human relatedness suggested by the texts. Accordingly, let us finish with a brief sketch of an alternative project: a novel conception of friendship that is both distinctly Confucian in spirit and challenges some familiar ways of thinking about friendship.

Exploring Confucian Friendships: Event-​Based Friendship The idea of friends as mentors, helping us along the Confucian way, is a plausible account of Confucian thought because it coheres with many parts of the texts, including those not explicitly addressing friendship. Using this same approach, another conception of friendship can be inferred from the early texts. Although not systematically laid out therein, this also makes sense of prominent themes and concerns. It captures the view of the self as primarily social and relational, and the Confucian emphasis on personal cultivation –​according to which the highest degree of flourishing involves the fullest engagement (cheng 誠) with the myriad things of the world, such that all things can be organized and integrated by the sage (Mencius 7A4). This includes the webs of human relations and emotional attachments in which the self is situated. Unlike the readings of the Analects that emphasize a more individualistic turn, and a departure from pre-​Confucian society, this account of friendship emerges from the preexisting social world of clan and kinship. In this account, friendship consists of multiple discrete shared social interactions and the goods realized therein, which mirror the large-​scale communal ritual events prevalent in Confucian thought. The goods generated in both are affective and aesthetic in nature: shared delight-​like states. This form of friendship generates, through everyday social interaction, emotional or affective goods that are also generated through more complex and structured communal rituals.This friendship is not based on character, utility, or even how another can be pleasing to oneself. This account is informed by John Dewey’s naturalistic account of aesthetic experience (Dewey 1980), particularly how practically important aesthetic experiences emerge in everyday contexts (Saito 2007: 2017). This kind of event-​based friendship is rooted in another foundational Confucian ethical ideal, harmony: “probably the most cherished ideal in Chinese culture” (Li 2006: 583; see also see Li 2014 and Li et al. 2021). In the Analects (1.12, 13.23, 19.25, and passim), harmony “is celebrated as the 19

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highest cultural achievement” (trans., Ames and Rosemont 1998: 57). Harmony as a practical ideal is explained in the texts by two metaphors: cooking and music (Ames and Rosemont 1998: 254–​8). It is the blending of constitutive elements to produce an overall effect, like making a fine soup or participating in an exhilarating musical jamming session. Harmony has a profoundly relational quality. If done well, successful combinations or blendings have an effect on the human subject that is felt or emotional in nature. The five cardinal relationships are one site of such harmony. Each party in the various relationships is typically (but not exclusively since personal judgment is relevant) guided by ritual and customary norms, so their contributions and actions achieve the kind of pleasing integration characteristic of harmony. The production of such harmony in social interactions can also serve as a guiding ideal for friendship (Lambert 2017). An important feature of harmony in Confucian thought concerns how participants in an event or interaction are affected when harmony is achieved. This is described in emotional or affective terms, as the generation of delight-​like states (le 樂) (Analects 6.11, 6.20, 7.19, 16.5; Holloway 2005; Nylan 2018; Lambert 2020). These can best be understood by analogy to the experience of participating in the making of music.Tellingly, the Chinese character for delight-​like states is identical to the character for music (樂), and delight-​like states (樂) are heralded as the fruit of successful human interaction (Mencius 4A27). This suggests that a visceral feeling of delight accompanies the attainment of relational goods created through the interaction; these include feelings of ease, a sense of anticipation, rapt attention, a sense of purposefulness, playfulness, novelty, or a sense of achievement (Lambert 2020). These goods are generated intersubjectively, through social encounter; and their co-​creation constitutes the friendship. An example, anachronistic but useful, is a large sporting event. For these to be successful, several groups must contribute. Athletes, officials, fans, ground staff, and media all make distinct contributions to an overall effect, and bask in the creation of a memorable social event. In fact, something like such events is a prominent theme of early Chinese culture. This was a “display culture” (Nylan 2001), characterized by drawing people together for ceremonies and ritual events, in which pleasure was generated and shared through the medium of public spectacle. Public rituals also generated a sense of solidarity and mutual identification among participants. In the case of large ceremony, and in the roles of the Confucian family, the interactions are often scripted and structured. However, the same basic model applies to less structured social interactions, such as the everyday interactions that make up friendship. Friendship involves a rolling series of interactions, either virtually or in person, with the closest friendships constituted by more frequent interactions. In the friendship case, however, imagination and personal interpretation play a greater role in discovering and blending the particulars –​words, actions, gestures –​that generate the aesthetic goods. Practical judgment and cultivated habit are also needed to bring together the elements of an interaction in such a way that interactions are transformed into events. In fact, this was a goal of Confucian cultivation. The Confucian exemplary person regarded the managing of human and personal interaction as an ethical task, something that called forth reverence and concern, and a skill that required personal cultivation. When possible, these interactions are to be distinguished by the skillful eliciting and blending of particulars to generate the kinds of affective goods noted above. Participation in such events is one of the ideals of the Confucian exemplary person (Analects 11.26). This approach to friendship –​as a personal relationship composed of an episodic series of interactions distinguished by their affective and memorable qualities –​is worthy of further exploration for several reasons. In contrast to some accounts of friendship, it does not depend upon detailed knowledge of, and deep affection for, another’s character. Although knowledge of personal particulars helps, situation and cultivated responses are arguably more important.What matters is not the number of personal particulars known, but rather the response to whatever is known. Also, since the value of this friendship resides in the quality achieved in the social interactions of everyday life, it avoids concerns about ethically problematic partiality that arises from the commitments of close personal 20

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friendship. A deep personal commitment to, and prioritizing of, a particular other are not required. Instead, the focus is on the situation and attempts to generate certain kinds of experiences for all participants. Furthermore, the number of people who can participate in an event is open. While the creation of such events might characterize close friendships (feeling energized and joyful when with a friend seems important), event-​based friendships can be enjoyed with a wider set of people. Events, as intersubjective creations, can be enlarged to include newcomers or greater numbers. The nature of the event might change in the pursuit of a new equilibrium, but this inclusivity or accommodation distinguishes event-​based friendship from closed and exclusive friendships based on familiarity and character. Finally, nor is this merely a friendship of pleasure, where the satisfaction of crude or existing desire drives the relationship. Creating events by discovering what resonates mutually is a skill, an effortful task, and its goods are mutual and interdependent, not private. What generates delight might be discovered only through the interaction. This sketch of an alternative form of friendship suggests that much can be gained from paying greater attention to the Confucian philosophical tradition, and hints at the promise of cross-​cultural and comparative philosophical projects. Friendship is a fitting topic for future work in this field.

Related Chapters Can Parents and Their Children Be Friends?; Friendship and Family; Partiality to Friends; Friendship and Special Obligations

Notes 1 Philosophers in the Western tradition have, of course, identified problems with friendship. Close bonds can inspire jealousy and familiarity can breed contempt. Conflicts arise between friendship and moral commitments, including modern moral theories such as consequentialism. Nevertheless, friendship has frequently been valued as a voluntary relationship of intimacy constitutive of flourishing. 2 See Norman Kutcher (2000). Discussions of friendship in the Chinese tradition include McDermott (1992), Hall and Ames (1994), Mann (2000), Blakeley (2008), Gerritsen (2007), Sim (2007), Connolly (2012), Lambert (2017),Yao (2019), and C. Li (2019). 3 Reliable English translations of these texts include: Menicus (Bloom and Ivanhoe 2011), the Doctrine of the Mean/​Zhongyong (Ames and Hall 2001), and Xunzi (Hutton 2014). 4 On the historical connections of kinship and politics, see Baker (1979), Anthony Yu (2005: 26–​52), Liu (2003), and Yiqun Zhou (2010: 1–​20). 5 Early Confucian thought was predominantly male-​centric; however, whether it is essentially gendered or paternalistic, or whether its initial expression was filtered through a transient cultural milieu, is much debated. Regardless, this has not prevented feminist interpretations of traditional Confucian thought (Rosenlee 2006), nor the emergence of positive and complex portrayals of female identity within the tradition (Raphals 1998). On feminism and Confucian modernity, see Foust and Tan (2016).

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2 PLATO’S EROTIC FRIENDSHIPS C.D.C. Reeve

We tend to think of friendship and erotic love as being quite different things. Erôs, we think, is not philia, and neither –​if we want to complete the traditional triadic division –​is it agapê, or divine love. Dividing and conquering is often a good way to go in philosophy, of course, as in other areas of life, but it can deceive as well as enlighten. Perhaps, as Sigmund Freud thought, erôs lies –​aim inhibited –​behind all these less obviously genital forms of affection. But whether or not that is true, it is certainly true that Platonic philia –​Platonic friendship –​is an erotic, sexual relation. It is not –​or not ideally –​a genital relationship – it is not supposed to involve the frottements des deux épidermes, but it is always reproductive in aim, even if its best results are not actual human babies. Moreover, like so many other elements in our lives, Platonic love is shaped by social forces: it is the result in part, of what socialization does to the sexual desires we share with other animals. But while it is shaped by these, it is also in many cases misshaped –​turned into something that contributes not to our happiness (properly conceived), but to our misery. There is a political dimension to philia, however we divide it up and conceive of its parts, and it was one of Plato’s major contributions to our understanding of it to see clearly that this is so. But Plato’s own views on erôs, as in the case of so many of his other views, began with ideas he inherited from Socrates. So that is where we, too, must begin.

Love and Socratic Questioning Hippothales, like Socrates, loves beautiful boys and philosophical discussions (Lysis 203b6–​204a3). But he does not know the art of love (ta erôtika) and so does not know how to talk to Lysis, the boy with whom he is in love and wishes to have as a friend. What he does is sing eulogies to him, and that, Socrates argues, no master of the art of love would ever do. For if your suit succeeds, “everything you’ve said and sung turns out to eulogize yourself as victor in having won such a boyfriend,” but if it fails, then “the greater your praise of his beauty and goodness, the more you will seem to have lost and the more you will be ridiculed.” Consequently, someone “who is wise in the art of love doesn’t praise his beloved until he has him: he fears how the future may turn out” (205e2–​206a2). Convinced, Hippothales asks Socrates to tell him “what someone should say or do to get his prospective boyfriend to love him?” (206c1–​3). Socrates responds,“if you’re willing to have him talk with me, I might be able to give you a demonstration of how to carry on a discussion with him” (206c4–​6). 24

DOI: 10.4324/9781003007012-4

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What follows is an examination of Lysis, so that Socrates’ lessons in love and friendship turn out to be lessons in how to ask and answer questions. At the end of the examination, Socrates characterizes what he has accomplished as follows:“This is how you should talk to your boyfriends, Hippothales, making them humble and drawing in their sails, instead of swelling them up and spoiling them, as you do” (210e2–​5). It sounds simply chastening put like that, but in the overall context of the Lysis, where love is a desire and desire a sort of emptiness, it is much more. It is a step in the creation of the canonical lover, the true friend –​the philosopher: Those who are already wise no longer love wisdom (philosophein), whether they are gods or men. Neither do those who are so ignorant that they are bad, for no bad and stupid person loves wisdom. There remains only those who have this bad thing, ignorance, but have not yet been made ignorant and stupid by it.They are conscious of not knowing what they don’t know. (218a2–​b1) So by showing Lysis that he is not already wise, by getting him to recognize that he does not know, Socrates sets him on the road to philosophy, just as a practitioner of “noble sophistry” should (Sophist 231b3–​8). When Socrates tells us in the Symposium that “the only thing I say I know is the art of love” (177d8–​9), his claim is best understood, then, as a nontrivial play on words, facilitated by the fact that the noun erôs (“love”) and the verb erôtan (“to ask questions”) sound as if they are etymologically connected –​a connection explicitly exploited in the Cratylus (398c5–​e5). Socrates knows the art of love, we may conclude, simply because he knows how to ask questions, how to discuss things using his characteristic elenchus. That is why the man famous for knowing that he is wise “in neither a great nor a small way” (Apology 21b4–​5) can nonetheless claim to know that art. But though elenctic discussion is important to love because it creates a hunger for wisdom, it is a hunger that such questioning cannot itself satisfy. Lysis, for example, is already something of a philosopher when he meets Socrates, and receives a rare accolade from him: “I was pleased with his love of wisdom (philosophia)” (213d6). But he too is left in unsatisfied puzzlement (aporia). Socrates is a master of foreplay, of arousing desire, we see, but when it comes to satisfying it, he seems to be a failure. This is one way to take Clitophon’s point in the dialogue named for him (Clitophon 410c8–​e8). The connection between the art of questioning and the art of love explored in the Lysis allows us to see why Plato’s own explorations of love invariably involve an exploration of discussion too –​ love-​talk in the Lysis, speechmaking at symposia and drama in the Symposium, oratory and rhetoric in the Phaedrus. Love and friendship, after all, are in part a matter of knowing how to talk to one another: “Many a friendship,” Aristotle reminds us, quoting a maxim whose source is unknown, “has broken off for want of conversation” (Nicomachean Ethics 1157b13). But they are also to some extent social constructs, products of words.

Socrates and the Inversion of Paiderastic Norms As a man who loves boys in the idiosyncratic way we have been exploring, indeed, Socrates is placed in potential conflict with the norms of a peculiar Athenian social construction, that of paiderasteia –​the socially regulated intercourse between an older Athenian male (erastês) and a teenage boy (erômenos, pais), through which the latter was supposed to learn virtue. Plato’s account in the Symposium of one such relationship, that with the brilliant and beautiful Alcibiades, is an illuminating case in point, to which we shall shortly turn. But to some extent –​perhaps together with his own innate sexual preferences –​it is what explains why the ideal of friendship for Plato is invariably that erotically charged educational one between an erastês and an eromenos, in which the first is a teacher of virtue and the second supposedly his apprentice. Thus, as I mentioned at the outset, an account of Plato’s views of friendship is perforce an account of his views of erotic love. For Aristotle, by contrast, the 25

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ideal friendship is one between two already virtuous mature males in which the erotic element is altogether missing or transmuted and sublimated. That Alcibiades was in love with Socrates “was obvious,” the Symposium (222c1–​2) tells us. So much so that when asked to speak of love, he speaks of his beloved –​a man so extraordinary that while “seeming to be a lover (erastês)” he was “really establishing himself as a beloved boy (pais) instead” (222b3–​4). But the speeches of all the others present of the occasion are also stories of their particular loves, but ones that masquerade as stories of love itself. For Phaedrus and Pausanias, the canonical image of true love –​the quintessential love story –​features the right sort of older male lover and the right sort of beloved boy. For Eryximachus, the image of true love is painted in the languages of his own beloved medicine and of all the other crafts and sciences. For Aristophanes, it is painted in the language of comedy. For Agathon, in the loftier tones of tragedy. In ways that these men are unaware of, then, but that Plato knows, their love stories are themselves manifestations of their loves and of the inversions or perversions expressed in them. They think their stories are the truth about love, but they are really love’s illusions –​“images,” as Diotima will later call them. As such, however, they are essential parts of that truth. For the power of love to engender illusions is a big a part of the truth about it. “Eye’s falsehoods,” as William Shakespeare calls them in Sonnet 137, are name players in the theater of erôs. Love stories, however inadequate as theories of love, are nonetheless verbal constructs, logoi, items that admit of analysis. But because they are manifestations of our loves, not mere cool bits of theorizing, we –​our deepest feelings –​are invested in them. They are tailor-​made in one way, then, to satisfy the Socratic sincerity condition, the demand that you say what you believe (Crito 49c11-​d2, Protagoras 331c4-​d1). Under the cool gaze of the elenctic eye, they are tested for consistency with other beliefs that lie just outside love’s controlling and often distorting ambit. Under such testing, a lover may be forced to say,“I didn’t know what I was talking about in that story” (Symposium 201b11–​ 12). The love that expressed itself in his love story meets then another love, namely, his rational desire to tell and live a coherent and consistent story, so as not to be endlessly frustrated and conflicted by repetitively trying to live out an incoherent one. In Alcibiades’ love story, in particular, these two desires are self-​consciously in play: Socrates is the only man in the world who has made me feel shame […] I know perfectly well that I can’t prove he’s wrong when he tells me what I should do: yet, the moment I leave his side, I go back to my old ways: I cave in to my desire to please the crowd. Symposium 216b1–​5 Even such awareness of conflict as is manifested here, however, is no guarantee of a satisfactory resolution. For the new love, the one that seems to offer coherence, satisfaction, and release from shame, may turn out to be just the old frustrating one in disguise. Alcibiades’ own famous failed attempt to seduce Socrates shows that this is so in his case too (218b8–​e5). For Alcibiades does not try to win Socrates’ love by undertaking the difficult task of self-​transformation required to become a more virtuous, and so more truly beautiful and lovable, person. Instead, he takes the easy, familiar path of offering the physical attractions he already has –​the ones that have earned him the approval of the Athenian multitude. When these fail him, it is to the crowd (in the form of the Bacchic revelers we meet at the end of the Symposium) he will regressively return, having never really succeeded in turning away. That he has never turned away is made yet more vivid in one of the most intriguing passages in the Symposium. Socrates, Alcibiades tells us, is “ironical (eirôneuomenos) and spends his whole life playing with people. Yet, I don’t know whether anyone else has seen the figures within (ta entos agalmata) when he is serious and opened up, but I saw them once, and I thought that they were so divine and golden, so marvelously beautiful, that I just had to do whatever Socrates told me” (216e4–​217a2).

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Alcibiades thinks he has seen Socrates without his ironic mask of mock modesty. But, as is so often the case with love, this is a fantasy. What Alcibiades thinks he sees in Socrates are embryonic virtues, which –​like spermatozoa in the embryology the Symposium implicitly embraces when it speaks of the lover as pregnant and as seeking a beautiful boy in which to beget an offspring –​need only be ejaculated into the right receptacle in order to grow into their mature forms (209a5–​c2). Sex can lead to virtue, in other words, without the need for hard work. As soon as the illusion is enjoyed, therefore, it gives birth not to a realistic attempt to acquire virtue, but to the seduction fantasy mentioned earlier. The origins of this fantasy, though, no doubt, partly personal, are predominantly a result of the complex ideology of Athenian paiderasteia that has shaped Alcibiades’ own desires. For, according to it, love is really “two things” –​good Uranian love, whose object is the soul and whose aim is to instill virtue in the younger male, and bad Pandemotic love, whose object is the body and whose aim is sexual pleasure for the older lover (180c1-​d7). What causes this split is the need Pandemotic love has to mask itself as Uranian love in order to preserve the illusion that the young man’s participation in it is compatible with his status as a future male citizen. It cannot, then, be motivated by a reprehensible desire on his part to adopt a passive, slavish, female pleasure-​seeking role. Instead, another motive must be invented for it –​a willingness to accept “slavery for the sake of virtue” (184c2–​3). A major cost of preserving this split, however, is that the older male’s body-​focused, sexual intercourse must itself be masked as intercourse of a more respectable sort. Alcibiades’ later re-​description of Socrates’ inner figures shows him succumbing to the double vision that inevitably results: If you were to listen to his arguments, at first they’d strike you as totally ridiculous; they’re clothed in words as coarse as the hides worn by the most vulgar satyrs. He’s always going on about pack asses, or blacksmiths, or cobblers, or tanners […] But if the arguments are opened and one sees them from the inside, he will find first that they are the only arguments with any sense in them, and next that they contain within themselves utterly divine and multitudinous figures of virtue (agalmat’ aretês). 221e1–​222a4 For Alcibiades, then, Socrates’ body is identical to his words; the virtues that are in him are in them; talking philosophy is having sexual intercourse, and vice versa. At the beginning of the Symposium, an unidentified man wants to hear what was said about love by Socrates and the others at Agathon’s house, where the dialogue is set. He has heard a garbled account. He wants Apollodorus to tell him what was really said. But Apollodorus was not there either. He got his account of the proceedings secondhand from Aristodemus. All these men who ought to be chasing boys are presented as so besotted with Socrates and his conversations that one of them, Apollodorus, makes it his business to know exactly what Socrates does and says each day (172c4–​6), while another, Aristodemus, is so far gone in his passion for Socrates that he walks barefoot like his beloved (173b1–​4). One reason for this complex setup is to let us see the inverting impact of Socrates, and so of philosophy, on paiderasteia. Another is more subtle. Alcibiades’ love for Socrates focuses on the beautiful figures of virtue that he thinks he sees lying beneath those “words as coarse as the hides worn by the most vulgar satyrs,” which are the analogue for him of Socrates’ ugly, satyr-​like body (215b3–​4). Aristodemus’ love for Socrates, by contrast, seems to focus on his coarse exterior, so that Aristodemus himself is a sort of inverted Alcibiades, whose very name associates him with Pausanias’ body-​centered goddess of love, Pandêmos. Loving Socrates, we may infer, is a complex business, since just what someone loves in loving him is tied to that person’s peculiar desires, and the limits they impose on how like Socrates he can become.

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When Socrates himself arrives at Agathon’s, his host says, “Socrates, come lie down next to me. Who knows, if I touch you, I may catch a bit of the wisdom that came to you under my neighbor’s porch” (175c7–​d1). Socrates replies with an obviously sexual simile: If only wisdom were like water which always flows from a full cup into an empty one when we connect them with a piece of yarn. If wisdom were that way too, I value the place beside you very much indeed; for I think I will be filled from you with wisdom of great beauty. 175d4-​e2 What actually happens, however, is the very reverse. Socrates responds to Agathon’s fancy speech about love with an elenctic examination, so that his own self-​proclaimed ignorance, his own emptiness, flows into Agathon, destroying the wisdom of great beauty that had won his tragedy a first prize the day before (175e4–​7).

Diotima Socrates is adept at some parts of the art of love, then, but he cannot take his beloveds all the way to the virtue and wisdom he shows them to lack. So he is clearly in need himself of further instruction in the art of love. In the Symposium, this is provided to him by Diotima, whom he describes as “the one who taught me the art of love” (201d5). And what she teaches him, in a nutshell, is Platonic philosophy. What Socrates needs if he is to satisfy rather than frustrate love, in other words, is that philosophy. If what Socrates learned from Diotima was about all love, it would be refuted by the very fact of Alcibiades, whose love for Socrates has not led him to love the Platonic Form of Beauty, the Beautiful itself. It would be equally refuted, indeed, by all the other symposiasts, none of whom has been led there by his love. But Diotima’s love story is not so general. It is self-​advertised as a story about “loving boys correctly (to orthôs paiderastein)” (211b5–​6), as a lesson in “the correct way to go or to be led by another to the art of love” (211b7–​c1). To be sure, it does not itself explicitly provide us with a story about how erôs can act as a force that retards development. But that is not because Plato thought erôs could not act as such a force –​consider Alcibiades. Rather, it is because Diotima’s story is a story about successful or correct love. The credibility of Diotima’s love story is another matter. To many, it has seemed both incredible and distasteful, because it seems to say that beautiful individual beloveds have only instrumental value. When one has climbed the ladder, of which they are merely the first rung, one should kick it –​and them –​away. But is this message really Diotima’s? What we all love, according to Diotima, is the good –​that is to say, we want good things to be ours forever. But because we are mortal, the closest we can come to satisfying that desire is to initiate an endless cycle of reproduction in which each new generation has good things. We achieve this, in a famous phrase, by “giving birth in beauty (tokos en kalô)” (206b7–​8, e5). Like Athenian paiderasteia, Diotima recognizes two fundamentally different kinds of love, two fundamentally different varieties of the desire to give birth in beauty. In the case of heterosexual lovers, who are “pregnant in body,” such giving birth consists in producing children who resemble, and so share in the beauty of their parents (209a3–​4). Homosexual lovers, however, are a different story. What they give birth to is “wisdom and the rest of virtue” (209b8). When a man who is pregnant in soul finds a beautiful boy, Diotima says, it “makes him instantly teem with accounts of virtue” (209b8), or “beautiful accounts” (210a8). Now giving birth to virtue and giving birth to accounts of it are obviously different. But some of the other phrases Diotima herself uses show us how to mitigate the difference. For what homosexual lovers want is to give birth to accounts of virtue of a particular sort –​ones that can be used in “the proper ordering of cities and households” (209a6–​7), and so can “make young men better” (210c1–​3). 28

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If the lover’s accounts are to achieve this goal, however, they must not be the product of distorting fantasy, as some feminists think our concept of romantic love itself is. What insures that it will not is their openness to reality –​an openness guaranteed by the fact that in the course of his ascent the lover must study the beauty of ways of life and laws (210c3–​5) and the beauty of the sciences (210c6–​7). What he gains from these studies are the conceptual resources needed to see the world, including the human world, correctly –​to gain knowledge of it. This is not the project an analysand takes up in psychoanalysis. Nor is it the one that we less formally undertake when we reflect on our own love stories in hopes of understanding them (often a project provoked by an unhappy ending). It is instead the project of philosophy, as Plato conceives of it. That is why it culminates in “the birth of many gloriously beautiful accounts and theories in unstinting love of wisdom (philosophia)” (210d5–​6).Yet the grander project intersects with the analysand’s project and with ours in an interesting way. For the terms or concepts we use to tell our love stories must themselves be coherent if the stories we use them to tell are themselves to be coherently livable. In Plato’s view, this means that they must be the concepts the true lover uses once he has seen the Beautiful itself –​the concepts whose ontological correlates are Platonic Forms. If they are not, they will be incoherent and the lover who employs them will find himself embroiled in a love story he does not understand, a love story whose incoherence the elenchus, or psychoanalysis, or just plain critical scrutiny will reveal. It is this incoherence, indeed, encountered at lower stages in the ascent, that leads the correct lover, under pressure from his rational desire for truth and consistency, and the pain of inconsistency, to climb to the next stage. We can see Diotima, then, not only as revealing the other more abstract loves that a true lover of boys must have, but also as exploring the conditions concepts must meet if they are to figure in genuinely coherent love stories. Her story is not about a lover who abandons the individual boys he loves, but about someone who comes to love boys successfully by coming to love something else as well. Having seen the Beautiful itself, he is “no longer slavishly attached” (210d1) to the boy whose beauty started him on his erotic journey. Now his attachment is as Beauty itself –​as the object of love –​requires it to be.

The Ladder of Love Like Diotima, we have been concentrating on what other things a lover is led to love by his love for his beloved boy.We have said nothing about the changes that explorations in this enlarged erotic field effect in the desires and feelings of the lover himself. But these too help us to see what happens to his love for his boy in the course of his explorations. What hooks the lover initially is a particular body: “First, he should love one body and beget beautiful accounts there” (210a6–​8). At this stage, what the boy engages in the lover is his sexual desire for physical beauty, albeit one that, in keeping with the norms of paiderasteia, is supposedly aim-​inhibited: instead of sexual intercourse, it leads to discussions about beauty and to accounts of it. Here the beauty at issue is, in the first instance, the boy who represents beauty itself to the lover. (Think of the stage in elenctic examination where the interlocutor gives examples rather than a general definition.) That is why when the lover finally comes to see the Beautiful itself, “beauty will no longer seem to you to be measured by gold or raiment or beautiful boys or youths, which now you look upon dumbstruck” (211d3–​5). One effect of generating accounts of this beauty, however, is that the lover comes to see his beloved’s beautiful body as one among many: if it is beautiful, so are any other bodies the accounts fit. And this initially cognitive discovery leads to a conative change: “Realizing this he is established as a lover of all beautiful bodies and relaxes this excessive preoccupation with one, thinking less of it and believing it to be a small matter” (210b4–​6). It is important in reading Diotima’s description of this change that we see it as comparative and contrastive: the lover used to slavishly overvalue his beloved (211d5–​8) –​now he values him appropriately. But valuing appropriately is still valuing. The boy is still included in the class of beautiful bodies the lover now loves. It is also important to notice that cognitive and conative change are going hand in hand.To recognize that his beloved is one among many, the lover’s love for him has to change. 29

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And that means that psychological resources within the lover –​beyond his sexual responsiveness to physical beauty –​are coming into play. More of the lover is now involved in his love. Hence what his beloved might be thought to lose in exclusivity he gains in richness –​and no doubt in endurance and reliability –​of response. When his physical bloom fades, he will now still be loved. But love that is to escape frustration cannot stop with bodies.The attempt to formulate an account of love free from puzzles and immune to elenctic refutation must lead on from beautiful bodies to beautiful souls, and so to the beautiful laws and practices that will improve souls and make young men better. Again this cognitive achievement is matched by a conative one. When the lover sees that all these beautiful things are somehow akin in beauty, he comes to think that “bodily beauty is a small thing” (210c5–​6), and so, as before, becomes less obsessed with it. At the top of the ladder of love, or scala amoris, lies the Beautiful itself, the first loved object that, like the “primary object of love (prôton philon)” in the Lysis (219d2–​e4), is not in any way gone beyond. There, it seems, the lover at last finds something worthy of the obsessive attention he had once lavished on his beloved boy (211d8–​212a7). Nonetheless, obsession is still out of place. For the Beautiful itself can no more satisfy the lover’s desires to eat and drink than his beloved can. There –​as here –​what the lover would do if it were possible must not be confused with what he can and does do. For the lover himself cannot become immortal except by giving birth in the beauty he has at last found. He does that, however, precisely by arranging for his beloved to grow up, become truly virtuous, and be with him in the contemplation of –​and, to the extent that it is possible, the possession of –​true beauty.

Love and Rhetoric In the Phaedrus we find a more detailed account of the psychology and art of love than in the Symposium. The soul, whether divine or human, Socrates claims, is like “the natural union of a team of winged horses and their charioteer” (246a6–​7). But whereas, in a divine soul all three elements are “good and come from good stock,” in a human soul the white horse (familiar from Republic IV as the honor-​loving spirited element) is “beautiful and good, and of similar stock,” while the black one (the Republic’s appetitive element) is “the opposite and of the opposite stock,” so that “the driving in our case is necessarily difficult and troublesome” (246a7–​b4). When spirit together with the charioteer (the Republic’s rational element, there too identified with what is truly human rather than bestial in us (588b10–​589a4)) “leads us towards what is best and is in control,” we possess moderation (sôphrosunê) (237e2–​3). But when “appetite drags us irrationally towards pleasures and rules in us, its rule is called excess (hubris)” (238a1–​2). Of this excess, gluttony is one species, but erotic love another (238b7–​c4). This is the bad kind of love Lysias rightly disparages in the speech Phaedrus admires and reads to Socrates (230e6–​234c5). In Socrates’ view, however, there is also another kind of love, namely, the madness of a man who, on seeing beauty here on earth, and being reminded of true beauty, becomes winged, and fluttering with eagerness to fly upwards, but unable to leave the ground, looks upwards like a bird, and takes no heed of things below –​and that is what causes him to be regarded as mad. 249d5–​e1 This madman is the philosopher of the Symposium, who, when he falls in love with a boy, is led by his love to ascend by stages to the Form of beauty. What makes his madness a divine gift, however, is that the ascent is now revealed as involving recollection of a prior prenatal ascent taken in the company of a god. From the rich literary account of this ascent, we need to take away just one idea, namely, that souls have different psychological structures depending on which god they have followed. For this sets an 30

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upper limit on how much of the Forms they see, and so how much they can subsequently recollect. Since gaining access to Forms nourishes and strengthens the rational element in the soul (248b5–​c2), this also helps determine their motivational structure. The stronger their reason is, the more likely it will be to succeed in controlling the other elements in the soul. Followers of Zeus, for example, choose someone to love whose soul resembles their patron god. So they seek someone who is “naturally disposed to philosophy and leadership, and when they have found him and fall in love they do everything to make him philosophical” (252e1–​5). Nonetheless, the fall itself involves a huge psychological upheaval. The black horse of appetite immediately urges toward sexual intercourse. The white horse –​“constrained then as always by shame” (254a2) –​holds itself back. Eventually, however, the black horse forces both the charioteer and the white horse “to move towards the beloved and mention to him the delights of sex” (254a5–​7). Again these balk, “indignant at being forced to do terrible and improper things” (254b1). But finally, “when there is no limit to their plight, they follow its lead, giving in and agreeing to do what it tells them” (254b2–​3). As they come close to the beloved, however, to initiate intercourse, the flashing face of the beloved reminds the charioteer of the Beautiful itself, so that his memory “again sees it standing together with temperance on a holy pedestal” (254b5–​7). He becomes frightened and in sudden reverence falls on his back, and is forced at the same time to pull back the reins so violently as to bring the horses down on their haunches, the one willingly, because of its lack of resistance to him, but the unruly horse much against its will. 254b7–​c3 Eventually, “when the same thing happens to the evil horse many times, it allows the charioteer with his foresight to lead” (254e5–​7). If this control of appetite by reason and spirit continues –​even when the boy has accepted his lover and embraces, kisses, and lies down with him –​and draws them to “a well-​ordered life and to philosophy,” they are blessedly happy here on earth, and, if they live such a life for three successive incarnations, they regrow their wings and rejoin the entourage of their god (255e2–​b7). When followers of Ares fall in love, on the other hand, they “adopt a lower way of living, not philosophical, but honor-​loving” (256b7–​c1). When they are drinking together, for example, or are careless in some other way, “the licentious horses in the two of them catch their souls off guard,” and since the man’s recollection of beauty is dimmer and is not rekindled by philosophical conversation, they end up having sex together –​something “the masses regard as the happiest choice of all” (256c1–​5). Nonetheless, they do not have sex very often, because “what they are doing has not been approved by their whole mind” (256c6–​7). So while the degree of their love and happiness is less than the philosophical pair and, on their death, “they leave the body without wings,” still they have an impulse, coming from love, to try to gain them. Hence they are not punished in the next life, but helped on the way to future happiness together (256c7–​e2). The love that is divine madness is a good thing, therefore, especially when, “accompanied by philosophical discussions (meta philosophôn logôn)” (257b6), it leads to the Beautiful itself and the other Forms, which are what we –​as most of all the rational element in our souls –​truly love and crave. The question is, what makes a discussion philosophical? What makes it of the sort to be included in the true art of love that the philosopher who loves the Beautiful itself practices? The answer now proposed is that it must be a technê –​an art or craft –​and so must have the defining characteristics of one. As applied to love itself, for example, it must begin with a definition of love, and reach its conclusions by ordering its discussion in relation to it (263d5–​e3). And this definition, in turn, must be established by what Socrates refers to as collection and division (266b3–​4). Collection is a process of “perceiving together and bringing into one form items that are scattered in many places” (265d3–​4). It is a process that we, unlike other animals, are able to engage in it, 31

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because our souls include a rational element that has prior acquaintance with Forms: “a soul that never [prenatally] saw what is true cannot take a human shape, since a human being must understand what is said by relation to a form that is reached from many sense-​perceptions being collected into one by reasoning” (249b5–​c1). Once a Form has been reached in this way, division begins. This is a matter of “cutting the Form up again, by relation to [sub-​]Forms, by relation to its natural joints” (265e1–​2). As an example, Socrates cites the case of love itself: Just as a single body naturally has its parts in pairs, with both members of each pair having the same name, and labeled respectively left and right, so the two speeches regarded madness as naturally a single form in us. The one [namely, Socrates’ reorganized version of Lysias’ attack on love] cut off the part on the left side, then cutting it again, and not giving up until it had found among the parts a love which is, as we say, “left-​handed,” and abused it with full justice, while the other speech [Socrates’ own defense of love] led us to the parts of madness on the right-​hand side, and discovering and exhibiting a love which shares the same name as the other, but is divine, it praised it as a cause of our greatest goods. 265e4–​266b1 Thus, while each speech tells only half the story, the two together show how correct division should proceed. The goal, however, is not just truth or correctness, but explanatory adequacy. Thus if the Form in question “is simple, we should consider […] what natural capacity it has for acting and on what, or for being acted upon and by what,” and if it is complex, we should count its subforms, and consider the same things about them as about the simple ones (270d3–​7). That Socrates –​the archetypal searcher for explanatory definitions (Euthyphro 6d9–​e6) –​should pronounce himself “a lover of these divisions and collections” is no surprise (266b3–​4). Philosophy aims at true definitions and true stories based on them. But it also aims at persuasion, since the philosophical lover wants to persuade his boy to follow him on the path to the Forms. Philosophy and rhetoric must thus go together, which means that rhetoric, too, must be developed as an art. It must, first, distinguish and give definitions of the various kinds of souls and kinds of speeches, revealing their respective capacities and susceptibilities, and, second, “coordinate each kind of soul with the kind of speech appropriate to it, explaining why one kind of soul is necessarily convinced by one kind of speech, while another is not” (271b1–​5). Mastery of such an art, however, requires one further thing: “the student must observe these things as they are in real life, and actually being put into practice, and be able to follow them with keen perception” (271d8–​e1). It is not enough, in other words, to know what kinds of speeches affect what kinds of soul, the philosophical rhetorician must also know that this man in front of him is of such and such a kind, and be able to talk in the kind of way that will prove convincing to him (271e2–​272b2).

Telling the Truth about Love At the end of the Symposium, Alcibiades has gone off, presumably with the throng of Bacchic revelers, who burst into his life as representatives of his overpowering love for the approval and flattery of the crowd. Socrates, Aristophanes, and Agathon are left behind discussing tragedy and comedy: the main point was that Socrates was trying to prove to them that the same man scientifically knows (epistasthai) how to write both comedy and tragedy, that someone who is by art (technê) a tragic poet is a comic poet too. 223d2–​6 32

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The key words here, as we learn in the Ion, are epistasthai and technê. Ordinary poets cannot write both comedy and tragedy, because they do not write out of scientific knowledge and art but out of divine inspiration (Ion 534c5–​6). If they did write out of these, if they were artistic poets, they would be able to write both comedy and tragedy, because opposites are always studied by the same art.Thus the comedic art and the tragic art would have to be one and the same; just as one and the same art, medicine, deals with both sickness and health. Socrates tells us what an artistic poet would be able to write. He does not tell us what he would write. Other Platonic spokesmen are somewhat more forthcoming. “We ourselves are poets,” the Athenian Stranger tells us in the Laws, “who have to the best of our ability created a tragedy that is the finest and the best; at any rate, our entire constitution is constructed as an imitation of the finest and best way of life –​the very thing which we claim is the truest tragedy” (817b1–​5). Earlier in the same discussion, the Stranger is equally explicit that this same constitution, though not a comedy (or not intended to be a comedy, anyway), does nonetheless embody comedic knowledge: Someone who is going to gain practical wisdom can’t learn serious matters without learning ridiculous ones, or anything else, for that matter, without its opposite. But if we intend to acquire virtue, even on a small scale, we can’t be serious and comic too, and this is precisely why we must learn to recognize what is ridiculous, to avoid being trapped by our ignorance of it into doing or saying something ridiculous, when we don’t have to. 816d5–​e5 The Laws is a tragedy, then, because it is “an imitation of the finest and best way of life.” The Symposium is a tragedy for an analogous reason: it contains an imitation of one part of such a life, namely, what the Protagoras terms a “symposium of beautiful and good men” who “test each other’s mettle in mutual argument” by asking and answering questions (347d3–​348a9). This is how Socrates responds to Agathon’s speech. It is how Diotima converses with Socrates. It is the type of symposium Socrates tries to reestablish when Alcibiades’ “satyr-​play” is finished, and the throng of Bacchic revelers has left. Unlike the Laws, however, the Symposium is a comedy too, since it also contains an imitation of the second-​best kind of symposium described in the Protagoras –​one where there are poets present, and where the participants “argue over points that can’t be established with any certainty” (347e1–​ 7). An accurate description, surely, of the speeches made by all the symposiasts who speak prior to Socrates. Finally, Alcibiades arrives with –​significantly enough –​a flute girl (212c5–​e3; compare 176e6–​ 7). And though she does not play, her arrival inaugurates the further decline of the symposium into something even more like the kind of symposium reviled in the Protagoras as “a symposium of common, vulgar fellows […] who, unable to entertain one another with their own conversation, put up the price of flute girls, and pay large sums to hear the sound of the flute instead of their own talk” (347c4–​d2). This is the element of satyr play in the Symposium –​satyr imagery is frequent in Alcibiades’ speech. The idea is the one mentioned earlier. Some love stories –​the good ones –​are tragedies (in the special sense of the term introduced in the Laws): they involve the kind of love found in the best kind of life, a life that comes as close as possible to the divine –​one in which we achieve happiness by having good things be ours forever (205d1–​206a12). Other love stories are comedies: they involve a lesser kind of love. Others still are satyr plays: genital farces. But the true story of love, the story that is Plato’s Symposium itself, is the story of all these stories. In the Symposium, it takes the form appropriate to its genre and audience. But in the Phaedrus, we learn of the longer road it might take in the future, when armed with a scientific psychology and rhetoric it becomes a matter for those who know the true Platonic art of love. 33

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Related Chapters Aristotle on the Nature and Value of Friendship; Friendship and Family; Friendship Love and Romantic Love; Friendship and Self-​Interest; Friendship and the Personal Good; Friendship and Epistemic Partiality; Are You a Good Friend?

Further Reading Destrée, P., and Z. Giannopoulou, eds. 2016. Cambridge Critical Guide to Plato’s Symposium. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (A useful collection of papers.) Fine, G., ed. 2008. The Oxford Handbook of Plato. New York: Oxford University Press. (Includes an accessible and reliable paper on Plato on love by R. Kraut). Halperin, D. 1990. “Why Is Diotima a Woman?” In his One Hundred Years of Homosexuality. New York: Routledge. (An engaging discussion of its topic.) Price, A. 1989. Love and Friendship in Plato and Aristotle. Oxford: Clarendon Press. (A good comparative study.) Reeve, C. 2013. Blindness and Reorientation. New York: Oxford University Press. (Chapters 2 and 6 are especially relevant.) Tuana, N. 1994. Feminist Interpretations of Plato. University Park, PA: Penn State Press. (The title describes the contents.)

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3 ARISTOTLE ON THE NATURE AND VALUE OF FRIENDSHIP Corinne Gartner

Aristotle’s account of friendship in Nicomachean Ethics VIII–​IX tends to be treated as the locus classicus of a highly moralizing view of the phenomenon, according to which the only genuine friendships are those between two virtuous agents who are attracted to each other on the basis of moral excellence.1 If this conception is right, then most of our apparent friendships fail to make the cut, and most of us are, strictly speaking, friendless. My aim is to complicate this standard contemporary characterization of Aristotelian friendship as I explicate Aristotle’s views about the nature and value of friendship. Contrary to the highly moralizing reading, Aristotle successfully accommodates commonplace observations and intuitions about friendship. Indeed, Aristotle himself aims to respond to a set of opponents who restrict friendship to the ideal case between perfectly virtuous individuals, and to harmonize everyday ancient Greek beliefs about friendship with the views of these moralizing opponents. In order to do so, he introduces distinctions in both kinds and degrees of friendship, as I will explain in the first and second sections, respectively, thus capturing the heterogeneity of our voluntarily chosen relationships. The result is a surprisingly pluralistic picture of friendship –​surprising, at least, if one approached Aristotle expecting a straightforward defense of the highly moralizing view. To be sure, the moralizing reading accurately represents the way that Aristotle’s eudaimonistic commitments inform his account, such that the best, most complete form of friendship, the one that serves as an ideal and a standard for the other forms, is friendship based on character virtue. Since eudaimonia, or human happiness, centrally consists in virtuous activity, we should rightly anticipate Aristotle’s focus on friendships between virtuous agents. But we should not conflate the virtuous standard with a definition; Aristotle thinks, as I shall argue, that friendship does not admit of a single definition. Given his background eudaimonism, it is interesting that Aristotle devotes as much space as he does to investigating non-​ideal cases, but perhaps this, too, is because even friendships based on pleasure or utility can be genuinely valuable relationships. In the third and fourth sections, I explore the ways in which friends constitute important goods. Just as there are different kinds of friendship, there are, on Aristotle’s view, corresponding different kinds of valuable contributions that friends can make to human happiness. However, the valuable contributions of pleasure and utility friends may, in keeping with the moralizing character of eudaimonism, remain contingent on the friend’s virtuous character.That is, the genuine value of any sort of friendship, whether based on pleasure, utility, or character, may remain conditioned by the virtue of the agents involved, such that, for example, a virtuous agent receives and bestows genuine benefits in relation to her utility friend, while a DOI: 10.4324/9781003007012-5

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non-​virtuous agent may not. In the ideal case of character friendship between virtuous agents, friends find happiness in their shared virtuous activities. The value of virtuous activity is amplified when engaged in together with friends.

I.  The Three Kinds of Friendship At the beginning of his accounts of friendship in both the Nicomachean Ethics (NE) and the Eudemian Ethics (EE), Aristotle, operating with his standard method of investigation, reports a number of common views about friendship as well as a number of puzzles or tensions. The opening of the Eudemian version begins with Aristotle stating that he will examine what friendship is, who friends are, and whether the term “friendship” is univocal (EE VIII 1 1234b18–​19). In the Nicomachean version, near the end of VIII 1, he raises a question drawn from Plato’s Lysis (214c–​d): can all sorts of people become friends, or are those who are vicious excluded (1155b10–​12)? He similarly reports the view that base people cannot be friends in the Eudemian first chapter at EE 1235a31–​3. In both contexts, in the following chapters, Aristotle goes on to argue for a threefold distinction in kinds of friendship based on the psychological grounds or source of attraction: determining who can be friends requires determining how friendships come to be. Once we see that there is a viable psychological mechanism to explain attraction and association among all sorts of people, and not just the most virtuous among us, we can account for the initial truisms that friendship is “most necessary for life” (NE VIII 1 1155a45) and “our whole life and our voluntary associations are bound up with friends” (EE VII 1 1234b33–​4).2 Before continuing, I should note briefly that, while I rely on material from both the better known account in the Nicomachean Ethics and the lesser known version in the Eudemian Ethics, I am not presupposing that these accounts are wholly consistent. Comprehensive comparative textual analysis is outside the scope of this chapter, but I will occasionally point out differences where they might impact the strength of a conclusion. Generally, however, the differences are not salient for the current arguments. Aristotle argues that there are three ways that we can be attracted to things, both objects and subjects alike (NE VIII 2 1155b17–​28; cf. EE VII 2 1235b24–​1236a15). We can like things because we take them to be pleasant, useful, or unqualifiedly good. When we like another person on account of one of these ways of finding them valuable, we wish them well, we want good things for them. By contrast, when we are drawn to, say, a bottle of wine because it is pleasant, our attitude of liking in relation to that wine obviously does not involve wishing for the wine’s good, since it is inanimate (NE VIII 2 1155b29–​31). The sorts of goods we want for a friend will be conditioned by the way that we find them attractive, such that, for example, if an interest in a kind of music we enjoy is what drew us to them, we will want them to have opportunities to appreciate this music. This account of liking is descriptive, psychologically, and so applies equally to all of us, regardless of whether we have virtuous characters. Of course, one-​sided attraction is not yet a friendship, and so Aristotle stipulates that the liking must be mutual and mutually known (NE VIII 2 1155b32–​1156a5; EE VII 2 1236a14–​15). That is, in order for two people to become friends, each of them must find the other in some way likable, express their attraction to the other in a way that generates awareness on the other’s part, and, in becoming aware of the other’s attitude, return the affection. Because there are three underlying sources of attraction, there are, Aristotle concludes, three kinds of friendship that can arise: friendships based on pleasure, friendships based on utility, and friendships based on the (apparently) decent character of the other (NE VIII 3 1156a6–​10). While he then continues by elaborating further on each of these kinds of friendship (NE VIII 3–​4; EE VII 2), we are already in a position to anticipate how this threefold division will accommodate friendships between agents of various moral characters. Even morally base people, those with deficient moral characters, can be pleasure friends or utility friends with one another, or with others of 36

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any character (EE VII 2 1236b10–​16, 1238a30–​b15; NE VIII 4 1157a16–​19, 1157b1–​3). “For base people can be pleasant for each other, not insofar as they are base or morally neutral, but like two musicians, or if one is a music lover and the other a musician” (EE VII 2 1238a35–​7). One need not possess a virtuous character or an accurate conception of moral value in order to like her fellow bandmates and enjoy playing music with them. If, as I am suggesting, Aristotle is not introducing a distinction in three kinds of friendship only to show how the two subordinate forms –​friendships of pleasure and utility –​fail to qualify as genuine friendships, then why have scholars been so often misled?3 It is easy to read into NE VIII 2 a definition of friendship when Aristotle explains that a friend wishes goods to her friend for the friend’s sake, and then subsequently adds the qualifications that this well-​wishing must be mutual and mutually reciprocated with awareness (NE VIII 2 1155b31–​1156a5). In the following chapter, however, he indicates that pleasure friends and utility friends wish goods to one another not for the other’s own sake, but for the sake of pleasure or utility (NE VIII 2 1156a9–​16). This restriction on the well-​ wishing involved in pleasure and utility cases is commonly taken to imply that they fail to satisfy the initial definition of friendship, as the wishing is wholly self-​serving, and so we ought not consider them real friendships at all. I have argued elsewhere that we should avoid interpreting Aristotle’s claim in NE VIII 2 that a friend wishes goods to her friend for the friend’s sake as a definition of friendship (Gartner 2017). I maintained that Aristotle should be understood as offering a common conception of friendship that he then subsequently refines and precisifies, with the result that, in one sense, all of us are of course capable of expressing disinterested concern, or genuine other-​regarding concern, but, in another sense, only virtuous agents, those who possess an accurate conception of value, are capable of wishing truly good things (as opposed to things merely perceived or believed to be good) to others for the sake of the other’s true self (her virtuous character). It need not follow, then, that a morally deficient pleasure friend’s well-​wishing in relation to her friend is always wholly self-​ serving; rather, to the extent that two agents wish for the other what they take to be, say, pleasant for the other, and not merely for themselves, they count as friends. Here, I briefly extend this position. In attending to the broader argumentative context, we should recall that Aristotle is offering a story about how two people come to be friends in the first place: how can we explain the nature of attraction in a way that encompasses the variety of views and observations about friends that we received in the first chapter of Book VIII? We might be puzzled if we think that we can only be attracted to genuinely good things and people, and so Aristotle offers an explanation aimed at diffusing this puzzlement. Once we focus on the fact that Aristotle starts by offering a very general analysis of attraction that applies equally to both inanimate objects and objects that are also subjects, it becomes clearer that, in all cases, attraction requires apprehending something as valuable. But just as we are not, for example, drawn to a cup of tea for its sake, we are not initially drawn to the potential friend for her sake. Indeed, the relevant attitude in that case would look more like pity than liking or loving. So, Aristotle explains attraction by showing how there are different ways to find some attractive object valuable, and so, in response, different ways to engage with that object commensurate with that perceived value. But the psychological mechanism that explains how we are attracted to things is distinct from the form or content of the attraction, which includes the way that the liking manifests in relation to the object of attraction. In the Eudemian Ethics, Aristotle formulates his conclusion of this section of the argument directly in terms of mutual and reciprocated liking with awareness: two people come to be friends when they like each other, both become aware of the other’s attitude toward them, and, on that basis, further return the liking (EE VII 2 1236a14–​15). He thus avoids the confusion about whether all instances of liking someone involve wishing her good things for her own sake (and about how we should interpret that claim). (Wishing goods for the friend as one of the paradigmatic constitutive expressions of liking does not occur in the Eudemian Ethics until later in 37

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the argument, at VII 2 1236b30–​1.) But we might then wonder in what this attitude and expression of liking consists, and how each prospective friend comes to be aware of the other’s attitude. Goodwill, or wishing goods to the other person for her sake, is a beginning of friendship, Aristotle tells us later (NE IX 5 1167a3–​4; EE VII 7 1241a12–​14), and, as I will explain further in the next section, it is one of the characteristic constitutive manifestations of liking, and so one of the features found in a friendship. While wishing goods to one’s friend is, with some qualifications, necessary for friendship, it is not sufficient, much less a definition of friendship. Nor, moreover, is it even the most characteristic feature, as I also explain in the next section.Yet it makes sense that Aristotle would use goodwill as the relevant characteristic expression of liking in his Nicomachean account of how friendship arises, since, plausibly, it is the feature that, when acted upon, commonly makes someone else aware of one’s positive valuation. And, as we have seen, the process of becoming friends involves awareness of the other’s friendly feelings toward oneself, which further fosters one’s own friendly feelings. Before I turn to examining the characteristic constitutive expressions of friendship, explaining how, in addition to coming in three kinds, friendship also admits of degrees, I want to address two questions about the threefold taxonomy. First, why should we think that what initially draws two people together is sufficient to divide friendship into kinds? Second, how do these three kinds of friendship relate to one another? With respect to the first question, although I have been emphasizing the way in which these three sources of attraction initiate the process of becoming friends, Aristotle also thinks that these grounds sustain friendships over time and, as I have gestured at and will explain in the next section, shape our expressions of liking. Hence, he explains, when the moving cause of being friends is removed, then the friendship dissolves (NE VIII 3 1156a19–​21, VIII 4 1157a14–​15, IX 3 1165b1–​3). Because being useful or pleasant tend to be less stable bases for attraction, these friendships tend to be, though need not be, similarly transitory, which also partly accounts for why some opponents challenge their authenticity (EE VII 2 1237b9–​11). We need not think, however, that a short friendship is simply no friendship at all. Moreover, the nature of one’s attraction to her friend might evolve over time, as when, Aristotle explains, erotic pleasure friends come to be fond of one another’s characters (NE VIII 4 1157a10–​12). We might worry that, once we have cultivated a rich relationship with a friend, what sustains the relationship goes beyond what initially drew us together, and includes our shared history of experiences, memories of our interactions together, deep knowledge and appreciation of the friend’s particularity, and so on. But Aristotle’s taxonomy can allow for these aspects of continued attraction, as it operates at a very broad level of explanation. According to his psychological picture, there are three exhaustive, overarching ways of apprehending something as valuable, so when, for example, reminiscing about the time that we played a perfect set together in a packed venue we are still, at base, taking pleasure in one another. Furthermore, Aristotle explicitly acknowledges the time and shared experiences involved in developing a friendship (EE VII 2 1237b10–​26, 1238a1–​3, 14–​29), and warns against treating friends as one treats cloaks: while we should replace an old, worn cloak with a new one when we can, we should not trade in an old friend so readily (EE VII 2 1237b37–​40). Trust and confidence in a friend come only with time, and merely wanting to be friends with someone is not enough to make it so (EE VII 2 1237b17–​18).These claims, too, seem to raise doubts about the status of pleasure and utility friendships, since those associations do not require the same diachronic trials (though Aristotle does indicate that the useful person does not become evident quickly (EE VII 2 1238a20–​21)). And yet, as with claims about dissolution, Aristotle’s goal is not to dismiss pleasure and utility friendships, but to explain and reconcile the conflicting views, showing how it makes sense to include friendships without much established trust as instances of the phenomenon in some sense, even though they are not ideal cases. How the three forms of friendship relate is a contentious topic, and I do not have space here to enter into a thorough discussion of the textual issues. For our purposes, it will suffice to note that, in both the NE and the EE, Aristotle maintains that the complete (the NE terminology) or primary (the 38

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EE terminology) kind of friendship based on virtuous, or at least minimally morally decent, character, also includes pleasure and utility (NE VIII 3 1156b13–​24). When two agents are attracted to one another’s virtue, they also, rightly, find that virtue both pleasant and useful. In the Nicomachean account, Aristotle describes pleasure and utility friendships as friendships by resemblance with character friendships, since they each share one of the aspects of attraction with the complete form (NE VIII 4 1157a1–​2, 1157a31–​2, 1157b5). In the Eudemian version, he claims that these two subordinate forms relate focally to the primary, character-​based form (EE VII 2 1236a16–​18, 1236b25–​6). Interpreters dispute whether these NE and EE analyses of the relationship are distinct,4 but both treatises are in clear agreement about our chief conclusion: friendship does not admit of a single definition. Friendship is not, to use Aristotle’s technical language in the EE, a kath’ hen predicate (EE VII 2 1236b25–​6). It is, moreover, unclear whether these three kinds of friendship constitute any sort of unity.

II.  More or Less Friends I have been arguing that Aristotle distinguishes three kinds of friendship, canvassing, exhaustively, the psychological causes of our voluntary relationships, at least in part in service of showing how the myriad kinds of associations commonly considered friendships in fact do count as such, in some sense. Even those of us who have moral deficiencies seem to have friendships, and Aristotle’s account makes room for these relationships, even as he shows how they fall short of the ideal kind of friendship based on attraction to the friend’s virtuous character. Indeed, we might read his enumeration of their deficiencies as an error-​theoretic explanation of why the opposition’s view has some merit. In addition to coming in three kinds, friendships also come in degrees; we can be attracted to people to differing extents. And so we can be more or less friends with someone –​more or less inclined to prioritize her interests, more or less desirous of her company, and so on. In the previous section, I challenged the notion that goodwill, when mutual and mutually reciprocated with awareness, constitutes a definition of friendship for Aristotle. Goodwill, or wishing goods to a friend for that friend’s sake and not one’s own, is just one among several characteristic constitutive features of liking. In this section, I treat these features that Aristotle recognizes as genuine constitutive manifestations of liking. These features are, in Aristotelian terms, the formal cause of liking, as they fill in an account about what, exactly, the attitude of liking consists in.5 In Nicomachean Ethics IX 4 and Eudemian Ethics VII 6, Aristotle discusses self-​love and the question of whether one can be friends with oneself. These two chapters are quite different, but they both contain a number of common markers or defining characteristics attributed to friendship: wishing and doing goods or apparent goods to the friend for the friend’s sake, wishing for the friend’s existence for the friend’s sake, wishing to live together and spend time with the friend, making the same choices as the friend, and sharing the friend’s joys and sorrows (NE IX 4 1166a1–​9; EE VII 6 1240a22–​b11). In the Eudemian context, Aristotle problematizes these features, reporting that some people think they are not loved by the apparent friend unless that person, for example, wishes to live together. In both treatises, he wants to establish that all of these features are genuine constitutive expressions of the attitude of a friend, even though they are not all found in every case of friendship, and what legitimizes all of these features is the virtuous agent’s relationship with herself (NE IX 4 1166a10–​11; EE VII 6 1240a22–​3, b4–​6). When one likes oneself, one wishes oneself well and practices reasonable self-​care not for some ulterior motive but for one’s own sake, and similarly for the other features. It is worth emphasizing that motivation matters for the way we understand each of these characteristics. None of these ways of responding to someone else is sufficient as a constitutive expression of genuine liking unless they have the motivational structure that the virtuous agent has in responding to her awareness of her own value. So if, say, I desire to spend time with someone not because I enjoy her company but because she seems lonely and I feel bad for her, this would not 39

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count as a manifestation of liking. Similarly, desiring to spend time with my friend in order to advance my political career would not count as a manifestation of liking, though it might nonetheless be among the desires I have toward a friend.Within the context of a friendship, not every wish or action that friends produce in relation to one another will be purely altruistic or other-​regarding, but it is those that are which constitute the central attitude of liking.6 Aristotle has mentioned these characteristic features earlier in both accounts of friendship, though not collectively. Instead, after claiming that the way of finding the friend valuable in each kind of friendship generates a different way of liking the friend, he fills in the nature of each of the three types of friendship. He connects utility friendships with wishing goods to the friend (NE VIII 2 1156a1) (though he elsewhere specifies that wishing goods to the friend is in fact common to all three kinds (EE VII 11 1244a21–​3)), even though, as I have argued, the kinds of goods wished and the nature of the wishing will be distinct in each kind. Useful friends will exchange external goods, like wealth, with one another. When one likes her friend on account of pleasure, by contrast, she wants to share pleasures with the friend, spend time with the friend, and live together with her friend (NE VIII 3 1156b4–​6, VIII 5 1157b17–​24, VIII 6 1158a22–​6; EE VII 11 1244a30). In the earlier context, Aristotle seems to be explaining, descriptively, our natural psychological tendencies. Different ways of finding someone valuable produce different ways of responding to that value, seeking to promote, preserve, or participate in it. But later, in other contexts, it becomes clearer that these defining characteristics are also normative: we ought to respond to a friend’s value in these ways. For one thing, the virtuous agent serves as a normative standard for Aristotle, and, in responding to her own value, she possesses all of these features toward herself. For another, Aristotle states explicitly that we owe certain loving responses to the useful person and other things to the good person: if [the useful person] gives food and necessities we do not have to live with him; and you do not owe to someone to whom you owe a shared life the things that you get not from him but from the utility friend. (EE VII 11 1244a16–​18) The character-​based friendships of virtuous agents contain all of these features of genuine liking in relation to the friend. Just as the virtuous agent responds to herself in all of these ways, wishing and doing well by herself, enjoying her own company, and so on, she likewise responds to her virtuous friend, for, claims Aristotle, the virtuous friend is, famously, an “other self ” (NE IX 4 1166a31–​2). Because of Aristotle’s reliance on the feature of wishing goods to the friend in the NE VIII 2 narrative about the formation of friendships, it is easy to conceive of goodwill as the main way one expresses attraction. As the discussion continues, however, it becomes clear that not only is wishing goods just one marker of liking among several, but, importantly, it is not the one Aristotle singles out as most characteristic of friendship –​that status belongs to the desire to live together (NE VIII 5 1157b17–​ 24, IX 10 1171a1–​2). Living together is a technical concept for Aristotle. It is not a matter of brute cohabitation, but rather, as I return to in the final section, sharing the activities that serve as one’s main aim or goal in living. In the ideal case, virtuous friends will participate in shared virtuous activities, but even friends who have adopted the wrong goal in living desire to live together, sharing and jointly enjoying whatever activities they value most. We are now in a position to see how Aristotle answers the questions with which he began in EE VII 1 and NE VIII 1. Friendship is not univocal, and all sorts of people can be friends in some way. But we can also appreciate why it is so tempting to read Aristotle as arguing that only the complete character-​based friendships of virtuous agents count as friendships at all; only these relationships contain all three of the psychological grounds of attraction and only they include the comprehensive set of characteristic constitutive features, or ways of experiencing and expressing the attitude of liking. Virtue friendships are the friendships that are most friendship, as it were, and by reference to which 40

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the subordinate sorts both do and do not seem to be friendships, for they both have and lack some of the features. But excluding them entirely would be a mistake, since, Aristotle claims, “to say that a person is a friend only in that one sense is to do violence to the appearances and in the end one must make paradoxical statements” (EE VII 2 1236b21–​23; cf. NE VIII 4 1157a29–​30). Interestingly, Aristotle’s conclusion that friendship lacks a single definition may also account for some of the contemporary debates on the topic. If we are seeking ironclad individuation conditions, we are bound to be disappointed; for any given proposed account of what, essentially, a friendship consists in, it seems we can formulate counterexamples. Cocking and Kennett, for instance, have argued that we should abandon the view that friendship is uniquely expressed in wishing goods to the friend for her sake, since a benevolent educator might wish and do well for a student she does not particularly like (Cocking and Kennett 2000: 284). Of course, as we have seen, Aristotle can agree. The motivation for one’s goodwill and aid matters for assessing whether that well-​wishing and well-​ doing constitute a manifestation of liking. And, moreover, there will be kinds of friendship –​pleasure friendships –​which are characterized less by goodwill than by, say, sharing a friend’s joys and sorrows. Aristotle’s pluralistic view about the nature of friendship might thus not be so removed from our own common discourse and conception of the phenomenon. As Jeske has persuasively pointed out, “it is very difficult to engage in conceptual analysis of the term ‘friend’ ” (Jeske 2019: 14).7

III.  Friends as External Goods The heterogeneity of friendship leads to different sorts of valuable contributions that friends can make to our lives. In the following two sections, I explore the value of friendship, connecting the three psychological causes of friendship with three ways that friends can promote happiness. In this section, I focus on the potential contributions of pleasure and utility friends. In the next, I examine the uniquely valuable contributions of virtuous character friends. Much earlier in the Nicomachean Ethics, in the chapter that follows his well-​known function argument, according to which virtuous activity constitutes happiness, Aristotle argues that happiness also requires external goods in addition, “for it is impossible, or not easy, to do fine actions if we lack the resources” (I 8 1099a32–​3). He goes on, in this passage, to explain that there are two different ways that external goods in general are necessary for happiness (1099a33–​b7). First, in some actions, we use goods like wealth or friends as instruments. Second, the absence of certain goods, like beauty, good birth, or friends, mars blessedness. It is noteworthy that Aristotle explicitly lists friends twice in this passage, once in conjunction with each sort of contribution; friends are the only external good that shows up repeatedly. Each of these modes of contribution tracks one of the two reasons Aristotle offers for why happiness needs external goods.That is, some actions are impossible without external goods as instruments, and so this utility-​based contribution is truly necessary. For instance, I simply cannot act generously toward a friend if I have no money and no friends at my disposal. Other virtuous actions, by contrast, are not strictly speaking impossible without resources, but are more difficult. If I am deprived of or suffer the loss of some very important goods like children or friends, this causes pain, and so impedes the pleasure I am capable of experiencing in virtuous actions. So, significantly prior to the account of friendship, Aristotle has already indicated that friends function as external goods, gesturing at their importance for happiness via both their usefulness and their pleasantness. In this earlier context, however, the value of friends as external goods clearly depends on virtue: useful friends contribute to the performance of virtuous activities instrumentally, while pleasure friends contribute via the avoidance of painful impediments to virtuous activity. In both cases, then, although the modes of contribution are distinct, what matters is how the goods at issue relate to virtuous activity. There is scholarly consensus that Aristotle, following Plato, endorses some version of the conditionality thesis, such that the value of external goods for an agent is conditioned by the possession or use of virtue.8 Now, Aristotle does indicate that virtuous agents, too, will have a few friends for utility and for pleasure, and at the start of NE IX 9, as I will discuss in the next 41

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section, he explains how a virtuous, intimate friend will confer and receive benefits and pleasure within friendships. But we might worry, then, that even if the pleasure-​and utility-​based relationships of morally deficient agents count as friendships in some sense, they will nonetheless be lacking in genuine value. This is a serious difficulty for Aristotle, and I cannot here hope to resolve the tension between the conditionality of the value of friends and the contention that pleasure and utility friendships can be valuable for the friends involved regardless of whether or not they are virtuous. Friendship poses a tricky test case for conditionality, since, traditionally, the agent’s virtuous character state is what conditions the value of some external good for that agent. So, wealth, say, is good for the virtuous agent because her virtuous character ensures the appropriate use of that wealth. By contrast, when a morally deficient agent possesses wealth, she is apt to put it to bad use, failing to, for example, make a generous and genuinely beneficial donation. When virtuous agents engage in utility friendships, then, they secure genuine value from these relationships. But what about cases in which non-​virtuous agents come to be virtuous through their friendships? The acquisition of a virtuous character is an undeniable benefit, and so a friend who was instrumental in helping the agent to develop virtue surely counts as a genuinely valuable friend. Of course, it cannot be the case that, in this instance, the agent’s antecedent possession of virtue conditioned the value of this friendship, for it is precisely on account of that useful friendship that she came to be virtuous. One ramification, then, of thinking about conditionality in relation to the value of friends may be that we need to broaden the way we understand conditionality: perhaps virtue can condition the value of other goods in more than one way, such that both the exercise of existing virtue and the production of virtue via the use of some external goods confer value on those goods. We might also, however, wonder about cases of pleasure and utility friendships between non-​ virtuous agents who do not come to be more virtuous through their association with one another. Are these relationships genuinely valuable at all? They are surely, even on Aristotle’s terms, subjectively valuable, but do they have any objective value? This is the point at which Aristotle’s view becomes moralizing, since his eudaimonism entails that what is objectively valuable –​what is genuinely in our own interests –​is acting virtuously. But it is less clear what we should think of the goods that Aristotle labels as naturally valuable in themselves, like seeing (NE I 6 1096b17, IX 9 1170a19–​b2). Is exercising one’s capacity for vision good if one sets her sight upon bad things, or if one is a bad person who uses her sight to carry out her morally repugnant plans? It would seem not, for Aristotle. Or consider again the case of two morally mediocre bandmates who enjoy playing music together. We might think that the enjoyment they experience in playing music together is good for them, but, in this case, it is deeply unclear to what extent Aristotle’s commitment to the conditionality of value on virtuous activity, including the value of pleasure, can allow for any genuine value of this shared experience. Perhaps, however, we should be cautious, to avoid overstating the severity of this potential problem for Aristotle. For one thing, we can concoct cases where two friends enjoy some activity together (say, stealing candy from babies), where they find that pursuit valuable, and where they are simply getting things wrong about what is actually good. Unless we are prepared to endorse flat-​footed subjectivism, we will agree that there are such cases. For another, contemporary work on friendship tends to conflate the nature and value of friendship, building the good of friendship into what it is to be a friend: a bad friend is no friend at all. But, while friendship in general is an important human good, it is not clear that every given friendship –​or every given friend –​is good for us. Some of our friends might not be valuable for us, even as we continue to count them as friends, and Aristotle’s view can accommodate this separation. He explains, for instance, how two people might remain friends even while being harmed by one another if they are akratic: pleasure motivates their continued association, against their better judgment (EE VII 2 1236b16–​17). We might be better off without such friends; we might reflect upon and come to regret their influence on our characters, or our overall well-​being. 42

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Friends of any kind who improve in virtue as a result of their friendship have benefited from that friendship. But if two friends end up becoming virtuous on account of their relationship, this implies that they were not already virtuous and so had room for moral improvement. Within the ancient Greek tradition, the most pressing puzzle is not about the value of the subordinate kinds of friendship to those who have yet to acquire virtue, but about why, if friendship is valuable for the sake of developing virtue, those who are already virtuous would need friends.9 Aristotle raises and aims to resolve this puzzle in both Nicomachean Ethics IX 9 and Eudemian Ethics VII 12, demonstrating how friendship is in fact most valuable to those among us who are virtuous. In the final section, I briefly sketch his response.

IV.  Living Together Amplifies Value Before explicating Aristotle’s reply to the puzzle about why the virtuous, and so self-​sufficient, agent nonetheless needs friends, it is worth flagging that Aristotle thinks virtue comes in degrees. As we will see, even already decent people can further solidify their virtuous characters through the virtuous activities of the highest kind of friendship (NE IX 9 1170a11–​12, 1172a10–​14). And it is not clear whether Aristotle thinks that virtuous character admits of a limit; perhaps, in practice, there is always room for improvement, even for the best among us. I divide Aristotle’s treatment of the dispute about whether a good person needs friends into two broad sets of considerations. First, he presents two absurdities for thinking that the virtuous agent will be friendless (NE IX 9 1169b8–​22), each of which captures a type of valuable contribution we have encountered before (in the NE I 8 account of external goods). Because complete friendships based on virtue also involve reciprocal utility (wishing and doing well for the friend’s sake) and pleasure, virtuous agents, too, will derive these kinds of value from their relationships.Virtuous agents supply for one another material goods that one’s own efforts cannot supply, but, more importantly, even when they are in a position of material abundance themselves, they also secure opportunities for virtuous action. It is finer, thinks Aristotle, to benefit friends than strangers (NE IX 9 1169b12). In addition, it would be absurd to make the virtuous agent friendless because we are political animals; it is in our nature to live together with others, and what is in our nature is pleasant (NE IX 9 1169b18–​19). He has also, earlier in the account of friendship, connected the desire to live together with finding someone pleasant, and explained how even blessedly happy people need sources of pleasure: “For,” he jokes at the Platonist opponent, “they want to spend their lives with companions, and though what is painful is borne for a short time, no one could continuously endure even the Good Itself if it were painful to him” (NE VIII 6 1158a23–​5). The second set of considerations that Aristotle formulates to show why even the best among us need friends sets aside their utility and pleasure contributions, which a virtuous agent might secure from pleasure or utility friends (NE IX 9 1169b28–​1170b19). Aristotle shifts ground, no longer treating friends as external goods, on a par with things like wealth or beauty, and instead shows how the unique value of virtuous character friends is to be found in the way their activities become bound up with our own. The value of living is to be found in our activities, but we are by nature limited in the way we can be aware of our own activities. Aristotle has a technical explanation for this limitation: our capacities for awareness can never be fully reflexive. Because we are unable to observe, fully, our own actions, we need a virtuous close friend whose actions are relevantly similar to our own to observe, and so appreciate, fully, the very activities that constitute our living (NE IX 9 1169b33–​ 1170a4). Life is not worth living, not worth choosing, in the absence of awareness of the value of that living. But we are only able to fully apprehend and thus fully enjoy our own living when living together with friends who share our ends (EE VII 12 1245a35–​b4). We should be careful to avoid assimilating the view I am limning here with one prominent interpretative strategy, according to which the virtuous character friend serves as a mirror for the virtuous agent, providing her with self-​knowledge.10 While I agree with this sort of view insofar as the 43

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virtuous agent gains access, via awareness of her virtuous friend’s activities, to a new perspective on her own virtuous activities, Aristotle’s point is just as much, if not more, about the hedonic value of this access as the epistemic value.11 It is a mark of a friend to be pleased at her friend’s pleasure. And so, when one’s virtuous friend is engaged in virtuous action, immersed in and enjoying that action, one derives unqualified pleasure from both the action itself and her friend’s pleasure. Furthermore, the virtuous activities at issue will themselves be shared activities, activities in which the friends participate together (EE VII 12 1244b25–​6, 1245b3–​5; NE IX 9 1170b10–​12, IX 12 1172a1–​8). The contribution of friendship to happiness, then, does not stand apart from the activities that themselves constitute happiness. Aristotle’s account has much to recommend it, even if we do not share his eudaimonistic framework. The mechanism of value amplification that he proposes to explain the good of friendship also helps us see why specifying the value of friendship is such a difficult task. It is not only that friendship itself is a heterogeneous phenomenon, but also that, even if we focus on our best friendships, the value of friendship depends on how we conceive the value of living itself.That is, whatever one’s account of well-​being or happiness, whether subjective and pluralistic or some set of objective goods, friendship’s value lies in amplifying the value of those other goods. Aristotle explains at the conclusion of his analysis of friendship: Whatever it is that for each sort of person constitutes existence, or whatever it is for the sake of which they choose to live, it is this they wish to spend time doing together with their friends; hence some drink together, some play dice together, others train, or hunt, or philosophize together, each kind spending their days together in doing whichever of the things in life most satisfies them; for wishing as they do to live a shared life with their friends, they follow and jointly engage in the occupations in which they think they are sharing a life with others. NE IX 12 1172a1–​8; cf. EE VII 12 1245b2–​5 Life itself, whatever centrally constitutes that life for the given agent, is more valuable when it is lived together with friends. Of course, for Aristotle, a genuinely valuable life is one of virtuous activities. Directly after this passage, he continues by applying his more general explanation of the choice to live together to the contrasting friendships of vicious agents and virtuous agents. The friendships of vicious agents, through their mutual shaping and sharing in base activities, lead to increasing moral bankruptcy and worse lives. Aristotle is thus in agreement with some recent contemporary work that highlights the danger inherent in friendship, given the way that friends are, directly and indirectly, especially receptive to one another’s influence.12 In contrast, the friendships of already decent people cause them to become still better via this same mechanism of influence, and so virtuous agents exercise virtue together, living well together. Once we appreciate that the most characteristic activities of friendship –​and the most valuable activities of friendship –​are not a matter of mutual and reciprocal beneficence but are instead shared activities, we can also mitigate the force of a common contemporary worry for the morality of friendship. Contemporary moral theories often demand that we treat others impartially, and yet friendship is an inherently partial relationship. To be sure, Aristotle does not confront this worry, as he is not committed to impartiality. As we have seen, he thinks we ought to afford preferential treatment to those closest to us; we owe different things to different people. But we might well endorse some version of impartiality as a constraint on any plausible moral theory and nonetheless apply the Aristotelian insight that shared activities most essentially typify friendship. If the primary interactions with our friends are shared activities, rather than benefit-​bestowing activities, the potentially dilemmatic cases that require an agent to privilege the interests of a friend over those of a non-​ friend may be much less central to the moral psychology of our relationships than we have tended to 44

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suppose. As Sarah Stroud puts it, describing the co-​agency that characterizes friendship: “ ‘with’ is the preposition of choice between ‘I’ and ‘you’: it’s what I do with you, not what I do to or for you that we should be focusing on” (Stroud 2010: 146; italics in original).

Related Chapters Plato’s Erotic Friendships; The Stoics and Augustine on Friendship and Altruism; Friendship and the Personal Good; The Value of Friendship; Partiality to Friends; Are You a Good Friend?

Notes 1 Many thanks to Diane Jeske for thoughtful and clarifying comments on an earlier version of this chapter. 2 Translations of the Nicomachean Ethics follow Broadie and Rowe (2002), with my own occasional modifications, and those of the Eudemian Ethics are from Inwood and Woolf (2013). I rely on the Bywater (1894) Greek edition of the Nicomachean Ethics and the Susemihl (1967) Eudemian Ethics. 3 For a standard version of the view that pleasure and utility friendships fail to make the cut, see Pakaluk (1998) and Nehamas (2010b). 4 See, e.g., Fortenbaugh (1975), Ward (2007). 5 In ancient Greek analyses of affections or emotions more generally, there is an initial perceptual component, or apprehension of some object as good or bad, which then generates a specific characteristic desire or motivational response. For instance, in the case of fear, an agent might perceive a lion as scary, and thus be motivated to flee. The desire to flee from the fearful object is constitutive of fear, and is an expression of apprehending the object qua scary. So, too, in the case of liking, an agent apprehends, say, her friend as pleasant, which generates a desire to spend time with her friend. This desire for the friend’s company (partly) constitutes the agent’s liking. 6 I develop this point in greater detail in Gartner (2017). 7 See also Jeske (2008). 8 See, e.g., Brown (2007), Cooper (1985). 9 As with the puzzle about whether bad people can be friends, this puzzle, too, has its roots in Plato’s Lysis (215a–​b). 10 Cooper (1977) originated the line of interpretation according to which the value of friendship to virtuous agents consists in self-​knowledge. 11 Whiting (2006) defends a hedonic-​value interpretation against self-​knowledge readings. 12 Aristotle also warns, at NE IX 3 1165b15–​22, about the corrupting influence of continued association with a vicious friend. For contemporary work that discusses the dangerous receptivity involved in being friends, see, e.g., Cocking and Kennett (2000) and Nehamas (2010a).

References Aristotle. 1894. Nicomachean Ethics. Edited by L. Bywater. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Aristotle. 1967. Eudemian Ethics. Edited by F. Susemihl. Amsterdam:Verlag Adolf M. Hakkert. Aristotle. 2002. Nicomachean Ethics:Translation, Introduction, and Commentary.Translated by C. Rowe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Aristotle. 2013. Eudemian Ethics.Translated by B. Inwood and R.Woolf. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brown, E. 2007. “Wishing for Fortune, Choosing Activity: Aristotle on External Goods and Happiness.” Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 22: 221–​56. Cocking, D., and J. Kennett. 2000. “Friendship and Moral Danger.” The Journal of Philosophy 97: 278–​96. Cooper, J. 1977 “Friendship and the Good in Aristotle.” The Philosophical Review 86: 290–​315. Cooper, J. 1985. “Aristotle on the Goods of Fortune.” The Philosophical Review 94: 173–​96. Fortenbaugh, W. 1975. “Aristotle’s Analysis of Friendship: Function and Analogy, Resemblance and Focal Meaning.” Phronesis 20: 51–​62. Gartner, C. 2017. “Aristotle on Love and Friendship.” In The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Ethics, edited by C. Bobonich, 143–16. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jeske, D. 2008. Rationality and Moral Theory: How Intimacy Generates Reasons. New York: Routledge. Jeske, D. 2019. “Love and Friendship.” In The Routledge Handbook of Love in Philosophy, edited by A. Martin, 13–​22. New York: Routledge. Nehamas, A. 2010a. “The Good of Friendship.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 110: 267–​94.

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Corinne Gartner Nehamas, A. 2010b. “Aristotelian Philia, Modern Friendship?” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 39: 213–​47. Pakaluk, M. 1998. Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics Books VIII and IX. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Plato. 1903. Platonis Opera III. Edited by I. Burnet. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stroud, S. 2010. “Permissible Partiality, Projects, and Plural Agency.” In Partiality and Impartiality: Morality, Special Relationships, and the Wider World, edited by B. Feltham and J. Cottingham, pp. 131–149. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ward, J. 2007. Aristotle on Homonymy: Dialectic and Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Whiting, J. “The Nicomachean Account of Philia.” In The Blackwell Guide to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, edited by R. Kraut, 276–304. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

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4 THE STOICS AND AUGUSTINE ON FRIENDSHIP AND ALTRUISM Tamer Nawar

1. Introduction Friendship held an important place in ancient philosophical thought and is important for understanding ancient views concerning altruism, egoism, happiness, moral psychology, and virtue. I first offer a brief, critical account of some classical questions concerning friendship and of Aristotelian and Epicurean accounts of friendship. I then reconstruct and examine Stoic accounts of friendship and altruism in greater detail. I give particular attention to Stoic views on the nature of friendship, the relationship between friendship and virtue, and whether friendship is necessary for a good life. I then examine Augustine’s views of friendship and the relation between friendship and vice, including how friendship gives rise to disordered love, impedes practical reasoning, and serves as an occasion to sin.

2.  Classical Questions and Problems Friendship (philia /​ amicitia) held an important place in ancient ethical and political thought (cf. Konstan 1997). In Greek, the term philia denotes an attitude that one has toward (what we would think of as) one’s friends, family members or household (e.g., Nicomachean Ethics 115a16–​18, Eudemian Ethics 1242a27–​8), romantic or erotic partners (e.g., Nicomachean Ethics 1157a5ff), and allies (e.g., Nicomachean Ethics 1157a25–​8), as well as the relation that holds between persons who hold the relevant attitude. Although the ancients often recognized various kinds of friendship, they especially esteemed a certain relation that obtains between two intimate associates who spend much of their time together (e.g., Nicomachean Ethics 1171a14–​15). In such instances, a friend could be described as “another self,” or two friends could be described as two bodies sharing one soul (e.g., Nicomachean Ethics 1168b7). Early philosophical discussions of friendship focused on several questions, such as: (1) What is friendship? Are there different kinds of friendship (cf. Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1155b12–​13)? (2) What features should persons have in common –​e.g., equality in certain respects, agreement on certain matters, virtue –​if they are to be friends (cf. Ps-​Plato Definitiones 413a–​b; Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1155a32–​5, 1158b11ff; 1167a22ff)? DOI: 10.4324/9781003007012-6

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(3) What is the place of altruism and friendship in the virtuous life (cf. Nicomachean Ethics 1166a1ff, 1168a28ff)? (4) How should the duties or concern attached to friends compare with those attached to other persons (cf. Nicomachean Ethics 1159b35ff; 1164b22ff)? On Aristotle’s view, the better sorts of friendship require time and intimacy to establish (Nicomachean Ethics 1156b25–​32, 1157b5–​24) and certain kinds of friendship are a central good for political communities (e.g., Nicomachean Ethics 1155a22–​4; Eudemian Ethics 1242a19ff; Politics 1262b7–​13). Such friendships seem to require a desire for the presence of one’s friends as well as a willingness to undergo hardships on their behalf (Nicomachean Ethics 1167a3–​12). In these respects friendship (philia) differs from goodwill (eunoia) and other neighboring attitudes (Nicomachean Ethics 1166b31–​1167a12). Aristotle seems to think that friendship –​or, more precisely, a certain excellent and paradigmatic kind of friendship –​between x and y requires: • reciprocal affection (antiphilēsis, Nicomachean Ethics 1155b28) between x and y (cf. Plato Lysis 212c–​d); • that x and y wish well for one another for their own sake (Nicomachean Ethics 1155b28–​31); and • that these facts should be common knowledge between x and y (Nicomachean Ethics 1155b34–​ 1156a5; cf. 1166a2–​9). On Aristotle’s view, this kind of friendship is a certain kind of virtue or excellence (aretē) or at least something that involves virtue or excellence (Nicomachean Ethics 1155a3–​5). It is seemingly restricted to the virtuous, is necessary for a good life, and is not, Aristotle thinks, something that one can have toward many people or toward persons one does not know well (e.g., Nicomachean Ethics 1158a10–​12; 1170b20ff). The Epicureans also deemed friendship important for the good life. Although they may have thought that virtue was valuable on account of the pleasure and security it produces (e.g., Cicero De finibus 1.46–​51, 66–​9), Epicurus seems to have maintained that friendship was supremely valuable (e.g., Key Doctrines 27) and an “immortal good” (Gnomologium Vaticanum 78), that is, something which is of value to both humans and gods (Philodemus De Dis 3) and an intrinsic excellence (or virtue), or something which is chosen for its own sake (Gnomologium Vaticanum 23).1 Even though the Epicureans seem to have thought that friendship is originally motivated by self-​interest, they do seem to (try to) find a place for valuing another for their own sake within friendship (Cicero De finibus 1.69–​70; 2.82–​5; cf. Gnomologium Vaticanum 23) and think that a wise person is no less troubled by the misfortunes of his friends than those he himself undergoes (Gnomologium Vaticanum 56–​7).

3.  The Stoics on Virtue, Altruism, and Friendship Stoic views of friendship are difficult to reconstruct on the basis of the surviving evidence but seem interestingly different from the accounts offered by Aristotle and Epicurus. According to the Stoics, virtue (aretē) is a certain state of the soul, namely a certain kind of knowledge (epistēmē) or expertise (technē) or wisdom (sophia), that is, a secure and comprehensive cognitive state constituted by mutually supporting items of knowledge (Stobaeus 2.73.16–​74.3 =​LS 41H; cf. Nawar 2014a; 2022-c), which includes knowing what has genuine value and how to live “according to nature.”2 The Stoics maintained that virtue is: • something (invariantly or unqualifiedly) beneficial for those who possess it and which enables them to always act successfully (e.g., Diogenes Laertius 7.94, 98–​9, 103, 125; Stobaeus 2.66.14–​ 67.4 =​LS 61G);3 48

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• necessary and sufficient for happiness (eudaimonia) (e.g., Diogenes Laertius 7.89, 127–​9; cf. Cicero Tusculan Disputations 5.1); and • chosen for its own sake (e.g., Diogenes Laertius 7.89) and for the sake of happiness (e.g., Stobaeus 2.71.15–​72.6 =​LS 60M). The Stoics define goodness in terms of benefit (ōpheleia, Sextus Empiricus Adversus mathematicos 11.22) and maintain that genuine goods are invariantly or unqualifiedly beneficial for their possessor(s) while genuine evils are always harmful (Diogenes Laertius 7.101–​3; Plutarch De Stoicorum repugnantiis 1048c–​d; cf. Plato Meno 87e). Items that are neither invariantly beneficial nor invariantly harmful were classified as “indifferents” (adiaphora) (Diogenes Laertius 7.101–​6; Cicero De finibus 3.50–​4). Thus, items such as health and wealth, which may be used for good or ill, were regarded as indifferents and, according to the Stoics, only virtue (aretē) and that which constitutes virtue is always beneficial; thus, virtue is the only genuine good (cf. Diogenes Laertius 7.102–​3; Cicero De finibus 3.21–​2, 30–​4; Stobaeus 2.58.5–​15 =​LS 60K). Although the Stoics thought that very few (if any) humans achieve wisdom or virtue (e.g., Alexander of Aphrodisias De fato 199.14–​22 =​LS 61N), they maintained that humans are naturally inclined toward virtue (e.g., Stobaeus 2.65.8 =​LS 61L; Diogenes Laertius 7.87). The Stoics thus rejected the Epicurean contention that living beings are naturally inclined toward attaining pleasure and avoiding pain and instead argued that living beings are inclined toward self-​preservation and performing their “proper functions” (kathēkonta), that is, actions which are appropriate to and beneficial for one’s nature or “constitution” (sustasis /​ constitutio) (Diogenes Laertius 7.85–​6; Stobaeus 2.85.13–​86.4 =​LS 59B).4 Virtue can be attained through the perfection of such “proper functions” (Stobaeus 2.85.13–​86.4 =​LS 59B), which involves not merely performing the relevant actions but doing so for the right reasons and in possession of the right character traits (Sextus Empiricus Adversus mathematicos 11.200–​1 =​LS 59G). Insofar as humans are social animals, they are inclined to live with others, make friendships, love their families, and serve the common good (Hierocles 9.3ff =​LS 57D; Cicero De finibus 3.62–​5 =​LS 57G).The “proper functions” of humans thus include “honoring one’s parents, brothers, and country, and spending time with one’s friends” (Diogenes Laertius 7.108). It is not entirely clear precisely how one should understand Stoic views about natural “self-​ fulfillment” and concern for others. Much turns upon the details of Stoic accounts of “appropriation” (oikeiōsis /​ conciliatio), that is, the process by which one comes to regard something as oikeion (an object of one’s concern). While the details are controversial, one much discussed report associated with Hierocles (floruit c. 100 ce) describes how one initially regards only one’s own body as the object of one’s concern or as one’s own (i.e., what is oikeion). However, as one develops, one expands the objects of one’s concern in ever broader “circles” to encompass one’s immediate family, extended family, fellow citizens, and, finally, all human beings (Stobaeus 4.671.7–​673.11 =​LS 57G). What degree of concern is thereby extended to others by mature humans is not entirely clear (cf. Anonymous In Platonis Theaetetum 5.18–​6.31 =​LS 57H), and it is also not clear whether this concern, whatever its degree, amounts to some robust form of altruism or impartiality or something more like enlightened self-​interest or extended egoism.5 Although Stoic views concerning friendship have received less in the way of detailed philosophical attention,6 Cleanthes and Chrysippus each wrote at least one treatise on friendship (Diogenes Laertius 7.174; Plutarch De Stoicorum repugnantiis 1039b). These treatises have not survived, but later Stoics, such as Seneca and Epictetus, discuss friendship in greater detail and we know that the Stoics characterized friendship as a certain kind of association, community, or partnership (koinōnia) with respect to those things pertaining to life (kata ton bion) (Diogenes Laertius 7.124 =​LS 67P; cf. Stobaeus 2.74.16ff =​SVF 3.112). Such remarks –​alongside Zeno of Citium’s apparent remark that a friend is “another self ” or “another I” (Diogenes Laertius 7.23; cf. 7.124) –​are in line with earlier claims about friendship (e.g., Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1166a31–​2, 1171b32–​4; cf. Magna Moralia 1213a12) but are not especially informative. Fortunately, other sources provide further details. 49

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In contrast to Aristotle, who emphasizes that friendship requires reciprocal affection (see above), the Stoics seem to maintain that friendship is or requires oneness of mind (homonoia) and concord (sumphōnia) (Stobaeus 2.105ff =​SVF 3.661; cf. Diogenes Laertius 7.125), with the latter being defined as agreement (homodogmatia) concerning those things pertaining to life (Stobaeus 2.74.16ff =​SVF 3.112). Moreover, just as the Stoics emphasized that goodness is spoken of in (at least) three ways (Sextus Empiricus Adversus mathematicos 11.22–​37), so too they seemingly maintained that friendship (philia) is spoken of in (at least) three ways (Stobaeus 2.94.21ff =​SVF 3.98), namely as: (a) something for the sake of common benefit (tēs koinēs henek’ ōpheleias); (b) a friendly relation toward one’s neighbors (kataschesin philikēn pros tōn pelas); (c) a friendship concerning oneself (tēn de peri auton philian). According to Stobaeus’ report, (a) was not regarded as a good whereas (b) was regarded as an external good and (c) was regarded as a good of the soul (Stobaeus 2.94.21ff =​SVF 3.98). In other reports we find that friendship is seemingly described as a relative good (Stobaeus 2.74.16ff =​SVF 3.112) and that friends are described as external goods and instrumental goods (Diogenes Laertius 7.95–​6; Stobaeus 2.71.15–​72.6 =​LS 60M). While friendship provides pleasure and allows one to practice certain virtues (e.g., Seneca Epistulae 9.6, 8), there are several difficulties in understanding whether the Stoics think that friendship should be pursued for its own sake and whether it is required for a good life. On the one hand, one might think that the pursuit of friendship –​a “proper function” which manifests and fulfills humans’ natural sociability (cf. Diogenes Laertius 7.108; Seneca Epistulae 9.3, 17) –​is entirely analogous to the pursuit of health and wealth and that friends should be regarded as “preferred” or “promoted” indifferents. Accordingly, the attitude of the wise or virtuous person toward his friends would be the same as his attitude toward health and wealth. Such indifferents may be promoted but are not required for virtue or happiness (Diogenes Laertius 7.104), and the wise person will not be disturbed by their loss or absence (cf. Plutarch De Stoicorum repugnantiis 1043e, 1048b). Such a view of friends and friendship is indeed suggested by some reports (e.g., Diogenes Laertius 7.95–​6; Seneca Epistulae 9.5–​7), and one might also think that certain remarks about grief also suggest such a view (e.g., Seneca Epistulae 9.18–​19; cf. Epictetus Discourses 3.24.81ff; 4.1.107ff). On the other hand, it seems that at least some Stoics rejected the view that friendship is pursued for the sake of its utility (utilitas) and instead maintained that it is pursued for its own sake (Cicero De finibus 3.70; Diogenes Laertius 7.124; cf. Cicero De finibus 2.84). Insofar as only virtue or happiness is chosen for its own sake and only virtue is invariantly or unqualifiedly good (cf. Diogenes Laertius 7.102–​3; cf. Stobaeus 2.58.5–​15 =​LS 60K), it seems that friendship should not be regarded as a “preferred” or “promoted” indifferent but as constitutive of virtue and happiness. And this is indeed what some sources seem to indicate (e.g., Sextus Empiricus Adversus mathematicos 11.22–​4; cf. Seneca Epistulae 9.8). Although the two views just described may be appealing to different notions of friendship or friendships of different kinds, both views seem to face certain difficulties if taken to hold of genuine friendships. Thus, for instance, the former kind of view, which deems friendship neither necessary nor sufficient for happiness, seems difficult to square with common ancient conceptions of friendship (e.g., Cicero De amicitia 86) and is inconsistent with the remarks some Stoics themselves seem to make about the intrinsic value of friendship. However, the latter kind of view, which makes friendship a part of virtue and happiness, suggests that a wise person needs friends. This seems to threaten the “self-​sufficiency” the Stoics attribute to the wise person (e.g., Seneca Epistulae 9.1, 3, 13) and the Stoics’ insistence that the wise do not stand in need of “external” things which are outside of one’s control and vulnerable to the vicissitudes of fortune (e.g., Cicero Paradoxa Stoicorum 16–​17, 29). In his own discussions, Seneca suggests that although the wise person makes good use of friends, as they 50

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facilitate the practice of certain virtues (Seneca Epistulae 9.8, 13–​14; 109.2), nonetheless the wise person can get by just fine (i.e., be happy and virtuous) without friends just as he can get by without health or wealth (Epistulae 9.4–​5, 14–​18; 109.8–​9). Seneca thus seems to ultimately side with the former kind of view. Although the Stoics were willing to speak of friendship among the non-​virtuous and offer practical advice on this score (e.g., Plutarch De Stoicorum repugnantiis 1039a–​b; Seneca Epistulae 35), they warned that love (or “love”) among those who are not wise is dangerous (Seneca Epistulae 116.5) and that only the wise (i.e., the virtuous) can be genuine friends (Diogenes Laertius 7.33, 124; Stobaeus 2.108.5ff =​SVF 3.630). There seem to be two principal reasons for the Stoics to restrict genuine friendship to the wise. First, genuine friendship requires oneness of mind (see above), which involves agreement concerning those things pertaining to life, that is, what is good and what has value (Stobaeus 2.108.5ff =​SVF 3.630). However, the relevant oneness of mind requires proper knowledge (epistēmē) of common goods and such knowledge is restricted to the wise. Those who are not wise do not attain oneness of mind with themselves, let alone with others. As a result, their views are inconsistent and they are prone to wavering opinions (cf. Epictetus Discourses 2.22.4ff; Nawar 2020). Secondly, the Stoics maintain that only the wise person is capable of genuine love (Epictetus Discourses 2.22.3) and of having genuinely friendly relations toward others. Genuine friendship requires trust (pistis) and security (bebaiotēs) (Stobaeus 2.108.5ff =​SVF 3.630). However, only the wise offer genuine security and are deserving of trust (Stobaeus 2.108.5ff =​SVF 3.630; cf. Diogenes Laertius 7.33). As Epictetus memorably writes: Did you never see dogs fawning on one another and playing with one another, so that you say “Nothing could be more friendly”? But to see what kind of friendship this is, throw a piece of meat between them and you will find out. Throw likewise between yourself and your son a small piece of land, and you will find out how much your son wants to bury you, the sooner the better, and how earnestly you pray for your son’s death. Epictetus Discourses 2.22.9–​10, trans. Oldfather 1925–​8 adapted As Epictetus describes things, each agent pursues their own advantage and only the wise, who take their advantage to consist in wisdom and virtuous action, are such that their interests could never possibly conflict.Thus, while ordinary persons might appear to love each other, the alignment of their interests is fragile and there are always things that could come between them. If such persons suffer a falling out, the Stoics would take this to be evidence not that the two persons (e.g., Jason and Medea, Arthur and Lancelot, Déagol and Sméagol) had ceased to be friends, but rather that they had never been friends at all. The same holds of those who happen not to have been similarly tested but who would fail if they were so tested. Thus far we have seen that, for the Stoics, virtue and wisdom are necessary for genuine friendship. However, at least some of the Stoics may have maintained that virtue and wisdom are also sufficient for genuine friendship. Thus, Cicero reports that, according to the Stoics, all the wise are friends to each other even if they do not know each other (Cicero De natura deorum 1.121 =​SVF 3.635). While this report has been dismissed as inaccurate by some readers (e.g., Long 2012; cf. Stobaeus 2.101.21ff =​SVF 3.626), such a view seems to have at least two reasonable grounds. First, virtuous action benefits all of those who are virtuous (Plutarch De communibus notitiis 1068f =​SVF 3.627; cf. Stobaeus 2.101.21ff =​SVF 3.626) and –​whether they know each other or not –​the wise are thus joined together in an association for genuine common benefit, that is, a kind of friendship (see (a) above). Secondly, friendship that does not require mutual acquaintance can be more easily reconciled with Stoic claims about the self-​sufficiency of the wise and friendship being a constitutive part of virtue. Simply put, if friendship can survive the loss of one’s (proximate) friends, then even if friendship is a 51

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constitutive part of virtue and happiness, one’s virtue and happiness will not be threatened by the loss of one’s (proximate) friends and the self-​sufficiency of the virtuous will thus not be imperiled. Such a view may also plausibly be seen as either the grounds or the results of the Stoics’ famed “cosmopolitanism” (cf. Diogenes Laertius 7.33; for Stoic cosmopolitanism, see Schofield 1991;Vogt 2008). In sum, the Stoics take virtue to be necessary for genuine friendship because only the virtuous may properly agree with others concerning those things pertaining to life, and only the virtuous are such that their interests may never conflict. At least some Stoics may also have suggested that virtue is sufficient for friendship. The latter claim, according to which the wise and virtuous are all –​qua wise and virtuous and mutually beneficial agents –​joined in a circle of friendship, is congenial to Stoic cosmopolitanism but suggests a deeply impersonal notion of friendship. Although the Stoic account of appropriation was influential, and several aspects of Stoic thought on emotions were much discussed in antiquity and beyond (cf. Sorabji 2000; Knuuttila 2006), the influence of Stoic views about friendship is difficult to gauge and a thorough account of the subject remains to be written.7

4.  Augustine on Friendship and Vice Friendship receives relatively little explicit attention in the Christian scriptures and the most prominent use of the term philia (amicitia) occurs in speaking of “friendship of this world which is hostile to God” (amicitia huius mundi inimica est Dei, James 4:4). In the second or third century ce, the Christian theologian Clement of Alexandria (c. 150–​215) offered an account of love (agapē) strongly influenced by Stoic views of friendship (Clement Stromata 2.9.41.2.1ff =​SVF 3.292). However, much like other early Christian writers, Clement somewhat conspicuously avoids using the terms “friend” or “friendship,” and it is seemingly only in the fourth century that friendship becomes a significant theme among Christian thinkers. Early Latin Christian views on friendship seem to have been mixed. On the one hand, in his De officiis, Ambrose of Milan (c. 339–​397) pastiches Cicero and claims that friendship is a virtue while extolling its splendors and offering the clergy advice on preserving friendship among themselves. On the other hand, few would accuse Ambrose of being a penetrating thinker (cf. Jerome De viris illustribus 124), and several other writers, such as Paulinus of Nola (c. 352–​431), have few good things to say about friendship. Thus, Paulinus seems to have emphasized that it is “charity” (caritas), not friendship (amicitia), that joins Christians together and that charity holds between Christians even if they do not know each other (Epistulae 4.1; 6.1–​2; 11.1–​3; cf. Nawar 2014b; 2015b). While neither Ambrose nor Paulinus can be said to have expressed particularly developed thoughts concerning friendship,8 Augustine is interestingly different.9 In his mature works, Augustine characterizes virtue as an appropriate ordering of love (De civitate Dei 15.22),10 that is, a correct love of God and of neighbor. Thus, God should be loved for his own sake whereas one’s neighbors should be “enjoyed in” (i.e., valued for the sake of) God (e.g., De doctrina Christiana 1.32.37; cf. Holte 1962; O’Donovan 1982; Canning 1993). Although Augustine wrote no systematic treatises on friendship, he discusses friendship on numerous occasions. In some earlier works, where he discusses friendship briefly and incidentally, Augustine simply repeats or paraphrases some of Cicero’s remarks about friendship.11 However, in a letter (seemingly written around 395), Augustine emphasizes that Cicero’s definition of friendship –​as agreement on all human and divine affairs combined with goodwill and charity (Cicero De amicitia 20) –​requires emendation. The relevant agreement, Augustine thinks, must consist in appropriately loving God and one’s neighbor and must be based in Christ (Epistulae 258.2–​4). Augustine thus seems to restrict genuine friendship to Christians. Although Augustine does sometimes speak of friendship as an intrinsic good (cf. Epistulae 67.3) and claims that a Christian should feel charity toward all fellow humans while allowing that he or she may feel friendship toward only a few (Epistulae 130.6.13), it is unclear what role Augustine thinks 52

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friendship should have in the Christian life. On the one hand, it is not clear that Augustine thinks that a Christian’s preferential treatment of certain others is in itself problematic. In this he differs from some later Christian thinkers, such as Kierkegaard, who were inclined to think that friendship toward some particular few is at odds with the charity one should feel toward all one’s neighbors. (Kierkegaard argues that a Christian should only have neighbors and not friends and that friendship –​ which he decries as pagan, erotic, and egotistic –​is absent in the Christian scriptures; cf. Works of Love 9.21–​200, especially 32). While all should be loved equally, Augustine emphasizes that one cannot do good to all equally and it is not, he thinks, problematic to feel a greater affinity toward some rather than others (De doctrina Christiana 1.28.29; De vera religione 47.91). On the other hand, unlike (for example) Aristotle, Epicurus, some Stoics, or Cicero, it is not clear that Augustine sees a distinctive role for friendship in facilitating virtuous activity. Thus, although Augustine thinks that the life of the wise person is social (e.g., De civitate Dei 19.5) and he sometimes praises friendship as a possible source of pleasure or consolation (e.g., Epistulae 73.10; 130), it is not clear friendship is necessary for the virtuous life or even that Augustine envisions a special or prominent role for friendship (as opposed to the charity, fellowship, love, etc.) in the Christian life (cf. Nawar 2014b). Those who look to Augustine for an account of the role of friendship in the virtuous life will thus likely be disappointed. However, Augustine’s views on friendship and vice are arguably of greater interest.Warnings about false friends and flattery were not uncommon in ancient political discussions (e.g., Plutarch Quomodo adulator ab amico internoscatur) and some earlier philosophers, including the Stoics, had remarked that friendship among those who are not good might be conducive to vice (e.g., Seneca Epistulae 109.4; 116.5; cf. Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1166b13–​17; Diogenes Laertius 7.89). However, Augustine’s discussions of how friendship among those who are not virtuous may foster vice are arguably some of the more interesting to have survived from antiquity, and it seems that Augustine thinks that friendship can be conducive to vice for at least two important reasons. First, Augustine emphasizes that friendship plays an important role in enabling sin. In addressing himself to God early on in his Confessiones, Augustine notes that “friendship of this world is fornication against you” (amicitia enim mundi huius fornicatio est abs te, Confessiones. 1.13.21; cf. James 4:4; Psalms 72:27), and the early books of the Confessiones offer an account of how friendship can serve as a seemingly necessary condition for certain kinds of sinful action. Thus, in a sustained discussion of a seemingly minor transgression involving the theft of some pears, Augustine reflects upon the origins of sinful action in some detail. As Augustine describes things (Confessiones 2.9.17): (i) he loved the sin for its own sake; (ii) he would not have committed the sin had he been alone; and (iii) friendship acted as an inscrutable seduction of the mind (seductio mentis investigabilis) that gave rise to evil. Augustine finds his theft of the pears puzzling because he seemingly desired to do something wrong precisely because it was wrong (cf. Confessiones 2.4.9). However, this seems akin to someone being inclined to believe something precisely because they think that it is false. As such, it is deeply puzzling and seems inconsistent with the view that every goal of action is considered under the guise of some good (a view that Augustine is attracted to and often articulates in terms of pleasure or enjoyment, e.g, De sermone Domini in monte 1.34; Enarrationes in Psalmos 32.3.15). Thus, for instance, adultery might be pursued under the guise of attaining pleasure and theft under the guise of acquiring wealth. One might attempt to account for or explain away (i) by appealing to (ii) and maintain that the relevant agent did in fact perform the sin under the guise of pursuing some good (e.g., the esteem of one’s friends). Such an analysis is suggested by Aquinas (De Malo q.3 a.12 ad s.c. 2) and has also been argued for more recently by MacDonald (2003). Alternatively, a different kind of reading attempts to account for (but not explain away) (i) by emphasizing both (ii) and (iii), and maintains that 53

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friendship has perverted or overridden practical reasoning (Nawar 2014b; 2015b). This latter kind of reading –​according to which the agent does not necessarily perform the action under the guise of pursuing some relevant good –​is arguably supported not only by some of Augustine’s remarks in the Confessiones but also by some of his discussions elsewhere (Nawar 2014b; 2015b). Most saliently, in discussing the sins of Adam and Aaron, Augustine argues that they perceived the relevant sins qua sin and yet sinned anyway “because of the bond of fellowship” (sociali necessitudine, De civitate Dei Dei 14.11; cf. De Genesi ad Litteram 11.42.59). Whichever reading is correct, although it is not entirely clear how (i) should be reconciled with Augustine’s remarks that pride is the origin of sin (e.g., De civitate Dei 12.6ff), it is clear that Augustine thinks that friendship plays an important role in misdirecting shame among the unredeemed (so that we feel shame at not having committed evil acts) and in fostering pride as well as greed or lust (aviditas) (e.g., Confessiones 2.3.7, 5.10; cf. Epistulae 258.1). Thus, when non-​virtuous people gather together, the vile desires in each of us may feed off and egg on those of others and friendship may thus act as an abetment to vice rather than an aid to virtue (cf. Nawar 2014b). Secondly, Augustine thinks friendship can have an important role in giving rise to disordered love (cf. Nawar 2015b). (Arguably, one may find hints of such worries in earlier thinkers, e.g., Seneca Epistulae 116.5). As the opening of the Confessiones makes clear, Augustine thinks that humans have an important lack within themselves (Confessiones 1.1.1), that is, a certain restlessness or desire which they may seek to satisfy by various means but that can only be satisfied when they love God appropriately. Such a view may be better known to some modern readers through the writings of Blaise Pascal: What then does this craving and inability cry to us, if not that there once was a true happiness in man, of which there now remains only the mark and empty trace? He tries vainly to fill it with everything around him, seeking from things absent the help he does not receive from things present. But they are all inadequate, because only an infinite and immutable object –​that is, God himself –​can fill this infinite abyss. He alone is man’s true good. And since man has forsaken him, it is strange that nothing in nature has been capable of taking his place. Pascal Pensées 11.181 Sellier edition, trans. Ariew 2004 On this kind of view, shared by both Augustine and Pascal, humans suffer a fundamental but sometimes hidden lack (e.g., secretiora indigentia, Augustine Confessiones 3.1.1) that they seek to remedy by various means, including –​as Augustine notes –​the love of their friends (Confessiones 3.1.1). However, to love mortal things in the manner in which one should love an immortal God is, Augustine notes, to be pierced by sorrows (ad dolores figitur, Confessiones 4.10.15; cf. Epictetus Discourses 3.24.81–​95). Augustine’s thought concerning how friendships may give rise to disordered love is not always entirely perspicuous, but his account of a close, erotic friendship in the fourth book of his Confessiones is informative (cf. Confessiones 1.20.31; 2.5.10; 4.7.12–​8.13; Nawar 2015b). Just as several ancients were inclined to claim that mortals seek to live on forever by leaving “traces” of themselves (e.g., children, deeds, works, etc.) behind and that this manifests itself in human love and friendship,12 so too Augustine seems to think that certain friendships –​most saliently those friendships, much discussed and praised in antiquity, where one friend acts as a kind of “mentor” to another and “molds” the other (and in which erōs often figures prominently, cf. Diogenes Laertius 7.129) –​are a result of the relevant fundamental lack or desire. On Augustine’s view, humans are inclined to mistakenly think that such friendships can fill the relevant “God-​shaped hole” within themselves (cf. Confessiones 2.5.10; 4.7.12–​ 8.13; Nawar 2015b). They thus seek in human friendship what they ought to seek in God and love human beings in an inappropriate way (cf. De Trinitate 9.8.13). All the while they often fall further victim to pride and grow ever more distant from God (cf. De musica 6.13.40–​14.44). 54

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In sum, Augustine seems to restrict genuine friendship to Christians who appropriately love God and neighbor. However, aside from providing a possible source of pleasure and consolation, it is not entirely clear what positive role Augustine thinks friendship (as opposed to, e.g., fellowship) should play in a Christian life. Augustine’s account of the dangers of friendship and the ways in which it may pervert practical reasoning, foster pride, and give rise to disordered love is arguably more informative and more interesting. It seems to have lain with later thinkers, such as Aelred of Rievaulx and Thomas Aquinas, to provide a substantive account of a positive role for human friendship within the Latin Christian tradition.

Related Chapters Plato’s Erotic Friendships; Aristotle on the Nature and Value of Friendship; God and Redemptive Friendship; Friendship and Practical Reason; Friendship and Personal Identity

Notes 1 How to read Gnomologium Vaticanum 23 is controversial (cf. Mitsis 1987; Brown 2002). However, Epicurean claims about the (intrinsic) value of friendship need not be taken to be inconsistent with Epicurean hedonism since, like the excellences or virtues (Diogenes Laertius 10.138), the Epicureans seem to take friendship to be pleasurable or inseparable from pleasure (cf. Cicero De finibus 1.67; 2.82). 2 Diogenes Laertius 7.89ff; Stobaeus 2.63.6–​2 =​LS 60D, 2.66.14–​67.4 =​LS 60G; Cicero De finibus 2.34; Sextus Empiricus Adversus mathematicos 11.23. On the unity or plurality of virtue in Stoicism, see Duncombe (2020: 211ff). 3 For the Socratic, Platonic, or perhaps even Sophistic roots of such views, see Nawar (2017b; 2018; 2021c). 4 Thus, for instance, an overturned turtle might seek to right itself despite discomfort, and babies seek to walk despite falling (Seneca Epistulae 121). In seeking what is beneficial and appropriate for oneself, living beings need to have some kind of grasp of themselves and their nature as well as what is appropriate or beneficial for themselves (e.g., Seneca Epistulae 21.7–​24; Hierocles 1.34ff =​LS 57C). 5 For discussion of Stoic accounts of “appropriation,” see Pembroke (1971); Striker (1983); Annas (1993); Reydams-​Schils (2002); McCabe (2005); Klein (2016). For discussion of Stoic psychology and views concerning identity, see Nawar (2017a; 2020). 6 Discussions of Stoic views of friendship include: Schofield (1991); Lesses (1993); Banataneau (2002); Graver (2007);Vogt (2008: 148–​54); Long (2012); Collette-​Dučić (2014); Weiss (2016). 7 Some words are in order about Cicero’s De amicitia, a rhetorical treatise that offers one of the longer ancient discussions of friendship but which is primarily hortatory rather than philosophical in character. The main speaker of Cicero’s De amicitia is Gaius Laelius. Although Laelius is clearly informed by several philosophical views, he often complains about the excessive subtlety of the Greek philosophers and offers little in the way of argument or analysis. Laelius maintains that virtue is the source of friendship (De amicitia 20, 37, 100), that proper friendship requires valuing another for their own sake (e.g., De amicitia 80), and that “friendships” not bound by virtue are fragile (e.g., De amicitia 84). He seems to agree with the Stoic view that the wise and virtuous are best placed to make friends while needing them the least (De amicitia 30, 51; cf. Seneca Epistulae 9.5–​6) and defines friendship as “nothing other than agreement on all human and divine affairs combined with goodwill and charity” (divinarum humanarumque rerum cum benevolentia et caritate consensio, Cicero De amicitia 20; cf. Ps-​Plato Definitiones 413a10–​b2). However, he maintains that friendship requires intimacy and long acquaintance (e.g., De amicitia 29), lowers the bar the Stoics set on goodness and virtue (De amicitia 18–​19, 21), and seems to regard the Stoic conception of virtue as inhuman (De amicitia 48, 50) while emphasizing that a wise person will sometimes suffer distress (dolor) (De amicitia 48). 8 For broader discussion of early Christian views of friendship in the fourth century, see White (1992). 9 Augustine engages with the Stoics and Platonists considerably and often creatively, notably in his discussions of knowledge (cf. Nawar 2015a; 2019; 2022-c), language (Nawar 2021a), metaphysics (Nawar 2022-​a; 2022-​b), and perception and emotion (O’Daly 1987; Brittain 2002; Byers 2013; Nawar 2021b). Augustine is influenced by Stoic notions of cosmic communities of the wise (e.g., De Trinitate 3.4.9) and discusses and criticizes Stoic views concerning virtue, self-​sufficiency, and the passions in some detail (e.g., De civitate Dei 9.4–​5; 14.4ff; 19.1ff; Irwin 2003; Byers 2013; cf. Cicero Tusculan Disputations 3.20–​1; Seneca De clementia 2.5ff). In some works, he may also appeal to Stoic or Stoic-​informed accounts of appropriation (Byers 2016).

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Tamer Nawar 10 For discussion of Augustine’s engagement with Neoplatonic accounts of virtue, see Brittain (2003); Tornau (2015). 11 Thus, in his early Contra Academicos, Augustine approvingly quotes Cicero’s definition of friendship (Contra Academicos 3.6.13; cf. Cicero De amicitia 20), and in his De diversis quaestionibus octoginta tribus, Augustine characterizes friendship as “a desire for good things for someone for his own sake, along with an equal desire on his part”i (31.3; cf. Cicero De inventione 2.166). 12 Plato Symposium 206e–​209a; cf. Plato Phaedrus 252d–​e, 276e–​277a; Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1161b15ff; Politics 1252a26–​30; Poetics 1448b3ff; Cicero Tusculan Disputations 1.32–​35.

References and Abbreviations Annas, J. 1993. The Morality of Happiness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ariew, R., ed. 2004. Blaise Pascal: Pensées. Indianapolis: Hackett. von Arnim, H. 1903–​1905. Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta. Leipzig: Teubner. [SVF] Banateanu, A. 2002. La théorie stoïcienne de l’amitié: essai de reconstruction. Fribourg: Univ. de Fribourg. Brittain, C. 2002. “Non-​Rational Perception in the Stoics and Augustine.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 22: 253–​308. Brittain, C. 2003.“Attention Deficit in Plotinus and Augustine: Psychological Problems in Christian and Platonist Theories of the Grades of Virtue.” Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 18: 223–​75. Brown, E. 2002. “Epicurus on the Value of Friendship.” Classical Philology 97: 68–​80. Byers, S. 2013. Perception, Sensibility, and Moral Motivation in Augustine: A Stoic-​ Platonic Synthesis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Byers, S. 2016. “Augustine’s Debt to Stoicism in the Confessions.” In The Routledge Handbook of the Stoic Tradition, edited by J. Sellars, 56–​69. London: Routledge. Canning, R. 1993. The Unity of Love for God and Neighbour in Augustine. Heverlee-​Leuven: Augustinian Historical Institute. Collette-​Dučić, B. 2014.“Making Friends: the Stoic Conception of Love and Its Platonic Background.” In Ancient and Medieval Conceptions of Friendship, edited by S. Stern-​Gillet and G. M. Gurtler, 87–​115. Albany: SUNY Press. Duncombe, M. 2020 Ancient Relativity: Plato, Aristotle, Stoics, and Sceptics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Graver, M. 2007. Stoicism and Emotion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Holte, R. 1962. Béatitude et Sagesse: Saint Augustin et le problème de la fin de l’homme dans la philosophie ancienne. Paris: Institut des Études Augustiniennes. Irwin, T. 2003. “Augustine’s Criticisms of the Stoic Theory of Passions.” Faith and Philosophy 20: 430–​47. Klein, J. 2016. “The Stoic Argument from oikeiosis.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 50: 143–​200. Konstan, D. 1997. Friendship in the Classical World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Knuuttila, S. 2006. Emotions in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Lesses, G. 1993. “Austere Friends: The Stoics and Friendship.” Apeiron 26: 57–​75. Long, A.A. 2012. “Friendship and Friends in the Stoic Theory of the Good Life.” In Thinking about Friendship, edited by D. Caluori, 218–​39. London: Palgrave. Long, A.A., and D. Sedley 1987. The Hellenistic Philosophers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [LS] MacDonald, S. 2003. “Petit Larceny, the Beginning of All Sin: Augustine’s Theft of the Pears.” Faith and Philosophy 20: 393–​414. McCabe, M.M. 2005. “Extend or Identify: Two Stoic Accounts of Altruism.” In Metaphysics, Soul, and Ethics in Ancient Thought: Themes from the Work of Richard Sorabji, edited by R. Salles, 413–​43. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mitsis, P. 1987. “Epicurus on Friendship and Altruism.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 5: 127–​53. Nawar, T. 2014a. “The Stoic Account of Apprehension.” Philosophers’ Imprint 14: 1–​21. Nawar, T. 2014b. “Adiutrix Virtutum? Augustine on Friendship and Virtue.” In Ancient and Medieval Concepts of Friendship, edited by S. Stern-​Gillet and G. Gurtler, 197–​225. Albany: SUNY Press. Nawar, T. 2015a. “Augustine on the Varieties of Understanding and Why There is No Learning from Words.” Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy 3: 1–​31. Nawar, T. 2015b. “Augustine on the Dangers of Friendship.” The Classical Quarterly 65: 836–​51. Nawar, T. 2017a. “The Stoics on Identity, Identification, and Peculiar Qualities.” Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 32: 113–​59. Nawar, T. 2017b. “Platonic Know-​How and Successful Action.” European Journal of Philosophy 25: 944–​62. Nawar, T. 2018. “Thrasymachus’ Unerring Skill and the Arguments of Republic I.” Phronesis 63: 359–​81. Nawar, T. 2019. “Augustine’s Defence of Knowledge against the Sceptics.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 56: 215–​65.

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The Stoics and Augustine on Friendship and Altruism Nawar, T. 2020. “The Stoic Theory of the Soul.” In The Routledge Handbook of Hellenistic Philosophy, edited by K. Arenson, 148–​59. London: Routledge. Nawar, T. 2021a. “Every Word is a Name: Autonymy and Quotation in Augustine.” Mind 130: 595–​616. Nawar, T. 2021b. “Augustine on Active Perception, Awareness, and Representation.” Phronesis 66: 84–​110. Nawar,T. 2021c.“Dynamic Modalities andTeleological Agency: Plato and Aristotle on Skill and Ability.” In Productive Knowledge in Ancient Philosophy: The Concept of Technê, edited by T. Johansen, 39–​61. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nawar, T. 2022-​a. “Augustine’s Master Argument for the Incorporeality of the Mind.” The Philosophical Quarterly 72: 422–​40. Nawar, T. 2022-​b. “The Roots of Occasionalism? Causation, Metaphysical Dependence, Soul-​Body Relations in Augustine.” Vivarium 60: 1–​27. Nawar, T. 2022-c. “Clear and Distinct Perception in the Stoics, Augustine, and William of Ockham”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplement 96 (2022): 185–207. O’Daly, G. 1987. Augustine’s Philosophy of Mind. London: Duckworth. O’Donovan, O. 1982. “usus and fruitio in Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana I.” Journal of Theological Studies 33: 361–​97. Oldfather, W.A., wd. 1925–​8. Epictetus:The Discourses as Reported by Arrian, the Manual, and Fragments. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pembroke, S. 1971. “Oikeiōsis.” In Problems in Stoicism, edited by A.A. Long, 114–​49. London: Athlone. Reydams-​Schils, G. 2002.“Human Bonding and oikeiōsis in Roman Stoicism.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 22: 221–​51. Schofield, M. 1991. The Stoic Idea of the City. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sorabji, R. 2000. Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Striker, G. 1983. “The Role of oikeiosis in Stoic Ethics.” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 1: 145–​67. Tornau, C. 2015.“Happiness in This Life? Augustine on the Principle That Virtue Is Self-​Sufficient for Happiness.” In The Quest for the Good Life: Ancient Philosophers on Happiness, edited by Ø. Rabbas, E. Emilsson, H. Fossheim, and M. Tuominen, 265–​80. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Vogt, K. 2008. Law, Reason, and the Cosmic City: Political Philosophy in the Early Stoa. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Weiss, R. 2016. “Stoic Utopia: The Use of Friendship in Creating the Ideal Society.” Apeiron 49: 193–​228. White, C. 1992. Christian Friendship in the Fourth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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5 KANTIAN FRIENDSHIP Karen Stohr

When people look back into the history of philosophy for an account of friendship, they rarely think to reach for Immanuel Kant. This is unfortunate, because Kant’s picture of friendship is rich and nuanced, with insights relevant to friendship in contemporary contexts. It shares key features of Aristotle’s much more famous account, but it also contains distinctive Kantian elements that modern readers might very well find appealing.1 Like Aristotle, Kant thinks that good friendships are tremendously valuable contributors to a good human life. Kant, however, is rather more concerned about the fragility of friendships in light of common human failings. In Kant’s eyes, friendships can be risky undertakings, but the moral value of friendship makes the risks well worth taking. Readers with only a passing acquaintance with Kant might be surprised to learn that he even has an account of friendship. To many people, Kant seems like someone who spent his life essentially alone in his ivory tower, producing ambitious and sweeping works of philosophy for the ages. Moreover, Kant’s ethical writings are well known for their emphasis on individual rational agency. It can be hard to imagine that he would have bothered to write on a mundane topic like friendship or that he might have had anything philosophically interesting to say about such a practical ethical matter. This common picture of Kant as a philosopher concerned only with the most abstract ethical questions is, however, a caricature. In fact, Kant’s published writing on ethics contain many discussions of social relationships and the ethical issues that arise within those relationships. (Among other things, Kant had well-​defined views about how to host a good dinner party.) Moreover, Kant wrote on such topics from his own experience as someone who enjoyed the company of others and who benefited greatly from his own friendships. It should not really come as a surprise that he had philosophically interesting things to say about the relationships he valued so highly himself. Studying Kant’s views on friendships is also illuminating as a way of understanding Kant’s often forbidding discussions of rational moral principles. The best kind of friendships, which Kant called moral friendships, can be understood as imperfect embodiments of idealized moral relationships between rational agents. In reading what Kant wrote about such friendships, we can make better sense of Kant’s famous categorical imperative and the ways in which it structures our actual human relationships and interactions. In many ways, friendships are the embodiment of the kind of moral community Kant thinks we should be aiming to build. Kant’s works contain three main discussions of friendship, each of which has a distinctive tone and advances slightly different claims. One discussion is at the end of the Metaphysics of Morals and 58

DOI: 10.4324/9781003007012-7

Kantian Friendship

the other two are in the Lectures on Ethics. This chapter will draw on all three discussions, as well as relevant sections of his other works.2 My aim is not to engage in the kind of scholarship that would generate an authoritative account of what Kant thought about friendship; rather, my goal is to provide a more general picture of Kantian friendship for readers who are not deeply familiar with Kant’s texts. The picture, I suggest, is one worth taking seriously in contemporary discussions of friendship. This chapter will be structured as follows. I will begin by laying out Kant’s account of friendship, emphasizing the ways in which it both resembles Aristotle’s account and departs from that account. Kant’s picture of friendship, like his broader moral theory, rests on an idealized conception of moral relationships. As we will see, that idealized conception informs the way we should undertake actual human friendships. I will then turn to the challenges of friendship as Kant understands them. The challenges arise from fundamental human tendencies and propensities that detract from our capacity to develop and sustain the best kind of friendship. The remainder of the chapter aims to highlight some of the especially philosophically distinctive and interesting features of Kant’s account. In the Lectures on Ethics, Kant distinguishes among three types of friendships –​friendships of need, friendships of taste, and friendships of disposition or fellowship (C 424–​427). In this, he more or less follows Aristotle, who divides friendships into the categories of utility, pleasure, and complete friendships. (Since Kant quotes Aristotle on friendship, it is safe to assume his familiarity with his predecessor’s account.) Kant sometimes employs a fourth category of friendship, a category representing an ideal against which ordinary human friendships might be measured.Aristotle’s account of complete friendship is also idealized in important respects, but the ideal friendship functions differently in Kant than it does in Aristotle. I will have more to say about this below. First, however, I will explain Kant’s three categories of friendship, focusing especially on the third. Like Aristotle, Kant considers one form of friendship as having singular importance in human life. The threefold division has a somewhat hierarchical structure. Friendships of need are focused on a reciprocal exchange of goods and services necessary for continued life and functioning. In this, they resemble Aristotle’s concept of friendships of utility, which do not seem much like friendships to modern readers, given that something as mundane as a carpool might qualify. Likewise, at one point, Kant seems to dismiss friendships of need as a primitive kind of friendship, based on the importance of banding together for purposes of survival. And yet Kant also takes seriously the fact that we are, by nature, needy creatures and that one of the morally important features of friendship is the ready willingness to respond to the needs of one’s friends. As we will see, Kantian ethics generally has what we might call a complicated relationship with human vulnerability. Any friendship will have to take into account our situation as limited, dependent beings who rely on others for support in achieving our ends. In that sense, every friendship is a friendship of need. But of course, not all friendships are merely about meeting each other’s needs, and Kant certainly thinks that the best friendships involve quite a bit more. The second type of Kantian friendship is a friendship of taste. It resembles Aristotle’s friendship of pleasure insofar as it rests on a foundation of mutual enjoyment of each other’s company. Kant, however, adds an interesting twist when he emphasizes the value of disparate backgrounds for such friendships. We often suppose that people will be drawn to others who are similar to them when it comes to things like interests, hobbies, and work. Kant, however, suggests that friendships of taste function best when the parties involved have different occupations. He says that: one scholar will have no friendship of taste with another, for the one can do what the other can; they cannot satisfy or entertain one another, for what one knows, the other knows too; but a scholar may well have a friendship of taste with a merchant or a soldier, and so long as the scholar is no pedant, and the merchant no blockhead, then each can entertain the other on his own subject. C 426 59

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Perhaps when he developed his account of friendships of taste, the scholarly Kant was thinking of his own very close friendship with an English merchant named Joseph Green. There is no doubt that Kant deeply valued Green, finding him an important source of information, insight, and wisdom. Indeed, it is the capacity of others to provide us with new perspectives and expand our knowledge of the world that, for Kant, makes them suitable candidates for friendships of taste. Such friends are obviously much more than drinking buddies or bowling partners. Rather, these friendships appear to revolve around conversation and the sharing of ideas. We seek out friendships of taste as a way of learning more about the world, and we value these friendships because of their ability to expand our intellectual and social horizons. Kant’s emphasis on mutual enlightenment in friendships of taste is a distinctive feature of his account. It also illustrates the importance of friends to our own self-​improvement. We do not seek out friendships of taste merely as a matter of personal benefit; indeed, doing so would put the friendship squarely back into the category of friendships of need. But friendships of taste do benefit us by improving our understanding of the world and other people, something Kant takes to be a significant good in its own right. We might see such friendships as helping us fulfill one of the two “ends that are also duties” that structure the Doctrine of Virtue, Kant’s last and perhaps most comprehensive ethical work.3 There Kant asserts that I have a duty to myself to cultivate my own natural and moral perfection, insofar as that is possible for me. Friendships of taste help sharpen my power of rational judgment, something that Kant, at least, found both pleasant and practically useful. Kantian friendships of taste are appealing in their own right. But for Kant, there is another level of friendship, one that he initially calls friendships of disposition. The name is a bit misleading because the disposition Kant has in mind is a moral disposition.These are the friendships that Kant sometimes calls moral friendships. (Kant also uses the term “moral friendship” to refer to the idealized version of these relationships, a point to which I will return shortly.) Friendships of disposition are based on mutual trust in the other’s good will. In Kantian terms, to have a good will is to have an abiding commitment to morality. Kant’s friendships of disposition can take place only between people with such a commitment. Readers of Aristotle will recall that his third and final category of friendship, known as complete friendship, has virtue as a precondition. It is not possible to be a complete friend in Aristotle’s sense without virtue because only virtuous people are capable of acting for the other’s good, something that is a requirement of Aristotelian friendship. This is in part because friends must be unselfish enough to put their friends first, but it is also because for Aristotle, it takes virtue to know what the other’s good consists in. An example will help make this clear. Consider someone who thinks that their friend spends too much time on their schoolwork and not enough time relaxing. In the Aristotelian moral framework, there is a fact of the matter about whether this is true. It is possible that the friend is genuinely overworked and needs to have their priorities corrected. It is also possible that the friend’s priorities are fine as they are, and that slacking off would be the wrong choice. On Aristotle’s view, it takes virtue (specifically the virtue of practical wisdom) to know which of these things is true. A vicious person is going to get it wrong. And this is part of the reason why a vicious person cannot reliably act for the good of their friend. They simply will not know what it is.Vicious people are more likely to corrupt their friends, and so cannot be, as Aristotle says friends must be, a good to their friends. Only a virtuous person is capable of making someone’s life genuinely better through their presence. Kant largely agrees with Aristotle that moral friendship can exist only between two morally good people, but his reasons are rather different. While Kant does share Aristotle’s view that friends make us better, that is not the primary point of moral friendship, nor is it the reason why we need our friends to have a moral disposition. Rather, Kant’s focus is on the importance of trust in our personal relationships. We need our friends to be good people because we must be able to trust them. And we need to be able to trust them because the familiarity that goes along with friendship 60

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makes us vulnerable. Friendship, for Kant, is a relationship of great intimacy. We reveal ourselves to our friends –​our thoughts, feelings, and flaws. This kind of self-​revelation comes with risks. There is always a danger that we will put ourselves in the hands of people who prove unworthy of our trust. In order to understand why Kant worries so much about the risks of self-​revelation, it is helpful to take a step back and consider his broader picture of human nature. Perhaps reflecting the Pietist Lutheran tradition in which he was raised, Kant takes a rather unhappy view of our natural state as human beings. In one essay, Kant describes the human condition as one of “unsocial sociability.”4 By that he means that while we are drawn into society with others by both natural inclination and moral reasons, we find it difficult to coexist peacefully with other people. We are prone to competing with others and jockeying for position in social life. Kant ascribes this to our natural tendencies to pursue our own self-​interest and to want to feel superior to others, tendencies that Kant refers to as self-​love and self-​conceit respectively. It is a constant struggle for us to rein in our self-​love and squash our self-​conceit, even in the context of friendships. Envy and rivalry are difficult to eradicate in any relationship.This means that in pursuing moral friendships, we are, in some respects, fighting our natures. This is why Kant thinks that true moral friendship is inevitably an ideal. There is no such thing as a perfect friendship because there is no such thing as a perfect person. No matter how committed we are to our friends, we are still prone to acting on reasons of self-​love or self-​conceit, rather than reasons of friendship. It is hard to keep one’s “dear self,” to use David Hume’s phrase, out of the way, even when it comes to our dearest friends. Even so, the ideal of friendship plays a very important role in helping us conduct our actual friendships because in those friendships, we aim to approximate the ideal. Because we can understand what idealized friendships are like, we are able to strive for them in our actual lives. Although we may not be able to rid ourselves of self-​love and self-​conceit, we can appreciate what it would mean to be in friendships where such tendencies played no role. In his discussion of moral friendship in the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant defines it as the “union of two persons through equal mutual love and respect,” a relationship that involves “each participating and sharing sympathetically in the other’s well-​being through the morally good will that unites them” (MM 469). The context makes it clear that he is talking about idealized moral friendship, especially since he goes on to say that it is “unattainable in practice” (MM 469). It is unattainable for several reasons. First and probably foremost, human nature makes it difficult for us to maintain a consistent focus on the other’s well-​being. But even when both parties to a friendship have the right moral disposition, there are additional challenges arising from what Kant describes as the two great moral forces of love and respect. It turns out that it is difficult to keep these two forces in balance because they are in some tension with each other. Kant rather memorably describes it this way: it will be difficult for both to bring love and respect subjectively into that equal balance required for friendship. For love can be regarded as attraction and respect as repulsion, and if the principle of love bids friends to draw closer, the principle of respect requires them to stay at a proper distance from each other.This limitation on intimacy […] is expressed in the rule that even the best of friends should not make themselves too familiar with each other... MM 470 This tension is present in any human relationship, but it is especially apparent in friendship. Love draws us toward intimacy while respect tells us to maintain some boundaries. The challenge lies in determining how to keep those forces in the right balance. Kant thinks that we owe duties of respect and love to all rational agents. The origins of this idea can be found in his articulation of the humanity formulation of the categorical imperative in the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (G 430).There Kant claims that we have duties to treat others as ends in both a negative and a positive sense. The negative sense corresponds to the duty to avoid treating others (and ourselves) as a mere means. The positive sense corresponds to the duty to treat others as setters of ends. This latter duty is the source of our duties of love, including the duties of 61

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sympathy and beneficence. Kant argues that we are morally required to act to promote the permissible ends of others, although always in a way that respects their status as a fellow rational being with dignity. Friendships are subject to the same moral constraints as any other relationship, in the sense that we owe general duties of love and respect to our friends. But of course, the relationship between friends is different from other moral relationships that we have. This is especially obvious when it comes to our duties of love. Although Kant thinks that we have duties to promote the (permissible) ends of all rational beings, we clearly have particular reason to care about the ends of our friends and to bring those about so far as we are able. Likewise, our general duty to sympathize in the fate of other rational beings takes a specific form in the case of our friends. It might seem, then, that the challenge of keeping love and respect in balance in friendship is largely on the side of love, with the difficulty lying in ensuring that we overcome our own self-​interest and act for the sake of our friends. And it is true that we often find it hard to do what love requires of us, whether we are talking about strangers or friends. But Kant seems to think that the more serious challenges of friendship have to do with respect, not love. We make a mistake if we dismiss the importance of respect in friendship or imagine that if friends can get love right, appropriate respect will naturally follow in its wake. Getting respect right in friendship can be even harder than getting love right. One problem is that if we are not careful, the demands of love can swamp the demands of respect. In his discussion of the general duty of beneficence, Kant emphasizes that our obligation is to promote the ends that others actually have, not the ends that we would like them to have or that we think would be better for them. It is disrespectful to substitute our judgment for the judgment of another, acting as if we know more about their happiness than they do. This kind of boundary crossing is usually more apparent to us in the case of strangers than in the case of friends. If a stranger on the street stops me and offers me unsolicited parenting advice, it is relatively easy for me to recognize it as intrusive and respond accordingly. It is much more difficult to identify and maintain such boundaries among close friends. When people act from love, they sometimes lose sight of the need to respect their loved ones as separate individuals with goals and projects of their own. And likewise, it can be easy for us to lose sight of our own status as setters of ends in the context of loving relationships. Kant insists that friends need to be able to respect each other as setters of ends. Unbridled love is a threat to friendship in the absence of mutual respect. There is a second, more specific problem about keeping love and respect in balance in friendship, a problem to which Kant returns in multiple places in his writings. This problem arises from the intimacy generated by self-​disclosure and the associated risks we take in engaging in it. As we have seen in the context of friendship of taste, Kant thinks that a significant part of friendship consists in sharing our thoughts, feelings, and ideas with each other. (Aristotle too emphasizes the importance of conversation in complete friendships.) Moreover, although Kant does not explicitly point this out, the mere fact that we spend so much time with our friends means that they have insights into our behavior and motives that strangers usually lack. Between what we reveal to friends through conversation and what is revealed to them in the course of our joint activities, it is evident that our friends know a great deal about us. In the ideal version of moral friendship, there would be no danger that my friend would abuse my trust or cause me harm in virtue of what they know about me. Kant claims that idealized moral friendship permits “the complete confidence of two persons in revealing their secret judgments and feelings to each other” (MM 471). But this confidence is not easy to acquire in actual relationships, where ordinary human frailties and weaknesses routinely lead to betrayals, even among friends. In the real world, it can be hard to shake the feeling that we must inevitably be watching our backs, giving no one our complete trust. Kant’s writings on friendship repeatedly stress the difficulty of creating and sustaining mutual trust. It is not always clear whether he thinks it is difficult because we are unable to trust people even when

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they warrant our trust or because people are in fact not to be trusted, although he tends to focus on the latter. He is keenly aware of how frequently human beings fail to live up to what morality requires of us, and how readily our trust can be misplaced and misused if we are not careful.This means that if we are too quick to reveal ourselves to others, we may put ourselves in danger. Self-​interested people may try to manipulate us. Envious people may try to gain a feeling of superiority by divulging our flaws and weaknesses. This suggests that prudential considerations direct us to hold our cards close to our chest: the evil is that we virtually never regard the other as a friend, but rather as an opponent, who will exploit our weakness and cleverly conceal his own. Hence the accepted rule: Deal with your friend as though he may well in the end become your enemy, can be explained as follows:Trust him with caution only, and disclose to him nothing which he might be able to misuse, to the detriment of your respect. V 679 Kant is not exactly endorsing this approach, but it does explain why he maintains that open-​ heartedness cannot be a duty. The world is too shadowy a place for that. As a general rule, we are wise to “keep the shutters closed” on our innermost thoughts and desires, lest we put ourselves at the mercy of unscrupulous people (C 445).5 And yet, Kant fully appreciates that this is a miserable way to conduct our lives. Although we find it hard to trust others, we are also drawn by the sociable part of our natures to the prospect of doing so. Open-​heartedness is desirable, even if it is not a duty. This presents us with a practical tension: Man is a being meant for society (though he is also an unsociable one), and in cultivating the social state he feels strongly the need to reveal himself to others. But on the other hand, hemmed in and cautioned by fear of the misuse others may make of his disclosing his thoughts, he finds himself constrained to lock up in himself a good part of his judgments. He would like to discuss with someone what he thinks about his associates, the government, religion and so forth, but he cannot risk it: partly because the other person, while prudently keeping back his own judgments, might use this to harm him, and partly because, as regards disclosing his faults, the other person may conceal his own, so that he would lose something of the other’s respect by presenting himself quite candidly to him. MM 471–​472 The practical tension arises from our deep desire to unburden ourselves to other people combined with a felt need for reserve as a matter of self-​protection. Moral friendship, if we can pull it off, holds out the prospect of enabling us to resolve this tension, at least insofar as that is possible for flawed creatures like us. But in order to resolve the tension, we must find ways to create intimacy within friendship that does not threaten the mutual respect that must be at its foundations. Self-​revelation poses prudential risks, at least if I put my trust in the wrong person. My so-​called friend may take advantage of my unreserve and use it to their own advantage, and to my disadvantage. But the risks are not merely prudential.There are moral risks to open-​heartedness as well, risks having to do with respect and self-​respect. This is why Kant is not confident that we can solve the problem of self-​disclosure simply by ensuring that we reveal ourselves only to trustworthy people. The worry goes deeper than that. Kant’s concern is not simply that my friend will misuse the information I reveal to her. I may well have enough confidence in her commitment to morality to be sure she will not post my self-​ revelations on Twitter. But self-​disclosure itself opens up my character in ways that may threaten the moral basis of our friendship. When we lay ourselves bare to another person, we risk losing the

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other person’s respect. This is particularly true when we have reason to think that our friend will see faults in us. Kant claims that it is duty for friends to tell each other what is wrong with them: “From a moral point of view, it is of course a duty for one of the friends to point out the other’s faults to him; this is in the other’s best interests and is therefore a duty of love” (MM 470). This claim is in some tension with his earlier insistence that we do not have a positive moral duty to improve other people, only ourselves (MM 394). It would seem that something about friendship alters this dynamic, although Kant does not explain it. In general, Kant thinks we cannot improve other people, since we cannot make it the case that another person has a good will. I cannot have a duty to do what it is not possible for me to do. We are obligated not to corrupt people, but otherwise, we are not obligated to make others better. It is thus not clear why Kant thinks that we have a duty to point out flaws in our friends, unless he regards friendship as involving a kind of mutual assistance pact. If pointing out flaws is, as he says, a duty of love, it may fall under the duty of beneficence, which is a duty to promote the ends of others as they see them. But as we saw earlier, that duty is constrained by the ends that others actually have. It cannot be my duty to improve you unless you want me to improve you. So perhaps Kant is assuming that friends have it as their ends to be improved by each other. Even so, there are dangers for respect: But the latter sees in this a lack of the respect he expected from his friend and thinks that he has either already lost or is in constant danger of losing something of his friend’s respect, since he is observed and secretly criticized by him. MM 470 Here we see how our duties of love and respect put us in a bit of a bind. When we are open-​ hearted with our friends, we unburden ourselves, but we also reveal our flaws. Our friends have duties of love to point those flaws out to us. Even if they abstain, we are still aware of the possibility that their perception of our flaws will make them lose respect for us. Our own self-​respect is also at stake. If my friend does not respect me, it is harder for me to respect myself. This is why open-​heartedness, even among friends, generates moral risks and not merely prudential risks. Even if we can be confident that our friend will not abuse our trust, we find it difficult to maintain that all-​important mutual respect. One solution would be to give up on the idea of open-​heartedness, but Kant thinks this would be a mistake. Although he worries about the risks of frank self-​disclosure, he clearly thinks that we are all better served by living in a world in which open, honest conversation is possible. In such a world, our desire for knowledge can be satisfied more fully, and we are capable of making social progress. The need for reserve is regrettable for us as members of a moral community. It is also regrettable for us as individuals who wish to be known by others. We should, therefore, work to create contexts in which open-​heartedness is possible. Moral friendships are one such context. The person in such a friendship “is not completely alone with his thoughts, as in a prison, but enjoys a freedom he cannot have with the masses, among which he must shut himself up in himself ” (MM 472). Moral friendships are a source of liberation, an escape into a world in which human beings relate to each other as members of the kingdom of ends. There is value for us in being able to experience such a world, both in its own right and because it helps us maintain our commitment to that larger moral kingdom. This might explain why Kant claims that it is a moral duty for us to strive for such friendships, despite our inability to achieve them in their ideal state. He calls it a “duty set by reason, and no ordinary duty but an honorable one” (MM 469). Moral friendships are ways in which we imperfectly instantiate idealized moral relationships with other people. Although we ordinarily think of friendships as making us happy, Kant thinks that they do more than this. In striving to succeed in moral friendship, I make myself more deserving of whatever happiness they bring. 64

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But in order for our moral friendships to succeed, we must solve the problems generated by the tension between love and respect. Essential to the resolution of this tension is the need to maintain moral equality in our relationships with our friends. Self-​disclosure is prudentially riskier when it is one-​sided. It is also morally riskier because it destabilizes our sense of ourselves as the moral equals of our friends. In order to address these risks, it is essential that our moral friendships involve reciprocity. Kant’s discussion of friendship is, in many ways, almost romantic. Indeed, it closely resembles his discussion of marriage (which would be more romantic if it were not for his persistent and pervasive sexism). Kant sees marriage as a form of reciprocal self-​g iving. There is risk to giving oneself over, body and soul, to another, but those risks are minimized when the giving is mutual. If I hand myself over to you and you hand yourself over to me, Kant thinks, there is a sense in which I get myself back. In the context of friendship, this means that when I open myself up to you and you do the same, our relationship is a relationship of equals. The equality is crucial. Self-​disclosure is less risky when it is reciprocal.This is not because it means that I am in a better position to retaliate if you betray my trust. Rather, it reduces the likelihood that one party will end up feeling morally superior or inferior to the other. Remember that Kant thinks that self-​conceit is a constant threat to our ability to engage in idealized moral relationships. It is what leads us to be constantly focused on our position relative to others. Being confronted with another person’s flaws feeds our self-​conceit, since it makes us feel superior to them. Likewise, being confronted with our own flaws is anxiety-​producing because it threatens our perceived status in relationship to others, making us feel inferior. If I present myself as flawed when you do not, my fear is that you will be unable to respect me, something that impinges on my own capacity for self-​respect. But if you also present yourself to me as flawed, our equality is restored. Kant does not, of course, think that perceived moral superiority or inferiority is equivalent to actual moral superiority or inferiority. All rational beings are moral equals in the sense of having equal dignity and equal claim to being members of the kingdom of ends. This is true regardless of how others perceive us or how we perceive ourselves. But the perception of inequality is, in Kant’s view, a threat to our ability to maintain relationships that reflect our actual equality. And this is why we have to worry about perceived inequality and its impact on mutual respect. The threat of perceived inequality in friendships is not limited to the revelation of our flaws. It also looms over the ways in which friends present and respond to each other’s needs. In his discussion of beneficence in the Doctrine of Virtue, Kant raises the concern that beneficence can disrupt relationships of moral equality, particularly when it is one-​sided (MM 453–​454). He suggests that it is demeaning to be in the position of needing another’s assistance (a view that is certainly controversial). He also says that benefactors have to take pains not to allow their acts of beneficence to generate moral smugness (a view that is likely much less controversial). The mere fact of our vulnerability generates problems about respect, particularly since we are not all equally in need of help. Kant is aware of the challenges that lopsided neediness and beneficence pose to friendships. He thinks that friends, motivated by love, will want to respond to each other’s needs. And friends, also motivated by love, will not want to burden each other with their needs. (This view, it is worth noting, is shared by Aristotle.) On paper, this may sound contradictory, but it is familiar to most of us from our own experiences. Often we do not want to bother our friends with our troubles, but at the same time, we want to help our friends when they have troubles of their own. As Kant sees it, these are both admirable feelings. And crucially, what they inspire is trust. Moral friendship is not merely a mutual aid society, but it presupposes trust in the other person’s willingness to come to one’s aid: Yet in every friendship we must still presuppose this friendship of need, not in order to enjoy it, though, but to trust in it; I must, that is, have confidence in each of my true friends, that he would be able and willing to look after my affairs, and promote my interests; though in order to enjoy that confidence I must never ask him to do it. He is a true friend, of whom I know and can presume, that he will really help me in need; but because I am also a true 65

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friend of his, I must not appear to him in that light, or impose such dilemmas upon him; I must merely have trust on that score, not make demands, and will sooner suffer myself than burden him with my troubles. And he must likewise have confidence in me, and be equally undemanding. C 425 Kant almost certainly takes the requirement of undemandingness too far. It is hard to imagine a friendship in which no one ever needed anything from their friend. It also seems likely that the trust of which Kant speaks so highly is built through a process of mutual responsiveness to actual needs. No one is in fact as independent as Kant suggests, nor is it obvious that the independence he describes is admirable. But Kant is surely right that one of the most valuable parts of friendship is the absolute trust that our friends are willing to come to our aid, even if we never ask anything from them. Kant’s picture of friendship is complicated, not least because of the way in which he moves back and forth between idealized moral friendship and the actual circumstances of human life. He is at once a pessimist about human nature and an optimist about human possibility. Regardless of our limitations, though, we have reason to pursue friendships. They make our lives better by enabling us to disclose ourselves to others, something that, while not free of risk, is much less risky when it takes place between friends. The intimacy of friendship provides us with a space in which we can engage in mutual self-​development and self-​improvement, trusting our friends to value and care for us in the same way we value and care for ourselves. The relationship of moral friendship is a microcosm of the idealized moral relationship between rational agents. As Christine Korsgaard puts it, “to become friends is to create a neighborhood where the Kingdom of Ends is real” (1996: 194). This is why moral friendships are worth the effort it takes to create and sustain them, even in their imperfect form. It is through moral friendships that we learn how to relate to each other as fellow rational beings, despite our flaws. I will conclude by pointing to a risk of friendship that often goes unrecognized, although not by Kant. That is the risk that fulfilling friendships will close us off to the rest of the world. Our neighborhood of friends may become overly exclusive and insufficiently concerned with the well-​being of others outside of those friendships. Kant sees this danger and warns us against it: “But that which diminishes the generality of good-​will, and closes the heart toward others, impairs the soul’s true goodness, which aspires to a universal benevolence” (C 428). Insofar as moral friendship is a good for us, it should have the effect of leading our gaze outward as well as inward.The best friendships expand our moral horizons and help us create a community in which the idealized relationship characteristic of moral friendship becomes the dominant way of relating to other people. In this way, friendships are the basis on which moral community is built.

Related Chapters Aristotle on the Nature and Value of Friendship; Friendship and Self-​Interest; Friendship and the Personal Good; The Value of Friendship; Friendship and Exploitation

Notes 1 Although Kant’s account of friendship is not widely known outside of Kant-​focused circles, there are a number of excellent essays on the subject in the literature on Kantian ethics. See especially Denis (2001); Veltman (2004); Biss (2019). 2 In quoting Kant, I will follow standard conventions and employ the Prussian Academy pagination system for references. Specific translations are listed in the bibliography. References to The Metaphysics of Morals (1992) will appear as MM followed by the page number. References to the Groundwork (2002) will appear as G followed by the page number. References to the Collins lectures in the Lectures on Ethics (1997) will appear

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Kantian Friendship as C followed by the page number. References to the Vigilantius lectures in the Lectures on Ethics (1997) will appear as V followed by the page number. 3 The Doctrine of Virtue is the second half of the Metaphysics of Morals. 4 The phrase “unsocial sociability” appears in Kant’s essay “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose” (1970). 5 On Kant’s account of reserve, see Stohr (2014).

References Biss, M. 2019. “Friendship, Trust, and Moral Self-​Perfection.” Philosophers’ Imprint 19 (50): 1–​16. Denis, L. 2001. “From Friendship to Marriage: Revising Kant.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 63 (1): 1–​28. Kant, I. 1970. “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan History.” In Political Writings, edited by H. Reiss, and translated by H. Nisbet, 41–​53. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kant, I. 1992. The Metaphysics of Morals. Translated by Mary Gregor, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kant, I. 1997. Lectures on Ethics. Translated by Peter Heath, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kant, I. 2002. Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. Edited by Thomas Hill, translated by Arnulf Zwieg. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Korsgaard, C. 1996. Creating the Kingdom of Ends. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stohr, K. 2014. “Keeping the Shutters Closed: The Moral Value of Reserve.” Philosophers’ Imprint 14 (23): 1–​25. Veltman, A. 2004. “Aristotle and Kant on Self-​Disclosure in Friendship.” Journal of Value Inquiry 38: 225–​39

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6 MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT ON “THAT SIMPLE FOOD” OF FRIENDSHIP Ruth Abbey

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–​1797) is not usually numbered among the canonical theorists of friendship such as Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Michel de Montaigne, Immanuel Kant, or Ralph Waldo Emerson.1 She is, more typically, seen as a proto-​feminist thinker and as an early rights theorist.2 Although these latter characterizations of her work are correct, as this chapter demonstrates, Wollstonecraft also contributes to many of the topics that are centrally relevant to the study of friendship. These include Friendship Love and Romantic Love, Friendship and Marriage, Friendship and Family, God and Friendship, and Friendship and Citizenship.3 However, unlike most of the canonical theorists of friendship, Wollstonecraft’s views on these matters cannot be found in any easily identifiable, single place. Instead, her views on friendship have to be reconstructed from across her various works. She traversed a variety of genres including philosophy, fiction, educational works, and memoir. Due to space limitations, this chapter confines itself to her better known philosophical texts: A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790) (henceforth VRM)4 and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) (henceforth VRW).5 Each of these texts is, moreover, a rich and generative writing, so it must be recognized that my engagement is limited to each one’s focus on friendship. As such, it will necessarily occlude many of the other important strands within these works.6 Friendship exhibits many of the goods Wollstonecraft prizes, such as equality, respect, confidence, esteem, rationality, virtue, stability, and choice.7 The eyes of friendship look beyond physical appearance to moral character. Believing that “The most holy band of society is friendship” (VRW 28), she wants its qualities to percolate through as many areas and types of social interaction as possible. The more that martial relationships, familial relationships, and civic bonds took on, where possible and appropriate, the qualities of friendship, the better they would be. I start by talking about the centrality of equality to friendship and then move to friendship and religion. I consider the different types of friendship she explores. I then move to her advocacy of marriage as friendship, paying significant attention to whether and how the role of sexual desire within marriage poses a challenge to its assimilation to friendship, for friendship has traditionally not been seen as essentially involving sexual encounters. I explore the ways in which friendship can set up a virtuous circle within families and between the household and the public realm. I conclude by contrasting Wollstonecraft’s hope that, with the advent of the French Revolution, friendship will become widely disseminated throughout society with the traditional view that friendship is a rare relationship. 68

DOI: 10.4324/9781003007012-8

Mary Wollstonecraft on “That Simple Food” of Friendship

The First Vindication Friendship and Equality Penned and published rapidly with the French Revolution as its context and catalyst,VRM appeared in December 1790 as the first of several responses to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France. Criticizing the Revolution, Burke defended tradition, social hierarchy, aristocracy, and monarchy. Much of Wollstonecraft’s response attacks the social and political inequalities that the first phase of the Revolution, with its commitment to liberty, equality, and fraternity and its Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, were targeting.VRM includes 12 references to friendship (or a cognate term such as friend). Five of these are clustered just past the work’s halfway mark, so we start our reconstruction of her understanding of friendship there. Echoing Jean-​Jacques Rousseau, Wollstonecraft insists that unequal relations promote “servility to superiors and tyranny to inferiors” (29). She warns that “Among unequals there can be no society […] from such intimacies friendship can never grow” (29). By “society” here she means healthy social interactions, for unequals can obviously associate and interact but this occurs on the terms that she condemns. In stark contrast to this exchange of servility from one side and tyranny from the other, friendship is based on “mutual respect” (29). This hearkens back to VRM’s very first reference to friendship which evokes the “true happiness” that comes from “the friendship and intimacy which can only be enjoyed by equals” (8–​9). In such remarks,Wollstonecraft is drawing on the long tradition of thinking in the Western canon that upholds friendship as the preeminent relationship of equality. In the case of Aristotle and other classical theorists, the equality within higher friendship was an island in a sea of unequal relations –​master and slave, husband and wife, parent and child. But as an egalitarian proponent of the ideals of the French Revolution,Wollstonecraft wishes for a much wider dissemination of equality throughout society than did her classical forerunners. Only then can the good of friendship become widely available, to the benefit of the individuals involved and to society as a whole. Wollstonecraft prizes friendship as one of “the fairest virtues” along with benevolence and generosity, “and all those endearing charities which bind human hearts together” (18). She admits that “the simple food of friendship” (31) might seem less tempting than the servility and “flattery” from others that the upper classes currently enjoy. Meriting “the affection of his equals” through friendship might pale by comparison with that “luscious cordial” which is “the flattering attention of sycophants” (31) for those on the receiving end of servility. Her contrast between friendship and flattery recalls Cicero’s De Amicitia, which repeatedly warns against mistaking flatterers for friends. As we learn from that dialogue, “there is no plague in friendship greater than flattery, fawning, and adulation” (91).True friends will, when necessary, speak painful truths in a way that flatterers never will. Wollstonecraft believes that her contemporaries need to learn this same lesson, that the affection of friendship is far more valuable than having others look up to them because of rank, inherited wealth, or some other undeserved feature. Even though it might not seem as tasty as the seemingly sumptuous fare of flattery and servility, friendship is akin to the “plain food” that a person needs to recover their health (31). Her society’s misjudged preference for flattery over friendship is one of the things that shows how far her contemporaries are from discovering “true happiness and dignity” (43). The adjectives “simple” and “plain” here do not connote anything wanting or bland about friendship. Instead they signal another way in which Wollstonecraft subscribes to Rousseau’s view about the immense value of simple and plain things in stark contrast to the ornament, artifice, and luxury that corrupted modern society prizes. Every use of the term “artificial” in VRM is, for example, critical. Writing of those who inherit property, rather than do anything to deserve it, she says that “The man has been changed into an artificial monster by the station in which he was born” (8). Conversely, her use of the term “simple” or “simplicity” is almost always positive, and at one point she declares that when it comes to taste, “simplicity [is] the only criterion of the beautiful” (6). So 69

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friendship is part of a “back to basics” agenda in Wollstonecraft’s work, yet in her case it is a “forward to basics” approach because the equal relations that make the simple food of friendship so satisfying are yet to be achieved on a widespread basis. Interestingly though, one of Wollstonecraft’s strong statements in favor of equality and the friendship it makes possible is followed just two paragraphs later by ruminations on the disappointments and losses that friends can incur through their friendship. When a friend has been “unkind” or has died, the remaining friend feels alone and bereft. In this way Wollstonecraft again resembles Cicero by recognizing the many frailties and failures to which friendship is heir. When in De Amicitia we first hear Scipio’s voice from the grave, ventriloquized by his surviving friend Gaius, we learn of the threats to and dangers of friendship. Gaius concludes this litany by observing that “These numerous causes, fatalities, so to speak, were ever threatening friendships, so that he [Scipio] used to say, that it seemed to him to require not only wisdom, but good fortune as well, to escape them all” (#35). So while a staunch admirer of friendship, Wollstonecraft is not blind to its failures and limitations nor to the suffering that can ensue from these.

Friendship and Religion When “the heart has not the prop on which it so fondly leaned” (29), it is only natural for the individual to turn to religion. But Wollstonecraft also suggests that even at its best, friendship, as a purely human relationship, will leave the individual unfulfilled and harboring a longing that only religion can satisfy. She writes of “a profound reverence for the model of all perfection […] That mighty Spirit moves on the waters –​confusion hears his voice, and the troubled heart ceases to beat with anguish, for trust in Him bade it be still” (29). As a purely human good friendship is, necessarily, inferior to the individual’s relationship with their Creator and the rewards that can be found therein. This same contrast between friendship among equals and rightful relationship to God is hinted at in one of VRM’s earlier references to friendship. Wollstonecraft indicates that though high, her regard for “the friendship of the virtuous” (26) falls below her relationship to God. Being his creature gives her a powerful sense of self-​respect or “enlightened self-​love” (26). But the self that experiences this divinely sourced love for itself does so with the knowledge that its proper purpose is to rationally deduce and follow the morality that the sublime power commands for all his human creatures.8 While friendship and the equality it reflects is the preeminent human relationship, such a relationship of equality cannot be had with God. In Wollstonecraft’s assessment, “the whole duty of man” resides in recognizing human equality through respect for rights while simultaneously recognizing God as the supreme and superior being (43). All humans thus need to see themselves as equal to one another in virtue of being God’s creatures and, as the quintessential expression of equality, friendship should characterize relations among God’s creatures. At the same time, the most important relationship in their life –​that with God –​is marked by insuperable inequality. Those like Burke and other defenders of the old regime fail to see that relations among humans should be based on horizontal equality while simultaneously failing to acknowledge that it is only humans’ relationship to God that is rightly one of entrenched vertical inequality.

Forms of Friendship Wollstonecraft’s remarks about friendship and equality are, obviously, offered in a political tract that strives to defend the French Revolution’s ideal of rights. Part of her defense is that a more equal distribution of social and political status and power will make friendship possible in the political arena. In this way she can be read as advocating a conception of civic friendship by proposing that citizens view one another as if they were friends. Within the Western tradition, this idea was first recommended 70

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by Aristotle in Book VIII of the Nicomachean Ethics and, as was the case with higher friendship, the equality manifest in civic friendship was an island of equal relations in a sea of unequal ones. But Wollstonecraft is advancing friendship as the paradigmatic model of equal relationships in more than just the political sphere. That she wants marriage to be reformed to become more like friendship is hinted at in this first Vindication when she insists that “Affection in the marriage state can only be founded on respect” (18). The equality and mutuality that accompany respect are impossible in current conditions where “these weak beings” are so unequal to men. As socialized in her society, women are not raised to be respectable, respected, or self-​respecting individuals. Instead they are encouraged to be obsessed with their appearance and with the flattery and power this affords them. Women focus on their appearance to the detriment of anything more substantial about their character, personality, or intelligence. Wollstonecraft castigates Burke for glorifying this conception of femininity, charging him with insinuating that “the chief business” of a woman’s life is “to inspire love” (34), not for her moral qualities but for her physical beauty. She “tremble[s]‌for the souls of women” (34) as they are encouraged to dedicate their time and attention to their appearances rather than to their reason or morals.Women in particular needed to learn the Ciceronian lesson about what a poor substitute flattery is for friendship.Yet whereas in class relationships the lower-​ranked groups flatter their so-​called superiors, in relations between men and women, it is the lower, servile group that receives and enjoys the flattery. Class relations flatter up whereas gender relations flatter down. Even after marriage, women continue to act as coquettes, preoccupied with the number of admirers they can attract. This leaves them ill-​equipped for the important role of motherhood and they neglect their children in favor of more trivial pursuits (18). Wollstonecraft’s alternative image, that of the “rational woman,” can also be glimpsed in this text, as she envisages women who would “act like mothers, and […] think it necessary to superintend her family and suckle her children, in order to fulfill her part of the social compact” (19). At that time, Wollstonecraft was hopeful that the changes being ushered in by the French Revolution would generate the social and political conditions for the rise of the rational woman. In this first Vindication Wollstonecraft describes herself as reverencing “the rights of humanity” (6) and later “the rights of men” (25), as if those formulations were synonymous. She was, however, soon to realize the slippage between those categories of humanity and men, and that France’s promised liberty and equality were only for the fraternity. Insofar as the Revolution was promoting equality and thus the possibility of friendship, it was the homosocial form of friendship embedded in the classical tradition –​namely, friendship among men. The Revolution’s exclusion of women from the prerogatives and possibilities of citizenship and of friendship with men and with one another necessitated her second Vindication,VRW, just two years after her first.

The Second Vindication Dedicated to Charles de Talleyrand, the French minister for education, Wollstonecraft’s second Vindication intervened in the debate among the revolutionaries about whether to extend citizenship and its attendant rights to women and about what sort of education women would need were they to become citizens. As this indicates, whereas Wollstonecraft’s first Vindication was directed primarily at critics of the Revolution’s values and ideals, this second one aims to persuade male defenders of the Revolution that they should include women as recipients of its rights, freedoms, and prerogatives. But it is also a much fuller elaboration of some of the themes only touched on in her much briefer first Vindication. This second Vindication contains 60 references to friend (or some cognate term such as friendship, friendly, or friendless). This is five times as many references as VRM, but as the second Vindication is about four times longer than the first, this suggests that there is a bit more attention to this concept in this later text. Following the same procedure as the previous section, I start with one of the places in the text where some of these references to friendship cluster and reconstruct her views on friendship outward from that epicenter. 71

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Marriage as Friendship In ­chapter 2, Wollstonecraft picks up on the point from VRM that under current conditions of stark gender inequality across all dimensions of life, married women cannot be their husbands’ friends. Husbands might feel a condescending fondness and tenderness for their spouses, but genuine respect and friendship are ruled out by the inequalities in their social, political, educational, and economic statuses.VRM’s brief sketch of the rational woman is also evoked here. To summarize Wollstonecraft’s picture, the rational woman will strengthen her body, exercise her mind, manage her family, and practice the virtues associated with these activities. Such a woman could become her husband’s friend rather than his “humble dependent” (28). Just as friendship has traditionally promised open and honest exchanges between its parties, such a wife will not “conceal her affection” (28) toward her husband, will not flirt, dissemble, play hard to get, or seek to manipulate him, as their interactions will be on a more solid, more equal, more virtuous footing. Wollstonecraft anticipates that some might find the “healthy temperature” of such a marital friendship “insipid” (28) when compared to the excitement and turmoil of romantic love. Yet this response is mistaken, for anyone with “sufficient intellect” prefers “the calm tenderness of friendship [and] the confidence of respect” over the “blind admiration, and the sensual emotions of fondness.” (28) The “noble mind […] pants for, and deserves to be respected” (28) and will not be satisfied with the inferior forms of affection currently available. Wollstonecraft later refers to the “simple elegance of sincerity” (136) that such an equal, respectful relationship enables. The way people’s desires and tastes have been corrupted away from what is wholesome and healthy comes out later in the book when she describes how “that purity of taste is vitiated which would naturally lead a man to relish an artless display of affection rather than affected airs. But that noble simplicity of affection, which dares to appear unadorned, has few attractions for the libertine ” (159). One of her tasks in VRW is thus continuous with that in VRM –​namely, to persuade people that friendship’s “simple food” is preferable to the meretricious appeal of the exchange of flattery and servility.

Sexual Desire Playing the coquette within marriage is not only inappropriate to an open and honest exchange between its partners, but it eventually becomes futile. Wollstonecraft firmly believes that over time, sexual excitement and attraction between a married couple are destined to diminish. As she says in the strongest of terms, “Love, from its very nature, must be transitory […] This is, must be, the course of nature –​friendship or indifference inevitably succeeds love” (28). She reiterates this toward the end of ­chapter 4: “Love, considered as an animal appetite, cannot long feed on itself without expiring […] this extinction in its own flame may be termed the violent death of love” (61, cf. 106). Because “the security of marriage allow[s]‌the fever of love to subside” (28), trying to keep this terminal emotion alive with games and flirtation is pointless. So instead of hoping to survive on sexual attraction alone, the marital relationship should transition from finite sexual desire to a more stable and enduring friendship. This alternative is vastly preferable to the other outcome Wollstonecraft threatens above when erotic love dies, namely, “indifference.” But in addition to being preferable to indifference upon the demise of romantic love, friendship has many positive features to recommend it. It is, as we have just seen, “healthy,” “calm,” compelling to those with noble minds, and it exchanges respect between its parties. Wollstonecraft portrays the purblind “fever” of sexual attraction or romantic love as governed by “chance and sensation,” whereas friendship is grounded in superior emotions and experiences such as “choice and reason” (28). Later she identifies the “main pillars of friendship” as “respect and confidence” (136). Here we witness some of the ways in which Wollstonecraft perpetuates Montaigne’s contrast between friendship and romantic love. In “On Friendship,” Montaigne says that sexual desire “is more active, more eager, 72

Mary Wollstonecraft on “That Simple Food” of Friendship

and more sharp […] more precipitant, fickle, moving, and inconstant; a fever subject to intermissions and paroxysms, that has seized but on one part of us.” The quality of emotions in friendship is very different: whereas sexual desire blows hot and cold, the love of friendship is “temperate and equal, a constant established heat, all gentle and smooth, without poignancy or roughness.” We hear powerful echoes of this Montaignean contrast in Wollstonecraft’s later claim that “Friendship is a serious affection; the most sublime of all affections, because it is founded on principle and cemented by time. The very reverse may be said of love” (61).That “tender confidence and sincere respect” characteristic of friendship stand in stark contrast to love’s “vain fears and fond jealousies” (61). However, whereas Montaigne fears that romantic love and friendship can never be combined, Wollstonecraft holds out the hope for their staged reconciliation within marriage. They cannot exist simultaneously of course, because love and friendship “for the same object can only be felt in succession” (61). But her hope is that with time, romantic and sexual love between partners will transmute into a calmer, cooler friendship. Once women are “sufficiently enlightened to discover their real interest, on a grand scale,” they will welcome this transformation of romantic love “into the calm satisfaction of friendship, and the tender confidence of habitual esteem” (85). She rehearses this point at greater length in Chapter 6, anticipating that Were women more rationally educated, could they take a more comprehensive view of things, they would be contented to love but once in their lives; and after marriage calmly let passion subside into friendship –​into that tender intimacy, which is the best refuge from care; yet is built on such pure, still affections, that idle jealousies would not be allowed to disturb the discharge of the sober duties of life. 98 Men too will have to change their expectations of marriage and look ahead to the time when sexual excitement has diminished. A rational, virtuous man “will wish to converse at their fireside with a friend” (144). Yet there are moments when Wollstonecraft seems to doubt her own conviction that sexual desire within marriage carries an expiry date, and she moves from confidently predicting that married partners will cease to desire one another sexually to recommending that they should. Consider her advice that “the master and mistress of a family ought not to continue to love each other with passion […] [nor] indulge those emotions which disturb the order of society, and engross the thoughts that should be otherwise employed” (29). Here she raises the specter of sexual desire that has become so demanding as to distract the couple from their duties to their family, the wider society, and to themselves as rational, moral creatures. Her previous paragraph paints a cautionary picture of the husband who remains his wife’s lover being “a prey to childish caprices” who “neglects the serious duties of life” (28). Among those serious duties are fatherhood, for such a man lavishes his affection upon his wife –​whom Wollstonecraft casts as an “overgrown child” –​to the neglect of their actual offspring. Another example of the way in which excessive sexual attraction between partners can result in neglect of their children is when fathers discourage mothers from breastfeeding. She condemns such men as “devoid of sense and parental affection,” desiring their wives “only to dress and live to please them” (61). So there are moments when Wollstonecraft shudders at the thought that sexual desire between a married couple might be persistent and importunate.This worrying scenario leads her to hypothesize that “the neglected wife” might be the most dutiful mother because all her attention and affection can be channeled toward her children. By this logic “an unhappy marriage is often very advantageous to the family” (29). The view underpinning this, as she goes on to explain, is that the pleasure associated with a loving marriage can stand in a zero-​sum relationship with the duties that accompany parenthood and self-​improvement. She elaborates on the tension between pleasure and virtue in the context of marriage when declaring that despite the attempts of some to unite them, “virtue and pleasure are 73

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not […] so nearly allied in this life” (61). She associates virtue with “dignity” and “an appearance of seriousness, if not of austerity”: it is the product of “toil” (61) not of fun. Wollstonecraft revisits this theme of reason governing the potentially wayward passions in her vignette of the widowed mother. She conjures a rational, dutiful woman who “marries from affection” (43) and with the awareness that sexual desire is bound to fade within marriage. Having secured “her husband’s respect[,]‌[…] friendship and forebearance take place of a more ardent affection” (43) when romantic love meets its “natural death” (43). However, Wollstonecraft interrupts this promising narrative of the friendly marriage to announce the husband’s death. As with the neglected wife, this husband’s absence from the affective economy of the household frees the widow to redouble her fondness for her children and become an even more devoted mother. Despite the temptation, the widow does not contemplate remarriage; instead, “she represses the first faint dawning of a natural inclination, before it ripens into love, and in the bloom of life forgets her sex –​forgets the pleasure of an awakening passion, which might again have been inspired and returned” (43). So even though this woman models rational behavior in every way by Wollstonecraft’s standards, she still rejects the possibility of a new round of sexual satisfaction in favor of solo parenthood. She thereby enacts Wollstonecraft’s point above by choosing toil over pleasure and by being content “to love but once” (98) in her life. This vignette also suggests that Wollstonecraft remains haunted by the fear of sexual desire as an ever-​present threat to people fulfilling their duties. Once the admirable widow’s parenting has been validated through the production of healthy, intelligent, virtuous children who are able to withstand adversity should it come their way, “she calmly waits for the sleep of death” and thence resurrection (44). The implication is that, come Judgment Day, her dutiful solo parenting and declining of subsequent opportunities for romantic attachment will stand her in good stead in God’s eyes. Another resolution Wollstonecraft offers to this possibility of persistent sexual desire within a marriage appears as she suggests that women and men exercise reason to govern their passions. Reason can “teach passion to submit to necessity” with “the dignified pursuit of virtue and knowledge rais[ing] the mind above those emotions” and restraining them “within due bounds” (29). In those marriages where passion does not eventually subside into friendship, the partners can still chasten their desires to prevent them from becoming unruly and distracting them from their duties. Of course, it helps if there was not too much romantic love in the relationship to start with, which is what motivates Wollstonecraft’s rumination that it might befit a marriage between virtuous individuals if one or both of them had already loved and lost elsewhere. This would make them more likely to choose a marriage based on “esteem” rather than passion and thereby expedite the passage from love to friendship in their marriage (61). Wollstonecraft’s contrast between simple and luxurious foods recurs in this context as she notes that bread, which “supports the constitution and preserves health,” is not typically seen to be as desirable or delightful as a feast. But she warns that “disease and even death lurk in the cup or dainty that elevates the spirit or tickles the palates” (61). Once again she follows Rousseau’s attempt reeducate and reorient people away from perilous luxury toward salutary simplicity. And we see the same pattern in this text as in VRM: whenever VRW uses the term “simple” or “simplicity” while speaking in Wollstonecraft’s own voice, it carries positive connotations. She thus speaks favorably of simple principles, simple truth or truths, the simple language of truth, simple duties, and simple reason.

Friendly Families Just as marriages in which the parents continue to feel persistent sexual desire can distract them from their parenting duties, so conversely do marriages in which, by whatever route, romantic and sexual attraction eventually transmute into the calm wisdom of friendship make the partners better parents. Wollstonecraft ends Chapter 10 with a vignette of such friendly parents, for whom “mutual confidence takes place of overstrained admiration” (125). Their devotion to their offspring creates “a new 74

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mutual sympathy” (125), giving them an even closer bond as virtuous individuals.This promising picture of the family is a counterpoint to the forementioned father who infantilizes his wife and neglects his children. It allows that parents’ mutual affection can be based on, instead of competing with, their solid commitment to their duties. Wollstonecraft’s next chapter, “Duty to Parents,” starts by proposing that parents can be friends not only to one another but also to their children. Or at least rational parents can achieve this, with reason being the ingredient that distinguishes human parenting from that carried out by other animals which is based on “instinctive natural affection” (126). Rational parents educate their children, both in heart and mind, and one of their returns on this is the respect of their children, even as those children grow into adulthood. “Such a parent acquires all the rights of the most sacred friendship” (126). As children mature and become more equal to their parents, the respect that characterizes friendship can come to drive their relationship. For Wollstonecraft this gratitude to one’s parents for a job well done is the most solid basis for filial respect and duty and contrasts with “blind duty” (126) to one’s parents based on their biological role alone. Blind duty is also very dangerous, for it sets the child up to obey arbitrary power and authority rather than the power of reason, and this is a terrible foundation for the other roles they will play in their lives, including that of citizen. As Wollstonecraft conveys in the strongest of terms, “the absurd duty, too often inculcated, of obeying a parent only on account of his being a parent, shackles the mind, and prepares it for a slavish submission to any power but reason.” (126) Rational parents, by contrast, would only want their adult children to conform to their advice if it aligns with the child’s own reasoning power (127). One example she gives of how a child would show friendship toward a parent is to take the parent’s feedback on choice of marriage partner seriously. Although adult children might be free legally to marry without parental consent, they should agree to defer the marriage for a period while giving the parent’s advice due consideration (127). Wollstonecraft can therefore be read as painting a self-​perpetuating virtuous circle that is initiated when marriage evolves into friendship. Parents who are friends to one another can also become friends to their children, which in turn prepares their children for friendly relations with others as they grow into adults. This also prepares their children to value the right sort of social dynamics such as equality and mutual respect and orients them toward civic friendship. One of her clearest expressions of friendship’s virtuous circle appears in Chapter 12 where she writes, if you wish to make good citizens, you must first exercise the affections of a son and a brother […] Few […] have had much affection for mankind, who did not first love their parents, their brothers, sisters, and even the domestic brutes whom they first played with […] it is the recollection of these first affections and pursuits that gives life to those that are afterwards more under the direction of reason. In youth, the fondest friendships are formed […] [and] the heart tempered for the reception of friendship. 134 Her belief in this dynamic points us to one of the other ways in which she follows Rousseau –​ namely, by believing that a person’s character is set in their early years. As she says in the passage just cited, “the exercise of youthful sympathies form the moral temperature” (134). In a later section she says even more specifically, “so early do they catch a character, that the base of the moral character […] is fixed before their seventh year” (157). During this formative time, children should be reasoned with as far as possible, “for every violation of justice and reason in the treatment of children weakens their reason” (157). Wollstonecraft is hopeful that the social and political changes being set in train by the French Revolution will catalyze this possibility of the friendly family. But she is also warning the Revolution’s supporters that if household dynamics are not reformed, the changes they pursue in the public realm will be built on an unreliable foundation. Her hope that the Revolution will usher in change in the domestic as well as the public realm is crystal clear in her dedication to Talleyrand, which declares 75

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that now “that more equitable laws are forming your citizens, marriage may become more sacred” (7). This dedication indeed provides this Vindication’s very first reference to marriage as a form of friendship. Using their “sense and modesty” women can choose husbands with whom they can become friends. Better relationships between men and women will see less fornication by men, less vanity and coquetry among women, and better care and education of children by both parents. Hence her insistence that “children will never be properly educated till friendship subsists between parents” (159–​60). She sums up a version of this dynamic when predicting that: we shall not see women affectionate until more equality be established in society, till ranks are confounded and women freed, neither shall we see that dignified domestic happiness, the simple grandeur of which cannot be relished by ignorant or vitiated minds, nor will the important task of education ever be properly begun till the person of a woman is no longer preferred to her mind […] a foolish ignorant woman […] [cannot] be a good mother. 158 This reference to “the simple grandeur” of domestic happiness conveys once again Wollstonecraft’s Rousseauean commitment to simplicity over luxury.9

Friendship’s Frequency In wanting marriages and families to be based on the qualities she associates with friendship, and advocating for civic friendship through her ongoing support of the French Revolution, Wollstonecraft wants friendship to become the paradigm for social relationships. This points to one of the ways in which she departs from the philosophical tradition, for there friendship has been seen as not just precious but rare. In Chapter 3, book 8 of the Nicomachean Ethics for example, Aristotle presents the higher form of friendship as a very unusual occurrence. Cicero echoes this in De Amicitia. Montaigne echoes this in his knowledge of how remote his friendship with Etienne de La Boétie was “from the common practice, and how rarely it is to be found.” In a nod to this tradition, Wollstonecraft quotes without naming the seventeenth-​century French moralist La Rochefoucauld. Calling him “a shrewd satirist,” she translates Maxim #473 to say that “rare as true love is, true friendship is still rarer.”10 But if she wants marriage, family life, and civic relationships to acquire the qualities of friendship, she must jettison this part of the tradition in favor of the hope that friendship can become more widely disseminated throughout society. Wollstonecraft also wants women to befriend other women. As she notes, “reason must cement friendship” (156) and unless and until women are enabled to develop their reason, they will not be capable of friendship. At the moment women are encouraged to see one another as rivals for male attention. “They are all running the same race […] [and] view each other with a suspicious and even envious eye” (155). This competition even infects the mother–​daughter relationship for “the mother is lost in the coquette and instead of making friends with her daughters, view them with eyes askance” (42). With greater freedom, equality, rationality, and opportunity, women will become less preoccupied with male attention and so with their appearance.This will in turn change their attitude toward other women and open up the possibility of friendship among them. In their current condition, however, “many women have not had mind enough to have an affection for a woman, or a friendship for a man” (144). Men, by contrast, are currently more capable of friendship with one another as they have wider interests: when they meet, “they converse about business, politics, or literature,” whereas women have not any business to interest them, have not a taste for literature, and they find politics dry, because they have not acquired a love for mankind by turning their thoughts to the grand pursuits that exalt the human race, and promote general happiness. 155 76

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But should the hoped-​for changes in women’s status, opportunities, and socialization transpire, women can become friends not only with one another but also with men beyond the marital context. Indeed, in the Introduction to this work, Wollstonecraft laments that men do not become women’s friends nor seek “to obtain a durable interest in their hearts” (11).Their attention rests solely on women’s appearance. The prospect of men and women eventually becoming friends if social conditions change sufficiently and morality is “settled on a more solid basis” is reiterated later in Chapter 2 (32). She later raises the prospect of a married woman improving her mind through “reading and conversations with both sexes” (158). And ever mindful that the child becomes the adult, she suggests that preparations for such heterosexual friendship can begin with coeducational schooling (136, 139).

Conclusion Wollstonecraft’s myriad thoughts about friendship do not appear in any single, easy-​to-​access location but are sprinkled across her writings.This chapter has reconstructed her views from two of her major works of political philosophy. A fuller appreciation of her approach to friendship would require an examination of her other works as well –​her literary writings, such as Mary, A Fiction, and The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria, which was incomplete when she died. Her travel memoir, Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, is also relevant as are her educational tracts, such as Thoughts on the Education of Daughters and Original Stories from Real Life. Some knowledge of the role that friendship played in Wollstonecraft’s own life would further round out our understanding of this important question.11

Related Chapters Friendship Love and Romantic Love; Friendship and Marriage; Friendship and Family; God and Redemptive Friendship; Friendship and Citizenship

Notes 1 In Abbey (1999), I argue that Nietzsche also qualifies as a major thinker who has significant things to say about friendship. 2 For just some of many possible examples of these views, see Halldenius (2007); Botting (2016); Lefebvre (2016). 3 She also has things to say on the topic of Friendship and Partiality, believing in friendship as a precursor, rather than a threat, to universal benevolence. We get a glimpse into her thinking on this in the discussion of the virtuous circle between domestic and public realms. 4 I cite this online version of the text, with page numbers referring to a PDF of the electronic text: https://​oll. libe​rtyf​und.org/​tit​les/​wol​lsto​necr​aft-​a-​vind​icat​ion-​of-​the-​r ig​hts-​of-​men. 5 I cite this version –​page numbers come from this text saved as a PDF:https://​oll.libe​rtyf​und.org/​tit​les/​wol​ lsto​necr​aft-​a-​vind​icat​ion-​of-​the-​r ig​hts-​of-​woman 6 Nor will I be able to do justice to the rich secondary literature that has grown up around her work in the last few decades. 7 Halldenius (2007: 76, 82, 94) contends that friendship is a metaphor for equality for Wollstonecraft.While I agree that equality is a sine qua non of friendship, friendship connotes more goods than just equality as I read her. And, conversely, although friendship exhibits all the features listed above, they are valuable in other contexts too. 8 I agree with those interpreters who emphasize the role of religion in Wollstonecraft’s thought. See Botting (2016) and Taylor (2003) for just two examples. 9 Although it must be recognized that her vision of domestic happiness varies from his in a major way, given that she reverses all of Emile’s recommendations for women’s education (74, 85, 163, 164). 10 Some of the later philosophers of friendship continue this theme of its rarity. For Emerson, “Friendship may be said to require natures so rare and costly, each so well tempered and so happily adapted […] that its satisfaction can very seldom be assured.” On same theme in Nietzsche’s scattered reflections on friendship, see Abbey (1999). 11 Such as Senders Pedersen (2008).

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References Abbey, R. 1999. “Circles, Ladders and Stars: Nietzsche on Friendship.” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 2 (4): 50–​73. Cicero. De Amicitia. www.uah.edu/​stude​nt_​l​ife/​organi​zati​ons/​SAL/​texts/​latin/​classi​cal/​cic​ero/​dea​mici​tia.html Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Friendship.” www.vcu.edu/​eng​web/​transc​ende​ntal​ism/​auth​ors/​emer​son/​ess​ays/​fri​ ends​hip.html Halldenius, L. 2007. “The Primacy of Right: On the Triad of Liberty, Equality and Virtue in Wollstonecraft’s Political Thought.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 15 (1): 75–​99. Hunt Botting, E. 2016. Wollstonecraft, Mill and Women’s Human Rights. New Haven,, CT:Yale University Press. Lefebvre, A. 2016. “Mary Wollstonecraft, Human Rights, and the Care of the Self.” Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development 7 (2): 179–​200. Montaigne, Michel de. “Of Friendship.” www.gutenb​erg.org/​dirs/​3/​5/​8/​3586/​3586.txt Senders Pedersen, J. 2008. “Friendship in the Life and Work of Mary Wollstonecraft: The Making of a Liberal Feminist Tradition.” Literature & History 17 (1): 19–​35. Taylor, B. 2003. Mary Wollstonecraft and the Feminist Imagination. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wollstonecraft, M. 1790. A Vindication of the Rights of Men. https://​oll.libe​rtyf​und.org/​tit​les/​wol​lsto​necr​aft-​a-​ vind​icat​ion-​of-​the-​r ig​hts-​of-​men Wollstonecraft, M. 1792. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. https://​oll.libe​rtyf​und.org/​tit​les/​wol​lsto​necr​aft-​a-​ vind​icat​ion-​of-​the-​r ig​hts-​of-​woman

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PART II

Who Can Be Our Friends?

7 FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN CHILDREN Mary Healy

In the classic James Stuart comedy film Harvey (Koster: 1950), the main character (an amiable drunk named Elwood P. Dowd) has an invisible constant companion –​six-​foot pooka rabbit (Harvey) –​that only he can see. Elwood, who insists on introducing his companion to one and all, is deemed insane by family members who have to accommodate Harvey’s existence and needs. Based on a Pulitzer Prize–​winning play, much of the whimsical charm and gentle humor of the film is created by the audience’s reaction to the imaginary friendship and the growing doubt as to whether he really is just a figment of the imagination. While friendship, as a distinct branch of philosophy, has attracted much research in recent years, it is rare for a philosopher to even make reference to children’s friendships; it is even rarer that philosophical literature raises problems pertinent to education and/​or schooling. For many philosophers, friendships between children remain merely an early category of socialization and not worthy of consideration as friendships.Where they are addressed in philosophical theorizing, these childhood relationships are often assumed to be prototypes or somehow “incomplete” friendships. Few philosophers entertain the idea that children could possibly form the third category of Aristotle’s typology of friendship, that of virtue friendship (Aristotle NE). Even those working in philosophy of education rarely discuss the issues pertaining to friendship and children –​with a few notable exceptions (Kristjánsson 2015; Healy 2015; Walker et al. 2016; White 1990). This omission is surprising on many levels but particularly so as friendship plays such a major role in the everyday lives of children. This leaves the field of considering the possibility of friendship between children solely to empirical research, which has regularly recognized friendship as one of the most important relationships in a person’s life, starting from childhood (Piaget 1932/​1965; Ainsworth 1988; Kohlberg 1981). Indeed, the ability to make, maintain, and develop supportive friendships in childhood is considered crucial in preparing children for intimate and long-​term relationships in adulthood (Newcomb and Bagwell 1995). For example, much has been written on links between children and moral development (Bukowski and Sippola 1996), attachment theory (Bowlby 1969; Ainsworth 1988), and identity and belonging (Barr 1997; Baumeister and Leary 1995; Healy and Richardson 2017), with newer topics arising all of the time: for example, Social Network Theory and friendship (Bryant and Marmo 2012; Holland and Harpin 2008) and one of the more recent foci –​ friendship and robots (Bumby and Dautenhahn 1999; Fior et al. 2010). DOI: 10.4324/9781003007012-10

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This neglect of children’s friendships in philosophical thinking (and the ensuing implications of this particularly for education) is often traceable to the belief that the ideal models used and analyzed in philosophy rarely map in their entirety onto the friendships of children. To some extent, this can be attributed to the Aristotelian typology that has proven such a foundational feature of the mountain of literature explored elsewhere in this handbook –​I do not propose to overly revisit such arguments in any detail. What I propose to do is to argue that both philosophical and empirical research would benefit from a closer relationship in thinking about friendships between children. To do this, I draw on four themes: first, there is not always the clear distinction between the friendships of children and adults in the way some psychological research might cause us to believe. Secondly, children might fulfill some of the criteria for virtue friendship, thus suggesting that friendships between children could be worthy of more philosophical consideration. Thirdly, friendship is valuable and gives pleasure to the lives of children and should be taken seriously. Fourthly, both empirical and philosophical thinking about friendship have much to offer each other, particularly when it comes to the formation of policy for children. I start by unpacking some of the key ideas about friendship and positioning them in the social world of children. From there, I highlight some of the key empirical research on children’s friendships and indicate some of the problems. After that, I move on to imaginary friendships as an exemplar of problematic childhood friendships that would benefit from philosophical thinking, again drawing attention to some of the most influential empirical research, and whether or not this phenomenon fits into a framework for friendship that we would recognize as philosophers, before I look at friendships between children and the value this holds in the lives of children. Finally, I indicate a need for empirical work on friendship to engage with philosophical theorizing and for philosophy to perhaps consider a wider range of relationships, including friendships of children to better develop understanding of what is happening in children’s friendships and theorize appropriate models if needed.

Positioning Friendship One of the difficulties here is that these two research methods (the empirical and the philosophical) tend to approach friendship with diverse understandings of what the concept consists of. For example, sociology claims that in modern culture, friendship is probably the most common and most widely available social relationship ungoverned by specific laws, formal roles, or socially acknowledged obligations. The point being made is that the understanding and usage of the term has changed and has become “thin”: that everyday usage can be more akin to social networks (see Pahl 2000, for example). Such friendships are then just one of a number of social relationships subject to the technological, cultural, and economic conditions of the day.Yet within philosophical accounts of friendship, friendship is usually thought of as a special relationship from which can be derived responsibilities and duties over and above those due to persons qua persons (Meyer 1992). These differences further dissent when considering the friendships of children. Before beginning this investigation, I want to briefly consider three common claims and align them with friendships between children: first, that it is voluntary and chosen. It is generally agreed that whatever friendship may be, it is a relationship entered into freely by both parties and cannot be forced on someone by a third party. Secondly, to call someone a friend is to see them in some way as special. Thirdly, friendship is a dyadic, reciprocated relationship. First claim: children can be surprisingly adept at actively choosing their friends and often refuse to play with adult-​guided others (Ahn 2011; Howes et al. 1988).Yet there is a sense in which it is never completely “unguided” with very young children: there is considerable empirical evidence that for the majority of children (under the age of seven or eight), their friendships will be determined by the context and social environment in which they are brought up. For example, family members often have some element of control over peer social networks in areas such as availability, travel, or arranging playdates (Uhlendorff 2000; Mose 2016). Many children find their first fully self-​chosen friends 82

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in school (Dunn 2004), and as children increasingly spend a considerable amount of time outside of family settings, these peers come to occupy a particular place in the social world of the child as a source of support. Nevertheless, parents in many countries, increasingly have some choice over the school setting for their child –​which in itself can determine who their child mixes with and who some of these earliest school friends might be.Yet which of these children their child chooses (from this restricted group) is outside their control. Sociologists, such as Ray Pahl, claim that proximity can play a major role in whom we come to choose as friends, whether for adults or children (Pahl 2000; Pahl and Spencer 2010). This idea of the importance of proximity plays out with adults in that most find friends within the workplace, but have little control (usually) over who gets to work there. Second claim: even young children can see their friends as “special” and can show particular preference for particular others from a very early age (Hinde et al. 1985; Howes 1996). This “specialness” includes treating the other differently: sharing goods, playing games, seeking to protect them or prioritizing their good, sharing secrets, and so on –​many of the things adult friends tend to do. These friendships are usually evolving relationships, marked by extensive time spent together on joint activities, shared confidences as a form of shared life with one like us in many ways and through whom we learn more about ourselves. Children of primary/​elementary school age often spend five to six hours a day in each other’s company in the classroom or playground: this can be a factor in how well they get to build important social bonds. Third claim: friendship has to be reciprocated. As many parents point out, young children can use the word “friend” for almost everyone they meet, including toys, objects, even inventing imaginary friends they can “see” and speak to (this point will be returned to in the discussion of imaginary friends). Nevertheless, Pahl (2000) reminds us that the term “friend,” even for adults, can also typically be used to cover a wide variety of social interactions from informal relationships, the connectedness of social networks, companionship playmates to the quasi-​kinship relationships of close friendship. So the looseness in usage of the term may not be so significant. But the importance of reciprocity in friendship is more than just the mutual recognition of the relationship. Friendship cannot be merely one sided with one taking advantage of the other: each must seek the flourishing of the friend for their own sake. Given that there is such a wide variety of friendships among children, why do we think the way we do about the friendships of children?

The Development of Friendship in Children Despite the lack of direct philosophical attention to the friendships of children, many of the often-​ repeated claims for friendship in philosophy have long found an echo in claims from the empirical sciences: that friendship is linked to our personal well-​being (Newcomb and Bagwell 1995); that friendship entails a level of care and affection for the other (Schneider 2014); that friendship is, in some way, action generated/​action generating –​we seek the benefit of the other; that the relationship is acknowledged and reciprocated (Bagwell and Schmidt 2011); that there is a temporal aspect to friendship –​it takes time for it to develop and time in which to maintain it (Poulin and Chan 2010); that it is based on perceived shared values and knowledge of the other person’s character (Kupersmidt et al. 1995). This would seem to suggest, at least superficially, that friendships between children and those between adults have much in common and that perhaps the former could be understood as an embryonic form of the latter. However, one of the many ways in which this predominantly social-​psychological literature differs from philosophical accounts of friendship is the dependence on some form of stage theory: that friendships follow a common pattern of development associated with particular ages (based around theories of child development from Piaget). A wave of experimental studies has purported that friendship expectations change as children age and develop, and theorists have long argued that the features and significance of friendship depends on the stage of a child’s social development (Dunn 2004; Buhrmester and Furman 1987; Selman 1980). These theories of social and cognitive 83

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development have significantly affected and structured both education and childcare, providing the basis for policy and practice. These theories are referred to as “stage theories” in that they can be described according to recognizable characteristics at particular ages (stages), regardless of cultural and diverse environments. Most stage theories tend to have sequences that form the basis for the next stage as in, for example, Sullivan (1953) and Selman (1980), who have produced some of the most influential stage theories in children’s friendships. Each stage is attributed to a particular age band with the characteristics “developing” from simple to complex forms and are often assumed to be “natural” –​that all children have deep-​rooted schemas within them that will appear in a foreseeable and ordered manner (Knight 2009). Faithful to the tradition of accounts following from the Piagetian project, theorists have argued that the features and significance of friendship depend on the stage of a child’s social development (Dunn 2004). These earliest friendships of young children are often assumed by early researchers to be strictly utilitarian, formed from the need to have a playmate being centered around play and companionship. This has since been challenged: for very young children (approximately the age of three), the need to have someone to play with is not the only factor: character also plays a part –​some children prefer to be on their own rather than just with anyone (Howes 1983; Howes 1996). Children learn a considerable amount about the character of their playmate by how they play: Do they cheat? Do they take turns? Do they play fairly? Even at this level, most children have intimations that best friendship requires certain types of behavior to some degree –​loyalty, playing together, partiality (whereby they put their friends first) (Walker et al. 2016; Healy 2011). Stage theories have notoriously had problems and have to some extent been superseded by psychological models of changes in human behavior that “have increased in complexity from linear to interactive to transactive to multilevel dynamic systems” (Sameroff 2010: 6). In this way, the social ecology of human relationships has now come to be understood through studying the interactions with differing subsystems of school, family, neighborhood, culture, and peer group (to name but a few), and this can change the way we think about children and their friendships (Bronfenbrenner 1974; Bronfenbrenner 1979; Bronfenbrenner 2005; Sameroff 2010). Nevertheless, the problem with emphasizing developmental accounts is that it frequently misses the value that friendship plays in the lives of children. As adults, we tend to think that the friendships of children are less valuable and/​or easily replaced in a way in which those of adults are not –​a point I will return to and develop later. Many adults dismiss the friendships of children over what they believe to be the short-​lived nature of many child-​relationships: many empirical researchers regard a friendship as stable (ongoing) if it lasts as little as six months. All friendships have a certain amount of “churn” in them; few last forever. It is generally accepted that children “try on” different friendships, particularly in middle childhood and adolescence during a period associated with identity exploration (Hartup 1996; Kidwell et al. 1995). This factor was not unknown to the ancients: Aristotle argues that pleasure friendships (the second of the typology), based on emotions and emotional responses (typical of the young), are prone to be transient (Aristotle NE: 1156b). While it is unclear how young this might be, I would posit that it did not intend reference to the friendships of young children. Even if we accepted that some children were capable of sharing a deep friendship based on shared values and commitments, spurring each other on to virtuous behavior, there would still be some issues to unpick seemingly unique to children that raise interesting philosophical questions: Does friendship require existence as persons? Could a toy be a friend? What if one member of the dyad did not exist at all except in the mind of the other? Could a friend be imaginary?

Imaginary Friends Having an imaginary friend is believed to be a frequently encountered experience in childhood (Bonne et al. 1999).1 This phenomenon is believed to be a feature of approximately one-​third of the 84

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child population from about the ages of three to ten years of age, by which stage real friends start to take over, often via a transitional object. Children with imaginary friends are more likely to be firstborn and only children (Gleason et al. 2000). A strict interpretation sees this companion as usually invisible to all but the child, who may give it a name, play with it, and look after it. Some children will insist that a plate has to be set at table for the imaginary companion; the Imaginary Friend (sometimes referred to as an IM) may be consulted in an audible way over choices of action/​games; they may be presented with gifts. Many of these imaginary friends are not invisible “regular” children –​they may have magical powers or characteristics or are toys/​animals embellished in some way. Above all, they are not hallucinations nor are they delusions. Many of the imaginary friends have “admired” characteristics taken from known real people; some are imaginary versions of real people. Unlike human friends, the child creating them has control of the situation and can make the imaginary friend come and go at will. That children can control the existence, maintenance, and characteristics of the imaginary friend suggests they are emotionally invested in these imaginary friendships in a similar way to those of real friends (Gleason 2002, 2004; Taylor et al. 1993). Gleeson (2004) indicates that “control” is an important feature in such relationships and that interference from others can result in the child losing interest in or abandoning the imagined companion. Overall, the effort taken to sustain and maintain the imagined friendship was considered similar to that of a real-​life friendship but with a significant difference: the child chooses the characteristics the companion will have and how events will unfold. Empirical researchers have traditionally argued that imaginary friends fulfill specific roles (for example, Nagera 1969). For some, the imaginary friend fulfills the need for a friend or companion to keep loneliness at bay; for others, the imaginary friend enables them to live out adventures they would not necessarily have access to; others might see them as an object for blaming their shortcomings onto (as in the children’s story “Oscar Got the Blame” (Ross 1997/​2004)); still others might see them as a way of trying to understand moral or ethical difficulties. For some, they perform a type of “self-​mirroring” through which a child derives a sense of reassurance and worth (Benson and Pryor 1973) particularly during times when the child feels vulnerable and in need of protective caretaking. In other cases, the imaginary friend is perceived as available for entertainment and companionship when others are not available (Majors and Baines 2017). What can make this even more complicated in the empirical literature is that children with imaginary friends are not a uniform group: not all imaginary friends are invisible. Some psychologists accept personified objects as imaginary companions (such as dolls, toys, etc.); others see these as transitory objects –​halfway between an imaginary companion (invisible to all but the child) and a real-​life companion: neither completely “real” nor completely imaginary (Klein 1985). Adults generally see little problem with young children “befriending” a soft toy; indeed, the research can be interpreted as support that most children go through phases of such “imaginary friendships,” using such incidents as a way of practicing the pro-​skills needed for future real friendships. Most psychologists believe that having an imaginary companion has no real detrimental impact on the healthy mental processes or social development. However, it is not just children who might have an imaginary friend. The ability to step into fantasy to develop an imaginary friendship in childhood can continue into adulthood in significant ways. For example, Freese reminds us that many adults process information about television characters as if they were real people (Freese 2002), talking about characters as if they were real and/​or sending cards and gifts to the character. Some even imagine conversations with imaginary others or daydream about meeting them. Having a “personal relationship” with a “fantasy figure” that one has never met, nor is likely to meet, is believed to be quite common (Taylor 2001): these can go beyond admiration into imagined interactions, conversations, meetings, and imagined relationships. So why is having an imaginary friendship identified as merely a childhood occurrence? Taylor (2001) argues that adults tolerate imaginary friends in children as we suppose childhood to be a 85

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time when children lack a complete sense of reality –​but that we are more likely to see adults who have imaginary friends as having a form of mental illness (think back to the example of the film Harvey that I started with.). While it is not unknown for adults to have imaginary companions (e.g., daydream crushes on celebrities, music artists, television personalities, etc.), it has generally always been classified under neuropathology (following on from Svendsen 1934). The more extreme of these tend to be the famous pathological examples that we know (such as that of Mark Chapman’s obsession with John Lennon),2 but for many adults, it is believed that the focus may simply be the desire for love or sexual attraction. Even adults anthropomorphize objects: they name and talk to their car, or their laptop, or the office printer, among other things. In a similar vein, many authors describe an imaginary friend with their fictional characters, which takes on a life of its own (Flood 2020).3 Studies seem to suggest that both adults and children can acknowledge these are “pretend friends” but are able to move between domains when needed (for example, Taylor et al. 1993). This ability to “code shift” between the worlds of reality and fantasy is a valued attribute: it opens us to the possibility of entering into fiction, to identify with characters and to live their adventures with them; it allows us to watch plays and dramas and films as no longer just part of the audience but “on the inside.”

But Is This Friendship? It is often taken-​for-​granted topics (such as imaginary friends) that can demonstrate the need for greater collaboration between both types of research. So how might philosophy help? Most of us want to believe that our friends are really our friends: we want to believe that their declarations of friendship and acts of friendship are grounded in genuine concern. For the skeptical philosopher of friendship, what matters is that it would be implausible to offer any account of friendship that excluded the need for the authenticity of the bond. But what do we understand by authenticity here? For it to be authentic, the friendship has to be “real”: as a dyadic, reciprocated relationship. It reflects a belief in the relationship as an accurate representation of what it claims to be: free from manipulation and upheld according to the reasons and motives of the dyad. Here I want to briefly touch on three interrelated points. First, philosophical examinations of friendship, following the Aristotelian tradition, define it as a special concern that each has for the other certain kind of relationship: it has to be both reciprocal and acknowledged by both parties. In other words, friendship requires something of both parties –​the being friendly, a liking or loving emotional involvement, a “being a friend” in wanting and actively trying to benefit the other, and a wishing for their good, an involvement in some mutually acceptable way in the lives of each other. From this insight it is a small step to the conclusion that imaginary friendships fall foul of this in that the other does not exist at all and cannot reciprocate. Secondly, friendship is defined as a personal relationship of a particular kind. As such, self-​disclosure holds a privileged role in models of friendship, allowing us to become coauthors in each other’s moral development by shaping each other’s views. Obviously, the imaginary friendship can attempt to imitate self-​disclosure. But the imaginary partner cannot disclose –​all disclosure is one way: the child can only “disclose” to themselves. However, it enables a form of self-​evasion of one’s own faults and less attractive qualities by default. The imaginary friend can only “mirror back” the perspectives from the child with no sharing of alternative traits or values in return. As Kristjjanson points out: “the ultimate point of the institution of character friendships is mutual self-​cultivation of virtue” (2020: 137). Where one partner does not exist, such mutuality cannot arise. As an act of imagination, the other is but a projection onto the world, incapable of offering insight and thus limited in its ability to cultivate virtue other than that already embedded in the character of the person. One attempted rebuttal to this might be: one sees the imaginary friend as a device which brings to the fore something that might not otherwise be noticed. But this is not without difficulties: any attributes would have to be already within the person, thus limited in range. 86

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Thirdly, personal relationships (such as friendship) are further strengthened when the dyad see each other as “special” and worthy of treatment over and beyond that given to others. The relational characteristics, the “shared life “usually found in friendship cannot be said to exist in any form with an imaginary friend –​I am not sure how one would go about “sharing” when there is only one participant. Even if, in the child’s mind, the friendship is returned and reciprocated in similar fashion, or the “interaction” is intense and frequent, the relationship is still an illusion, a playfulness and a form of self-​deception. The key factor to remember here is that the reason philosophers reject imaginary friendships as friendships has nothing to do with showing something “strange” about the friendships of children; adults, as I have shown, can also have these. We reject them because they are imaginary –​the friend does not exist. They may indeed be comforting; they may be valued by the child (or adult); they may be “important steps” into real friendship; they may even be pleasurable or useful –​but that does not make them friendships. So why does this matter so much? Admittedly, as long as the child (or adult) has access to other real friendships, there is little real harm being done: the problem arises if the Imaginary Friendship is the sole or main friendship available for the following reasons. First, there is something special about friendship and the value it holds in our appraisal of our personal well-​being. If it does not matter whether or not one party to the friendship is real, we seem in danger of selling children (or adults) short. Secondly, we are then indirectly giving often young children the wrong impression about personal relationships by encouraging a unidirectional relationship. If a child tried to exert the same level of control in a friendship with another child, this could cause a problem and possibly end the friendship.4 Thirdly, while imaginary friends may occupy a child’s imagination, persons function as social agents, capable of autonomous action, decisions, and behavior in a way that an imagined companion cannot. Finally, ascribing complex social interactions to acts of the imagination (whether object or invisible entity) can be limited in its reach. In humanizing or anthropomorphizing an inanimate object, we also have to be aware of where this might lead in other arguments.5 Yet in my dismissal of this phenomenon as a form of friendship, there is something very special going on that is in danger of being missed. We are in danger of letting the language we use obscure our thinking. We have an extensive everyday usage of the term “friend” that may differ from the philosophical concept of friendship. Adding the adjective “imaginary” to this is both its greatest weakness in the argument and its strength: by emphasizing the nonexistence of the friend when considering it as a form of friendship, we risk missing that it fulfills a function as an internal model for what we may desire (or fear) in a possible friend. But more than that –​many of the things we might desire can also be found in other social relationships: companionship, comfort, and so on.6 Finally, there are other benefits: being able to “perform” both sides of a “friendship” requires subjects to have considerable skills in imagining the feelings of others, cooperation and negotiation skills as well as insight into their own responses to this fantasy world.

Friendships between Children Adults generally tend to believe that children go to school to learn, to become educated; in the minds of young children, school is all about where they see their friends. As I write, the world is still reeling from COVID-​19, and most school settings have had to close or go online for considerable periods of time. While politicians have been vocal in their concerns about effects on educational achievement, parents and guardians frequently have voiced a deeper concern with the overall well-​being of children, separated for months from contact with their friends.This mass closure of schools around much of the world in response to COVID-​19 (and possible effects on the mental health of children) has served to remind us of this fact: there is something special about being with our friends that cannot easily be replicated or replaced. So why does philosophy have so little to say about children and their friendships? Why is this important topic left almost entirely to empirical studies? 87

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The seriousness with which we take children’s friendships, whether in philosophy, in policy, or in practice, can often hinge on our understanding and valuing of childhood. While on the surface, it may seem that the concepts of “child” or “children” are relatively unproblematic –​after all, we use both terms on an everyday basis with little noticeable difficulty –​how we treat or regard children can be far more problematic. Children rightly hold a very special status different from that of adults: we do not hold them responsible for their words or deeds in the same way; we do not have the same expectations for self-​sufficiency (Murris et al. 2020). In other words, we generally accept that childhood is a period of life without the responsibilities and expectations of adulthood and in which children need some form of protection from harm. In one perspective, childhood is seen as an age legally defined as below a particular level (usually below 18). But who counts as a child (in the treatment allotted to accruing different rights) can vary across the globe (i.e., to go to school, to hold a driver’s license, to work, to drink alcohol, to vote, etc.). Similarly, what a child is and why they should be treated differently can depend on many historical and cultural contexts (i.e., the shifting ages for compulsory education; protection and welfare rights available in that context, etc.). Children are, in some way, both sentient moral agents, and socially, economically, and culturally embedded in families and societies. Nevertheless what is constitutive of a “good” childhood or what counts as human flourishing for non-​adults is still in need of philosophical exploration. In another perspective, a child is seen as a biological entity, hence the belief that to call a person a child is to call attention to their biological features (hence the reliance on empirical accounts). Children are seen as an immature specimen of the human organism that has the potentiality to develop into a more mature specimen, given time, nurture, and so on. An individual child is then seen as “a person who in some fundamental way is not yet developed, but who is in the process of developing” (Schapiro 1999: 716). This development is then assumed to take place in structured, age-​related stages. Indeed, thinking in such ways has a long history. It is then to psychologists that we tend to look for conceptualizing childhood in this way (Piaget 1971; Hartup 1996, among others). Much of the existing philosophical attention on childhood has been given to the rights or the rationality of children. This often leaves the status and significance of children to be accredited differently to that of adults. Indeed, children (and childhood) are measured in relationship to the concept of adulthood –​sometimes as the very absence of adulthood (Archard 2004, cited in Murris et al. 2020). But the immaturity of children cannot simply be based on the description of a biological entity developing over time: there is also a normative side to this. The value and treatment that derives from the way in which we categorize children can have considerable ethical implications. For our purposes, it also has a further effect: their “friend-​like” relationships are also seen as immature specimens that, given time, will develop. In other words, children qua children are not judged capable of fully reciprocal relationships such as friendship in the same way as adults, so these, in turn, tend to hold a lower value than those of adults (less stable, more utilitarian, and open to manipulation). These value-​beliefs about children and childhood can then be found to underpin the veritable mountain of research that has attempted to correlate school/​university/​workplace friendships and academic success/​well-​being/​human flourishing (for example, Ladd 1990; DfE 2019; Wilcox et al. 2005). Similarly, this can affect important areas of practice: one of the major goals of early school settings is frequently voiced as the ability to develop “friendship skills.” Leaving to one side questions as to whether friendship is a skill or not, or if these can be taught, there are concerns that this goal is undermined by other promoted policies. For example, state schools in countries such as England have become so focused on exam success that little attention is left for those things that just make life go “better.”While attempts have been made to address this in England via relationships education (DfE 2019), some early years policies still overly promote “school-​readiness”;7 some schools (usually

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primary schools) may have practices of splitting friends up in the classroom and/​or have “no best friends” policies (Healy 2017). So how should we think about friendship between children? Models, such as Aristotle’s typology, represent idealized, theoretical constructions. As such they express normative qualities through analysis and/​or testing of constitutive parts to help us make sense out of our experience, to clarify the nature of friendship in its most important manifestations. Their strength lies in the fact that they give us a way of discussing the best possible image of friendship that we could wish for. As such, they are neither entirely descriptive nor prescriptive in their reach. But their ability to be applied to particular friendships, or for us to measure our friendships against, is naturally limited: that is not their purpose. Having ideal models can help us better frame and examine the ideas and practices of children’s friendships. Integrating two different models, such as the psychological and the philosophical, aims to achieve a consensus understanding of crucial elements to both. These different models are not necessarily contradictory, nor incompatible, but they may differ in emphasis. Looking at friendships with a philosophical lens gives a different significance to the value of relationships in the lives of individuals and how seriously they should be taken. Both empirical studies and philosophy could help each other. Empirical studies could benefit from looking at the extensive philosophical theorizing about friendship as an aid to conceptual clarity in attempts to interpret and understand what is happening “on the ground.” Philosophy would benefit from attention to a far wider range of relationships (including those of children) and may find the work of empirical researchers helpful in their endeavors. Keeping these two methodologies too far apart runs the risk that we miss part of the story –​and then we all suffer.

Notes 1 I first became interested in the thinking around the phenomena of imaginary friendship after giving a promo-​ lecture (on philosophy of friendship) to students considering attending the university at which I taught. During the question-​answer session, one of the accompanying parents asked me what I thought of childhood imaginary friendships. After my reply, she then asked about adult imaginary friendships –​can adults have imaginary friendships? Does it matter, she asked, if they weren’t real? Many thanks to Lily Kamanda for asking about this –​and to her daughter, who subsequently became my student. 2 Chapman murdered John Lennon (of The Beatles) in 1980, infuriated by Lennon’s lifestyle and a growing obsession with Holden Caulfield, a character in Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. 3 Also see Taylor’s description of Enid Blyton and Alice Walker. 4 Many thanks to Diane Jeske for this reminder. 5 For example, the issue of companionate robots (and the possibility of human–​robot friendship) is perhaps more often currently positioned in application to seniors/​elderly, and seen as less of an issue for children. 6 Many of these attributes can be found outside of friendship in other social relationships. For example, companionship can be asymmetrical and does not necessarily need to be reciprocated. 7 Many thanks to Lewis Stockwell, University of Hertfordshire, for this reminder.

Related Chapters Aristotle on the Nature and Value of Friendship; Can Parents and Their Children Be Friends?; The Value of Friendship

Further Reading Helm B. 2010. Love, Friendship, and the Self: Intimacy, Identification, and the Social Nature of Persons. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kristjánsson, K. 2015. Aristotelian Character Education. London: Routledge. White, P. 1996. Civic Virtues and Public Schooling, New York and London: Teachers College, Columbia University.

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References Ahn, J. 2011. “ ‘You’re My Friend Today But Not Tomorrow’: Learning to Be Friends among Young U.S. Middle-​ Class Children.” American Ethnologist 38: 294–​306. Ainsworth, M. 1988. “Attachments beyond Infancy.” American Psychologist 44: 709–​16. Aristotle. The Nicomachean Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bagwell, C.L., and M.E. Schmidt. 2011. “The Friendship Quality of Overtly and Relationally Victimized Children.” Merrill-​Palmer Quarterly 57 (2): 158–​85. Barr, D. 1997. Friendship and Belonging. In Fostering Friendship: Pair Therapy for Treatment and Prevention, edited by R.L. Selman, C.L. Watts, and L.H. Schultz, 19–​31. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Baumeister, R.F., and M.R. Leary. 1995. “The Need to Belong: Desire for Interpersonal Attachments as a Fundamental Human Motivation.” Psychological Bulletin 117: 497–​529. Benson, R.M., and D.B. Pryor. 1973. “ ‘When Friends Fall Out’: Developmental Interference with the Function of Some Imaginary Companions.” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 21: 457–​73. Bonne, O., L. Canetti, E. Bachar et al. 1999. “Childhood Imaginary Companionship and Mental Health in Adolescence.” Child Psychiatry and Human Development 29: 277–​86. Bowlby, J. 1969. Attachment and Loss.Vol. 1: Attachment. New York: Basic Books. Bronfenbrenner, U. 1974. “Developmental Research, Public Policy, and the Ecology of Childhood.” Child Development 45: 1–​5. Bronfenbrenner, U. 1979. The Ecology of Human Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bronfenbrenner, U. 2005. “Interacting Systems in Human Development Research.” In Persons in Context, edited by Niall Bolger, A. Caspi, G. Downey, and M. Moorehouse, 25–​49. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/persons-in-context/CFC4958D40B652BD5C46C324ED41216C Bryant, E.M., and J. Marmo 2012. “The Rules of Facebook Friendship: A Two-​Stage Examination of Interaction Rules in Close, Casual, and Acquaintance Friendships.” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 29: 1013–​35. Buhrmester, D., and W. Furman. 1987. “The Development of Companionship and Intimacy.” Child Development 58: 1101–​13. Bukowski, W.M., and L.K. Sippola. 1996. “Friendship and Morality: (How) Are They Related?” In The Company They Keep: Friendship in Childhood and Adolescence, edited by W.M. Bukowski, A.F. Newcomb, and W.W. Hartup, 238–​62. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Bumby, K., and K. Dautenhahn. 1999. “Investigating Children’s Attitudes towards Robots: A Case Study.” Proceedings The Third International Cognitive Technology Conference CT’99, August, San Francisco. 391–​410. Department for Education (DfE). 2019. Relationships: Education, Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) and Health Education. London: Crown Publications. Dunn, J. 2004. Children’s Friendships. Maldon, MA: Blackwell. Fior, M., S. Nugent, T.N. Beran et al. 2010. “Children’s Relationships with Robots: Robot Is Child’s New Friend.” Journal of Physical Agents 4: 9–​17. Flood, A. 2020. “Me and My Detective.” The Guardian, June 27. www.theg​uard​ian.com/​books/​2020/​jun/​27/​ me-​and-​my-​detect​ive-​by-​lee-​child-​att​ica-​locke-​sara-​paret​sky-​jo-​nesb-​and-​more. Freese, J. 2002. “Imaginary Imaginary Friends? Television Viewing and Satisfaction with Friendships.” Evolution and Human Behavior 24: 65–​9. Gleason, T.R. 2002. “Social Provisions of Real and Imaginary Relationships in Early Childhood.” Developmental Psychology 38: 979–​92. Gleason, T.R. 2004. “Imaginary Companions: An Evaluation of Parents as Reporters.” Infant and Child Development: An International Journal of Research and Practice 13: 199–​215. Gleason, T.R., A.M. Sebanc, and W.W. Hartup. 2000. “Imaginary Companions of Preschool Children.” Developmental Psychology 36: 419–​28. Hartup, W.W. 1996. “The Company They Keep: Friendships and Their Developmental Significance.” Child Development 67: 1–​13. Harvey. 1950. (DVD). Directed by H. Koster. Los Angeles: Universal Studios, 104 mins. Healy, M. 2011. “Should We Take the Friendships of Children Seriously?” Journal of Moral Education 40: 441–​56. Healy, M. 2015. “‘We’re Just Not Friends Anymore’: Self-​Knowledge and Friendship Endings.” Ethics and Education 10: 186–​97. Healy, M. 2017. “Should Children Have Best Friends?” Studies in Philosophy and Education 36: 183–​95. Healy, M. 2017. “Patriotism and Loyalty.” In Handbook of Patriotism, edited by Mitja Sardoc, 1–​23. Online living reference: Springer. Healy, M. 2019. Belonging, social cohesion and fundamental British values. British Journal of Educational Studies, 67 (4), 423–438. Healy, M. 2020. “Keeping Company: Educating for Online Friendship.” British Educational Research Journal 45 (6), 1089–1104.

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Friendship between Children Healy, M. 2020. “The Other Side of Belonging.” Studies in Philosophy and Education 39 (2): 119–​133. Healy, M., and M. Richardson. 2017. “Images and Constructing a Sense of Belonging to Europe.” European Educational Research Journal 16: 440–​54. Hinde, R.A., G. Titmus, D. Easton et al. 1985. “Incidence of ‘Friendship’ and Behavior toward Strong Associates versus Nonassociates in Preschoolers.” Child Development 56: 234–​245. Holland, S., and J. Harpin. 2008. “ ‘It’s Only MySpace’: Teenagers and Social Networking Online.” In Remote Relationships in a Small World, edited by S. Holland, 117–​34. New York: Peter Lang. Howes, C. 1983. “Patterns of Friendship.” Child Development 54: 1041–​53. Howes, C. 1996. “Earliest Friendships.” In The Company They Keep: Friendship in Childhood and Adolescence, edited by W.M. Bukowski, A.F. Newcomb, and W.W. Hartup, 66–​86. New York: Cambridge University Press. Howes, C., K.H. Rubin, H.S. Ross et al. 1988. “Peer Interaction of Young Children.” Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 53: i–​92. Kidwell, J.S., R.M. Dunham, R.A. Bacho et al. 1995. “Adolescent Identity Exploration: A Test of Erikson’s Theory of Transitional Crisis.” Adolescence 30 (120): 785–​93. Klein, B.R. 1985. “A Child’s Imaginary Companion: A Transitional Self.” Clinical Social Work Journal 13: 272–​82. Knight, L. 2009. “Dreaming of Other Spaces:What Do We Think about When We Draw?”. Psychology of Education Review 33 (1): 10–​17. Kohlberg, L. 1981. Essays on Moral Development, San Francisco: Harper & Row. Kristjánsson, K. 2015. Aristotelian Character Education. London: Routledge. Kristjánsson, K. 2020. “Learning from Friends and Terminating Friendships: Retrieving Friendship as a Moral Educational Concept.” Educational Theory 70: 129–​49. Kupersmidt, J.B., M.E. DeRosier, and C.P. Patterson. 1995.“Similarity as the Basis for Children’s Friendships:The Roles of Sociometric Status, Aggressive and Withdrawn Behavior, Academic Achievement and Demographic Characteristics.” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 12: 439–​52. Ladd, G.W. 1990. “Having Friends, Keeping Friends, Making Friends, and Being Liked by Peers in the Classroom: Predictors of Children’s Early School Adjustment?” Child Development 61: 1081–​100. Majors, K., and E. Baines. 2017. “Children’s Play with Their Imaginary Companions: Parent Experiences and Perceptions of the Characteristics of the Imaginary Companions and Purposes Served.” Educational and Child Psychology 34 (3): 37–​56. Meyer, M.J. 1992. “Rights between Friends.” The Journal of Philosophy 89: 467–​83. Mose, T.R. 2016. The Playdate: Parents, Children, and the New Expectations of Play. Manhattan: NYU Press. Murris, K., K. Smalley, and B. Allan 2020. “Postdevelopmental Conceptions of Child and Childhood in Education.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. Accessed May 16, 2022. https://​oxfor​dre.com/​educat​ ion/​view/​10.1093/​acref​ore/​978019​0264​093.001.0001/​acref​ore-​978019​0264​093-​e-​1425 Nagera, H. 1969. “The Imaginary Companion: Its Significance for Ego Development and Conflict Solution.” The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 24: 165–​96. Newcomb, A.F., and C.L. Bagwell. 1995. “Children’s Friendship Relations: A Meta-​Analytic Review. Psychological Bulletin 117: 306–​47. Pahl, R. 2000. On Friendship. Oxford: Polity. Pahl, R., and L. Spencer 2010. “Family, Friends, and Personal Communities: Changing Models-​in-​the-​Mind.” Journal of Family Theory & Review 2: 197–​210. Piaget, J. 1932/​1965. The Moral Judgement of the Child. New York: Free Press. Piaget, J. 1971. The Child’s Construction of Quantities. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Poulin, F., and A. Chan. 2010. “Friendship Stability and Change in Childhood and Adolescence.” Developmental Review 30: 257–​72. Richardson, M., and M. Healy. 2019. “Examining the Ethical Environment in Higher Education.” British Educational Research Journal 45 (6): 1089–1104. https://​doi.org/​10.1002/​berj.3552 Ross, T. 1997/​2004. Oscar Got the Blame. London: Penguin Books. Sameroff, A. 2010. “A Unified Theory of Development: A Dialectic Integration of Nature and Nurture.” Child Development 81: 6–​22. Schapiro, T. 1999. “What Is a Child?” Ethics 109: 715–​38. Schneider, B. 2014. Friends and Enemies. London: Routledge. Selman, R.L. 1980. The Growth of Interpersonal Understanding. New York: Academic Press. Sullivan, H.S. 1953. The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry. New York: Norton. Svendsen, M. 1934. “Children’s Imaginary Companions.” Archives of Neurology & Psychiatry 32: 985–​99. Taylor, M. 2001. Imaginary Companions and the Children Who Create Them. Oxford: Oxford University Press on Demand. Taylor, M., B.S. Cartwright, and S.M. Carlson. 1993. “A Developmental Investigation of Children’s Imaginary Companions.” Developmental Psychology 29: 276–​85.

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8 THE PHYSICIAN AS FRIEND TO THE PATIENT Nir Ben-​Moshe

My question in this chapter is this: could (and should) the role of the physician be construed as that of a friend to the patient? The question, to be clear, is not whether it is morally permissible for physicians to be friends with their patients –​for example, whether it is morally permissible for a physician to go out to a movie or to play golf with a patient. Rather, the question is whether the physician–​ patient relationship itself should be understood in terms of what I will call a “physician-​qua-​friend model.” I begin by briefly discussing the “friendship model” of the physician–​patient relationship –​according to which physicians and patients could, and perhaps should, be friends –​as well as its history and limitations. Given these limitations, I focus on the more one-​sided idea that the physician could, and perhaps should, be a friend to the patient. I show that given recent developments in our understanding of the physician–​patient relationship, this idea is far from asinine (section 1). I then make the case that the most plausible conception of the physician-​qua-​friend model incorporates the following components: (a) a common goal, that is, one that physician and patient share; (b) certain forms of equality between physician and patient; (c) an ideal of a caring physician. This model should be understood as a normative ideal, toward which (many) actual physician–​patient interactions may aspire (section 2). Finally, I show how the model can be instantiated in a certain type of physician–​patient interaction, namely, in physician-​assisted dying (PAD). Among other things, I argue that the physician-​qua-​friend model allows for the possibility of physicians justifying their participation in PAD, while also enhancing patient trust in them and in the medical profession (section 3). I conclude by noting limitations of my argument (section 4).

1.  Friendship in the Physician–​Patient Relationship: An Overview The association between the physician–​patient relationship and friendship, which I shall call “the friendship model,” has a long history. For example, Plato (1997) famously argued that “a sick man” is “a friend to the doctor” (Lysis: 218e), and Seneca (2011), who asks why it is “that I owe something more to my doctor and my teacher, but I do not quit my debt by payment,” answers that “from being a doctor or a teacher they turn into a friend” (On Benefits: 6, 16.1). In his much-​discussed book, Doctor and Patient, Lain Entralgo (1969: 17–​23) argues that for the ancient Greeks, the relation between doctor and patient is one of philia, or “friendship.” Although philia is much broader than our contemporary understanding of friendship, Entralgo demonstrates that the image of the physician as friend to the patient has been prominent throughout the Western medical tradition, concluding with DOI: 10.4324/9781003007012-11

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a normative claim according to which “insofar as man is an individual and his illness a state affecting his personality, the medical relation […] should be a friendship” (ibid.: 242). The long history of the friendship model –​or, at least, “picture” –​of the physician–​patient relationship might be explained in part by the “Hippocratic ethic,” which has dominated the Western medical tradition. According to the Hippocratic Oath, the physician is required to benefit the sick according to her ability and judgment as well as keep them from harm and injustice (Kass 1985: 229). As Veatch (1983: 192) points out, in such a tradition, the friendship model is of importance, since the physician’s task is to use her judgment to benefit the patient, and this often requires intimate knowledge of the patient and his life, which is attained, so the thought goes, in the context of long-​standing friendship. Some physicians (and others) still understand their practice in terms of a friendship model.Thus, Pellegrino and Thomasma (1981: 64) argue that the clinical interaction is “a relationship of friendship,” a theme that they develop throughout their work. And Bleuler (1973: 73) writes, in a manner that will be of importance shortly, that in the patient’s pain, in his despair, in his misery, the patient called for a friend, a friend whom he can trust, a friend whose wisdom, whose willingness to help, whose integrity is beyond question, a man who understands his most secret and most personal problems, and the Doctor must be such a friend. Despite its long history and contemporary proponents, the friendship model of the physician–​ patient relationship has been criticized for various reasons. These reasons can be divided into two kinds, namely, psychological and structural. Psychologically, the physician–​patient relationship is, on the face of it, different from one between friends. For example, while friends want to spend time with each other, this reciprocal desire to share experiences is not part of the physician–​patient relationship (Erde and Jones 1983: 305). Indeed, neither patients nor physicians necessarily desire to be friends with each other. In terms of patients, some patients might actually prefer, as Veatch (1983: 202) notes, the physician as stranger, at least for certain kinds of sensitive medical care encounters, such as those pertaining to abortions, venereal disease treatment, and mental health therapy; and some people have personality types that favor more compartmentalized lives and prefer to lead their lives so that those they know in one sphere are not involved in other spheres. More generally, it seems reasonable to assume that friendship is not what patients want from their physicians. Rather than friendship, many patients simply want their physician’s committed but disinterested attention as part of competent medical care; they do not want physicians to feel their pain or to circumvent their usual stark procedures, lest they be incapacitated or make mistakes (Montgomery 2006: 182–​4). And as Illingworth (1988) has argued, since most patients do not desire a friendship with their physicians, the friendship model might risk violating patient autonomy; this is so, since saddling patients with a friendship that they do not desire fails to respect patient claims to self-​determination. She further argues that even if patients desire a friendship with their physicians, it does not necessarily follow that this desire should be satisfied: if patients want to befriend their physicians, this might be because patients are psychologically oppressed. For example, patients might regard themselves as the medical profession tends to view them, as agents with diminished capacities for self-​determination. If this is true, it is unlikely that patients themselves would endorse their desire for such a friendship. And it is certainly also the case that most physicians do not necessarily desire a friendship with their patients. Indeed, insofar as the friendship model dictates otherwise, it is at risk of conflicting with medicine’s ideal of openness to all in need, or, alternatively, of being impractical, since friendship with every patient would be emotionally exhausting, and even perilous, for physicians (Montgomery 2006: 180). The physician–​patient relationship is also different from one between friends for structural reasons. First, as Veatch (1983: 187) notes, the institutional structure of the health-​care system available to many people dictates that health care will often be delivered in a model in which the 94

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physician is a stranger; for example, when patients see specialists for one-​time referral consultations. Moreover, the physician is often professionally required to be a stranger in the sense that she needs to be detached from the patient in order to dispassionately analyze the situation. Detachment is especially crucial when physicians must inflict pain or produce disfigurement, or when they have to deal with patients who are abusive or belligerent, or for whom the physician feels a strong dislike (Loewy 1994: 55–​6). Second, the physician–​patient relationship is different from one between friends in its inherently inegalitarian nature. For example, it is patients’ needs (real and felt) that always give rise to medical relationships. Patients also pay physicians for their care and do not have reciprocal loyalties (Childress and Siegler 1984: 20). More specifically, as many have noted, the patient, who is usually vulnerable, is confronted with a physician, who has the requisite knowledge and skills to help the patient, as well as a socially conferred authority to determine what counts as sickness or health and who warrants labeling as sick or healthy (Brody 1992: 16–​20; Davis 2000: 29). Indeed, not only does the physician have general medical knowledge and skills, but she also has specific knowledge about her patients’ bodies and lives. Moreover, the physician has legal power to invade patients’ bodies, prescribe poisons, and use procedures that would otherwise be rendered aggravated assaults (Loewy 1994: 57). Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the imbalance of power in the physician–​patient relationship grounds, as Davis (2000: 29) notes, various de facto moral obligations and responsibilities on the part of the physician toward the patient that the patient does not have toward the physician; this is not the case in friendship, which is generally characterized by mutuality and reciprocity: while mutuality and reciprocity may not always define friendship between any two individuals, they are generally crucial to the sustenance of friendship and their persistent absence often warrants its dissolution. The differences between friendship and the physician–​patient relationship, especially the lack of mutuality and reciprocity, suggest that this relationship cannot be one of “friendship,” at least not as we usually understand this term. Nevertheless, I want to examine the more one-​sided idea, expressed in Bleuler’s words above, that the physician could, and perhaps should, be a friend to the patient. In other words, instead of a friendship model of the physician–​patient relationship, I want to examine a “physician-​qua-​friend model” of this relationship. The importance of this idea should be understood, I believe, against the backdrop of shifts in our understanding of the physician–​patient relationship in recent decades. When paternalistic models of this relationship fell out of favor several decades ago, fact-​provider models –​according to which physicians merely provide patients with non-​value-​laden medical information and patients then choose their preferred intervention based on their own values –​seemed like a promising alternative. However, it was soon realized that the assumption underlying these models, according to which there is a clear distinction between facts and values, is untenable: physicians cannot really avoid making value judgments (Emanuel and Emanuel 1992; Savulescu 1995; Veatch 1972). Given such problems and growing recognition that medical decision-​making should be shared by patient and physician, deliberative models, which prize joint physician–​patient deliberation, emerged. According to Emanuel and Emanuel’s (1992) version of this model, physicians deliberate together with patients regarding the best health-​related values that could, and ultimately should, be pursued in the clinical situation.1 Accordingly, the physician serves, among other things, as a “friend, engaging the patient in dialogue on what course of action would be best” (ibid.: 2222; emphasis added). If one subscribes to Childress and Siegler’s (1984: 20–​ 1) observation, according to which friendship in the physician–​patient relationship incorporates both “love or care” and “equality and respect” –​their thought is presumably that the combination of these components, care expressed within the context of an egalitarian relationship, allows one to speak of “friendship” between physician and patient –​then there is a prima facie case to be made that the physician could, and perhaps should, be considered a friend to the patient in the deliberative model. First, the model can embody an ideal of a caring physician who engages patients in evaluative discussions (Emanuel and Emanuel 1992: 2225). Second, the model can embody an ideal of equality and respect in the sense that the physician and the patient are fellow deliberators. Therefore, insofar 95

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as there is a prima facie case for (a) construing the physician–​patient relationship along the lines of a deliberative model, and (b) construing the deliberative model as one in which the physician could, and perhaps should, be a friend to the patient, then there is also a prima facie case for construing the physician–​patient relationship as one in which the physician could, and perhaps should, be a friend to the patient.

2.  The Physician-​qua-​Friend Model as a Normative Ideal In this section, I wish to develop what I take to be the most plausible conception of the physician-​qua-​ friend model, according to which the physician could, and perhaps should, be a friend to the patient. I will then demonstrate, in the next section, that this model can have great value in certain contexts. Let me commence by following MacIntyre’s (2007: 156) lead, who argues that one can understand friendship in two ways: According to a modern perspective, “affection is often the central issue […].‘Friendship’ has become for the most part the name of a type of emotional state rather than of a type of social and political relationship.” According to an ancient Greek view, attributed to Aristotle, while friendship involves affection, “that affection arises within a relationship defined in terms of a common allegiance to and a common pursuit of goods.” While I cannot delve into Aristotle’s views about friendship, there is a case to be made that Aristotle understood friendship as a “shared activity” that involves a shared and mutually known commitment to a goal, a mutual understanding of participants’ roles in their pursuit of this goal, and an agreement on the part of participants to do their respective shares in the common effort (Cooper 1980: 326).2 Accordingly, one could understand friendship as a complex social relationship that is constituted in part by a commitment to a common goal, in light of which parties jointly pursue certain goods. If we also include Childress and Siegler’s focus on equality and care, we get the following model of the physician–​patient relationship, which, so I shall argue, can incorporate the idea that the physician could, and perhaps should, be a friend to the patient: (a) a common goal to the physician–​patient relationship, that is, one that physician and patient share; (b) certain forms of equality between physician and patient; and (c) an ideal of a caring physician.The phrase “could, and perhaps should” suggests that this model should not be understood, in the first instance, as an explanatory model that aims to makes sense of current medical practices. Indeed, this cannot be the case, since, as noted, the institutional structure of the health-​care system often dictates that the physician is a stranger. Rather, it is more plausible to understand this model as a normative ideal, toward which (many) actual physician–​patient interactions may aspire. As James (1989: 144) put the point in connection with the friendship model of the physician–​patient relationship: the model “points towards and helps to organize important moral goods and ideals which physicians and patients may strive to attain” and “is most plausibly seen as aspirational, helping bioethics to focus on the distinctive goods possible within medical relationships.”3 If we understand friendship as involving, among other things, a commitment to a common goal, in light of which parties jointly pursue certain goods, we first need to inquire regarding the identity of this common goal in the physician–​patient relationship. Some authors have argued that physicians and patients do not necessarily share the same goals (Engelhardt 1996: 298; Veatch 1972: 7). In Emanuel and Emanuel’s “deliberative model,” there seems to be an implicit assumption that the goal in question is health, for they argue that physicians deliberate together with patients regarding the best health-​related values. However, “health” is problematic as a common goal, since physicians and patients do not necessarily share the same concept of health. Consider, for example, a patient who comes to a surgeon requesting that her left leg be amputated above the knee. She says that her left leg has always felt “alien” to her and that her life would be much better without it. Indeed, she compares herself to a person who feels he or she has been born in a body of the wrong gender and wants an operation to put things right, to be “whole.”4 The surgeon might stipulate health as pertaining primarily to bodily integrity, while the patient might stipulate health as also incorporating the patient’s psychology in general and her happiness in particular. I have argued elsewhere that a good candidate 96

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for the constitutive end of medicine is “benefiting patients in need of prima facie medical treatment and care.”5 As I argue, this is not an arbitrary choice. First, the constitutive end of medicine, without which the practice would not exist, needs to make mention of the fact that this practice advances medical treatment and care. Second, the constitutive end needs to mention the fact that the relevant treatment and care benefits its recipients because this is how physicians have understood their craft ever since the introduction of the Hippocratic Oath (Ben-​Moshe 2019: 4457–​8).6 This end could manifest itself, in turn, as the goal of individual physician–​patient interactions. Of course, even with the goal of benefiting patients in need of prima facie medical treatment and care, physicians and patients might disagree about definitions and actions, for example, about what counts as a healthy limb or about whether a healthy limb should be removed. But if there is agreement about the goal of their activity, then disagreements about what benefits patients in need of prima facie medical treatment are to be resolved, insofar as they can be resolved, in deliberation between the two parties, in light of this shared goal. If the goal of physician–​patient interactions is benefiting patients in need of prima facie medical treatment and care, then there is an even stronger case to be made than the one afforded by Emanuel and Emanuel’s deliberative model that physicians and patients can deliberate as equals. This is so because, contrary to their model, the focus of deliberations need not be solely health-​ related values, about which the physician has epistemic authority, but can include values more generally, including patients’ values, about which the patient has epistemic authority. The idea that patients’ values should be incorporated into medicine has become all the more pressing given the prevalence of patient rights movements in recent decades. It has also been recognized in the literature. For example, Pellegrino (2001: 569) has argued that “the good of the patient” includes both the patient’s medical good, which aims at the restoration of the well-​functioning of the body, and the patient’s perception of the good, which concerns his values and preferences. More recently, I have argued that since the end of medicine can be construed as “benefiting patients in need of prima facie medical treatment and care” and since there is no a priori reason to limit what constitutes patient benefit, it should include both patients’ medical good and their perception of the good. While the physician might be the expert when it comes to the patient’s medical good, it is the patient who has intimate knowledge of his perception of the good. Hence, patient values are an integral part of the physician–​patient relationship in the following sense: what will benefit the patient in need of prima facie medical treatment and care should be jointly determined by physician and patient, who, together, have the knowledge needed to attain this goal. I further argued that this makes medical practice a relational enterprise: rather than being an enterprise in which the craftsman produces a product that is independent of the relationship between craftsman and consumer, medicine is an enterprise in which the relationship is a constitutive component of the craft itself. Accordingly, the interactions between physicians and patients constitute in part the norms that govern the craft (Ben-​Moshe 2019: 4462–​3). Therefore, while some of the structural asymmetries between physician and patient that were noted in section 1 will no doubt remain, the ideal of equality in the physician–​patient relationship can be understood as follows: (a) deliberation as equals, that is, as two parties who respect each other’s epistemic authority over the respective knowledge that each party possesses in furthering the common goal of their interactions; (b) equal contribution to the norms that govern the craft in which their relationship is embedded. Hence, like friends, both parties could, and perhaps should, have an equal say not only within the interactions between them, but also about the boundaries of the framework in which those interactions occur. Now, a common goal and equality may also characterize relationships that are not ones of friendship. For example, colleagues might share a common goal and interact as equals in all the relevant respects, but they might not be characterized as friends. And although my aim was merely to present a model of the physician–​patient relationship that incorporates the idea that one could (and should) characterize the physician as a friend to the patient, a common goal and equality 97

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does not even get us to this idea. This is where the third component, an ideal of a caring physician, comes in. (Colleagues do not need to exhibit care in any interesting sense!) In this regard, some authors have noted that a good physician is compassionate like a friend (Pellegrino and Thomasma 1993: 82–​3).7 One can understand the justification for physician care as follows: the ideal of care is part and parcel of how the medical profession has understood itself and, to some extent, still understands itself. Seneca (2011), for example, associates the physician qua friend with his “kind and friendly disposition” and provides an account of a compassionate physician for whom the patient is “always his prime concern” (On Benefits: 6, 16.1 and 16.4–​5). Consider also the oaths that the medical profession has endorsed, and continues to endorse: in addition to the classical Hippocratic Oath, which requires the physician to benefit patients and keep them from harm and injustice, the modern version of the oath asks physicians to exhibit “warmth, sympathy, and understanding” (Hajar 2017: 157) –​or “compassion,” per the American Medical Association’s “Principles of Medical Ethics” (Kass 1985: 231) –​in their dealings with patients. Indeed, physicians should presumably exhibit these attitudes in greater degree to patients than to persons in general. This differential level of concern seems crucial to friendship. Note that physician care does not entail that physicians should forsake the type of detachment that is professionally required of them: a physician can, for example, be compassionate and dispassionately analyze the situation, provide competent medical care, and so on. Moreover, if physician care, understood primarily in terms of compassion, should be an integral part of the physician–​patient relationship, then, as Rhodes (1995) rightly argues, the physician must, as a matter of professional obligation, be equipped with a compassionate character; this would need to be cultivated, for example, as part of physicians’ training in medical school. So while my proposed model does not get us the mutuality and reciprocity that characterizes friendship, since patients need not care for physicians in the manner in which physicians should care for their patients, it can incorporate the idea of a physician who is a friend to the patient. In particular, and to expand on a thought noted earlier, the physician ought to care about the patient like a friend –​rather than, for example, like a parent –​because this caring attitude occurs in the context of a social relationship that is constituted in part by a commitment to a common goal, in light of which physician and patient jointly pursue certain goods as equals.

3.  The Physician-​qua-​Friend Model and Physician-​Assisted Dying In the previous section, I presented what I took to be the most plausible version of the ideal that the physician could, and perhaps should, be a friend to the patient. I now wish to show how this ideal can be instantiated in a certain type of physician–​patient interaction. In these interactions, the caring attitude of the physician could (and should) also include characteristics such as “closeness” and “emotional as well as intellectual investment” in the sense that “one has staked some of one’s own happiness, feeling, and being in the happiness, not just in the success, of another” (Loewy 1994: 54).8 The type of interaction that I will discuss concerns physician-​assisted dying (PAD). I will take PAD to cover cases of physician-​assisted suicide and active voluntary euthanasia and assume that there is no significant moral difference between the two; I will further assume, for argument’s sake, that PAD is both morally permissible and a sound public policy.9 The discussion of the relations between PAD and the friendship model of the physician–​patient relationship has primarily focused on the physician and the good of the physician. Clark and Kimsma (2004), for example, argue that PAD is the kind of activity where physicians should be more personally involved, including in a “loving act” toward patients. The patient, they argue, must respect the vulnerabilities a physician faces in agreeing to assist in ending a life. Accordingly, the physician and patient should enter a personal relationship or a “medical friendship.” In order to make their case, the authors point to, among others things, the fact that (a) some physicians, who are impeded from participating in PAD for their patients, do nevertheless participate in PAD, qua “loving act,” for family members and friends, even at the risk of prosecution (Vaux 1988: 2141); (b) some physicians who participate in PAD claim they need a personal 98

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relationship with the patient so as to be able to live with themselves and not experience guilt (Clark and Kimsma 2004: 63).10 My focus will be on the physician-​qua-​friend model and on the claim that this model of the physician–​patient relationship can allay worries pertaining to questions of trust and the ends of medicine, which tend to arise in connection with PAD. However, I first wish to contrast two well-​known cases in order to motivate the importance of the physician-​qua-​friend model in the context of PAD. First, consider the following case, reported by a gynecology resident at a large hospital, who was called in the middle of the night to see a 20-​year-​old girl named Debbie dying of ovarian cancer: I entered [the room] and saw an emaciated, dark-​haired woman who appeared much older than 20. She […] was sitting in bed suffering from what was obviously severe air hunger. The chart noted her weight at 80 pounds. A second woman, also dark-​haired but of middle age, stood at her right, holding her hand. […] The room seemed filled with the patient’s desperate effort to survive. […] She had not eaten or slept in two days. She had not responded to chemotherapy and was being given supportive care only. […] Her only words to me were, “Let’s get this over with.” I retreated with my thoughts to the nurses’ station. The patient was tired and needed rest. I could not give her health, but I could give her rest. I asked the nurse to draw 20 mg of morphine sulfate into a syringe. Enough, I thought, to do the job. […] [I]‌told the two women I was going to give Debbie something that would let her rest and to say good-​bye. Debbie looked at the syringe, then laid her head on the pillow with her eyes open, watching what was left of the world. I injected the morphine intravenously and […] waited for the inevitable […] effect of depressing the respiratory drive. With clocklike certainty, within four minutes, the breathing […] ceased. The dark-​haired woman stood erect and seemed relieved. “It’s Over, Debbie” (1988): 272 Setting aside worries pertaining both to the legality of this case and to patient-​informed consent, it seems obvious that some of the troubling aspects of this case pertain to the physician not being a friend to the patient: the two parties had just met for the first time; there was no shared deliberation as equals regarding the decision to kill the patient; the physician did not exhibit a caring attitude of, for example, warmth and sympathy, let alone closeness and emotional and intellectual investment. A very different case was documented by Timothy Quill (1991) regarding a leukemia patient named Diane. Despite having a 25 percent chance of survival, Diane declined treatment. Quill, who had been Diane’s physician for several years before the cancer diagnosis, knew her well, including the details of her life story. When she was diagnosed with cancer, not only did he provide her with all of the requisite medical information, but they also “together […] lamented her tragedy and the unfairness of life” (ibid.: 692). Quill and Diane met several times to discuss her decision to forego treatment, especially since Quill had previously seen Diane fight and use her considerable inner resources to overcome alcoholism and depression and so he half expected her to change her mind. However, he “gradually understood the decision from her perspective and became convinced that it was the right decision for her” (ibid.: 692). She then raised the option of PAD: It was extraordinarily important to Diane to maintain control of herself and her own dignity during the time remaining to her. […] When the time came, she wanted to take her life […]. I acknowledged and explored this wish […]. In our discussion, it became clear that preoccupation with her fear of a lingering death would interfere with Diane’s getting the most out of the time she had left […]. I feared the effects of […] [suicide] on her family […] [but] [t]‌hey believed that they should respect her choice. With this in mind, I told Diane that information was available from the Hemlock Society that might be helpful 99

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to her. A week later she phoned me with a request for barbiturates for sleep. […] [I]t was important to me […] to be sure that she was not in despair or overwhelmed in a way that might color her judgment. In our discussion, […] it was […] evident that the security of having enough barbiturates available to commit suicide when and if the time came would leave her secure enough to live fully and concentrate on the present. It was clear that she was not despondent and that in fact she was making deep, personal connections with her family and close friends. I made sure that she knew how to use the barbiturates for sleep, and also that she knew the amount needed to commit suicide. We agreed to meet regularly, and she promised to meet with me before taking her life, to ensure that all other avenues had been exhausted. […] [When] it was clear that the end was approaching […], she let me know […]. [I]t was clear that she knew what she was doing, that she was sad and frightened to be leaving, but that she would be even more terrified to stay and suffer. […] Two days later her husband called to say that Diane had died. […] They called me for advice about how to proceed. When I arrived at their house, […] [w]e talked about what a remarkable person she had been. Quill 1991: 693 If we are more approving of this case than the previous one, it is presumably because, among other things, Quill was a friend to Diane: he knew the patient well, cared deeply about her, and treated her as an equal in sustained deliberation, paying close attention to her values and preferences. Indeed, he also learned important lessons from her: “Diane taught me about the range of help I can provide if I know people well and if I allow them to say what they really want. She taught me about life, death, and honesty and about taking charge and facing tragedy squarely when it strikes. She taught me that I can take small risks for people that I really know and care about” (ibid.: 694). The contrast between the two examples demonstrates that we tend to look more favorably on PAD if it is performed in the context of a relationship in which the physician is a friend to the patient. There are also a couple of specific benefits to the position according to which, insofar as PAD is performed by physicians, they should be doing so qua friend of the patient. Consider the following two worries. First, it has been argued that PAD might lead to a loss of trust by patients in their physicians: “if physicians become killers or are even merely licensed to kill, the profession –​ and, therewith, each physician –​will never again be worthy of trust and respect as healer and comforter and protector of life in all its frailty” (Gaylin et al. 1988: 2140). Second, it has been questioned whether physicians in particular should assist patients in dying, since doing so might not further the end(s) of medicine. Kass (1989: 29–​30), for example, has taken this position, since he argues that the end of medicine is “health,” understood as the “wholeness” and “well-​working” of “the living body.” Accordingly, he argues that “for the physician, at least, human life in living bodies commands respect and reverence –​by its very nature” and that “the deepest ethical principle restraining the physician’s power […] is the dignity and mysterious power of human life itself ” (ibid.: 38; emphasis in original). Now, one might attempt to allay these worries by arguing that if (a) PAD is restricted to cases in which it is truly voluntary, and (b) X has not voluntarily requested it, then X should not fear getting it. Moreover, one could argue that it is physicians’ commitment to the values of respecting patients’ self-​determination and promoting their well-​being that should be at the “moral center” of medicine, and these values support PAD when patients make competent requests for it (Brock 1992: 16–​17). Nevertheless, merely insisting that patients have nothing to fear, if PAD is truly voluntary, would probably do little to reassure patients for whom this practice causes doubt about the medical profession in general and individual physicians’ intentions in particular. Moreover, while it is true that PAD usually respects the patient’s self-​determination –​and, insofar as the patient’s life is not worth living, promotes their well-​being –​if the end of medicine is construed as “health” or “healing,” PAD would be outside the realm of permitted medical interventions. And even if “health” or “healing” is a

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too-​narrow conception of the end of medicine, similar worries could also arise on a wider conception of this end, such as “benefiting patients in need of prima facie medical treatment and care,” for it is not conclusive that PAD falls under the category of “prima facie medical treatment and care” and thus that is furthers this end. If PAD is (legally) performed only when the physician is a friend to the patient –​that is, only if the physician and the patient have a common goal, they deliberate as equals, and the physician exhibits a caring attitude (in the expansive sense discussed above) –​patient trust in physicians could be enhanced. In particular, those patients who opt for PAD could rest assured that the physician is a friend to them and has a duty to be loyal to them qua friend, and thus that they can place trust in her as one does in a friend. And those who are not interested in PAD would at least know that physicians would perform PAD only in the context of an intimate and caring relationship, which is also characterized by a common goal and shared deliberation, of the type that Dr. Quill had with Diane. The proposed model can also allow for physicians, who are obligated to act in accordance with the ends of medicine, to nevertheless assist patients in dying. More specifically, physicians who participate in PAD would be justified in doing so primarily qua friends. The thought here is that the role of the physician qua physician and the role of the physician qua friend can come apart; this allows for the possibility that the physician qua friend can perform, and even be obligated to perform, actions that are at the very least controversial, and are at most supererogatory, for her to perform qua physician. Thus, PAD might very well be obligatory for the physician qua friend, but at most supererogatory for the physician qua physician. Of course, I do not mean to suggest that the physician qua friend is not availing herself of the prerogatives, rights, and powers that she has qua physician; nor am I suggesting that she is unconstrained by professional norms and obligations. Indeed, the physician would still need to justify her actions qua physician, that is, in terms of some of the specific goals of medicine that fall under the more general and constitutive end of “benefiting patients in need of prima facie medical treatment and care.” In the case of PAD, the physician can justify herself by arguing that, for example, she is relieving suffering, even if she is not prolonging life. In doing so, she can at least argue that PAD is not inconsistent with the constitutive end of medicine, even if it cannot be shown to conclusively further it. So while Kevorkian (1991: 202–​3) has argued that PAD should be performed in the context of a unique subspecialty of medicine –​“obitiatry,” in which obitiatrists would practice “medicide” –​I am suggesting that PAD should be performed in the context of a unique form of relationship, namely, one in which the physician is a friend to the patient. Therefore, while disagreement might continue regarding whether physicians should be involved in suicide and euthanasia, my proposal allows for the possibility of physicians justifying their participation in PAD, while also enhancing patient trust in them and in the medical profession.

4. Conclusion In this chapter, I have tried to make the case for what I take to be the most plausible conception of the physician-​qua-​friend model of the physician–​patient relationship and explained its potential importance against the backdrop of recent developments in our understanding of this relationship. I also argued that it is most plausible to understand this model as a normative ideal, toward which (many) actual physician–​patient interactions may aspire, but showed how it can be implemented in one type of medical scenario. I should emphasize, in conclusion, two important limitations of my argument. First, even as an ideal, the physician-​qua-​friend model can better guide certain types of physician–​patient interactions, but less so others. For example, while this model might be able to guide a patient’s long-​term relationship with his primary care physician, it might not be able to guide the type of interactions that patients have with specialists in one-​time referral consultations, in emergency care situations, or, for very different reasons, with mental healthcare providers. Second,

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and more importantly, I have not conclusively shown that the physician-​qua-​friend model is the only model for conceptualizing the physician–​patient relationship, or that it is, all things considered, the most plausible one for doing so. For all I have said, perhaps other models of the physician–​patient relationship would, for different reasons, fare just as well, or, indeed, better. Nevertheless, I hope that I have shown that there is much more to this type of model than, as one author puts it in connection with the friendship model of the physician–​patient relationship, a mere recent “compensatory rhetorical turn” (Montgomery 2006: 180).11

Related Chapters Aristotle on the Nature and Value of Friendship; The Stoics and Augustine on Friendship and Altruism; Friendship and Special Obligations; Friendship and Loyalty

Notes 1 There are variations of these models in the literature. For example, Savulescu (1995) argues that physicians should make all things considered value judgments: physicians form a conception of what is best for their patients and rationally argue with them (without coercing patients). He calls this “rational non-​interventional paternalism.” 2 Cooper’s analysis of the characteristics of “shared activity” builds on this passage from Aristotle (1984): “[Men] think that the happy man ought to live pleasantly. Now if he were a solitary, life would be hard for him; for by oneself it is not easy to be continuously active; but with others and towards others it is easier. With others therefore his activity will be more continuous, being in itself pleasant, as it ought to be for the man who is blessed” (Nicomachean Ethics: 1170a4-​9). While any friendship between physician and patient will presumably be, following a distinction in Book VIII of the Nicomachean Ethics, a friendship of “utility” rather than one of “excellence,” this does not entail that there is no genuine other-​regarding or disinterested concern in such friendships, per Aristotle’s own views about friendships of utility (Gartner 2017). This means that physicians can genuinely care for their patients, even in a friendship of utility. 3 Illingworth (1998: 34) argues that because models prescribe for a wide range of cases, they are limited in what desires they can assume to exist. In particular, she argues that, on the one hand, models might assume uncontroversial desires that will be true of everyone –​e.g., a desire that physicians treat one with respect and benevolence –​but will not generate a very interesting model; on the other hand, models can posit desires that have some substance to them –​e.g., a desire for friendships with physicians –​but are not necessarily shared by all and are problematic with respect to patient autonomy. However, if we understand the proposed model as a normative ideal, then it can abstract away (in part) from the specifics of individuals’ psychology and current practices. This is so because we are not primarily interested in what specific patients and physicians desire or in how physician–​patient interactions currently play out. 4 I am indebted to Daniel Brudney for this example, which I discuss in Ben-​Moshe (2019: 4450). 5 Brody and Miller (1998: 386–​7) suggest that medicine has multiple goals, such as diagnosing, preventing, curing, and lessening the pain caused by disease or injury, which are unified by the fact that the physician is dedicated to “benefiting patients in need of medical treatment and care”; but they do not postulate this as the end of medicine. 6 As I also note in this earlier paper, “benefiting patients in need of prima facie medical treatment and care” is different from “medicine” (the latter would have the unwanted result of making “medicine” the end of medicine): the end of medicine does not focus on medicine simpliciter, but also on benefiting patients. Moreover, the focus is on “prima facie” medical treatment and care: what is considered “medical treatment and care” is not an unchanging fact of the matter; rather, its nature will be transmuted in the course of the history and development of medical practice. 7 Other authors have argued against the friendship model of the physician–​patient relationship by arguing that this relationship is not generally characterized by “compassion, kindness, sympathy, warmth, and fidelity,” which “stand in contrast to the character traits stereotypically attributed to the modern, more specialized, businesslike physician: efficiency, technical competence, impartiality, coldness, and distance” (Veatch 1983: 188). However, I am arguing for a certain ideal of the physician–​patient relationship and not for what happens currently (or recently) to be the case. 8 Loewy discusses these characteristics as counterexamples to the claim that physicians and patients are friends. I am making the case that, under certain circumstances, the physician, at least, could (and should) exhibit them.

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The Physician as Friend to the Patient 9 See Brock 1992 and Buchanan 1996 for excellent discussions of these issues. Regarding the first issue, as Brock (1992: 10) observes, the factual difference between physician-​assisted suicide and active voluntary euthanasia amounts to the identity of the person who actually administers the lethal dose, the patient (physician-​assisted suicide) or the physician (active voluntary euthanasia). In both cases, the physician plays an active and necessary causal role, and the choice rests fully with the patient. Therefore, according to Brock, there is no substantial moral difference between the two. 10 For example, the authors quote a Dutch physician, who, when asked why he felt the need for a personal relationship when participating in PAD, said, “because I have to go on for the next 20 or 30 years myself. […] The next morning I want to look into the mirror right into my eyes without feeling any guilt” (Clark and Kimsma 2004: 63). Satisfying the need for a personal relationship might outweigh the risk, noted above, that friendship with patients would be emotionally exhausting for physicians. 11 For helpful feedback on drafts of this paper, I am very grateful to audiences at the Practical Philosophy Workshop at UIUC, the Philosophy of Medicine Affinity Group meeting at the 2021 ASBH conference, and the Alden March Bioethics Institute at Albany Medical College –​and especially to Ashi Anda, Megan Applewhite, Charles Maimone, Allison McCarthy, Ben Miller, Steve Mischler, Brian Reese, Wayne Shelton, Andrew Smith, and David Sussman. I am also grateful to Diane Jeske and Nicholas Koziolek for excellent comments.

References Aristotle. 1984. “Nicomachean Ethics.” In The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, Vol. 2, edited by J. Barnes and translated by W.D. Ross and J.O. Urmson, 1729–​1867. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ben-​Moshe, N. 2019.“The Internal Morality of Medicine:A Constructivist Approach.” Synthese 196 (11): 4449–​67. Bleuler, M. 1973. “Let Us Stay Near Our Patients.” Diseases of the Nervous System 34 (23): 73–​9. Brock, D.W. 1992. “Voluntary Active Euthanasia.” The Hastings Center Report 22 (2): 10–​22. Brody, H. 1992. The Healer’s Power. New Haven, CT:Yale University Press. Brody, H., and F.G. Miller. 1998. “The Internal Morality of Medicine: Explication and Application to Managed Care.” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 23 (4): 384–​410. Buchanan, A. 1996. “Intending Death: The Structure of the Problem and Proposed Solutions.” In Intending Death: The Ethics of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia, edited by T. Beauchamp, 23–​41. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-​Hall. Childress, J.F., and M. Siegler. 1984. “Metaphors and Models of Doctor-​Patient Relationships: Their Implications for Autonomy.” Theoretical Medicine 5 (1): 17–​30. Clark, C.C., and G.K. Kimsma. 2004. “‘Medical Friendships’ in Assisted Dying.” Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 13 (1): 61–​7. Cooper, J.M. 1980. “Aristotle on Friendship.” In Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics, edited by A. Oksenberg Rorty, 301–​40. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Davis, F.D. 2000. “Friendship as an Ideal for the Patient–​Physician Relationship: A Critique and an Alternative.” In The Healthcare Professional as Friend and Healer, edited by D. Thomasma and J.L. Kissell, 24–​34. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Emanuel, E.J., and L.L. Emanuel. 1992. “Four Models of the Physician–​Patient Relationship.” JAMA 267 (16): 2221–​6. Engelhardt, H.T. 1996. The Foundations of Bioethics. 2nd edn. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Erde, E.L., and A.H. Jones. 1983. “Diminished Capacity, Friendship, and Medical Paternalism: Two Case Studies from Fiction.” Theoretical Medicine 4 (3): 303–​22. Gartner, C.A. 2017. “Aristotle on Love and Friendship.” In The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Ethics, edited by C. Bobonich, 143–​61. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gaylin, W., L.R. Kass, E.D. Pellegrino, and M. Siegler. 1988. “Doctors Must Not Kill.” JAMA 259: 2139–​40. Hajar, R. 2017. “The Physician’s Oath: Historical Perspectives.” Heart Views 18 (4): 154–​9. Illingworth, P.M.L. 1988. “The Friendship Model of Physician/​Patient Relationship and Patient Autonomy.” Bioethics 2 (1): 23–​36. “It’s Over, Debbie.” 1988. JAMA 259 (2): 272. James, D.N. 1989. “The Friendship Model: A Reply to Illingworth.” Bioethics 3 (2): 142–​6. Kass, L.R. 1985. “Is There a Medical Ethic? The Hippocratic Oath and the Sources of Ethical Medicine.” In Toward a More Natural Science: Biology and Human Affairs, 224–​46. New York: The Free Press. Kass, L.R. 1989. “Neither for Love Nor Money: Why Doctors Must Not Kill.” The Public Interest 94: 25–​46. Kevorkian, J. 1991. Prescription –​Medicide:The Goodness of Planned Death. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

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Nir Ben-Moshe Lain Entralgo, P. 1969. Doctor and Patient.Translated by F. Partridge. New York:World University Library, McGraw-​ Hill Book Company. Loewy, E.H. 1994. “Physicians, Friendship, and Moral Strangers: An Examination of a Relationship.” Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 3 (1): 52–​9. MacIntyre, A. 2007. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Philosophy. 3rd edn. South Bend, IN: Notre Dame University Press. Montgomery, K. 2006. How Doctors Think: Clinical Judgment and the Practice of Medicine. New York: Oxford University Press. Pellegrino, E.D. 2001. “The Internal Morality of Clinical Medicine: A Paradigm for the Ethics of the Helping and Healing Professions.” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 26 (6): 559–​79. Pellegrino, E.D., and D.C. Thomasma. 1981. A Philosophical Basis of Medical Practice: Toward a Philosophy and Ethic of the Healing Professions. New York: Oxford University Press. Pellegrino, E.D., and D.C. Thomasma. 1993. The Virtues in Medical Practice. New York: Oxford University Press. Plato. 1997.“Lysis.” In Complete Works, edited by J.M. Cooper and D.S. Hutchinson, and translated by S. Lombardo, 687–​707. Indianapolis: Hackett. Quill, T.E. 1991. “Death and Dignity: A Case of Individualized Decision Making.” The New England Journal of Medicine 324 (10): 691–​4. Rhodes, R. 1995. “Love Thy Patient: Justice, Caring, and the Doctor–​Patient Relationship.” Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 4 (4): 434–​47. Savulescu, J. 1995. “Rational Non-​Interventional Paternalism: Why Doctors Ought to Make Judgments of What is Best for Their Patients.” Journal of Medical Ethics 21 (6): 327–​31. Seneca. 2011. On Benefits. Translated by M. Griffin and B. Inwood. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Vaux, K. 1988. “Commentary: Debbie’s Dying: Mercy Killing and the Good Death.” JAMA 259 (14): 2140–​1. Veatch, R.M. 1972. “Models for Ethical Medicine in a Revolutionary Age.” The Hastings Center Report 2 (3): 5–​7. Veatch, R.M. 1983. “The Physician as Stranger: The Ethics of the Anonymous Patient–​Physician Relationship.” In The Clinical Encounter: The Moral Fabric of the Patient-​Physician Relationship, edited by E.E. Shelp, 187–​207. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.

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9 CAN PARENTS AND THEIR CHILDREN BE FRIENDS? Kristján Kristjánsson

Introduction The title of this chapter poses a question that, at first sight at least, seems to call for an unequivocally positive answer. Of course parents and their children can be friends.They tend to know each other in uniquely transparent ways, share joys and sorrows through intimate interactions and mutual affection, play together and provide services for one another, ranging from the daily chores that kids often perform for their parents, to the “bank of mum and dad” that typically helps children once they fly the nest. Moreover, how often do we come across heart-​warming greetings on social media where a big birthday is celebrated with “my mum” or “my daughter” lauded as “my best friend.” Even in that most fastidiously exacting account of friendship, by Aristotle, there are passages about friendship between parents and children, albeit what Aristotle called “unequal” friendship (as explained later). Nevertheless, worries obtrude about whether parents and children are really capable of forming friendships of the “deep” and “close” kind –​distinct from mere friendships for utility or pleasure as Aristotle would have categorized them. Can they literally be each other’s “kindred spirits,” in the same sense as two unrelated adults can? Enlisting Aristotle’s references to parental friendships with children may not carry much traction either since the term philia in ancient Greek was more capacious than our term “friendship.” We are perhaps a tad more nuanced now in friendship talk than the ancient Greeks were. While these worries are worthy of serious investigation, we are not helped in that endeavor by the vagueness of the terms “deep” or “close friendship” in modern parlance, be it colloquial or academic. The standard ploy in friendship research in psychology, for instance, is to offer some generic characterization of friendship, such as that friendship is “a reciprocal relationship where there is mutual liking and enjoyment spent in each other’s company” (Majors 2012). People’s own specifications of their deep or best friendships then tend to be taken at face value and the question becomes not if and how they distinguish themselves essentially from more superficial friendships, but rather what “provisions” those purportedly deep friendships between self-​described kindred spirits offer (e.g., companionship, help, intimacy, reliable assistance, self-​validation, emotional security) and how those “provisions” are correlated with significant psycho-​social variables, most notably subjective well-​being (Demir and Weitekamp 2007). Characterizing the standard methodological approach to friendship research in psychology is therefore a unidimensional, instrumentalist, and amoral understanding of friendship, where friendship will vary quantitatively with respect to a number of variables but is not 1

DOI: 10.4324/9781003007012-12

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taken to assume qualitatively different types as in Aristotle’s theory, explained below (see Anderson and Fowers 2020, whose paper incidentally constitutes an exception to, and a critique of, the standard psychological approach). To try to extricate ourselves from the vagueness of most current specifications of friendships qua “deep” or “close” associations, I adopt the ploy in what follows of using Aristotle’s definition of the most “complete” type of friendship as a benchmark: what he called “friendship for character” (cf. Cooper 1977 for a helpful overview). The reason for this choice has nothing to do with deference to Aristotle as such (his historical role as the first systematic friendship theorist notwithstanding), but everything to do with the fact that Aristotle’s criteria for friendship to count as “complete” in this sense are so strict that one can be reasonably confident that if friendships between parents and children make the grade with respect to those criteria, they will count as “deep” and “close” on almost any other account one can think of. In the following section, I rehearse Aristotle’s criteria and exploit them to argue that friendships between parents and children cannot be excluded merely for moral developmental reasons. In the third section, I explore a different set of objections to the idea of (deep) friendships between parents and children that have to do with potential psycho-​structural or socio-​structural barriers –​also finding those objections wanting. I close with a few comments about moral education for a flourishing life and how friendship seems to have lost its ancient status as an educational concept.

Aristotle and Worries about Moral Developmental Barriers According to Aristotle, all types of true friendship (as distinct from mere friendliness or acquaintanceship, for example) involve reciprocated goodwill and the loving of friends (1985: 210 [1155b31–​2]). True friendships assume three main types, where the first two –​loving friends for the sake of the pleasure or utility they bring –​are “incomplete” because of their essentially extrinsically valuable and transitory natures. The most developed type, however, namely character friendship –​in which the love is grounded in the friend’s virtuous character –​is “complete” because of its unique intrinsically valuable and enduring nature (1985: 211ff [1156a6ff]). Owing to their extreme closeness, devotion, and intimacy, character friendships can be actualized only with a small number of people (1985: 262–​ 3 [1170b29–​1171a21]). This claim, as well as the one about the enduring nature of those friendships, allows us to consider Aristotle’s view as a view of the nature of what contemporary psychologists would call “deep” or “best” friendships. Aristotle offers more specific criteria for such friendships that add further weight to the impression that a friendship has to be significantly intimate to pass muster with regard to all the general and specific conditions. The specific criteria in question involve (a) spending time together in shared activities, thereby instantiating shared values, (b) sharing joys and sorrows, (c) loving the friend for her own sake in the special sense of loving her moral character (as her set of virtues), (d) having kindred-​ spiritedness in the strong sense of being “related to his friend as he is to himself, since the friend is another himself ” (1985: 246 [1166a30–​3]; cf. 260 and 265 [1170b6–​7; 1172a32–​4]), and (e) viewing the friendship as intrinsically valuable to the extent of seeing the friend as irreplaceable. In Aristotle, as distinct from contemporary psychology, no clear distinction is drawn between the descriptive and the evaluative; his criteria place normative constraints upon what can properly be called an example of the highest form of friendship –​however the individuals themselves may choose to self-​describe their relationship. Aristotle makes an initial comment about complete (namely, character-​ based) friendships (1985: 212 [1156b6–​8]) that has often been interpreted to mean that such friendships are possible only between people who are not only, as he says, “similar in virtue,” but also equal in social standing, and even already both of perfect virtue (namely what he calls fully fledged phronimoi). While that is clearly his ideal instantiation, Aristotle spends considerable space in the following discussion delineating friendships that are complete while not perfect: namely, character friendships among people 106

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who are unequal in various ways and/​or on the path toward full phronesis rather than phronimoi graduates already. As Cooper adamantly puts it, “it is clear that Aristotle is willing to countenance a virtue-​friendship where both parties are quite deficient with respect to their appropriate excellences” (1977: 628). Indeed, it turns out that the fundamental raison d’être of character friendships is not only moral but also educational. The aim of such friendships is not only loving moral character per se, but loving it in the service of mutual character development. Character friends become “better from their activities and their mutual correction” as “each molds the other,” and through this mutual molding they become “more capable of understanding and acting” (Aristotle 1985: 266 and 208 [1172a11–​14 and 1155a15–​16]). Friendship of this kind educates by being, in various ways, knowledge-​enhancing, virtue-​enhancing, and life-​enhancing, through the friends acting as each other’s guides on the trajectory toward full phronesis (cf. Darnell et al. 2019). The mutual fine-​toothed revision of each other’s characters can take place between people who are equal in either social standing or virtue, or unequal in both social standing and virtue. Aristotle did not countenance the possibility of socially unequal friends being equal in virtue. Given the guiding question of this chapter, readers will want to know what age ranges he is talking about. It would be untenable to claim that very young children are capable of character friendship. Such friendship presupposes some minimal “comprehension or [at least] perception” of the moral character of the other to be cherished and admired (Aristotle 1985: 230 [1161b26–​7]). Other than that, Aristotle is at his most elusive here. He does say that, while the old and “sour” are prone to mere utility friendships in order to make sure they are cared for, the cause of friendship between young people “seems to be pleasure” (1985: 212 [1156a31–​3], and 216 [1157b14–​15]; cf. 1935, p. 371 [1236a35–​7]). On the other hand, he also states that “the young need [friendship] to keep them from error” (1985: 208 [1155a10–​ 13]), and he is clearly not talking about friendship for pleasure there. He later takes the example of parent–​child associations as a paradigmatic case of unequal friendships, and he seems to be referring to character friendships there because he says that this sort of friendship “also” includes pleasure and utility (1985: 231 [1162a4–​9]). A “parent is fond of his children because he regards them as part of himself; and children are fond of a parent because they regard themselves as coming from him.” Furthermore, a parent “loves his children as [he loves] himself […] Children love a parent because they regard themselves as coming from him” (1985: 230 [1161b16–​29]). Despite this textual evidence, the standard view is that Aristotle did not consider children capable of character friendship (see e.g., Jacquette 2001) because they do not really possess virtues yet as relatively stable (but amenable to further development) traits of character. The apparently clear references to parent–​child friendships (“being fond of ” and “loving” are renderings of philia and its grammatical derivatives) are then typically written off on grounds of the fact that the word philia in ancient Greek could also cover parental love. This chapter is not meant to constitute an exercise in Aristotelian exegesis, but I cannot resist the temptation to remark that the standard exegetical view seems fairly weak. In the Rhetoric, Aristotle unambiguously refers to some “virtues” that virtuous adults should ideally possess but do come more easily to young people for reasons of developmental psychology. The young are thus typically open-​minded and optimistic, tending to look at the good side rather than the bad side of things, as they have not yet “seen much wickedness.” They trust others readily “because of not yet having been much deceived.” They are also more courageous and guileless than the old are, and have more exalted notions, not having yet been “worn down by life.” Moreover, they are fonder of their friends than older people are and have not come to value them for their usefulness (2007: 149–​50 [1389a16–​b3]). The virtues referred to here are obviously not phronesis-​infused virtues, but rather what Aristotle would designate as “natural” ones, but they are still, as far as I can see, virtues-​in-​progress (as rudimentary or developing excellences), making up character. I think Aristotle would most likely have seconded the observation made by one of Gabriel García Márquez’s characters that “one does not love one’s children just because they are one’s children but because of the friendship formed while raising them” (1988: 211). 107

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Whatever Aristotle’s view may have been, current empirical evidence seems to indicate that, at least in late childhood, children may be capable of mutually edifying character friendships (cf. Healy 2011 for an even-​handed discussion of the literature, pro and con). For example, an empirical study of nine-​to ten-​ year-​old children in the UK (Walker, Curren, and Jones 2016) revealed that those children often claimed to identify and choose friends on the grounds of their moral qualities, more specifically virtues such as honesty, generosity, helpfulness, and kindness. Indeed,“the language of virtue seemed to come naturally to many of the children” (2016: 296), and they seemed to be able to distinguish between the moral value of those virtues and their instrumental benefits. Notably, the authors refer to the sort of friendship described by many of their respondents as “eudaimonic friendship,” perhaps to avoid the strictness of the criteria associated with Aristotelian “character friendship” and of becoming embroiled in exegetical debates. Nevertheless, I consider their evidence to add backbone to the view that the educative value of character friendship can emerge prior to adolescence (cf. also Fowers and Anderson 2018). If this is the case even for friendships between children, then surely there should not be any moral developmental barriers preventing unequal character friendships being formed between children and adults: say, parents, grandparents, or (much) older siblings. I am inclined to include teacher–​pupil friendships in this mix (cf. Shuffelton 2012), although there I would be entering sensitive territory. Patricia White probably echoes the voices of many teachers when she argues that “norms of impartiality” and the dangers of “ethical complexities” rule out intimate friendships with individual students (1990: 88–​9). Contrast that view, however, with the Montessori approach to teacher–​pupil relationships, according to which it is incumbent on every teacher to act in loco parentis and offer pupils domestic affection through frequent “parental” hugs and approaches toward deep personal friendships (Martin 1992: esp. 16–​19). At all events, to return more squarely to the topic of the present chapter, no good moral developmental reasons have emerged for ruling out deep friendships between parents and children. Since not even Aristotle’s strict criteria exclude them, it is difficult to imagine what else in the area of moral development would. A parent–​child relationship described in those terms will, I believe, fall within the ambit of Talbot Brewer’s astute characterization of friendship, for and in character, as the locus of shared, virtuous activities, accompanied and completed by a running appreciation of “the words and actions emanating from the two jointly produced sensibilities whose ongoing collaboration makes these activities possible” (2005: 758). Children would, on this account, not benefit from friendship with their parents by simply replicating the parental virtues, but rather by critically enlarging their knowledge of life’s options and gradually shaping their own evaluative outlooks. Similarly, parents would reshape and reinvigorate their evaluative outlooks by attending to the guilelessness and sincerity of their children.To the extent that the benefits of this collaboration enter the texture of conduct and thought of both parties –​the parents and their children –​friendship between them has, arguably, been instantiated and actualized.

Kupfer and Worries about Psycho-​Structural and Socio-​Structural Barriers We are not out of the woods yet, however, for although standard moral developmental concerns may leave the possibility of parent–​child friendships intact, there are other potential barriers in the way.To avoid repetition, in what follows I will be referring exclusively to “deep” friendships, on Aristotle’s or some other equally restrictive conception, when using the term “friendship” (unless otherwise stated). It is, in any case, a truism that parents and their children can be friends on many other, more permissive, conceptions of “friendships,” for example by being Facebook friends. I rely on a much-​cited article by Joseph Kupfer (1990) as the springboard of my discussion, in which he argues that parents and their children are incapable of mutual friendships for various psycho-​structural and socio-​structural reasons, even after the children have reached adulthood. Although Kupfer’s article is not couched in the poststructuralist language of ubiquitous power relations, readers versed in that language may detect hints of Nietzschean or Foucauldian themes in his argument. However, as Kupfer’s philosophical style is very much analytical, I will not pursue any potential “Continental” links here but simply 108

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take what he says at face value and respond to him mostly from the Aristotelian position adopted in the previous section. Kupfer offers a whole smorgasbord of structural arguments, large and small, to bolster his case, but as I have previously tried to rebut them fairly specifically one by one (Kristjánsson 2007: chap. 8), I aim for more of a general synthesis here of his critical stance, as well as suggesting possible counterarguments or at least counterconsiderations. It is one thing to argue that children lack moral developmental maturity to form friendships with parents. I dissented from that view in the previous section, and Kupfer does not make use of it. His arguments take us rather, as already noted, into the structural psychology and sociology of close human relationships. He partly assumes and partly argues for a certain conception of human selfhood –​its nature and genealogy –​that makes it unamenable to parent–​child friendships. Part of the delight in friendship, Kupfer says, turns upon the way in which two people discover each other and gradually get to know each other as distinct individuals. However, the relationship between parents and their children cannot progress in this way because their lives have already been entwined since the child’s beginning. Hence, they will never be able to encounter and discover each other as beings with independent histories: as true “others.” The parents are too “naturally familiar” to the child, and vice versa, for them to become friends (1990: 20–​1). To rephrase this psycho-​structural argument in the language of selfhood, friends have distinct selves at the beginning. When they meet and start to get to know each other, one of the delights –​ if they happen to be kindred spirits –​is to familiarize themselves with the selfhood of the other and gradually to become entwined in it. If one buys into Aristotle’s “another-​self ” metaphor, one can even accept the notion that the distinction between the selves of friends gradually becomes obliterated, psychologically, morally, and epistemologically (if not strictly speaking ontologically or biologically). However, this developmental process cannot take place in the case of parents and children because their selves have been intertwined from the outset. The parents see the child as an extension of their own selves and the children see themselves, originally at least, as an outgrowth of their parents’ selves, even viewing themselves and the outside world through the eyes of the parents. One way to respond to this developmental story about a trajectory from independence of selfhood to interdependence in the case of friends (as opposed to parents and children) would be to try to rebut the whole interdependent-​selves developmental thesis. However, the natural Aristotelian response is exactly the opposite one: namely, to bite the bullet and deny that anyone has a fully independent self vis-​à-​vis friends in the first place.The first thing to note here is that Aristotle was a “self-​ realist,” believing that selfhood is objectively identifiable and not reducible to mere self-​concept. He thus considered it of paramount interest, for instance in terms of potential character growth, that our views about who we are correspond to who we really are “deep down.” However, he realized that we are lacking in self-​transparency (as we possess no fully accurate and independent self-​mirror) and need someone who knows us well to correct our self-​conceptions. So the epistemological implication to be drawn from Aristotle’s self-​theory is that character friends are invaluable for self-​knowledge in the sense that they (often) know us better than we do ourselves. For example, a soulmate is likely to notice much earlier than I do that I have lost my zest for life and am sinking into depression. In general, “we are able to observe our neighbors more than ourselves, and to observe their actions more than our own” (Aristotle 1985: 258 [1169b33–​5]). In this sense, Aristotle’s “another-​self ” metaphor is not about two fully independent selves who happen to meet and gradually become interdependent. It is about my own self being incomplete and inaccessible to introspection until I interlock it with that of a character friend. The bottom line here is that, according to the Aristotelian conception, there is no human self that is formed and sustained independent of the selves of others and that exists prior to all its contingent ends. Our lives as human beings are, by necessity, intertwined and shackled with the heavy chains of social and psychological interdependence, not only at the beginning but throughout our lives. Therefore, if we accept that my self-​concept requires me to seek recognition and self-​information 109

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from others, and my social existence and social relations are essential rather than contingent parts of my selfhood, it is unreasonable to insist that because someone else has helped shape my self-​concept from the outset, I cannot be a friend of that person.To paraphrase Robert Frost’s famous lines in “The Star Splitter”: If one by one we counted out potential friends for having played a role in shaping our self-​concept, it would not take us long to get so we had no friends left to live with. To be sure, it could be argued that since parents provide us with our first social interactions, we come partly formed to all our other relationships except to the one with them. However, often parents are not the sole providers of the first social interactions, but grandparents and siblings also –​sometimes even uncles and aunts (in extended-​family cultures). Yet I have not seen any objections lodged against the view that children can be friends with their siblings and grandparents. So the Aristotelian response to Kupfer’s psycho-​structural argument is basically this: it is true that the psychological structure of the child’s self is dependent upon his or her parental relationships. But, far from signaling a departure from the relationship with a friend, this is exactly what characterizes (complete) friendships also. And because there is no essential difference between these two kinds of relationships in terms of self-​knowledge or self-​constitution, there are no good psycho-​structural reasons to conclude that a parent cannot also be a friend. The second main strand of Kupfer’s argument relates to socio-​structural barriers that have to do with unequal power relations. While the underlying idea very much mirrors the one motivating the psycho-​structural argument, the focus here turns from independent versus interdependent selves or selfhoods to unequal capacities for autonomous decision-​making vis-​à-​vis the other party. According to Kupfer’s unequal-​autonomy argument, friendship requires that the parties enjoy equal autonomy; otherwise, unequal influence and power will lead to unequal dependency and to one party’s disproportionate reliance on the other. Because children are less autonomous than parents in their relationship (that is, according to Kupfer’s understanding of autonomy, less self-​determining, less able to choose for themselves on the basis of their own values), then such a relationship cannot constitute friendship. Kupfer seeks indirect support in a parallel thesis, which he ascribes to Aristotle, about the need for equal virtue in friendships: “Only if the friends are equally virtuous will they mutually strive for the other’s good for his own sake” (1990: 16). Recall from the preceding section, however, that although Aristotle thinks friendship is ideally a relationship between persons of equal virtue, he does not exclude relationships based on superiority from the category of friendship. Quite the contrary, Aristotle states explicitly that within each of the three types of friendship are some that rest on equality and others on superiority: “For equally good people can be friends, but also a better and worse person; and the same is true of friends for pleasure or utility” (1985: 232–​3 [1162a34–​b4]). We must avoid an argumentum ad verecundiam here, however. Aristotle might simply be wrong about the possibility of friendship between unequal parties, and, after all, Kupfer concentrates on the problem of unequal autonomy rather than that of unequal virtue, which could be a different and less surmountable problem. Aristotle aside, Kupfer can nevertheless be criticized for proposing too restrictive a conception of friendship. If friendship is possible only between persons of equal autonomy (in Kupfer’s sense), then various relationships that seem to constitute standard examples of friendship, such as the relationship between a guru/​mentor and disciple/​mentee, are excluded from the reckoning. Kupfer’s considerations about the impossibility of the parent–​child relationship ever growing fully out of the social dependency relationship that characterizes its beginnings seem equally applicable to the guru–​disciple relationship. However enlightened disciples eventually become –​one would have to argue by analogy –​they may never be able to interact with their old gurus on completely equal footing.Yet –​and here is the rub –​it would be counterintuitive to suppose that gurus and their disciples cannot be friends. That said, Kupfer might respond by arguing that Aristotle is actually much too cavalier about the vagaries and vicissitudes that may decimate unequal friendships as they progress developmentally (as acknowledged in Kristjánsson 2019). Kupfer makes the additional point that the parent witnessing the child’s coming to be gives the parent intimate, privileged knowledge of the child’s development and character, aspirations, 110

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and humiliations. Thus the parent has special access to the child’s personal identity, which the child does not and cannot enjoy with respect to the parent. This superiority in terms of epistemic power, then, rules out friendship between the two (1990: 17–​18). However, we can question the empirical thesis that the parent is, in fact, typically such an expert on the child’s character that he or she has a privileged epistemic power-​status with regard to the child. I wonder if, in the complicated juggling act of modern-​day child-​rearing where the demands of spouse, work, friends, and hobbies vie with those of children for parents’ attention, children are not typically more exclusive epistemic experts on their parents than vice versa. In the first years of life, the child’s full-​time job is growing up, and it has ample time to study its parents’ characters (and character weaknesses). How often we see small children who have become deftly aware of their parents’ little foibles and whims, and having learned to play up to them, can use them to their advantage. Older children commonly use their privileged knowledge of their parents’ characters to woo and manipulate them in a more systematic fashion. It may be the case that children are often unable to put the pieces of their parents that they are familiar with into a larger picture, because they do not know their parents’ full histories and they also do not understand the mechanics of the adult world in which their parents move. However, children are also, from an early age, able to create their own little worlds, occupied by toys and friends, to which the parents have no epistemic access. If this manipulation process potentially works both ways, and not merely in one direction as Kupfer suggests, then his contention that one-​sided privileged epistemic knowledge precludes the child’s autonomy in the parent–​child relationship cannot hold up to scrutiny. Both the psycho-​structural and socio-​structural arguments may seem to be built upon a deficit model of parent–​child relationships: namely, about inadequacies that bar them from making the grade as friendships. However, to Kupfer’s credit, he also focuses on the unique strengths of parent–​child relationships that, arguably, go beyond those of “mere” friendships and lend them special value. I will simply mention two related ones at the end of this section: unconditionality and permanence. One’s fondness for one’s friends is, in the Aristotelian model, ultimately conditional upon their retaining their moral character. Although virtue is enduring, as Aristotle pointed out, even the best can become morally corrupt. In such cases, one’s fondness may appropriately be revoked –​the friendship dissolved. However, Kupfer argues, this conditionality does not apply to the parent–​child relationship: “parents (ideally) feel an ‘unconditional’ love for their children: a love that is untouched by accomplishments or failures, kindness or callousness” (1990: 22). In response, I must say, first, that a parent–​child relationship can also have its own pathology. However much one party has invested emotionally in the other, the two may become so alienated from one another in the end that the emotional deposit is withdrawn. World literature and the biography genre are replete with stories of parent–​child relationships that have gone sour. Kupfer might reply that he is talking about unconditional love as an ideal, and that such an ideal is not compromised by particular extreme examples of the breakdown of unconditionality. However, unconditionality is also an ideal feature of the best of friendships, in the Aristotelian model. The friend is meant to be irreplaceable –​ although Aristotle’s criteria for the terminations of best friendships may have been unrealistically strict (Kristjánsson 2019). Kupfer’s insistence on the permanency of the parent–​child relationship, as opposed to the essential impermanency of friendship, is closely related to the value of unconditionality. Precisely because of the unconditionality of parent–​child relationships, they retain their solidity and stability, no matter how functions and needs shift. “Friendship is different. We can acquire and lose friends” (1990: 24). If Kupfer is still talking here about true character friendships, this seems to be a frivolous way of describing their onset and closure. For Aristotle, by contrast, the dissolution of such friendships can never be taken lightheartedly; whether or not we should cancel a friendship that has gone bad is an agonizing question. Aristotle’s conclusion is that we should wait and see, and only give up the friendship when we are sure that the other person has become “incurably vicious.” For if “someone 111

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can be set right, we should try harder to rescue his character than his property, in so far as character is better and more proper to friendship” (1985: 244 [1165b17–​21]). Aristotle’s notion of the essential permanency of friendships, which can never be treated lightly, seems to be more intuitively plausible than Kupfer’s conception. In the case of both unconditionality and permanence, therefore, it seems as if Kupfer systematically overstates and overdraws the distinction between the values that characterize parent–​child relationships and friendships in order to provide focus to his own thesis that parents and children cannot be friends. Even if it were correct that the relationship between parent and child has some special value that cannot be reduced to the value of friendship and is even incommensurable with it, we cannot conclude that parent–​child relationships may not also be friendships. More plausibly, such value would be surplus value, added on top of the value of friendship.

Flourishing, Parenting, and Friendships The concept of flourishing, grounded in Aristotelian or quasi-​ Aristotelian assumptions, has recently become the hottest ticket in town in educational theory (see Kristjánsson 2020b for an overview). According to Aristotle, having good friends is an indispensable constituent of a flourishing life –​but so is having good parents and good children (Wolbert, de Ruyter, and Schinkel 2018). The question that has set the agenda for this chapter is whether these essential goods are somehow related or not. More specifically, I have inquired whether parents and children can be friends, on the most demanding conception of friendship as deep, close, and intimate. Although I have tried to rebut moral developmental, psycho-​structural, and socio-​structural arguments that speak against the possibility of parents and their children being friends, I do not claim to have come up with a definitive answer.There may still be a sneaking intuition lurking in the background that something in the nature of parent–​child relationships debars them from passing muster as true friendships. The whole tenor of Aristotle’s discussion of all types of friendship is that they are developmentally constituted and, in their most complete form as character friendship, educationally executed. There is no such things as friendship per se, but rather friendship at a certain developmental niveau, with its specific developmental assets, and liabilities, qualitatively differentiated according to its educational affordances (Kristjánsson 2020a). Parenting is obviously also an educational enterprise, so a question which may suggest itself is whether the “sneaking intuition” that I referred to earlier has something to do with contrasting educational challenges related to friendship, on the one hand, and parenting, on the other. It is difficult to answer this question, however, because friendship seems to have lost its currency as an educational concept that it had in Aristotle’s day. Even within contemporary Aristotle-​inspired virtue ethics, and its educational incarnation as “character education,” friendship is almost never mentioned as a “method” of moral cultivation, in the same way as for example role-​modeling is. The idea of character coordination with a friend has thus typically been replaced by one of conformation to a role model (Hoyos-​Valdés 2018). And although the current category of “role models” is so large as to include both parents and friends within its ambit –​with parents, indeed, still being the role models most often mentioned by young people –​some subtleties seem to have been lost by placing moral learning from a distant role model, such as Nelson Mandela or Mother Teresa, a parent, and a friend all under the same academic umbrella. Perhaps learning to hone one’s character through interactions with parents follows a different psycho-​moral trajectory from learning the same through interactions with friends –​let alone role models (where the interaction is most often asymmetric). However, even if that were the case, we would not be compelled to provide a negative answer to the question posed in the title of this chapter. The same persons can wear different hats at the same time and occupy distinct roles. So for a parent

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to count as a friend also it is not necessary that the former role be reducible to the latter.There could be special parental obligations and bonds that go beyond even the closest of friendships; yet the parent could also at the same time assume the responsibilities of a friend and act as one. There is nothing more common in everyday life than hearing people refer to a parent as their best friend. Now, ordinary language may sometimes need to be departed from for the sake of conceptual clarity and economy. However, such departures must be well motivated. In this chapter, no compelling reasons for a departure from the commonsense idea of parents as potential friends of their children have emerged.

Related Chapters Friendship between Children; Friendship and Family; Friendship and Special Obligations; Aristotle on the Nature and Value of Friendship

Note 1 This chapter draws substantially on Chapter 8 in Kristjánsson (2007) and on Kristjánsson (2020a). The title deliberately contains a small variation only on the title of Kupfer’s (1990) paper that in many ways set the terms of the present debate about the possibility of (deep, close) friendships between parents and their children.

References Anderson, R.A., and B.J. Fowers. 2020. “An Exploratory Study of Friendship Characteristics and Their Relations with Hedonic and Eudaimonic Well-​Being.” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 37 (1): 260–​80. Aristotle. 1985. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by T. Irwin, Indianapolis: Hackett. Aristotle. 2007. On Rhetoric. Translated by G.A. Kennedy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brewer, T. 2005. “Virtues We Can Share: Friendship and Aristotelian Ethical Theory.” Ethics 115 (4): 721–​58. Cooper, J.M. 1977. “Aristotle on the Forms of Friendship.” Review of Metaphysics 30 (4): 619–​48. Darnell, C., L. Gulliford, K. Kristjánsson, and P. Paris. 2019. “Phronesis and the Knowledge–​Action Gap in Moral Psychology and Moral Education: A New Synthesis?” Human Development 62 (3): 101–​29. Demir, M., and L.A. Weitekamp. 2007. “I Am So Happy Cause Today I Found My Friend: Friendship and Personality as Predictors of Happiness.” Journal of Happiness Studies 8 (2): 181–​211. Fowers, B.J., and A.R. Anderson. 2018. “Aristotelian Philia, Contemporary Friendship, and Some Resources for Studying Close Relationships.” In The Theory and Practice of Virtue Education, edited by T. Harrison and D.I. Walker, 184–​96. London: Routledge. Healy, M. 2011. “Should We Take the Friendship of Children Seriously?” Journal of Moral Education 40 (4): 441–​56. Hoyos-​Valdés, D. 2018. “The Notion of Character Friendship and the Cultivation of Virtue.” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 48 (1): 66–​82. Jacquette, D. 2001. “Aristotle on the Value of Friendship as a Motivation for Morality.” Journal of Value Inquiry 35 (3): 371–​89. Kristjánsson, K. 2007. Aristotle, Emotions, and Education. Aldershot: Ashgate/​Routledge. Kristjánsson, K. 2010. The Self and Its Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kristjánsson, K. 2019. “Ten Un-​Aristotelian Reasons for the Instability of Aristotelian Character Friendships.” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 49 (1): 40–​58. Kristjánsson, K. 2020a.“Aristotelian Character Friendship as a ‘Method’ of Moral Education.” Studies in Philosophy and Education 39 (4): 349–​64. Kristjánsson, K. 2020b. Flourishing as the Aim of Education: A Neo-​Aristotelian View. London: Routledge. Kupfer, J. 1990. “Can Parents and Children Be Friends?” American Philosophical Quarterly 27 (1): 15–​26. Majors, K. 2012.“Friendship:The Power of Positive Alliance.” In Positive Relationships: Evidence-​Based Practice across the World, edited by S. Roffey, 127–​44. Dordrecht: Springer. Martin, J.R. 1992. The Schoolhome: Rethinking Schools for Changing Families. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Marquez, G.G. 1988. Love in the Time of Cholera. London: Jonathan Cape.

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Kristján Kristjánsson Shuffelton, A.N. 2012. “Philia and Pedagogy ‘Side by Side’: The Perils and Promise of Teacher–​ Student Friendships.” Ethics and Education 7 (3): 211–​23. Walker, D.I., R. Curren, and C. Jones. 2016. “Good Friendships among Children: A Theoretical and Empirical Investigation.” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 46 (3): 286–​309. White, P. 1990. “Friendship and Education.” Journal of Philosophy of Education 24 (1): 81–​91. Wolbert, L.S., D.J. de Ruyter, and A. Schinkel. 2018. “What Attitudes Should Parents Have towards Their Children’s Future Flourishing?” Theory and Research in Education 16 (1): 82–​97.

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10 GOD AND REDEMPTIVE FRIENDSHIP Paul K. Moser

Redemptive Friendship If God is worthy of worship, then God is morally perfect, without moral defect, because God then merits the full loyal commitment suited to worthiness of worship. God thus would be worthy of full loyal commitment as a result of being worthy of worship. In addition, if God is morally perfect, then God is perfectly redemptive toward people needing redemption as interpersonal reconciliation to God. Being thus redemptive, God would seek what is good, all things considered, for those people for the sake of their being reconciled to God. The intended reconciliation would invite people to cooperate willingly with God’s morally perfect character and will, at least to some extent. It would be a needed basis of friendship that includes mutual care and willing cooperation between God and humans. Such friendship would morally involve these humans with God in a cooperative way foreign to some understandings of friendship. God’s moral character and will, we shall see, would have distinctive value for redemptive human friendship with God. The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, offers the following definition of “friendship”: “Accord, alliance, peace; a state of mutual trust and support between allied nations or peoples.” It offers the following definition of “friend”: “A person with whom one has developed a close and informal relationship of mutual trust and intimacy; (more generally) a close acquaintance.” The key notions for our purpose are: accord, alliance, peace, trust, and support, all in the context of an interpersonal relationship. Those notions can figure in a conception of friendship even when one friend has moral authority and superiority relative to another friend. Friends, then, need not have equal moral authority or status. We should ask whether human history offers actual reports of a God who seeks redemptive friendship with some humans. The book of Isaiah refers to the patriarch Abraham as a friend of God, and this idea is repeated in some Jewish and Christian writings. You, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen, the offspring of Abraham, my friend; you whom I took from the ends of the earth, and called from its farthest corners, saying to you, “You are my servant, I have chosen you and not cast you off ”; do not fear, for I am with you, do not be afraid, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand. Isa. 41:4,8–​10, NRSV, here and in following biblical translations; cf. 2 Chron. 20:7, James 2:23 DOI: 10.4324/9781003007012-13

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The passage does not explain what the divine friendship includes, but it does suggest that, perhaps as a result of friendship with Abraham, God is favorably disposed toward Israel, the offspring of Abraham. A related reference occurs in Exodus 33:11, with regard to Moses: “The Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend.” Here, too, the verse does not explain what the friendship includes; its concern is the directness of God’s speaking to Moses. We need to look elsewhere for clarification of divine redemptive friendship. John’s Gospel offers an approach to friendship with Jesus that bears on our concern. It portrays Jesus as saying: This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. John 15:12–​15 The friendship suggested here has three important features. It stems from a redeemer’s self-​g iving love for his friends; it requires that his friends obey what the redeemer commands; and it depends on the redeemer’s revealing something from God to the friends. We shall consider how Jesus aims to make God known in redemptive friendship, with a unique moral gift and challenge. The role of obedience makes friendship with God distinctive relative to ordinary human friendship. John’s Jesus claims that his kind of love in redemptive friendship is akin to the kind of love God shows to him and thereby to others: “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love” (John 15:9). In addition, God is portrayed as seeking not to condemn the world but to save it through Jesus, that is, to redeem it in reconciliation to God (John 3:16–​17; cf. John 17:3). In this regard, the friendship represented by Jesus is divine redemptive friendship. We thus may explore, as an approach to redemptive friendship from God, how Jesus intended to present divine friendship and the kind of love it includes. If God seeks redemptive friendship with humans, this goal may bear on how God self-​reveals to them and thus on how God responds to human inquiry about God. How we inquire about God matters, because trustworthy inquiry must fit with its subject matter, in a way that allows its subject to present itself accurately to inquirers.

Jesus and Inquiry about God If Jesus somehow represents God, where should an inquiry about Jesus in relation to God begin, and how should it proceed? If the inquiry is historical, one could define “history” in a way that excludes theology and God from history, as some historians have done. That, however, would be to foster, at least by implication, a philosophical position subject to dispute.1 One also could proceed with theology as if history were irrelevant (as some theologians have done), but that would be to neglect theological recognition of any divine redemptive effort in human history. A responsible approach considers that history and morally relevant theology could be mutually illuminating. My approach requires that both morally relevant theology and historical interpretation must earn their keep from supporting evidence, if they are to survive needed scrutiny. So, not just any theology or history will serve. Theological and historical beliefs matter, but they do not matter on their own, as mere, unfounded beliefs, from a cognitive point of view. They call for evidential support, to avoid being mere opinions, and that support can be abductive relative to one’s experience: a function of the explanatory power of a claim relative to the whole range of one’s experience. The Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke portray Jesus as inviting a kind of interpersonal inquiry that bears on inquiry about God.

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Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” And they answered him, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.” And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him. Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” Mark 8:27–​33; cf. Matt. 16:13–​23, Luke 9:18–​22 Three main facts emerge from this exchange. First, Jesus asks his followers to consider from their own decision-​perspectives who he is: “Who do you say that I am?” Second, Peter identifies Jesus as God’s special emissary to Israel: “You are the Messiah,” and Jesus evidently approves of this, or at least he does not reject it wholesale. Third, Jesus reveals his ultimate purpose in terms of “setting your mind on divine things” (literally, “the things of God”), in contrast with “human things.” His purpose includes not only his intentionally focusing his mind on God’s will, but also his willingly “suffering, being rejected, being killed, and rising again” as part of the “divine things.” So, his purpose includes his intentional cooperation with the “divine things,” the “things of God,” bearing on him.2 The probing question from Jesus is in the second person, and, while Mark’s Gospel has the plural “you,” the question as intended requires reference to oneself, that is, considering it from one’s own decision-​perspective, as Peter did without delay. In my own case: Who do I say that Jesus is? The intended question from Jesus thus has a self-​referential application for an inquirer: It prompts one to put oneself in the presence of the question of who Jesus is, in order to give one’s own answer, from one’s own first-​person perspective. The question in an individual’s case is thus not a question about what others say. In my case, I become, if implicitly, the one being interrogated by Jesus, involving what he would think of me. I thus become the subject of a self-​referential inquiry, courtesy of Jesus. So, my inquiry about Jesus expands, in the light of his question, to an inquiry also about me, in relation to whom I take him to be. If Jesus, as God’s special emissary, represents God here, an analogous lesson applies to our inquiry about God. The question from Jesus at Caesarea Philippi yields a self-​referential approach to inquiry about Jesus and God, as an inquirer about Jesus and God becomes “the inquired of ” (by Jesus and God). An assessor of Jesus becomes “the assessed” (by Jesus and God). (Who do I say that Jesus is, and what leads me to my answer regarding him?). The question from Jesus implicates an inquirer in a way that goes beyond mere history, to the broader intentional perspective of that inquirer. In saying who Jesus is, I would be engaged in intentional action of saying something (about Jesus). I might say that I do not know who he is, and this, too, would be an intentional action. In any case, I am under challenge from Jesus’s question to give an answer, and his challenge puts me on the spot. Whatever I say, or do not say, in response, Jesus’s question implicates me and my decision-​ perspective, by inviting this question about me: Am I being responsible in my response, whatever it is? We can assess this matter of first-​person responsibility from the position of my relevant evidence about Jesus. A striking feature of Jesus, according to the overall portrait of him in the New Testament Gospels, is that he speaks for and represents God. E.P. Sanders (1993: 239) thus remarks: “[Jesus] thought that he had been especially commissioned to speak for God, and this conviction was based on a feeling of personal intimacy with [God].” Sanders finds that Jesus represented himself as the “viceroy” in the kingdom of God, “subordinate only to God himself.” Some of the supporting evidence comes from Jesus’s remarks about his status of unique authority in the final judgment of humans (Matt. 19:27–​29; cf. Luke 22:28–​30). Some additional evidence comes from such remarks by

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Jesus as: “Blessed [by God] is anyone who takes no offense at me” (Matt. 11:6, Luke 7:23; cf. Matt. 13:16–​17, Luke 10:23–​24; Matt. 12:42, Luke 11:32), and “no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Matt. 11:27; cf. Luke 10:22).3 Given the conclusion reached by Sanders, we may propose that Jesus thought of himself as the human king and judge immediately under God and thus as the human measure or norm for the morally relevant things of God. He considered himself to exemplify and to represent, in actions as well as words, God’s moral character of righteous love. In that capacity, Jesus aimed to function as the human benchmark for the assessment of humans by God’s moral standard. He thus could challenge people to seek first God’s kingdom and to do God’s will (Matt. 6:33, 7:21), while assuming that he himself shows how this is to be done (Mark 14:36). The latter assumption underlies his frequent injunction “Come, follow me.” The initial aim of Jesus, as God’s special emissary, was to draw all of national Israel to reconciliation with God. His best portrait of God as seeking reconciliation with humans is the parable of the prodigal son. God is represented by a father who shows profound forgiveness to his two sons, even though they have opposed his ways. Here is the father’s reconciliatory approach of mercy to one returning son: While [the son] was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” But the father said to his slaves, “Quickly, bring out a robe –​the best one –​and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!” And they began to celebrate. (Luke 15:20–​24) Jesus portrayed God as seeking reconciliation with all of Israel, but the scope of his movement became broader, going beyond Israel, in the face of resistance from national leaders (see Matt. 21:43; cf. Acts 11:16–​18). The breadth of the divine redemptive effort is captured by John’s Gospel: “God so loved the world…” (John 3:16). Despite deep skepticism about the Gospels’ portrait of Jesus, Rudolf Bultmann (1951, vol. 1: 43) has captured the relevant evidence as follows: In his lifetime [Jesus] had demanded decision for his person as the bearer of the Word [of God] […] It does imply a christology which will unfold the implications of the positive answer to his demand for the decision, the obedience response which acknowledges God’s revelation in Jesus. When Jesus raises his self-​referential question about me, by asking who I take him to be, he aims to put me in a morally defined I–​Thou context, in relation to him and God. As I stand before Jesus and his question, facing his moral character and responding from my moral character and perspective, what is my assessment of him (and thereby of God, whom he represents)? The moral contrast between Jesus and me, including our relative moral proximity to God, is striking, so striking that I might be inclined to question my own moral reality, propriety, and authority instead of his. Certainly, it would be misguided for me to assume my moral superiority over Jesus, particularly in relation to his God of righteous love. Jesus raised a moral challenge to a person in his response to a rich man inquiring of him how to get eternal life. He directed the man to obey God’s commandments and, given his wealth, to sell his possessions. He then added: “Come, follow me” (Mark 10:21; cf. Matt. 19:21, Luke 18:22). Jesus thought of himself as the human model or norm for obeying and pleasing God. He offered himself as the human measure for how humans are to relate to God, as suggested by his recurring command 118

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“Come, follow me.” His question, then, raises the issue of how I fare in relation to him as the human measure for relating to God. So, the self-​referential question from Jesus is no matter of mere information or intellectual reflection. It should lead to vital reflection on my relation to God from a morally relevant perspective that bears on my actions, attitudes, and thoughts. Divine redemptive friendship calls for such moral reflection, given God’s perfect moral character and its central role in such friendship. The question of Jesus’s purpose in the self-​referential feature of inquiry about him sheds light on two matters: who Jesus considered himself to be, and who an inquirer is in relation to Jesus and God. Jesus considered himself called by God to challenge people with the coming to them of God’s kingdom as a divine reign, in a way that invites a response, a decision, from each of them. Part of this challenge included his showing, in actions and words, who God is, as a righteous and loving Father. He did not allow for a response by proxy, as if someone else could respond for me to the message of God’s coming kingdom. Given the self-​referential feature of suitable inquiry about Jesus, I am challenged to allow myself to be confronted by the message of Jesus and thus by its reported source: namely, God as a morally powerful agent. This approach to inquiry differs from an examination of mere conduct or teachings from history. It brings the inquirer into the current focus of inquiry and assessment. Jesus thought of it as the assessment of inquirers by God (and himself), with regard to the fitness of inquirers for the kingdom of God. He thus thought of himself as God’s authoritative inquirer for the divine kingdom, including for human suitability for entering it. Jesus’s question for an inquirer, say me, prompts me to reflect not only on my understanding of who Jesus is, but also on my motives and values in inquiring about him and the God he represents. What do I aim to do with my information about who Jesus is, and what do I value in my inquiry about him? Do I aim to use my information in a manner guided by the redemptive purpose of Jesus in relating to humans? Or, do I have an aim contrary to his purpose? If so, what motivates my contrary aim, and is it suitably grounded in reality rather than in a misrepresentation of reality or of Jesus? In addition, does any contrary aim of mine block me from appropriating salient evidence regarding Jesus and God? Such questions are, at least, about me as an inquirer about Jesus and God. Challenging questions about me abound. In facing Jesus’s question about an inquirer, such as me, do I allow myself to be revealed to myself, particularly regarding how I stand, morally and otherwise, in relation to Jesus and God? Do I allow Jesus’s question of me to become a mirror of self-​reflection where I can be compared to the normative standard set by his (and God’s) moral character, including his obeying God? If so, do I allow myself to be morally convicted, forgiven, reconciled, and befriended by him? If I allow myself to be searched and known by God, I may able to experience firsthand who Jesus and God really are, and what their main redemptive purpose is. Otherwise, I may block such firsthand evidence for myself, including firsthand evidence of God’s moral goodness, authority, and power. I then may fail to apprehend Jesus’s moral authority in being God’s unique representative for humans, including myself. We find confirmation of Jesus’s self-​referential approach for us in his response to a question about his authority. His response came after his judgment on certain temple practices. He proceeds obliquely: “Jesus said to them, ‘I will ask you one question; answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin? Answer me’ ” (Mark 11:29–​30; cf. Matt. 21:24–​25, Luke 20:3–​4). His inquirers chose to plead ignorance, having been challenged to reflect on their own attitudes regarding the spokesman from God who had introduced Jesus as a superior representative. Jesus thought of John the Baptist as an Elijah-​ like prophet commissioned by God to be his forerunner (see Matt. 11:7–​15, Mark 9:11–​13.) We thus see Jesus aiming for moral self-​reflection from inquirers, in relation to God’s redemptive purpose for them, but receiving resistance from them. Inquiry about him, then, can become a moral challenge and clash for inquirers in relation to God. 119

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If we omit the self-​referential feature in question, we may be inquiring not about the real Jesus, but instead about a more convenient object of our own preference. Much inquiry about Jesus, inside and outside the academic world, seems to have such a defect, and it can lead to a distorted, morally impotent Jesus in our inquiry. In contrast, we shall hold together our inquiry about Jesus and his (and God’s) inquiry about us as inquirers, thus avoiding a typical one-​sided approach to inquiry about him. This typical approach, including any resulting bias in inquiry, is challenged by a standard set by Jesus the inquirer who represents God. A direct I-​Thou confrontation with God’s human norm and with God would have a redemptive purpose toward reconciliation in friendship: to have people receive a unique redemptive gift from God, the gift of God’s perfect guiding will in their experience. Morally imperfect humans would not be in a position to earn such a gift, but receiving it would present them with the personal and intentional moral power of God in God’s redemptive will. God’s will thus would come as a moral challenge as well as a moral gift. It would include confrontation not just with an idea, but with an intentional agent with intentional power, that is, a living agent with moral purposes and the moral power to challenge and to lead a person toward the moral goodness of God’s character. Our cooperative redemption by God, in interpersonal reconciliation to God, would require our considering human motivation agreeable to God’s perfect will and character. For instance, human motivation by a hateful or grudging attitude toward God would be misplaced. Our direct awareness of God’s perfect redemptive will and character would serve well, because this perfect will would display the kind of motivation suited to God. In meeting firsthand with this will in our direct experience, we would go beyond mere talk of a perfectly good will that is just theoretical, reflective, or speculative. We then would have an experiential basis for our talk and reflection about this will. The will of a redemptive God would challenge us in our direct experience, and the challenge would be for us willingly to conform to it. It also would be a gift in our experience, because it would offer us invaluable, needed guidance by God for our moral lives. Even so, this challenging gift would not coerce our will to conform to it. Instead, it would nudge us, at God’s preferred time, toward God’s character, but it would allow for our suppressing and rejecting the nudge. God’s will, then, would not extinguish our personal agency. It thus would allow for a genuine interpersonal interaction and relationship between a human and God. The relationship could become a redemptive friendship by including a divine–​human alliance in mutual care for the sake of human redemption by God. God would seek to have us guided by the divine will as a gift and a challenge as we willingly value it, beyond our merely experiencing it or reflecting on it. In willingly valuing it, we would become suited, in our own will, to conform to God’s will, and we thus would allow ourselves to be befriended by God. If we do not value God’s perfect will, we will not welcome it or God’s redemptive friendship stemming from it. In that case, we would not value God, and we would, in effect, opt out of friendship with God. God’s redemptive effort thus would seek opportunities for befriending people who will value God’s perfect will. Our decision to opt out would frustrate God’s redemptive will. In failing to value God’s perfect will, I would obstruct myself from not only appreciating but also apprehending firsthand its value and the reality of what it intends: my cooperating with God in redemptive friendship. In fact, God would withhold salient self-​revealing of the divine redemptive will from humans who fail to value it. Otherwise, people would tend toward, or at least be at risk of, deeper alienation from God, in facing God’s will without valuing it. Such divine withholding of self-​revealing is suggested by Jesus’s statement of the purpose for his use of parables (see Luke 8:9–​15; cf. Luke 10:21–​22).4 Measuring ourselves by the standard of the moral character of Jesus and God can occur in our moral conscience, and it can present a sharp contrast between our moral character and theirs. On this basis, we can be challenged, by way of contrast with the presentation of divine goodness, in our moral shortcoming before Jesus and before the God he represents. For instance, my attitude toward my enemies often conflicts with God’s love toward them, and that love can challenge me in conscience. If we willingly receive the divine moral challenge for us, we can become convicted before God. Such 120

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conviction by God would call for our cooperation with God, but it would not be self-​conviction. It would come from an intentional source morally superior to us, and it would convict us toward divine righteousness, and not just against our unrighteousness (cf. John 16:8–​11). We should expect God to seek our willing, uncoerced moral conviction, because it would figure importantly in human redemption as volitional reconciliation to God.The divine aim, being redemptive, would be for our motivated or agreeable commitment to God and God’s redemptive purpose. So, the consideration of how we are best motivated by God would arise. Helmut Thielicke (1977, vol. 2: 349–​51) has remarked on the motivational importance of interpersonal confrontation: What Jesus is saying is that I want [people] to confront me […] I want the decision to be made in relation to my person […] Mere telling [of a message] which does not lead to involved confrontation with [the person at] the center of the message engenders empty dogmatic formulae and the pseudo-​faith which is conventionally called a purely historical faith or fides quae creditur in distinction from fides qua creditur, i.e., belief in distinction from faith […] [So,] Jesus does not use the title “Messiah” or “Christ” to define his person and mission but handles it socratically, leaving it ambiguous and thus maieutically triggering the question of his person [for inquirers]. We have noted Jesus’s raising “the question of his person” at Caesarea Philippi, and we have noted its self-​referential application for inquirers of him. Aiming to elicit the proper human motivation of faith and love toward God, Jesus sought faith and love as trust and caring toward God that go beyond mere historical belief regarding God and himself. Such trust and caring would be sought by a God who aims to lead people willingly, in redemptive friendship, toward an improved moral character and its corresponding conduct for a divine kingdom. God thus would care about the motive behind one’s affirmations regarding God and Jesus, given the bearing of motive on goodness in the formation of moral character. A motive of agreeable resolve toward trusting and loving God and Jesus would benefit one’s enduring in faith and love toward them when opposition arises. It also would contribute to a kind of personally involved responsibility and ownership in one’s commitment toward God and Jesus. The moral gravity of Jesus as inquirer of us indicates that he is not after a parlor game, a spectator sport, or a merely intellectual puzzle. His self-​referential question puts my moral inadequacy and my corresponding discernment under question relative to him and God, in a way that can remove bias or prejudice in my inquiry. Nonetheless, as suggested, an interpersonal meeting with God would be partly up to me, as I could reject being in God’s presence in a morally challenging way. I could refuse the divine moral challenge, such as when I suppress the workings of my conscience or choose to be distracted by something else (including merely intellectual endeavors). My knowing the challenge (of me) by God’s moral character represented by Jesus requires a kind of ethical knowing that acknowledges the contrast between God’s moral character and my own, given my moral shortcomings and failures. This can be the beginning of a kind of repentance, or cooperative turning, toward God in a willing change of my moral direction and purpose. The self-​referential application of the question from Jesus leads to another decisive question: Whose question takes priority: Jesus’s question of me or my various questions regarding him? Who has authority in this area? This is a matter of lordship, and our approach to it will reveal what, or who, has lordship for us in this area. We often think of our questions as morally neutral, but they are actually morally revealing about us and our priorities. They show what we value in inquiry, and often in what order of priority. If Jesus has moral authority for us, his morally relevant questions should be acknowledged for their priority relative to our questions of him. Inquirers, in any case, will decide about the moral authority of Jesus for them in how they approach the self-​referential question from Jesus relative to their own questions. In doing so, inquirers should consider that God and Jesus could 121

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self-​reveal to them commensurate with how those inquirers respond, in terms of their cooperative self-​revealing to God (in comparing themselves to the moral character of Jesus and God). This would include their allowing themselves to be “known by God,” in the language of the apostle Paul (Gal. 4:9, 1 Cor. 8:3). Jesus raised the question “Who do you say that I am?” not just to get my answer, but also to prepare his audience for his own answer that reveals his ultimate purpose. That purpose is to set his mind, with active cooperation, on “the things of God,” in particular, God’s redemptive will for him as God’s special emissary seeking the reconciliation of humans to God. By this standard, a purposive understanding of who Jesus is relates Jesus to God as one who supremely commits himself to God’s redemptive purpose for him and challenges other humans to do the same. We need to consider how such a purpose could be disclosed to us in a redemptive manner.

Purpose Disclosed A person is inherently a conscious intentional agent who aims or wills to satisfy a purpose or goal. This purpose is sought or pursued by the person, for its being satisfied, actualized, or realized. The person thus has settled on a purpose with a volitional resolve or commitment that goes beyond thought, belief, or desire. (For instance, I do not simply think, believe, or desire that I write this paragraph as I intend to write it.) Willing to act by a person is central to being a person; without it, we do not have a person (even if we have a human body), and we do not have a personal agent influencing human history. Understanding who a person is, then, will include understanding intentions or purposes of that person. A person’s purposes contribute to who that person is and seeks to be, in satisfying those purposes. The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, presents the following as its first definition of the noun “purpose”:“That which a person sets out to do or attain; an object in view; a determined intention or aim.” One’s “setting out” to do something includes one’s settling on doing it, one’s resolving or willing to do it. The “object in view” is what one aims or intends to bring about, to actualize, as a goal. So, this is not just one’s thinking, believing, or desiring regarding something, such as a merely intellectual plan; instead, it includes one’s willing to actualize an outcome. Whatever persons are, they are not mere processes or mere things. Their purposes distinguish them from such processes or things, and purposes are central to the caring alliances necessary for friendships. Persons have a distinctive kind of goal-​directedness lacking in mere processes or things. They thus are intentional agents irreducible to mere events. They have distinctive power to act, to implement a will toward a goal.This is intentional power, and it is foreign to the world of mere processes or things. Mere causal power can be found among mere processes or things, but intentional power is not mere causal power. Instead, intentional power is causal power directed or guided toward a goal. The world of mere processes or things does not exercise such power, whatever else it exhibits. Some intentional powers are positive moral virtues and others are not. For instance, the intentional power to love a person unselfishly for that person’s good is a positive moral virtue, but the intentional power to hate a person is not. From a moral point of view, the power to hate, as aiming to harm an undeserving person, contradicts morally virtuous power, which aims to bring about what is morally good for persons. So, intentional power that makes one a person need not be morally virtuous, and it can be immoral. Our understanding Jesus as a person requires our having a purposive description of who he is. The needed description will identify purposes that guide his thinking and his behaving, and it thus will entail that he is not a merely physical process or thing. It will characterize him as a psychological agent with purposive features irreducible to physical features. We thus will be told what Jesus aimed to accomplish in his earthly mission. In doing so, it will identify some of his goals for his life. This will make some sense of who he is as a person in relation to his ends.

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We now can identify a method for inquiry about who Jesus is, a method of “knowing on purpose” that attends to his identifiable main purposes. It seeks a distinctive kind of knowledge of a person on the basis of identified purposes of that person. This method isolates and assesses our available evidence for the ultimate and the instrumental purposes of Jesus. It relies on abduction as a best available explanation of our overall experience and resulting evidence to isolate which claims about Jesus and his main purposes are credible relative to that evidence.5 Those claims that figure in a best overall explanation relative to our overall experience accrue a positive epistemic status, in the absence of defeaters. According to our best available explanation, Jesus’s ultimate purpose is to please God from wholehearted love of God and thereby to love and benefit other humans (Mark 12:30–​31).This purpose underwrites his aim to fulfill his redemptive mission from God. The redemptive purposes of Jesus identifiable in the New Testament can play a role in saving us from what we may call “the excess of a third-​person perspective” in inquiry about Jesus. This excess would leave Jesus as a mere historical object, an object merely talked about in the third person, without purpose-​oriented confrontation with an inquirer. According to Paul, however, the risen Jesus “became a life-​giving spirit” at his resurrection (1 Cor. 15:45), and thus he can work now, and even be met now, in human experience.6 His self-​referential question of us can be an opportunity now for an I–​Thou confrontation challenging and convicting us to turn to God for the redemptive purpose of reconciliation.The key issue becomes: do some humans actually confront Jesus at times in his redemptive question and message, perhaps via their conscience? If so, are they willingly convicted by him and his main purpose to conform to God’s redemptive will? These two questions raise two more questions for us bearing on whether we would cooperate with a redemptive disclosure from God and Jesus. First, are we willing to receive a redemptively significant question from God and Jesus about our response to them? Second, are we willing to accept a challenge to follow Jesus as the human norm for God? Our questions resist easy answers from us for two reasons.The first reason is that the self-​referential question from Jesus leads to a demanding standard for a cooperative response: “taking up one’s cross” to follow Jesus in redemptive obedience to God (Mark 8:34). This is no casual, merely intellectual means of cooperative response; instead, it calls for one’s life being committed to God. The second reason is that a cooperative response demands wholehearted commitment to God, in keeping with the commitment of Jesus to God, as expressed in his primary command to love God fully. These demanding expectations can prompt us not to welcome a confrontation with God or Jesus and even to try to avoid it, especially if we prefer to opt out by being mere spectators without a divine moral challenge. As a result, we could direct our attention elsewhere, to less demanding matters. In that case, we would raise an obstacle to our being confronted by God or Jesus. H.R. Mackintosh (1912: 33) has identified how Jesus could function as more than a merely historical object of our inquiry. Is he more than a dead Jew, who perished about 30 A.D.? Now, when we look away from books to actual life, we discover that Christ remains past only as long as he is not faced in the light of conscience. So long as we bring into play our intellect merely, or the reconstructive fancy of the historian, he is still far off […] The change comes when we take up the moral issue. If we turn to him as people keen to gain the righteous, overcoming life, but conscious so far of failure, instantly he steps forward out of the page of history, a tremendous and exacting reality. We cannot read his greatest words, whether of command or promise, without feeling, as it has been put, that “He not only said these things to people in Palestine, but is saying them to ourselves now.” He gets home to our conscience in so direct a fashion […] that we feel and touch him as a present fact. Mackintosh has in mind a moral (including volitional) rather than a sensory kind of “feel and touch,” in keeping with the moral character of Jesus. It is a volitional confrontation between my will and the 123

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will of Jesus. Since the main purpose of Jesus is morally redemptive, he aims to be known for who he truly is via our moral experience, discernment, and practice suited to moral redemption reflective of his moral character. If we omit this moral character, we omit who Jesus truly is, even if we identify a range of historical facts about him. In any case, we lack evidence of coercion in the intervention of Jesus in our moral experience. Instead, we have evidence of our being able to block such intervention, such as when a person blocks divine goodness from conscience. Jesus is morally demanding because he presents himself as not just the moral inquirer for God but also as the moral advocate for God. This role of moral advocacy is central to his function as the “life-​g iving spirit” for God. A decisive question about Jesus is thus about his current moral access to an inquirer: am I willing to let him into my moral conscience in a way that makes him Lord of my moral life? His self-​referential question for inquirers leads to that question about my basis for moral decision-​making. Is he the basis, or does something else serve this role? In deciding, on the basis of my overall evidence, I take responsibility and ownership regarding what has moral authority for me. So, coercion of my decision would be out of place. My ability and evidence allow me, causally, to turn away from the divine challenge, just as the rich man turned away from Jesus. Otherwise, we would have a morally inadequate story of coercion rather than genuine moral responsibility. My own decision has an ineliminable role in the prospect of redemptive friendship with God, and my unwilling disposition may prompt divine hiding of self-​revelation to me until I become cooperative. So, the final question becomes: who do I decide to become relative to divine goodness? My answer can come from my response to the self-​referential question from Jesus: who do I say that he is? We thus go beyond mere history to our own current decisions and lives, for better or worse. In that case, the historical Jesus could emerge as no longer merely historical. If we are willing to consider him with due moral sincerity, he could loom large in our moral lives, including in a volitional alliance of redemptive friendship, at least as one who in our conscience inquires of us on behalf of God while advocating for God. Apart from our allowing his redemptive role in our moral experience and in divine–​human friendship, he may become hidden from us, to save us from harmful distortion of him and premature opposition to him. In any case, each inquirer is responsible for examining his or her own relevant evidence in moral experience. The remaining issue is whether we are willing sincerely to consider and to cooperate with a divine intervention in our moral experience and a volitional alliance of redemptive friendship. Each of us has a self-​referential question to answer here, courtesy of Jesus as God’s inquirer of us. Moral experience is the suitable ground, because it can directly reveal God, including God’s unique moral character, and thus offer God as our ultimate authority underlying any dependent authority. We have no better authority on offer, but our appropriation of such divine value calls for our moral cooperation in divine–​human friendship, in the manner exemplified by Jesus in his actions, teachings, and questions. We will not run out of worthwhile work on this challenging front, and that is arguably for our redemptive good, perhaps even in divine–​human friendship.7

Related Chapters Aristotle on the Nature and Value of Friendship; The Stoics and Augustine on Friendship; Kantian Friendship

Notes 1 For criticism of a priori exclusion of what is supernatural from history by various New Testament scholars, see (Meyer 1979: chap. 2). 2 On the historical basis of the exchange between Jesus and Peter at Caesarea Philippi, see (Davies and Allison 1991, 2: 602–​23). 3 On the historical basis of the latter verse from Matthew, see (Davies and Allison 1991, 2: 271–​97. 4 For discussion of this topic, see (Moser 2021: chap. 5).

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God and Redemptive Friendship 5 For details on abduction oriented to experience, see (Moser 1989), and (Moser 2020: chaps. 7–​8). For misgivings about some familiar alternative standards for historical authenticity, see (Allison 2011). 6 See (Dunn 1998). 7 For helpful comments, I thank Diane Jeske, Aeva Munro, Ben Nasmith, and Clinton Neptune.

References Allison, Dale C. Jr. 2011. “How to Marginalize the Traditional Criteria of Authenticity.” In Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus, edited by Tom Holmen and S.E. Porter,Vol. 1: 3–​30. Leiden: Brill. Bultmann, Rudolf. 1951. Theology of the New Testament. Translated by Kendrick Grobel. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Davies, W.D., and Dale C. Allison Jr. 1991. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew. Edinburgh: T&T Clark. Dunn, James D.G. 1998. “The Spirit of Jesus.” In The Christ and the Spirit, Vol. 2: 338–​41. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Mackintosh, H.R. 1912. The Person of Jesus Christ. London: SCM Press. Meyer, Ben. 1979. The Aims of Jesus. London: SCM Press. Moser, Paul K. 1989. Knowledge and Evidence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moser, Paul K. 2020. Understanding Religious Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moser, Paul K. 2021. The Divine Goodness of Jesus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sanders, E.P. 1993. The Historical Figure of Jesus. London: Penguin. Thielicke, Helmut. 1977. The Evangelical Faith. Translated by G.W. Bromiley. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.

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11 FRIENDSHIP AND CITIZENSHIP Jonathan Seglow

1.  On Friendship For readers of this volume’s chapters that reflect on the nature and value of friendship, it might seem surprising to consider that citizenship might be like friendship in some salient way. Friendship relationships are personal, immediate, and open-​ended, while citizenship is public, impersonal, and institutional: the rights and obligations it articulates are codified in the hard facts of law. More instrumental accounts of friendship (Badhwar 1993: 3), which locate one friend’s value to another in her serving some ulterior end such as business advantage, still retain a good portion of the mutual goodwill and enjoyment that characterizes more companionate friendship. Citizens, by contrast, are generally anonymous to one another. Even readers familiar with Aristotle’s influential account of civic friendship might consider his view archaic in today’s heterogeneous world. In fact, however, a broadly Aristotelian view has been the subject of renewed interest in recent years as a source of inspiration for normative reflection on civic friendship’s value and potential. I review contemporary civic friendship in the latter part of this chapter (section 5). Before that, I introduce the concept of citizenship (section 2), explore the disanalogies but also analogies between it and personal friendship (section 3), and outline a variety of ways we could bring the two ideas into contact (section 4). Before all that, I very briefly sketch an (I hope) uncontroversial view of friendship as we understand it today –​not necessarily in Aristotle’s time. This will serve as the locus for comparing it with citizenship. Though friendship’s conceptual morphology is fluid and remolded in changing contexts and cultures, the following features nonetheless seem central to it. First, friendship is a relationship that individuals freely enter into; if consent in a single voluntaristic act is a misdescription, it remains true that individuals become friends through a myriad of choices, shaped by circumstances such as being neighbors or working on a common project. We speak of finding, discovering, or making a friend, testifying to a friendship’s ultimate dependency on an individual’s will. Conversely, friends can drift apart due to some combination of choice and circumstance; and friendships can be abruptly terminated when friends fall out. Second, friends demonstrate care and concern for one another, and a friend is responsive to her friend’s needs, interests, and aims. An individual supports her friend who faces challenges; consoles her in times of crisis; shares her joy in achievements and good fortune, and so on. This concern is rooted in the value each friend places on her friend’s character and qualities; her concern is a response to that positive appraisal. Part of friendship’s value, moreover, arises from the secure mutuality of the 126

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good will that friends demonstrate to one another; each friend cares for the other in the knowledge that her friend cares for her. The third feature of friendship is the knowledge and understanding each friend has of her friend’s qualities, character, background, needs, interests, and the like. Several writers have drawn attention to the intimacy that characterizes friendship where friends attend to private information about each other’s inner lives (e.g.,Thomas 1993: 54–​5; Jeske 1998: 538–​41; Seglow 2013: 98–​104).Your response to those secrets your friend chooses to share with you can be a significant source of self-​knowledge too. Especially when mutual, this disclosure tends to replenish the bonds of friends’ good will, and is a source (and instance) of mutual trust. Less emotionally close acquaintance friendships are not marked by such intimate disclosure, however, though these friends usually enjoy greater knowledge of each other’s character than others. Finally, friends engage in shared activities with one another that form much of the medium and substance of their particular friendship. Friends eat, walk, drink, party, play sports, watch movies together, and so on, in ways that they typically co-​orchestrate. Given the mutual concern at the center of friendship, friends are typically attentive to each other’s input into shared activities; each friend’s judgment on them has a salient importance above participants’ judgments in common experiences between those who are not friends. A person’s attempt unliterally to direct her friend to her own interests without accounting for her friend’s perspective generally detracts from the value of their friendship. I say “generally,” but not invariably: some master–​apprentice-​type relationships may still bring forth friendly feelings. In sum, friendship is voluntary, characterized by mutual concern and mutual understanding, and its substance constituted by shared activities.

2.  On Citizenship In characterizing the ideal of citizenship, it makes sense to begin by contrasting it with the notion of subjecthood, where whatever rights and freedoms inhabitants of a territory enjoy are granted to them by a superior authority (such as a monarch or colonial power) at the latter’s discretion. As subjects, they are dominated, at the mercy of the political authority’s potential interference in their liberty. Citizens, by contrast, ultimately rule themselves, even if through representative institutions; they have a say over their rights and interests. Citizenship involves democratic voice. Admittedly, this is a stipulative definition. Inhabitants of undemocratic states such as China are clearly citizens in the more minimal sense that they have a legal status codified in some civil rights. One recent study claims that citizenship is a so-​called essentially contested concept: the normative criteria that inform its definition will be forever debated (Cohen and Ghosh 2019: 16–​17). That said, my stipulative view is familiar to those of us living in liberal democracies today. On this account, citizens enjoy civil rights (to property, a fair trial, and freedom from arbitrary arrest, for instance) and also democratic political ones including rights of speech, association, assembly, and the right to vote. Further, contemporary citizens possess social and economic rights such as education, welfare, and healthcare. All such rights are claimed (vertically) from the state by citizens, yet they can also be conceptualized horizontally as what citizens claim from one another. Democratic rights help ensure that the practice of citizenship does not reflect the power of a dominant group. This implies too that the democratic dimension of citizenship is undergirded by some principle of equality among citizens. Clearly citizens’ obligations involve respecting one another’s rights; this includes some positive acts such as paying one’s taxes, reporting information to officials, serving on juries, fulfilling military conscription, ensuring one’s children are educated, and so on. Besides its legal duties, citizenship plausibly includes significant other responsibilities, such as treating fellow citizens with civility whatever their background; looking out for one’s neighbors; practising environmental responsibility; making an economic contribution through paid or unpaid labor such as caregiving, voting, and other forms of political participation; and instilling in one’s children the responsibilities, norms, and rights of citizenship. This is a demanding 127

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list; moreover, some of these responsibilities could be legally mandated. But the duties and responsibilities of citizens animate and give substance to their citizenship –​“citizens make citizenship through citizenly actions,” as Cohen and Ghosh put it (2019: 19; emphasis in original). Citizenship’s potentially demanding nature can burden individuals’ own projects –​familial, professional, religious, and so on. The impartiality that, qua citizen, each citizen ought to demonstrate toward each other can conflict with these partial attachments (think of parents who wish to enroll their children into a strict religious orthodoxy, for example). This raises the critical issue of citizens’ motivations to meet citizenship’s responsibilities, given their other legitimate ends. At this point, it is useful to introduce three overarching perspectives on citizenship, though in sketching them here we are hugely oversimplifying a complex and long-​standing set of debates. First, then, on the liberal model, citizens’ freedoms to pursue their own aims are the center of normative concern. While citizenly activity is admirable, there should be maximal space for citizens to explore their own concerns. The liberal model makes sense in plural societies with multiple values and ways of life –​which characterizes many liberal democracies today. In meeting those civic responsibilities, citizens are motivated principally by a conception for fellow citizens as free and equal rights-​bearers like themselves, to whom they owe civility and tolerance. To be sure, those rights are entitlements of a particular state’s citizenship; they are more generous than the basic human rights which all persons enjoy, while also giving substantive content to them. Nonetheless, the motivational basis for citizens’ obligations is relatively spare on the liberal model. The second, civic republican, model is skeptical that rights-​based liberalism will deliver a sufficiently compelling motivational basis for citizens to meet their civic demands. It fears that citizens’ other attachments may be more persuasive, eroding the motivations for citizens to meet their civic responsibilities. Civic republicans argue for a more ambitious view of the good of citizenship: the ideal of active democratic participation by and for citizens themselves (Honohan 2002). In giving greater substance to the core democratic ideal of ruling and being ruled, the civic republican approach urges citizens’ political participation at all levels, local, state, and in between, and it usually seeks to devolve political authority where possible. It commends too citizens’ engagement in civic associational life –​political parties, social movements, trade unions, churches, neighborhood organizations, and so on –​some of which have a role in civic governance. The ideal of citizens’ equal status has a stronger rendering on the civic republican view than the liberal approach since it consists in active political engagement between equal participants. This means, however, that the civic republican model appears paradoxical. Is not the participation it urges far more demanding than the liberal rights-​based view that civic republicans criticized for having insufficient motivational support? That is indeed a familiar charge made by liberals. But the civic republican view is that democratic participation, where successful, is itself a stimulus for citizens to assume their civic responsibilities because of the identification they thereby generate with their political society. Civic participation not only expresses the ideal of a democratic association between free and equal persons, it galvanizes citizens to realize it too because of the active identity they thereby forge as fellow members of the polity. Despite this bootstrapping account, liberals remain skeptical of the politicization of society they see the civic republican view as commending, given citizens’ diverse individual aims. Too ambitious, and democratic participation becomes another contestable outlook, competing with others in plural societies. The third approach is the communitarian one. It locates citizens’ reasons for meeting their civic responsibilities in the bonds of nationality, culture, language, and possibly even religion that defines their political community’s character. Such bonds not only unite the current generation of citizens, they have a temporal depth that ties them to their shared history and projected future. Loyalty to the past is a central theme. A philosophical strand of the communitarian approach claims that the rights-​ bearing liberal individual is too abstract and empty to give content to individuals’ political and other identities (Sandel 1982). But even that aside, communitarians all urge conceptualizing political identities through the values, ideals, norms, beliefs, traditions, and practices of citizens’ nationhood, culture, language, and so on. On the communitarian view, it is just these shared bonds that create among 128

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citizens a sense of co-​membership of a strong political community, and motivates them to meet their civic responsibilities. (Regarding these bonds and ties more as civically manufactured than inherited from the past shows an area of dialogue between communitarians and civic republicans (see Miller 2000)). From the liberal perspective, there are powerful objections to the communitarian approach. First, the appeal to an antecedent national or cultural identity is too static, and undermines citizens’ reasons to review, revise, and even reject the culture they inherit from the past. Second, shared nationality and culture again describe a contestable form of life that many individual citizens have reason to reject. Their norms and values may threaten individual liberty. Third, the appeal to nationality, language, and culture is unjustifiably exclusionary for immigrants and minority ethnic and religious communities, indigenous peoples, and other groups on the margins. As I suggested, liberalism, civic republicanism, and communitarianism can each be articulated in numerous ways and combined with one another to form hybrids too. There is also, clearly, more we could say about citizenship, such as its disaggregation in multinational institutions like the European Union, special rights for cultural minorities, and its acquisition by non-​citizen residents.The sketches above simply provide some points of orientation for what follows.

3.  Analogies and Disanalogies Citizenship and friendship are obviously quite different phenomena. Friendship is freely initiated and the choice of a friend informs the value of any friendship. Citizenship is standardly acquired at birth and difficult to renounce. Unlike friendship, it is as an institutional relationship that precedes, succeeds, and surrounds any individual citizen’s life. Friendship relationships are intimate and tangible; the relationship between millions of co-​citizens is largely anonymous, abstract, and impersonal. Citizens qua citizens lack the understanding of another individual’s character and concerns in all the depth and detail that friends enjoy; knowledge of a society’s history, culture, traditions, and so on is hardly equivalent (it may be acquired by non-​citizens too). Citizens do not demonstrate care and attentiveness to one another, or exchange private information, or desire to spend time with one another, or love one another as friends do. Many civic responsibilities are legally codified and enforced in a way friends’ ones are not (if they owe duties at all). Friends may challenge each another, but they lack the authority to mete out punishments in cases of wrongdoing; arguably possessing such standing would be antithetical to friendship. Friends tend to share a common outlook, while citizens have more divergent convictions (albeit they must share some values –​especially on the communitarian view –​for citizenship to fulfill its political role). Citizens remain subject to the legal and political authority of the state that frames and regulates their input into their relationship in ways not paralleled for friends. In sum, friends have reason to value the freedom to form friendships, the intimacy and shared outlooks they consist in, and in being affirmed as an individual by someone who knows them well. Friends can often drop their social masks and be themselves away from demanding roles such as colleague, or associate –​“often” because friendships may be commingled with these roles. Conversely, citizens have reason to value the guarantees of their civic rights and entitlements; the right to welfare, for instance, forestalls relying on charity from family or neighbors. There is reassurance too in the enforcement of the criminal law being outsourced to a higher authority. Citizens value the freedom liberal democratic citizenship gives them to follow their own ends; their relative immunity from others’ moralizing judgments compared to friends’; and the liberal state’s (albeit not always successful) commitment to impartiality so that jobs, business deals, university places, legal protection, and so on do not depend on rank or favoritism. Besides these obvious differences, however, there are also analogies, some less visible. I mention five that we shall return to in exploring civic friendship in section 5. First, then, I suggest that friendship and citizenship are analogous as status-​based forms of equality (cf. Schwarzenbach 2005: 234; Schwarzenbach 2009: 72–​3; cf. Seglow 2013: 139–​48): parties’ mutual 129

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recognition of one another’s standing in the context of the relationship they share. On the stipulative definition of democratic citizenship, I drew attention to citizens’ equal civic rights, and responsibilities to meet them, and the value of approximate parity in collective decision-​making. Parallel to this, I maintained that friends recognize one other as co-​partners in some sense if they are to enjoy the shared experiences and mutual concern that characterize valuable friendship. While friends have different strengths and skills and commonly defer to each other in respective areas of expertise, status equality pushes against relationships where one friend instructs or orders the other, or expects acquiescence to and/or greater recognition of her interests across the board. Those would undermine the mutuality of their friendship. Second, both friendship and citizenship are characterized by collective acts and practices. I drew attention above to the shared activities constitutive of friendship. Citizens act with and for each other in an obviously more attenuated way because there are fewer such practices –​though the civic republican perspective urges more –​and citizens encounter only a small fraction of their fellow citizens. But there are examples. Participating in democratic elections is an obvious one. Community engagement such as work for a local charity is another. Wearing a mask during the COVID-​19 pandemic and getting vaccinated both have a significant other-​regarding dimension: they are what good citizens do alongside one another (if not quite together). Third, building on the latter two claims, both friends and fellow citizens steer their co-​relationship to some degree, each enjoying some input on its future course. I have suggested that it is substantially up to friends to shape their relationship, and friendship’s value is partially contingent on that. That is very roughly analogous to the democratic ideal where through formal elections, political movements, and broader attempts to influence the public political culture each citizen has the right –​exercised or not –​to an individual say. Civic republicans in particular will bemoan non-​exercised political rights, while communitarians may be more willing to see rights shaped by cultural norms and traditions. Fourth, both friendship and citizenship involve certain skills and capacities that must be fostered to sustain each relationship’s character and value (cf. Kahane 1999: 274–​6). In light of more self-​ centered motives, friendship involves empathy, care, concern, a willingness to understand –​and perhaps learn from –​one’s friend’s situation, and a preparedness to disclose more vulnerable parts of oneself –​some see the latter as central to friendship (e.g.,Thomas 1993). All these involve judgment and practice that nourishes the relevant skills. Somewhat analogously, good citizenship involves at least some understanding of citizens’ rights and responsibilities and one’s state’s institutions, laws, and history. It also involves extending toleration and civility toward fellow citizens from different backgrounds, and a willingness to contribute to their interests on at least some occasions, even where that is burdensome. Fifth, both friends and citizens identify with one another in various ways that they typically value. As we have seen, friends identify with one another’s cares, commitments, ideals, and character. That mutual identification helps constitute their friendship and is a platform for the enjoyment of their shared experiences and desire to spend time together –​which in turn fuels their mutual identification. While differences can keep a friendship vital and active –​Aristotle’s claim that a friend is “a second self ” (EN 1166a1-​19) seems overstated –​too much divergence in outlook and a friendship cannot be sustained. On the communitarian view, citizens identify with one another through their shared history, nationality, and culture, which are all potential sources of pride. But liberals and civic republicans too recognize that citizenship needs mutual trust and solidarity to fulfill its functional roles.

4.  Points of Connection In a moment, we shall turn to the ideal of civic friendship in order to explore further the analogies between the nature, value, and motivational bases of our two ideas. Before that it is worth recording briefly some alternative points of connection that, unfortunately, there is not the space to investigate here. 130

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Although citizenship is unavoidable (for all but stateless people), there are individuals who have difficulty making and maintaining friendships, however much we normally consider it important for a flourishing life. Besides the analogical relationship, then, for some people citizenship may be a partial substitute for emotionally close friendships. This could be true especially on the civic republican approach, which urges civic engagement, and the communitarian one, which emphasizes blood and belonging, though here it is really national identity that is the substitute, not citizenship as a legal status. From the liberal perspective nationalism carries the dangers of extremist movements where personal friendships tend to get submerged beneath collective, politicized ones –​think of militia groups in the US today, for example. But a liberal-​minded citizen could be an active participant in neighborly and associational life, thus partially making up for a relative paucity of intimate friendly and familial relationships. From another perspective, it is worth reflecting on the fact that that one’s fellow citizens largely form the pool of individuals from whom a person will come to choose her friends. Clearly, there are also non-​citizen residents, and in a globalized world people forge friendships across political boundaries, online, or through travel or emigration. But those caveats aside, it may matter a great deal for some individuals if their fellow citizens share characteristics that diverge markedly from those of potential friends (and partners). In a homogeneous, religiously conservative society, for example, it will matter to a minority religious adherent if others all follow the dominant religion, or she has an LGBTQ+​identity that is officially rejected and that few if any share. Alternatively, there may be structural social and economic reasons that frustrate flourishing interactions among potential friends. A disabled or elderly citizen may find it hard see friends if he lacks adequate transport opportunities and they live at a distance. A home-​schooled child prevented from mixing much by orthodox religious parents may fail to develop basic friendship skills or face stigma if she leaves her community. Transient individuals who traverse the country for work may have too short-​lived, slender connections in any place to form and maintain friendships there. There may be few clubs, parks, restaurants, entertainment centers, and so on in an area for people to meet and interact in a friendly way. All these kinds of circumstances are socially contingent and hence revisable by suitable laws, institutions, and policies that are a matter of political will (Digeser 2016: chap. 7). The social bases of personal friendship, in other words, are a matter of justice for citizens to determine in democratic states (Cordelli 2015). Finally, both friendship and citizenship are partial attachments, which thereby enjoy greater moral weight than what an individual owes to human beings as such. That is, of course, one further analogy. Not every philosopher thinks that friends owe special duties to one another (Wellman 2001; Jeske 2018), but they certainly have special reasons of concern. Similarly, while some philosophers maintain that citizens have special obligations to fellow citizens (e.g., Miller 2005), cosmopolitan-​minded thinkers reject this (e.g.,Tan 2004).They offer a revisionary view that attaches great significance to the equal importance of each individual’s interests, and often invoke too global connections such as economic trade or citizens’ subjection to coercive institutions on a world scale. But even cosmopolitans may have to argue that citizens owe derivative duties to one another or that compatriot duties have some ancillary role. In that case, it would be interesting to explore how these two sources of partiality are related. I suspect it has something to do with the status-​based equality common to both. It is also interesting to reflect on why, given their closeness, friends have special reasons of concern falling short of duties, while no one but the most radical cosmopolitan doubts that moral and legal duties obtain between fellow citizens, though it is a more detached and distant relationship than friendship.

5.  Civic Friendship The civic friendship tradition in political philosophy, inaugurated by Aristotle, looks to see friendship in citizenship; the idea is that the normative appeal of the former can be transposed to the latter. At its most general, civic friendship is the idea that citizens qua citizens recognize and value each other 131

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for that role; that this is demonstrated in the good will and concern they reciprocally express to one another; that they affirm norms of mutual support, inclusion, and civic mindedness; and that they put aside much self-​interest to accommodate their differences in a spirit of amity and co-​operation. As we will see, the civic friend sees other citizens’ interests as part of her own good in at least some way; and she is committed to working through those divergences that threaten the common interests of the polity. Civic friendship (like personal friendship) is active and participatory; it is an ideal realized through practice. In the Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle says that “friendship seems to hold states together,” and that “the truest form of justice is thought to be a friendly quality” (EN 1155a21-​28). In The Politics, he seems to go further, writing that “friendship we believe to be the greatest good of states” (Politics 1262b7). Aristotle classifies political friendship as a form of advantage friendship; it does not aim at the highest good like his virtue friendship. That does not mean it is instrumental, however. Unlike the later liberal individualist tradition, Aristotle believes we can only find our good within political communities; he does not see humans as self-​sufficient outside them. Civic friends are political partners who reciprocally wish each other well for each other’s sake. They are concerned for each other’s just and excellent character, expressed in part through the way each affirms the polity’s laws, norms, and customs. In that context it is worth remembering that in ancient Greek city-​states, a far greater proportion of citizens would know one another personally than today and our division between the public and private spheres was foreign to that era. Citizens as civic friends also affirm the constitution and its apportionment of honors and offices, and distribution of goods and responsibilities (Schwarzenbach 2005: 250; Kahane 1999: 273–​4). Also, good citizens are able and willing to assume their share of responsibility for democratic participation. In so doing, citizens recognized one another as political equals who ruled and ruled over each other in turn (unlike metics (resident foreigners), women, and slaves, to whom only the latter applies). Social, political, and economic justice –​at its core distribution proportionate to merit according to Aristotle –​imposes often burdensome duties, but for citizens who are mutually concerned, reciprocal equals, such burdens will be met willingly even at the cost to personal interests. This requires that inequalities of wealth and property among citizens should be constrained; such disparities would be unjust given citizens’ co-​parity and roughly comparable merit, and would breed ill will, undermining civic friendship. Hence justice underwrites civic friendship, but the attitudes of civic friendship make true justice possible as well. In willingly maintaining political institutions that disburse justice, the latter does not have to be imposed by a political authority from on high. Indeed, justice concerns citizens’ moral character too. In contrast to today’s pluralistic societies, then, Aristotle’s ideal polity coalesces around the trinity of justice, moral character, and civic participation. In a seminal discussion of Aristotelian civic friendship, John Cooper remarks that in cities we find a general concern on the part of those living under the constitution of a city and participating in its civic life for the moral characters of all those similarly engaged […] a concern of each citizen for each other citizen. Cooper, 1993: 314 That is intrusive by contemporary liberal standards. Bentley regards civic friends scrutinizing each other’s ethical conduct as “a strange and unappealing basis for civic friendship” (Bentley 2013: 14). Others have doubted whether the affective emotional attachment between individual friends retains any resonance in the political domain: if not, then “civic” friendship is an unilluminating metaphor (Healy 2011; Hope 2013; Digeser 2016: 27). Citizens could be civic-​minded associates, but why friends in particular (Digeser 2016: 223–​4)? Attitudes of friendliness, Peter Digeser points out in his critique of the idea of civic friendship, do not suffice for a relationship of friendship –​one can be friendly toward strangers (2016: 113). That line of criticism, however, stems from friendship’s place in today’s private sphere (largely anyway –​there are acquaintance friends in workplaces and associations). But ancient 132

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Greece was a face-​to-​face political community; all friendships had an inevitable public dimension (Healy 2011: 236). It remains true, though, that Aristotelian civic friendship is demanding. Citizens only had the necessary time, energy, and resources because an army of women, slaves, and metics –​all ineligible for citizenship –​saved them from economic and domestic responsibilities (Schwarzenbach 2009: 227, 235). Sybil Schwarzenbach’s (1996; 2005; 2009) contemporary defense of civic friendship draws on Aristotle’s view –​with one distinctively non-​Aristotelian twist. In Schwarzenbach’s reading, Aristotelian personal friendship (philia) contains three elements, each of which is transfigurable to the ideal of political citizenship. First, “one of the distinguishing marks of friendship is wanting the other to be equal too” (Schwarzenbach 2005: 246 emphasis in original); the friend wants equality for her friend’s sake as well as her own. Analogous to that, civic friendship involves combating inequalities of wealth and power, which breed resentment among citizens, eroding their motives of mutual concern and the common purpose necessary for maintaining their political community. Conversely, citizens’ bonds of amity are weakened if they are perpetrators of injustice against other citizens (Schwarzenbach 2009: 127–​8). (It is noteworthy that the paradigmatic liberal John Rawls calls his redistributive “difference” principle, one of “fraternity” (Rawls 1999: 105; Schwarzenbach 2005: 247–​8; Schwarzenbach 2009: 180–​4)). Second, civic friendship involves, as just implied, mutual goodwill and concern; like personal friends, citizens wish each other well for their own sake. In the absence of intimacy and affection between civic friends, this concern, Schwarzenbach maintains, is expressed in their willing support for the laws, norms, habits, and institutions that constitute the legal, social, political, and affective dimensions of liberal democratic citizenship. This includes seeking to eliminate prejudice and stereotype in how one regards one’s fellow citizens, and acquiring knowledge of one’s political society’s history and culture. Schwarzenbach rejects the troublesome Aristotelian view that citizens care directly about the state of one another’s personal character (1996: 113). At stake in contemporary citizenship are public norms describing a political ideal, not personal feelings. Third, Schwarzenbach recognizes how the institutions of citizenship need to be nourished over time; and this requires social labor. (I emphasized myself that personal and civic friendship involve mutually oriented practical activity.) Schwarzenbach looks to the social reproduction of families, which requires caring labor historically borne by wives and mothers (1996: 99–​104; 2009: 56–​65). Unlike productive labor aimed at some individual end, reproductive labor sustains and replenishes relationships.This, she maintains, can be transposed to the domain of democratic citizenship (Schwarzenbach 2005: 244–​ 50; Schwarzenbach 2009: chaps. 5–​6). The motive of personal care in familial labor is displaced, but societal reproductive labor’s proper end is the basis of civic friendship. As this is labor traditionally carried out by women, it opens up a space for reflecting on how women’s political participation and representation can be augmented (Schwarzenbach 1996: 119; Schwarzenbach 2009: chap. 6). Ethical reproductive labor could involve civilian service, voluntary work, aiding fellow citizens in crisis, or campaigning for progressive taxation. These all sustain and build the habits and attitudes of citizens as civic friends. The ideal is a virtuous circle: citizens as equals willingly labor to maintain the common citizenship they value. Conversely, injustice as civic inequality erodes the motives for such labor and with it, civic friendship itself (Schwarzenbach 2009: 54). Digeser is skeptical that any parallel motivations to personal friendship obtain at the civic level, or that they can they be galvanized by reproductive labor (2016: 127–​9, 135). Genuine friendship relationships are made by mutual recognition of motive, not distant observation. Citizens may know that other citizens volunteer and aid each other, but behind that apparent concern, they cannot know what largely anonymous others’ real motives are. In conditions of civic anonymity, citizens must take each other as they present themselves in public; even with personal friends, says Digeser, it seems paternalistic to infer their real motives from their conduct (2016: 118). That seems a little pessimistic, however. We standardly infer motives from behavior (not just with in-​depth conversation among personal friends), and it seems reasonable to assume that citizens who volunteer in civic society and 133

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seem committed to their political community’s flourishing are not simply being strategic, especially if we do encounter them face-​to-​face (cf. Cooper 1993: 320 n18; cf. Digeser 2016: 132–​3). It remains true that Schwarzenbach’s ideal of citizens’ concern for each other’s political disposition and engagement in socially oriented reproductive labor make it a relatively ambitious model of civic friendship, for liberal theorists of citizenship at any rate. Danielle Allen (2004) offers a less expansive approach. For Allen, the issue is the Aristotelian vice of pleonexia, the desire to have more than others. Rivalrous wants and the desire to have the upper hand breed suspicion and undermine civic concord. As political institutions inevitably require citizens to make sacrifices for one another, pleonexia frustrates their functioning too. Citizens must therefore extend their self-​interest to include within it some concern for the good of others, a key Aristotelian thought as we have seen. Allen calls this “equitable self-​interest.” Citizens retain their own interests, but come freely to enlarge the domain of their desires to include other citizens’ interests too so that the former is restrained by concern for the latter. Again, civic engagement is central. Through it, citizens will begin to understand something of each other’s outlooks, and recognition of others’ predicaments is the seed bed to grow the norms and habits of mutual goodwill. The means to achieve this may be quotidian: Talking to Strangers is the title of Allen’s book. She sets great store by society’s common places and institutions –​the workplaces, clubs, churches, and so on –​where citizens are able regularly to converse and exchange perspectives, eroding pleonexia and cultivating civic bonds. Yet those conversations must reach beyond reference groups and be with individuals representative of the citizenry as a whole –​and instituting frequent conversations across social cleavages is no mean feat. On Allen’s view, while disagreement and competition continue, each citizen’s awareness of how she is regarded by others provides an internal check on her perception of her self-​regarding aims. How far more civic conversations could transform citizens’ outlooks seems to me open to question. No doubt such everyday encounters –​especially across cultural, racial, religious, and economic divisions –​have some potency in fostering civic identification, but they may be as much an effect as a cause of government policies to tackle racial and economic inequalities, combat discrimination, address de facto segregation in schools, housing, workplaces, and so on. Digeser’s general critique is that personal friendship is not scalable (2016: 109). The tangible mutual concern of close friends cannot be extended to the polity as such. We can use the label “civic friendship” for citizens who take some account of each other’s interests, but this is short of what genuine friendship involves. Moreover, Digeser argues, we do not need the concept of civic friendship in order to explain citizens’ motives to discharge their civic responsibilities to one another (2016: 108).There are the thick bonds of culture and history on the communitarian view. Or there is the abstract commitment to liberal justice, as in Rawls’s (1999) theory, where citizens’ commitment to respect each other’s civic rights and meet the duties they entail displaces a more ambitious mutual concern. Or there are the rough-​and-​ready habits of civility of “agonistic democracy” where citizens cooperate with one other because states need some common policies in the face of conflicting interests, whatever their real attitudes toward each other. More generally, should not citizens be free to dislike each other, provided they behave civilly? Why, beyond civility, must they exhibit a virtuous concern with each other’s interests (Hope 2013)? I will return in a moment to the meaning of mutual concern in civic friendship. For now, by way of another route of reply to Digeser, it is worth noting that the five analogies I identified in section 3 between citizenship and personal friendship apply (as one might expect) equally well to the latter’s civic counterpart. First, as Aristotle and following him Schwarzenbach make clear, civic friendship involves a status-​based form of equality: citizens desire that other citizens enjoy (roughly) the same rights and responsibilities as they do. Second, citizens as civic friends, more than citizens who do not regard themselves as such, are practice oriented: they engage in civic participation, including involvement in neighborhood organizations, churches, charities, and other civil society groups. It is true, as I said earlier, that we choose our personal friends while we do not choose our fellow citizens. But given the large number of the latter, citizens also exercise freedom in choosing how to 134

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engage in civic participation (if they do), thereby interacting concretely with some of their fellow citizens and not others. Third, citizens value their democratic vote and less formal input into public deliberation. Fourth, with regard to the latter two points, political participation and engagement in civil society involves skills and capacities that can be learned –​beginning at school –​and fostered. Fifth, civic friends identify with one another, not (or less) on the basis of historical national and cultural bonds, as on the communitarian view, but through reflection on their practice of citizenship itself, including exercising a say in their polity’s future direction and less formal participation. While personal friends share interests and outlooks, the practice of friendship itself also breeds identification with one another. The latter applies analogously to civic friends, and as far as a common outlook is concerned, civic friends share the view that civic participation is a good. Schwarzenbach maintains that citizens qua civic friends exhibit a noninstrumental concern with each other’s political character. One way of interpreting this, which draws together the points above, is that civic friendship describes the attitudes and motivation that obtain among citizens on the civic republican approach, and that each citizen is concerned, for the good of the polity, that other citizens possess those attitudes and are motivated to engage politically. The civic republican tradition represents one route to respond to the critics’ complaint that civic friendship is an empty metaphor. Given that civic republicanism is a complex tradition and (as the chapters in this volume testify) the ideal of friendship can be interpreted in numerous ways too, this approach invites us to consider the values, norms, and other beliefs that citizens need to share for the civic republican model, in its various strands, to be put to work in today’s political world. As a substantive view, civic republicanism, incorporating attitudes of civic friendship, also needs to be defended against liberals concerned with individual privacy, the demandingness of civic engagement and the dangers of the state sponsoring a contestable view of public participation where some individuals prefer family life, creative solitude, religious contemplation, and so on. The idea that civic friends determine the character of their relationship for themselves speaks against the more conservative version of the communitarian view that is overlaid by the inheritance of history and tradition. I am not wholly convinced by the view that a noninstrumental concern with other citizens’ political character is distinctive of civic friendship because that claim seems to hinge on a contingent view of how we describe political character. It seems to me that in any polity citizens will be concerned that other citizens have the kinds of political characters necessary to maintain that polity’s preferred normative characteristics, whether that is the more ambitious civic republican view of public engagement or a more slender liberal view of justice. Indeed many liberals could accept much of the political demands Schwarzenbach requires of civic friends. So what makes her view distinctive is its yoking together of civic republicanism and civic friendship. Perhaps, though, there is a little more we can say. Against the common view that friends mirror each other’s interests, Cocking and Kennett alert us to the differences in perspectives that often obtain between friends and they maintain that friends are “characteristically and distinctively receptive to being directed and interpreted […] by the other” (Cocking and Kennett 1998: 503); we care what our friends think and believe (in contrast to strangers) because they are our friends. Along similar lines, Nehamas sees the good of friendship in the role each friend gives the other in the “lifelong process of self-​construction.” “[W]‌e give them [our friends] the power to lead us to need, desire, and plan things that we can’t possibly anticipate” (Nehamas 2010: 288), a perspective that only makes sense if we give peculiar consideration to our friend’s concerns. I think there is a possible analogy with citizenship here, one that offers a potential reconstruction of the ideal of mutual concern. Although there is not the space to explore the view in full, the basic idea is that it matters to citizens what matters to other citizens because they are fellow citizens; because, in fact they are civic friends,. The analogy is that civic friends are peculiarly alive to each other’s opinions on public matters, reflecting the fact that they are co-​members of the same political community. Just as to enjoy a relationship of approximate parity, as a personal or civic friend, is to share control over that relationship’s course and direction, so also does parity involve mutual influence on how participants interpret their common 135

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situation. Parallel to the mutual receptivity in personal friendship, so civic friends give each other’s views some special salience in their practical political deliberations because that is what relationships of co-​equality mean. In short, civic friends are responsive to the content of one another’s views. We could imagine a democratic polity where each citizen respects each other’s right to a say, and their views were transformed via a majoritarian decision procedure into a common policy, but where citizens attached no special weight to the substance of each other’s voices. Though such a polity might function, it describes a state of civic estrangement, not civic friendship. On Cocking and Kennett’s “drawing account,” one’s identity as a friend is a relational thing, in part a product of its formation through friendship (1998: 505). By analogy, one’s identity as a citizen, if bonds of civic friendship obtain, is formed with and through other citizens, through affirming, or contesting or otherwise engaging with their views (cf. Kahane 1999). Mutual concern is concern for each other’s political perspective, not (or not simply) their political character. Even a passing acquaintanceship with recent political events might appear to refute this.The Black Lives Matter movement in the United States and elsewhere, besides numerous other instances of deep polarization, suggest that enmity and antagonism are all too common. But civic receptivity is an interpretative ideal, not a descriptive model. Where opposing parties refuse even to consider the other side’s views, something is seriously awry with the civic relationship. I am suggesting a positive counterpart to that thesis: that citizens qua civic friends give attention to one another’s views because they are fellow citizens, or put another way civic peers. Mutual concern as mutual consideration is one dimension of the parity that civic friends enjoy. Having made this defense, however, I suggest the thesis somewhat tentatively. Some views deserve to be dismissed outright, racist ones being an obvious ­example –​though citizens do have special reasons to be concerned that some of their number hold racist views; the circumstances in which racism seems apt to some citizens should matter to others. I am also not sure how attentiveness to one another’s views distinguishes civic friendship from associational, for example, workplace relationships, a comparison I have not considered. Finally, one might argue that special attentiveness to some others’ views, merely because one shares a certain kind of relationship with them, is a failure of epistemic responsibility; specifically the responsibility each of us has as an autonomous agent to arrive at our own convictions for our own reasons (cf. Keller 2004). Still, citizenship is a relationship of mutual interdependency where the infrastructure within which each of us pursues our own aims and ends is one necessarily shaped by other citizens. That alone is reason to be concerned about their views. I have tried to show above, through a series of analogies, that citizenship and friendship are not quite so conceptually removed as we might first assume, and that the notion of civic friendship in particular enjoys some intellectual fecundity. Civic friendship bears some consideration, especially for those attracted to civic republican tradition in political theory; it should not be dismissed outright merely as a warm-​sounding metaphor.

Related Chapters Aristotle on the Nature and Value of Friendship; The Value of Friendship; Friendship and Special Obligations

References Allen, D. 2004. Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Aristotle. 1998. The Politics. Edited by E. Barker. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Aristotle. 2009. Nicomachean Ethics. Edited by L. Brown. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Abbreviated to EN in text] Badhwar, N.K. 1993. “Introduction: The Nature and Significance of Friendship.” In Friendship: A Philosophical Reader, edited by N.K. Badhwar, 1–​36. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

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Friendship and Citizenship Bentley, R. 2013. “Civic Friendship and Thin Citizenship.” Res Publica 19 (1): 5–​19. Cocking D., and J. Kennett. 1998. “Friendship and the Self.” Ethics 108 (3): 502–​27. Cohen, E.F., and C. Ghosh 2019. Citizenship. Cambridge: Polity. Cooper, J. 1993. “Political Animals and Civic Friendship.” In Friendship: A Philosophical Reader, edited by N.K. Badhwar, 303–​26. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Cordelli, C. 2015. “Justice as Fairness and Relational Resources.” Journal of Political Philosophy 23 (1): 86–​110. Digeser, P. 2016. Friendship Reconsidered: What It Means and How It Matters for Politics. New York: Columbia University Press. Healy, M. 2011. “Civic Friendship.” Studies in the Philosophy of Education 30 (3): 229–​40. Honohan, I. 2002. Civic Republicanism. London: Routledge. Hope, S. 2013. “Friendship, Justice and Aristotle: Some Reasons to Be Sceptical.” Res Publica 19 (1): 37–​52. Jeske, D. 1998. “Family, Friends and Special Obligations.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 28 (4): 527–​55. Jeske, D. 2018. “Friends and Fellow Citizens.” In Handbook of Patriotism, edited by M. Sardoč, 561–​74. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Kahane, D. 1999. “Diversity, Solidarity and Civic Friendship.” Journal of Political Philosophy 7 (3): 267–​86. Keller, S. 2004. “Friendship and Belief.” Philosophical Papers 33 (3): 329–​51. Miller, D. 2000. Citizenship and National Identity. Cambridge: Polity. Miller, D. 2005. “Reasonable Partiality towards Compatriots.” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 8 (1): 63–​81. Nehamas, A. 2010. “The Good of Friendship.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society New Series 110: 267–​94. Rawls, J. 1999. A Theory of Justice. Revised edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press Sandel, M. 1982. Liberalism and the Limits of Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schwarzenbach, S.A. 1996. “On Civic Friendship.” Ethics 107 (1): 97–​128. Schwarzenbach, S.A. 2005. “Democracy and Friendship.” Journal of Social Philosophy 36 (2): 233–​54. Schwarzenbach, S.A. 2009. On Civic Friendship: Including Women in the State. New York: Columbia University Press. Seglow, J. 2013. Defending Associative Duties. London: Routledge. Tan. K.-​C. 2004. Justice without Borders: Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism and Patriotism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thomas, L. 1993. “Friendship and Other Loves.” In Friendship: A Philosophical Reader, edited by N.K. Badhwar, 48–​64. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Wellman, C.H. 2001. “Friends, Compatriots and Special Political Obligations.” Political Theory 29 (2): 217–​36.

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12 THE ANIMALS IN OUR LIVING ROOMS Friends or Family? Cheryl Abbate

Introduction Our relationships with the animals who live in our homes –​especially our relationships with cats and dogs –​are often characterized by deep emotional bonds and attachment, great physical intimacy, trust, loyalty, and even emotional intimacy. Indeed, these relationships are, in most cases, loving relationships. And this love is rarely one-​sided, as mutual love often exists between people and their animal companions (Gheaus 2012; Milligan 2017). But we must ask: What should we make of these loving relationships? How should we treat our loving relationships with companion animals? While animal ethicists readily characterize deep human–​animal bonds as loving relationships, they rarely characterize these bonds as instances of friendship (see, for instance, Milligan 2017). Relatedly, although scientists admit that animal behavior can be “friendly,” they rarely claim that animals are capable of forming friendships, even with members of their own species (Silk 2002). Some suspect that the term “friendship” is avoided in discussions about animals because of its strongly anthropomorphic connotations (Silk 2002). As Rachel Wichert and Martha Nussbaum (2021) point out, friendship is often defined by philosophers in a cognitively demanding way that excludes animals. Nevertheless, a handful of philosophers argue that animals are capable of forming “lesser” friendships (with other animals or with humans), such as friendships based on utility or pleasure (Frööding and Peterson 2011; Jordan 2001). Humans and animals might, for instance, form friendly relationships with each other because of the utility the other brings to their lives or because of the pleasure they enjoy when they are together. Going one step further, some argue that animal–​human connections can be rightly characterized as “higher” friendships, which are based in something other than mere utility or pleasure, such as mutual admiration (Rowlands 2011; Townley 2011). While Heather Stewart (2018) suspects that humans and animals can be genuine friends, she worries that the limited academic discussions about human–​animal friendship do not go far enough, in that they fail to recognize that humans can become family with animals. As Stewart points out, caring relationships between humans and some animals –​specifically, cats and dogs –​often mirror the (human) parent–​ child bond. More controversially, she argues that “some relationships between human caregivers and their non-​human companion animals ought to be [my emphasis] thought of (and treated as) instances of parenting” (Stewart 2018: 253). Contra Stewart, I will argue that there are highly undesirable features of parenting, which are absent in friendship.1 I thus recommend that we, as much as possible, model human–​animal relationships 138

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after friendship rather than the parent–​child relationship. Although I grant that we may be unable to form friendships with highly dependent animals, not all animals are so dependent on us. The most obvious example of independent and capable animals commonly found in human homes is cats, so I will focus the subsequent discussion primarily on felines. However, much of what I say about our relationships with cats can, to some degree, be applied to our relationships with other animals who live in our homes, such as dogs.

Parenting as a Social Practice In defense of the claim that we should treat our relationships with animals as relationships involving parenting, Stewart argues that the bonds between humans and their animal companions have the same morally salient features that are found in parent–​child bonds. For instance, Stewart claims that parent–​child relationships and human–​animal relationships involve many of the same rights and responsibilities. Before evaluating these claims, I will first draw a distinction that is crucial for my analysis of Stewart’s argument: the distinction between the parenting ideal and parenting as a social practice. Social practices are (evolving) patterns of behavior that are the product of social learning (Haslanger 2018), and they thus involve ideas and beliefs that are formed within a social context of established norms (of belief and behavior) (Sadler 2018). So, when it comes to social practices: (1) socially established ideas and beliefs cause people in that society to behave in a certain kind of way, (2) socially established ideas and beliefs cause individuals in that society to have certain ideas and beliefs, (3) socially established patterns of behavior cause individuals in that society to have certain ideas and beliefs, and (4) socially established patterns of behavior cause people in that society to behave in a certain kind of way (i.e., in accordance with the socially established patterns of behavior). Parenting is a social practice insofar as it involves patterns of behavior that are the product of social learning. For example, parenting involves specific ways of disciplining children that parents “learn,” in part, from established norms of belief (e.g., widely accepted beliefs about what kinds of child discipline are “appropriate”). Moreover, parenting involves ideas and beliefs that are formed within a social context in which there are established norms (of belief and behavior). For instance, parenting involves the belief that the parent–​child relationship involves an essential good that is absent in other loving relationships, and this belief in turn stems, in part, from the way most people (and institutions) in society, through their words and behavior, place high value on parenting. On the other hand, the ideal of parenting is something that parents should, morally speaking, try to achieve, but one that, in reality, is hardly ever realized. Indeed, because the social context is often imperfect, and moreover unjust, we can expect that parenting, in practice, is often imperfect and, at times, unjust. Moving forward, my discussions about the parent–​child relationship refer only to parenting as a social practice and not the parenting ideal. This is because Stewart herself seems to be concerned with how parenting is normally viewed and treated in our society, and not with how parenting should be, morally (or ideally) speaking, viewed and treated. For instance, Stewart emphasizes that parenting is normally treated as having special status and esteem in our society, and this is a certain kind of social behavior that is caused, in part, by the socially established belief that parenting involves essential goods that cannot be found in other kinds of loving relationships. And note that Stewart does not argue that parenting should have special status and esteem in our society. Relatedly, Stewart notes that women who are not mothers are typically thought to be, in some way, deficient. This belief is caused, in part, by the socially established investment in parent–​ child relationships at the expense of other valuable loving relationships and the socially established belief that having children is one of the defining pursuits of adult life and central to individual flourishing. And note that Stewart does not argue that childless women should be perceived as deficient. 139

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Stewart thus essentially moves from the claim that parenting as a social practice involves favorable beliefs about and treatment of parenting to the claim that the human–​animal relationship should be viewed and treated akin to the parent–​child relationship. Against this view, I will argue that because parenting as a social practice involves highly problematic patterns of behaviors and beliefs –​behaviors and beliefs that are harmful for children –​we shouldn’t try to model human–​animal relationships after the parent–​child relationship. Instead, as I will argue, we should, as much as possible, model human–​ animal relationships after friendship.

Parental Responsibilities Current ideas about parenting involve the belief that parents have extensive responsibilities to children. And Stewart is right that many human–​animal relationships involve similar responsibilities and acts of caring that are expected in parent–​child relationships. For instance, while humans who live with animals are expected to keep their animals safe, shelter and feed them, provide them with medical care, and ensure that they are entertained, it is also widely believed that parents are responsible for keeping their children safe, sheltering and feeding them, providing medical care for them, and ensuring that they are entertained. And it is certainly morally desirable that humans do these things for their animals and children. However, there is at least one important disanalogy. In parent–​child relationships, extensive unilateral caregiving is the norm, insofar as children are not expected to reciprocate acts of caregiving. Indeed, we tend to think something has gone wrong when children are forced to engage in caregiving for their parents. On the other hand, human–​animal relationships often involve mutual caregiving. Consider, for instance, that dogs are often viewed as guardians of the home and protectors of children, and they sometimes assist the blind and other handicapped people (Rollin 2006: 289). So, while humans in relationships with these dogs perform acts of caring, such as feeding them and attending to their medical needs, the caregiving in these relationships is not unilateral, as it is in the case of the parent–​child relationship. And this is because dogs, unlike children, are, to some degree, capable of defending and taking care of not only themselves, but also the humans they live with.

Problematic Features of Parenting Current ideas about parenting involve not only the belief that parents have extensive responsibilities to their children, but also the belief that parents have extensive power over their children. For instance, current forms of parenting involve domination, insofar as parents have the ability and legal right to interfere with their children’s lives in arbitrary ways that affect their interests (Gheaus 2020). Indeed, parents can, and typically do, make decisions about every aspect of their child’s life: parents normally decide what their children eat, where they go to school, whom they socialize with, what they wear, when they go to sleep, how they behave at home and in society, and how they should be disciplined (Gheaus 2020). Moreover, parents have the power (both the ability and legal right) to interfere with their children’s lives in ways that set back their basic welfare interests by, for instance, preventing them from receiving certain medical procedures that would be beneficial for them (e.g., withholding vaccinations from children for religious reasons)2 and harmfully using them to express their own values (e.g., by forcing children to undergo circumcision) (Gheaus 2020). Moreover, because “parents transmit values, rules, and standards about ways of thinking and acting” (Tamis-​LeMonda et al. 2008: 183), children are vulnerable in respect to autonomy development (Lotz 2014). In particular, this value inculcation often leads to an impairment of the “volitional self,” which is the “part of the self that seeks to govern its own actions to accord with what it values, cares about, wants to accomplish” (Mullin 2007: 537–​8). In other words, parents have the power (both the ability and legal right) to set back the autonomy interests of their children.This is most obvious with parents

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who adopt highly direct and intentional exclusionary forms of parental value inculcation, which involve: explicit and pejorative depiction of the parents’ own values and value systems as the “best” or “only” available; the forced participation of children solely in activities that instruct in the parents’ values; and parental refusal to allow children to participate in educational or social activities that inform them of alternative and possibly competing values. Lotz 2014: 255 This kind of dogmatic and doctrinaire parenting, unfortunately, is not rare. After all, predominantly collectivist cultures, which use an authoritarian parenting style to instill cultural values or beliefs in children, are widespread. In such families, connection to the family and obedience to parents, which are thought to promote a strong sense of relatedness, are emphasized, and the developmental goal of autonomy is often viewed as interfering with the goal of relatedness (Grotevant 1998). Consequently, it is not uncommon for “collectivist” children to altogether be forced to sacrifice certain interests –​namely, those that diverge from the interests of the parents –​for the sake of “the family.” Even in individualist cultures, there is normally at least some covert value inculcation and autonomy impairment. Indeed, it is generally assumed that, in any kind of family, parents will, to some degree, try to instill their values in their children, and it is commonly thought that parents have this freedom, at the very least, as a by-​product of familial rights to privacy and freedom from unwanted state intrusion (Schoeman 1980). So, as Howard Cohen puts it, “[t]‌he problems with our relations to children seem to be a normal part of family life rather than occasional deviances or freak occurrences” (Cohen 1982: 149). Arguably, a root cause of the autonomy and welfare impairment in children is that parents tend to think that their relationships with their children involve a union. Indeed, parents normally place high value on the unique and “creative” opportunity to “mould a small intimate community” in line with their own beliefs and values (Lotz 2014: 258). Indeed, there is a common belief that “we share ourselves with those with whom we are intimate” (Schoeman 1980: 8), especially when it comes to intimate family relationships. This socially established belief about “family unity” explains why we commonly hear about the needs of children, but not the rights of children. After all, rights presuppose moral independence. As Ferdinand Schoeman puts it, “the language of rights typically helps us to sharpen our appreciation of the moral boundaries which separate people, emphasizing the appropriateness of seeing other persons as independent and autonomous agents” (Schoeman 1980: 8). And given that children are often deemed dependent creatures and extensions of the family, and not uniquely distinct individuals, it is unsurprising that discussions about parenting rarely focus on the rights of children. For obvious reasons, having one’s autonomy unnecessarily restricted and being denied the opportunity to make choices about one’s own life is harmful.3 It is, at the very least, frustrating to be told we cannot do X when we want to do X. From the moral point of view, all sentient creatures are unique individuals who have their own distinct goals, interests, and capacities, and it is prima facie problematic for a person to forcefully project their own goals, interests, and values upon other sentient creatures in an effort to “manage” their lives. And because it is prima facie undesirable to be under the power of another, those who have power over others must have a special justification for assuming such power. Parents are thought to be justified in having some power over their children because this is needed to meet children’s legitimate claims to adequate care and healthy development (Brighouse and Swift 2014; Gheaus 2020). But note that it is undesirable for any creature, children included, to be under the (near) complete power of another creature, given that, as mentioned, this kind of power can be used to set back the creature’s interests (both welfare and autonomy). Yet, current parenting involves the (near) complete power of parents over children.4

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On a related note, the parent–​child relationship itself is, at least for the children, unchosen, and children moreover are unable to exit the relationship. So, as Sara Protasi (2018) puts it, in the parent–​child relationship, a parent’s love is directed toward an unchosen object of love. Consequently, parent–​child relationships often lack genuine partiality and relationship roles are often performed out of a sense of duty. Even as adults, children often spend time with their parents not because they desire their parent’s company over the company of others, but because children feel a strong sense of obligation to their parents. This is evident by the increasing number of web pages offering advice for “tolerating” or “surviving” family gatherings, and, in particular, “stressful parents.” Perhaps, though, one might argue that the unchosen nature of family relationships, including parent–​ child relationships, is what makes them especially valuable. After all, because family is unchosen, family members are simply always there for us and cannot exit the relationship at will, and this tends to make us feel quite secure within our family relationships. As Gheaus (2018) points out, family relationships involve a uniquely high degree of commitment, given that “as long as we are part of a family, we can expect not to be abandoned […] almost no matter what” (169). And this seems to satisfy a psychological need for a sense of secure belonging. Yet, as Gheaus (2018) notes, the need for a sense of secure belonging can be met through the lower degrees of commitment found in friendships. And we have reason to prefer relationships with lower degrees of commitment over relationships with high degrees of commitment, given that relationships with high degrees of commitment often impair individual flourishing. For instance, an “almost no matter what” level of commitment usually endures in spite of misery and wrongdoing (Gheaus 2018). For instance, as Gheaus (2018) points out, “the abusive spouse, the racist uncle, the manipulative cousin are tolerated ‘because they are family’ by people who would not tolerate lesser failings from their best friends” (174). And such commitments often endure “not in virtue of affection and desire for the other’s company, but in spite of their absence” (Gheaus 2018: 173). Surely, it’s not valuable to remain in a loveless, miserable relationship with someone who abuses you just because they are “family.”

Desirable Features of Friendship I will now argue that friendship, unlike parenting, is characterized by mutuality, choice, equality, and appreciation of differences, and these are goods we should try to foster in all loving relationships. The following discussion is about friendship as a social practice, which is informed by everyday observations of how friends normally act toward one another and what people, especially parties of friendship relationships, tend to believe about friendship. But note that the basic elements of friendship as a social practice (mutuality, choice, equality, and appreciation of differences) are also part of the ideal of friendship.5

Reciprocity in Friendship Let us start with some basic observations of the social practice of friendship. It is commonly accepted that two people do not automatically become friends with one another just because they spent one good day together. Rather, we tend to think that friendships are established over time, after repeated interactions. Moreover, friendship is a relationship that involves some kind of reciprocity. After all, A cannot be friends with B if B doesn’t reciprocate in some way. It would be strange, for instance, to claim to be friends with someone who avoids you like the plague and never acknowledges your existence. So, what exactly is reciprocated in a friendship? To answer this question, consider how friendships typically form. At first, three people, call them A, B, and C, find themselves engaged in an activity of some sort with one another, and A and B realize they enjoy each other’s company, but not so much the company of C. So, A and B seek each other’s

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company in the future, but neither seeks C’s company. And as A and B spend more time with one another, they begin to feel mutual affection for one another, and a friendship is then formed. This account of friendship formation suggests that the most basic ingredient of friendship is reciprocated enjoyment in spending time with another.That is, at the heart of friendship is interactions between friends that are done for the sake of spending time together. Friendship thus is centered upon mutual activities that both friends enjoy doing together. And this is one way in which friendship is distinct from the parent–​child relationship. After all, children, both young and adult, often dread spending time with their parents, yet nevertheless do so reluctantly out of a sense of duty or a complete lack of choice. This is not to say that friendship never involves acts of duty or obligation. If my friend has a flat tire, I may reluctantly assist her from a sense of duty, and I likely will not enjoy doing so, especially if it interrupts my plans. But these occasional acts of duty that are inevitable aspects of friendship are not what friendships are normally based or centered upon. Rather, most interactions within a friendship involve mutually enjoyed interactions. Moreover, friendship involves a reciprocated marked preference for the companionship of the friend over the companionship of most others. For instance, if A and B mutually enjoy interacting with each other, but not with C, then A and B will seek each other’s company over the company of others, like C. Friendship thus involves some form of partiality, in that friends are deemed to be, in some way, special (Healy 2011). And it would be strange to seek out someone’s company over the company of others for the sake of spending time with them if you do not care for them or have any positive feelings toward them. Presumably, then, friendship also involves mutual feelings of affection. And this is another way in which friendship is different from familial relationships, which often involve “unrequited affection.”

Choice in Friendship As mentioned, friendship involves partiality of feelings. But partiality of feelings is not possible without a certain kind of choice. For instance, if I am confined to a room with just one other person for my entire life and thus am unable to interact with other creatures, it does not seem as though I can have a genuine preference for the company of this one person over the company of others. I may enjoy interacting with him because I am a social creature and thus have social needs, which, in this situation, can be satisfied only by interacting with him. Yet, I suspect that most people would deny that this person is genuinely my friend, simply because I do not choose his company over the company of others and I am not able to exit interactions with him. At best, I have a friendly relationship with him that is centered upon mere utility. After all, friendship is typically thought to be a relationship between A and B that involves certain kinds of choices and opportunities, including, at the very least, (1) the mutual choice to form and/​or sustain a certain kind of “friendly” relationship, and (2) the mutual choice to initiate and exit at least some interactions. So, a relationship that is forced or assigned is rarely, if ever, thought of as friendship (although a friendship may develop out of such a relationship), and this is one reason why familial connections, including parent–​child relationships are rarely, if ever, thought to constitute friendship (Goering 2003).6

(Rough) Equality in Friendship Friendship is also thought to involve a relationship between (roughly) equals, which means that neither party of a friendship can be in a position of (near) complete control or authority over another (Thomas 1989). Indeed, there is a connection between equality and choice. For instance, if one is disempowered within a relationship, one cannot (authentically) choose to exit the relationship or interactions. For instance, as humorously illustrated in Diary of a Future President, bosses that invite

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their subordinates to socialize with them essentially hold their subordinates “bostage,” insofar as the subordinates cannot really say “no” to their bosses’ social invitations. And the presence of (rough) equality in friendship is yet another feature of friendship that distinguishes it from parent–​child relationships and explains why many suspect that children and their parents rarely become friends (Thomas 1989).

Respect for Differences in Friendship While philosophers writing about friendship often draw on the Aristotelian idea that a friend is another self, our social practice of friendship involves a belief that friendship involves a connection between two creatures that preserves the distinctiveness of each. So, although it is commonly thought that there is a sense of belonging in friendship, friends nevertheless tend to see each other as separate from themselves and as being invested in their own, separate lives. Indeed, as Plato noted in Lysis, friendship is a relationship through which we, perhaps for the first time, “learn to experience and attend to others as unique beings, rather than as projections of [our] own needs and desires” (Linch 2021: 110). The idea that friendship involves a respect for difference is reflected in Robert Selman’s (1980) empirically supported view that the final stage of friendship involves an appreciation of the differences between oneself and one’s friends. At this stage of friendship, friends are mutually close but also autonomous and independent; a friend is conceived as someone who accepts you and that you accept as they are. Relatedly, a friend’s need for autonomy is acknowledged and respected, and thus friends normally are not very possessive and do not feel threatened if their friends have other relationships or interests. For instance, rarely, if ever, do we, especially as adults, demand that our friends limit the time they spend with their romantic partners or family members because it cuts into “friendship time.” Rather, we normally accept and appreciate that our friends have other important relationships and corresponding commitments that often look very different from our own. And this is another important way in which friendship is different from parenting, which, as mentioned, often involves a love rooted in “sameness,” insofar as children are often identified as a part of the family or viewed as extensions of the parents.

Against Parenting Animals So far, I have argued that while (1) parenting tends to lacks mutuality, choice, equality, and respect for differences, (2) friendship is characterized by mutuality, choice, equality, and respect for differences. As a matter of descriptive fact, Stewart is right that human–​animal relationships tend to resemble parent–​child relationships more so than friendships, insofar as many humans exercise a kind of parental control over the animals who live in their homes. As Townley (2017) points out: Humans can control the household, the quality and availability of food, the options for medical intervention, and even life and death decisions for pets [...] The nonhuman may not choose what or when it eats, where and for how long it can exercise, whether it can breed, what kind of medical attention is available, and so on. The human makes decisions in all these domains. 28 But, normatively speaking, we shouldn’t try to model loving relationships with animals after parent–​ child relationships. After all, it is undesirable for humans to have “parental power” over any creature (human or nonhuman), given that such unchecked power has the potential for misuse, insofar as it can be used to set back the interests (both welfare and autonomy) of the disempowered creatures. Rather, we should try to model loving relationships with animals after friendship, insofar as this would better promote the autonomy and welfare of animals. 144

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Recall that parents have the legal right to circumcise their children (for value or aesthetic reasons) and the legal right to deny their children important medical treatments and procedures (for value (religious) reasons). So, if there were a socially established belief that humans are parents of their animal companions, this would arguably reinforce the problematic idea that humans are entitled to promote their own interests at the expense of their “animal-​child’s” interests. For instance, conceiving of humans as “parents” of animals arguably would reinforce the problematic belief that humans can declaw their “animal-​children” and harmfully impose their values on their “animal-​children,” such as by forcing their felines to eat a vegan diet, permanently confining cats in order to “save” wildlife, and refusing important medical treatments and procedures for their animals (such as medications that are tested on other animals). Essentially, conceiving of humans as “parents” of animals arguably would both impair the basic welfare of animals and thwart their ability to govern their own actions in accord with what they care about and want to accomplish. Indeed, because animals are even more vulnerable than children, it is more likely that they will be seriously harmed as a side effect of being “parented” and viewed as “children.” For instance, animals lack, and will never develop, the ability to speak our language, and thus they can never complain when humans exercise harmful control over them. Moreover, animals have fewer legal protections than do children. For instance, it is highly unlikely that the state would try to override a “pet parent’s” decision to refuse lifesaving medical treatment to their animal. And this is all especially concerning given that animals, unlike children, will never “grow up” and acquire the legal right to leave their guardian’s home. Indeed, for the most part, animals can never escape the control of their guardians. But, one might argue, if we attempted to model our loving relationships after friendship instead of parenting, we might promote the autonomy of the beloved, but we would do so at the expense of their welfare. For instance, while it is true that we tend to respect the autonomy of our friends, we do not tend to feel responsible for meeting their basic needs. We do not, for instance, normally feed, shelter, and clothe our friends. So, if we treated vulnerable creatures, such as animals, like we normally treat our friends, we would jeopardize their welfare in the name of promoting their autonomy. It is certainly good that humans who live with animals care for them by providing them with medical treatment, food, and shelter, and so forth. But one can care for animals in this kind of way without asserting parental control over them. Indeed, a norm of friendship is that we take care of our close friends when they genuinely need us to. As James Grunebaum (1993) points out, it is believed in perhaps every culture that we have special duties to help our friends, and presumably this entails that, at the very least, we ought to help our friends when they are in dire need of our help, such as in cases where they will starve to death if we do not feed them. Given that it is consistent to say that we can be friends with someone while at the same time providing for their basic needs when they are especially vulnerable (temporarily or permanently), it is consistent to say that we can treat animals as friends while at the same time providing for their basic needs when they are especially vulnerable (temporarily or permanently). So, we should seek to, as much as possible, model our loving relationships after friendship. And this is true even though parenting is believed to be highly valuable –​and more valuable than friendship –​ in our society. After all, it is because parenting relationships are viewed to be “so special” that they are, for the most part, deemed to be protected from “interference” and immune from criticism, even when it comes to parenting practices that harm children. And, relatedly, the fact that parenting is highly valued primarily serves the interests of the empowered party –​the parents –​and not necessarily the interests of the children. Indeed, most of the benefits Stewart suspects would follow from human–​animal relationships being viewed akin to parenting, such as priority boarding at the airport and “priority parking” at shopping centers for “pet parents,” are ultimately benefits for parents, and not benefits for the disempowered parties (the “animal children”). Arguably, parents reap the rewards that flow from society’s “heavy valuing” of parent–​child relationships because parents, and not children, are ultimately the “creators” of these relationships. Thus parents, as “creators” of parent–​child 145

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relationships, are deemed entitled to pursue their own interests within these relationships, even when their interests conflict with what is in the best interest of their children. The basic idea is this: increasing the degree to which society values a relationship will not necessarily lead to better treatment of all parties of that kind of relationship. In fact, this often will lead to worse treatment of creatures who are disempowered in these relationships, given that the benefits of “heavy valuing” often amount to special privileges for the more empowered parties. So, increasing the degree to which society values the human–​animal relationship will not necessarily lead to better treatment of the animals within these relationships. How well animals are treated within loving human–​animal relationships depends on how much animals enjoy these relationships, whether animals are presented with the opportunities to make choices, whether animals are treated as equals, and whether the differences of animals are respected. That is, how well animals are treated within loving human–​animal relationships depends on whether animals are treated as our friends.

Befriending Animals Now we must ask: to what extent can we model our loving relationships with animals after friendships? To state the obvious, many humans and animals find themselves in mutual loving relationships with each other, mutually enjoy spending time together, and seemingly prefer each other’s company over the company of others. And humans can certainly do better to ensure that the animals they live with enjoy their company (rather than just “tolerate” their company), by, for instance, frequently participating in play behavior that their animal companions enjoy. Moreover, humans who adopt animals from shelters or purchase them from breeders certainly choose to enter into and sustain relationships with these animals. Yet, it does not seem that these animals choose to enter into and/​or sustain relationships with humans. As Goering (2003) might put it, most of the animals who live in human homes are thrust into close contact with humans through forces outside of their control. Moreover, most of these animals are not given the choice to exit the relationship, insofar as they are not able to leave the home (without being controlled by a leash). While this lack of choice is an unfortunate aspect of many human–​animal relationships, they need not all be this way. For instance, cats often act intentionally to form relationships with humans by, for instance, one day appearing on their doorstep in pursuit of food or even companionship. But even in situations in which relationships with humans are thrust or forced upon animals, friendship can still develop, just like friendships can develop between college roommates who are, in a sense, initially forced into a relationship. But for a friendship to form under these conditions, some amount of choice must be present. At the very least, the choice to exit the relationship must be possible. And it is possible, and moreover, morally responsible, for some people to allow their animal companions to make this choice. For instance, given that felines are independent, self-​ sufficient, and capable predators who can fend for themselves when left to their own devices, it is, under certain conditions, morally responsible to provide felines with outdoor access (Abbate 2020, 2021). And because free-​roaming cats can choose to never return to their “home,” those who (responsibly) provide their feline companions with outdoor access essentially provide felines with the opportunity to choose whether to sustain the relationship.7 And some free-​roaming cats have exercised this choice by finding companionship and a new home with other humans whom they seemingly prefer. Now we must ask: to what extent can parties of human–​animal relationships respect each other’s differences? At the very least, many cats and dogs seem to respect that their human companions have interests that are different from their own. For instance, although they frequently invite us to participate in their species-​normal activities, as evident by their frequent play initiations, they do not expect this of us all the time, such as when we cook dinner. And the way they engage in play with humans is often different from the way that they engage in play with their conspecifics. 146

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For instance, during play, cats do not try to jump on and tackle humans the way they often try to jump on and tackle other cats. Cats moreover meow mainly to communicate with humans, which indicates that they are aware that humans, unlike cats, primarily communicate orally rather than behaviorally. At the very least, cats recognize that humans are different from them, have their own lives, and have unique ways of being, and they seem to love us despite these differences. And we surely can do the same for animals. But do we? To truly respect the differences of an animal we must, at the very least, try to see the world from the animal’s perspective, by, for instance, imagining how they experience things and paying attention to how they communicate and what kind of choices they tend to make under conditions that are (relatively) free (Bekoff and Pierce 2019; Wichert and Nussbaum 2021). Unfortunately, many people who live with animals fail to employ this kind of empathy and rather expect that animals behave like humans by, for instance, adapting to human lifestyles, not being aggressive, being friendly, and adjusting to the human home and its inhabitants (Policarpo 2020). Relatedly, humans often train animals to behave in a way that does not take into account the unique desires and intentions of animals (Benz-​Schwarzburg et al. 2020). But this need not be the case, and we can certainly pay better attention to and empathetically promote the unique desires, capacities, and ways of being of our animal companions.This requires that we, as much as possible, provide animals with opportunities to act in their species-​normal way, such as providing cats with the opportunity to hunt and patrol territories in the outdoors. Moreover, we should not merely “tolerate” the species-​normal behavior of our animal companions; rather, we should foster genuine appreciation and respect for it.We should, for instance, carefully observe and admire the excellent hunting capacities of our felines, rather than react with disgust or disappointment when they return home with captured prey. Finally, we must ask: to what extent can the parties of human–​animal relationships function as (roughly) equals in these relationships? We might be tempted to say that the parties in human–​animal relationships are necessarily unequal simply because humans assert dominance and (near) complete control over them. But just because animals are treated unequally does not mean that they cannot function as equals in human–​animal relationships. Inherently unequal relationships refer to those relationships where authority or dominance cannot be eliminated without sacrificing some significant relationship good. For instance, in the parent–​child relationship, the authority of the parent over the child cannot be eliminated without sacrificing the good of proper childhood development. But the authority in some human–​animal relationships, such as the feline–​human relationship, can be eliminated without sacrificing a significant good. For instance, we can promote the flourishing of felines and maintain a close bond with them without perpetually asserting control over them. We can, for instance, provide them with food, water, shelter, and companionship while also granting them the choice to roam outdoors and spend their days as they please. Of course, there may be times when we must exercise some control over felines, just like there may be times when we must exercise some control over our human friends. For instance, if my human friend is intent on driving her car while drunk, I would be right to exercise some control by, for instance, taking away her keys and driving her home. If I happen to see my human friend about to enter the vehicle of someone who is wanted for murder, I would be right to exercise some control by, for instance, dragging her away from the vehicle. And if my human friend is in need of emergency life-​saving medical assistance, I would be right to drag her into my car and drive her to the hospital, even if, for some reason, she resisted. Likewise, if I see that my feline friend is intent on eating a poisonous plant or roaming in the vicinity of coyotes, I would be right to exercise some control by picking up my cat and bringing her inside our home. And if I happen to see my feline friend in need of emergency life-​saving medical assistance, I would be right to drag her into my car and drive her to the vet clinic, even though she may resist this. But just as I should not perpetually control the behavior of my human friends, I should not perpetually control the behavior of my feline companions. 147

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Concluding Thoughts Loving human–​animal relationships should be, as much as possible, modeled after friendships, which involve respect for difference, equality, mutuality, and choice –​positive qualities that we should seek in all loving relationships, which are, more often than not, lacking in child–​parent relationships. Unfortunately, it is often difficult, if not impossible, to form friendships with some of the animals who live in our homes. Indeed, some animals are incapable of surviving, let alone flourishing, when left to their own devices, and thus it would be irresponsible for their human guardians to, for instance, allow them to roam about in the outdoors. But friendship with self-​sufficient animals like cats is possible, and we should do our best to ensure that we structure our loving relationships with them in ways that respect their uniquely remarkable capabilities. This, at the very least, means that we should provide them with outdoor access, when it is safe to do so. By doing so, we recognize their feline-​specific ways of being, demonstrate an acceptance of them for who they are and how uniquely different they are from both us and other animals, and open ourselves up to a way of admiring their feline-​specific goodness. We moreover provide them with the choice to sustain a relationship with us, and when they do come back to us, we can relish in the fact that they, day after day, intentionally choose our companionship, despite the fact that they are capable of finding food and comfort elsewhere. Indeed, we can relish in the fact that our relationships with our felines go beyond just utility or pleasure and are rather instances of genuine friendship.

Related Chapters Can Parents and Their Children Be Friends?; Friendship between Children; Friendship and Family; Partiality to Friends; Friendship and Special Obligations

Notes 1 Throughout this chapter, the terms “child” and “children” refer to those who are under 18 years of age. 2 Although, in the United States, most states require parents to provide a reasonable degree of medical care for their children, many states have “exemptions” for parents who withhold medical care from their children on religious grounds (Swan 2020). 3 It may be necessary to curtail another’s liberty, for instance, if one lacks certain sorts of deliberative capacities, or if one lives in an environment that is unsuitable for one’s deliberative capacities. 4 Parents have near complete, and not complete, power over their children, insofar as parents do not have the legal right to physically abuse their children. 5 Although arguably there is more to the ideal of friendship than these four features. So while these four features are necessary conditions of ideal friendships, they arguably are not sufficient. 6 However, one may find oneself in more than one relationship with another person. For instance, I might be in a professional working relationship with a colleague and then develop a second relationship with her –​a friendship –​by choosing to initiate friendly interactions with her outside of the workplace. Likewise, I might be in a familial relationship with a cousin and then develop a second relationship with her –​a friendship –​by choosing to initiate friendly interactions with her outside of family gatherings. 7 For a detailed account of what it means to provide responsible outdoor access to felines, see Abbate (2020).

Further Reading Fröding, B., and M. Peterson. 2011. “Animal Ethics Based on Friendship.” Journal of Animal Ethics 1 (1): 58–​69. (An application of Aristotle’s account of friendship to human–​animal relationships.) Harvey, J. 2008.“Companion and Assistance Animals: Benefits,Welfare Safeguards, and Relationships.” International Journal of Applied Philosophy 22 (2): 161–​76. (An extended treatment of the view that humans have a moral obligation to develop relationships of “loving interaction” with animal companions.) Milligan, T. 2017. “Love and Animals.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Love, edited by C. Grau and A. Smuts. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (An extended treatment of animals’ capacity to love.)

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Are Our Companion Animals Friends? Scotton, G. 2017. “Duties to Socialise with Domesticated Animals: Farmed Animal Sanctuaries as Frontiers of Friendship.” Animal Studies Journal 6 (2): 86–​108. (An extended treatment on the alleged duty to befriend domesticated animals, especially farmed animals.) Wichert, R., and M. Nussbaum. 2021. “Can There Be Friendship between Human Beings and Wild Animals?” Journal of Human Development and Capabilities 22 (1): 87–​107. (An extended treatment of friendship between humans and “wild” animals.)

References Abbate, C. 2020. “A Defense of Free-​Roaming Cats from a Hedonist Account of Feline Well-​Being.” Acta Analytica 35(3): 439–​61. Abbate, C. 2021. “Re-​defending Feline Liberty: a Response to Fischer.” Acta Analytica 36: 451–​43. Bekoff, M., and J. Pierce. 2019. Unleashing Your Dog. Novato: New World Library. Benz-​Schwarzburg, J., S. Monsó, and L. Huber. 2020. “How Dogs Perceive Humans and How Humans Should Treat Their Pet Dogs: Linking Cognition With Ethics.” Frontiers in Psychology 11: 1–​17. Brighouse, H., and A. Swift. 2014. “The Goods of Parenting.” In Family-​Making: Contemporary Ethical Challenges, edited by F. Baylis and C. McLeod, 11–​28. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cohen, H. 1982.“Ending the Double Standard: Equal Rights for Children.” In Child Nurtured: Philosophy, Children, and the Family, edited by A. Cafagna, R. Peterson, and C. Staudenbaur, 149–​58. New York: Plenum Press. Fröoding, B., and M. Peterson. 2011. “Animal Ethics Based on Friendship.” Journal of Animal Ethics 1 (1): 58–​69. Gheaus, A. 2018. “Love, Not the Family.” Analize: Journal of Gender and Feminist Studies 8: 168–​76. Gheaus, A. 2012. “The Role of Love in Animal Ethics.” Hypatia 27 (3): 583–​600. Gheaus, A. 2020. “Child-​ Rearing with Minimal Domination: A Republican Account.” Political Studies 69 (3): 748–​66. Goering, S. 2003. “Choosing Our Friends: Moral Partiality and the Value of Diversity.” Journal of Social Philosophy 34 (3): 400–​13. Grotevant, H. 1998. “Adolescent Development in Family Contexts.” In Handbook of Child Psychology: Social, Emotional, and Personality Development, edited by W. Damon (series) and N. Eisenberg (vol.). 5th edn., Vol. 3: 1097–​149. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Grunebaum, J. 1993.“Friendship, Morality, and Special Obligation.” American Philosophical Quarterly 30 (1): 51–​61. Haslanger, S. 2018. “What Is a Social Practice?” Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 82: 231–​47. Healy, M. 2011.“Should We Take the Friendships of Children Seriously?” Journal of Moral Education 40 (4): 441–​56. Jordan, J. 2001. “Why Friends Shouldn’t Let Friends Be Eaten.” Social Theory and Practice 27 (2): 309–​22. Linch, A. 2021. “Friendship in Captivity? Plato’s Lysis as a Guide to Interspecies Justice.” Journal of Human Development and Capabilities 22 (1): 108–130. Lotz, M. 2014. “Parental Values and Children’s Vulnerability.” In Vulnerability: New Essays in Ethics and Feminist Philosophy, edited by C. Mackenzie, W. Rogers, and S. Dodds, 242–​65. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Milligan, T. 2017. “Love and Animals.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Love, edited by C. Grau and A. Smuts. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Available at: www.oxfo​rdha​ndbo​oks.com/​view/​10.1093/​oxfor​ dhb/​978019​9395​729.001.0001/​ox fordhb-​9780199395729-​e-​6. (Accessed January 13, 2022). Mullin, A. 2007. “Children, Autonomy, and Care.” Journal of Social Philosophy 38 (4): 536–​53. Policarpo, V. 2020. “Daphne the Cat: Reimagining Human–​Animal Boundaries on Facebook.” The Sociological Review 68 (6): 1290–​1306. Protasi, S. 2018. “ ‘Mama, Do You Love Me?’ A Defense of Unloving Parents.” In Routledge Handbook of Love in Philosophy, edited by A. Martin, 35–​46. New York: Taylor & Francis Group. Rollin, B. 2006. Animal Rights & Human Morality. New York: Prometheus Books. Rowlands, M. 2011. “Friendship and Animals: A Reply to Frööding and Peterson.” Journal of Animal Ethics 1 (1): 70–​9. Sadler, B. 2018. “Love as Emotion and Social Practice: A Feminist Perspective.” Analize: Journal of Gender and Feminist Studies 11: 16–​37. Schoeman, F. 1980. “Rights of Children, Rights of Parents, and the Moral Basis of the Family.” Ethics 91 (1): 6–​19. Selman, R. 1980. The Growth of Interpersonal Understanding: Developmental and Clinical Analyses. New York: Academic Press. Silk, J. 2002. “Using the ‘F’-​Word in Primatology.” Behaviour 139: 421–​46. Stewart, H. 2018. “Parents of Pets? A Defense of Interspecies Parenting and Family Building.” Analize: Journal of Gender and Feminist Studies 11: 239–​63.

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Cheryl Abbate Swan, R. 2020. “Faith-​Based Medical Neglect: for Providers and Policymakers.” Journal of Child and Adolescent Trauma 13: 343–​53. Tamis-​LeMonda, C., N. Way, D. Hughes, H. Yoshikawa, R. Kalman, and E. Niwa. 2008. “Parents’ Goals for Children: The Dynamic Coexistence of Individualism and Collectivism in Cultures and Individuals.” Social Development 17: 183–​209. Thomas, L. 1989. Living Morally: A Psychology of Moral Character. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Townley, C. 2011. “Animals as Friends.” Between the Species 13 (10): 45–​59. Townley, C. 2017. “Friendship with Companion Animals.” In Pets and People: The Ethics of Our Relationships with Companion Animals, edited by C. Overall, 21–​34. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wichert, R., and M. Nussbaum. 2021. “Can There Be Friendship between Human Beings and Wild Animals?” Journal of Human Development and Capabilities 22 (1): 87–​107.

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PART III

Friendship and Other Relationships

13 FRIENDSHIP AND FAMILY Monika Betzler

The features that help differentiate these two types of relationships –​such as freedom of choice, equality, and mutual affection in the case of friendship and biological relationships and social roles in the case of family relationships –​cannot be said to ground the particular associative duties of friends or family members. Rather, they owe associative duties to each other because of the relationship goods that these relationships produce and that they have a strong interest in co-​creating. Relationship goods, however, do not help us explain how these two types of relationships differ normatively from one another. I put forward that it is the interplay between all the different types of special duties, together with the link between particular relationships and our self-​conception as well as the particular value we place on our shared history that accounts for the distinct normative weight of each of these two types of relationships.

1. Introduction Friendships and family relationships are typically regarded as the most significant relationships in our lives.They can both be understood as personal relationships because two (or more) participants in the relationship share a history and interconnected experiences as well as expectations and interactions that are directed, at least partly, at each other and are generally undertaken for the other person’s sake. In addition to the participants’ shared history, the particular closeness of these two types of relationships can be characterized –​to some extent at least and if all goes well –​by additional constitutive elements, such as mutual concern, mutual knowledge and understanding, joint identification, the undertaking of joint projects, reciprocated trust, and vulnerability (Tsai 2016). Both these personal relationships are somewhat indeterminate in nature: it is not entirely clear, for example, whether “Facebook friends” really qualify as friends or whether the spouses of distant cousins who have never met can be regarded as family members. I will, therefore, focus on the more paradigmatic cases of what are termed companion friends (Cocking and Kennett 1998) as well as on close family relationships, such as those between parents and their children or between siblings. It has become a truism to say that the nature of friendship and family cannot be determined without first elucidating the distinct normative significance of these two kinds of relationships: on the one hand, both friendships and family relationships are considered to have contributory value in that they are regarded as being part and parcel of a meaningful life. On the other hand, and for these relationships to have contributory value, they also need to have final value and to be valued for their own DOI: 10.4324/9781003007012-17

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sakes. Part of that value and our responses to that value are often characterized in terms of the special duties that the parties to these relationships are thought to owe to each other because of that relationship and because of the value they place on it. To date, studies of these two kinds of personal relationships have focused on the particular relationship itself or on their shared normative significance. Philosophers have a long-​standing interest in the nature and value of friendship and, more recently, have begun to study the nature and value of family as well (e.g., Helm 2009; Caluori 2013; Archard 2010). However, they have rarely focused on undertaking comparative analyses of these two relationships in order to explain their normatively relevant differences. Vernacular phrases, such as “my friend is like a brother to me,” or “my sister is my best friend,” suggest that there are meaningful differences between these relationships. Similarly, friendships can come to an end, although there seems to be a widely held intuition that there is a sense in which we cannot sever family relationships. The idea of a “chosen family” and lifelong friendships may, however, give the impression that there are overlaps and commonalities between these two types of relationships. It is, therefore, hardly surprising that giving priority to friends or family is considered to be an equally good reason to be exempted from the duties we may have toward other people. The exact nature of the normatively relevant similarities and differences between friends and family remains, however, unclear. So, too, does the bearing they have on the special duties we owe to our friends and family members, and how we can assess the normative weight of these distinct types of relationships. The aim of this chapter is to explore these normatively relevant similarities and differences in order to provide a better understanding of how the nature and value of friendship and family relationships differ.

2.  The Contributory Value of Friendship and Family Relationships Both friendships and family relationships are regarded as sources of particular value for the people involved. If they flourish, they can contribute substantially to the quality of our lives. Unsurprisingly, then, our relationships with friends and family are commonly considered to be important contributors to leading a good life. They are both taken to be an essential part of our personal integrity and self-​conception (Williams 1973) or normative identity (Korsgaard 1996) and they appear on every objective list theory of well-​being (Nussbaum 2000). Their value and, relatedly, our fundamental interest in realizing this value have led some philosophers to assume that we have an unconditional human right to have relationships (Brownlee 2013), a right to procreate and to parent (Archard and Benatar 2010; Hannan, Brennan, and Vernon 2015), and that children have the right to be loved (Liao 2015). Some even think that, given the value of these personal relationships, we have a duty to make friends if we can (Collins 2013). The value of these two kinds of personal relationships is considered to be so significant that even impartial moral theories –​most notably consequentialism –​ have tried to account for them (Railton 1984; Portmore 2011; Pettit 2015). By incorporating these personal relationships into their theories, philosophers aim to show that morality should not demand that we abandon what we consider to be of utmost importance to us. It should, therefore, be morally permissible for us to do more for our friends and family than for strangers, even if this does not maximize agent-​neutral value. Similarly, there is a commonly held intuition that, although we should be required to treat everyone equally because every person has the same intrinsic moral worth, we should nevertheless be morally permitted to give special treatment to the people with whom we share close relationships (Bramer 2010). The particular value of our personal relationships has, therefore, led some philosophers to argue against the “supremacy” of moral rationalism that entails an impartial theory of morality, most notably consequentialism (Dorsey 2016), and others to highlight personal relationships as the paradigm of a relational account of morality (Wallace 2012). Psychological studies, meanwhile, confirm that both friendships and family ties facilitate cooperation and altruism (O’Gorman and Roberts 2017). 154

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As a result, both friendships and family have been examined as sources of value that are important contributory factors in helping us lead a good life, ground particular social rights, and limit the demands of impartial moral theories. These two types of personal relationships are thus equally important when assessed from the so-​called outside or third-​person perspective.That is, if we were to seek advice on how to go about leading a good life, we would almost certainly be told to “make sure you have friends” or “cherish your relationship with your parents and siblings.” Similarly, if we were to think more generally about what is good for us, our friends and family relationships would surely spring to mind. That these relationships have such significance from an outside perspective depends, though, on the assumption that they are going well from the “inside” or first-​person perspective of the parties involved. However, the relationships with friends and family members are not always flourishing ones. They can also be toxic: people can be good or bad friends and good or bad parents. As a result, and for such close relationships to have contributive value at all, we need to value our friends and family as well as the relationships we have with them appropriately and for their own sakes. Many philosophers think that there is a close connection between the final value that friendships and family relationships have and the special duties that the parties need to acknowledge in order to realize that value and thus make these relationships thrive. Indeed, there is a broad consensus among scholars that close relationships only help us lead a good life if we respond to their final value by acknowledging that we owe special duties to our friends and family members (Scheffler 1997; Keller 2007; Seglow 2013). These two types of relationships are, therefore, believed to share an internal normative structure.

3.  The Shared Internal Normative Structure of Friendship and Family Relationships Once we consider personal relationships from the first-​person perspective, we will find that they can be regarded as a personal value of great significance and as a source of special duties. How we fully grasp this connection between the value of a particular relationship and its special duties will depend on our views on the priority of value or duty. Some think that acknowledging special duties is constitutive of the value of such relationships (Scanlon 1998). Scheffler regards special duties as “preconditions” for the existence of a valuable close relationship (1997), while Seglow maintains that “meeting these duties is a central way people serve their salient social relationships” (2013). Martin believes that a relationship-​constituting norm justifies our special duties (2019; see also Betzler 2008), and Owens claims that the value of these special duties lies in the fact that close relationships serve our normative interests (2012). Others think that these relationships should be treated as “higher-​level goods,” which consists in having appropriate attitudes to other previously given goods and other previously given normative considerations in the lives of our friends (Hurka 2006; Betzler 2016); higher-​level goods thus point to the distinct value of close relationships. A fitting way to respond to the value of these close relationships then seems to be to accept that we owe special duties to those with whom we have such a relationship (Lazar 2016). Regardless of how we understand the connection and order of priority between the value of close relationships with friends and family as well as the special duties we take ourselves to owe to participants in such relationships, there is broad agreement among philosophers that there is a “relationship-​duties nexus” (Seglow 2013), which states that participants in close relationships consider that they owe each other particular duties simply because of that shared relationship. In addition, there is also a close “relationship value claim” (Seglow 2013), which maintains that such duties are only owed to participants because of the value of their relationships. According to this claim, the mere fact that people are engaged in a relationship is not enough for them to owe any special duties to one another. Since relationships can be abusive or highly immoral, it is important that we are able to rule out that relationships that are not valuable can ground special duties. 155

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To better understand the normative significance of being in such relationships from the “inside,” we need to elucidate the precise nature of the special duties that we owe to our nearest and dearest and also uncover how we can distinguish between different types of special duties. Special duties are distinct from natural duties, which we owe to all human beings qua human beings, as they are grounded in a particular relationship. Special duties are particularly stringent as we are morally obliged to fulfill these duties (Bazargan-​Forward 2019). They are peremptory as we are not free to ignore them.They can be said to be exclusionary reasons in that they block the normative force of other normative considerations that would otherwise apply to us. Special duties are thus robustly demanding (Arrell 2014; Pettit 2015) as they continue to be stringent in a range of possible worlds in which the relationship has undergone change. Consequently, we are required to be virtuously disposed to the other participant in a relationship. Special duties also demand that we give priority to the interests of friends and family –​our nearest and dearest –​over those of strangers (Scheffler 1997); as a result, they are mostly positive duties. This does not imply that other duties can never outweigh special duties to friends and family. Special duties are pro tanto duties, but if we are to realize the value of a particular relationship, then we need to regard the special duties that we owe to friends or family as being particularly stringent. Furthermore, special duties are agent-​relative: They cannot be carried out by any person other than the agent –​in this case the duty-​holder –​and they must include an essential reference to the duty-​ holder. They are also directed duties, and thus owed to the particular other participant with whom we have a relationship, not to some generalized other. There are at least four categories of special duties: three are grounded in more general moral principles, while the fourth is rooted in the essential and valuable features of a particular close relationship. The first category, agency-​based special duties, appeals to a general moral principle according to which one agent owes particular actions to another agent if the former has deliberately led the latter to expect that the agent will behave in a certain way, for example by making a promise or coming to an agreement over something. We then have a duty to carry out the actions that we have willfully led others to believe we will do. These duties are general duties as they might arise from any form of interaction between any two or more people. The second grouping involves special duties that are benefit-​based. They refer to a general moral principle according to which an agent who has benefited from the actions of another has a duty to reciprocate in some way, such as by repaying debts or owing duties of gratitude. The third category comprises non-​harm-​based special duties, which emerge when a duty-​holder has harmed or could harm a duty-​bearer through some action of his. The duty-​holder has a duty to offer compensation or make amends as well as to ensure that the duty-​holder is not harmed again (Wallace 2012; Seglow 2013). These three categories of special duties are of particular significance in close relationships as we are more likely to interact with, benefit from, and wrong those with whom we are in such a relationship. By contrast, the fourth category of special duty cannot be reduced to general moral principles because the duty is owed on account of the particular relationship in question. This non-​reducible kind of special duty is usually termed an associative duty. Various considerations have been put forward to defend the view that associative duties are a distinct subset of special duties: first, associative duties are thought to capture our moral phenomenology.When we visit our mother in hospital or go out of our way to support our children, we explain why we give priority to them by using statements that refer explicitly to them (“she’s my mother” or “he’s my son”); we do not refer to any other general or special duties. Second, there are a number of cases that cannot be adequately explained by the other special duties that are grounded in general moral principles. For example, some take the filial duties of adult children to their aging parents to be benefit-​based special duties. This view can, however, be criticized for the following reason: if we were to receive a large amount of money from an unknown billionaire, we might similarly find that we owe benefit-​based special duties to our benefactor. But the duties we owe to the billionaire on account of the received benefit surely differ in nature and quality 156

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from the duties we owe to our aging parents (Wallace 2012). This implies that associative duties are distinct duties that cannot be reduced to other types of special duties. Third, and not unrelatedly, it is believed that the actions of realizing the particular personal value that such relationships have for those involved and of capturing the unique normative claims that we make on each other are intimately tied to associative duties. Those who choose to reduce associative duties to other special duties seem unable to explain why the latter are grounded in the particular relationships that particular duty-​ holders and duty-​bearers share. Both friendship and family relationships are thus thought to have a common normative structure that consists of a close connection between their value and the exclusive associative duties they generate. It is also within such close relationships that other special duties can emerge. But which of the valuable features of these relationships can ground and justify associative duties? And how can we account for the normatively relevant differences between friendship and family relationships despite their shared internal normative structure?

4.  Justifying Associative Duties to Friends and Family It would be reasonable to assume that the distinct value of friendship and family relationships, together with the associative duties they generate, is grounded in the features that characterize each of these two types of relationships.These features could then account for the value they each have for their own sakes and explain how the associative duties we owe to friends or family members differ from each other. The valuable elements of friendship could comprise certain positively evaluated descriptive features, such as free choice, equality, and mutual affection.1 In the case of family relationships, the features that stand out and that could explain the distinct value of family are the biological relationship between related individuals and the social role that is taken to capture the relationship that holds between them. I will now examine whether these positively evaluated descriptive features of friendship and family relationships ground and can justify the respective associative duties that people can be thought to have toward friends and family members, and whether they can account for the normatively relevant differences between friendship and family. If these features are to qualify as sources of associative duties, it will need to be shown that associative duties are modally demanding and exclusionary, that they are directed and agent-​relative, and that, because of these factors, we are required to give priority to our friends and family members. Similarly, if associative duties are to be justified, we need to answer two objections to these duties.The so-​called “voluntarist objection” addresses the concern that we often do not choose our relationships and so it seems problematic to justify duties in terms of a relationship in which we simply find ourselves (Scheffler 1997). The “respect objection” maintains that in meeting our associative duties we can fail to respect close others or people outside our relationships. For example, parents can discriminate against their daughters by giving priority to their sons, while gang members can disrespect those who are not members of their group by engaging in group activities that wrong others (Seglow 2013). As a result, if the valuable elements of close relationships are to ground and justify associative duties, then we need to account for the aforementioned distinctness of associative duties as well as defuse the voluntarist and respect objections.

4.1.  The Values of Freedom of Choice, Equality, and Mutual Affection Friendships are chosen, voluntary, and symmetrical relationships that are essentially characterized by mutual affection and other positive attitudes. Thus, freedom of choice, equality, and mutual affection can be taken to be particularly valuable elements of friendship. The fact of being chosen to be someone’s friend is valuable as it provides us with recognition of our distinct value (Berlin 1958; Kane 1996; Nelkin 2015). To choose a person one likes is equally good as a 157

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freely chosen relationship enhances our sense of free agency. Similarly, to be regarded as an equal is also valuable as it acknowledges our authority and thereby gives us associative control (Scheffler 2015). In addition, positive attitudes such as liking, loving, sympathy, or even admiration have value because they are pleasant feelings that manifest the particular enjoyment of a close personal bond. Moreover, to the extent that a person and the relationship we have with them exhibit some valuable elements, responding to them by showing love or admiration is independently valuable (Hurka 2006). Furthermore, because friends are freely chosen and typically regarded as equals, plus the fact that friendships are voluntary, it would seem that both the voluntarist and respect objections to associative duties could be taken to have been overcome. But do these elements really ground and justify associative duties? First, the fact that we start a friendship voluntarily is not sufficient to ground and justify associative duties. For example, just because Amy befriends Albert of her own free will does not mean that she should give his interests priority over her own. Indeed, Amy might have good reason to end her friendship with Albert if, for example, he manipulates her and gets her to do things for him that she would rather not do. Hence, voluntariness as such does not help us to answer the respect objection. Second, one might consider that equality is an aspect of friendship that guarantees respect. But even if it is undeniably valuable to be in an egalitarian relationship, equality does not ground associative duties either. After all, we should treat strangers as our equals too. Equality as such also does not justify associative duties, but rather justifies the duties of respect we owe to every human being. One might, therefore, suggest that it is not the egalitarian relationship between friends as such that grounds and justifies associative duties but the equality they share in regard to their values and feelings of mutual affection that is relevant in this instance. But then again surely the friendships based on shared values between mafiosi, who are unlikely to respect people outside their close relationships, do not justify associative duties. This would lead us to conclude that even the more qualified equality between friends concerning their shared values does not answer the respect objection. Third, mutual affection cannot be considered to be a source of associative duties for two reasons: on the one hand, subjective attitudes of this kind are not stable enough to justify associative duties.These emotions are too fickle and too prone to change. Furthermore, if a subjective attitude is no longer present in a relationship, we do not necessarily lose our associative duties. After all, they are exclusionary and robustly demanding and so we cannot simply give them up at will. On the other hand, subjective attitudes cannot be used as an external norm according to which we can evaluate the different types of associative duties that we have to each other (Jeske 2008). If the valuable elements of friendship are unable to justify the claim that we owe associative duties to our friends and, as a result, do not explain the normatively relevant differences between friendship and family relationships, then perhaps the distinctly valuable features of family relationships may prove to be more promising.

4.2.  The Values of Biological Ties and Social Roles Some philosophers maintain that the fact that we are biologically related is in itself valuable, since it provides us with a kind of self-​knowledge that we acquire from direct acquaintance with biological relatives, which is important for forming a sense of identity and leading a meaningful life. David Velleman, for example, argues that our biological relatives are like mirrors in which we are able to see ourselves. Without such a mirror and thus not knowing our biological relatives “must be like wandering in a world without reflective surfaces, permanently self-​blind” (Velleman 2005: 368). In such a world we are unable to tell our life story in terms of an imagined family history as we lack the resemblances that exist in biologically related families. In a similar vein, it has been argued that our biological ties provide the most enduring aspect of who we are, which is why we owe special moral duties to our family members (Belliotti 1986). As a result, we might believe that we have associative duties to our family members because this is what responding to these valuable genetic ties entails. 158

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The more profound question is whether the value of biological relationships can ground and justify associative duties. Consider a child whose biological father disappeared after her birth and whose stepfather later assumed the role of the social father. We would surely not claim that the child acquired associative duties to her biological father solely on account of her genetic ties to him.To claim that she does owe him associative duties would not answer the respect objection. Moreover, it is questionable whether genetic ties are in fact necessary to form an adequate identity. A person can acquire a strong sense of identity in a number of ways: There are plenty of cultural schemas that enable people to forge a sense of identity without the necessity of knowing their biological parents. Even if family relationships have unique value, this value need not be connected to blood ties, but could be grounded in the shared commitments and responsibilities that are required to raise children (Jeske 1998; Haslanger 2009; Archard 2010). As a result, the normative differences between friends and family members in terms of the distinct associative duties that these two kinds of relationships generate cannot be captured on account of the distinct value of biological kinship. Even if there were some value in being biologically related, it is not significant enough to generate associative duties that demand that we give priority to our family members. Another way to account for the normative differences between friendship and family relationships by justifying the distinct associative duties we owe to our family members would be to look at the normative relevance of social roles, such as those of mother, father, daughter, or brother. One could suggest that family is essentially characterized by the social roles involved in making a family. After all, family is often viewed as an institution that is focused on child-​rearing and which thus has a predefined function comprising particular custodial responsibilities (Cutas 2019). These roles are defined as “institutionally specified rights and duties organized around institutionally specified social functions” (Hardimon 1994: 334), where role obligations are regarded as special duties “whose normative force flows from that role” (ibid.) and that are, what Hardimon calls,“reflectively acceptable.” Even though no one chooses to be born into a particular family, we could be thought to owe associative duties to our family members because of the particular roles that we are assigned in that family and that are reflectively acceptable to us. Again, the advantage of locating associative duties in social roles carries the promise that we might find a source of value that is unique to family relationships, that can distinguish between the normative significance of family relationships and that of friendship, and that is not defined by the particular social roles that friends are meant to fulfill. But to claim that family roles generate associative duties hinges on the assumption that these roles are distinctly valuable. Philosophers account for the value of social roles by pointing to their importance for our sense of self, our self-​understanding, and how others understand us as well as for our self-​determination and meaning (Sciaraffa 2011). It is to be hoped that the value of social roles will be able to justify the claim that we have associative duties to our friends and family, even though we might not have acquired these relationships voluntarily. Associative duties grounded in social roles might thus be able to answer the voluntarist objection. Four concerns have been raised, however, as to whether associative duties can be justified on account of the value of social roles in family relationships. First, role obligations cannot account for the difference in associative duties that we might be thought to have toward, for example, different siblings; we might have a more intimate shared history with one particular sister that we do not have with our other siblings (Brewer-​Davis 2019). Second, role obligations are grounded in types of relationships, such as the parent–​child relationship or family relationships more generally, but it is not possible to have associative duties on behalf of some generic type of relationship. After all, associative duties are directed at and owed to someone in particular. For instance, a person cannot have associative duties toward their not-​yet-​conceived child (Brewer-​Davis 2019; Jeske 1998). Third, role obligations are grounded in the value of a particular social role. To the extent that this value is borne by our self-​determination or identity, role obligations, unlike associative duties, are not directed at others (Brewer-​Davis 2019). Even if we claim that the value of self-​determination depends, in part at least, on the realization of a relationship, the obligation it grounds continues to be an obligation 159

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because of the particular social role and not an obligation grounded in the claims of particular others. Fourth, role obligations are grounded in given social structures. However, if we ground special obligations in such structures, we will not be able to answer the respect objections, since social structures can be unfair and immoral. Also, we would not easily be able to account for the fact that the way we conceive of family will, over time, undergo social change. But role obligations also do not answer the voluntarist objection. Why should we have such obligations when we did not choose to be part of those structures in the first place (Jeske 2019)? These concerns seem conclusive enough for us to reject the view that social roles can explain both the distinctness of family relationships and the particular associative duties they generate. Therefore, we need to look for other evaluative features if we are to be able to account for the differences between friendships and family relationships. Conceptual considerations could provide a clue. For example, we can use the terms “friend” and “family” not just as thick concepts, in which descriptive content is positively or negatively evaluated (Williams 1985), but also as “dual character” concepts (Knobe, Prasada, and Newman 2013; Reuter 2019). Accordingly, we can consider a person to be a friend or a mother if certain descriptive features are met. In the case of a friend, this could be mutual affection or a shared history. In the case of a mother, this could be a biological or social role relationship. But we can also conceive of a person as a friend if she satisfies the norms of friendship by behaving in a way that we believe “real” or “true” friends should behave. For example, a mother who raises her children unlovingly is a mother in a descriptive but not in an evaluative sense: she does not do what good mothers do. Our choice of language shows that we can use these terms as “dual character” concepts. A daughter might respond to an unloving mother by stating that she never acted like a real mother, which suggests that behavioral expectations are built into the use of the term “mother.” As a result, there is a sense in which we consider friends and family members (particularly parents) to be governed by different norms. The “true” modifier picks out its evaluative dimension. In contrast to the standard interpretation of thick concepts, dual character concepts can categorize descriptive and normative dimensions independently. The evaluative dimension of the terms “friends” and “family” manifests an ideal of what it is to be regarded as a good friend or parent. Analyzing the terms as dual character concepts thus reveals that the value associated with these types of relationships can also be taken to be embedded in a conception of an ideal relationship. Such an ideal need not be grounded in the descriptive features of these relationships. The relationship goods account presupposes that associative duties are grounded in an ideal conception of a particular relationship. It thus looks highly likely that this account will make sense of the modal robustness of associative duties as well as take into consideration the widely held intuition that only those relationships that meet some external norm and are thus not subject to the voluntarist and respect objections can justify associative duties.

4.3.  Relationship Goods The most prominent account of associative duties thus views relationship goods as grounded in and justified by an ideal conception of a distinct kind of relationship. This ideal is, in turn, characterized by the particular relationship goods that participants in these distinct types of relationships can be thought to co-​create as both agents and beneficiaries of these goods. A good friendship or family relationship –​that is, one in which the participants realize a particular ideal –​is, therefore, one in which the participants co-​create relationship goods in light of the fact that they have particular “relationship-​dependent interests” that they can enjoy together (Keller 2007; Seglow 2013; Brighouse and Swift 2014). Relationship goods and our interest in them are not the only elements that justify associative duties. Family relationships can also be distinguished from friendships by the distinct kinds of goods that they generate and that can help us capture the normative differences between different types 160

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of relationships. The latter are valuable in virtue of the different kinds of relationship goods that ground different associative duties. In the case of parent–​child relationships, for example, it is in the interests of parents and children alike to enjoy familial intimacy, shared family experiences, and family continuity; their associative duties thus involve developing those goods.While intimacy can be expressed as a form of “authentic self-​disclosure” and “mutual other-​direction” (Seglow 2013: 82f.), family experiences consist of taking part in joint activities and developing emotional bonds, which help the parties involved to maintain their identity over time. Family continuity refers to a family’s intergenerational relationships and thus helps all family members make sense of themselves in light of such a family narrative over time. Friendship, however, is considered to be valuable because of other goods, such as the experiences between friends, friendship-​ related intimacy, and mutual concern. Intimacy in friendship is characterized by the mutual receptivity of friends to respond to each other’s commitments and identities (Seglow 2013). Mutual concern expresses the readiness to assist and support one’s friends, and it can thus be considered to be a certain obligation of friendship (Owens 2012). Friends, therefore, have the associative duty to engage in shared experiences. Relationship goods accounts show that not every type of friendship or family relationship generates associative duties; personal relationships can, after all, be abusive or harmful in other ways and, as a consequence, produce too few relationship goods. Relationship goods accounts can thus answer the respect objection in that they rule out the possibility that abusive or immoral relationships fulfill the ideal of friendship or the ideal of family. Furthermore, relationship goods accounts can answer the voluntarist objection as our associative duties are not grounded in relationships that we did not choose but in the relationship goods that we wish to co-​create. We express our autonomy by furthering these relationship goods more or less voluntarily (Jeske 1998). The associative duties that are grounded in and justified by our interest in these goods can also be said to be agent-​relative, directed, and robustly demanding duties. Carrying out these duties in order to realize such an ideal cannot be transferred to people outside the relationship: in order to realize particular relationship goods, both participants in a relationship need to regard the other as a particular other. After all, it is impossible to be intimate –​to take but one relationship good –​with a generalized other. Moreover, relationship goods are such that we can only promote them if we continue to further those goods in a possible world in which we are not that inclined to do so. As a result, it would seem that relationship goods accounts based on the ideal of family relationships or of friendship are better able to ground and justify associative duties. Nevertheless, they remain problematic in two ways. First, relationship goods accounts have difficulty in individuating the goods that characterize the ideal of a distinct kind of relationship. Seglow, for example, claims that it is the goods of familial intimacy, shared family experiences, and family continuity that account for the ideal of family relationships (2013), while Brighouse and Swift single out the goods of love, trustworthy and spontaneous intimacy, and the beneficial aspect of parental authority on children (2014). Although these goods are similar in many ways, they nevertheless do differ to some extent, which makes it difficult to identify the associative duties that are justified on account of our interest in these goods. Second, the goods that arise from different types of relationships, such as friendship and family, are also too similar to account for the differences between the relationships. Intimacy, for example, figures both in friendship and in parent–​child relationships, and it is not entirely clear if it is possible to determine the differences between these two types of relationships by analyzing only variants of the same relationship good of intimacy.2 Even if we concede that intimacy is a good that characterizes all close relationships and that all we need to do is identify which type of relationship produces this particular good, we will still be at a loss to elucidate the exact nature of a particular kind of intimacy in a particular type of relationship. We will thus be unable to account for the normative differences between friendship and family. Given the generality of the relationship good of intimacy –​to stay with the ­example –​we would be hard put to spell out how the associative duties that feature in 161

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friendship differ in content from those that matter in parent–​child relationships. Relationship goods accounts have not yet addressed these issues. In order to tackle the first problem, we need to be aware of the fact that the participants in close relationships can, in part at least, determine and interpret a particular relationship good that they wish to co-​create. It is itself a matter of normative defense that, to some extent at least, the participants in a relationship are responsible for deciding what types of friendship goods they wish to generate and for working out what furthering these goods will involve. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that philosophers have put forward slightly different relationship goods for the same types of relationships. As for the second problem, I suggest that it is not so much the differences in relationship goods that account for the differences between distinct types of relationships, but rather the descriptive differences between the distinct types of relationships that tell us how the relationship goods can be identified and which relationship goods can be realized. To make this clearer, consider again the relationship good of intimacy. To further this good in a friendship –​given that friendship is a freely chosen relationship of mutual affection between equals –​friends need to acknowledge that their associative duties are receptive to each other and that they determine and shape each other’s values and identities. By contrast, furthering the good of intimacy in a parent–​child relationship –​taking into consideration that it is a relationship between caregivers and caretakers and that it has the objective of raising children to become autonomous adults –​necessitates that we acknowledge that we must undertake certain associative duties, such as, for example, reading bedtime stories, giving cuddles, and playing cards together (Brighouse and Swift 2014). Hence, what it more precisely means to develop intimacy in these two types of relationships depends on the types of relationships and thus on their distinct descriptive features. Although we cannot use relationship goods to distinguish between different types of relationships, they do reveal that qualities are needed to make a particular type of relationship flourish. Furthermore, we should not forget that close relationships ground not only associative duties but also other kinds of special duties. Hence, part of what it means to be a good parent involves carrying out non-​harm-​based special duties that deal with the particular vulnerabilities of children. Part of what it means to be a good friend involves acknowledging that we have a special duty to carry out particular actions that we have led a friend to believe we will do as well as to fulfill other special duties, such as duties of gratitude or duties to make amends for any harm we may have inflicted. If we want to account for the normative differences between friendship and family relationships, we then need to consider all the kinds of special duties that might be at play. The special duties we have and their level of demandingness will depend on the context and nature of the particular relationship and the vulnerabilities of the people involved. While it would be reasonable to assume that parents have particularly strong special duties to their children that are grounded in general moral principles, it is far less clear whether the associative duties they have always differ in kind, source, and content from the duties that friends have toward each other. All four types of special duties play an important role in assessing the distinct normative significance of particular kinds of close relationships and their importance to us. This overlooked fact sheds light on a vexing issue concerning the duties that grown children have to their aging parents (Jeske 2016). Some philosophers think that these are associative duties of friendship (English 1979; Dixon 1995), while others maintain that filial duties are special duties grounded in general moral principles (Hoff Sommers 1986; Kupfer 1990). Although I believe that the relationship we have with our parents strongly influences the associative duties we have toward them, which might resemble those of friendship, and even though a parent–​child relationship might provide some additional value that is tied to family history, I also think that we have other special duties that are grounded in the distinct relationship-​dependent vulnerabilities of our aging parents. It could be claimed that special duties derived from general moral principles should, given the distinct vulnerability of children and aging parents, feature particularly strongly in parent–​child relationships, and thus typically account for the particularly strong normative significance of parent–​child relationships. 162

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There is an additional normative dimension that we still need to account for in our assessment of the normative significance of both friendship and family relationships.The distinct normative weight they carry depends not only on the special duties derived from general moral principles, which are particularly prevalent in close relationships, or on the associative duties grounded and justified by our strong incentive to have thriving friendships and family relationships, but also on how the history we share with our friends and family members affects our self-​conception and the value of the particular relationship in question (Keller 2013; Lord 2016). The normative weight that each type of relationship has for us thus depends on a number of features, such as the various special duties we have toward our friends and family, including the associative duties we take ourselves to have to further that particular relationship. In addition, it hinges on the value we place on a particular relationship and the person involved with regard to our self-​conception and the value of that history of shared concern we have with another person. In principle, though, it is impossible to assess the exact normative weight of a particular friendship or a particular family relationship.

5.  Concluding Remarks It is a widely held view that both friendships and family relationships help us live more meaningful lives and it is equally uncontroversial that only thriving relationships have such contributory value. A relationship will flourish if we acknowledge that it has value for its own sake. Many philosophers believe that in order to realize that value, we need to acknowledge that associative duties are generated by that value. Both friendship and family relationships thus have a common normative structure. How, though, should one account for the differences between friendships and family relationships in terms of their normative significance and their content? I found that the descriptive features –​ such as biological relationships, social roles, equality, freedom of choice, and mutual affection –​that might be able to characterize these relationships as two distinct types could not be said to ground such associative duties. A more promising view is concerned with the distinct goods that participants in these relationships can co-​create. The problem with the relationship goods account is that it raises an additional normative question: which relationship goods can explain why a particular type of relationship thrives? Moreover, because of their similarities, the aforementioned relationship goods are unable to account for the differences between the two types of relationships. Thus, to account for the normative differences between the two types of relationships and to determine the content of the associative duties generated by these relationships, it was necessary to consider the special duties that are grounded in general moral principles as well as the particular value of a distinct type of relationship for our self-​conception and history of shared concern. I have, therefore, come to the conclusion –​appearances to the contrary notwithstanding –​that blood is not always thicker than water and that, depending on each particular case, a particular friendship can have greater normative weight than a particular family relationship.

Related Chapters Can Parents and Their Children Be Friends?; Are Our Companion Animals Friends or Family?; The Value of Friendship; Partiality to Friends; Friendship and Special Obligations

Notes 1 There are different views on how descriptive features can be connected to value. As I will outline in Section 4.2, I use the terms “friend” and “family” as thick concepts in this chapter. 2 LaFollette (2017, 34–​5) looks at the differences between intimacy and closeness. He defines intimacy as a “rare achievement,” even between partners, as many people are only selectively trusting of and selectively honest to others. This supports the view that intimacy is a good that is expressive of an ideal.

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Further Reading Archard, D. 2010. The Family: A Liberal Defence. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. (An important defense of the family in light of its function.) Helm, B. 2009. Love, Friendship, and the Self: Intimacy, Identification, and the Social Nature of Persons. New York: Oxford University Press. (A wide-​ranging and promising theory of friendship.) Jeske, D. 1998. “Families, Friends, and Special Obligations.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 28: 527–​55. (The first extended treatment of special duties and their differences with regard to friendship and family relationships.) Keller, S. 2013. Partiality. Princeton: Princeton University Press. (An extremely lucid study of why partiality to our nearest and dearest is justified.) Seglow, J. 2013. Defending Associative Duties. London and New York: Routledge. (The most comprehensive relationship goods theory of associative duties.)

References Archard, D. 2010. The Family: A Liberal Defence. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Archard, D., and D. Benatar, eds. 2010. Procreation and Parenthood. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Arrell, R. 2014. “The Source and Robustness of Duties of Friendship.” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 22: 166–​83. Bazargan-​ Forward, S. 2019. “The Identity–​ Enactment Account of Associative Duties.” Philosophical Studies 176: 2351–​70. Belliotti, R.A. 1986. “Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother and to Thine Own Self Be True.” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 24: 149–​62. Berlin, I. 1958. Two Concepts of Liberty: An Inaugural Lecture Delivered before the University of Oxford on 31 October 1958. Oxford: Clarendon. Betzler, M. 2008. “Valuing Interpersonal Relationships and Acting Together.” In Concepts of Sharedness: Essays on Collective Intentionality, edited by H.-​B. Schmid, K. Schulte-​Ostermann, and N. Psarros, 253–​72. Frankfurt: Ontos. Betzler, M. 2016. “Evaluative Commitments: How They Guide Us Over Time and Why.” In Time and the Philosophy of Action, edited by R. Altshuler and M. Sigrist, 124–​40. London: Routledge. Bramer, M. 2010.“The Importance of Personal Relationships in Kantian Moral Theory: A Reply to Care Ethics.” Hypathia 25: 121–​39. Brewer-​Davis, N. 2019. “Roles and Relationships: On Whether Social Roles Ground Associative Duties.” European Journal of Philosophy 27: 377–​86. Brighouse, H., and A. Swift 2014. Family Values: The Ethics of Parent–​Child Relationships. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Brownlee, K. 2013. “A Human Right against Social Deprivation.” The Philosophical Quarterly 63: 199–​222. Caluori, D., ed. 2013. Thinking about Friendship: Historical and Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Cocking, D. and J. Kennett. 1998. “Friendship and the Self.” Ethics 108: 502–​27. Collins, S. 2013. “Duties to Make Friends.” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 16: 907–​21. Cutas, D. 2019. “The Composition of the Family.” In The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Childhood and Children, edited by A. Gheaus, G. Calder, and J. De Wispelaere, 191–​201. London: Routledge. Dixon, N. 1995. “The Friendship Model of Filial Obligations.” Journal of Applied Philosophy 12: 77–​87. Dorsey, D. 2016. The Limits of Moral Authority. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. English, J. 1979. “What Do Grown Children Owe Their Parents?” In Having Children, edited by O. O’Neill and W. Ruddick, 351–​56. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hannan, S., S. Brennan, and R. Vernon eds. 2015. Permissible Progeny?: The Morality of Procreation and Parenting. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hardimon, M. 1994. “Role Obligations.” The Journal of Philosophy 91: 333–​63. Haslanger, S. 2009. “Family, Ancestry, and Self: What Is the Moral Significance of Biological Ties?” Adoption & Culture 2: 92–​122. Helm, B. 2009. Love, Friendship, and the Self: Intimacy, Identification, and the Social Nature of Persons. New York: Oxford University Press. Hoff Sommers, C. 1986. “Filial Morality.” The Journal of Philosophy 83: 439–​56. Hurka, T. 2006. “Value and Friendship: A More Subtle View.” Utilitas 18: 232–​42. Jeske, D. 1998. “Families, Friends, and Special Obligations.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 28: 527–​55. Jeske, D. 2008. Rationality and Moral Theory: How Intimacy Generates Reasons. New York and London: Routledge. Jeske, D. 2016. “Filial Duties.” In The Palgrave Handbook of the Philosophy of Aging, edited by G. Scarre, 365–​83. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Friendship and Family Jeske, D. 2019. “Special Obligations.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Available at: http://​plato.stanf​ord. edu/​archi​ves/​fall2​019/​entr​ies/​spec​ial-​obli​gati​ons/​ (Accessed December 17, 2020). Kane, R. 1996. The Significance of Free Will. New York: Oxford University Press. Keller, S. 2007. The Limits of Loyalty. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Keller, S. 2013. Partiality. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Knobe, J., S. Prasada, and G. Newman 2013. “Dual Character Concepts and the Normative Dimension of Conceptual Representation.” Cognition 127: 242–​57. Korsgaard, C. 1996. The Sources of Normativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kupfer, J. 1990. “Can Parents and Children Be Friends?” American Philosophical Quarterly 27: 15–​26. LaFollette, H. 2017. “Kinship and Intimacy.” Nordic Journal of Applied Ethics 1: 33–​40. Lazar, S. 2016. “The Justification of Associative Duties.” Journal of Moral Philosophy 13: 28–​55. Liao, S.M. 2015. The Right to Be Loved. New York: Oxford University Press. Lord, E. 2016. “Justifying Partiality.” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 19: 569–​90. Martin, A.M. 2019. “Personal Bonds: Directed Obligations without Rights.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (Early View online). Nelkin, D. 2015. “Friendship, Freedom, and Special Obligations.” In Agency, Freedom, and Moral Responsibility, edited by A. Buckareff, C. Moya, and S. Rosell, 226–​50. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Nussbaum, M. 2000. Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. O’Gorman, R., and R. Roberts 2017. “Distinguishing Family from Friends: Implicit Cognitive Differences Regarding General Dispositions, Attitude Similarity, and Group Membership.” Human Nature 28: 323–​43. Owens, D. 2012. “The Value of Duty.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume, 86: 199–​215. Pettit, P. 2015. The Robust Demands of the Good: Ethics with Attachment, Virtue, and Respect. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Portmore, D. 2011. Commonsense Consequentialism: Wherein Morality Meets Rationality. New York: Oxford University Press. Railton, P. 1984. “Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 13: 134–​71. Reuter, K. 2019. “Dual Character Concepts.” Philosophy Compass 14 (1): e12557. https://​doi.org/​10.1111/​ phc3.12557. Scanlon,T.M. 1998. What We Owe to Each Other. Cambridge, MA:The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Scheffler, S. 1997. “Liberalism, Nationalism, and Egalitarianism.” In The Morality of Nationalism, edited by R. McKim and J. McMahan, 191–​208. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reprinted in S. Scheffler. 2001. Boundaries and Allegiances: Problems of Justice and Responsibility in Liberal Thought, 48–​65. New York: Oxford University Press. Scheffler, S. 2015. “The Practice of Equality.” In Social Equality: On What It Means to Be Equals, edited by C. Fourie, F. Schuppert, and I. Wallimann-​Helmer, 21–​44. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sciaraffa, S. 2011. “Identification, Meaning, and the Normativity of Social Roles.” European Journal of Philosophy 19: 107–​28. Seglow, J. 2013. Defending Associative Duties. London and New York: Routledge. Tsai, G. 2016. “Vulnerability in Intimate Relationships.” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 54: 166–​82. Velleman, D. 2005. “Family History.” Philosophical Papers 35: 357–​78. Wallace, R.J. 2012. “Duties of Love.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume, 86: 175–​98. Williams, B. 1973. Utilitarianism: For and Against (with J.C.C. Smart). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, B. 1985. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. London: Fontana.

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14 FRIENDSHIP LOVE AND ROMANTIC LOVE Berit Brogaard

1. Introduction While much has been written on love, the question of how romantic love differs from friendship love has rarely been explored.1 This chapter focuses on shedding some light on this question. I begin by considering a class of views that analyze love in terms of pro-​attitudes, such as desires for intimacy with the beloved, desires to advance the good of the beloved, or desires for reciprocity (e.g., Thomas 1991; LaFollette 1996; Frankfurt 1999, 2004; Rorty 2016). On such conceptions, love is a goal-​ oriented attitude with a specific motivational structure that shapes our preferences and guides and constrains our conduct (Frankfurt 1999: 129). These approaches, I argue, have the resources needed to account for the differences between friendship love and romantic love. Purely goal-​oriented approaches to love, however, fail on account of their utilitarian gloss of our loved ones. Even when they circumvent this criticism, they make the mistake of conflating the motivational tendencies of love for its constitutive characteristics. I then turn my attention to the view that love is an emotion. This class of views is able to accommodate the intuitive appeal of the goal-​oriented approaches to love while avoiding their undesirable consequences. David Velleman (1999) presents a promising account of love as a moral emotion. However, I argue that his view must be rejected on the grounds that it lacks the resources to account for the differences between romantic love and friendship love. I then sketch a socially situated account of love as an emotion that can accommodate the differences between romantic love and friendship love. I conclude by considering a commonly stated objection to emotion views of love, namely, the objection that because emotions are subject to norms of justification but love is not, love is not an emotion (e.g., Solomon 2002; Frankfurt 2004; Soble 2005; Zangwill 2013; Smuts 2014; de Sousa 2015; McKeever 2019; Pismenny 2018; Pismenny Prinz 2021). I argue that the objection is moot, as romantic love and friendship love are indeed subject to normativity constraints.

2.  Goal-​Oriented Approaches to Love Historically, love has commonly been analyzed in terms of pro-​attitudes toward the beloved, such as desires for intimacy with the beloved, desires to spend time with the beloved, desires to advance the good of the beloved, or desires for reciprocity (Thomas 1991; LaFollette 1996; Frankfurt 1999, 166

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2004; Jeske 2008; Ebels-​Duggan 2008; Rorty 2016; Shpall 2018). On such conceptions, love is a goal-​oriented attitude with a specific motivational structure that shapes our preferences and guides and constrains our conduct (Frankfurt 1999: 129). Laurence Thomas’s rough characterization of love captures the gist of the goal-​oriented approaches: Roughly (very roughly), love is feeling anchored in an intense and nonfleeting (but not necessarily permanent) desire to engage in mutual caring, sharing, and physical expression with the individual in question or, in any case, some idealized version of her or him. 1991: 470 Although the advocates of goal-​oriented approaches do not always explicitly distinguish between romantic love and friendship love, these approaches can accommodate the differences between them by linking them to different motivational structures. For example, proponents can take sexual desires to be part of the motivational structure for romantic love but not of that for friendship love. However, the goal-​oriented approaches to love face a plethora of other problems. As Velleman (1999) observes, taking such desires to be constitutive of love is incompatible with how love actually strikes us. If you love a friend deeply, you may be willing to go out of your way to help her when she needs it, but love does not characteristically feel like an urge to do our loved ones favors. Love may be coupled with a longing to be with our loved ones, but Velleman argues, you can love your cranky grandfather or hyper-​competitive sister yet have no recurrent desire to spend time with either. Similar remarks apply to romantic liaisons. A romantic couple may split up, not because they no longer love each other, but because their love unleashes all-​consuming, destructive emotions that wreak so much havoc in their lives that they no longer want to be together. Velleman’s primary concern about goal-​oriented approaches to love, however, is that they rest on the mistaken assumption that love essentially involves desires to achieve specific results in which the beloved plays an instrumental role. This assumption runs counter to a deep-​seated intuition that love involves an attitude toward the beloved as an end in themselves and not merely as a mere means for realizing one’s desires. If a mother asks her son to help out in her soup kitchen while she recovers from knee surgery, and he agrees merely because he needs the community service hours required by his school, we would be hard pressed to say that he was motivated to help his mother out of love for her. As a motivational factor, his mother is merely instrumental to his desire to satisfy a school requirement. This concern does not apply to all versions of the goal-​oriented approaches. In the Nicomachean Ethics, De Anima, and Rhetoric, Aristotle argues that loving someone (philêsis, τὸ φιλεῖν) requires wanting what we regard as good for her sake and not for our own (NE II 4, 1155b31, 1156b9-​10; NE VIII 7, 1157b28-​33; De Anima 403a16-​18; Rhetoric II 4, 1380b34-​1381a3). Thus, as Aristotle envisaged love, loving someone may require you to sacrifice your own interests and values for the sake of the beloved. Corine Gartner (2017) mentions Aristotle’s example of a mother who gives away her child, because doing so is in the child’s best interest.2 By doing so, she is sacrificing her own deep interest in being part of the child’s life. But she acts as she does because she is moved by her love for her child, not her own interests. Aristotle’s conception of love as selfless and disinterested runs thick in the veins of contemporary philosophical accounts of love (LaFollette 1996; Soble 1997; Frankfurt 1999, 2004;White 2001). Also known as the “robust concern view” (Helm 2010, 2017), the contemporary version of Aristotle’s view holds that loving someone requires being sufficiently motivated to promote the beloved’s interests for her own sake (LaFollette 1996; Frankfurt 1999, 2004; Badhwar 2003; Abramson and Leite 2011, 2021; Rorty 2016; Pismenny and Brogaard 2021). As Harry Frankfurt puts it: What is essential to the lover’s concern for his beloved is not only that it must be free of any self-​regarding motive but that it must have no ulterior aim whatsoever. To characterize 167

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love as merely selfless, then, is not enough. Although the term “disinterested” is –​from the point of view of rhetoric –​a bit misleading in its tone and associations, it has the virtue of conveying the irrelevance to love not just of considerations that are self-​regarding but of all considerations that are distinct from the interests of the beloved. 1999: 167–​8 By construing the goal of love as the promotion of the beloved’s interests for her sake, the robust concern view avoids the objection that love essentially involves desires to achieve specific results in which the beloved plays a mere instrumental role. But the robust concern view is still subject to the other criticism Velleman (1999) raises for the goal-​oriented approaches; namely, that they conflate the motivational tendencies of love with its constitutive characteristics. There is a further objection to the robust concern view that cuts deeper. Unlike parental love of a child (Ferracioli 2014), romantic love and friendship love tend to elicit desires for reciprocity and emotional intimacy. As Natasha McKeever observes: “the romantic lover is not usually content to love her beloved from afar; she wants to be loved back and she wants to be near her beloved.” (2019: 213) While this does not imply that, in romantic love and friendship love, we tend to treat the beloved as a mere means to the satisfaction of our own ends, it does suggest that the beloved normally plays an instrumental role in fulfilling our desire for love to benefit us. Thus, neither romantic love nor friendship love is selfless and disinterested in the sense envisioned by advocates of the robust concern view (cf. Wonderly 2017; McKeever 2019). In fact, as McKeever notes, the reason we are in pursuit of romantic love is that “it will contribute to [our] own well-​being and happiness” (McKeever 2019: 213). This is no less true of friendship love. One reason we strive for the kinds of friendships that nurture friendship love is that they help advance our own well-​being as an explicit end. So, the robust concern theory’s insistence that love be disinterested and selfless makes the theory unsuitable as an account of romantic love and friendship love.

3.  Love as a Moral Emotion As we have seen, goal-​oriented approaches to love crumple under scrutiny. The kernel of truth to be gleaned from these approaches is that love has causal tendencies to unleash specific motivational attitudes toward the beloved. In this respect, love is akin to paradigm emotions like fear and sadness, which come with their own unique motivational tendencies. Fear’s most characteristic motivational tendency is to make us want to fight or outrun the danger we are facing, whereas sadness’s most characteristic tendency is to make us want to isolate ourselves from social interaction. As an emotion’s motivational tendencies are not constitutive of the emotion, there is no necessary connection between the emotion and its tendencies. For example, there is no necessary connection between fear and the fight-​or-​flight response. When in fear, we might simply freeze in place. The idea that the desires commonly elicited by love are motivational tendencies rather than constituents supports the view that love is an emotion. An influential theory of love as an emotion is presented by Velleman (1999; cf. Velleman 2008).3 Velleman assimilates love to Kantian respect –​the kind of respect every person is owed in virtue of their inherent value, or dignity. Love and Kantian respect, he argues, are different ways of appreciating a person’s unconditional or absolute worth, or dignity (1999: 360). A standard distinction in the emotion literature is that among an emotion’s target or proper object, its focus of concern, and its formal object. An emotion’s focus of concern is the emotion’s perceived cause (Ben-​Ze’ev 2010; Brogaard 2020: chap. 1), whereas an emotion’s formal object is what emotions of that type have in common (Kenny 1963; Ben-​Ze’ev 2010; Deonna and Teroni 2012: 41).4 The target (or proper object) is the person the emotion is directed toward (de Sousa 2014; Brogaard 2020: chap. 1). Not all emotions have a target. Sadness, for example, does not.

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Following this distinction, we can say that, on Velleman’s account, love’s target is the beloved, its focus of concern is the beloved’s manifest properties, and its formal object is the beloved’s dignity.This makes love a moral emotion in the sense proposed by Alan Gibbard (1990). Gibbard’s suggestion is that an emotion is moral when it takes a moral property as its formal object. As a person’s dignity is a central moral property within Kantian morality, and Velleman holds that the formal object of love is a person’s dignity, love is a moral emotion. In fact, as Ronald De Sousa points out, “[taking the formal object of love to be a person’s dignity] makes love moral by definition, in the specific sense that it is a [proper] response to a person’s essential moral nature” (De Sousa 2021: 15). In Velleman’s opinion, love and Kantian respect thus have the same formal object, but they are different attitudes with a different phenomenology. To account for the differences between the phenomenology of respect and that of love, Velleman stipulates that the two attitudes have different motivational forces. The motivational force of respect, he argues, is to deter us from using the person we respect as a mere means to an end. The motivational force of love, by contrast, is to disarm our emotional defenses against the beloved, thus making us vulnerable to them (1999: 361). Here, an emotion’s motivational force, as Velleman is using the term, should be kept apart from the emotion’s motivational tendencies. Unlike an emotion’s motivational tendencies, which are contingently tied to the emotion, the motivational forces of love and respect are partially constitutive of these attitudes. According to Velleman, when we suspend our preoccupation with protecting ourselves, we can allocate more attention to our beloved’s needs and interests. This heightened sensitivity allows us to respond more quickly when the beloved needs our help, making us more likely to benefit those we love than those we do not love. Rather than being defining characteristics of love, our motivational tendencies –​for example, our desire to benefit the beloved –​are thus desires that our love unleashes once our emotional defenses toward the beloved have been suspended. There is another way in which love differs from Kantian respect, according to Velleman. Since we are not directly acquainted with people’s dignity, our respect for other people is an appreciation of an inherent worth that can only be grasped intellectually –​through rational reflection. Kantian respect is thus a kind of intellectual appreciation of another person’s dignity. Love, by contrast, is an embodied emotion. In Velleman’s words, love is a direct response to the manifest person “embodied in flesh and blood and accessible to the senses” (1999: 371). It is the manifest person’s qualities –​the way she walks or talks or sips her tea –​that produce love’s characteristic motivational force and hence also its special phenomenology. While the manifest qualities of the flesh-​and-​blood person are what enables love to arrest our emotional defenses, they are not the formal targets of love. Rather,Velleman argues, the manifest qualities are “expressions or symbols of a value that isn’t theirs but belongs instead to the inner—​or, as Immanuel Kant would say, merely intelligible –​person” (1999: 371). Velleman’s account of love has a considerable degree of initial plausibility (cf. Kennett 2008). However, his view runs into difficulties because of his unusual construal of love’s formal object. One difficulty is that of accounting for the intuitive differences between romantic love and friendship love. On a commonly held view, emotions are individuated by their formal object (Kenny 1963; Deonna and Teroni 2012: 41). For example, the formal object of anger is a wrongful action, whereas the formal object of fear is a threatening or dangerous object. Those who defend this view of emotions tend to hold that the formal object plays the same role in more fine-​g rained individuations of emotions. Different anger-​type emotions, for example, are said to have different formal objects. The formal object of resentment is a personal injustice, whereas the focus of indignation is a second-​person injustice. However, because Velleman defines love’s formal object as the beloved’s inherent dignity, he cannot appeal to love’s formal object to differentiate between romantic love and friendship love. Nor can he differentiate between them by pointing to differences in their motivational forces. Although this is how he distinguishes between respect and love, he does not expressly attribute different motivational

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forces to romantic love and friendship love. As Velleman sees it, love’s motivational force just is to disarm our emotional defenses to the beloved. Furthermore,Velleman holds that love’s motivational force explains why love can unleash motivational tendencies like the desire to help the beloved when needed. But because he specifies only one formal object and one motivational force for love, his account leaves it a mystery how romantic and friendship love can unleash different motivational tendencies. To remedy this,Velleman could modify his account in such a way as to attribute different motivational forces to romantic love and friendship love. For example, to account for why romantic love tends to be associated with sexual desire, whereas friendship love does not, he could take the manifest properties of the beloved to disarm our psychological defenses to sexual intimacy in romantic love but not in friendship love. Unfortunately, the matter is not so simple. To be able to arrest our defenses to sexual intimacy, the manifest properties of the beloved must include attributes of the beloved that cause sexual arousal. However,Velleman also holds that the manifest properties that disarm our defenses to the beloved are expressions or symbols of the beloved’s inherent dignity, and it is hard to see how he could hold that we always take attributes of the beloved that cause sexual arousal to be expressions or symbols of the beloved’s inherent dignity. In partriarchic societies, heterosexual cis men are prone to disregard the humanity of women who sexually arouse them, even their wife, especially if she expresses sexual desires of her own. This is the source of the Madonna–​Whore complex and other dehumanizing portrayals of women as mere means to men’s sexual gratification or general flourishing (Brogaard 2020: chap. 6). Velleman’s view has other glitches. The manifest properties that disarm our emotional defenses to our beloveds play two roles in Velleman’s account: they are expressions or symbols of the beloved’s inherent value, and they explain why we love the people we do. Yet love can have many different causal bases, and the manifest properties that explain why we love the people we do can include morally bad dispositions (Cocking and Kennett 2000). However, it is difficult to see how a person’s morally bad dispositions could serve as expressions or symbols of their unconditional worth. A third problem with Velleman’s account turns on his claim that the suspension of our emotional defenses to the beloved is (partially) constitutive of our love (cf. Kennett 2008). It is doubtful, however, that there is a necessary connection between love and the suspension of our emotional defenses. If you discover that your long-​term monogamous partner cheated on you, your trust may give out, but the indiscretion is unlikely to put an abrupt end to your love. Even so, your partner’s betrayal is likely to eliminate your love’s ability to suspend your emotional defenses. Love’s ability to arrest our emotional defenses seems more akin to a motivational tendency than a constituent of love. But that is not how Velleman treats it. As Velleman’s account does not hold up in light of scrutiny, it should be rejected. It may be insisted, however, that we should repudiate Velleman’s view only after considering the quandary that motivated him to develop it in the first place. So, let me briefly address this concern. Velleman frames his account as a way to deal with Bernard Williams’s (1981) objection to Kant’s moral philosophy. Kant’s moral philosophy demands that we act only on universalizable maxims, that is, maxims that can be regarded as valid for anyone similarly situated (Velleman 1999: 340). But this demand seems to conflict with the idea of acting solely for reasons of love. Consider the following lifeboat case (which is loosely based on Williams’s original): The Kantian’s Wife A Kantian can save only one of several people who are drowning –​all strangers except his wife. He judges that the maxim “I will prioritize saving my drowning wife over saving a drowning stranger” is universalizable, and saves his wife. However, when he tells his wife why he saved her rather than one of the strangers, she is anything but happy. She wanted to be saved out of love.

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On a standard reading of Kant, Kant holds that acting rationally requires acting only after ensuring that the categorical imperative renders the act permissible. On this reading of Kant, acting for reasons of love without checking one’s action for universalizability is irrational, even if doing so would have made no difference to how you acted. In our example above, the husband would have performed the same action (viz., saved his wife), if he had acted solely for reasons of love. But if he had acted solely for reasons of love, then he would have acted irrationally, as it would have been a mere happenstance that his action satisfied Kant’s imperative. This is the backdrop against which Velleman sets forth his account of love as a proper response to the dignity in the beloved. Velleman’s view of love, however, ultimately does nothing to address Williams’s concern. If the husband had acted solely for reasons of love, in Velleman’s sense of “love,” he would still have failed to reason from Kant’s categorical imperative. So, he would have acted irrationally here too. One way to circumvent Williams’s objection is to reject his intuition that there are situations that demand acting solely for reasons of love. Rather, it may be argued, you must always first consider whether your situation complies with Kant’s categorical imperative, and if it does, only then may you choose to act for reasons of love.5 But this proposal is absurd on its face. Morality cannot possibly demand that we stop to do ethics while our loved ones drown. A better reply to Williams is to deny that Kant thought of his categorical imperative as a decision procedure for what to do –​a method of moral deliberation –​rather than a method of justifying general moral principles (Stark 1997; Baron 1991). But this is not the place to dwell on how a Kantian can respond to Williams.6 The main point here is that Velleman’s account does not ultimately help alleviate Williams’s concern. We thus have good reasons for rejecting both Velleman’s account of love as a proper response to the beloved’s dignity and the proposition that Kantian moral philosophy requires us to see love as a proper response of this kind.

4.  Love as a Socially Situated Emotion Rather than taking love to be a way of appreciating a person’s dignity, as Velleman suggests, I propose to cast love as a paradigmatic complex emotion, much like blame, grief, and contempt. In previous work, I have argued that emotions involve appraisals of a perceived, remembered, or imagined entity (Brogaard 2015, 2020; see also Tappolet 2016; Rossi and Tappolet 2018).7 Thus, admiration portrays a person as admirable, blame renders a person as blameworthy, and contempt presents a person as contemptible. These evaluations of the perceived, remembered, or imagined objects elicit the bodily and mental changes characteristic of the specific emotions. Fear of public speaking –​a complex emotional variant of primitive fear –​renders speaking in public as fearsome.This assessment, in turn, (ordinarily) elicits the bodily stress response characteristic of fear. Emotions can thus be understood as perceived bodily and mental responses to a proper object picked out and evaluated in perception, memory, or imagination. This is a rough sketch of what I have called the perceived-​response theory of emotions (Brogaard 2015, 2021a). If I am right that romantic love and friendship love are paradigmatic complex emotions, then these types of love are perceived bodily and mental responses to the beloved as depicted and appraised in perception, memory, or imagination. Just as admiration renders a person as admirable, love renders a person as lovable, or worthy of love. Lovability is thus love’s formal object. But different attributes can count as lovable for different lovers. Like other complex emotions, love is not always consciously present. We can grieve a loss, envy a coworker, or appreciate literary fiction in the absence of any experienced or attended bodily responses. Likewise, we can love a person for days, months, and years and only register our bodily and mental responses to them intermittently.When love is not consciously manifested, it can take the form of a dispositional emotion, also called a “sentiment” (cf. Goldie, 2010).

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We can shed further light on this proposal by briefly considering Stephen Darwall’s (1977) distinction between two kinds of respect: recognition respect and appraisal respect. Recognition respect is the kind of respect owed to all people on account of their inherent worth, or dignity. It is this latter form of respect that underpins Velleman’s account of love. Appraisal respect, on the other hand, is a positive appraisal of a person for her moral excellence on the whole or her excellence as engaged in a specific pursuit. Like appraisal respect, love is an appraisal of another person, not in terms of their excellence, but rather in terms of properties we value in them (Brogaard 2015, 2021a). Furthermore, while we may love a religious figure solely for her perceived morally good qualities on the whole, we do not normally love people romantically or as friends solely on the basis of their morally good qualities. Rather, if we love someone romantically, we love them in their role as our romantic interest or partner, and if we love someone in the friendship sense, we love them in their role as our friend. Let us pause for a minute to briefly consider Alan Soble’s (2005) objection to appraisal views. Exploiting a historical distinction between love as an “appraisal” and love as “bestowal” (e.g., Singer 1984: 3–​22; cf. Singer 2009, 1987), Soble argues that appraisal views of love run into a Euthyphro problem: do I love Melinda at least in part because Melinda is, so I think, beautiful, or do I think that Melinda is beautiful because I love her? The problem remains if “beautiful” is replaced by any other valuable property or set of properties, such as wit, charm, and intelligence. Soble 2005 This is an interesting objection, which may threaten certain appraisal views, but the appraisal view under consideration does not fall prey to it. Soble focuses on qualities such as beauty, wit, charm, and intelligence, but as the latter are highly determinable properties, they cannot serve as a causal basis for love. Rather, the causal basis of love consists of underlying, more determinate properties. Suppose Jay, who has a romantic fetish for big ears, finds big ears beautiful. Suppose further that Jay loves Clay romantically, in part, for his big ears. In the envisaged case, it is true that Jay bestows beauty on Clay, but it is not true that he bestows love on Clay.Thus, Soble’s objection does not present a threat to the appraisal view under consideration. The nature of complex emotions depends not only on biology but also on our embodied cultural and individual scripts (sometimes called “schemas”) (see e.g., Barrett et al. 2010; Boiger et al. 2018). As I will use the term, scripts are structures comprising social roles, common knowledge, and norms and guidelines that shape our perception, thinking, and action and guide our interaction with others (Goddard and Wierzbicka 2004: 157; Haslanger 2012: 462–​3). Whereas cultural scripts are constructs of the culture in which we are embedded, individual scripts are products of individual socialization, which includes our upbringing and personal experiences. To see how cultural scripts can mold complex emotions, consider how patriarchal cultures versus matrilineal cultures shape the contents of shame in oppositional ways. As an emotion, shame is a form of self-​disgust for carrying out a shameful action. But what counts as a shameful action is culturally variable. In patriarchal cultures, the cultural script for women is centered around being subservient to men and practicing sexual modesty. Being sexually modest for a woman includes not putting herself in situations where she could get raped. Women who do get raped must have done something to cause the rape. As a consequence of this cultural script, rape victims typically feel ashamed (Bergoffen 2018). Contrast traditional patriarchal cultures with matrilineal societies, such as the Ashanti in West Africa, the Mosuo of Southwest China, and the Minangkabau of West Sumatra in Indonesia, where the maternal role equals status and power (Sanday 1986; Watson-​Franke 2002). Here, dishonoring women by engaging in domestic violence, lechery, or rape is seen as an expression of a defective masculinity. Matrilineal men’s fear of shame is so strong that most of these societies meet the criteria for being rape-​free. 172

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As expected, cultural and individual scripts also shape the different motivational tendencies of romantic love and friendship love. For example, today’s dominant script for romantic love dictates that romantic relationships are sexual relationships. Accordingly, sexual desire is a motivational tendency of romantic love but not of friendship love in contemporary, Western culture. While culturally dominant, the scripted sexual component of romantic love is rejected by individuals who identify as asexuals. Asexuals lack sexual desires as conventionally defined (Bogaert, 2006). Despite their lack of sexual desires, however, they still fall in love and experience romantic love and friendship love differently (Haefner 2011): asexual romantic love typically elicits romantic attraction and a desire for romantic intimacy, but not sexual desire. Asexuals’ experiences of love thus underscore the importance of distinguishing between the romantic and the sexual components of romantic love. By contrast to romantic love, the dominant script for friendship in contemporary, Western culture dictates that friendship is non-​sexual. In ancient Greek culture, on the other hand, close adult male friendships were often both romantic and sexual in nature. Most scholarship on ancient Greek homosexuality has focused on pederasty –​a socially acknowledged sexual relationship between an adult male and a younger boy. But, as Thomas Hubbard (2014) argues, many pederastic relationships continued as sexual and romantic friendships long after the younger boy had reached adulthood –​most famously the relationship between the Iliad’s epic heroes Achilles and Patroklos. While Homer makes no explicit mention of the sexual nature of Achilles and Patroklos’s friendship, Plato characterizes their relationship as both sexual and romantic in the Symposium, as do other Greek writers. In the Nicomachean Ethics (8.4), Aristotle remarks that “many [pederastic] couples continue the relationship, if, as a result of spending time together, they come to love each other’s character, because they are of similar character” (1157a 9–​11; as cited in Hubbard [2014: 146]).The culturally prescribed friendship love in ancient Greece thus appears to have been much more akin to the romantic love portrayed by contemporary cultural scripts than to friendship love, as prescribed in our culture.

5.  Epistemic and Normative Reasons for Love A common argument against the view that love is an emotion turns on the widely held intuition that whereas emotions are subject to standards of justification or rationality, love is reasonless and arational (Solomon 2002; Frankfurt 2004; Soble 2005; Zangwill 2013; Smuts 2014; de Sousa 2015; McKeever 2019; Pismenny Prinz 2021). As Sam Shpall (2020) notes, love on the no-​reasons view is akin to non-​instrumental desire on procedural (or “Humean”) approaches to practical rationality. Non-​instrumental desire on these approaches is only subject to internal consistency constraints. A commonly cited piece of evidence for the apparent asymmetry is that while we can easily provide reasons for our emotions, we are often taken aback if asked to produce reasons for love (Solomon 2002; Soble 2005; McKeever 2019). As Robert Solomon puts it, “most people are quite incoherent if not speechless about producing reasons for loving a particular person” (2002: 12). If asked “Why do you love her?”, we may simply reply with “I don’t know. I just do.” If, however, we are asked “Why do you hate her?” or “Why do you admire her?”, it would not be satisfactory to answer with “I don’t know, I just do.” Alan Soble remarks that “[reasonless] hate looks pathological, and we would help someone experiencing it to get over it” (2005: II). We expect people to be able to give reasons for hating or admiring another person. When people are unable to give reasons, we suspect that their hatred or admiration is inappropriate. Further, while we can lead others to reject how they feel in response to rational argument, we cannot typically bring ourselves or others around to love or cease to love someone in this way (Smuts 2014; McKeever 2019; Pismenny 2018; Pismenny and Prinz 2021). As Natasha McKeever puts it,

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I might say, ‘You should admire Jemma because she’s intelligent, thoughtful, has great values, and has made it all on her own,’ and there is at least some chance that you will agree. However, I cannot persuade you to love her. 2019: 210 This difference between love and other emotions is alleged to bear on love being unresponsive to reasons. Before addressing this objection, let us dwell for a moment on the nature of the reasons that lie at the center of this objection. The reasons we provide to justify emotions are reasons intended to establish that a given emotion fits its proper object. For example, “Jemma has admirable qualities like intelligence, thoughtfulness, and great values” is intended to establish that the speaker’s admiration of Jemma fits Jemma. As Justin D’arms and Daniel Jacobsen (2000) have argued, when an emotion fits its proper object, the object can be said to possess the attributes denoted by so-​called Y-​ able adjectives, such as “admirable,” “pitiable,” and “regrettable,” alongside variations like “fearsome,” “hateful,” “blameworthy,” and “disgusting”: Emotional Fit: Emotion Y fits its proper object O just in case O is Y-​able Here, statements of the form “O is Y-​able” do not express the proposition that O has a disposition to be Y-​ed. Rather, as D’arms and Jacobsen point out, they carry the purport that it is apt to direct Y to O. For example, “Jemma is admirable” carries the purport that it is apt to admire Jemma. In light of this clarification, let us now turn to the alleged asymmetries between love and other emotions when it comes to reasons and rationality. I am particularly skeptical of the premise that love is all that different from other holistic emotions, such as admiration, respect, hate, and contempt. Certainly, in contemporary Western culture, friendship love is not typically a matter of falling in love. Rather, to make a mere acquaintanceship progress to a close friendship –​the most natural context of friendship love –​we typically embark on various intentional actions that we know will advance the acquaintanceship.8 While unreciprocated romantic love seems to be more common than unrequited friendship love, romantic love in the context of romantic relationships follows a similar pattern. As Shpall notes, “when we narrate actual stories of romance we tend to describe processes constituted, in part, by many deliberately undertaken intentional actions, actions that contribute to escalating passion and commitment over time” (2020: 418). But even if it is true that we find it more difficult to conjure up reasons for love compared to certain other emotions, there is no general asymmetry of this kind. Disgust is a case in point. Most of us naturally react with disgust to other people’s bodily excretions and skin growths, such as vomit, cold sores, and warts. If asked to provide reasons for our disgust of vomit, cold sores, and warts, we may list the prudential concern that coming into contact with such bodily excretions and skin growths could make us sick. But most of us would be hard pressed to explain why we find other people’s ear wax, dandruff, sweat, urine, semen, and menstruation disgusting. If asked why, it seems reasonable to reply with “I just do” or “It’s just how I feel.” As Martha Nussbaum (2018) has argued, disgust is tied to fear of death and our own bodily decay as we get older. We associate things that remind us of our animal nature with contamination or impurity, such as corpses, rotting meat, and bodily fluids, because we fear and despise our mortal bodily humanity. But at best this explanation provides a causal reason for our disgust, not a justifying one. Similarly, rational argument does not usually help persuade us to stop being disgusted by something that we already find repulsive. In fact, in one of their studies, Paul Rozin and colleagues asked participants to watch them sterilize a cockroach (Rozin and Fallon 1987).The subjects denied seeing any danger in eating it. Yet they refused to consume it. The experimenters then sealed a sterilized cockroach inside a digestible plastic capsule guaranteed to come out intact in the feces. But to no avail. The volunteers refused to swallow the capsule. 174

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Attempting to persuade others to be disgusted by something that is not already repulsive to them tends to be equally pointless. If you are not already disgusted by other people’s tears, for example, you are unlikely to be persuaded by argumentation. In most cases, then, no describable aspect of an object we find repulsive seems to justify our disgust. So, love is no outlier among the emotions. A natural comeback is to try to extrapolate Soble’s intuition that reasonless hate looks pathological to fit the case at hand. More specifically, our opponent may insist that our inability to provide justification for why other people’s ear wax, dandruff, sweat, urine, semen, or menstruation disgusts us –​or for our unwillingness to swallow a safely encapsulated cockroach –​just goes to show that our disgust is unjustified. Unlike herpes sores, feces, and rotting meat, another person’s ear wax, say, does not normally present a health risk to us. So, whereas our disgust of herpes sores, feces, and rotting meat is justified, our disgust of ear wax is not. However, this reply is unsuccessful, as it appeals to prudential (or perhaps evolution-​based) reasons to explain why disgust of herpes sores is justified but disgust of ear wax is not. But as D’arms and Jacobsen (2000) argue, fitness reasons and prudential/​moral reasons are not on a par. An emotion can be fitting, even if it is unwise or morally wrong to feel that way, and vice versa. One of their examples concerns grief: [I]‌f you are widowed with young children, you must bring them up as best you can. Too much grief risks further harm to them, so it is incumbent upon you not to fall apart. Since the children need to go on with their lives, with as much security and as little trauma as possible, it would be wrong to indulge in the fitting amount of sorrow –​the amount that accurately reflects the sadness of the situation. But this is not to suggest that the loss of a spouse isn’t all that sad. 2000: 77 D’arms and Jacobsen’s example shows that moral considerations (or special relationship considerations) for or against an emotion can come apart from considerations of fit. But it is not hard to imagine a variation on their example where prudential considerations would count against grieving to an extent that would be fitting. The main point, though, is this: as emotions can be fitting but prudentially verboten, and unfitting yet prudentially permissible, showing that you will be fine after getting in close proximity to, say, another person’s ear wax fails to establish that disgust of ear wax is unfitting. Following the standard distinction between epistemic and practical rationality and reason, we can say that the fittingness of emotions provides epistemic justification for emotions, thus further eliminating the temptation to bring prudential concerns to bear on the question of an emotion’s fittingness. Ultimately, I am skeptical that settling the question of whether an emotion is fitting will even help us settle the question of whether the emotion is epistemically justified. If your admiration of Jemma is based on a fantasy, but it so happens that she has the admirable qualities your fantasy projects onto her, then your admiration is fitting, despite its fantastical nature. But arguably, it is not epistemically justified, or rational. At the very least, for an emotion to be epistemically justified, it must fit the properties on which it is based. Prudential and moral considerations bear on the practical justification of emotions only insofar as they lead to, or prevent, the formation of intentions to perform certain actions. For example, in D’arms and Jacobsen’s widow case, it is incumbent upon the widow not to grieve her loss to the extent that is fitting only insofar as her grief causes or motivates her to act immorally or imprudently or violates special relationship duties (Jeske 1998, 2001, 2008). In a similar vein, we can say that friendship love and romantic love are epistemically unjustified, or irrational, when they do not fit the qualities of the beloved that fueled the love. If your romantic

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partner or friend has inherently good qualities, but your love of her is based on a projection of a fantasy onto her, your love does not fit the qualities of the beloved that fueled your love. So, your love fails to be epistemically justified. Friendship love and romantic love are practically irrational when they motivate the lover to do something that runs counter to prudential or moral concerns or special relationship concerns. In her memoir Crazy Love (2009), Leslie Morgan Steiner details the domestic violence she suffered during her four-​year relationship with her ex-​husband Conor.9 He choked her, punched her, banged her against a wall, knocked her down the stairs, broke glass over her face, held a gun to her head, took the keys out of the ignition on the highway. As the title of the memoir makes plain, Steiner’s love is deeply irrational, verging on madness.Victims of intimate partner violence sometimes stay with their abuser out of fear of repercussions and backlash if they leave.This is not irrational. But Steiner did not stay for reasons of fear. Not initially, at least. When Conor broke a glass frame over her head, slitting open her face, her only thoughts were: “Don’t let this happen. I do still love him. He is my family.” Staying with an abuser for reasons of love, as Steiner did, vitiates prudential concerns (and sometimes even moral concerns).

6. Conclusion This chapter set out to explore how romantic love differs from friendship love. I began by considering goal-​oriented approaches to love. These approaches have the resources to account for the differences between friendship love and romantic love. The trouble with these approaches is that they conflate the motivational tendencies of love with its constitutive characteristics. I then turned to Velleman’s account of love as a moral emotion but dismissed it on the grounds that it lacks the resources to differentiate between romantic love and friendship love. I then sketched a socially situated account of love that can accommodate these differences. I concluded by making a case for the view that both types of love are subject to normativity constraints.10

Related Chapters Aristotle on the Nature and Value of Friendship; Friendship and Marriage; Friendship and Self-​ Interest; Friendship and the Personal Good; Friends with Benefits

Further Reading Darwall, S. 2017. “Love’s Second Personal Character: Reciprocal Holding, Beholding, and Upholding.” In Love, Reason, and Morality, edited by E.E. Kroeker and K. Schaubroeck, 93–​109. New York and London: Routledge. Jenkins, C. 2017. What Love Is: And What It Could Be. New York: Basic Books. Naar, H. 2013. “A Dispositional Theory of Love.” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 94 (3): 342–​57. Protasi, S. 2014. “Loving People for Who They Are (Even When They Don’t Love You Back).” European Journal of Philosophy 24 (1): 214–​34.

Notes 1 Some dismiss romantic love as a genuine form of love (e.g., Frankfurt 1999, 2003). 2 While philia and its cognates are commonly translated as friendship or friendship love, Aristotle also uses these terms to refer to love in a generic sense that includes parental love. 3 Similar views have been defended by Smith (2007) and Setiya (2014). 4 As it stands, this view entails an implausible essentialism about emotions. We reject essentialism about emotions below. 5 Velleman defends a version of this strategy, except he argues that the husband should save his wife, not for reasons of love, but for reasons of their shared history. 6 I discuss the problem of partiality at length in Brogaard (2021b). 7 For a variation on the emotion view, see Jollimore (2011, 2017).

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Friendship Love and Romantic Love 8 Cf. Cocking and Kennett (1998) and Helm (2010), who characterize friendship in terms of an expansion, or delineation, of one’s agency. 9 The example is adopted from my “Love shouldn’t be blind or mad. Instead, fall rationally in love,” Psyche. https://​psy​che.co/​ideas/​love-​shoul​dnt-​be-​blind-​or-​mad-​inst​ead-​fall-​rat​iona​lly-​in-​love 10 I am grateful to Diane Jeske for invaluable comments on a previous version of this chapter and to Aaron Ben-​ Ze’ev, Dimitria E. Gatzia, Maria Aleksandra Hernandez, John Perry, Arina Pismenny, Jesse Prinz, Michael Slote, and Kenneth Taylor for discussion of these and related issues.

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Pismenny and B. Brogaard. London: Rowman and Littlefield. Pismenny, A., and J. Prinz. 2021. “Is Love and Emotion?” In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Love, edited by C. Grau and A. Smuts. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Published online February 2020. Rorty, A. 2016. “The Burdens of Love.” Journal of Ethics 20 (4): 341–​54. Rossi, M., and C. Tappolet. 2018. “What Kind of Evaluative States Are Emotions? The Attitudinal Theory vs. the Perceptual Theory of Emotions.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy. https//​doi.org/​10.1080/​00455​ 091.2018.1472​516. Rozin, P., and A.E. Fallon. 1987. “A Perspective on Disgust.” Psychological Review 94(1): 23–​41. Sanday, P.R. 1986. “Rape and the Silencing of the Feminine.” In Rape, edited by S. Tomaselli, and R. Porter, 84–​101. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Setiya, K. 2014. “Love and the Value of a Life.” Philosophical Review 123 (3): 251–​80. Shpall, S. 2018. “A Tripartite Theory of Love.” Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 13 (2): 91–​124. Shpall, S. 2020. “Against Romanticism.” Ergo 7 (14). https://​doi.org/​10.3998/​ergo.12405​314.0007.014. Singer, I. 1984/​1966. The Nature of Love,Vol. 1: Plato to Luther. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Singer, I. 2009/​1984. The Nature of Love,Vol. 2: Courtly and Romantic. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Singer, I. 1987. The Nature of Love,Vol. 3: The Modern World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Smith, M. 2007. “The What and Why of Love’s Reasons.” In Love, Reason and Morality, edited by E.E. Kroeker and K. Schaubroeck, 145–​62. New York: Routledge. Smuts, A. 2014. “Normative Reasons for Love, Parts I and II.” Philosophy Compass 9 (8): 507–​26. Soble, A. 1997. “Union, Autonomy, and Concern.” In Love Analyzed, edited by R.E. Lamb, 65–​ 92. Boulder, CO: Westview. Soble, A. 2005. “Review of The Reasons of Love, by Harry G. Frankfurt.” Essays in Philosophy 6(1): 308–​31. Solomon, R. 2002. “Reasons for Love.” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 32 (1): 1–​28. Stark, C. 1997. “Decision Procedures, Standards of Rightness, and Impartiality.” Nous 31 (4): 478–​95. Tappolet, C. 2016. Emotions,Values, and Agency. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Thomas, L. 1991. “Reasons for Loving.” In The Philosophy of (Erotic) Love, edited by R.C. Solomon. and K.M. Higgins, 467–​76. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press. Velleman, J.D. 1999. “Love as a Moral Emotion.” Ethics 109 (2): 338–​74. Velleman, J.D. 2008. “Beyond Price.” Ethics 118 (2): 191–​212. Watson-​Franke, M.-​B. 2002. “A World in Which Women Move Freely without Fear of Men: An Anthropological Perspective on Rape.” Women’s Studies International Forum 25 (6): 599–​606. White, R.J. 2001. Love’s Philosophy. London: Rowman & Littlefield. Williams, B. 1981. “Persons, Character, and Morality.” In Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers 1973–​1980, edited by J. Rachels, 1–​19. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wonderly, M. 2017. “Love and Attachment.” American Philosophical Quarterly 54 (3): 232–​50. Zangwill, N. 2013. “Love: Gloriously Amoral and Arational.” Philosophical Explorations 16 (3): 298–​314.

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15 FRIENDSHIP AND MARRIAGE Christopher Bennett

1.  The Problem of Marriage –​and Its Solution in Friendship? “It is a fact universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” The famous assertion that opens Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is ironic. The novel very quickly provides evidence against the claim made apparently so confidently in its opening sentence, through the counterexample of its reluctant hero, Mr. Darcy, who has a fortune (tick!), but who seems for most of the novel not to have any desire for a wife. Austen’s irony would have been resonant to her readers. The novel makes it clear how dependent women of that class were on the whims and decisions of men, and –​paradoxically –​how dependent they were on the institution of marriage as a way of gaining any kind of independence. Such women, she implies, are in a position in which they must believe that any single man can in principle be convinced to marry, however much this belief seems to be contradicted by recalcitrant evidence of male behavior. Rather than a fact universally acknowledged, the opening assertion of the novel is, on this reading, an article of faith underpinning a practical attitude that women adopt out of necessity. Coupled with its focus on the strong, independent character of Elizabeth Bennet, the novel raises a question in the mind of readers: why should the fate of women be so dependent on the arbitrary decisions of men? And why should it be that it is only through the institution of marriage, in which a woman binds herself to a man (who may, of course, not turn out to have all the charm, intelligence, and kindness Elizabeth eventually discovers in Mr. Darcy), that a woman should be able to escape social marginalization? The questions so pointedly raised by Austen provide a perspective on the tangled relationship between friendship and marriage. If the problem facing women in Austen’s time was their dependence on one-​shot, all-​or-​nothing success in the marriage market, the price of which may be binding oneself for life to a man of questionable personal qualities, what is the solution? Might the solution not lie in reasserting the importance of wider forms of friendship that have been marginalized as a result of the all-​consuming focus on marriage as the main vehicle of personal happiness and success?1 If, as Aristotle thought, friendship is a fundamental good, something that, as finite, dependent, and sociable creatures, we would not be without, a good society would provide its members the opportunity to form and sustain friendships of various sorts and with various people. If women (and men) concentrated more on sustaining these wider networks of friendship –​friendships among women, for instance, or across genders but without the pressures of marriage –​would they not be less vulnerable to the dynamics that Austen and other writers have dissected? DOI: 10.4324/9781003007012-19

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The concerns raised by Austen are still resonant. The general problem with marriage, it might be said, is that it requires people to tie their fate to a single individual. That can create a gulf in power between men and women in a society where men have overwhelming control over economic resources and opportunities. But it is also an arrangement in which key support relationships of all agents are inherently precarious because they depend on a particular relationship in which one’s life has been invested. Better to face life, it might be said, with a wide range of friendships (or, as sociologists have called it, social capital) than to concentrate one’s resources on a relationship with a single person.2 This chapter will address the relationship between friendship and marriage by asking whether marriage is of distinctive value as compared to (other forms of) friendship. In response to the problems just raised, three options present themselves. One could argue for the status quo, understood as prioritization of marriage at the expense of friendship; one could argue for the abolition of marriage; or one could argue for retaining marriage as an important goal while at the same time seeking to maintain and strengthen the social capital of strong friendship groups. While sympathetic to the second approach, I will canvass an argument for the third position. This argument, which I will term the Equality Argument, claims that marriage can have distinctive value insofar as it represents a form –​ perhaps the most basic form –​of “living together as equals” (Anderson 1999).3

2.  Friendship and Marriage To conduct an evaluation of marriage as it compares to friendship, we need some understanding of what marriage is. I will be leaving out things like marriages of convenience that are treated instrumentally and concentrating on the type of relationship that many people value intrinsically. What we want to know is: are there good reasons for valuing marriage intrinsically? For the purposes of this inquiry, I will take it that marriage is a form of personal relationship that is characterized by: a) b) c) d) e)

an aspiration to longevity; a dyadic, two-​person form; exclusivity to the two parties involved; the sharing of (at least some of) the fundamentals of life; a legal status involving a distinctive bundle of legal rights.

We can also distinguish marriage as a form of personal relationship, and marriage as a privileged legal status given exclusively to that form of relationship. For instance, it would be quite possible to form a marital relationship with properties a)–​d) without it being legally recognized as marriage. As we will see, this distinction is important to the case for or against marriage. For instance, in her defense of the “marriage-​free” state, Clare Chambers is happy to accept that people should remain free to form marital relationships.4 Her objections are rather to the state giving priority to marital relationships by giving them the legal status of marriage. We will begin by looking at marital relationships in more detail and how they relate to friendship. Friendship and marital relationships have certain features in common.5 First of all, they are ideally built on reciprocal attraction, affection, and mutual care and attention. Friends and marital partners ideally take pleasure in one another, and it is (ideally) as an expression of that pleasure that they are motivated to spend time with one another and look after one another in a range of ways, depending on the character of the relationship. Secondly, they are relationships that typically involve the parties sharing certain activities, whether those are just hanging out together, or sharing meals, or sharing a drink, or whether they involve shared projects or specific formal activities such as sports or hobbies or intellectual pursuits.Thirdly, there are responsibilities that go along with being party to either form

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of relationship.These responsibilities typically have to do with some level of engagement in the forms of caregiving and/​or activity-​sharing that characterize the relationship. It might strike readers as odd to think that friends or marriage partners have duties or obligations to one another. But the point about responsibilities might also be expressed by the idea of the “good friend” or the “good spouse.” For instance, it is quite common for people to say things like, “if I had been a better friend to you, I would have done XYZ …” where they mean to draw attention to a standard of behavior that could have been reasonably expected of them, given their position in the relationship. Fourthly, the responsibilities that friends or marital partners have to one another are assumed more or less voluntarily, and, even if there is a non-​negotiable core, admit a wide range of variation. Fifthly, these responsibilities are not simply standards of virtue, but are responsibilities reciprocally directed between one party and another. In other words, it is not simply that someone in a friendship relationship should be a good friend, or has strong reason to be a good friend; rather, they (X) owe it to their friend (Y) to be a good friend to them, where this means that Y has something like a right against X that X be a good friend to Y, and a special standing to complain and ask for appropriate treatment if they do not receive it.6 Furthermore, this structure of directed responsibility is reciprocal in that X owes it to Y to be a good friend to Y while at the same time (and perhaps because) Y owes it to X to be a good friend to X. Sixthly, both friendship and marital relationships are often taken to be choice-​worthy elements in a human life, and the shared features listed above would figure at least partially in the explanation of why this is so. However, there are also significant differences between friendship and marriage, which are captured in a)–​e) above. Of course, marriage is a legal status, whereas friendship is not. But even a non-​legally recognized marital relationship would typically be more formal than a friendship, in the sense of involving an explicit commitment to a (semi-​)permanent arrangement. For instance, marital relationships typically have a datable starting point at which this commitment is undertaken and the relationship –​as a marital relationship –​begins. Furthermore, while there is such a thing as a “friendship group” that may comprise numerous individuals, marriage is often thought of as an arrangement restricted to two people. Although it is the case, of course, that marital arrangements such as polygamy, polyandry, and polyamory also exist, and are or have been standard in some societies, in this chapter we will be interested in two-​person marriage.7 Relatedly, while one can simultaneously be in relations of friendship with a number of people –​and these relations can be of similar levels of closeness and importance –​a marital relationship is generally taken to be a relationship that one only has with one other person and involves some idea of exclusivity. And while friendships may legitimately be more or less intimate, it is part of the idea of a marital relationship that it inherently involves at least some forms of intimacy, in the sense that some such intimacies go along with the idea of the “good marriage” or the “good spouse.”These forms of intimacy often include such things as sharing a house, or a bed, or sharing sex, or sharing discussions of intimate matters, or raising children together. What matters from our perspective is not so much any particular activity (one can easily imagine a marriage that did not involve sharing one or other of the things listed above) but rather the idea that marriage involves some sharing of what we might call the fundamentals of life. Indeed, by contrast to (other forms of) friendship, marriage might be characterized in part at least by a commitment to “share a life,” where this involves both the thought, noted above, that the relationship will aim to last (possibly until the death of one of the parties), but also that the relationship will involve its participants sharing (at least some of) the basic activities of their lives and carrying them out together. The characterization of marriage just given might be criticized for being based simply on those forms of relationship that are common practice in Western societies. Furthermore, the question might be raised whether marriage is different in kind from friendship or rather simply a form of friendship: say one in which certain features of friendship, such as intimacy and responsibility, are particularly heightened. However, our interest in marriage in this chapter is normative rather than descriptive or taxonomical.What we want to know is whether, given that various forms of friendship

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are socially available to us, we would also want to be able to enter into marriage.The characterization of marriage given in features a)–​e) is simply meant to help us focus our normative assessment.

3.  The Case against Marriage The next stage in our inquiry involves looking in more detail at the case against marriage. As we will see, some abolitionist arguments reject marriage as a particular form of personal relationship, whereas some reject marriage as a political or legal institution. Having drawn up some challenges that any vindication of marriage would need to overcome, we will then be in a position to look at such a vindication and assess its prospects for success.

a.  Women’s Dependence on Marriage for Flourishing This first form of skepticism about marriage recapitulates the concern that, I argued, most directly underpins Austen’s critique of marriage in Pride and Prejudice.The life prospects of women should not be dependent on the arbitrary choice of men. But in a situation in which the entitlements, opportunities, liberties, and status necessary for an adequate standard of life are available to women only through marriage such dependence obtains. This form of skepticism about marriage protests against the role that marriage must take in a woman’s life when only men have recognized social entitlements, for example, to work outside of the home, to hold money independently, to free movement and travel, and when women can have share in such entitlements only through the unit of their birth family, or the unit of marriage. This form of skepticism about marriage is less compelling the more that there are independent routes to an adequate standard of life available to women. However, it would be complacent to think that marriage now matters equally to men and to women. As Chambers argues, marriage remains “more central to women’s life chances than it is to men’s”: The persistence of the gender pay gap and discrimination against women in the workplace, both of which worsen considerably when women become mothers, mean that women are much more dependent than men are on marriage and the financial support of a spouse. Chambers 2017: 26 Furthermore, marriage remains more deeply rooted for women than it does for men as a source of self-​respect: “The persistence of cultural pressures on women to get married means that women are much more likely to feel that they have to get married in order to be valuable” (Chambers 2017: 26).

b.  The Cultural Dominance of Marriage as a Life Goal On traditional conceptions, only a man and a woman can form a marriage.This assumption has been widely criticized as discriminatory against same-​sex couples, and as helping establish the cultural dominance of “heteronormativity,” which Elizabeth Brake describes as “the assumption of heterosexuality and gender difference as prescriptive norms” (Brake 2011: 89). In response to this criticism, the defender of marriage might point out that the characterization of marriage given above specifies nothing about the sex or gender of the parties involved.8 If marriage involves inherent goods, those goods can and should be open to same-​sex couples. Indeed same-​sex marriage (or civil partnership) is now available in many jurisdictions. Furthermore, it is likely that the advent of same-​sex marriage will help make the cultural meaning of marriage more inclusive. Nevertheless, some thinkers believe that the fundamental problem of marriage lies rather in its privileging a dyadic and exclusive relationship as a life goal. Picking up on the concern we raised 182

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in the opening section about the way in which a focus on marriage devalues and undermines our ability to enjoy wider forms of friendship, Brake argues that: “Our culture focuses on dyadic amorous relationships at the cost of recognizing friendships, care networks, urban tribes and other intimate associations” (Brake 2011: 88). Brake and others have detailed the enormous range of ways in which our culture powerfully transmits assumptions about the desirability of marriage. Thus, Brake argues that marriage establishes and helps promote an assumption of “amatonormativity,” by which she understands a “disproportionate focus on marital and amorous love relationships as sites of value, and the assumption that romantic love is a universal goal” (Brake 2011: 88). Amatonormativity, in Brake’s view, “relegates friendship and solitudinousness [the desire to remain single] to cultural invisibility” (Brake 2011: 89).

c.  The Legal Status Given to Marriage by the State The concerns that we have looked at so far have resonance because marriage is a form of personal relationship that figures in many people’s life plans and that dominates the cultural landscape. But recent philosophical debates about marriage have also expressed a range of concerns about marriage that are specifically political, and have to do with the fact that marriage, as a relationship that is given a distinctive legal status, is recognized by the state in a way that no other form of relationship is. For instance, the state’s favoring of marriage as a life goal might appear to violate the neutrality that liberals believe that the state should show to competing conceptions of the good. On this conception of liberalism, decisions about the nature of the good should be left to individuals, and the state’s proper role is that of an arbitrator that ensures that forms of basic respect between individuals are recognized. But if this is the right way to think about the role of the state, it might seem highly problematic that the state favors those who make the formation of a certain form of relationship a part of their good, and gives them certain political rights that are denied to others. As Brake argues: The monogamous central relationship ideal is only one contested ideal among many. Framing marriage law in a way that presupposes such a relationship favors one contested conception of the good and thereby fails to respect public reason and reasonable pluralism. In the absence of a public reason for defining marital relationships as different-​sex, monogamous, exclusive, durable, romantic or passionate, and so on, the state must recognize and support all relationships –​same-​sex, polygamous, polyamorous, urban tribes –​if it recognizes and supports any. As political values do not generally speak to these comprehensive choices, a public reason for amatonormative or heteronormative discrimination is unlikely to be forthcoming. Brake 2011: 170 Similarly, Chambers argues that the range of life choices that are left out by the prioritizing of marriage include: non-​monogamy (the belief that “it is better for a life to contain polyamorous relationships”); bohemianism (“it is better to pursue an unconventional lifestyle with few permanent ties”); feminism (“it is better to reject institutions that are or have been central to patriarchy”); pragmatism (“it is better for a life to contain relationships that are structured in such a way as to best enable the wellbeing of those in the relationship, and this will vary for different people”); and celibacy (“a life is better without sexual relationships”) (Chambers 2017: 55). Her argument is not that these choices are better than choosing marriage as a way of life. Her point is simply that it is not for a liberal state that respects its citizens’ competence and right to make these life choices for themselves to make this decision on behalf of citizens. Having set out the case against marriage, we can now focus on whether it gives us decisive reason to reject marriage in favor of other forms of friendship. Returning to the options presented in Section 15.1, the question is whether a) to continue to prioritize marriage over wider forms of friendship; b) 183

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to seek to abolish marriage; or c) to retain marriage but give greater importance to maintaining wider forms of friendship. I propose not to assess in detail the merits of each of the arguments presented above, but rather to take it as plausible that there are serious problems in the way that our society thinks about and “does” marriage.These problems include the effects that our pursuit of marriage has on individual life chances, and the state-​sponsored devaluing of wider forms of friendship. With the option of retaining the status quo dismissed, the question is whether we should reconceive marriage and/​or recalibrate its pursuit to incorporate a more proportionate recognition of the value of wider forms of friendship; or whether we should abolish it.

4.  The Equality Argument for Marital Relationships I will now introduce the Equality Argument for the claim that the marital relationship is a choice-​ worthy form of personal relationship with a distinctive value (Bennett forthcoming). We noted earlier that a distinction can be drawn between marriage as a form of relationship and marriage as a legal status. The strategy of the discussion will be to look first at what the distinctive value of marital relationships might be; and then to ask whether promoting this value is a legitimate interest of the state, giving it some public reason to afford marriage distinctive legal status. For clarity, and to keep these steps separate, I will from now on talk about the form of personal relationship captured by a)–​d) as a “marital relationship” and the legal status given exclusively to this relationship as “marriage.” In Section 15.2, we enumerated features a)–​d) that seem non-​accidentally to characterize marital relationships: aspiration to longevity; exclusivity; dyadicity; and sharing of some fundamentals of life. Why –​or in virtue of what overall focus –​does the marital relationship involve specifically those features? This question is related to the question of whether the marital relationship has some distinctive value. The Equality Argument claims that there is good reason to pursue the marital relationship as a life goal because it is a relationship of a distinctive and important form of equality. It is a form –​perhaps the most basic form –​of “living together as equals.” Now this claim might provoke some skepticism among readers. It is an important part of the case against marriage (and marital relationships) that marriage is a relationship that is founded on –​and that helps sustain –​gender oppression and inequality. However, accepting that this is true does not yet decisively answer the question of whether we should seek to abolish marriage. As with critiques of other social institutions, establishing deep problems is not sufficient to justify abolition, because we still need to show that we should not rather seek to reform the institution, preserving what is good in it and repurposing it in line with our best understanding of value. The Equality Argument should be read as a contribution to the debate over whether there is something worth preserving, some distinctive value in marital relationships that continues to make them choiceworthy.To be clear, however, the Equality Argument presents a normative rather than a purely descriptive conception of marriage: it seeks to represent how we ought to think of and practice marital relationships, rather than how we actually do. What is the basis for claiming that it is specifically equality that, at least on a certain way of conceiving of them, marks out marital relationships as distinctively valuable? The Equality Argument begins with the claim that what is distinctive in a marital relationship is that its members take ultimate responsibility for one another.We have said that a marital relationship involves certain responsibilities that parties have toward one another; we have also said that it involves two people in a relationship that they do not have toward anyone else. If we put these ideas together, it might therefore make sense to think of the marital relationship as involving responsibilities that the parties have toward each other but that they do not have toward anyone else. This does not yet mark out what is distinctive about marital relationships: the members of a sports team might also have responsibilities to each other that they do not have to anyone else. However, what marks out marriage is plausibly the nature of these mutually directed responsibilities. If we put this idea of exclusive responsibility 184

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together with the idea that marriage involves a conscious aspiration to longevity, if not permanence, and to the sharing of a life, we get the idea that marriage involves two parties taking responsibility for one another’s lives. Interpreting this phenomenon, the Equality Argument says that the distinctive thing about the marital relationships is that, no matter what the differences in how parties may conceive their responsibilities to one another, the fixed point is that two people take ultimate responsibility for one another’s lives.9 Let us spell out this idea of ultimate responsibility in more detail. Firstly, ultimate responsibility is responsibility that pertains to the detail of the partner’s life (Bennett 2003). This can involve practical matters such as household planning, or accompanying someone to hospital when they are ill, or bringing up children. It can also involve listening, paying attention, and in general witnessing and validating (sometimes critically) the responses of the other person, helping them carry on and supporting their sense of themselves as having a life that it is worth carrying on with. This can be particularly important for the maintenance of agency and self-​respect in the face of criticism and challenge that might undermine them; and in the face of unhappy situations that simply cannot be made any better. While participation in many forms of joint activity requires one to turn up psychologically ready to play one’s part in the team, intimate relationships are where we can share the detail of our feelings and vulnerabilities, get the resources from which we can draw when times are tough, and the care that we need to continue. Secondly, ultimate responsibility pertains to the whole of one’s partner’s life. This is not to say that marital relationships involve the kind of comprehensive responsibility that parents have for very small children. The marital relationship is compatible with each partner retaining a strong degree of independence and autonomy. Each partner may have their own friends, projects, and interests that their marital partner need not share. Furthermore, such friends may be far better placed to help a person’s projects succeed than their marital partner could. Indeed, as the case against marriage suggests, it may well be that individuals and their marital relationships are far more likely to flourish against a background of strong friendship ties and other solidaristic relationships. Nevertheless, while large areas of either partner’s life may be mainly carried out with others, the marital relationship involves taking on responsibility for the whole of the partner’s life in the sense that there is in principle no area to which responsibilities to pay attention to the detail of the partner’s life do not extend. Where problems (and successes) arise in whatever areas of life, the marital partner’s role is to offer support, to share celebrations and commiserations. Thirdly, the responsibility is ultimate in the sense that, in the end the partner’s role is to be where the buck stops: the place where, should there be no other sources of support, support can be found. Either partner may look to other friends for support with particular details of their life, or may seek to have a particular friendship in which the support to be found is global in the sense that it applies to all areas of one’s life. But the significance of the marital partner is that they are designated as the person to whom their partner can turn if those other things fall through, and who is to provide relevant support when their partner needs it and cannot get it elsewhere.Thus the most fundamental element of ultimate responsibility is that in marriage one becomes the person to whom another person can turn and who one cannot turn away: it is part of the role that you are that person’s ultimate port of call, and that you have ultimate responsibility for ensuring that they have the confidence, self-​respect, emotional robustness, and agency to carry on, for helping them to deal with those things that cannot be made any better, and for sharing the details of their life. Marital relationships are distinctive because they involve the parties taking ultimate responsibility reciprocally, for one another. While parents may have ultimate responsibility for their children, the distinctive thing about the marital relationship is that X takes ultimate responsibility for the person, Y, who has ultimate responsibility for X. The next step in the Equality Argument is to claim that relationships involving ultimate responsibility are highly valuable. This is so for instrumental and non-​instrumental reasons. It is plausible that relationships of ultimate responsibility are valuable instrumentally because the conditions of 185

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human life and human nature inevitably mean that we require psychological and emotional support and reassurance. To keep going through the hardships of life, it is highly plausible that we need the strength, reassurance, self-​knowledge, and self-​esteem that can come from another person or persons bringing detailed attention and care to our lives. However, relationships of ultimate responsibility can also have non-​instrumental value. I will have more to say about this below, but two initial points can be noted. The kinds of skills and virtues that it takes to be a good marital partner arguably meet the conditions for being an inherently valuable human activity: giving another person the kind of detailed, sustained attention that ultimate responsibility involve requires a synthesis of intelligence, emotion, and perception oriented toward addressing an in principle infinitely extendable range of situations, and involving an open-​ended perfectibility. This makes being a good marital partner a complex form of excellence that people can work on and progress over a period of many years, and where it can be a justified source of pride and a sense of achievement to be good in that role. Secondly, autonomous human beings are complex creatures, and it is a genuine achievement to have created and sustained that kind of relationship in which beings fit together well enough such that partners can express their love and gain a sense of fulfillment in providing detailed care and attention for the life of precisely this other person. The Equality Argument claims that the idea of a relationship of ultimate responsibility is attractive, even highly attractive. However, for some readers alarm bells may have been set off by the description of the role of taking ultimate responsibility for another person’s life.This might look, not so much like a high form of human excellence, but rather like a life of self-​denial and even servitude. After all, it is a relationship in which one makes the success of the other person’s life one’s own success. However, the Equality Argument specifies that, as in other forms of friendship, marital relationships are reciprocal. The idea is that the parties to the relationship take ultimate responsibility for the person who is taking ultimate responsibility for them. As a result, the relationship ideally involves deep and detailed mutual care and attention between two beings who each have their own autonomous projects, rather than one-​sided servitude or devotion. We should now ask how many people can be party to a relationship of ultimate responsibility. According to the Equality Argument, the answer to this question is: only two. Some of the reasons for this have to do with the instrumental value of marital relationships. It is important that one gains sympathy, understanding, self-​esteem, and self-​knowledge from one’s friends. But should one have a marital partner in the sense outlined here, one knows that there is at least one person who is following the whole story of one’s life and who is in principle able to understand the context of what is happening to you now because they know that whole story. Furthermore, in a marital relationship, one gains sympathy and self-​esteem from the person for whom one has chosen to take on that same special responsibility: a person to whom one has given a special value in one’s life, and whose attitudes to you one has special reason to value. This can make the support and positive regard of this person especially meaningful. But there are also structural reasons for thinking that the ideal case is that in which two people take ultimate responsibility for one another. The first point to make is that taking ultimate responsibility is something that only one person can do. Where there are two or more people sharing the task, no one person is where the buck stops. Indeed, questions of fair division of responsibility start to arise. Should A, B, or C deal with this problem facing D? Perhaps A dealt with the last big problem that arose for D, and, given the different kinds of competence each has, A is best placed to deal with this one again. Distributive questions like these will inevitably come up, raising questions about the fairness and effectiveness of particular responsibility allocations. By contrast, marital relationships involve one person being singled out as the one allocated ultimate responsibility, and hence as the one to whom the partner can turn (at least when there are no other appropriate sources of aid and support). Because the very ideal of taking ultimate responsibility brings with it the idea that only one person can be the ultimate bearer of that responsibility, marital relationships preclude such distributive questions. 186

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Now this point about ultimate responsibility requiring one single person does not yet show that the relationship of ultimate responsibility has to have the exclusive and dyadic form of marriage. Perhaps we can imagine a relationship in which A takes ultimate responsibility for B, who takes it for C, who takes it for D, who takes it for A, and so on. However, if we assume that the relationship should ideally be reciprocal, then the ideal number of parties to a relationship in which people take such responsibility for one another is two. The Equality Argument therefore holds that marriage is a distinctive, and distinctively valuable, type of adult interpersonal relationship because it is one in which two individuals take ultimate responsibility reciprocally for one another. This cannot be replicated in another form of friendship: where there are more than two people, the two features of ultimacy and reciprocity cannot both be met. We are now in a position to see what the distinctive value in marital relationships is, and why the Equality Argument is so called. I have already mentioned some grounds for thinking that relationships of ultimate responsibility have instrumental and inherent value. However, the Equality Argument holds that a further important element of the inherent value of the conception of marital relationships described here is that they are a form –​perhaps the most basic form –​of living together as equals. As we have described them, marital relationships involve two partners having the role of taking ultimate responsibility for one another, doing so reciprocally. This egalitarian relation follows, with marital relationships, simply from the structure of the relationship and the responsibilities it involves. One of the reasons for which marital relationships are a choice-​worthy goal, and why it can be an important aspiration to find a person with whom one can form such a relationship, is because it gives one the opportunity to build a form of living together that takes this egalitarian form.

5.  The Politics of Marriage The Equality Argument as we have looked at it above is an argument for the choice-​worthiness of marital relationships as a life goal. But what about marriage, in which (only) marital relationships are given a distinctive legal status? Part of the case against marriage, as put forward by writers such as Brake and Chambers, is that marriage, understood as a particular legal status, violates state neutrality. It involves favoring certain choices that citizens make when choosing their life goals, when, according to the liberal outlook, the role of the state should be restricted to supporting citizens’ choices equally, providing them with freedom to live as they see fit as long as they do not infringe on the like freedom of others. Could the Equality Argument provide us with a way of defending marriage against this critique? There is not space to explore such a response in detail here, but we can sketch how it might go. The liberal view takes it that the state should be neutral, but this is not to say that it is value-​free. The liberal state stands for certain values. However, the liberal state distinguishes principles of right from conceptions of the good: liberal state action should be restricted to principles of right, and should be neutral as to conceptions of the good. However, principles of right are rooted in certain values, in particular, values of liberty and equality. The Equality Argument, however, is compatible with this point. A state that makes equality a fundamental value has reason to give marriage a special place, and can do so without violating neutrality, because the value ideally instantiated in marriage is that of equality. Support for marriage could therefore be akin to other forms of expressive support that the liberal state has the right to give to its foundational values. These considerations might lead us to the following proposal. The good liberal state should seek to minimize any differences in life chances as between the married and the unmarried. Any substantive discrimination would, as Brake and Chambers show, be inconsistent with liberal principles of equal treatment. The state should do that in part by giving robust support for non-​marital relationships of friendship, and by taking seriously the idea that care might be a primary good that agents need no matter what their conception of the good. But the state nevertheless has an expressive reason to give marriage a privileged position because the state has reason to celebrate the value of equality, and marriage represents a basic –​perhaps the most basic –​form of living 187

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together as equals. The state can and should recognize that marriage in our society is very often organized on inegalitarian principles. Nevertheless, the meaning of marriage can be, and is being, reinterpreted, and a more adequate understanding of its basis sees its structure as a fundamentally egalitarian sharing of basic mutual caring responsibilities. In offering its citizens the opportunity to marry, the state has the chance to frame marriage in these egalitarian terms and contribute to its progressive reinterpretation. If it does so, the Equality Argument can claim, it has a justification for reserving marriage for two-​person relationships even in a state that abides by liberal neutrality among conceptions of the good. The Equality Argument might be criticized as an overly abstract, even naive, venture into ideal theory. We have good empirical evidence, it might be said, that marriage creates and strengthens conditions of gender inequality rather than equality, since it can put women into a relationship in which social pressures that lead to a gendered division of labor (for instance, regarding childcare and housework) can flourish. Furthermore, given emotional investment in marriage and conventions of privacy, women can have strong incentives not to call on outside support when things go wrong. In certain social conditions, in which men are socialized to be egalitarian, caring, and respectful, such a structure may not be problematic. However, in a social environment in which male violence is legitimized, and in which conceptions of male entitlement and corresponding female deference are widespread, we might have concerns about a situation in which marriage is made a necessary part of a secure life for women. However, the Equality Argument is not an unconditional recommendation in favor of marriage no matter what other background social conditions are in place. What I have said in its defense takes no stand on the extent to which marriage or marital relationships should be promoted in our actual society. It is simply an attempt to say what distinctive value there might be in marriage, and thus to point out what would be lost if, perhaps in the face of such evidence about the oppressive potential of marriage, we sought to abolish it. If it turns out that gender relations are so bad in our society that, on balance, a sensible decision would be to discourage marital relationships, the Equality Argument offers an explanation of why that would be cause for regret.

Related Chapters Aristotle on the Nature and Value of Friendship; Friendship, Love and Romantic Love; Friendship and the Personal Good; The Value of Friendship; Friendship and Special Obligations; Are You a Good Friend?

Notes 1 For a recent discussion of this question, see (Cohen 2020). 2 This criticism might tie in well with concerns expressed about the atomization of modern society and the decay of social capital. See e.g., (Putnam 2000). 3 The Equality Argument develops a view I have set out previously in (Bennett 2003; Bennett forthcoming). 4 For a contrasting view, see e.g., (McMurtry 1972; Gregory 1984.) 5 For a good overview of philosophical discussions of the nature of friendship, see Helm (2017). For excellent recent book-​length discussions of marriage, which also give a comprehensive overview of the debate, see (Brake 2011; Chambers 2017). See also (Brake 2021). 6 For a recent discussion of directed responsibilities, see (Gilbert 2018). 7 For a recent discussion of polyamory, see (Brunning 2018). On polygamy, see (Calhoun 2005; Brooks 2009). 8 See e.g., (Mohr 2005). 9 The argument here is not meant to preclude that close friendships might have just these features. On my view, this would simply be to say that such friendships are, or are close to marital relationships, even if they do not have the legal status of marriage.

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References Anderson, E. 1999. “What Is the Point of Equality?” Ethics 109: 287–​337. Bennett, C. 2003. “Liberalism, Autonomy and Conjugal Love.” Res Publica 9: 285–​301. Bennett, C. (forthcoming). “Against the Polyamorous Civil Union Proposal,” in Norton Introduction to Ethics, edited by A. Guerrero and E. Harman. New York: W.W. Norton. Brake, E. 2011. Minimizing Marriage: Marriage, Morality and the Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press Brake, E. 2021. “Marriage and Domestic Partnership.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Available at: https://​ plato.stanf​ord.edu/​entr​ies/​marri​age/​ (Accessed: 16 May 2022). Brooks, T. 2009. “The Problem with Polygamy.” Philosophical Topics 37: 109–​22. Brunning, L. 2018. “The Distinctiveness of Polyamory.” Journal of Applied Philosophy 35: 513–​31. Calhoun, C. 2005. “Who’s Afraid of Polygamous Marriage? Lessons for Same-​Sex Marriage Advocacy from the History of Polygamy.” San Diego Law Review 42: 1023–​42. Chambers, C. 2017. Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defence of the Marriage-​Free State. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cohen, R. 2020. “What If Friendship, Not Marriage, Was at the Center of Life?” The Atlantic, October 20. www. thea​tlan​tic.com/​fam​ily/​arch​ive/​2020/​10/​peo​ple-​who-​pri​orit​ize-​fri​ends​hip-​over-​roma​nce/​616​779/​. Gilbert, M. 2018. Rights and Demands. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gregory, P. 1984. “Against Couples.” Journal of Applied Philosophy 1: 263–​68. Helm, B. 2021. “Friendship.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Available at: https://​plato.stanf​ord.edu/​entr​ies/​ fri​ends​hip/​ (Accessed: 16 May 2022) McMurtry, J. 1972. “Monogamy: A Critique.” The Monist 56: 587–​99. Mohr, R. 2005. The Long Arc of Justice: Lesbian and Gay Marriage, Equality and Rights. New York: Columbia University Press. Putnam, R. 2000. Bowling Alone:The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster.

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PART IV

The Value and Rationality of Friendship

16 FRIENDSHIP AND SELF-​INTEREST Richard Fumerton

Ask not what you can do for your friends; ask what your friends can do for you1

Introduction In this chapter I explore the reasons we have to form and maintain friendships.While I will not argue that the only reasons we have to make friends and care for them are reasons of self-​interest, I will argue that we do have such reasons, that they are strong reasons, and that those kinds of reasons might often weigh in favor not only of forming friendships but also of ridding ourselves of friendships that no longer contribute to our overall well-​being. In what follows I will begin by saying briefly how I understand the relation of friendship. I will then talk about what I mean by reasons of self-​interest. I will conclude by emphasizing the importance of such reasons in both forming, maintaining, and ending friendships.

Friendship So I have a highly deflationary account of friendships. I have friends who think my view gives new meaning to the expression “shallow,” and who probably stay my friends only because they do not believe I mean what I say. My friends are, in the first instance, the people I hang around with because I (usually/​often/​sometimes) enjoy hanging around with them, and who hang around with me because they similarly (usually/​often/​sometimes) enjoy hanging around with me. That is probably not, however, sufficient for regarding someone as my friend. As my colleague Diane Jeske has suggested to me, if I am a bit of an unsavory character, I might enjoy hanging around someone who I think of as particularly foolish just so that I can employ firsthand reports of that person’s behavior when ridiculing that person to others. Or I might enjoy hanging around with someone who is famous so that I can get a kind of reflected glory. It seems that we should make a distinction between these sorts of “instrumental” enjoyments, and enjoying someone’s company where the enjoyment in question flows from character traits and behavior that I enjoy for their own sake.2

DOI: 10.4324/9781003007012-21

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My friend and colleague Jeske has also argued that friends need to know a fair bit about each other, and care about each other’s well-​being.3 And they need to care about that well-​being not instrumentally, but for its own sake. My friends, on her view, want to share at least some intimate and important details of their lives with me, and I want to reciprocate. All that might be true of most friends, but I do not think all of that is necessary for people to be friends. I have had and continue to have friends who do not talk to me much, and do not have any desire to talk to me much, about what is going on in their lives. Some of my best friends are people with whom I feel really comfortable in part because neither of us wants to do anything but hang out together. We do not want to share our life secrets or burdens. Still, there does seem to be something to the idea that someone cannot be my friend if I do not feel close to that person and it may be that one cannot be close to a person unless one cares about that person, if only in the sense that one would miss that person if the person were no longer a part of one’s life. And as I suggested before, we would need to make something like the distinction between missing a person as a companion, and missing a person “instrumentally” –​as, for example, missing the opportunity to ridicule the person. OK. You may have already concluded that I am a pathetically superficial person who probably would emphasize the significance of self-​interest in forming and maintaining friendships. That might be true, but I suspect that I am not all that different from many other people whose lives are enriched by friendships. And whether or not that is true, it is important to recognize that self-​interest has a role to play in understanding why rational people have friends. But first we should be clear about self-​interest.

Self-​Interest It is not that easy to define clearly either the concept of self-​interest, or the closely related concept of reasons of self-​interest. In one sense, we can say that an action of S is in S’s self-​interest if S benefits from doing X. S is motivated by self-​interest to do X when S does X (at least in part) in order to benefit from X.4 And S has a self-​interested reason for doing X just in case S is epistemically justified in believing that X will or might benefit S. It is important to emphasize that this is only a way of capturing the very weak notion of a reason of self-​interest for doing something. In the sense just explained we have at least some reason for doing all sorts of things that are, all things considered, wildly irrational. We all have a reason, for example, to buy a lotto lottery ticket –​there is at least a chance that it will benefit us enormously. Of course, there is also a much greater chance that we will lose the cost of the lottery ticket with nothing to show for it but a brief flicker of hope for financial prosperity. For that matter, we probably have a reason to kill some random stranger whose acquaintance we make. After all there is a chance (a tiny chance) that the person in question is out to kill us. Given what I just said, this concept of a reason does not accord very well with ordinary language. After all, it would sound decidedly strange to you if, after meeting you, I announced that I have a reason to kill you. But the strangeness might well have to do with Gricean intuitions about how odd it is to say things that, so to speak, go without saying. If I say that I have a reason to kill you, you will naturally infer that there is something special about you and your relationship to me that distinguishes you from all of the other people in the world. Defining self-​interest in terms of benefits just redirects our attention to the concept of a benefit. In classic debates about the rationality of egoism, the debates sometimes centered on the question of whether our only reasons for acting are grounded in rational beliefs we have about the probability that an act will bring us pleasure or happiness (or freedom from pain and suffering).5 But when the debate is understood that way, it is probably because participants to the debate agreed that a person’s pleasure or happiness is the only kind of thing that is intrinsically good for that person. And that is a decidedly controversial position. I might think that knowledge is intrinsically good, for example, and that would surely lead me to conclude that when I act with the goal of securing knowledge, I am 194

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still acting in such a way as to benefit myself. And if we agree with Moore that personal affection is something that is intrinsically good, there is a sense in which when I act so as to promote a friendship with someone, at least the kind of friendship that involves affection for that person, I am still acting in a way that will benefit me. In general, one might think that anything that makes me a better person, is for that very reason, something that benefits me. So if acting in kind and generous ways toward other people, for example, makes me a good person, then acting in such ways benefit me. At this point, one might worry that we are losing our grasp on the contrast between self-​ interest behavior and other-​directed, altruistic behavior. But the distinction is still there, even if we need to be careful in thinking about it. We can still distinguish self-​interested motives, and self-​interested reasons, from altruistic motives and altruistic reasons. If my motive for acting in a certain way, even if it involves caring for others, is only that it will benefit me, then my motive is still one of self-​interest. If my motive, my goal is to improve the life of another in some way, then my motive is not one of self-​interest. And if we distinguish motive from reason, we can still argue that I have a reason of self-​interest for doing X just insofar as I have a justified belief that X will or might benefit me –​even with this very broad conception of what constitutes a benefit. If there are reasons that are independent of an agent’s well-​being, then there are reasons that are not reasons of self-​interest. There is another way of distinguishing self-​interested motives and reasons from those that are not that really does seem to me to make the distinction uninteresting. One might initially suppose that I am acting in a self-​interested way when I am doing what I want to do. Indeed, in ordinary conversations we sometimes use that sort of language to criticize a person who does not take into account the interests of others. We are arguing about what to do this Saturday and I keep insisting that we go to the movies.You, on the other hand, want to go on a hike. “We always have to do what you want to do; we never get to do what I want to do,” you bitterly complain. “You are so selfish.” But if the “want” in question is something like an “all-​things-​considered” want, it is hard to imagine an agent who acts intentionally not doing what he or she wants to do (all things considered). If doing what one wants to do makes one an agent motivated by self-​interest, then the only way you could fail to act in a self-​interested way is to “do” something you do not want to do. But in one sense such a person would fail to be an actor at all.6 One could say something similar about reasons that derive from wants or desires. Many philosophers want to acknowledge that someone S has at least one kind of reason for doing X whenever S has a justified belief that X will or might satisfy some subjective goal or end that S has. Many also insist that there must be other kinds of reasons –​perhaps reasons that have their source in awareness of what is objectively good or right. If all of the reasons we have for acting have their source in goals or ends, which are in turn defined in terms of subjective desires or values, then we would need to recognize as perfectly rational the masochistic sadist who lives a life creating no end of mayhem. I am actually willing to bite this sort of bullet. Like Thomas Hobbes and David Hume I do not think that there is anything intrinsically irrational about any fundamental subjective goal or end.7 But even if one accepts that thought, we should still mark the distinction between self-​interested and altruistic goals or ends, and the difference between egoistic reasons and altruistic reasons an agent might have to act. We can define the egoist as someone whose sole goal or end is his/​her own well-​being. Those who are not egoists have at least some goals or ends that are not even partially constituted by their own well-​being. As a matter of empirical fact, it seems to me almost obvious that most people value as an end the happiness of at least some other people. They do not value that happiness only because they value being the kind of person who has those sorts of things as an end, or because that enjoy seeing those people happy and they seek that enjoyment for themselves. Most people who are not psychopaths value as an end the happiness of their family, lovers, and friends much more than they value as end (if they value it at all) the happiness of complete strangers. Again, this distinction is subtle. If I have the goal of being a good person and the goal of benefiting you, I might simultaneously have a reason of self-​interest and another sort of reason for coming to your aid. 195

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Self-​Interested Reasons to Make and Keep Friends The above discussion of self-​interest left open the answer to many questions about the nature of reasons for acting. I described the Hobbesian/​Humean view as holding that all reasons for acting are grounded in the agent’s ultimate goals or ends, goals or ends that are in turn defined in terms of what an agent desires or values for its own sake. I think that view is true, but I will not presuppose it here. I will presuppose that there are reasons of this sort for acting. I have not argued for the thesis of psychological hedonistic egoism, the view that the only goal or end that anyone has is his or her own happiness. I do not think that the view is true. But again I will presuppose that almost all of us include among our goals our own happiness, and thus that all of us have a reason to pursue any action that contributes to that happiness.8 In this chapter I will not say much about what constitutes a person’s pleasure or happiness. The question is difficult. Certain sorts of physical pains seem to be almost obviously a kind of sensation. And it is plausible to suppose that there are pleasures that are sensations of an opposite sort. The pleasure of an orgasm is arguably like that. The pleasure that comes from quenching intense thirst might be like that.9 But the kind of happiness or enjoyment that we associate with other sorts of activities is not so easily identified with a kind of sensation. I enjoy playing tennis and golf. I get pleasure from these activities. But it is hardly the case that there is some sort of “warm and fuzzy” feeling that accompanies a game of tennis or a round of golf. Think about how absurd it would be if I tried to market a pill that gives one the pleasure of playing golf without one’s needing to have any of the experiences associated with playing golf.10 What could that possibly be? Reflecting on such questions leads some philosophers to offer a desire-​based account of pleasure or enjoyment. At least some experiences are enjoyable just insofar as they are experiences that we want to continue having (for their own sake). An enjoyable tickle sensation can become a painful experience, and the only difference, one might argue, is that the sensation changes from one we want to continue to one we want to end. Such an account of pleasure or enjoyment will also allow us to contrast it with the kind of painful experience that is not so easily assimilated to a kind of sensation or experience. Think of a painful lecture one endures. What makes the lecture painful? It is at least tempting to think that from the moment it began we just wanted it to end.We cannot hope to settle these controversies here. One could write an entire book on the metaphysics of pleasure, happiness, and enjoyment.11 For most of what I say below, I invite you to presuppose whatever view you take to be most plausible. From within the framework sketched above, it seems almost obvious that we have reasons of self-​ interest to make and keep friends. People are, by nature, social animals. We become lonely and bored without contact with others. We enjoy talking with other people, sharing stories, and “performing” for them. I am an addicted golfer, and while I will occasionally play golf on my own, I do not enjoy it nearly as much as I do when I play with my regular golf partners. Why? I enjoy the banter. I enjoy the contest. I particularly enjoy doing well in front of an audience (though the downside is that I really hate losing a contest with someone I know very well). Why have I cultivated relationships with some people rather than others? The answer is complicated. To some extent, perhaps a large extent, it is an accident of history. Consider an analogy. I am very close with all of my sisters. I enjoy their company and I enjoy talking to them. I miss them when I have not seen them for a long time. Is it because I was lucky enough to be born into a family of particularly interesting and delightful people –​a veritable Algonquin Roundtable of erudite wit? Probably not (though I say this safe in the knowledge that my sisters will not read this chapter). We were raised together, we went to school together, we got in trouble together, we fought and laughed together. We became close as a result, and once we become close to others, we miss their company. Missing someone is an unpleasant experience, and we have reasons of self-​interest to avoid putting ourselves in that state. Everyone has heard of the so-​called Stockholm syndrome. It is a strange fact that hostages held captive by a person for a prolonged time sometimes grow attached to their captor. They start caring 196

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about what happens to that person. They feel bad when their captor is caught and punished. It is not that they like or admire their captor. They do not think that they should empathize with their captor’s plight. But apparently, the mere fact that you go through an emotionally draining ordeal with someone often just does make you feel close to that person, and does make you empathize with that person.12 The military understands well that phenomenon. Boot camp obviously teaches recruits valuable military skills. But the hardship that recruits endure also makes them feel close to each other, and makes them care for one and other. That camaraderie plays a crucial role in forming an effective fighting unit. I am not suggesting that one’s relationship with one’s siblings is an instance of the Stockholm syndrome. But I am suggesting that suffering life’s slings and arrows with someone is one causal explanation of why one ends up caring so much about that person. One might come to have that person’s well-​being as an ultimate goal or end. But one might also realize that one is empathetically tied to that person –​one will be made happy by seeing that person happy, and one will be unhappy seeing that person suffer. These are reasons of self-​interest to take that person’s well-​being into account. Not all close relationships develop in the way that sibling relations develop. Developing friendships does almost always involve a large element of chance. But we choose to become close with some people, and keep our distance from others. Why? I suspect the reasons are almost always, at least initially, reasons of self-​interest. Some people are interesting and make me laugh. Others are dull and bore me. Still others annoy me. It seems almost obvious to me that there are not objective truths about who is interesting or amusing. Being interesting or amusing seems to be clearly a relative concept. X is interesting or amusing only to a certain person or group. To be sure, I sometimes wonder what is wrong with the French who idolized as the paradigm of comedic genius Jerry Lewis. I also sometimes wonder what is wrong with people whose musical tastes run to heavy metal. But in my heart of hearts, I realize that there is no “objective” fact of the matter about who is funny or which music is pleasing. But none of that matters. I discover that some people interest and entertain me and others do not. I like to listen to some sorts of music and I do not like to listen to others. I have reasons of self-​interest to cultivate relationships with the people I run across who interest and entertain me just as I have reasons of self-​interest to play the music I enjoy. While relations of friendship often start out in a quite different way from the close relations I have with family members, the reasons to stay in such relations are often quite similar.13 Once I spend a lot of time with you, I become close to you. If I enjoyed your company, I will start to miss you when I do not see you. But how precisely should we understand all this talk of closeness? The standard view is probably correct in at least one respect. I think friends do start to value each other’s well-​being, and to value that well-​being intrinsically. And on the view of reasons I talked about earlier, the fact that I value your well-​being intrinsically gives me a reason that is not a reason of self-​interest to act in various ways that cultivate your well-​being. But if you are the best kind of friend, the kind of friend who interests and amuses me, I will also miss that aspect of our engagement. My friend’s absence, at least for a prolonged period of time, impoverishes my life. And that realization gives me a reason of self-​interest to do what I can to ensure that you and I stay close, and that I continue to benefit from our relationship. Once I have been in a long-​standing friendship, a variation of the Stockholm syndrome probably kicks in. My emotional well-​being becomes tied, at least in part, to my knowledge of how you are doing. And this is true even if you have changed in significant ways from the person I first befriended. Once amusing friends can change in ways that makes them very boring. Once interesting friends can become self-​absorbed in ways that make them annoying. These are powerful reasons for ending the friendships. Divorce is a painful experience that married couples should not embrace without giving it very careful thought. But divorce is also sometimes rational. Why would not rational friends who once enjoyed either other’s company but who no longer do, get a friendship “divorce?” Jeske (2008) argues that special relationships like friendship generate objective agent-​relative reasons for those in such relationships to benefit each other. Where Jeske finds these objective agent-​relative 197

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reasons, I find only desire-​based subjective agent-​relative reasons. As I have admitted earlier, I would not argue that all of those desire-​based agent-​relative reasons are reasons of self-​interest, though reasons of self-​interest often weigh heavily. In conversations, Jeske has also suggested that my past friendships might continue to generate objective agent-​relative reasons to benefit those past friends even after the friendship has ended. I am more inclined to think that if there are reasons to benefit past friends, the reasons have their source either in the fact that I still value intrinsically the well-​ being of people who used to be my friends or the fact that I still empathize with such people and do not want to feel bad thinking about my past friend’s current hardships. It is hard to tell which of these reasons weighs more heavily in my willingness to come to a past friend’s aid. Other-​directed reasons and reasons of self-​interest often go hand in hand. But they are not to be identified—​they are importantly different, and they can certainly come apart. Even if I have come to value intrinsically your well-​being, I also value intrinsically my well-​being. And the more your being a part of my life causes me unhappiness, the more likely it is that reasons of self-​interest will trump other-​directed reasons for interacting with you.

Additional Considerations: Implicit Contracts and Commitments We talked about reasons of self-​interest to form friendships and reasons of self-​interest to end friendships. In this section I want to explore a more subtle sort of self-​interested reason to stand by my friends in need even when the friendship has deteriorated. Many people do expect people not to abandon friends of many years even when the friends have changed in ways that defeat the original reasons one had to form the friendship.To the extent one’s emotional health is tied to what one believes about the attitudes of others, the disapproval of others might give one a reason of self-​interest to try hard to mend a deteriorating friendship. The above, though, just raises the question of why people in general think that it is worth trying to save a friendship that has “gone south.” And why do we very often feel the force of the claim that a person should, within certain limits, try hard to save a friendship? I mentioned the analogy of marriage earlier, and I want to explore that analogy further here. A marriage ceremony typically explicitly involves promises, oaths, and commitments. There were, no doubt, all sorts of reasons, including strong reasons of self-​interest to enter into those commitments. But once made, many philosophers think that the commitments themselves generate additional “objective” reasons to behave in certain ways. If I promised to stand by you in sickness and in health, and your mental or physical health begins to deteriorate in ways that make it difficult to fulfill my promise, most people still think that there are strong (perhaps defeasible) reasons to act in accordance with the promise. Here is not the place to enter into a detailed discussion of how promising (or more generally making a commitment) generates reasons to act. Most consequentialists take a deflationary approach to understanding such reasons. According to them, the reasons we have to keep a promise are tied somehow to good or bad things that (typically) happen from keeping or breaking promises. As I indicated earlier, I am a radical subjectivist when it comes to understanding an agent’s reasons for acting. On my view an actor’s reasons are always tied to the actor’s rational beliefs about the possibility and probability of achieving some goal or end the actor has. Of course, it is perfectly consistent with such a view that people might come to value intrinsically telling the truth or keeping a promise. Particularly after conditioning of various sorts, most people might be like that. If they are, then they will have reasons other than reasons of self-​interest to keep a promise or act in accordance with a commitment they have made. There are, however, other more “crass” reasons we might have for keeping a promise. On one understanding of the linguistic conventions that allow for making a promise or a commitment, the whole point is that by uttering certain words we can, so to speak, ratchet up the stakes for not doing what we said we were going to do. If I agree to help you move this weekend, I will expect to get 198

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some grief if I do not do it. If after prodding by you, I promise to help you, and still do not do it, I will expect to get even more grief. The promise is just a form of giving assurance and it is useful to have ways of assuring people that we will do what we say. Legal contracts take everything up a notch. The legal contract brings the whole weight of society to bear when it comes to penalties or mitigation directed at those who break their contract. What has any of this to do with friendship? If there are such things as implicit contracts,14 it is not implausible to suppose that in maintaining a close friendship for years, one has implicitly contracted to stand by that person in times of need, even when the initial basis for the friendship has long ceased to exist. Are there implicit contracts? It seems to me that there is something very much like such commitments. My wife and I have been married a very long time. We never reached any formal agreement about who would do what when it comes to practical needs that need to be met. But by now there are expectations that have been set. I do not pay bills. I do not vacuum. I do not make beds. She does not do much grocery shopping. She does not barbeque. She does not look after the lawn. If either of us were to suddenly refuse to play our “role,” all hell would break loose. It is as if the long-​ established behavior patterns themselves create a kind of assurance upon which the other person will rely. And both of us have strong reasons of self-​interest to avoid the kind of hell that would probably follow from disturbing existing patterns of behavior. Friendships are not marriages, but one of the reasons we want friends is that we want to have people upon whom we can rely when times get tough and we need help. Of course, we never engaged in a quid pro quo contract when we formed friendships, but once we reciprocally start describing each other as friends, there is, arguably, an implicit understanding that we will try to be there for the other when the other is in need. Friendships can be ended –​sometimes should be ended –​but we do not want to get the reputation of being a “fair-​weather friend.” Such a reputation can destroy one’s ability to get others to trust one. And there are all sorts of reasons, including strong reasons of self-​interest to be a person who is trusted by others. As Hobbes suggested in Leviathan (1994), the greatest of all human powers come from the ability to cooperate with others. And often the basis of cooperation is trust. Trust is earned and can easily be lost. Casually dissolving friendships is a good way to lose the trust of other people.

Related Chapters Friendship and the Personal Good; The Value of Friendship; Friendship and Practical Reason; Friendship and Consequentialism; Friendship and Exploitation

Notes 1 I thank Diane Jeske for very helpful comments on a draft of this chapter. 2 Even here, we might argue that that character and behavior of the person is only character and dispositions to behave that I take the person to have. In Plato’s Republic, Socrates makes the distinction between what one might call “true” friends and “faux” friends. I might enjoy being with you because I take you to be kind and interested in my life even though you are, in fact, using me instrumentally for various purposes. 3 Her view is actually extremely subtle. She doesn’t identify any one feature of most friendships as necessary for friendship. Rather she describes a “cluster” of properties some number of which need to be present in order for two people to be friends. 4 It should go without saying that I might realize that I will benefit from doing X without being motivated by that realization to do X. 5 In what follows I’ll usually talk about benefits, but self-​interest is always concerned just as much with avoiding things that harm us. Any complete discussion of benefits would also emphasize that the concept of a benefit probably presupposes some sort of base line. So, for example, if you do something to me that improves my life, but I would have been even better off had you not acted that way, it would be not accurate to say you benefitted me. And by contrast if my surgery leaves me in a wheel chair unable to walk, but saves my life, it would be quite natural to say that I benefitted from the surgery (relative to the state I would have been in absent the surgery.

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Richard Fumerton 6 See Feinberg (1999) for a nuanced discussion of distinctions that need to be made in order to find an interesting way of characterizing egoistic (self-​interested) motivations. 7 One might have instrumental reasons to try to rid oneself of subjective goals or ends. If am a sadist who is not a masochist, I might realize that I will need to choose between a life in which bad things happen to me (what goes around comes around) and a life of frustration. If I can get of my sadistic impulses I might get more of my other goals or ends satisfied. 8 Again, as with the more general concept of a benefit, happiness is probably best measured against a base line. It is also complicated. One might wish one were the kind of person who isn’t made happy by seeing a rival fail in life. But all that suggest to me is that one might simultaneously have a reason to try to bring about the rival’s failure while one has a reason to try to change the fact that one is a person who has those sorts of reasons to act. 9 Although in The Republic Plato (1974, Book IX) argues that it is easy to confuse genuine pleasure with the mere cessation of pain (where thirst is a kind of pain or suffering and the “pleasure” is largely the cessation of the thirst (the pain). I don’t think that Plato is quite right, though I do believe that for the reasons he gives we often overestimate the degree of pleasure we get from satisfying what Plato called the appetites. 10 It wouldn’t be absurd to imagine entering Nozick’s “experience machine” (described in Nozick (1974). The machine is a device you can enter which gives you the experiences as if you were playing a game of golf. I’m talking here about a pleasure that it is distinct from the experience. 11 People have. See Broad (1930, pp. 237–​38) and Parfit (1984, p. 493). 12 I’m not sure what the causal explanation for this is. It might have something to do with gaining a special sort of knowledge of the person with whom you have shared the stressful experience. But it also may not be anything that cerebral. 13 I’m not suggesting that siblings can’t be friends. But the closeness one feels to one’s family sometimes doesn’t involve the kind of enjoyment of their company that characterizes friendship. 14 See Simmons (1979) for a defense of the idea that one can make sense of implicit contracts or agreements that generate obligations.

References Broad, C.D. 1930. Five Types of Ethical Theory. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Feinberg, Joel. 1999. “Psychological Egoism.” In Reason and Responsibility, edited by Joel Feinberg and Russ Shafer-​Landau, 493–​505. 10th edn. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Hobbes,Thomas. 1994. Leviathan Parts I and II. Edited by Edwin Curley. Indianapolis: Hackett. First published 1668. Jeske, Diane. 2008. Rationality and Moral Theory: How Intimacy Generates Reasons. New York: Routledge. Nozick, Robert. 1974. Anarchy, State, and Utopia, New York: Basic Books. Parfit, Derek. 1984. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Plato. 1974. The Republic. Translated by G.M.A. Grube. Indianapolis: Hackett. Simmons, John. 1979. Moral Principles and Political Obligations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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17 FRIENDSHIP AND THE PERSONAL GOOD David O. Brink

It is common to regard friendship as an important part of a good life.1 This would be easy to understand if we focused only on the instrumental advantages of friendship. Many aspects of friendship are pleasurable, and friends can and do provide emotional and other forms of support in difficult times. But friendship seems to be more than merely instrumentally valuable. As Aristotle insists, the best kind of friendships involve concern for the friend for the friend’s own sake (NE 1166a2-​5) It is clear how having friends of this sort might be beneficial. What is less clear and requires explanation is how being this sort of friend might contribute to one’s own good. In what follows, I will explain some ways in which friendship contributes to the personal good.2 This discussion draws on both historical and contemporary resources, especially historical ideas about love and friendship in Plato, Aristotle, and T.H. Green and ideas in the Lockean tradition of thinking about personal identity. I will begin with some assumptions about the nature and significance of friendship (§1). To inquire about the value of friendship, we need to situate the question in the context of the good for a person (§2). We can then identify different kinds of value that friendship might have. Friendships are mutually advantageous, and this makes friendship instrumentally valuable (§3). Friends also remedy each other’s limitations and complete each other, providing a distinctive rationale for friendship (§4). But these explanations of the value of friendship do not show that friendship is a good in itself. Drawing on Aristotle’s discussion of friendship (NE VIII-​IX, esp. IX 9), we might claim that one’s friend is a “second self ” and that the good of one’s friend is a part of one’s own good (§5).We can articulate this conception of the normative interdependence among friends by appeal to claims about personal identity and the relationships that matter (§6).

1. Friendship Though it is convenient to focus on friendship, I will understand friendship broadly to include love, friendship, and other associational relationships. The Greek concept of philia can apply to a diverse set of associational relationships including various forms of love, friendship, and community. Philia can be translated as friendship, and friendship is similarly diverse.3 While it is no doubt true that there are important differences between paradigmatic cases of romantic love and casual friendship, the differences within loving relationships and within friendships are at least as great as the differences between love and friendship. Love comes in many shapes, including romantic love, love for family members, disinterested love for others, and love for activities and causes (e.g., DOI: 10.4324/9781003007012-22

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music, sport, the environment). Similarly, friendship can be found in companionate relationships and between siblings, neighbors, colleagues, teachers and students, and even business partners. Moreover, love and friendship have overlapping extensions. Good marriages involve not just love but friendship, as illustrated by John Stuart Mill’s ideal of marriage as a “friendship among equals” (1869: 293, 334, 336), and Aristotle understands familial love –​the love of parents for their children and love among siblings –​as forms of friendship (NE VIII 12). Though we speak of “friendships” and “friends,” we lack a cognate verb to signify the actions expressing friendship. Instead, we can and do use “love” to signify how friends relate to each other. Moreover, we speak of friends as both subjects and objects of concern; if we want to distinguish between subjects and objects of concern, we can distinguish between the lover and the beloved. These facts speak to similarities between love and friendship and in favor of understanding friendship broadly to encompass both (Helm 2010). Because of the variety of forms that friendship can take, it is difficult to identify necessary and sufficient conditions of friendship. But we can focus on central cases of love and friendship, especially those that seem morally or prudentially important. Paradigmatic cases of friendship involve a particularized special concern arising out of shared history. Each element of this analysis requires explanation. First, friendship involves special concern for another. Special concern is itself a complex cluster of attitudes and dispositions. Friends have positive conative and affective regard for each other manifesting itself in concern for the friend for the friend’s own sake. Friends will be especially aware and attentive cognitively, affectively, and motivationally to each other’s needs, interests, and happiness, and will be disposed to help the friend when in need, to invest in the relationship, and to sacrifice one’s interests for the sake of the friend. Another manifestation of interpersonal special concern is trust. Friends rely on each other for information, advice, constructive criticism, support, and help. An additional manifestation of special concern for one’s friend is a readiness to be answerable to one’s friend for one’s attitudes and conduct as it affects the friend –​explaining one’s attitudes and conduct, sometimes offering justification or excuse, but also being willing to take ownership of one’s failings, apologize, and make amends.Yet another dimension of special concern among friends is empathy. Friends share in each other’s triumphs and joys, as well as their setbacks and sorrows. Second, these forms of special concern among friends grow out of and are sustained by shared history. Friendships are relationships between people who share important interests and experiences, who discuss their common and private lives with each other, and who plan and execute joint activities. Many aspects of shared history –​including spending time together, keeping in touch, and sharing experiences –​can be characterized without mentioning special concern. Indeed, the special concern characteristic of friendship often evolves out of shared history that does not involve special concern. We come to have special concern for those with whom we share activities and experiences. In this way, shared history will often anchor special concern. But once special concern is established, that concern itself contributes to the shared history. We may not maintain this sort of care and concern for our friends at every moment in our friendships.There are moments within friendships when good will and mutual concern lapse. But it seems hard to imagine friendships persisting that did not generally exhibit this sort of special concern among friends, and this special concern will further contribute to their shared history. Third, friendship involves special concern arising out of shared history that is particularized. A friend’s concern for her friend is particular inasmuch as it involves a kind or degree of concern for the beloved that she does not have for those with whom she is not friends, and this concern is grounded in the shared history the friend has with her beloved. The beloved is an individual with whom the lover shares history. This point can be made in terms of the distinction between agent-​ neutral and agent-​relative reasons. The general form of agent-​relative reasons makes essential reference to the agent in some way, whereas the general form of agent-​neutral reasons does not (cf. Nagel 1986: 152). Being under a duty to help children, as such, would involve an agent-​neutral reason,

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whereas being under a duty to help one’s own children would involve an agent-​relative reason. Friendship should be understood to involve particularized special concern arising out of shared history in the sense that shared history gives the lover agent-​relative, and not just agent-​neutral, reasons to be concerned about her beloved (cf. Jeske 2008). On this analysis, paradigmatic cases of friendship involve a complex form of particularized special concern on the part of the lover for her beloved arising from their shared history. Friendship involves practical commitments to share activities and experiences, prioritize the beloved’s needs and desires, and be answerable to one’s beloved for one’s own choices and actions, and these commitments ground cognitive, affective, conative, and behavioral dispositions on the part of the friend toward her beloved. Different approaches to the nature of love and friendship tend to privilege some subset of these attitudes, beliefs, commitments, and dispositions. But this can lead to Procrustean treatment of relationships otherwise like love or friendship that do not satisfy the privileged account. By contrast, we might distinguish between the core and syndrome of friendship (Stringer 2021). The core of friendship is this particularized special concern arising out of shared history. However, this core non-​accidentally gives rise to a syndrome or cluster of attitudinal and behavioral dispositions between friends. A prototypical friend will display all of these attitudes, beliefs, commitments, and dispositions, and we can assess putative cases of friendship in terms of approximation to the prototype. However, no particular elements of the prototype, beyond the core, are literally necessary for friendship, so that we can recognize cases of love or friendship that do not conform to the prototype in all respects.

2.  The Personal Good Normatively significant forms of friendship, broadly construed, involve a particularized and complex form of special concern for another based on shared history. It is reasonably clear how having friends of this kind will be beneficial to the beloved. But is being this sort of friend beneficial to the lover and, if so, how? That frames a question about the role of friendship in the personal good or the good for a person. We can understand the personal good as a life that is good in itself for the person who lives it. If so, we might conceive of it as the sort of life I would or should want for someone insofar as I care about her for her own sake (Darwall 2002). We might call this the concern test. A special case of concern test is the crib test, which asks what sort of life I would want for my newborn child insofar as I care about her for her own sake (Feldman 1988).4 The crib test makes especially salient the idea implicit in the concern test that we are asking what sort of life as a whole is choiceworthy for someone. But if we adopt the concern and crib tests, then we should recognize that a person’s good can be more or less complete. The relevant concept of completeness derives from Plato and Aristotle. In Plato’s Philebus, Socrates insists that the good is complete (teleion), sufficient (hikanon), and choiceworthy (haireton) and concludes that neither pleasure nor intelligence alone is the good, since neither by itself is complete, self-​sufficient, or most choiceworthy (20d-​22d). Each would be made more choiceworthy by the inclusion of the other and the appropriate relation between the two. In the Ethics, Aristotle insists that eudaimonia must be complete (teleios), self-​sufficient (autarkês), and choiceworthy (hairetos) (NE I.7, 1097a26-​b21). Self-​sufficiency and choiceworthiness are aspects of completeness. A complete good must be self-​sufficient in the sense of containing all the goods within itself, which makes it lacking in nothing and most choiceworthy (NE 1097b15). Consider some putative final good {x and y}. If I can improve on that good by adding z, that shows that the putative final good was not in fact most choiceworthy. For then it was not lacking in nothing and, hence, it was not complete. A good that could be improved by adding other elements would not be complete and would not be most choiceworthy (NE 1097b16-​21; MM 1184a7-​29). Completeness, in this sense, implies that the good cannot consist in virtue alone, no matter how important virtue is, because a life of virtue without goods of fortune would be incomplete.

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We can frame the value of friendship in terms of its role in a complete personal good. Friendship can have instrumental value by contributing causally or as a necessary condition to other elements of a complete good. Friendship can have non-​instrumental value if it is itself something without which a life is incomplete.

3.  Friendship and Mutual Advantage Friendship clearly has instrumental benefits. Friendship benefits the beloved, because it involves special concern for the beloved. As we have seen, special concern is itself a complex cluster of attitudes and dispositions. Friends have positive conative and affective regard for each other manifesting itself in concern for the friend for the friend’s own sake. Friends will be especially aware and attentive cognitively, affectively, and motivationally to each other’s needs, interests, and happiness and will be disposed to help the friend when in need, to invest in the relationship, and sacrifice one’s interests for the sake of the friend. In central cases of friendship, it is a symmetrical relationship. Friendships are reciprocal relationships in which friends regard each other with special concern. Though reciprocity may never be complete and can lapse occasionally, mutual friendship generally requires rough symmetry and reciprocity. We can think of friendships as mutually beneficial relationships. There are costs and benefits in friendship. The beloved enjoys the benefits of friendship, and the lover incurs the costs of friendship. In symmetrical and reciprocal friendships, each friend is both lover and beloved. Significantly, the benefits of friendship are typically conditional on the costs of friendship. We can think of friendship as a cooperative virtue, like justice, to explain its mutually beneficial character. Consider Plato’s claims about the instrumental value of justice in Republic II (esp. 357a–​368c). Glaucon and Adeimantus recognize the instrumental value of justice. I benefit from another’s justice, not my own. The reason I have to be just is that the justice of others is typically conditional on my own. Others will not be just toward me if they see that I am not just toward them. So, in order to secure the benefits of other people being just toward me, I must be just toward them. In this way, justice is good for its consequences. Though I might originally value justice only instrumentally, it is likely that the regular practice of justice toward others will lead me, by a process of association and habit, to come to value justice for its own sake. Though the motivation for justice may become psychologically autonomous and non-​instrumental in this way, presumably my reasons to be just remain, on this contractualist story, instrumental. Similarly, it might seem, I benefit from the friendship of my beloved, not my own love.The reason I have to be a friend to my beloved is that my beloved’s love for me is typically conditional on my love for her. I cannot expect others to be my friends if I am not friends to them. In this way, friendship is good for its consequences. At the beginning of a friendship, I might not yet value my friend for her own sake. But it is likely that the regular practice of friendship toward another breeds in me, by a process of association and habit, a concern for the beloved for her own sake. Indeed, we said that concern for the other for the other’s own sake is a constituent feature of central and mature forms of friendship. This story makes room for the thought that although friendship typically involves non-​ instrumental concern for the beloved, the way in which friendship is good for friends can have an instrumental dimension. This is one way that friendship can be beneficial. But it is an instrumental justification of friendship, not a defense of friendship as good in itself. As Plato notes in his Republic II discussion of justice, the justification of justice in terms of mutual advantage does not show justice to be its own reward. It represents justice as a second-​best good behind undetected injustice. As a result, the instrumental justification of justice is counterfactually unstable; there would be no reason to be just if one could be unjust with impunity. For then one would receive the benefits of the justice of others without incurring the costs of being just toward them, as illustrated by the Ring of Gyges. Perhaps we should

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be content with an extensionally adequate justification of justice, but we have reason to look for a counterfactually stable defense of justice that represents it as its own reward. The same is true for the justification of friendship in terms of mutual advantage. This justification represents being a friend as a second-​best option behind having friends without having to reciprocate. This makes the purely instrumental conception of the value of friendship counterfactually unstable. We have reason to look beyond the justification of friendship in terms of mutual advantage for a counterfactually stable defense of friendship’s value that can represent being a friend as its own reward.

4  Friendship and Transcending Individual Limitations Friendship carries costs, in part because friends are emotionally invested in the well-​being of their beloveds. This raises the question of what is worthwhile about friendship in a way that might justify or compensate for those costs. Aristotle articulates another kind of value that friendship has. He focuses on cases of friendship in which friends are psychologically similar in ways that are produced and sustained by their shared history –​in particular, by shared experiences, discussion, and activities –​ and in which friends care about each other for the other’s own sake. In such relationships, Aristotle claims, friends regard each other as a second self. We will explore this dimension of friendship more fully shortly. For now, we can rely on an intuitive sense of this dimension. What is important, for present purposes, is Aristotle’s idea that friendship of this sort is good because it makes possible a more complete good for persons than is available to them on their own: For it is said that blessedly happy and self-​sufficient people have no need of friends. For they already have [all] goods, and, hence, being self-​sufficient, need nothing added. But one’s friend, since he is another oneself, supplies what one’s own efforts cannot supply. NE 1169b3-​6 Part of what Aristotle may have in mind is the way in which friendship can be mutually beneficial, discussed above. But Aristotle seems to have more in mind. He is impressed by the ways in which individuals are limited, cognitively and otherwise, and by the ways in which one’s friends can help one transcend some of those limitations. The forms of friendship that interest Aristotle are ones in which friends share thought and discussion, especially about how best to live. Sharing thought and discussion with another diversifies my experiences by providing additional perspectives on the world. By enlarging my perspective, it gives me a more objective picture of the world, its possibilities, and my place in it. These epistemic benefits of friendship are important on almost any conception of the personal good. But they are especially important on objective conceptions of the good that treat knowledge and agency as important parts of a good life. Both Plato and Aristotle develop this rationale for friendship by appeal to the idea that one’s friend is a kind of “mirror” on oneself (Plato Phaedrus 255d5; Aristotle NE 1169b34-​35). Aristotle articulates this claim about the role of friendship in self-​knowledge most clearly in the Magna Moralia.5 Since then it is [...] a most difficult thing [...] to attain a knowledge of oneself ... we are not able to see what we are from ourselves (and that we cannot do so is plain from the way in which we blame others without being aware that we do the same things ourselves; and this is the effect of favour or passion, and there are many of us who are blinded by these things so that we judge not aright); [...] when we wish to see our own face, we do so by looking into the mirror, in the same way when we wish to know ourselves we can obtain that knowledge by looking at our friend. For the friend is, as we assert, a second self. MM 1213a13-​24

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Insofar as my friend is like me, I can appreciate my own qualities from a different perspective. This promotes my self-​understanding. One need only think of the familiar way in which parents experience pride and sometimes chagrin when they see various habits and traits of their own manifested in their children. But interaction with another just like me does not itself contribute to self-​criticism. This is why there is value in interaction with diverse sorts of people, many of whom are not mirror images of myself. This suggests another way in which I am not epistemically self-​sufficient. Sharing thought and discussion with others, especially about how to live, improves my own practical deliberations; it enlarges my menu of options, by identifying new options, and helps me better assess the merits of these options, by forcing on my attention new considerations and arguments about the comparative merits of the options. Friends who are not exactly like me will have different experiences and perspectives and can help me correct blind spots and biases in my own perspective. Here, Aristotle might appeal to Socratic claims about the dialectical value of open and vigorous discussion with diverse interlocutors. However, friends enable each other to transcend more than just epistemic limitations. Cooperative interaction with friends on joint projects allows me to participate in larger, more complex projects and so extend the scope of my activities and control over my circumstances. In this way, friends enable me to transcend my own limitations causally, as well as epistemically, and achieve a more complete good than I could acting on my own. This appeal to individual transcendence seems in some ways more robust than the appeal to mutual advantage and reciprocity. The reciprocity rationale fails whenever friends do not reciprocate concern and whenever one can enjoy the benefits of friendship without its costs. These include actual and not merely possible circumstances. By contrast, the transcendence rationale fails only in circumstances in which individuals are completely self-​sufficient, cognitively and otherwise. Perhaps gods would have no need for the sort of transcendence that friends provide. But we are not gods, and it is a pretty deep fact about us that we are beings with limited cognitive and causal powers. Friendship enables us to transcend these limitations, and, hence, its value is comparatively counterfactually stable. Nonetheless, even the transcendence rationale makes the value of friendship conditional on contingent facts about our limitations. As such, it seems to fall short of showing that friendship is good in itself.

5.  The Friend as a Second Self One rationale for thinking that friendship is part of the personal good can be found in Aristotle’s discussion of friendship, in particular, his conception of the friend as a second self (heteros autos). Initially, Aristotle distinguishes three main kinds of friendship: (1) friendship for advantage, (2) friendship for pleasure, and (3) complete friendship found between virtuous people (NE VIII 3–​8). Both advantage-​ friendship and pleasure-​friendship, Aristotle claims, can involve something less than concern for the other’s own sake (NE 1156a11–​13). He insists that virtue-​friendship supplies the “focal meaning” of friendship. In calling virtue-​friendship the best or most complete kind of friendship, he signals that it is friendship to the fullest extent and that other associations are friendships insofar as they approximate it (NE 1157a25-​3; EE 1236a16-​b27). Friendship’s concern with another for her own sake makes friendship essentially other-​regarding. But Aristotle also believes that friendship is a virtue and that the virtues are parts of an agent’s eudaimonia or happiness. The key to understanding Aristotle’s claims that friendship benefits both the beloved and the lover lies in his conception of the friend as a second self (Irwin 1988: chap. 18). Aristotle’s most important claims about the value of friendship begin at Ethics IX 4. But he anticipates some of these claims about the justification of friendship in VIII 12, where he suggests that we can take parental friendship as our model of friendship. The parent is concerned with the child’s welfare for the child’s own sake. This concern is appropriate, because the parent can regard the child as a second self (NE 1161b19, 28). This is apparently because the child owes its existence and physical 206

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and psychological nature in significant part to the parent. This both echoes and helps explain the common view that a parent’s interests are extended by the life of the child. Aristotle suggests similar claims can be made about friendship between siblings. In virtue of living together, siblings causally interact in important ways and share many things in common and so can regard each other as second selves (NE 1161b30-​35). These claims about familial-​friendship apply to virtue-​friendship. Aristotle explains the value of virtue-​friendship in terms of proper self-​love (NE 1166a1-​2, 10, 1166a30-​32, 1168b1-​1169a12). The excellent person is related to his friend in the same way as he is related to himself, since a friend is another self; and therefore, just as his own being is choiceworthy for him, the friend’s being is choiceworthy for him in the same or a similar way. NE 1170b6-​9; cf. 1168b2-​6 Here, Aristotle claims that the beloved stands to the lover as the lover stands to himself and that this gives the friend reason to care about his beloved as he cares about himself. Aristotle’s idea seems to be that the shared history that the friend has with his beloved is like the relation that he bears to himself. This suggests that we explore parallels between friendship and personal identity. A similar thought is explored by Plato in the Symposium. Plato describes the evolution of philosophical love (eros) as involving an ascent of desire through various stages (210a-​212a). This ascent moves from (1) love of a particular beautiful body, to (2) love of bodily beauty, as such, to (3) a love of all beautiful bodies, to (4) a love of spiritual beauty, that is, what is fine (kalon) or beautiful in souls, to (5) a love of fine laws and institutions, to (6) a love of all kinds of knowledge, to (7) a love of what is fine, as such. This last, best sort of love aims at what is good or fine (201a, 204d, 205d, 206b-​e) and, in particular, at propagating what is good or fine (206c-​208a, 212a). Plato believes that virtue is fine and that spiritual love aims at producing virtue. In middle dialogues, such as the Republic, Plato understands virtue as a psychic state in which one’s appetites, emotions, and actions are regulated by practical deliberation about one’s overall good. Virtue, so understood, is the controlling ingredient in a good or flourishing life. So when A loves B, Plato concludes, A will aim to make B virtuous (209a, 212a). Such love benefits the beloved, because one benefits by becoming virtuous precisely insofar as one is better off being regulated by a correct conception of one’s overall good. But Plato also believes that the lover benefits from loving another (Phaedrus 245b), as he must if he is to reconcile interpersonal love with his eudaimonist assumption that a person’s practical reason should be regulated by a correct conception of her overall good. The key to seeing how Plato can reconcile interpersonal love with self-​love is to appreciate the way in which he thinks that reproducing one’s virtuous traits in another is the next best thing to immortality (206c1-​209e5). According to Plato, my own persistence over time, despite both compositional and qualitative change, is a matter of reproducing my traits into the future. Now although we speak of an individual as being the same so long as he continues to exist in the same form, and therefore assume that a man is the same person in his dotage as in his infancy, yet, for all we call him the same, every bit of him is different, and every day he is becoming a new man, while the old man is ceasing to exist, as you can see from his hair, his flesh, his bones, his blood, and all the rest of his body. And not only his body, for the same thing happens to his soul. And neither his manners, nor his disposition, nor his thoughts, nor his desires, nor his sufferings, nor his fears are the same throughout his life, for some of them grow, while others disappear. [...] In this way every mortal creature is perpetuated, not by always being the same in every way, as a divine being is, but by what goes away and gets old leaving behind and in its place some other new thing that is of the same sort as it was. 207d3-​208b12 207

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Though Plato mentions both physical and psychological persistence, his primary concern is with psychological persistence. For he regards the soul essentially as a capacity for deliberation, decision, and action (Phaedrus 245c-​e), and he regards eudaimonia as consisting in the proper psychic ordering of the agent’s soul. So my persistence requires my psychological reproduction into the future, and if this is to be good for me, I must reproduce my valuable traits into the future. If virtue is the dominant component of my good, this requires me to reproduce my virtuous traits into the future. But interpersonal love involves the reproduction of my virtuous traits in another, who can live beyond me. This is why interpersonal love is correctly viewed as the next best thing to immortality. We see echoes of Plato’s argument in Aristotle’s claim that in the right sort of parent–​child relationship the shared history between parent and child makes the child a second self of the parent, presumably one who extends the parent’s interests and acts as a counterweight to the mortality of the parent. In a similar vein, the nineteenth-​century British idealist T.H. Green claims that the history one shares with others in various forms of interpersonal association extends an individual’s interests beyond this life. That determination of an animal organism by a self-​conscious principle, which makes a man and is presupposed by the interest in permanent good, carries with it a certain appropriation by the man to himself of the beings with whom he is connected by natural ties, so that they become to him as himself and in providing for himself he provides for them. Projecting himself into the future as a permanent subject of possible well-​being or ill-​being –​and he must so project himself in seeking for a permanent good –​he associates his kindred with himself. It is this association that neutralises the effect which the anticipation of death must otherwise have on the demand for a permanent good. 1883: §231 Green thinks that rational agents seek intrapersonal permanence by engaging in activities that exercise their normative powers and rational nature. Interpersonal association, he claims, makes possible a kind of interpersonal permanence that provides a counterweight to the agent’s mortality.

6.  The Metaphysics of Friendship These historical claims represent friendship as extending the interests of the friend to her beloved. We can articulate this idea by drawing on psychological conceptions of personal identity and what matters prudentially, and parallels between intrapersonal unity and the sort of interpersonal unity characteristic of friendship and other associational ties. An historically influential conception of personal identity is in terms of continuity of mental life. In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke distinguishes between humans and persons and defends the forensic role of personhood and personal identity (Essay Book II, Chapter xxvii, §18, 26). Locke thinks that personal identity is implicated in responsibility for our past actions and special prudential concern for our own future. Locke is what we would now call a psychological reductionist about personal identity (Parfit 1984: part III). He thinks that his own conception of personal identity in terms of sameness of consciousness or experiential memory explains the forensic role of persons. In particular, he thinks that I would and should extend special concern to any future person who would share experiential memories with me now. But the forensic role of persons does not support Locke’s narrow focus on experiential memory. The psychological reductionist should be broadly interested in continuity of various aspects of mental life including not just experiential memory but also factual belief, intellectual and practical skills, desires, and values. Indeed, if personhood is a forensic category in which persons are the bearers of accountability and responsibility, then we should be especially interested in relations of dependence among the mental states of agents, their deliberations, and their subsequent actions. 208

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A plausible form of psychological reductionism requires two central concepts: connectedness and continuity. Psychological Connectedness. Persons Px and Py are psychologically connected if and only if and insofar as (iffi) the mental states and actions of Py are counterfactually dependent in the appropriate way on the mental states and actions of Px. Connectedness takes many forms –​experiential memory, retention of skills and traits, persistent beliefs and desires, actions that reflect the influence of prior deliberations and intentions, and reasoned modification of one’s beliefs, values, and goals. We can then define psychological continuity in terms of psychological connectedness. Psychological Continuity. Persons Px and Pz are psychologically continuous iffi Px and Pz are elements in a series of persons such that temporally contiguous pairs of persons are psychologically connected. Psychological reductionism should be formulated in terms of psychological continuity, because identity is a transitive relation, as continuity is, and connectedness is not.6 Psychological Reductionism I: P1 and P2 are identical iffi they are (sufficiently) psychologically continuous. Locke believed that prudential special concern presupposes personal identity in the sense that P1 can have prudential concern for P2 iffi P1 =​P2. But the psychological reductionist analysis of fission cases, in which there is symmetrically branching continuity, appears to undermine this claim. Consider a case of fission in which Tom’s mental life is split symmetrically between two persons, Dick and Harry. As a first approximation, the psychological reductionist believes that psychological continuity constitutes identity. What happens in fission? There seem to be four principal possibilities. 1. Tom survives as Dick and as Harry. 2. Tom survives as Dick, rather than Harry. 3. Tom survives as Harry, rather than Dick. 4. Tom survives as neither Dick nor Harry. The psychological reductionist might be tempted by (1). If Tom survives in a non-​branching case, it might seem he should survive as Dick and as Harry in the fission case. But this would violate the transitivity of identity. If Tom is identical to Dick and Tom is identical to Harry, then, by the transitivity of identity, Dick must be identical to Harry. But that is plainly not the case. They are distinct persons with different spatio-​temporal locations. If I pinch Dick, Harry does not feel it, and vice versa. By Leibniz’s Law, they are not identical. But a psychological reductionist has no reason to accept (2) or (3), as Dick and Harry have precisely symmetrical claims to being Tom. That leaves (4), which is initially hard to believe, because if non-​branching continuity is a success in terms of Tom’s survival, how can a double success be a failure? However, (4) is the consensus description of fission for psychological reductionists.7 If we are psychological reductionists, we should deny Tom survives as Dick or as Harry, because of the transitivity of identity, and conclude that fission is a case of interpersonal psychological continuity.Whereas fission preserves psychological continuity, which can be one-​many, it cannot preserve identity, which must be one-​one. For psychological continuity to constitute personal identity, it must take a nonbranching form. Psychological Reductionism II: P2 is identical with P1 iffi P2 is (sufficiently) psychologically continuous with P1 and there is no other continuer of P1 that is as continuous with P1. 209

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But fission also teaches us that special concern tracks continuity, rather than identity (Parfit 1984: chap. 12).Tom should have special concern for the lives of Dick and Harry as he would normally have for his own future self. But this suggests that special concern does not presuppose personal identity. P1 can have special concern for P2 even if P1 ≠ P2. In this way, fission challenges the idea that special concern presupposes personal identity (Brink 2021). Prudence can accommodate fission and other cases of interpersonal psychological continuity if psychological continuity extends a person’s interest. In non-​branching cases, psychological continuity extends Tom’s life and thereby extends his interests. In fission, continuity cannot extend Tom’s life, because of the logic of identity. But it can extend his interests. We can see Tom’s interests preserved in the lives of Dick and Harry. On this view, Tom has posthumous interests in the lives of Dick and Harry. Fission is a case of interpersonal psychological continuity. In the normal case, intrapersonal psychological continuity is extremely strong. In fission, interpersonal psychological continuity is just as strong; it is interpersonal continuity only because it takes a branching form. Though exotic, fission is the limiting case of interpersonal psychological continuity. However, interpersonal psychological continuity is quite common. It is found in friendships of various kinds and other interpersonal associations.8 Interpersonal connections and continuity are found in friendships in which friends share history, interact on a regular basis, and help shape each other’s mental life and behavior. In such relationships, the experiences, beliefs, desires, ideals, deliberations, emotions, and actions of each person depend in significant part on those of her friend or associate. We can see this in the sort of intimate relationships that Plato, Aristotle, and Green discuss. Parents nurture their children in ways that profoundly affect the child’s development, skills, opportunities, experiences, sensibility, and actions. Similar relations hold among spouses and companionate friends, who share experiences, conversation, and plans. They can be found, to a lesser extent, in various associational relations in which partners form beliefs, desires, expectations, and plans together or in ways that are conditioned by attitudes and activities of the partner. In these ways, interpersonal psychological connectedness and continuity extend broadly, even if the degree of connectedness and continuity weakens as these relationships extend more widely. Indeed, we might think that the closeness and significance of a friendship or association is directly proportional to the degree of interpersonal psychological continuity. Perhaps friends and associates do not exhibit the degree of interpersonal psychological continuity found in the case of fission, but they manifest significant interpersonal continuity that is the basis of special concern. It seems natural to say that the interpersonal psychological continuity in fission extends a person’s interests, grounding posthumous interests. If so, there is strong reason to claim that friendship and other forms of interpersonal association also extend a person’s interests. Here, the friend’s interests are part of one’s own interests. These can be posthumous interests in cases in which the person’s friend (e.g., partner or child) outlives her. But in many cases this extension of a person’s interests is synchronic and contemporaneous, resulting in a kind of interpersonal dispersion of a person’s interests. This explains how the friend is justified in regarding the beloved as a second self and caring about her for her own sake as she cares about herself. Interpersonal psychological continuity explains how the weal and woe of friends are interdependent. This explains both how the good of a friend can be part of one’s own good but also how one becomes vulnerable to ways in which one’s friends can be harmed or suffer.

Conclusions We can conceive of friendship broadly, so as to include paradigmatic forms of love, friendship, and interpersonal association. Normatively significant forms of friendship, broadly construed, involve a particularized and complex form of special concern for another based on shared history. How does friendship, so understood, contribute to a good life? For one thing, friendship is mutually 210

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advantageous. People benefit from having friends, and being a friend to another is part of sustaining friendship and the benefits of friendship. But these benefits of friendship are instrumental and do not explain how friendship might be good in itself or its own reward. We get a more stable account of the value of friendship by appealing to the ways in which my friend helps me transcend my own limitations. Though the individual transcendence rationale may be more robust than the appeal to mutual advantage, transcendence still represents friendship as extrinsically valuable. We can begin to explain how friendship is good in itself by attending to the Aristotelian idea that the friend is a second self. Drawing on resources in Plato, Aristotle, Green, and the Lockean tradition of personal identity, we can explain how the sort of interpersonal psychological continuity characteristic of friendship extends the lover’s interests to her beloved. Interpersonal psychological continuity explains how the weal and woe of friends are interdependent. The beloved’s good becomes part of her lover’s own good, and so what benefits the beloved benefits the lover. But, equally, the lover’s good becomes vulnerable to ways in which one’s beloved can be harmed.This account of the metaphysics of friendship explains important features of the distinctive value of friendship and friends.

Related Chapters Plato’s Erotic Friendships; Aristotle on the Nature and Value of Friendship; Friendship and Self-​Interest; The Value of Friendship; Friendship and Practical Reason; Partiality to Friends; Friendship and Personal Identity

Notes 1 Thanks to Diane Jeske for feedback on an earlier version of this chapter. 2 This essay builds on ideas in Brink 1990, 1997, 1999, 2018, and 2021. 3 Vlastos claims that “love” is the only suitably broad translation for philia (1969: 4). However, many cases of love are also cases of friendship, and philia also includes non-​intimate forms of association that are more easily conceived as cases of friendship than love. Irwin makes the case for translating philia as “friendship,” with the understanding that friendship can include love (2019: 377). 4 However, Feldman now has qualms about the crib test, because he worries that one’s preferences for another’s life might be moralistic. For instance, I might want my loved one to lead a life of virtue or to be a martyr for a moral cause (Feldman 2004: 10). But either such moralistic preferences do not reflect what one wants for another for her own sake, in which case they do not pass the crib test, or they do, in which case they reflect a partly moralistic conception of the other’s good that deserves to be taken seriously as a conception of the personal good. If so, the crib test is a defensible test for conceptions of the good life and the personal good. 5 It is unclear if the Magna Moralia is a work of Aristotle or one of his students or commentators. It can be a useful source of information about Aristotle’s ethical theory whether or not Aristotle is its author. 6 This is the standard moral drawn by reductionists from Thomas Reid’s worry that Locke’s memory criterion is not a transitive relation. See Reid 1785: 357. 7 Due to space constraints, I omit engagement with the proposal in David Lewis (1976) to identify persons with continuants. On this conception, there are only two people in the fission case –​Tom1, who is the continuant consisting of Tom and Dick, and Tom2, who is the continuant consisting of Tom and Harry. Lewis invokes tensed identity to say that Tom1 and Tom2 are identical prior to fission and distinct afterward. I suspect that the Lewisian analysis is unnecessarily revisionary but that it could be adapted to support my claims about interpersonal continuity, if necessary. Unfortunately, I cannot pursue these matters here. 8 Jennifer Whiting has explored parallels between intrapersonal and interpersonal psychological continuity in interesting ways (1986, 1991). Whereas I understand the parallels from the inside-​out, Whiting understands them from the outside-​in.

References Aristotle. 1984. Eudemian Ethics (EE). In The Complete Works of Aristotle; The Revised Oxford Translation, 2 vols., edited by J. Barnes. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Aristotle. 1984. Magna Moralia (MM). In The Complete Works of Aristotle; The Revised Oxford Translation, 2 vols., edited by J. Barnes. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Aristotle. 2019. Nicomachean Ethics (NE), translated by T. Irwin. Indianapolis: Hackett.

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David O. Brink Brink, D. 1990. “Rational Egoism, Self, and Others.” In Identity, Character, and Morality, edited by O. Flanagan and A. Rorty, 339–​78. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Brink, D. 1997. “Self-​love and Altruism.” Social Philosophy & Policy 14: 122–​57. Brink, D. 1999. “Eudaimonism, Love and Friendship, and Political Community.” Social Philosophy & Policy 16: 252–​89. Brink, D. 2018. “Eudaimonism and Cosmopolitan Concern.” In Virtue, Happiness, and Knowledge: Themes from the Work of Gail Fine and Terence Irwin, edited by D. Brink, S. Meyer, and C. Shields, 270–​92. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Brink, D. 2021. “Special Concern and Personal Identity.” In Principles and Persons:The Legacy of Derek Parfit, edited by J. McMahan, T. Campbell, J. Goodrich, and K. Ramakrishnan, 15–​38. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Darwall, S. 2002. Welfare and Rational Care. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Feldman, F. 1988. “On the Advantages of Cooperativeness.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 13: 308–​23. Feldman, F. 2004. Pleasure and the Good Life. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Green, T.H. 1883. Prolegomena to Ethics, edited by D. Brink. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003. Helm, B. 2010. Love, Friendship, and the Self. New York: Oxford University Press. Irwin, T. 1988. Aristotle’s First Principles. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Irwin, T. 2019. Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (introduction, translation, notes, and glossary). Indianapolis: Hackett. Jeske, D. 2008. Rationality and Moral Theory. New York: Routledge. Lewis, D. 1976.“Survival and Identity.” In The Identities of Persons, edited by A. Rorty, 17–​40. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Locke, J. 1975. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, edited by P.H. Nidditch. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Mill, J.S. 1869/​1984. The Subjection of Women. In The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, edited by J. Robson, vol. 21. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Nagel, T. 1986. The View from Nowhere. New York: Oxford University Press. Parfit, D. 1984. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Plato. 1997. Republic. In Plato’s Complete Works, edited by J. Cooper. Indianapolis: Hackett. Plato. 1997. Phaedrus. In Plato’s Complete Works, edited by J. Cooper. Indianapolis: Hackett. Plato. 1997. Symposium. In Plato’s Complete Works, edited by J. Cooper. Indianapolis: Hackett. Plato. 1997. Philebus. In Plato’s Complete Works, edited by J. Cooper. Indianapolis: Hackett. Reid, T. 1785/​1969. Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, edited by B. Brody. Cambridge: MIT Press. Stringer, R. 2021. “The Syndrome of Love.” Ergo (forthcoming). Vlastos, G. 1969/​1981.“The Individual as Object of Love.” In Platonic Studies, 2nd edn., 3–​42. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Whiting, J. 1986. “Friends and Future Selves.” The Philosophical Review 95: 547–​80. Whiting, J. 1991. “Impersonal Friends.” The Monist 74: 3–​29.

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18 THE VALUE OF FRIENDSHIP Thomas Hurka

Philosophers have often thought friendship an important human good. Aristotle devoted two books of his Nicomachean Ethics to philia, usually translated as “friendship,” as part of a flourishing life. G.E. Moore counted “the pleasures of human intercourse,” which he associated with friendship, as one of his two main intrinsic goods (1903: 188). And surely common sense agrees that friendship enriches our lives while its absence, say through forced isolation, can be a serious loss. This chapter asks what gives friendship its value. Friendship is one type of personal relationship, alongside familial love and romantic love. But all of these involve at least many of the following elements: a desire for another’s happiness or, more generally, her good, along with efforts to promote it and pleasure when it is found; a desire to spend time with her plus enjoyment of her company; a desire that she, too, desire your good and company; a desire to know and be known by her; and some admiration or positive assessment of her character and actions. Not all these elements are needed for friendship or even love; one or more can be missing. But unless some are present there is surely no relationship. Which elements are most important can differ between the types. Though it is possible to love a sibling while finding her company annoying, we would not call people friends if they did not like spending time together. Unlike familial love, friendship is not usually based on biology or very early life experiences; unlike erotic or romantic love, it need not have a sexual dimension and does not as often demand exclusivity. And though friendships vary in intimacy, from lifelong best-​friend ones to more casual acquaintanceships, they usually involve less intense emotions than the other types. Still, the elements they share with familial and romantic love are the main source of their value. This value can be of three broad kinds. First, friendship can be the occasion for generic human goods, ones found in other aspects of our lives but also and even especially in personal relationships. Here it is a source of goods not exclusive to it. Second, friendship can make for distinctively valuable forms of the generic goods, so they have more value within a relationship than they do outside it. Here it intensifies values, making something that is good in relation to a stranger even better when directed to a friend. Finally, friendship can involve distinctive or non-​generic goods, ones not found outside personal relationships but specific to them. Different accounts of the value of friendship emphasize different ones among these kinds; this chapter will consider them in turn.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003007012-23

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Friendship and Generic Goods The least controversial view is that friendship provides goods that can also be found outside it, and for some this completely explains its value. W.D. Ross thought the basic human goods are virtue, knowledge, and pleasure and that the value of “mutual love” rests entirely on its blending “virtuous disposition of two minds towards each other, with the knowledge which each has of the character and disposition of the other, and with the pleasure which arises from such disposition and knowledge” (1930: 141; compare Telfer 1970–​71: 239–​41). But even views that recognize more distinctive goods in friendship ground much of its worth in its promoting generic ones like these. Most obviously, friendship is a source of pleasure or good feeling, and that is often what initiates a friendship.You meet someone and find his company enjoyable: he makes you laugh or conversation with him is especially engaging. So you meet again, and if later interactions are similarly rewarding, you repeat them and a friendship develops. The same pleasures then persist through the friendship –​ you keep having engaging talks –​and new ones develop. Though similar pleasures are possible outside friendship –​you can laugh at a stranger’s jokes or enjoy a chat with someone you’ll never meet again –​a friend is an especially available and reliable source of them, one it does not take effort to find and that you can almost always count on. Other pleasures are more specific to friendship. Most of us enjoy activities we could do alone, such as watching a movie or traveling, even more if we do them with someone else, and we enjoy this especially if the other is a friend. More strongly, many of us want friends: we want there to be people who want our company and happiness as much as we want theirs. By doing so a friend gives us the warm feeling fulfillment of that desire can bring. Even when she is absent, it can be a comfort to know she cares for us; when she is present and showing her concern, the feeling is stronger. And there is a related benefit shared with familial and romantic love. Just as an infant feels safe and secure in its mother’s arms, so a married couple can feel at ease and protected in each other’s company, their private space a haven from an often challenging world (Wonderly 2017). Similarly if often to a lesser degree, a friend is someone you can relax with and with whom other anxieties fade. You need not worry about making a good impression and can, for a time, leave other troubles behind. While this strengthens your ability to address those troubles, it is also an intrinsically comforting respite. At the same time, friendship can cause sorrow, for example if a friend dies or moves away or betrays you. In this it is like romantic love, which can be a source of heartache as well as of delight. But just as the good feelings in friendship are usually less intense than in romantic love, so are the bad ones. And just as the rewards of love usually outweigh its risks, so, and perhaps more securely, do friendship’s pleasures outweigh its potential pains. Friendship is also, as Ross said, an occasion for knowledge, especially of a friend’s character and past. From a purely cognitive point of view, this knowledge may not have as much value as knowing, say, quantum physics or world history, but it shares some of the same good-​making features. The most valuable cognitive state is understanding, where you use knowledge of more general truths, for example of scientific laws, to explain and understand more particular ones (Ross 1930: 147–​8; Hurka 2020). And that is present to at least some degree when you use your knowledge of a friend’s general character to explain his more specific traits and those to explain particular things he does, or combine the different things you know about him to form an integrated picture of his personality. In an admittedly more limited domain there are the same connections between things you know that make for understanding, and something similar holds for the good of achievement. Though less prominent in philosophical writing about value, achievement is an important good in part because it is the converse of knowledge. If in knowing you make your mind match the world by forming beliefs about it that are true, in achievement you make the world match your mind by realizing a goal you have formed in it. And the features that make for more valuable achievements parallel those for knowledge, so it is better to realize more connected goals, with many serving as means to a 214

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primary or organizing one; then achieving that goal is complex and difficult. One thing a friend can do is encourage achievements of this sort, say in your career, by emotional and even tangible support. But some achievement values are more internal to friendship. It is arguably also better to know truths and achieve goals that are more extended, ones not limited to the here and now but involving many objects or people at many or distant times. Among other things, this gives special value to achievements that involve cooperation with others. Then at least many of your goals involve states of several people, and even if you contribute to a collective project mainly by doing your part, you do so to help make it true that the whole group acts. Though cooperative activity is possible outside friendship, it is especially common and successful within it. Friends regularly do things together, with the togetherness itself a goal, and because of their friendship can realize longer-​term and more elaborately structured common goals. Their cooperation may not involve as many people as a sports team’s or be as far-​reaching and complex as that of a married couple raising children, but a further important good in friendship is the frequent achievement of goals that include states not just of you but also of another person, where one such goal, so far as it is intended, can be forming and sustaining the friendship itself. The final and perhaps most important generic good in friendship and personal relationships more generally is moral virtue. An attractive view takes virtue to consist largely in caring fittingly about other, independently given goods and evils in your own and especially other people’s lives (Moore 1903; Ross 1930; Hurka 2001). If another’s happiness, for example, is good, then wanting her happiness, trying to promote it, and being pleased by it –​what some call loving it –​for its own sake is virtuous and intrinsically good; more specifically, it involves the virtue of benevolence. If her pain is evil, trying to prevent or being pained by it involves the companion virtue and good of compassion. If virtue is just a generic good, we should ideally care as much about a stranger’s good as about a friend’s, but most of us in fact care much more about our friends’. If we have one unit of concern for a stranger’s happiness, we may have ten for a friend’s, which is more benevolent and therefore better. Like familial and romantic relationships, our friendships are a part of our lives where we’re most virtuous or morally at our best. Even if it would be equally good to care intensely about a stranger’s good, we do so more often and to a higher degree about a friend’s; we are virtuous toward him in a way we are not toward others. If only happiness is good, benevolence toward a friend involves caring only about his having that; if knowledge, achievement, and virtue too are good, it includes concern for them. Some argue that virtuous concern for a friend also includes supporting his ends or goals, where these can be separate from and even conflict with his good. If a friend has devoted himself to improving the lives of those less fortunate at the cost of pleasure, knowledge, and achievement for himself, you should value and encourage that project as well as, and at times in preference to, his good (Ebels-​Duggan 2008). Virtue also involves wanting to act rightly and avoid wrong, and this, too, can be present to a higher degree in friendship. We are usually more averse to harming a friend or interfering with her freedom than we are to a stranger, which again is better. But this can make for heightened internal conflicts. If a friend is about to make a choice, for example of romantic partner, that you think is unwise and will cause her pain, your strong desire for her happiness can make you want to intervene while your equally strong desire to respect her independence holds you back. Immanuel Kant noted this tension, saying friendship involves both love as a force of attraction and respect as a force that keeps friends apart (1964: 141). Both are stronger toward a friend and both are virtuous, so the conflict is between intrinsic goods. In one form of virtue, often called de dicto, you want something good because it is good or to act rightly because it is right; here your attitude involves a normative thought. In a different, de re form you want something good for the property that makes it good but without thinking of that as good-​making; for example, you want another’s happiness just as happiness. Or you want to avoid lying because you dislike lying apart from thinking it is wrong. Some philosophers hold that, whatever may 215

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be true in other contexts, what is best and most fitting in personal relationships is the second, de re, form of virtue. If you visit a friend in hospital, your main motive should not be to do your duty, even your duty as a friend, nor to bring about a better state of affairs. It should be a simpler desire just to comfort your friend (Stocker 1976;Williams 1981).This last claim should not be exaggerated. Friends do have duties to each other and can properly be motivated in part by them. But it does seem right that friendship is best when it involves, as a main if not the only element, the less reflective and more immediate de re form of virtue. Some philosophers think concern for another’s good for its own sake is present only when a friendship has a certain basis. Aristotle distinguished friendships of utility, based on another’s usefulness to you; friendships of pleasure, based on enjoying his company; and friendships of virtue, based on his character. Only in a friendship of virtue, he said, do you really care for the other for himself; in the other types you value him only as a means to benefits or pleasure for yourself (1980: 1156a6-​ b31). But this last claim does not follow. Having become friends with someone because he is pleasant company, you can come to want his happiness as an end in itself; this happens often. The qualities that ground a friendship, those that attract you to a person and that you like him for, do not necessarily determine the content of its concerns; interactions that are good for you can make you want for its own sake, or altruistically, what is good for your friend (Schoeman 1985: 275–​6). It is true that if he stops being pleasant company, you may end your friendship, but you’d equally end a friendship of virtue if the other’s character became vicious. Nor was Aristotle persuasive when he said a person’s moral character is essential to his nature as other properties such as his being good company are not; each is a trait he could either have or lack. What gives friendship value is the virtuous content of its concerns, which is to a large extent independent of the properties on which it rests. In any case, and contrary to Aristotle, most friendships are based on multiple properties.You typically care for a friend in part because you can count on her when you are in need; that is utility. You also, and crucially, enjoy her company, and you can be attracted by more idiosyncratic features such as her appearance (important not only in romantic love) or distinctive sense of humor. Many of these last properties you just like without thinking they are good or ones anyone else need find appealing; you do not think they are inherently lovable but like them nonetheless. Other properties of hers you admire; here you do think they are lovable or good in a way others should acknowledge. But not all of these are moral properties; you can admire and be attracted by a friend’s intelligence, insight into art, and other non-​moral traits. (To be fair, these may be included in Aristotle’s “virtue,” which was not just moral.) Finally, there is her moral character, but it is absurdly high-​minded to say, as some philosophers have, that this must be the primary basis of your friendship. It may be wrong to be friends with someone who is vicious; she may need a minimally good character for a relationship with her to be worth having. But appreciating her moral character would justify a relationship with her rather than anyone else only if you thought she is more virtuous than anyone else –​which is absurd. Much of what attracts you to a friend are idiosyncratic properties you just like or the accidental fact that you started having enjoyable interactions with her rather than with someone else. But on this morally trivial basis an altruistic and virtuous concern for her good can develop, and when it does, its value is independent of its specific origin. To a large extent the generic goods in friendship reinforce each other. That you enjoy a friend’s company makes it easier for you to learn about his character, cooperate with him, and respond virtuously to his needs; understanding him helps both your shared activities and efforts to help him succeed.There can, however, also be conflicts between these goods.Your enjoying a friend’s company can make it harder for you to encourage projects of his that require separation from you; this is part of Kant’s conflict between attraction and repulsion.Your concern for his welfare will make you happier about good things in his life but more distressed by bad ones, and it can also work against your knowing him.Your desire that he be successful and good, which is a virtuous desire, can lead you to form, through wishful thinking, an exaggeratedly positive view of his character and achievements, 216

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which you think are better than they really are (Stroud 2006). This can be a benefit to him, since we often make the most of our talents if we have a somewhat inflated picture of what they are, which a friend’s similar picture can reinforce. But here virtuous desires about your friend can inhibit accurate understanding of him. There is a further issue about these goods. Many philosophers hold that, for the full value in friendship, it is not enough to care about the other’s happiness for its own sake, as in a generic form of virtue. You must care for her for her own sake, or want her happiness and company because they are hers, or as states of this person. If your friendship rested just on generic properties such as her appearance, intelligence, and even moral character, then if someone appeared with the same properties to a higher degree, or with different but more appealing ones, you would immediately switch your attachment to them. But that, many say, is inconsistent with true friendship, which involves attachment to a friend as an individual and not just for generic traits; it resists such “trading up.” (Plato’s account of love and Moore’s of friendship in particular are faulted for omitting this feature.) The demand for loyalty to a friend may be weaker than to a family member or long-​time romantic partner; it is more acceptable to let a friendship end when one of you changes or a more likable person appears. But we still expect some attachment to a friend as against someone new with more pleasing generic traits, and many think this a crucial element in the value of friendship. Explaining what grounds this attachment and how it contributes to friendship’s value will lead to our second possibility: that friendship intensifies the values of generic goods, so a state with some value toward a stranger can have more toward a friend.

Friendship as Intensifying Generic Goods Caring for someone as an individual cannot mean caring for him apart from any of his properties, say as a featureless substrate that has those properties. What is there to be attached to in that? More plausibly, it involves caring for him in part for properties no one else could share. These are historical properties, based on his participation with you in a shared past.You want his happiness and company more than other people’s in part because of what the two of you have done together: because he is the person you played tennis with or struggled through adolescence or took that wonderful trip with. And once he has those properties, no one else can be the very person who did those things with you, or have those historical traits (Hurka 1997; Brink 1999; Kolodny 2003). To ground this additional concern, a shared history must be of a certain type. If someone has abused you, you will not on that basis care especially for him; you may well do the opposite.Your history must instead involve good experiences, of enjoyment or of benefiting either each other or outsiders (as in jointly teaching school), or even of jointly suffering hardship.Your history can also attach you to material things, such as a landscape or a house, and it is crucial in familial and romantic love. But it also figures in friendship, where a shared past of the right kind can make you care more for a friend than for a stranger with equally or more appealing generic traits. You have little such history when you are just starting a friendship with someone, but as your relationship progresses, it comes to have more of a shared past and an ever stronger basis for this type of concern, so you value your friend more as an individual and are less likely to trade up.Your history can also affect your friendship’s other basis, the generic properties you like your friend for. Having first been attracted by some of her traits, you can now like others because they are hers. The singer recalling “The way you wear your hat/​The way you sip your tea” didn’t first have preferred ways of handling hats and tea cups and then chose her lover because he used them. She first loved him and then cherished certain mannerisms as ones of the person she had a romance with. So in friendship you can first be drawn by some of a person’s properties and then grow fond of others, such as her distinctive laugh or style of dress, because they belong to the person you did things with.You may even come to like in her traits you would not like in anyone else. It is not that your shared history must tie you to a friend forever. If her other properties change or no longer attract you, the loss of that 217

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other basis of friendship can outweigh your shared past. That past, too, can deteriorate, if interactions that were once enjoyable become tedious or strained. But if her properties remain attractive and your interactions stay positive, your shared history will make you care more for her than for others with comparable generic traits. A different view rests attachment to an individual on more global properties he has, such as a distinctive style of expressing his generic traits (Badhwar 1987; Nozick 1989) or the way they combine to form the organic whole of his personality (Clausen 2019). Even about love, however, these views are far too high-​minded. To be someone’s friend, must I really have identified a distinctive style he has? Can’t I be indifferent to many of his traits, not just individually but also as contributing to his overall personality, and even mildly put off by some? More importantly, both these views depend tacitly on the historical one. It is not as if, before meeting your friend, you had a favorite style of expressing traits or way of combining them that he fortuitously turned out to have; you came to like those global properties because they were his. Nor can these views explain all instances of attachment. Imagine that a friend has died and scientists offer to create a perfect molecular duplicate of him. Since the duplicate will have all the same global properties, these views imply that having it means you suffer no loss. But surely you will not think that; you will not accept the replacement since not even a perfect duplicate can be the very person you did things with. Not only do we in fact care more about our friends, on most views we should care more. It is commonly held that we have stronger duties to a friend, just as to a family member or romantic partner, so whatever we owe people in general, we owe more to an intimate (Jeske 1997). If a friend is moving house or needs comforting, there is more call to help her than to help a stranger in similar need.Your relationship with her intensifies your duty, making it stronger because she is a friend. The same is true of negative duties such as not to cause harm or lie. Though always wrong, these acts seem worse when done to a friend; then she can ask not only “How could you do that?” but “How could you do that to me?” These various intensifications may rest in part on other generic duties, for example on your having tacitly committed to help your friend or your owing her gratitude. But these generic factors seem inadequate to both the degree and the breadth of the intensifications, and also to the sense that extra concern is owed to your friend as a friend. If what ties you specifically to her is your shared history, what grounds the intensifications must be in large part that history. Your having done good things with her must contribute significantly to your having stronger duties to benefit and avoid harming her now. But a shared history can also intensify certain goods in friendship, most centrally that of virtue. If you have a stronger duty to promote a friend’s happiness, a natural explanation is that his happiness is a greater good relative to you, or from your point of view, than a stranger’s equal happiness; that is why it makes a stronger demand. And it is in general better and more virtuous to care about greater goods and evils, for example to feel compassion for others’ intense pains than just for their mild pains. So if a friend’s happiness is a greater good relative to you, your wanting and being pleased by it is better and more virtuous than your having the same attitudes to a stranger’s happiness; its value is intensified.We saw, however, that you typically do not have the same attitudes to a stranger’s happiness; you care more about a friend’s.Your concern for him is therefore in two ways intrinsically better. It is more intense, where more concern for a good is in general better; and it is concern for what relative to you is a greater good, which also is better. Similar points hold of your desires not to harm or lie to a friend. They too are doubly better, since it is more virtuous to want to avoid more serious wrongs and your aversions to wronging a friend are stronger. In addition, your pattern of concern, where you care more about the greater good of your friend’s happiness and the greater wrong of harming him, is also good as a pattern, because it approximates an ideal of proportioning your attitudes to their objects’ degrees of value or importance. If your history with a friend makes her happiness a greater good relative to you, your caring about it as much more as its greater value makes appropriate is itself virtuous and good. And this good in particular rests on your attachment to her as an individual. If you cared no more about her happiness than about that of 218

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a stranger with similar generic properties, your combination of concerns would be at least less good as a combination and could be evil. (This is less a case of intensifying a value than of changing its content, in this case the division of concern that is best.) Caring no more about someone with whom you have a rich and rewarding history omits a central good of friendship and may even be positively bad if it departs too far from proportionality. It can also be less good and possibly bad to care too much, or more than proportionally, about a friend’s good. That can lead you to act wrongly, by giving more preference to her happiness than its greater value relative to you makes appropriate or even by harming a stranger in order to benefit your friend. Excessive partiality toward a friend, which in fact is common, is morally dangerous (Cocking and Kennett 2000) but also means your friendship has less of the good of virtue than it could and may have an element of vice. If your history with a friend intensifies both your duties concerning him and the values of the virtues related to them, why does it do so? Why does it make desiring his happiness better than desiring a stranger’s? It may be that there is no further explanation. Your past interactions make some people closer to you and others less close: your family and romantic partner arguably closest, your friends somewhat less close, and others less close still. And it may be just a brute or underivative truth that duties and virtues are strengthened by closeness (Jeske 1997). But a possible explanation looks to the requirement that your shared past be a good one. It says the value in that past calls for heightened efforts and concern now, as fitting and therefore mandated responses to that value; more specifically, it says these responses “resonate” with that value (Kolodny 2010) in a way that gives them extra weight. There is some similarity here to the idea that it is good to love what is good, which also involves resonance with a value, but there are also differences. What is mandated here is not greater concern for the good object itself, the history, but for things related to it, such as the present and future success of the person who figured in that history, even in projects largely independent of you. That may not be as immediately compelling. And the self-​referential character of the intensifications, their being only in relation to your friend, is assumed rather than explained, since it is only a history you participated in that has this effect. Still, it is possible to see the degrees of intensification of both duties and virtues as dependent on two factors: how good your shared history was and how much close interaction it involved (Hurka 1997), where familial and established romantic love arguably score highest on these dimensions and most friendships somewhat lower. With or without this explanation, however, if it is better and more virtuous to care about a friend, and what ties you to him is your history, the added value must rest somehow on that history. Intensifications are also possible for other goods, such as knowledge. Then understanding a friend’s character has more value, given your shared history, than a similar understanding, should you have it, of a stranger’s. Just as some hold that, its instrumental value aside, there is special intrinsic worth in self-​knowledge, or understanding yourself, so a related view finds special value in understanding someone close to you just because he is close: what ties him to you makes knowing him better. A parallel view is possible about achievement, so helping to realize goals in a friend’s life or engaging in cooperative ventures with him is better than doing the same with a stranger; again your shared past increases a generic good. These last two intensifications do not have the independent support of the one about virtue, which follows from the same facts that give you stronger duties to a friend, for example the greater value relative to you of his happiness. They are also harder to assess given the other ways knowledge of and achievement with a friend can be better, as when your shared past gives you more evidence about his character and your affection for him makes you keener to learn from it. Still, these instrumental considerations aside, knowing about and achieving with a friend can be better because they concern him, so your history also intensifies these non-​moral goods. The parallel view seems less plausible, however, for pleasure. Interactions with a friend are in many ways more enjoyable, but is the resulting pleasure also better as pleasure because it is with a friend? 219

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That is harder to believe. Like virtue, knowledge and achievement involve intentional attitudes: you have a belief about some fact and aim at some goal. So when your belief or goal concerns a friend, who then figures in your attitude’s object, that can increase the attitude’s worth. But if pleasure is just a feeling, with no intentionality in what makes it pleasure, there cannot be that reason for intensification. As always the same feeling, it seems always of the same value. (When a pleasure is intentional, as when you are pleased that a friend is happy, it can be an instance of, and especially good as, virtue.) So while intensification is compelling for the good of virtue, and perhaps plausible for knowledge and achievement, it is less so for pleasure or enjoyment.Your shared history with a friend makes for distinctively valuable forms of some goods, though arguably not of all.

Friendship and Distinctive Goods Finally, friendship and personal relationships more generally may involve distinctive goods, ones not found to any or a significant degree outside them. This is suggested when friendship is simply added to a list of basic goods, as if it is independent of all other goods. But if friendship is a compound of more basic elements, such as enjoying another’s company and wanting her happiness, must not its value depend somehow on the values of its parts? An alternative view finds distinctive values in the way these elements are combined in friendship, or in the complex whole they make up. This view exploits the “principle of organic unities” (Moore 1903: 27–​36), according to which the value of a whole need not equal the sum of the values its parts would have on their own but can be greater or smaller, depending on how those parts relate. One possible application of this principle is to the elements in the relation each friend, considered on his own, has to the other. However good these elements are individually, even as intensified, they may have more value when they are combined, so you enjoy a friend’s company and understand his character and want his happiness. That you relate to him in all these ways at once can be a further, organic good. Similar combinations are possible, at lower levels of intensity, to a non-​friend, so this good may not be unique to intimate relationships. It would be unique if it appeared only when there are elements above a threshold of intensity or ones based on a substantial shared history, but even without those restrictions it is significantly present only in closer relationships. So one possible distinctive value in friendship is the way it simultaneously involves several intense relations to the same person. A related possibility values the combination of these elements across time, so your enjoying, knowing, or feeling benevolently toward the same person at many times is an organic good. Persistence through time, which is often thought essential to “deep” personal relations, has obvious instrumental value, since it can increase enjoyment and knowledge and lead to stronger altruistic desires. But it may also have intrinsic value, so a long-​lasting friendship with one person is better than a sequence of shorter friendships, each containing as much enjoyment and other goods at a time as the longer-​ lasting one. Whether or not this idea is persuasive, it posits an organic good not found in more transitory acquaintanceships. The most compelling application of the organic principle, however, is to the combination of the relations friends have to each other. It is to the fact that these relations are reciprocated, so just as A enjoys B’s company, B enjoys A’s, and just as A understands B and wants his happiness, so B understands A and wants his. Reciprocation seems part of the concept of friendship as it is not of romantic or familial love. Romantic love can be unrequited, and a child can love a parent who, tragically, does not love it. But it does not seem possible for A to be a friend of B unless B is a friend of A. This conceptual point aside, friends typically feel mutual affection, and the fact that their attitudes are reciprocated is arguably a source of additional value in their friendship. The addition could in principle be a matter of intensification, so A’s desire for B’s happiness is made better by B’s desiring A’s, and vice versa. But if the value rests on the reciprocation, it seems most fitting to attach it to the relation between them as such, as a property of the friendship as a whole rather than of either individual. Reciprocation is again possible between non-​friends, but there too it is a property of their 220

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interaction rather than of either individual, and it is present in more elements and at higher levels of intensity between friends, so it is at least to a large extent distinctive of friendship. And it is especially distinctive if what is reciprocated is the friends’ attachment to each other as individuals, as when each wants the other’s happiness more than a stranger’s because of their shared history. Finally, this third organic good can be augmented by the other two, so there is more value when there is reciprocation of many elements, say of enjoyment and knowledge and benevolence, and when the reciprocation lasts for a longer time. Then friendship is a good with many cross-​cutting relational, in the sense of organic, elements. As well as having independently valuable parts, it is multiply valuable as a whole. A related possible good is mutual causal influence, when friends affect each other’s desires, attitudes, and even characters. They can, for example, each acquire interests from the other and so develop shared interests. To have value, the influences here must be mutual. If A takes up many of B’s interests but B takes up none of A’s, that does not seem organically good; B must likewise be inspired by A. In some cases the causal upshot of this influence is intended, as when A encourages B to try an activity of A’s because it can then be shared or B adopts it for that reason. This need not be so, however. B can just see A engaging in an activity, find it independently interesting, and try it; if A does the same with an activity of B’s, there is reciprocal causation without intention. And there can be other unintended and even subconscious influences, as their time together causes them to think, feel, and even talk in similar ways. This may be especially valuable if the mutual influence is with respect to goods, as when they increase each other’s knowledge or improve each other’s characters. But even neutral effects, such as on each other’s interests or vocabulary, may have some worth. If among the goods of friendship are ones of reciprocation, they can include friends’ causal effects on each other. Some writers emphasize friends’ influence on each other’s values or ideals of life, so they together develop a shared set of evaluative beliefs. But this again exaggerates the role of moral considerations in friendship and also exaggerates how far friends must share values. Can’t a consequentialist be friends with a deontologist or a liberal with a conservative? What they do need is a shared way of dealing with any differences in values they have, one involving respect for each other’s beliefs. That is an instance of a final, especially valuable form of reciprocation. It involves each friend’s constraining her activities by her concern for the other, so each pursues her ends in ways that do not set back, and may further, the other’s ends and good, and each tries to ensure that the benefits and burdens of the relationship are fairly shared. (This last aspect of friendship may, more than others, involve de dicto thoughts, here about fairness.) It also involves the friends’ jointly resolving any conflicts that do arise in a way that acknowledges each one’s prerogative to act on her own convictions. This instantiates mutual virtuous concern but goes beyond merely wanting each other’s good to involve a pattern of active mutual accommodation that many think a central good in friendship. It can be seen as combining the value of reciprocated virtue with the achievement of creating, together, a relationship in which that virtue is continuously expressed. Assigning the goods of reciprocation to friendship as a whole fits the way friends typically care not only about each other’s good but also about their relationship as such. Each can want not only the other but also the friendship between them to flourish; thus each can want the reciprocation between them to continue. This organic-​unity approach to these goods, which treats friendship as a relation between distinct individuals, contrasts with ones that see a friend as an “extended self ” (Sherman 1987; Brink 1999), so his good is “part” of yours, or that borrow a view of romantic love on which partners form a unified “we” in some metaphysical sense (Nozick 1989).The claims these views make can only be taken so far. Even your closest intimates remain separate centers of consciousness: no matter how much you are pained by a friend’s pain and want it to end, you cannot experience it directly, as he does. Nor does your wanting his good make it in any useful sense a “part” of yours. Whatever your good consists in, whether pleasure, knowledge, or the fulfillment of some desires, it must be a state of you or more closely related to you than a friend’s freedom from pain or success in independent projects can be (Parfit 1984: 494–​5).These views’ metaphysical claims also undermine a central good of friendship, that of altruistic concern. If a friend is an extension of you or part of a single unit with you, caring about 221

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his happiness is like caring about your own, and it is hard to see much that is virtuous or admirable in that. Only if he is separate from you can your desires about him have the special worth of other-​ regarding virtue. Nor can these views easily accommodate the side of friendship that involves Kant’s force of repulsion, such as your strong aversions to interfering with a friend’s choices or independent pursuits; those too require him to be separate. Friendship may involve goods not located in the friends’ individual lives, in particular the various relations of reciprocation. But these relations are best seen as holding between distinct individuals, so their mutual attitudes are on each side altruistic.

Conclusion Friendship can be good in several ways. It can involve generic goods such as enjoyment, knowledge, and virtue that are possible outside friendship but found especially often and to an especially high degree within it. It can involve intensified versions of these goods, so, for example, a degree of virtuous concern that is good toward a stranger is even better toward a friend. And it can involve more distinctive goods, such as the various forms of reciprocation. On some views the value of friendship rests on just one or two of these grounds; on others it rests on all three. But surely on any view it can contribute significantly to a desirable human life.

Related Chapters Aristotle on the Nature and Value of Friendship; Friendship and Self-​Interest; Friendship and the Personal Good

References Aristotle. 1980. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by W.D. Ross. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Badhwar, N.K. 1987. “Friends as Ends in Themselves.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 48: 1–​23. Brink, D.O. 1999. “Eudaimonism, Love and Friendship, and Political Community.” Social Philosophy and Policy 16 (1): 252–​89. Clausen, G.T. 2019. “Love of Whole Persons.” Journal of Ethics 23: 347–​67. Cocking, D., and J. Kennett. 2000. “Friendship and Moral Danger.” Journal of Philosophy 97: 278–​96. Ebels-​Duggan, K. 2008. “Against Beneficence: A Normative Account of Love.” Ethics 119: 142–​70. Hurka,T. 1997. “The Justification of National Partiality.” In The Morality of Nationalism, edited by R. McKim and J. McMahan, 139–​57. New York: Oxford University Press. Hurka, T. 2001. Virtue,Vice, and Value. New York: Oxford University Press. Hurka, T. 2020. “The Parallel Goods of Knowledge and Achievement.” Erkenntnis 85: 589–​608. Jeske, D. 1997. “Friendship,Virtue, and Impartiality.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 57: 51–​71. Kant, I. 1964. The Doctrine of Virtue: Part II of The Metaphysic of Morals. Translated by M.J. Gregor. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Kolodny, N. 2003. “Love as Valuing a Relationship.” Philosophical Review 112: 135–​89. Kolodny, N. 2010. “Which Relationships Justify Partiality? The Case of Parents and Children.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 38: 37–​75. Moore, G.E. 1903. Principia Ethica. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nozick, R. 1989. “Love’s Bond.” In The Examined Life, 68–​86. New York: Simon & Schuster. Parfit, D. 1984. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Ross, W.D. 1930. The Right and the Good. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Schoeman, F. 1985. “Aristotle on the Good of Friendship.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 63: 269–​82. Sherman, N. 1987. “Aristotle on Friendship and the Shared Life.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 47: 589–​613. Stocker, M. 1976. “The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories.” Journal of Philosophy 73: 453–​66. Stroud, S. 2006. “Epistemic Partiality in Friendship.” Ethics 116: 498–​524. Telfer, E. 1970–​71. “Friendship.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 71: 223–​41. Williams, B. 1981.“Persons, Character, and Morality.” In Moral Luck, 1–​19. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wonderly, M. 2017. “Love and Attachment.” American Philosophical Quarterly 54: 235–​50.

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19 FRIENDSHIP AND PRACTICAL REASON Daniel Koltonski

As Aristotle notes in his account of friendship in the Nicomachean Ethics (2009), friends are disposed to do things with and for one another.1 Friends desire one another’s company, and this desire disposes them to “share the actions in which they find their common life” (Aristotle 1999: 153). They also “wish goods to their friend for the friend’s own sake,” and this goodwill disposes them to cooperate in their actions and even to go to some trouble for one another (Aristotle 1999: 122, 143). In the philosophical literature, there is wide agreement with Aristotle about this and, in particular, about the claim that friendship is marked by deep and particularized care for one another. Often this care is understood as practical concern for the friend’s good (or, for her well-​being). Diane Jeske (1997: 54) claims, for instance, that the care (or “concern”) at issue in friendship involves “dispositions to promote the [friend’s] well-​being and, if appropriate circumstances arise, acting on such dispositions.” And Lawrence Blum (1993: 192) remarks that “[i]‌t is entirely appropriate […] that a friend act for the benefit of his friend for [her] own sake and without apprising himself of other possibilities for his beneficence.” Among the reasons your friendship with another gives you, then, are reasons to benefit her in particular. This so far seems perfectly unobjectionable. But things quickly become complicated once we observe that your friend, the object of your care, is herself an agent, someone with her own projects, aims, and relationships (including her friendship with you) that give her reasons for action. Caring for her as the kind of thing she is –​as an agent –​seems not to be exhausted by a concern to benefit her, and so the reasons your friendship with her gives you will be more than just reasons to benefit her; indeed, in some situations, these other reasons of friendship can conflict with and sometimes take priority over your reasons to benefit her. The aim of this chapter it is to trace these complications by mapping out some of the ways in which you, as someone who cares for your friend as an agent, ought to respond to her reasons –​those she has on account of her own projects, aims, and relationships –​and incorporate them into your own practical reasoning. While the situations at issue might, of course, be of significant import (for her, for you, for your friendship, for others), more often they will not be, as Alexander Nehemas (2010: 273) observes: “most of the actions with which [friendship] is usually associated are insignificant, humdrum everyday events.” In mapping out the ways in which you ought to respond to your friend’s reasons, we will thus need to consider not only situations where much is at stake but also those more mundane, even insignificant, situations that make up so much of the life of a friendship. DOI: 10.4324/9781003007012-24

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Being Directed by Your Friend Dean Cocking and Jeannette Kennett (2000: 284) note that, while concern for one another’s well-​ being is indeed fundamental to friendship, it is not distinctive of friendship as a relationship. Many other relationships also feature this sort of concern. What is distinctive of friendship, they argue, and a source of its particular value for us, is that friends “are characteristically receptive to being directed and interpreted and so in these ways drawn by each other” (1998: 503). Notably, this first way of being drawn by your friend –​being directed by her –​involves taking her as providing you with certain reasons for action, reasons that are not necessarily about benefiting her. Here, then, Cocking and Kennett have identified an additional way your friendship with another can affect your own reasons for action: you not only have reasons to benefit her but also reasons arising from her direction of you. (We can call them “reasons of direction.”) This direction of you by your friend characteristically occurs in the activities you two share. It is thus in deciding the things you two do together, such as playing a game of tennis or going hiking (or out to drinks or to a show, etc.) that you are disposed to be directed by your friend (and she by you). On Cocking and Kennett’s account, the reasons of direction your friend gives you are reasons to pursue her interests simply because they are hers: In the case where my close friend’s interests diverge from mine, her interests continue to have action-​guiding force for me, since in friendship it is her interests as such that are important, not her interests under some description that has no essential connection to her. 2000: 284–​5; emphasis in original One thing to notice is that, strictly speaking, you are not being directed by your friend’s interests but rather by her conception of her interests. She might want to go hiking today, say, but only because she has a mistaken sense of what hiking involves. If she understood what it involves, she would not want to go. Does she have an interest in hiking today? It seems to me she does not; she just (mistakenly) thinks she does. If this is right, then Cocking and Kennett’s account of being directed by one’s friend has it that what matters is simply that she wants to go hiking, whether or not she is right about actually having an interest in hiking. Or, as they put the point, “[t]‌he interests of the other in friendship, whether serious or slight, are not, in general, filtered through one’s antecedent tastes and interests or subject to rational or moral scrutiny before they acquire action-​guiding force” (2000: 285). On their view, then, your reason to go hiking with her is not contingent on your agreeing, upon reflection (or, “rational scrutiny”), that she does have an interest in the hiking she wants you to do with her. (We will consider their claim about moral scrutiny later.) As Cocking and Kennett understand it, then, to be directed by your friend is to give her a kind of practical authority over your shared activities, for it is not merely that, in these activities, you have reason to take up her interests with her but rather that you have reason to take up what she judges to be her interests because she has so judged them (and so regardless of whether you might agree). It is her judgments that direct your actions here, not yours. In ordinary or mundane cases, there may be little need for you to be alert to this distinction between your friend’s interests and her conception of her interests, for she will normally be correct about her interests and, in those instances when she is not, the potential losses to her will likely not be significant. (She simply will not enjoy the hike, for instance.) But the more serious the case, the more this distinction will matter, and in these cases your friendship with her might demand that you subject her conception of her interests to rational scrutiny before being directed by her. It seems quite possible that, in some situations, being directed by her conception of her interests conflicts with acting, out of concern for her good, on behalf of what is in her interest. Suppose that, despite having both no real experience and a tendency to take on overly challenging projects (only to fail at them later), your friend has decided to design and build her own woodland cabin, and she wants your help one afternoon brainstorming design ideas. On Cocking and Kennett’s view, that she wants you two to 224

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brainstorm ideas together is an “interest in friendship” she has and so it is a reason of direction for you to do this with her. But, if she is mistaken about this interest in building her own cabin –​she wants to build it, but only because she underestimates the challenges –​you would seem to have reason to steer her away from this project and so, in this situation, to suggest some other activity together in lieu of brainstorming ideas. Here, then, we seem to have a conflict of reasons that is internal to friendship, and it is not clear what being a good friend calls for. Someone might argue that the appearance of conflict here is illusory. Since the care characteristic of friendship is a concern for the friend’s well-​being, a substantial part of a person’s well-​being is determined by the aims or ends she herself has adopted, the projects, relationships, and involvements that she finds valuable and worth pursuing. As Bennett Helm (2008: 30) puts the point, “to care about another agent as such is to be concerned with her well-​being as an agent, a well-​being which is partly constituted by the things she cares about.” On this view, your care for your friend gives you reason to act on behalf of what she cares about because she cares about them –​these things partly constitute her well-​being –​and, in particular, to help her realize those aims that she has adopted for herself. Her adoption of certain aims can thus give you reasons to help her pursue them precisely because of your concern, as her friend, for her good. In this way, by adopting this aim of designing and building her own cabin, your friend has made that aim a part of her well-​being; your friendship with her thus gives you reason to help her, including by spending the afternoon brainstorming ideas with her, and not to steer her away from it, and it does so precisely because you care about her well-​being. These may look like reasons of direction in Cocking and Kennett’s sense but they are rather, at bottom, reasons of beneficence. The problem for this view, however, is that, in this case, you think is that your friend would be better off if this were not an important aim for her. And you might very well be correct about this. If you are, it would seem that your concern for her well-​being, even on this view, does still give you reason either to steer her away from this aim –​and so, in this instance, to redirect her away from brainstorming toward some other shared activity –​or, at the very least, to decline her request for help. And this seems objectionable, for, barring special circumstances, this sort of orientation toward her and her aims –​it is for her own good that you are not helping her brainstorm ideas –​is paternalistic and so incompatible both with respect for her as an agent and with your friendship as a relationship of equals.2 Here, then, we have an instance where, instead of being concerned with her good, you ought to be directed by her conception of her interest, even if her conception is mistaken, because she is your friend. Failure to be thus directed would be a failure of friendship. Or, to put it another way, your friendship gives you reason to share her end. Kyla Ebels-​Duggan (2008: 151) observes that, “if well-​being and rational aims are not one and the same, we can raise the question of whether sharing in the pursuit of a loved one’s ends, per se, is a better guide to action than aiming at her well-​being.” What is at issue here emerges most clearly, as Ebels-​Duggan explains (2008: 152), when you imagine that your friend has adopted some aim –​reasonably and even admirably so –​that involves self-​sacrifice and, in so doing, she has chosen “against her own well-​being.” If your care for your friend is to be focused on her well-​being rather than on sharing her end, then it would seem that, in such a case, you should at least not assist her in her pursuit of such an aim and perhaps even to act to undermine her pursuit of it. But it seems clear that in many such cases doing either of these things, and particularly the latter, would be not just a failure of friendship but rather a betrayal of it and of her, for you are failing to respect her as an agent with ends of her own.

Sharing Your Friend’s Ends The issue here concerns what is involved in caring for your friend as an agent. On one view, her rational aims come into play for you directly –​you are to be concerned with them independently of, and so in addition to, your concern for her well-​being –​while, on the other, they come into play only indirectly –​you are to be concerned with them insofar as they are part of her well-​being. 225

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Cases of self-​sacrifice, of your friend adopting rational aims that are genuinely her own and yet involve choosing against her well-​being, make the difference between these views clear. And what considering such cases reveals, it seems to me, is that caring for a friend as an agent often requires that her aims come into play for you directly and in a way that looks very much like the sort of direction that Cocking and Kennett take to be distinctive of friendship. And so, on this sort of view, what your friendship with another primarily gives you reason to do is to share her ends. This does not mean, of course, that you need not also be concerned for your friend’s well-​being. For instance, if she has adopted an end requiring self-​sacrifice, caring for her will involve not only helping her in her pursuit of this end but also looking for ways to do so that lessen the extent of the self-​sacrifice her pursuit of this aim requires of her. What does it mean to share your friend’s end? As Ebels-​Duggan remarks (2008: 156), sharing her end will normally not involve pursuing that end yourself as if it were your own. Consider again your friend who wants to design and build her own cabin. Her end is not simply that her cabin gets built but rather that she does it, albeit in part with your help. And so, the reasons that her end gives her will not be the reasons that her end gives you as her friend.Your reasons will be to help her in her efforts to design and build the cabin herself. You may, for instance, have reason to accompany her in her search for the perfect plot of woodland; or to look over her preliminary designs and give her your honest feedback; or to spend a weekend helping her with its construction. The reasons her end gives you will depend, in part, on how she understands what is required for it to be she who designed and built the cabin, which decisions and activities must be hers and which can be partly or wholly yours. Were you to give your feedback on her designs a bit too insistently, say, and in that way signal that there are design decisions that you think she must make regardless of her opinion of the matter, you would not be sharing her end in the way a friend should; you’d instead be treating her end as if it were your own. And this would be the case even if she would be better off going with your design judgments because, as design judgments, they are indeed better than hers. In her defense of this “shared ends” view, Ebels-​Duggan argues that sharing your friend’s end involves giving her certain kinds of authority over you, specifically “selection authority” and “authority in judgment.” She explains selection authority thusly: [B]‌y choosing from among the set of permissible projects, [your friend] gives you reason to pursue the chosen ends with her rather than concentrate your efforts on some other worthwhile pursuits […] The sort of thing I have in mind can be mundane, or significant and demanding. 2008: 156 This sort of authority is not confined to the end itself but extends to how your friend conceives of its pursuit and, in particular, to your role in it. And so, that she envisions your involvement in a particular way is a reason for you to be involved in that way rather than, say, some way you might think more effective or productive (Ebels-​Duggan 2008: 157). But what if you think that the end itself or the end as she is pursuing it is not valuable or worthwhile? This is where authority in judgment comes in: you are to “treat her choice of an end as if it were evidence that the end is worthwhile […] [Y]‌ou must operate on the presumption that her choices are good ones” (Ebels-​Duggan 2008: 159). In this way, authority in judgment is a kind of trust you are to have in your friend’s judgment, trust that she is seeing something of value in the end that you cannot (or cannot yet) see. This presumption can, of course, be defeated –​you may have reason to subject her end to rational scrutiny and, even after doing so, you still cannot appreciate its value –​and, when it is defeated in this way, it is not clear whether the friend’s selection authority remains, for your care for her “doesn’t in

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this case require that [you] ignore the disagreement” (Ebels-​Duggan 2008: 161–​2). This might at first glance seem a place where Ebels-​Duggan’s shared-​ends account diverges from Cocking and Kennett’s direction account, but I think Cocking and Kennett’s account can be read similarly. Consider again their claim that “[t]‌he interests of the other in friendship, whether serious or slight, are not, in general […] subject to rational or moral scrutiny before they acquire action-​guiding force” (2000: 285). This “in general” seems to indicate a presumption of some sort that can be defeated and, when it is, her interests give you reasons only if they survive your rational scrutiny. Where Ebels-​Duggan does diverge from Cocking and Kennett is whether the presumption at issue is a presumption of the worth or value of her end. Cocking and Kennett seem to say that it is not, as they suggest that your friend’s ends that stem from, say, one of her vices might give you reasons of direction to share that end: [A]‌good friendship might well include a focus on certain vices. Recklessness is not morally admirable, but it might be what I like about you and it may well structure the ways in which we relate to each other and the activities we share. I am just as likely to be directed by your interest in gambling at the casino as by your interest in ballet. 2000: 286 Their claim seems to be that your friendship gives you reason to go with your friend to the casino when she suggests it, even if she intends to gamble an imprudent amount of money (she is reckless after all, and this is partly what makes going gambling with her fun and exciting). Of course, her gambling may not be (very) harmful to her in the end. But the reasons you have to go gambling with her do not seem to be filtered through a concern for her well-​being –​and so a concern for whether the gambling might be harmful (or not) to her –​but rather seem to arise directly from her wanting you to go with her. Indeed, since she is receptive to being directed and interpreted by you, that you embrace her recklessness in this way, incorporating acting on it into your friendship as something fun and exciting, may end up strengthening it in her. And so, as Cocking and Kennett (2000: 287) point out, “concern for [her] welfare [or, well-​being] cannot plausibly explain how we might embrace certain moral vices in a friend.” Nor, it seems, could your concern for her pursuit of her worthwhile ends, for this end of going to the casino seems to be something she wants to do precisely because it is not in any plausible sense worthwhile: it is attractive to her (and, for that matter, to you) in large part because of the thrill of deliberately leaving some not insignificant portion of her financial well-​ being up to chance. If Cocking and Kennett are right about this sort of case, then it seems that your friend’s ends can give you reasons of direction to share them even if there are no grounds to sustain even the sort of presumption of the worth or value of those ends that Ebels-​Duggan’s account defends.This may seem troubling, but, as Cocking and Kennett agree that friendship gives you reason also to be concerned for your friend’s well-​being, and, in particular, concerned about serious threats to it, they might say that, if her gambling is becoming a genuine problem, then your reasons, as her friend, to promote her well-​being may override any reasons of direction you might have as her friend to go gambling with her when she proposes a trip to the casino.3

A Friend’s Ends versus Your Moral Judgment What about Cocking and Kennett’s arguably stronger claim, that your friend’s ends can give you reasons for action even before you subject those ends to moral scrutiny? On their view, those reasons that arise from being directed by her interests –​or, the reasons you have to share her ends –​can conflict with and at times even override the demands of morality. For Cocking and Kennett, then, morality does not necessarily limit the authority your friend has to direct you (2000: 279). Ebels-​Duggan

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takes the opposite view, that morality –​or, more precisely, morality as you judge it –​does limit your friend’s authority. She invites us to imagine a situation where your friend adopts an end that is, on your view, “flatly impermissible”: [H]‌ere we run up against a limit on the [friend’s] authority: the provisional adoption of an impermissible end simply can’t generate reasons for you. You may still owe it to your [friend] to consider her view that it would not be impermissible to undertake the project in question, if indeed that is her view. But in the end, you will have to rely on your own considered judgment about this. 2008: 162 When it comes to significant potential wrongdoing, Ebels-​Duggan’s position here seems quite plausible. But one might wonder, with Cocking and Kennett (2000: 286), whether it is nearly as plausible for more mundane but still clear cases of wrongdoing. Imagine that you have promised to join a coworker for a drink tonight but now your friend wants you to go out with her instead. If you agree to go out with her, you will need to break your promise to your coworker, perhaps by lying to him and giving him some plausible (but false) excuse. It does seem, to me at least, not only that you can have reason to share this end she has proposed but also that your reason to share it can override your moral reasons not to do so. It is relevant, of course, that the moral stakes are not at all high in this case; but, as Cocking and Kennett (2000: 287) point out about such cases, the stakes for your friend’s well-​being are also not high: “We need not suppose that [your] friend’s welfare importantly hangs on the night out […] or that [your] deeply felt concern for her sake is what moves [you].” What this sort of case shows, they think, is that just because you are failing to be a perfectly moral friend does not mean that you are thereby failing to be a perfectly good friend to her (2000: 287). Indeed, I suspect that it may be that it is precisely in failing to be a perfectly moral friend here that you are being a good friend to her, as it signals that you are being directed by her interests in the way a friend ought to be. However, even if Cocking and Kennett are correct so far about this sort of case, we might still ask whether your friend ought to take back her proposal that you grab a drink with her once she learns that you have already promised to meet your coworker for a drink. Friendship is a reciprocal relationship of equals, and so it is not only that you are to care for your friend as an agent for her sake but that she is reciprocate that care: she is to care for you as an agent for your sake. It does not seem overly moralistic to note that one of our important interests as agents is that we act in accordance with the demands of morality, perhaps even that we act out of a concern for morality. This means, though, that your friend, out of care for you, ought to be concerned about the morality for you of her proposal precisely because, as her friend, you are disposed to be directed by her. Her proposal may be a candidate for directing you in the way Cocking and Kennett outline but it will be only so long as, in proposing it, she is not failing to be responsive to your interest as an agent in acting morally, for otherwise her directing you would count as wrongly taking advantage of you and your friendship with her. She would fail in this way, say, if she knows about your promise to your coworker before offering her proposal or if, once she learns about your promise, she does not at least try to take her proposal back. In the latter sort of case, what we end up with is that, while your friendship gives you reason, once she makes her proposal, to break your promise to your coworker so that you can grab a drink with her instead, her friendship with you gives her reason, once she learns about your promise, not to let you do that. In this way, she has reason, as your friend, to concern herself with the morality for you of her proposed shared aim precisely because, as her friend, you have reason not to be. Her friendship with you thus gives her additional, friendship-​specific reasons to care about the morality of her proposal, specifically its moral implications for you. Now, one might resist even this sort of account for cases of mundane wrongdoing. Perhaps knowingly encouraging your friend to use a white lie to skip out on drinks with a coworker, or to play 228

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hooky from school or work (or some other everyday responsibility), or to ignore the “No trespassing” signs to swim with you in an abandoned quarry would not be incompatible with being a perfectly good friend, even if it would be incompatible with being a perfectly moral one. Indeed, these seem precisely the ways that a friend might do us some good by prompting us to “loosen up” or “live a little” when we are arguably too wedded to obeying society’s rules. (This sort of view does seem particularly plausible when breaking some social rule is not really morally wrong. But perhaps it is plausible also in cases of genuine but minor wrongdoing. Perhaps one can also be too wedded to obeying all of morality’s rules.) For cases that involve more serious potential wrongdoing, however, the thought that your friend can have friendship-​based reasons to be concerned about the morality for you of her proposal seems quite plausible. In these cases, we might say that she has reason to propose only what she in good faith takes to be morally permissible. Of course, even if she does this, it still may be that you disagree with her about the morality of her proposal, and so the question now is what reasons, if any, might your friendship with her give you. Ebels-​Duggan’s view, recall, is that in these cases we reach the limit of a friend’s authority: “in the end, you will have to rely on your own considered judgment” about the morality of the proposed action (2008: 162). Suppose, though, that the case is a hard one about which even morally perceptive people can in good faith disagree. One view, perhaps Ebels-​Duggan’s, would be that, in such a case, the demands of conscience or moral autonomy are such that you ought to act on your own judgment here, particularly if the situation is quite serious. Even if your friend genuinely and responsibly thinks her proposal is morally permissible –​and even if you are confident she would never ask you, her friend, to do something she thought seriously wrong –​you still must go with your own judgment. On this view, this is simply a case where the authority partly constitutive of friendship gives out. I think, however, that there is a case to be made that, provided the friendship is indeed a close one, you may have a duty of friendship to defer to her in this sort of case and so, despite your disagreement, to act on her proposal because she genuinely and responsibly judges it morally permissible (Koltonski 2016). The reason why has again to do with what it means to care for your friend as an agent. This sort of care seems, in part, to involve a concern that she be able to steer the course of her own life, especially in situations that are particularly significant for her, by responsibly exercising her agency in those situations, including her moral agency: When a person acts on their own [responsible] moral judgments in difficult situations whose resolution will significantly shape their life, what happens –​both the actions and their consequences –​expresses their own moral sensibility and so counts as part of their moral world they have created; the person thus takes responsibility for and invites others to hold them responsible for what happens, thereby demanding recognition both as a moral agent and as a reasonable one. In this way, a person has reason to value the responsible exercise of their moral agency, particularly in situations that are significant for them, and their friends have reason to accommodate and promote this exercise. Koltonski 2016: 500 In a situation where you disagree with your friend about the morality of her proposed joint action but which is of particular significance for her and her ends (but not similarly to you and yours), you may have a duty as her friend to defer to her judgment that her proposal is morally permissible, provided that she has deliberated responsibly, rather than act on your judgment that it is not. And so, when you do have this duty to defer to her moral judgment, you will have it even if her judgment that her proposal is morally permissible is, as a matter of fact, mistaken, for what matters is that her judgment, though mistaken, is a responsible moral judgment about a genuinely hard case that is of particular significance to her. Importantly, this may not be a straightforward case of your reasons of friendship overriding those of morality, for the sort of care for your friend that, in this case, justifies 229

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deferring to her moral judgment –​care for her as an agent and, particularly, as a moral agent –​seems to be precisely the sort of care for a friend that is compatible with (and even required by) the moral demand that you respect her as an agent (Koltonski 2016: 475). On this view, being friends with another brings with it a kind of moral risk –​you may end up helping her do what is in fact morally wrong –​but this sort of risk does not seem different in kind from the sort of moral risk that one runs oneself when one acts on one’s best moral judgment in genuinely hard moral cases. To be sure, it is not clear quite how broad this duty to defer might be. For one, the answer will depend both on how common hard moral cases are and on what makes for responsible moral deliberation and judgment (and these seem themselves to be difficult questions). This also seems one place where the boundaries of individual friendships may differ: some friendships may be such that this sort of duty to defer is quite circumscribed because one (or both) of the friends prizes a kind of independence of judgment, particularly of moral judgment; in such a friendship, the friends know about one another that, in these sorts of cases, they will only help one another if they agree morally about the proposal. One thing to ask about this sort of friendship is whether this limitation on the scope of this duty of friendship –​there are situations where your friend is not to be expected to help in the way you responsibly judge appropriate –​marks the friendship as less close than one without that limitation. I suspect that it does, for the friends’ reciprocal willingness to take this sort of moral risk for another seems a mark both of the depth of their care for one another as agents and of the extent that they share their lives with each other. (This is not meant to disparage such a friendship, however.)

Sharing Ends as Ours Together The discussion so far has focused on friends sharing each other’s ends. In this sort of end-​sharing, one friend brings to the friendship an end she has already adopted for the other to share with her and so, while they do share it, she retains certain kinds of authority over the end because it remains, in some basic sense, hers. But this is not the only sense in which friends share ends. Some ends they share as theirs together, as ends belonging equally to them both. The ends they share in this sense, as theirs together, are ones that they have as friends with one another (or, a bit more awkwardly, as members of the same friendship). This distinctive way of sharing an end emerges most clearly in Bennett Helm’s (2008) argument that friendship is a paradigmatic case of what he calls “plural agency.” Helm’s overall account of how a group of persons can together form a plural agent, one with its own ends, is rich and so rewards careful study, but for our purposes what is important is this distinctive way of sharing an end that, on this account, characterizes valuable personal relationships like friendship. Consider Helm’s example of two friends (you and me, say) who care about spending the day together. We decide to go to the beach –​this is an end we share as ours together –​but we differ on the kind of beach day to have: I would like us to relax and sunbathe, perhaps with a good book; you to walk the boardwalk, enjoying the touristy atmosphere (Helm 2008: 36). Importantly, each of our visions for the day is of the day we each want us to have together because we care about us: it is for our sake that we each want to do the activities we propose (Helm 2008: 40). So, it is not simply that I would like to spend my day relaxing and sunbathing and that I would like you to do this with me; it is rather that I would like us to spend our day this way because I think it would be the better beach day for us taken together. The same is true of you and walking the boardwalk. Our conflict, then, is not between judgments we each make from our individual evaluative perspectives but rather between judgments we each make from within one evaluative perspective –​ ours together –​that we share as friends who not only care about one another but who also care about us and our friendship. How should we go about resolving this conflict? What character should our deliberations have? Helm (2008: 37) argues that, as friends, we ought not adopt a strategy of bargaining in which we each aim to achieve as much as we can of what we, from our own individual evaluative perspective, count 230

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as good, for “[e]‌ven if each is concerned to act fairly, the negotiations are nonetheless competitive.” The idea seems to be that this sort of approach would be in tension with our status as friends, and this is so even if we are each motivated to “win” at these negotiations because we genuinely think that our vision if the day would indeed make for a better day. The problem here is that we would be understanding the decision as “up to us” in only a weak sense, for the decision would be whatever results from each of us pushing our own individual judgments of what is best rather than from what we together, from a perspective that we share, judge best. On this bargaining approach, I may be committed to compromising with you so that you also have a say over our day but, even so, I might still regret that the decision was not just up to me, since, from my perspective, my vision for our day is what is best. This sort of regret –​regret that I do not just get to make the decision myself –​seems in tension with us being friends who share this end as ours together. We can understand Helm’s contrasting position as arguing that, as your friend, I should want the decision to be up to us in a more robust way: in our deliberations, “we must together aim at achieving an equilibrium within our evaluative perspective,” the one we share as friends (Helm 2008, 37). He continues: Consequently, the enthusiasm you feel as one of us at the thought of our people-​watching while munching on greasy boardwalk fare must be a reason, albeit a defeasible one, for me to feel likewise, and it ought to be given due weight in my rational responsiveness to the import things have for us, potentially sparking in me some anticipation of the cheesy pleasures this would afford us. Conversely, my utter distaste (again, as one of us) for our making a meal out of that stuff must be a defeasible reason for you to be less enthusiastic here: such food has less import to us than it initially seemed to you. Helm 2008: 37 In this way, our deliberations consist of “the evaluations both you and I (each as one of us) feel emotionally and make in judgment” (Helm 2008: 37). And, as we deliberate together, the evaluations you make as one of us change the evaluations I make as one of us (and vice versa). Ideally, the end result of our deliberations is an equilibrium, one shared judgment about how we will spend our beach day together. Suppose that our shared judgment about our beach day comes to include our having a picnic lunch, something that was not initially part of your vision for our day. Suppose further that, as we are carrying our picnic basket onto the sand, it spills, ruining our lunch. In this case, it is not that “you ought to be disappointed when our picnic lunch spills onto the sand because this has become important to you insofar as you care about me and I care about it,” for that would merely amount to you sharing my end of us having a picnic lunch (Helm 2008: 40); you would merely be disappointed for me, as you would be counting the picnic lunch as ultimately my end. It is rather, in this case, that you ought to be disappointed when this happens because this has become important to you insofar as you care about us and we care about it.You ought, then, to be disappointed not for me but for us, as having a picnic lunch had become our end, mine and yours together.

Conclusion In the philosophical literature, there is wide agreement that friendship is marked by deep and particularized care for each other. Often this care is understood as practical concern for the friend’s good. And this seems perfectly unobjectionable as far as it goes. But things quickly become complicated once we observe that a friend, the object of your care, is herself an agent, someone with her own projects, ends, and relationships that give her reasons for action. Caring for her as the kind of thing she is –​as an agent –​seems to be not exhausted by a concern to benefit her, and so the reasons your friendship with her gives you will be more than just reasons to benefit her; indeed, some of these 231

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other reasons of friendship can conflict with and sometimes take priority over your reasons to benefit her. The aim of this chapter has been to trace these complications by mapping out some of the ways in which you, as someone who cares for your friend as an agent, ought to respond to her reasons –​ those she has on account of her own projects, aims, and relationships –​and incorporate them into your own practical reasoning.

Related Chapters Partiality to Friends; Friendship and Special Obligations; Are You a Good Friend?; Friendship and Loyalty

Notes 1 By “friendship” I mean that kind of close voluntary personal relationship between biologically unrelated persons that is normally neither sexual nor romantic but is more intimate than, say, “work” or “school” friends or other relationships that depend in large part on proximity for their survival. (This is not to deny that friendships can have a sexual component. It is simply a complicating factor that does not bear on my discussion here.) 2 It would not be paternalistic of you to explain to her why you think her aim is misguided and ask her to defend it, particularly if your aim here is to make sure she has thought things through. But it would be paternalistic, in this instance, to insist that your help is contingent on her defense convincing you. I am indebted to Diane Jeske for pressing me on this. 3 Would you have any reason to share your friend’s end if what she wants is, for instance, to stay in an emotionally abusive relationship? Most likely not. But not simply because of your concern for her well-​being. Her desire here may itself be at least partly a product of her partner’s abuse and, if it is, then concern for her as an agent may require not sharing that end, as it is not really hers in the right sense. Things will be different, though, if she wants to stay in the relationship, at least temporarily, because she is financially dependent on her partner, or because her partner is dying of terminal cancer and has no one else to care for them. I am indebted to Diane Jeske for this case.

References Aristotle. 1999. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated and edited by T. Irwin. Indianapolis: Hackett. Blum, L. 1993. “Friendship as a Moral Phenomenon.” In Friendship: A Philosophical Reader, edited by N. Badhwar, 192–​210. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Cocking, D., and J. Kennett. 1998. “Friendship and the Self.” Ethics 108: 502–​27. Cocking, D., and J. Kennett. 2000. “Friendship and Moral Danger.” Journal of Philosophy 97 (5): 278–​96. Ebels-​Duggan, K. 2008. “Against Beneficence: A Normative Account of Love.” Ethics 119: 142–​70. Friedman, M. 1989. “Friendship and Moral Growth.” Journal of Value Inquiry 23: 3–​13. Helm, B. 2008. “Plural Agents.” Noûs 42 (1): 17–​49. Jeske, D. 1997. “Friendship,Virtue, and Impartiality.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 57 (1): 51–​72. Koltonski, D. 2016. “A Good Friend Will Help You Move a Body: Friendship and the Problem of Moral Disagreement.” The Philosophical Review 125 (4): 473–​507. Nehemas, A. 2010. “The Good of Friendship.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 110(3): 267–​94.

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20 FRIENDSHIP AND EPISTEMIC PARTIALITY Sarah Stroud

It is a near platitude that we feel and act differently toward our friends than we do toward people who are not our friends or intimates.1 As I shall put it, we exhibit differential responses toward our friends (as compared with non-​friends) in a very wide range of respects: in our attention, our actions, and our feelings. We devote more attention to our friends and other intimates than to others, even in thought: we think and worry about our friends more than we do others. We also do things for and with our friends that we do not do for or with others. Indeed, we do these things even when they come at a cost to us that we would not be willing to absorb for the sake of someone not our friend. We have feelings for our friends and intimates, like affection, that we do not have for others. And our emotional reactions to our friends’ misfortunes and accomplishments are more intense than our reactions to similar events in other people’s lives. These patterns are of course even more evident in the case of our very closest intimates, like our children or our spouse. This chapter will closely examine such dispositions to differential responses where our friends are concerned. Its particular focus will be cognitive or doxastic dispositions of this kind. But it is important, I think, to first situate that discussion within a broader survey of what I will call the dispositions of friendship.

20.1  The Dispositions of Friendship: Attentional, Affective, and Agential Partiality The opening paragraph above summarized some of the ways we are disposed to think, feel, and act vis-​à-​vis our friends. We respond differently to friends, I proposed, in the management of our attention, in our emotions, and in our actions. I take these points to be familiar and unsurprising. In this section, I wish to make five points about these familiar phenomena that will prepare us for our later discussion of differential cognitive responses.2 My first point is that there are really two distinct questions that interest us about such patterns of differential response. One is a descriptive question: how do we tend to think, act, and feel toward our friends? The other is a normative question: how ought we to think, act, and feel toward our friends? We will be concerned with both of these questions in this chapter. So far, we have simply noted some pervasive tendencies in human life. But to note a tendency is of course not yet either to endorse or to repudiate that tendency: the descriptive question of how we do act and feel does not settle the normative question of how we ought to act and feel. Rather, simply observing a tendency is compatible with a DOI: 10.4324/9781003007012-25

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wide range of attitudes that we might take toward that tendency, whether positive, negative, or neutral. So we will need to consider the normative question separately and on its own terms. My second, connected point is that precisely in order not to beg any normative questions, we should not classify our differential responses to friends as bias. “Bias” carries at least the strong connotation that the phenomenon so labeled is objectionable.The more neutral word “partiality” is, I think, a better umbrella term for these asymmetries in response –​as long as we can keep firmly in mind that it is neutral.To be partial to a person S (or to one’s Fs) is simply, I propose, to have or to manifest some form of special or differentiated concern for S (or for one’s Fs), as compared to relevantly similar others who are not S (or one’s Fs). In that case, to characterize a person or phenomenon as partial is not yet to make either a positive or an adverse assessment of that person or phenomenon: the normative status of the partiality in question is left open by labeling it as such. This concept will be a better tool than that of bias when we consider the various forms of differential response that we exhibit toward our friends. The third contention I wish to make is that dispositions toward attentional, affective, and agential partiality are partly constitutive of friendship. That is why they are properly called “dispositions of friendship,” rather than merely “dispositions associated with friendship.” The idea is that the relation of these dispositions to friendship –​or at least to good friendship –​is endogenous, not exogenous. Such dispositions are integral or internal to friendship, rather than merely correlated with friendship in the way causal consequences or concomitants are. It seems virtually analytic, after all, that a friend has special concern for her friends. We can confidently say –​without, it seems, needing to do any causal investigation –​that a good friend, as such, is disposed to care especially about her friends on an affective level; to be moved to do certain actions as regards her friends; and even to see some of those actions as required of her given the friendship. We should be careful, however, not to overstate the implications of the claim that a disposition to such differential responses is constitutive of friendship. It should not be taken to imply that you no longer count as someone’s friend if ever you react to them emotionally (for instance) in the same way you would to a non-​friend. Perhaps you would be disqualified as a friend if you lacked even a disposition to pay more attention, and so on, to your supposed friend. But the main point here is evaluative, not classificatory. It is built in to being a good friend, not simply to being a friend, that you manifest special concern for your friend. We might put it this way: to the extent that you lack special concern for a friend or other intimate, you thereby fall short of an ideal of good friendship. Even this claim might have to be qualified. Diane Jeske (personal communication) makes the good point that sometimes neglect of a friend is justified. Suppose you are battling a murderous regime. Under those circumstances, she suggests, it need not indicate any deficiency in you as a friend for your attention to be totally focused on the regime’s victims rather than on your personal friends. And on a less cosmic scale, we might say the same if your child was fighting a serious illness. Such cases suggest that –​like so many things in ethics –​the above claims about the good friend should be read as ceteris paribus. My fourth point is that if we ever expressly considered the normative question, I believe we would attribute an overall positive normative status to the attentional, affective, and agential partiality that we manifest toward our friends. I emphasized above the difference between stating that we are partial in various ways toward our friends and endorsing such partiality as appropriate or good. Even while granting this important distinction, however, I think we do so endorse it. Let me now elaborate on this point. We can perhaps best see it by contrast. Suppose (as seems likely, in fact) that we exhibit differential responses in attention, feeling, and action to people of our own race. This might mean, for example, that we attend more closely to people of our own race; that we systematically feel more compassion for them; or that we are more likely to assist them than otherwise similar others. We might acknowledge these as descriptive facts about our dispositions, while at the same time thinking it is terrible that we do this and that it would be far better if we could excise these forms of differential response. 234

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We might well think, in other words, that these particular tendencies –​if we have them –​are to be regretted and bemoaned. By contrast, other human tendencies and dispositions are such that we do not regret them or think we would be better off without them. Human beings make music, make art, and make jokes. With respect to these tendencies, if we can call them that, our attitude is surely that we would be the poorer without them: if someone offered to “liberate” us from these tendencies, we would no doubt decline. These two contrasting cases perhaps represent the ends of a spectrum of normative response, from highly unfavorable to highly favorable.3 Where on that spectrum would we place our attentional, affective, and agential partiality toward our friends and other intimates? I submit that if we ever explicitly considered the question, we would endorse a differential pattern of concern for our friends. We are valuing creatures (Scheffler 2010, Part I); we are creatures who care about particular things and people (Frankfurt 1988).These basic facts about humans would predict an asymmetric distribution of each person’s attention, emotion, and motivation; it would seem a fool’s errand to prescribe that these be rigorously doled out in strict proportion to the objective value of their targets. Even if everyone is objectively equally important, some people are more important to me than others, and the same is true for each of us. While this is in itself a merely descriptive remark, the phenomenon at issue seems so fundamental that it is difficult to see how differential response, as such, could be persuasively objected to. This leads us, however, to a different question: whether our friends, in particular, are appropriate targets of our differential concern. (Recall our judgment that our own race is not an appropriate target of differential concern.) Here too, though, an affirmative answer seems irresistible. It seems entirely appropriate to care more, in both an attentional and affective sense, about your friends and other intimates than about strangers. Who better, after all? As flagged earlier (234), this overall endorsement of partiality toward friends should be read as implicitly setting aside certain special circumstances. For there are of course contexts in which it is downright objectionable to respond differentially to friends, especially in action. You should not influence a search process to get your friend hired –​or, at least, you should not do so because they are your friend. You should not arrange for your friend to get the real drug and not the placebo in a clinical trial at your hospital. We might describe these actions as manifesting objectionable bias (a word I said we should generally avoid). But these are cases in which ceteris are not paribus. As a ceteris paribus matter, we see the disposition to respond differently to friends in attention, action, and feeling as unproblematic, unobjectionable, indeed fitting. We consider it permissible and acceptable that people exhibit asymmetries of these kinds in their responses to friends and intimates on the one hand, and non-​friends on the other. The foregoing point already places partiality in friendship somewhere toward the right-​hand side of the normative spectrum. But we can go further still. For we may well view it, not just as permissible, but as outright virtuous, admirable, or good to respond differentially in these ways to friends. For example, we praise the person who is especially sensitive to their friends’ well-​being as a good friend. More strongly still, we take some of these differential responses to be downright required of us as friends, at least in the minimal sense that a failure to exhibit them could open one to criticism. For example, we typically take ourselves to be required to do things for or with a friend that (we assume) we would not be required to do for “just anyone.” And we may feel we are “letting our friend down” in some way if, distracted by our own woes perhaps, we do not have the emotional bandwidth to care that much about a misfortune they have suffered. (If you were the friend, you would probably feel let down by your friend’s near indifference.)4 To take stock, so far I have not only noted the descriptive fact that we do exhibit differential responses to our friends; I have suggested more strongly that this is part of good friendship. I have also signaled our generally positive normative attitude toward those differential responses in attention, feeling, and action. (It is instructive to contrast this positive verdict with our negative normative attitude toward our disposition to differentially respond to those of our own race.) Partiality of these kinds toward our friends has not generally been subject to serious normative challenge.5 235

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My fifth and final point is that the third and fourth points I have just made are connected: it is in part because such dispositions are an integral part of friendship that we have a favorable normative attitude toward them. I want to develop this point in two ways.6 First, it could be said that friendship itself supplies or constitutes an evaluative perspective –​one that evidently approves of attentional, affective, and agential partiality toward friends. To the extent that friendship itself counts the friend who is especially attentive and so on to her friend as a good friend, it favorably evaluates such conduct, if you will permit the reification. And something’s being good-​sub-​x, where x is a particular evaluative perspective, often counts in favor of its being good in an unsubscripted sense. Second, the unsubscripted normative question we are addressing –​namely whether these forms of partiality are ones we should regret –​takes on heightened significance if we accept that these patterns of partiality are a constitutive part of friendship. On that supposition, to regret that we exhibit these responses, or to think it would be better if we did not, is to regret that we engage in friendship, and to think it would be better if we did not. If these dispositions are part of, not separate from, friendship, to wish them away would be to wish friendship away. And surely we would not want to do that. To the extent that we value and prize friendship, we cannot regret the patterns that are inherent to it, in the way we might well regret preference for our own race. Quite the contrary: we would find it downright mystifying if someone –​or a philosophical theory –​seriously maintained that we should not think about our friends and other intimates any more often than we think about anyone else. For to erase such patterns of differential response, as they seem to wish us to do, would be to erase friendship and love. To sum up: I have emphasized the partiality toward our friends that marks our agential, attentional, and affective lives. And I have suggested that our normative attitude toward these forms of partiality is broadly favorable. Especially because we see such attentional, affective, and agential partiality as integral to friendship, we overall approve of these forms of special concern and would not wish to be rid of them.

20.2  The Dispositions of Friendship: Cognitive or Doxastic Partiality We have seen that partiality is prominent in our attentional, affective, and agential lives. But does such partiality extend to our cognitive lives? Do we also manifest different patterns when we form, maintain, or update beliefs involving our friends? Partiality in thought and belief has proven far more controversial than partiality in feeling or action, with lively debates about whether we reason and believe differently with regard to our friends and, if so, whether we ought to. Partiality in the domain of belief is called epistemic or doxastic partiality; we will once again be concerned with both the descriptive question of whether we do exhibit epistemic partiality toward our friends and the normative question of whether we ought to.7

20.2.1 The Descriptive Question Let us imagine a situation in which attentional, affective, and agential partiality would probably kick in. Then let us consider whether our partiality would stop there or would likely also impact our distinctively doxastic responses.This should be a helpful way to examine whether we manifest specifically epistemic partiality toward our friends. So: suppose your dear friend has for a long time had a passion for theater set design, which they have pursued with increasing dedication and skill but always on a strictly extracurricular basis while holding down a full-​time job. Your friend has now made the momentous decision to promote this activity from side gig to main gig, and they are moving to New York to try to break into the set design world, hoping eventually to make their living in the field they love. How would you respond to these developments? Let us first consider your likely feelings and actions, before turning to your beliefs.

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As a reasonable person, you are aware that your friend is just one of thousands who will move to New York this year hoping to make it in some artistic domain. But you will respond to this case differently than you do to the others: you will almost certainly manifest attentional, affective, and agential partiality. As a good friend, you will devoutly hope that your friend succeeds. (Perhaps you wish everyone well who sets off on such a quixotic quest. But you will hope more ardently for success in your friend’s case.) You will probably feel other emotions as well, ones you would not typically experience in the case of a non-​friend: a mixture of excitement, trepidation, and admiration, perhaps. In short, your affective responses will likely differ both qualitatively and in intensity in your friend’s case. You will devote more of your attention to your friend’s situation than you do to the similar plights of others.You are also likely to respond differently to this news at the level of action.You will be more disposed to do what you can to help your friend, both materially (asking your bachelor uncle if your friend can stay in his apartment while looking for a place) and psychically (making a point to call or text frequently during your friend’s transition).You would certainly not do these things for “just anyone,” not even for someone whom you know but who is not a close friend like this one. We can not only predict that you would do some of these things; it is not a matter of normative indifference whether you do them or not. If you did not respond along the above lines, it seems your friend would have reasonable grounds for some kind of complaint.8 Barring mitigating circumstances (see 234 above), if you had no particular emotional reaction to their decision or upcoming move, your indifference (if perceived) would be hurtful to your friend, and, it seems, rightfully so. Your friend could by rights complain, “You don’t care whether I succeed or fail!” A parallel point applies to action. If you were not willing –​as your friend might put it –​“to lift a finger” to aid them in this transition, any more than you would for anyone else, your friend could reasonably feel let down. In both cases, note that the legitimacy of your friend’s complaint stems from your particular relationship. A stranger or mere acquaintance would not have grounds to complain if you had no particular emotional reaction to learning of their move to New York under similar circumstances, and there is no general obligation to assist people with moves of this kind that you could be charged with breaching. Your affective and agential partiality in this matter thus seem clear. I want to suggest that you would also respond differently on a cognitive level. Consider what doxastic attitude you would be likely to take toward the following proposition: S is not likely to make it. For S =​someone who is not a friend (but who is also moving to New York hoping to make it), you might be likely to endorse the above claim, were you to consider it. Statistically, most of the people who try this do not find success: supply greatly exceeds demand in these fields. But when S =​your dear friend, I think you are considerably less likely to outright form the belief that they will probably fail.You are more likely –​or at least more likely than you would be in the case of a non-​friend –​to settle instead on some other response. You might simply believe that your friend will succeed. Or you might consciously decide to keep that question open, rather than settling it now in the negative. Alternatively, you might not even pose the question to yourself. Or you might minimize the significance of the question, for example, by thinking, “Of course the odds are against anyone who is trying to do this, but what I do know is that S will give it their best shot and won’t throw in the towel at the first sign of adversity.” If –​contrary to the above possibilities –​you did affirmatively form the belief that your friend likely won’t make it, it seems to me that your friend would have a basis for complaint. We can imagine them complaining, “You don’t believe in me!” or “You don’t have faith in me!” (See Paul and Morton 2018.) This seems a reasonable complaint, coming from your friend. But it is normatively interesting that this observation even constitutes a complaint. Coming from “just anyone,” such a remark could only ever be a mere observation, not a complaint. (There is no general obligation to believe or have faith in each and every person, though some might argue otherwise: see Preston-​Roedder 2013.) In this respect your friend’s imagined response parallels the complaint we attributed to them when you

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did not seem to care much whether they succeeded or failed. In both cases we have the sense that legitimate expectations have been violated –​but the legitimacy of those expectations is tightly bound up with your being their friend. I have suggested that we manifest doxastic partiality toward our friends. Let us now try to demarcate where and when we are liable to do so. I have already indicated the broad terrain within which we will find such behavior, namely propositions about your friend.9 Consider the set of possible pairs of propositions (or of questions) such that the members of each pair share the same content, except that your friend figures in one of them where a non-​friend figures in the other. I contend that your doxastic responses are likely to differ across such pairs. (They might not vary across any given pair, but your pattern of diverging responses will be evident if we look at the above set as a whole.) We will look more closely in a minute at how exactly your responses are likely to differ, but for now let us zoom in on when they are likely to differ. For there are vast swaths of the above set where our doxastic processes will not differ depending on whether the person concerned is our friend. Consider how you would think about the following questions: Has S ever been to Cleveland? What size shoe does S wear? With respect to these questions, I submit that we will not find systematic differences in method or doxastic outcome depending on whether we put your friend in for “S.” And there are an infinity of questions of which this would be true. What unites them? Questions like the above, and the propositions that would constitute answers to them, seem too neutral to elicit differential doxastic conduct on your part. When there is nothing that would count as a more favorable answer to a question than some other answer, epistemic partiality seems not to be triggered. It is, rather, with respect to propositions whose truth would reflect well or badly on your friend where we manifest divergent doxastic responses.10 And I think we can be more specific still. Within the category just mentioned, we are especially likely to manifest epistemic partiality with respect to our friend’s actions and character, as contrasted with other areas where they could also be favorably or unfavorably evaluated, such as various kinds of abilities.11 You are likely to approach a question like “How much weight can S bench-​press?” in a more uniform manner across different values of “S” than a question like “How loyal is S?” or “How rude was that?” (with reference to an action of S’s). These latter examples connect to three further points about the scope of epistemic partiality toward our friends. First, many of the divergences in doxastic response that characterize this phenomenon arise in the interpretation of our friend’s actions and character, as opposed to affecting our assent to the propositions that serve as the raw material for interpretation. That is, we are less likely to disagree with a third party about whether our friend put their fingers in the cookie jar than about what they were up to when they put their fingers in the cookie jar (see Morton (1988: 177)). Second, where our opinions diverge, it is often with respect to propositions involving thick concepts like rude and loyal. Where one person sees arrogance, a friend might see confidence; while someone else might classify your friend as taciturn, you think of them as reserved. Third, the scope of the more favorable cast that we tend to put on a friend’s actions and character extends beyond their conduct with you in particular. It is not only with respect to how they treat you that you extend a greater benefit of the doubt to your friend, but to matters bearing on their character in general. When we do see divergences in doxastic responses, these take a variety of forms. Some are differences in how you approach inquiry into the question of whether p when p concerns your friend. If p would reflect badly on your friend, you are likely to devote more attentional and other resources to that inquiry than you would if p did not concern a friend. For example, you are likely to work harder to think of alternative potential interpretations or explanations that do not reflect as badly on your friend as the ones that first come to mind. In part for this reason, you are likely to keep inquiry open longer, beyond the point where someone else would already have concluded that p.This 238

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difference in how you manage inquiry into p will be reflected in divergent doxastic outcomes: since belief closes inquiry (see Friedman 2017, 2019), you will tend to lack certain (unfavorable) beliefs that others will have gone ahead and formed, or that you yourself might have formed if p did not concern a friend. So far we have been talking about your beliefs about your friends. We should also consider your doxastic response to propositions conveyed to you by your friends. That is, we should examine whether and how you might manifest doxastic partiality in response to testimony addressed to you by a friend. This case needs separate consideration, for here the propositions conveyed might be about anything: what distinguishes the resulting beliefs is not their subject matter but their source. Here too I think we will find asymmetries across paired cases. Although we have a global and no doubt indispensable disposition to believe testimony (absent special reasons not to), we are no doubt even more strongly disposed (all else being equal) to believe our friends’ testimony. Beyond this purely descriptive claim about our dispositions, there is also an asymmetry in our normative beliefs about accepting testimony. Anscombe and others have argued that there is a moral or ethical dimension to accepting testimony: we may well wrong someone by disbelieving them.12 After all, when we do not believe testimony, we are in effect attributing either insincerity or incompetence to the testifier: we must be supposing either that they are lying to us, or that they don’t know what they’re talking about. It is insulting to be accused of either of these (even if only internally). Especially when those charges are false, we have, it seems, done the testifier a wrong in thinking those things about them. Notice, though, that we take disbelieving a friend to be an especially grave wrong of this kind: their being your friend amplifies the wrong you do them by failing to believe them.Your close friend seems to have especially strong grounds for complaint about your lack of faith in what they told you, even if we grant that anyone would have such a complaint in principle. It is as if your friend is entitled to expect that you will believe them to a greater extent (ceteris paribus) than testifiers considered merely as such.

20.2.2  The Normative Question Suppose we accept that your doxastic responses would indeed tend to differ in these various ways in your friend’s case, as compared with that of a non-​friend. Let us now consider whether there are normative perspectives that either enjoin or forbid such behaviors. When we take up the normative question of whether we ought to respond to friends with epistemic partiality, we are considering the relation of doxastic partiality to any norms or standards that apply to such behavior. Here it may be helpful to ask two questions. First, are there any salient norms or standards that call for us to be epistemically partial toward our friends? That is, would we be falling short with respect to any important norms or standards if we were not doxastically partial? To offer an affirmative answer to this question would be to make a normative case for epistemic partiality.13 Second, however, we must also consider whether there are any salient norms or standards that frown on doxastic partiality. Are there norms or standards that we would be violating were we to be epistemically partial toward our friends? An affirmative answer to this second question would constitute a normative case against epistemic partiality.14 We should underline that these two questions are independent: a positive answer to one does not entail a negative answer to the other. For there might be certain evaluative perspectives that censure epistemic partiality just as other norms applaud or demand it. This should be no more controversial than the possibility of a morally bad action that is prudentially advantageous, or –​more prosaically –​ a dessert that is bad for your health but delicious. If there are multiple types of norms or standards against which our doxastic behavior can be measured, those normative perspectives can in principle yield different verdicts. (I remind you that we have defined partiality in non-​normative terms precisely in order to keep all such normative issues open.) I have mentioned the possibility of conflicting norms with intent. While we had difficulty identifying any normative perspective that would vigorously protest affective partiality, the case is different 239

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for doxastic partiality. For now that we are concerned with the formation, maintenance, and revision of beliefs, epistemological norms enter the scene. This was not the case for attention, affect, or (extra-​ mental) actions, which are normally taken to fall outside the purview of epistemology. In a word, epistemic norms apply to doxastically partial conduct in a way they did not to the other forms of partiality discussed earlier. This poses a potential difficulty for doxastic partiality. Epistemological norms as classically conceived are subject-​matter-​invariant: the standards for whether a belief is warranted from a strictly epistemic point of view are not traditionally thought to vary according to whom the belief is about. So if our doxastic behavior as concerns our friends differs from our doxastic behavior elsewhere, one or the other of these must be epistemically objectionable, by the lights of any doxastic norm that is uniform across all beliefs regardless of subject matter. This suggests that even if there is something to be said for doxastic partiality, there is definitely something to be said against it. Perhaps for this reason, doxastic partiality arouses considerably more opposition than the forms of partiality discussed in Section I. I will call those who maintain that we ought not be doxastically or epistemically partial “skeptics about epistemic partiality.” I confess that against the background of our previous discussion of the less controversial varieties of partiality, I find skepticism about epistemic partiality a prima facie odd position. Presumably defenders of the skeptical position on doxastic partiality have no quarrel with our earlier claims about attentional, affective, and agential partiality. It seems to me strange, though, to have no beef with partiality in attention, feeling, or action but then to switch to strong opposition when we get to thought. Let me explain why. Samuel Scheffler introduces the useful term resonance to characterize certain concerns that “ramif[y]‌ [...] throughout our mental and social lives” (1992: 68).While some attitudes can be adequately modeled as “discrete sentiment[s] or self-​contained conative unit[s]” (1992: 70), others have a more pervasive scope: they “resonate throughout human personality” (1992: 83). Attitudes or dispositions of the latter kind incorporate a large repertoire of responses and manifest in a range of heterogeneous ways across a broad and diverse terrain in our mental and social lives. They cannot be identified with a single psychological unit. Scheffler’s own lead example of resonance is moral concern, which does not consist in assent to a single proposition, nor in possession of a discrete motive. Rather, moral concern is a complicated package of responses and attitudes that pervade one’s psyche and structure interpersonal relations. I think it is natural to think of friendship or intimacy with someone as having resonance in Scheffler’s sense. If the dispositions of friendship consisted only of a few “discrete sentiment[s]‌or self-​contained [psychic] unit[s]” (to quote Scheffler again), it might make sense to take sharply different normative attitudes toward the various elements in that set. If each were discrete and self-​contained, we might be able to point to some of the individual planks as objectionable even if others are acceptable. But it seems to me more plausible that the dispositions of friendship are pervasive across a variety of loci, “woven throughout the fabric of [...] the personality of the individual” (1992: 68–​9). If they are taken to be a resonant totality, the dispositions of friendship would have the same structure as a virtue. A virtue is often characterized as a unified transversal disposition “to think, feel, and act well” in a certain domain (Annas (2015: 609, emphasis added)). The virtue theorist would find distinctly puzzling the idea that it is one thing to feel and act well in a certain area of life, but quite another to think well in that same domain. My own view on the normative questions we are now addressing is informed by this conception of partiality in friendship as a psychologically resonant phenomenon. To put my cards on the table, I would maintain that epistemic partiality parallels the familiar forms of partiality that we discussed in Section I with respect to all five of the points which we considered there. The first two of those five points were methodological. They were that we have two questions here –​one descriptive, one normative –​and that given the independence of the second, we should not label the phenomena we are considering “bias.” Those points, I think, hold equally here. The other three points in Section I were substantive contentions. I maintained, first, that attentional, affective, and agential partiality are constitutive of friendship, not mere exogenous consequences or concomitants of being someone’s friend. If 240

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they were only concomitants, it would be a matter of normative indifference, from the point of view of friendship, whether you manifested them or not. I argued however that it is not a matter of normative indifference –​certainly not to your friend, at any rate –​whether you show these kinds of differential concern. Failure to show them, I argued, gives your friend legitimate grounds for complaint. I would apply all of these points to the differential doxastic dispositions that we have discussed in this section. Using a parallel line of argument, I suggested earlier (11 and 14) that partial doxastic dispositions are not normatively neutral consequences or concomitants of friendship,15 but, instead, are endogenous to what it is to be a good friend.16 The final two points I made in Section I addressed the normative question of whether we should regret or endorse our partiality to friends. Suppose the partial dispositions of attention, affect, and action that I discussed in that section are indeed integral to friendship. In that case, I proposed, it is hard to take seriously the normative position that we should bemoan and seek to excise those dispositions, for that would be to regret friendship itself. I think exactly the same argument holds here with respect to our doxastic dispositions. If there is no prospect of ridding friendship of an epistemic form of special concern, then to demand complete doxastic objectivity would be to demand that we eschew friendship. But we can be forgiven for thinking that too high a price to pay. Skepticism about epistemic partiality thus sits ill with the view (which I would endorse) that all the forms of partiality we have discussed are internal to friendship. Since a great deal hangs on this, let us look a little more deeply into the connection I have asserted between constitutive claims about friendship and normative conclusions. For one might legitimately wonder whether or how we can really get normative or evaluative mileage out of a constitutive claim. One could for example point out that partiality (in the expansive sense in which I have defined it) is also inherent in the relationship of being an enemy. If S is your enemy, you will attend to what they are up to, you will desire the frustration of their aims, you will delight in their misfortunes, you will have a range of negative emotions toward them. So you will certainly be attentionally and affectively partial where S is concerned.You will also, ceteris paribus, take opportunities to act in ways deleterious to S’s interests, in ways you do not vis-​à-​vis others. In sum, just as you are positively oriented toward friends in a variety of ways, you will be negatively oriented toward an enemy: otherwise in what sense are they your enemy? We have here a parallel constitutive claim about partiality being inherent to a certain relationship; but it seems that in this case no normative conclusion follows. This is correct. We cannot automatically draw a normative conclusion from a constitutive claim; we get a full-​fledged normative or evaluative upshot from a constitutive claim about a type of relationship only when we add two further premises. First, the relationship in question must have standards, norms, or ideals internal to it.That is, there must be something that it is to be a good R. Not all relations or relationships support this kind of attributive goodness. Is there such a thing as a good second-​cousin-​once-​removed? Or, for that matter, a good enemy? I don’t think so.17 But we certainly have the idea of a good friend (and its contrary, a bad friend), as well as a clear sense that there are certain (perhaps hard to specify) norms of friendship.18 Only when a relationship has internal standards, norms, or ideals does it yield an evaluative perspective, or support normative or evaluative judgments, at all. Second, in order for us to have any reason to concern ourselves with the evaluative perspective internal to a given relationship, that relationship has to be one that we rightly value. I expressed doubt, just now, that there even is such a thing as a good enemy. (I was in effect suggesting that “enemy” has no normative profile, only a descriptive profile.) But suppose that is wrong, and enemyhood does yield evaluative standards proper to it. Then enemyhood would generate subscripted “oughts”: I oughtenemyhood to do x, ought notenemyhood do y. But do these subscripted “oughts” have any bearing on what I ought, unsubscripted, to do, which is the question that ultimately interests us? If I have no reason to be or become an enemy, then what is normatively required of enemies is of no interest to me, and may have no bearing at all on how I ought (unsubscripted) to live or act. Things are otherwise, however, in the case of a relationship that I do have reason to engage in or to value. To put the point abstractly, if a certain relation R requires (in the constitutive sense) a 241

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phenomenon P, then any normative standard N that would forbid P will also preclude R. (In the case of partiality, this holds equally for R =​enemyhood as for R =​friendship.) So far, this is just an observation, not a normative remark. But when R is a relationship that we have reason to value, then it is a mark against our obeying N that doing so would preclude R. In that case, we have some reason (some unsubscripted reason) not to follow N. So an objection to P (e.g., from N) will be less potent, or at least less decisive, to the extent that it also brings down R, whose absence we would rightly regret. Indeed, its bringing down R tends to undercut the normative significance of N.19 To sum up, I think the basic argument that we gave in Section I extends to distinctively doxastic partiality. We should not bemoan this kind of partiality, because it, too, is internal to friendship. If there are competing normative standards that would condemn it –​as might, for example, certain epistemological norms –​then we should question either the correctness or the authority of those norms.

20.2.3 A Counterargument As I have said, the sharply asymmetric position of the skeptics about epistemic partiality strikes me as strange. But all the same, it must be said that there is no logical incoherence in such a view. It is logically consistent to maintain a) that there is nothing to regret in our being attentionally, affectively, and agentially partial –​at least to our friends, if not to our race –​but b) that we ought not be doxastically partial. Even having conceded that other facets of our psyche are shot through with partiality, one could with perfect consistency demand objectivity when it comes to matters of truth and falsity and insist that any tendency to respond differentially in the epistemic domain is to be bemoaned. Perhaps the following might illustrate that position, albeit as applied to a relationship other than friendship. I live with a Montreal Canadiens fan. The Habs20 fan in my household certainly attends intently to the Habs’ play and to their standing. He knows who is out on injured reserve and who is a healthy scratch. He knows how many games ahead or behind the Habs are in their division. He knows how many matches it’s been since the backup goalie played. Why does he know all this stuff? Because he pays attention. He is definitely attentionally partial to the Canadiens, giving them far more of his attention than he does other, better teams. He also has strong affective attitudes toward the Habs and their main rivals. He is in a great mood when Montreal wins, especially if Toronto or Boston loses. He is frustrated when Montreal’s play is flat, and disconsolate when their GM makes what he considers to be ill-​advised moves. There is no doubt that he is affectively partial to the Habs. These are all familiar behaviors. More strongly, it seems to be constitutive of being a fan of a sports team that you manifest attentional and affective partiality along these lines. What kind of fan are you, if you don’t even know whether your team is winning or losing? Or if you don’t care? By definition, a fan roots for their team; and whatever exactly rooting for is, it must at least include some positive affective attitudes toward the team and its success. (Perhaps also negative affective attitudes toward at least certain other teams.) So we could make a constitutive claim about fandom and attentional or affective partiality, just as we did for friendship. If we ask whether this kind of partiality is to be bemoaned, only the most censorious among us would say yes. It is fine, indeed entirely appropriate, if people support certain teams over others. Surely there is no general normative imperative for everyone to apportion their support of teams in strict proportion to those teams’ relative merit (or whatever else might be held to be the correct objective yardstick). It makes life more interesting to care particularly about one team, and to follow and root for it throughout the season.There does not seem to be any compelling normative perspective from which the mere existence of attentional or affective partiality with respect to sports teams is to be condemned.21 And if there were, that normative perspective would in effect be enjoining us not to be or become fans: it would be treating the relationship of fandom as something we have reason to bemoan. 242

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Pretty stern stuff. But there is another aspect, or concomitant, of fandom about which one might well want to take a stern line. Have you ever noticed how fans tend to react doxastically to penalties and fouls, especially disputed ones?22 Even when everyone is watching the same feed, it is amazing how partisans of one team will insist that a hit was clean, while fans of the opposing team will maintain with equal fervor that the player left his feet and it was charging. If you survey fans of Team A and fans of Team B, you will not find opinions about whether the guy left his feet, or whether the hit was clean, randomly distributed across these two populations –​even though these questions are purely factual. Fans appear, in short, to be epistemically partial, as well as attentionally and affectively partial. But one might well think this doxastic disposition regrettable. Something like the following reasoning seems cogent: These two groups of fans are coming to opposite conclusions, so at least one of them must be wrong. Either the Team A guy left his feet (in which case the fans of Team A have got it wrong) or he did not (in which case the Team B fans have got it wrong). But these people all watched the same broadcast: they have identical evidence. Clearly they are being influenced by what they desire to be true of the hit. The subversion of truth by wish, however, is a cardinal epistemic sin.23 These fans ought instead to be objective and impartial about the facts, just as the referee strives to be, even though their feelings about those facts are naturally going to differ. Facts and feelings can be separated: one can still be a fan of a team, while cheerfully acknowledging that one’s team really did commit a penalty on that play. This line of thinking takes the fans to task for their divergent beliefs, while giving them a free pass for their divergent preferences. It counsels us to cleave the former from the latter, to take (what it would call) an unbiased stance when adjudicating facts, even though we are clearly not neutral with respect to our allegiances. Skeptics about epistemic partiality in friendship see it as analogous to the case of the biased fans. They would urge us to use only generally applicable epistemological principles when we adjudicate claims about our friends and respond to our friends’ testimony. It is fine, they might say, for us to be for our friends; but those affective and agential preferences should not be reflected in our beliefs about the facts about our friends. Emotional and motivational dispositions can be separated from cognitive dispositions, in the case of friendship just as in the case of fandom: it would be better if we could excise partiality from our doxastic dispositions, even as we (legitimately) maintain partiality on an affective level. In both fandom and friendship, specifically doxastic partiality is to be bemoaned or regretted. I very much appreciate the line of thought pressed by the fandom example, so I would like to close by explaining why I do not think it carries over to epistemic partiality in friendship.Three significant asymmetries between friendship and fandom block the parallel, in my view. The first asymmetry of note is that fandom, unlike friendship, is not a reciprocal relationship. Your team does not care if you judge that hit to have been dirty, when in fact it was not; your team does not have grounds for complaint in such a scenario. In the case of friendship, on the other hand, there is a real person whom you may wound via your beliefs and doxastic practices, and who seems to have legitimate grounds for complaint if you do.24 Your friend seems entitled to expect a certain interpretative charity and testimonial trust from you in virtue of your relationship; in the case of fandom, by contrast, there is nothing there to do the expecting. A second difference is that the fan’s doxastic partiality seems more separable from his being a fan than the friend’s doxastic partiality is from her being a friend. Whether or not your team committed a penalty seems irrelevant to the basis of your being a fan, which in most cases is simply that you live in that team’s city. So it stands to reason that changes in your doxastic posture on such issues could leave your fandom intact. In the case of friendship, by contrast, it makes less sense to speak of cleaving off your partial doxastic posture; for your opinions about your friend’s actions and character are likely 243

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not irrelevant, but instead highly germane, to the basis of your friendship. Indeed, I have argued that a variety of forms of partiality are part and parcel of friendship itself. If this is right, then even if specifically doxastic partiality is exogenous to fandom, it is nonetheless endogenous to friendship. The third, rather obvious, point I would make is that fandom and friendship play very different roles in human life. Suppose I am wrong about the previous point, and fandom is parallel to friendship in having a certain kind of epistemic partiality baked right into it. If we felt that being a fan inevitably induced objectionable epistemic conduct, we might conceivably try to excise fandom from our lives in order to avoid those lapses. In the face of such pressure from epistemological norms, we would be less likely, I think, to insist on maintaining fandom and all it entails; for fandom is dispensable from human life in a way that friendship is not. In the terms of our earlier discussion, a constitutive claim about fandom does not seem to compel a particular normative conclusion. But in the case of friendship, I have argued, we neither can nor should regret the partiality it entails.

Related Chapters Epistemic Partiality to Friends and Value Commitments; Partiality to Friends; Are You a Good Friend?;The Value of Friendship

Notes 1 My thanks to Sandy Goldberg and Diane Jeske for comments on a previous draft, and to Z Quanbeck for comments and extremely helpful research assistance. 2 See also Troy Jollimore’s chapter below for a much more detailed and textured account of partiality toward friends. 3 Besides the tendencies we bemoan and the contrasting class of those we would not want to be without, there might be other human tendencies that we consider simply neutral or optional. Examples might be our tendency to react with disgust to certain odors or our tendency to stop growing (in height) by the age of 18 –​we may feel it would be neither better nor worse if we stopped growing by age twenty instead. 4 As discussed earlier (234), this might not be the case if you felt your friend’s emotional absence was justified by something more morally pressing, such as a child’s illness. 5 Admittedly, I have particularly stressed this normative point with regard to our affective and emotional responses, not our actions. While I am not aware of any serious defenses of the idea that we ought to feel the same emotions toward an event regardless of who is involved in it, there might be more space to question whether we ought to act differently toward friends than toward others, even outside special contexts. Insofar as consequentialism demands impartial conduct, for instance, it might be viewed as normatively challenging our spending more time (e.g.) with our friends. But it is more typical of consequentialism to accept that this is permissible and to seek ways to justify it in consequentialist terms. See Jackson (1991) and Railton (1984). (See also Troy Jollimore’s chapter below for some sour remarks by Kant about partiality in friendship.) 6 I will return at 241–2 to the question of how exactly one can get normative mileage out of a constitutive claim. 7 An intriguing recent study by Cusimano and Lombrozo (2021) offers evidence that “the folk” believe we ought to. 8 I do not mean by this that your friend should actually complain to you about your reaction, but just that the facts are such as to give her grounds for complaint. 9 I will later consider separately (239) the case of testimony by your friend about any proposition whatsoever. 10 Notice that some questions admit of more and less favorable answers without those answers reflecting well or badly on the person concerned. It is the second that seems to mark off an important class for present purposes. Contrast the question corresponding to our earlier example, “Is S likely to make it?”, whose truth or falsity depends in part on your friend’s actions and character, with a different future-​tense question about your friend: “Is S likely to get robbed in their first month in New York?” We can certainly distinguish favorable and unfavorable answers to the latter question, but it does not fall into the core locus of epistemic partiality. 11 Keller (2004) offers as a central illustration of doxastic partiality a case in which you learn that your friend writes poetry (when you had not known this previously). Keller focuses on the way in which your beliefs and expectations about the quality of her poetry would differ from those you would have about a stranger.

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Friendship and Epistemic Partiality But to the extent that Keller wishes to highlight favorable beliefs about your friend’s abilities as core cases of doxastic partiality, I disagree with this emphasis. 12 See Anscombe (1979).The idea is taken up by Fricker (2007), Hazlett (2017), and Marušić and White (2018). 13 Keller (2004) and Stroud (2006) are usually credited with having first made such a case. For further discussion, see Jollimore (2011), Hazlett (2013), Keller (2018), Morton and Paul (2018), and Preston-​Roedder (2018), who are broadly sympathetic to Stroud and Keller, and Kawall (2013), Hawley (2014), Enoch (2016), Arpaly and Brinkerhoff (2018), Crawford (2019), Goldberg (2019 and this volume), and Mason (2020), who are broadly critical. The taxonomy is somewhat muddied, though, by the fact that these authors do not all mean the same thing by “epistemic partiality.” 14 If the answer to both questions were “no,” that would suggest that epistemic partiality is completely normatively neutral: it simply does not matter, from any point of view, whether we exhibit it or not. Nobody seems to advocate this answer. 15 As Arpaly and Brinkerhoff (2018) maintain. 16 Keller (2004, 2018) maintains that it is endogenous only to some friendships. 17 Peter Ziff famously pointed out (1960: 211) that there is no such thing as a good corpse. My point is analogous. 18 Keller (2004: 330): “A norm of friendship is a truth about what you should do, insofar as you are a particular person’s good friend.” 19 Of course, one could say the same thing about R: that its authority or desirability is undercut by its precluding our living up to N. In order to run the argument convincingly in this direction, one would first have to be confident that N is the (or a) correct norm in whatever domain N governs. For doubts about whether commonly advanced epistemic norms are the correct epistemological norms, see Friedman (2020). Moreover, this argument-​in-​reverse will be more plausible than the original only if living up to N (that is, invariably satisfying certain epistemological norms) is more important or valuable than attaining R (friendship), a thesis which seems (to put it mildly) dubitable. 20 Nickname for the Canadiens. 21 It is of course possible to take issue with specific manifestations of fandom partiality (such as booing the opposite side’s national anthem). The degree of one’s partiality for –​or obsession with –​a particular sports team is also open to normative criticism. But the simple fact that people are partial for some sports teams over others is not itself to be regretted. 22 Keller (2005: 578–​579) briefly discusses this. 23 I take this idea from Williams (2002, esp. chap. 6). 24 My thought is not that the duty (if one can call it that) to be epistemically partial to one’s friends and other intimates is derived from a general duty not to cause emotional pain. It is rather a point about the structure of the former duty: it appears to be a “bipolar” or “directed” duty, i.e., something you owe your friend. Her wounded feelings, and that she seems to have grounds for complaint, are evidence that she is indeed the other “pole” of the duty –​the person you have wronged.

References Annas, J. 2015. “Virtue and Duty: Negotiating between Different Ethical Traditions.” Journal of Value Inquiry 49 (4): 605–​18. Anscombe, G.E.M. 1979. “What Is It to Believe Someone?” In Rationality and Religious Belief, edited by C.F. Delaney, 141–​51. South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Arpaly, N., and A. Brinkerhoff. 2018. “Why Epistemic Partiality Is Overrated.” Philosophical Topics 46 (1): 37–​51. Crawford, L. 2019. “Believing the Best: On Doxastic Partiality in Friendship.” Synthese 196 (4): 1575–​93. Cusimano, C., and T. Lombrozo. 2021. “Morality Justifies Motivated Reasoning in the Folk Ethics of Belief.” Cognition 209. https://​doi.org/​10.1016/​j.cognit​ion.2020.104​513 Enoch, D. 2016. “What’s Wrong with Paternalism: Autonomy, Belief, and Action.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 116 (1): 21–​48. Frankfurt, H. 1988. The Importance of What We Care About: Philosophical Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fricker, M. 2007. Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Friedman, J. 2017. “Why Suspend Judging?” Noûs 51 (2): 302–​26. Friedman, J. 2019. “Inquiry and Belief.” Noûs 53 (2): 296–​315. Friedman, J. 2020. “The Epistemic and the Zetetic.” Philosophical Review 129 (4): 501–​36. Goldberg, S. 2019. “Against Epistemic Partiality in Friendship: Value-​Reflecting Reasons.” Philosophical Studies 176 (8): 2221–​42. Hawley, K. 2014. “Partiality and Prejudice in Trusting.” Synthese 191 (9): 2029–​45. Hazlett, A. 2013. A Luxury of the Understanding: On the Value of True Belief. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Sarah Stroud Hazlett, A. 2017. “On the Special Insult of Refusing Testimony.” Philosophical Explorations 20 (sup1): 37–​51. Jackson, F. 1991. “Decision-​Theoretic Consequentialism and the Nearest and Dearest Objection.” Ethics 101 (3): 461–​82. Jollimore, T. 2011. Love’s Vision. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kawall, J. 2013. “Friendship and Epistemic Norms.” Philosophical Studies 165 (2): 349–​70. Keller, S. 2004. “Friendship and Belief.” Philosophical Papers 33 (3): 29–​351. Keller, S. 2005. “Patriotism as Bad Faith.” Ethics 115 (3): 563–​92. Keller, S. 2018. “Belief for Someone Else’s Sake.” Philosophical Topics 46 (1): 19–​35. Marušić, B., and S. White. 2018. “How Can Beliefs Wrong? –​A Strawsonian Epistemology.” Philosophical Topics 46 (1): 97–​114. Mason, C. 2020. “The Epistemic Demands of Friendship: Friendship as Inherently Knowledge-​Involving.” Synthese 199: 2439–​55. Morton, A. 1988. “Partisanship.” In Perspectives on Self-​Deception, edited by B. McLaughlin and A. Rorty, 170–​82. Berkeley: University of California Press. Morton, J., and S. Paul. 2018. “Believing in Others.” Philosophical Topics 46 (1): 75–​95. Preston-​Roedder, R. 2013. “Faith in Humanity.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 87 (3): 664–​87. Preston-​Roedder, R. 2018. “Three Varieties of Faith.” Philosophical Topics 46 (1): 173–​99. Railton, P. 1984. “Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 13 (2): 134–​71. Scheffler, S. 1992. Human Morality. New York: Oxford University Press. Scheffler, S. 2010. Equality and Tradition: Questions of Value in Moral and Political Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press. Stroud, S. 2006. “Epistemic Partiality in Friendship.” Ethics 116 (3): 498–​524. Williams, B. 2002. Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ziff, P. 1960. Semantic Analysis. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

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21 EPISTEMIC PARTIALITY AND VALUE COMMITMENTS Sanford C. Goldberg

1 Let the thesis of Epistemic Partiality in Friendship be the thesis that (EPF) Being a good friend can make demands on what one believes of one’s friend, such that satisfying these demands sometimes requires the violation of epistemic standards (as these are traditionally understood). By the traditional understanding of epistemic standards, I have in mind a view according to which (TRU) Only truth-​related considerations bear on what one ought to believe. I construe TRU as implying that non-​truth-​related considerations (a) cannot themselves be reasons for belief1 and (b) cannot affect the standards for (epistemically) justified belief. EPF asserts that the demands of friendship are inconsistent with TRU –​whether because reasons of friendship can be reasons for belief, in violation of (a), or else because they affect the standards for (epistemically) justified belief, in violation of (b).2 In the literature there are various arguments for EPF. In this chapter I highlight three. While these are not the only arguments to be found in the literature, they highlight distinctive ways to motivate the claim of partiality, they come from some of the leading figures in the discussion, and taken together they arguably cover most of the types of consideration offered in defense of EPF.3

1.1  The Value-​Commitment Argument (Stroud 2006) I begin with the case from Sarah Stroud. Her motivation derives from a position for which Michael Stocker had argued, according to which (in Stroud’s formulation) “love, friendship, affection, fellow feeling, and community […] essentially contain certain motives and essentially preclude certain others.” Stroud aims to “extend that lesson into the realm of belief ” (2006: 501). She argues that, such is what is involved in being a good friend, that “the good friend is prepared to take her friend’s part both publicly and […] internally” (505). Given that friendship is based on our views of our friends, “we need […] to maintain a favorable opinion of our friend’s character” (2006: 511). DOI: 10.4324/9781003007012-26

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In this argument for EPF, a central role is played by the sorts of commitment that arise in the course of a friendship. Stroud thought is that to be someone’s friend is “to have cast your lot in with his and, indeed, with his good character,” and she remarks that such an attitude “properly affects how you respond to new situations and new data” (2006: 511). The line of reasoning here seems to be this: the value we place on our friendships generates a certain sort of commitment, and this commitment in turn constrains how we ought to respond “to new situations and new data.” I will call this the Value-​Commitment Argument (VCA) for EPF. According to VCA, a valued relationship generates a commitment that demands epistemic partiality when the good of the relationship –​what is properly valued in it –​depends on our having certain beliefs about the relationship itself or the person in question. According to Stroud (2006), friendship is a case in point.

1.2  The Care-​and-​Support Argument (Keller 2004, 2018) Where Stroud locates the source of the demand for epistemic partiality in the sort of commitment that emerges from our valued relationships, Simon Keller emphasizes the reasons that derive from the care we have for (and the support we provide to) our friends. In a recent (2018) defense of his earlier (2004) view, Keller argues that Within some perfectly good friendships, the support that each friend provides for the other extends as far as their being willing to regulate their beliefs with the goal of benefiting the other, even if that makes it less likely that their beliefs will be supported by the evidence. 2018: 19 Keller thinks that the care and support in question extend to the domain of belief: because “[y]‌ou care about what others [especially your friends] believe about you,” what your friends believe about you can affect your well-​being, and so their care for you grounds a motive for them to shape their beliefs accordingly. I will call this the Care-​and-​Support Argument (C&SA) for EPF. As noted, this argument locates the source of the demand for epistemic partiality in the sort of care we have for those with whom we are in valued relationships, and in the types of support that this care gives us reason to provide. The care extends to what others think of us (when we are in valued relationships with them), so that the beliefs we have of those we care about is a way we have of supporting them. Keller himself recognizes that this line of reasoning extends to cover “the sorts of relationships [we] value” (20).

1.3  The Agent-​Based Argument (Paul and Morton 2018) A third type of argument for EPF, owed to Paul and Morton (2018),4 focuses on beliefs regarding the agency of our significant others, in those cases in which they have “adopted a difficult end” (2018: 82–​3). In such cases, they write, there is “an ethical requirement concerning our beliefs about our significant others’ agency,” one that mandates “a presumption against doubting the reality of their practical commitments” (86). As a result, it can happen that, though one’s evidence warrants doubts about the likelihood that they will succeed in a given endeavor they regard as significant, nevertheless we ought to “believe in” them –​and so we ought to believe that the chances of their success are good, despite the evidence to the contrary. Paul and Morton explain this in terms of the ethical demand to avoid what Strawson famously called the “objective perspective” on others. Using “diagnostic” instead of “objective,” Paul and Morton apply this point to our intimates: 248

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we can wrong our significant others by doubting the sincerity of their commitments, if this doubt is the product of an overly low evidential threshold for adopting the diagnostic perspective. […] To this extent, we can be justified in having more optimistic expectations about our significant others’ endeavors than a stranger with the same evidence would tend to have. 88; emphasis added Their thought is that as long as the ends our friends have set for themselves “are not exceedingly foolish, dangerous, or morally wrong,” we “owe it” to them to be optimistic (89). In such cases we should not treat the evidence bearing on the likely success of their endeavors as we would treat the evidence bearing on the proper functioning of a machine or other mere mechanism. Rather, we ought to see the likelihood of success of our friends’ endeavors in the light of our valued relationship with them.This involves recognizing that (at least when their aims are not immoral, dangerous, or frivolous) believing “in” them –​and so believing that they will succeed –​is a way of supporting our friends, and that failing to do so is a way of failing to support them. To defend the virtuousness of this way of handling the evidence bearing the likely success of significant others’ endeavors, Paul and Morton suggest that this attitude is the interpersonal analogue of the virtue of grittiness. They explain: the gritty person’s estimation of the likelihood that she will ultimately succeed is resilient against the impact of the evidence provided by experiences of failure, rejection, injury, and other setbacks. […] [I]‌nsofar as the capacity for grit is advantageous to an agent, this consideration can legitimately bear on the evidential policies she reasons with, after purely epistemic considerations have been exhausted. Other things equal, within the set of policies that are epistemically permissible, she ought to reason with a “grit-​friendly” policy. 2018: 81 Thus, in providing the sort of care that is associated with valued relationships, we owe it to our significant others to extend our “grit-​friendly” policy to them, as a way of supporting them in the face of the challenges that arise when they choose to pursue difficult (but not immoral or dangerous or frivolous) ends. I will call this the Agency-​Based Argument (ABA) for epistemic partiality in friendship. Without further assumptions, however, ABA does not establish EPF. This is because Paul and Morton embrace an epistemic constraint on their suggestion that the gritty subject ought to reason “with a ‘grit-​friendly’ policy”: such a policy ought to be followed “within the set of policies that are epistemically permissible” (emphasis added). Suppose that a policy for interpreting the evidence is “epistemically permissible” only if it conforms to traditional epistemic standards. In that case, ABA does not threaten epistemic evaluation as traditionally conceived. If it is meant to do so, the argument must be read as repudiating this supposition about what is epistemically permissible. I will assume this reading in what follows.

2 In this section my claim is that the sort of considerations that EPF’s proponents have used in these three arguments to motivate the restricted thesis of epistemic partiality in friendship can be used to show that what we value can require us to violate traditional epistemic standards in a great many other cases as well. Proponents of EPF must make clear why their doing so does not threaten to degenerate into a recommendation for a very pervasive sort of epistemic partiality, or else they must explain away the concerns that such a recommendation appears to generate. In this section I argue that each of the three arguments for EPF –​VCA, C&SA, and ABA –​can be extended in several ways, resulting in a much broader sort of epistemic partiality than what is 249

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captured by EPF itself. The first way extends the arguments for EPF beyond beliefs regarding our friends and significant others, to cover our beliefs regarding a whole range of people with whom we are in valued human relationships.5 The second way extends the arguments so that they apply to our beliefs regarding people who participate in valued social practices or institutions. The third extends the arguments so that they cover our beliefs regarding the social groups in which we value our membership. The result of these extensions, I contend, represents us as under normative pressure to be epistemically partial in most of our social lives. Such a picture should be unattractive to everyone, including those who endorse EPF itself.

2.1  Extension #1: Other Valued Human Relationships The first extension I want to defend is one that generalizes the argument for EPF so that the demand for partiality applies to beliefs regarding not only our friends and significant others but also people with whom we stand in a whole range of other valued human relationships. Here I have in mind relationships such as being a fellow member of a valued team, being a valued business partner, being a fellow member of a valued group or community, or being a valued fellow employee in a work setting. None of these relationships typically involves the sort of intimacy characteristic of being a friend or a significant other. Even so, when we return to the three arguments for EPF, we see that what each regards as the source of the demand for epistemic partiality in cases of friendship also applies in cases involving individuals in these other categories as well. Consider first Stroud’s Valued Commitment Argument for EPF. This argument sees the demand for epistemic partiality in friendship as driven by the value of friendship itself. This value generates a commitment to “cast your lot” with your friend’s “good character,” where this “properly affects how you respond to new situations and new data.” Importantly, the commitment to treat the relevant evidence in this “partialist” way is generated whenever we are in a valued relationship which is such that the good of the relationship –​what is properly valued in it –​depends on our having certain beliefs about the relationship itself or the individual in question. It should be obvious that friendships are not the only kind of other-​involving relationship that we properly value. We also properly value the teams we are on (and our teammates), our social groups (and the members of those group, qua members), our community (and its members, qua members), and our professional colleagues. (This list is not meant to be exhaustive.) I submit that for each of these categories, we can construct an argument paralleling the argument Stroud gave for EPF, thereby extending the demand for partiality. Indeed, it is possible to present a recipe for transforming VCA into an argument for partiality with respect to people in each of these other categories. To that end, consider the following vignette, which I will call GOOD FRIENDS Carol and Amy are great friends. It is mutual knowledge between them that each places great value on their friendship. Consequently, they are each committed to doing what they can to promote and protect the friendship, and to doing what they can to avoid doing what will harm or destroy the friendship. Since acquiring a false belief that denigrates their friend, or failing to acquire a true belief that speaks well of their friend (when given the opportunity to do so), would damage the friendship, their value-​based commitment to the friendship gives them a reason to be partial in their interpretation of the relevant evidence. What I want to suggest is that insofar as VCA treats GOOD FRIENDS as the basis for the demand for epistemic partiality in friendship, VCA should view this basis as present with respect to valued 250

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members of teams, valued members of social groups and communities, and valued colleagues. The recipe for bringing this out involves a simple replacement of the bolded words in GOOD FRIENDS with the relevant descriptors in the case at hand. Consider an alternative vignette that can be reached in this fashion. This involves a research team, where the valued relationship is that between fellow members: TEAM MEMBER Carol and Amy are members of a research team. It is mutual knowledge between them that each places great value on their relationship to one another as fellow members of the research team. Consequently, they are each committed to doing what they can to promote and protect their relationship as fellow members of a research team, and to doing what they can to avoid doing what will harm or destroy this relationship. Since acquiring a false belief that denigrates their fellow member (in her role as member of the team), or failing to acquire a true belief that speaks well of their fellow member (when given the opportunity to do so), would damage that relationship, their value-​based commitment to this relationship gives them a reason to be partial in their interpretation of the relevant evidence. The point I am making is a conditional one: if GOOD FRIENDS motivates EPF in the manner that VCA suggests, then that argument, as applied to TEAM MEMBER, threatens to motivate the thesis that being a valued member of a properly valued team generates a demand for epistemic partiality as well. The mechanisms are precisely the same: VCA applies to any valued relationship which is such that the good of the relationship –​what is properly valued in it –​depends on our having certain beliefs about the relationship or the individual in question. The teammate relationship would appear to be a case in point.6 One might think to question this parallelism by noting a relevant difference between the value we place on friendship and the value we place on the members of a valued team.7 Consider, for example, a research team. I value the members of my research team insofar as they help conduce us to the team’s goals –​say, the discovery of a new drug. A team member who is incompetent or is slowing our work only gets in the way of that goal. Consequently, the “external goal” of the team constrains the value I ascribe to its members: I value team members as such only insofar as they help the team reach its goals. This fact has a direct bearing on the prospect for the case for partiality: even though I value team members in this way, I have no reason to be partial toward any evidence that a member is not pulling his weight. (On the contrary, such partiality only gets in the way of our attempt to attain what we fundamentally value, which is the attainment of the team’s goal.) Friendship stands in contrast, since (arguably) there is no “external goal” to speak of, and so nothing external to constrain how my valuing of a friendship underwrites a policy of partiality. But even if this rejoinder does succeed in blocking the case for partiality in some team contexts, it will not do so in others. Consider the case of the team member who is a superb member of the team, whose work for the team is irreplaceable, but who has engaged in, or who has been alleged to have engaged in, disreputable or immoral activities. (This will be a depressingly familiar scenario to anyone who has had long-​term managerial responsibilities.) Here, the team member, qua team member, is superb, and is highly valued as such; but his behavior outside of the team context is (alleged to be) terrible. Notice that if the allegations against him are false and the targeted team member finds out that other team members believe those allegations, this can do major damage to the relations between them as teammates, thereby putting at risk the proper functioning of the team. In such a case it would seem that the very sort of considerations that (according to VCA) drive the case for EPF would also justify partiality here. Only in this case, this sort of counsel strikes us as patently reprehensible: Should our commitment to the team (and the value we ascribe to the joint attainment of its goals) really prompt 251

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us to treat the evidence in favor of a “negative” hypothesis about our teammate as less weighty than it objectively is, and to treat the evidence in favor of a “positive” hypothesis about our teammate as more weighty than it objectively is? Do we really think it is appropriate to be partial toward the evidence of a teammate’s would-​be sexism, racism, xenophobia, or his pernicious treatment of others, merely because the would-​be perpetrator happens to be a superb researcher and is helping to advance our team’s research agenda? As Stroud herself notes in connection with her case for EPF, there will be limits as to how far one can go in embracing a policy of partiality in one’s interpretation of the evidence: one cannot deny the obvious or believe what by one’s own lights is clearly false. But even granting this there will be a range of cases in which there will be room for a policy of partiality, motivated by one’s commitment to preserve what one values in the relationship. After all, just as the proponent of VCA holds that there is “leeway” in how one interprets the evidence regarding the character of one’s friend, so too in the case of a valued teammate: what appears to be evidence of a teammate’s viciousness might be interpreted in a more charitable light, for example, as his “just having a bad day”; what appears to be evidence of her unscrupulousness might be interpreted as evidence of her commitment to our common cause; and so forth. One who is committed to the team and its goals might thereby manifest the value she attaches to the team (and to the teammate in question) by embracing one of these more “charitable” interpretations. In sum, at least as far as VCA goes, the situation with a teammate is relevantly like the situation with a friend. Suppose a proponent of VCA wants to try to resist the foregoing attempt to extend that argument. Might she think to respond by noting that, when it comes to one’s teammates, the evidence bearing on such things as their bad (extracurricular) behavior should be taken at face value? In one sense this seems correct: after all, if one acquires evidence that appears to question a teammate’s attitude toward women or people of color, for example, one might well want to confront the teammate with these facts, rather than to explain them away in a partiality-​induced fashion. But why then shouldn’t we say precisely the same thing about our friends, and the evidence of their shortcomings (moral and otherwise)? Don’t we do them a favor by (gently) pointing out how they might have done better?8 It seems that the proponent of VCA cannot have it both ways. That argument, after all, was supposed to establish that friendship “essentially contain[s]‌certain motives and essentially preclude certain others,” and that this “extend[s] […] into the realm of belief ” (Stroud 2006: 501). So if there are cases in which being friends with someone warrants treating evidence in a partial way when the preservation of what we value in the friendship depends on it, it seems that there are cases in which being teammates with someone warrants treating evidence in a partial way when the preservation of what we value in the teammate relationship depends on it. Unfortunately for the proponent of VCA, the parallelism can be extended even further, to other sorts of valued relationships. In this light consider the following: POLITICAL GROUP Carol and Amy are members of a political group. It is mutual knowledge between them that each places great value on their relationship to one another as fellow members of this political group. Consequently, they are each committed to doing what they can to promote and protect their relationship as fellow members of the group, and to doing what they can to avoid doing what will harm or destroy this relationship. Since acquiring a false belief that denigrates their fellow member (in her role as group member), or failing to acquire a true belief that speaks well of their fellow member (when given the opportunity to do so), would damage the relationship, their value-​based commitment to this relationship gives them a reason to be partial in their interpretation of the relevant evidence. 252

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POLITICAL GROUP itself is framed in a way that is neutral with respect to the political aims of the group. But insofar as there is value to being politically active, and there is value as well in doing so as a member of a group (thereby capturing the benefits of solidarity), it would seem that this case patterns precisely like GOOD FRIENDS and TEAM MEMBERS. But of course to sanction epistemic partiality in this sort of case appears to be to sanction partisanship, polarization, and group think. What is more, it does so independent of whether the group’s political views are plausible on the available evidence. Once again, Stroud herself notes that the defense of EPF provided by VCA is not meant to provide cover for those who (in the name of friendship) would deny obvious and incontrovertible facts, and we should allow the same here. Still, this would appear to allow for as much partiality in political contexts as Stroud allows for in contexts of friendship. One might well worry that this sanctions a noxious form of partisanship. Nor do the implications end here. For another example, consider also the following case, which I will call BUSINESS PARTNERS Carol and Amy are long-​time business partners. It is mutual knowledge between them that (though they are not friends outside of business) each places great value on their partnership. They both regard each other as playing an essential and ineliminable role in their successful joint business. Consequently, they are each committed to doing what they can to promote and protect their partnership, and to doing what they can to avoid doing what will harm or destroy this partnership. Since acquiring a false belief that denigrates their business partner, or failing to acquire a true belief that speaks well of their business partner (when given the opportunity to do so), would damage the partnership, their value-​based commitment to this partnership gives them a reason to be partial in their interpretation of the relevant evidence. If Carol acquires evidence that (outside of the business context) Amy is behaving unethically or illegally, do we really want to say that Carol ought to treat this evidence with partiality? It is important here to have in mind a case in which Amy’s alleged behavior falls outside of the scope of her role within the business itself. If Amy’s (alleged) bad behavior was part of her role with the business, then the behavior could be ascribed to the business venture itself. In that case, the very value Carol places on the success of the business might well give her a reason not to be partial to the relevant evidence –​ lest she ignore something that potentially threatens the very thing she values. But suppose we have a case in which the evidence concerns alleged behavior of Amy’s that has nothing to do with the business itself, but where the awfulness of the allegations would turn Amy into a social pariah if these allegations turn out to be true. Does Carol’s valuing her business relationship with Amy give her a strong reason to approach the evidence of Amy’s immorality with partiality? By the lights of VCA, it would seem so. After all, if Carol believes the allegations under conditions in which these allegations turn out to be false, this will damage Carol’s valued business partnership with Amy, which would harm the prospects of their joint business success. If the commitments that arise in a valued friendship give one a rationale for partiality regarding evidence bearing on the friend, it seems that such commitments do so, too, in connection with valued business relationships. In sum, there is a real danger that the principles underwriting VCA will overgenerate partiality claims, in domains that go far beyond those of our friendships and our significant others. VCA is not the only argument for EPF that can be extended in these ways. Consider Keller’s Care-​and-​Support Argument (C&SA) for epistemic partiality. C&SA locates the source of epistemic partiality in the care we have for those with whom we are in valued relationships, and in the types of support that this care gives us reason to provide. Keller argues that the care extends to what other people think of us (when we are in valued relationships with them), so that the beliefs we have of those we care about is a way we have of supporting them. As Keller himself explicitly notes, 253

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this argument generalizes to cover “the sorts of relationships [we] value” (2018: 20). Unless there is something distinctive about valuing members of a team, or one’s social groups, or one’s community, or one’s colleagues, or any of the other “sorts of relationships [we] value,” the argument is naturally extended in these ways. A proponent of C&SA might respond that the relevant sort of care, care for another for her own sake, is only present in these relationships if there is also a friendship involved. This sort of care will not generally be present in cases involving teammates or colleagues.9 The difficulty, though, is in squaring this with the way Keller develops C&SA. His thought is that certain of our relationships are with people we care about and have reason to support; insofar as we value these relationships, our care for (and support of) the people in question can make demands on what we believe of them, since each of us “care[s]‌ about what others believe about” us (2018: 19).While the sort of care of a cherished colleague or a good teammate may differ from the sort of care we have for our friends, and while the sort of support that we may be called upon to give them may differ from that we are called upon to give our friends, even so, the fact is we care for and are supportive of people beyond our friends.The demand for epistemic partiality that comes out of C&SA is as extensive as is the domain of people whom we care for and support. Finally, the Agency-​Based Argument (ABA) of Paul and Morton (2018) can also be extended in analogous ways. Recall that, like the previous two arguments, ABA appeals to (i) the value we place on our cherished relationships, (ii) the requirement to care for those with whom we are in cherished relationships, and (iii) the need to support these individuals (deriving from our care for them). ABA differs from the first two arguments in that its focus is restricted to our beliefs regarding the agency of significant others. The thought behind ABA is that we ought to adopt a policy of partiality to the evidence bearing on our friends’ attempts to realize certain hard-​to-​fulfill aims and ambitions, since doing so is a way of showing them proper support (and not doing so is to treat them, inappropriately, from the “diagnostic perspective”). Suppose then that, when applied to GOOD FRIENDS, ABA supports the conclusion that we ought to be partial in our treatment of the evidence bearing on the likely success of our friends’ endeavors (at least when these endeavors are neither dangerous nor frivolous nor morally impermissible; I will not bother mentioning this again). Then it would seem that a similar conclusion could be obtained in the other cases described above as well: TEAM MEMBER, POLITICAL GROUP, and BUSINESS PARTNER. After all, these are cases in which the subjects (i) ascribe value to their relationship to one another, where (ii) the nature of the value they ascribe to the relationship generates a responsibility to care for those individuals in a certain way, including (iii) supporting them in particular ways. This is perhaps most clear in TEAM MEMBER: what one values in a good team member, presumably, include features relevant to the success of the team, and among these, I would venture, are features bound up with how likely it is that fellow members will succeed in their team-​related endeavors. But then it can happen that there are cases in which the sort of support one would need to show for a team member involves believing (or assigning high credences) that goes against one’s evidence, since doing so will increase the chance that the team member will have the confidence needed to accomplish what needs to be done. Similar points can be made, mutatis mutandis, regarding fellow members of a political group, as well as fellow business partners. The sort of partiality recommended by ABA seems naturally to extend to these cases as well.

2.2  Extension #2: Social Practices or Institutions The first set of extensions expanded the scope of the demand for partiality, as this demand was framed in the three arguments for EPF, from (some) beliefs regarding our friends and significant others, to (some) beliefs we form regarding people with whom we are in a broad range of other valued relationships. Here I propose to extend the demand for epistemic partiality to (some) beliefs regarding those who participate in valued social practices or institutions. 254

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Consider the social practices and institutions we cherish. These include the practices that regulate our social lives in ways that make possible certain forms of valued social interactions (conversational practices, practices of politeness and courtesy, practices of showing gratitude and offering forgiveness, gift-​g iving practices, etc.), as well as the institutions that structure many of our interactions with one another (whether these institutions are professional, political, legal, or of some other sort). Consider next that these valued practices and institutions can be affected by what we believe about our fellow participants: on this score our beliefs can contribute to the protection and preservation of the practices and institutions, but our beliefs can also expose these practices and institutions to various harms. (I develop this point below.) So insofar as one embraces an argument for EPF on which the value of a friendship gives us a rationale for epistemic partiality in those beliefs that bear on the well-​being of the friendship –​something that is common to all three arguments for EPF canvassed above –​ that argument should apply equally to our beliefs that bear on the well-​being of the practices and institutions themselves.10 Only in this case the relevant beliefs concern those who participate in the social practices and institutions we value. In developing this line of reasoning, it will be helpful to separate the first two arguments –​the Value-​Commitment Argument (VCA) and the Care-​and-​Support Argument (C&SA) –​from the Agency-​Based Argument (ABA), as the latter introduces complications of its own. In both VCA and C&SA, the value of the friendship gives one practical reasons to do what one can to support and promote the friendship, and to avoid doing what one anticipates would damage or harm the friendship. Although the proponents of these two arguments place limits on the demands that friendship can make regarding what we believe, these proponents embrace the idea that the demand for partiality can require things that fly in the face of traditional epistemic standards. Now it stands to reason that if the rationale for epistemic partiality is the well-​being of a valued friendship, the same rationale is in place for the well-​being of a valued social practice or institution. Consequently, if it can be shown that our beliefs regarding fellow participants in such practices or institutions can affect the well-​being of those practices or institutions themselves, it will have been shown that we can extend both VCA and C&SA to cover beliefs regarding these participants. (And, while it is true that we do not “owe it” to social practices or institutions to care for them or to support them –​they are not people after all –​below I will argue that this point, though correct, does not undermine the thrust of my argument.) Our beliefs regarding fellow participants in social practices or institutions can affect the well-​being of those practices or institutions themselves. To see this, suppose that one believes that would-​be participants in some valued social practice are systematically violating the norms of the practice, whether through incompetence or malevolence. This will decrease one’s motive to follow those norms oneself (why should one be a sucker?) and this, in turn, increases the chance that others will follow suit (why should they be suckers?) –​thereby risking the slow degeneration of the practice. Or suppose that one acquires strong doubts as to the lack of informedness of one’s fellow citizens. This may decrease one’s commitment to democratic practices and institutions, which in turn may lead others to weaken their commitment –​with a resulting weakening of the hold of those practices and institutions on the public at large. Alternatively, suppose that one acquires strong doubts as to the goodwill of one’s fellow citizens. This will decrease one’s commitment to good-​faith engagement with them in group deliberation, with corresponding effects on the well-​being of the practices and institutions that underwrite such deliberation. In each of these ways, what one believes of one’s fellow participants can affect the health and robustness of the practices and institutions themselves. It would thus seem that, assuming that VCA and/​or C&SA is sound, and assuming further that one values these practices, cares about them, and wants to support their continued flourishing, one has a rationale to interpret evidence of the quality of others’ participation in these practices and institutions in a manner that reflects the value one ascribes to the practices and institutions themselves. To be sure, here (as in the friendship case) there will be limits to the demand for partiality: one cannot deny obvious facts. But (also as in the friendship case) this still leaves scope for a policy of partiality. And 255

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since this result derives from assumptions shared by VCA and C&SA, proponents of either argument will have to embrace this extension as well. Might proponents of VCA and C&SA try to resist this extension of their arguments, by insisting that the sort of care and concern we have for our friends is different than the care and concern we have for our social practices and institutions? Here is a potentially relevant difference: given our care and concern for our friends, we owe it to them to believe certain things about them; whereas practices and institutions themselves are not subjects in their own right, and so are not owed any particular regard. In response I concede the difference but deny its significance for the extension of the arguments. Granted: we do not owe it to the practices or institutions to do what we can to protect and avoid harming them. Even so, we owe it to those who participate in these practices and institutions to do what we can to protect and support these practices, and to avoid damaging them. After all, doing something to damage the practices themselves is doing something that damages our relationship with our fellow participants who value the practice. And participants who value the practice owe it to the other participants who value the practice to avoid this –​in the same way that those who value a friendship owe it to their friends to avoid damaging the friendship. But then the demand for epistemic partiality is still in place. From the perspective of VCA, this demand reflects the fact that one’s beliefs about other participants in the practice can protect or harm one’s relationship to other participants as well as the practice itself. And from the perspective of C&SA, the demand reflects a type of care or concern for fellow participants: one who adopts a policy of strict impartiality would risk forming beliefs that would expose the practice to the sorts of harms described above, thereby manifesting a lack of care or concern for one’s fellow participants in the practice.11 Moving on to ABA, extending this argument in an analogous way presents a different challenge. ABA is restricted to beliefs regarding the agency of one’s friends, and social practices and institutions are not agents. For this very reason, it makes no sense to speak of grit. At the same time, it makes perfect sense to think of the resilience of a social practice or institution in the face of social factors that might lead to their demise. (A social practice or institution might be said to be resilient to the extent that it can withstand threats to its well-​functioning.) And while it makes no sense to think of our owing it to social practices or institutions to form beliefs about participants so as to enhance the resilience of these practices or institutions, the previous paragraph made clear that this is no impediment to the conclusion I seek to reach. After all, it would appear that (assuming ABA) this is something we owe to fellow participants in the practice, on pain of not properly valuing our relationship with them (qua fellow participants). In short, the argument for partiality in these cases remains strong even if our argument for EPF focuses on issues of agency, in the manner of Paul and Morton (2018) or of Marušiç and White (2018).

2.3  Extension #3: Valued Social Groups So far my claim has been that all three arguments for EPF can be extended beyond beliefs regarding our intimates, to bear as well on beliefs regarding others with whom we are in valued relationships (2.1) and those who participate with us in valued social practices and institutions (2.2). Arguably, these implications are unhappy: they point to a much more widespread case for epistemic partiality than what appears, at first glance, to be a more constrained argument for epistemic partiality in friendship (EPF). Still, I can imagine that proponents of EPF might greet these extensions of their argument(s) with a shrug. (Where I see a modus tollens, they see a modus ponens.) But we are not finished yet: the implications of the arguments for EPF are even more far-​reaching than this. In this section, I argue that these implications extend to beliefs we have (not only about the members of valued social groups but also) about the social groups themselves: if the arguments for EPF are embraced, we have a rationale to be partial in what we believe about the social groups we value. This, I contend, is an implication that goes beyond anything we have seen in the arguments of 2.1 or 2.2, and it would exacerbate the sorts of partisanship, polarization, and groupthink already highlighted in those arguments. 256

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Suppose that you are a life-​long Democrat and that you identify with the progressive branch of the party. These are your people: they share your political outlook, your values, and your priorities. You place a high value on your affiliation with this political group, and cherish your identity as a progressive Democrat.The value you place on these things gives you practical reasons to do what you can to protect and promote the group, and to avoid doing what will harm or undermine the group. I want to suggest that extant arguments for EPF would have us extend partialist policies to the beliefs we form regarding the group itself (in contrast to its members). I begin by describing what epistemic partiality might look like when it is directed toward a group. Pick your favorite social group. Now consider the sort of evidence you might have regarding such things as (i) potential sources of bias in group deliberation, (ii) the falsity of one of the group’s core assumptions, (iii) the history of the group and its accomplishments, (iv) the unreliability of one of the group’s important sources of information, (v) the unlikelihood of the group achieving its goals, and so forth. It seems clear that these things bear on the group without necessarily bearing on any particular member. So epistemic partiality toward a group is partiality in the way one forms beliefs on these (and other) topics. I submit that if any of the three arguments above succeeds in establishing EPF, it succeeds as well in establishing an analogous claim of partiality toward one’s valued social groups. The argument is a simple application of the argument from 2.1, taking the group (rather than its members) as the relevant target. Thus consider the following schematic description: POLITICAL GROUP* Carol and Amy are members of a political group. It is mutual knowledge between them that each places great value on this political group. Consequently, they are each committed to doing what they can to promote and protect the group, and to doing what they can to avoid doing what will harm or destroy the group. Since acquiring a false belief that denigrates their group, or failing to acquire a true belief that speaks well of their group (when given the opportunity to do so), would damage the group, their value-​based commitment to this group gives them a reason to be partial in their interpretation of the relevant evidence. POLITICAL GROUP* is just like POLITICAL GROUP from 2.1, save that where the latter speaks of Carol’s valuing of her relationship with Amy as a member of the political group, the former speaks of Carol’s valuing the group itself. Now in 2.2 we saw how, on the assumption that one or both of VCA and C&SA succeed in establishing EPF, then valuing a practice or institution in which others participate warrants a policy of partiality in interpreting the evidence bearing on the quality of others’ participation. The very same point would appear to hold in connection with one’s valuing of a political group. So if either of VCA or C&SA warrants a policy of partiality in connection with evidence bearing on a friendship, it does so as well in connection with the evidence bearing on the qualities of a group or its deliberations.To be sure, a group (as opposed to its members) is not the sort of thing to which you might owe it to be partial; but as we saw in 2.2, this point does not undermine the extension of VCA or C&SA, since one might owe it to the members of the group –​those who value the group as one oneself does –​to be epistemically partial to the group. Now consider how we might extend ABA in a similar fashion. ABA focuses on the fact that our friends are agents who aim to do certain things, where the support we owe them extends to “believing in” them and their efforts: we ought to adopt a “grit-​friendly” policy regarding the evidence bearing on their likely successes. Clearly, social groups have aims or objectives –​whatever the metaphysics underlying this sort of statement might be. What is more, like the practices and institutions of 2.2, social groups might be more or less resilient in pursuit of those aims. So the path is clear for extending ABA. Insofar as we value the social group, we owe it to the other members of the group to enhance the group’s resilience (and to avoid undermining that resilience). Of course, 257

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beliefs about the likelihood of group success can bear on that resilience: group members can become demoralized if they believe that success is unlikely (or if they believe that we believe this), and they can be motivated if they believe that with hard work success is likely (or if they believe we believe this). Thus insofar as ABA succeeds in showing that we have a rationale for partiality in interpreting the evidence bearing on our friends’ ability to realize their goals, it would seem that we have a rationale for partiality in interpreting the evidence bearing on our valued social groups’ ability to realize their goals as well. In short, all three arguments for EPF –​VCA, C&SA, and ABA –​can be extended into an argument for epistemic partiality regarding the social groups we value. I chose as my illustration a group consisting of progressive Democrats. But I could equally well have chosen social groups of other political persuasions (conservative Republicans, Trump supporters, anarchists, etc.), as well as other types of social groups (religious groups, ideologically driven groups, affliation groups, etc.). It should be clear that the sort of partiality these arguments support, if they support any at all, is very far-​reaching indeed.

3  The “Propriety Constraint” Objection In this penultimate section I want to return to an objection I briefly considered above, which I will call the “propriety constraint” objection. The original arguments for EPF are tailored to apply to friendship (and other valued relationships) only because friendship (etc.) is among the things that are worth valuing, that are objectively valuable. But only those relationships that are worth valuing are such that our commitment to them –​the care we have for them, the rationale we have for regarding the relevant efforts in a favorable light –​are such that epistemic partiality is warranted. As a result, attempts to extend arguments for epistemic partiality hold only for those relationships and social groups that we properly value. The objection concludes that the “propriety” constraint ensures against the sort of widespread partiality that (I have been suggesting) results from the arguments for EPF. Proponents of EPF who endorse this objection face a dilemma. To bring this dilemma out, I note that the case for epistemic partiality in friendship is often made on the grounds that we are imperfect creatures who need the goods of friendship precisely because we are not fully virtuous. The expectation that one’s friends will be partial is meant as a salve against one’s own imperfections. On this point Keller (2018) is clear: the norms of friendship are to do with the needs and interests of humans, in all their imperfection. What I need from you, as a friend, is a matter of what it takes for you to offer me, in my present state and circumstances, such goods as support, openness, encouragement, and the assurance that someone is on my side. (Keller 2018: 32; emphasis added) Keller’s comments on this score are not idiosyncratic. The values he cites as elicited by friendship are those typically cited by EPF’s proponents more generally. And the situations that he highlights as eliciting the demand for partiality are in keeping with what other defenders of EPF say on this score as well. Keller has put his finger on what (for EPF’s proponents) motivates the demand to be epistemically partial toward our friends: our care and concern for them demands that we show partiality to them when their reputation is at stake, or their likely success on a cherished project is in question. It would not be in keeping with the spirit of these arguments to say that whether partiality is owed depends on whether it was proper for us to have valued the friendship in the first place. To be sure, some abusive, one-​sided, or otherwise unrewarding “friendships” are not worth valuing as friendships; but even after we filter these “friendships” out, the sorts of friendships that are left –​those that are worth valuing –​ include some in which each of the friends has their shortcomings and weaknesses. By the same token, there are social groups whose aims or methods make these groups not worth valuing in the first place; 258

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but even after we filter these social groups out, the sorts of groups that left –​those that are worth valuing –​include some in which the group itself is not perfect, is fallible, is prone to certain biases, and so on. In this way it would seem that, when it comes to the attempt to avoid the extent of epistemic partiality by appeal to the “propriety” constraint, proponents of EPF have a forced choice: continue to embrace the case for EPF as it stands, and so embrace the demand for a much more far-​reaching (and, I would say, socially noxious) epistemic partiality; or avoid that demand by placing constraints on when a friendship is to be valued, which in effect undermines extant arguments for EPF by dramatically constraining the occasions on which a friendship demands partiality.

4 Conclusion The case for epistemic partiality in friendship threatens to overgenerate the demand for epistemic partiality. Those who support EPF, then, must either show that this allegation of overgeneration is false, or else defend the demand for what would then appear to be a much more thoroughgoing kind of partisanship.

Related Chapters Aristotle on the Nature and Value of Friendship; Friendship and Citizenship; Friendship and Self-​Interest; The Value of Friendship; Friendship and Practical Reason; Friendship and Epistemic Partiality; Partiality to Friends; Friendship and Special Obligations; Are You a Good Friend?; Friendship and Loyalty

Notes 1 That is, non-​truth-​related considerations are not the sort of thing that can serve to justify a belief in any sense of ‘justify’ that is related to what one ought to believe. 2 This is a slightly non-​standard construal of EPF. Some critics of EPF (Kawall (2013); Hawley (2014)) appeal to pragmatic encroachment –​and so deny (b) –​as a way to resist the case for EPF.This difference in construal of EPF will not be particularly relevant in what follows, so I will ignore it. See Goldberg (2019) for discussion. 3 I thank Diane Jeske and Sarah Stroud for comments on earlier drafts of this chapter. Any remaining errors in interpretation or flaws in reasoning are my responsibility alone. 4 But see also Marušiç and White (2018) as well as Basu (2019), for similar arguments. 5 As I noted above, Keller (2018: 20) explicitly embraces this generalization. 6 One might want to constrain the conclusion so that it holds only with respect to team membership among teammates on teams that themselves are worthy of being valued. (Criminal teams fail this test, for example.) Conceding this point would not affect my overall argument very much. See Section 3 for details. 7 With thanks to Diane Jeske for pressing me on this objection. 8 Kawall (2013) makes this point. 9 I thank Diane Jeske for raising this objection. 10 This, despite the fact that practices and institutions are not agents, and so are not owed any care or concern. I will return to this point below. 11 Objection: one who really cared for the preservation of a practice would use evidence of others’ incompetence to criticize and correct them, as this would have a salutary effect on the practice itself. Reply: a parallel point can be made in connection with friendships, so insofar as this is a way to resist implying a demand for epistemic partiality in the case of teammates, it is also a way to resist implying such a demand in the case of friendships.

References Basu, R. 2019. “What We Epistemically Owe to Each Other.” Philosophical Studies 176: 915–​31. Goldberg, S. 2019. “Against Epistemic Partiality in Friendship: Value-​Reflecting Reasons.” Philosophical Studies 176 (8): 2221–​42. Hawley, K. 2014. “Partiality and Prejudice in Trusting.” Synthese 191: 2029–​45. Kawall, J. 2013. “Friendship and Epistemic Norms.” Philosophical Studies 165: 349–​70. Keller, S. 2004. “Friendship and Belief.” Philosophical Papers 33 (3): 329–​51.

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Sanford C. Goldberg Keller, S. 2018. “Belief for Someone Else’s Sake.” Philosophical Topics 46 (1): 19–​35. Marušiç, B., and S. White. 2018. “How Can Beliefs Wrong? –​A Strawsonian Epistemology.” Philosophical Topics 46 (1): 97–​114. Paul, S., and J. Morton. 2018. “Believing in Others.” Philosophical Topics 46 (1): 75–​96. Stroud, S. 2006. “Epistemic partiality in friendship.” Ethics 116(3): 498–​524.

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PART V

Friendship, Morality, and Virtue

22 CONSEQUENTIALISM AND FRIENDSHIP Scott Woodcock

Friendship is a vital part of our lives as human beings. It is a valued good that we would miss terribly if it disappeared from the world. Yet it is also distinct from other goods that we would miss terribly if they vanished, like puppies, ice cream, and rare works of art. In the case of friendship, it plays a role in our lives not captured simply by the magnitude of benefit it provides. Rather, friendship plays an integral role in the meanings we attribute to our lives, and it structures the psychological capacities that allow us to appreciate what has value. Thus, friendship is an essential part of living well as the social creatures we are as human beings. More generally: our special relationships with friends, family and romantic partners give substance to our most cherished personal projects, they contribute to the formation of our identities, and they help to determine the deepest values that we come to endorse.1 All of this seems, at first, like very bad news for the consequentialist. An ethical theory ought to be able to recognize friendship as a key feature of our experience, and it ought to be able to provide a satisfying justification for agents to honor the permissions and obligations that friendship prescribes.Yet consequentialism has no straightforward way to satisfy these criteria. Recall that consequentialism is the view that the rightness and wrongness of acts (or rules, motives, character, etc.) is judged exclusively according to the goodness of their consequences. It is grounded in the impartial promotion of goodness, so its foundation appears antithetical to the special relations of loyalty and partiality that characterize our friendships. The challenge for consequentialism to accommodate friendship is therefore no minor difficulty; it strikes at the heart of the requirement to promote good states of affairs without assigning special priorities to the interests of some agents over others. Friendship seems to throw a wrench into the most basic machinery of a consequentialist approach to ethics. In this chapter I will try to convince you that this first impression is mistaken and that consequentialism can successfully capture the special role that friendship plays in the lives of human agents. In fact, I will suggest that a closer look at the details of friendship reveals that consequentialism holds an advantage over other positions in ethics when it comes to accommodating relationships like friendship. I begin by providing a summary of the initial friendship objection to consequentialism and the replies consequentialists offer to deflect this objection. I then explain why critics of consequentialism remain unconvinced by these replies. Finally, I conclude by presenting a brief argument in favor of the consequentialist perspective on friendship –​an argument that will at least help clarify what divides consequentialists from their rivals when it comes to the significance of friendship. DOI: 10.4324/9781003007012-28

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The Initial Alienation Objection The tension between friendship and consequentialism begins with the impartiality at the heart of consequentialism matching up poorly with the special priority that we give, and expect from, our friends. Indeed, it is a defining feature of friendship that friends have a unique connection to each other that leads them to show special concern for their friends’ well-​being and the achievement of their aims.This connection generates bonds of loyalty that permit, and sometimes require, privileging the interests of one’s friends over those of other agents. There are many different varieties of love, friendship, and allegiance, as the chapters in this volume will no doubt illustrate, but some type of special priority will be a defining characteristic of what makes each of them valuable.2 The initial argument against consequentialism is that agents will be alienated from this defining feature of friendship if they seek to impartially promote the good. How can friends maintain a special connection with one another if they must simultaneously aim to promote impartial results at every available opportunity? It is hard not to feel alienated in a friendship with someone who shows just as much kindness and concern for you as they do for every other person on the planet. In this respect, friendship serves as a particularly revealing focal point for two of the most prominent objections to consequentialism: the demandingness objection and the integrity objection.To begin with the former, it is hard to imagine that a consequentialist would have time to give friends any special attention in a world where one could be working flat-​out at every moment to help the multitude of persons who currently live without reliable access to basic goods like food, water, shelter, and medicine. Like so many other luxuries enjoyed by those living in affluent conditions, friendship looks like something that is ultimately dispensable given the extreme demands that consequentialism places on agents to promote impartial outcomes.3 This is the most concrete sense in which consequentialism alienates agents from their friends. Friendship also helps highlight the integrity objection that has been articulated so influentially by Bernard Williams (1973). The integrity objection is compounded by demandingness considerations, but it is an independent argument. For even if agents are not in circumstances in which they face profound requirements to help others in need of aid, Williams claims that our integrity as individual persons is at risk if an ethical theory alienates us from the projects that shape our identities and give meaning to our lives. As he famously observes of utilitarianism: It is absurd to demand of [an individual agent], when the sums come in from the utility network which the projects of others have in part determined, that he should just step aside from his own project and decision and acknowledge the decision which utilitarian calculation requires. It is to alienate him in a real sense from his actions and the source of his action in his own convictions. It is to make him into a channel between the input of everyone’s projects, including his own, and an output of optimific decision; but this is to neglect the extent to which his actions and his decisions have to be seen as the actions and decisions which flow from the projects and attitudes with which he is most closely identified. It is thus, in the most literal sense, an attack on his integrity. 116–​17 Friendship is a particularly familiar type of life project that helps the integrity argument seem that much more persuasive. If at each moment an agent is required to act so as to promote impartial goodness, then their commitment to their friends would seem to be undermined by the fact that they can only ever view such commitments as contingent in the mix of general outcome calculations. Given the deep significance of friendship, this looks like a considerable problem for the integrity of agents who aspire to live authentic consequentialist lives. An early reply to those who object to the extreme impartiality of consequentialism comes from John Stuart Mill (1998: 66), who seeks to reassure his readers that utilitarianism does not expect too much from us by requiring that we promote the general interests of society: 264

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The multiplication of happiness is, according to the utilitarian ethics, the object of virtue: the occasions on which any person (except one in a thousand) has it in his power to do this on an extended scale, in other words, to be a public benefactor, are but exceptional; and on these occasions alone is he called on to consider public utility; in every other case, private utility, the interest or happiness of some few persons, is all he has to attend to. If Mill is correct, then consequentialism can deflect the integrity objection and allow its agents to pursue the private utility of their life projects in ordinary circumstances. They would only need to concern themselves with acting as “public benefactors” if they find themselves in situations where they have special opportunities to contribute to impartial goodness, and this opens up space for friendship in the lives of agents who are normally permitted to concentrate on promoting the good within what is presumed to be a limited sphere of influence. There are, however, two important problems with Mill’s argument. First, the empirical claim that very few of us are in a position to benefit others beyond our private groups was probably not accurate even in 1861, and it is most certainly false now that we can provide vital resources to strangers with a few taps of our mobile phones.4 Second, even if Mill was correct in his empirical assessment of our options, the deeper objection at stake is that consequentialism will lead to alienation because it provides the wrong kinds of motivations to act for the sake of our friends. Michael Stocker (1976) provides a memorable example to make this point. He asks you to imagine that a friend visits you in the hospital to boost your spirits, but in the course of this visit you discover that your friend has visited you after deciding it was the best way to advance some other aim like promoting impartial goodness. Most people feel considerably let down by this revelation.The existence of some more general motivation for the visit seems to imply that it fails as a genuine act of friendship, and this case looks like it offers a general illustration of the way impartiality at the heart of consequentialism alienates agents from the bonds of their friendships. Even if it turns out that consequentialist math directs us to act within a local community that includes our friends, an alienation objection remains that threatens to prevent those who subscribe to consequentialism from being motivated by considerations that are consistent with authentic friendships.

The Standard Consequentialist Reply Let us begin with a strategy that consequentialists do not tend to advance when it comes to the value of friendship: they do not recommend that agents bite the bullet and simply eliminate all instances of partiality from their lives. Instead, consequentialists recognize how serious a blow this would be to the basic integrity of human agents. Eliminating the bonds of partiality might be a perfectly suitable implementation of consequentialism for an alien species that exists as a collection of anonymous drones, but for our species it is a strategy that is insufficiently sensitive to the empirical details of how we operate as moral agents. Friendship, as noted above, is not merely an auxiliary good like chocolate that adds value to the lives of agents with already established identities; friendship is instead the kind of necessary condition that allows humans to develop cohesive identities and be able to act as well-​functioning moral agents. For, as Elizabeth Ashford (2000) notes, it is through our intimate relationships with friends and family that we acquire the capacity to understand and care about the needs of others. If we were to remove this crucial source of moral development for human agents, we would undermine our capacities to become agents with moral insight. It thereby would stunt our moral growth (Friedman 1989) and counterproductively weaken our ability to appreciate the significance of outcomes for agents beyond our intimate groups. Attention to these details allows consequentialists to incorporate the insights of the integrity objection and turn it into an upgrade, rather than a threat, by acknowledging the crucial role that friendship plays for the aim of promoting long-​term goodness.

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When it comes to practical guidance, the way consequentialism implements these important details about human moral development depends on the particular formulation of consequentialism that one prefers.The most common way of mapping the versions of consequentialism available is in terms of direct versus indirect formulations.5 Perhaps the most straightforward way to incorporate friendship into consequentialism is to adopt an indirect version of the theory like rule-​consequentialism. For example, according to the influential version of rule-​consequentialism proposed by Brad Hooker (1990, 2000), an action is morally right if it is consistent with the set of desires, dispositions, and rules that, if widely accepted by nearly everyone, would result in the greatest amount of good compared to all other available sets of desires, dispositions, and rules. On this view it is plausible to think that the essential benefits of friendship will be included in the ideal set of desires, dispositions, and rules, since competing sets of rules that fail to recognize the significance of friendship for human beings will likely underperform when we compare how much goodness these different sets of rules generate if they were implemented over significant stretches of time. Just as sets of rules that fail to include prohibitions on theft or obligations to help others in distress are unlikely to promote as much good as sets that include these features, it seems a safe empirical prediction that powerful dispositions for friendship will be included in the ideal set of desires, dispositions, and rules prescribed by rule-​ consequentialism. We might wonder, of course, if unique circumstances will lead to exceptions to the ideal set of rules that justify our friendships, but in general the move to rule-​consequentialism offers a plausible method of insulating the love, trust, and intimacy of friendship from the otherwise alienating math that drives the consequentialist goal of promoting impartial results. It is also possible for direct consequentialism to incorporate friendship into what it proposes for practical guidance. To do so, proponents of this form of consequentialism take inspiration from a key distinction noted by Mill (1998: chap. 2) that is developed more extensively by Henry Sidgwick (1981: book 4, chap. 5). The distinction is that the standard prescribed by a theory for evaluating right actions need not be identical to the standard a theory proposes for evaluating motives and other factors like desires, dispositions, or rules for practical decision-​making. Instead, one can remain committed to a criterion for right action that directly prescribes the promotion of impartial goodness while simultaneously emphasizing strategies for practical guidance that can diverge from this narrow focus on individual actions. This move allows consequentialists to recommend general decision-​ making strategies that reflect ways in which we stand to benefit from taking a long-​term perspective on promoting the good, and it is therefore an influential strategy for applying consequentialism in practical contexts.6 Indeed, many prominent consequentialists like Peter Railton (1984), David Brink (1986), and Julia Driver (2005) adopt the preceding strategy to accommodate friendship within the practical guidance they recommend for their prototypical moral agents.7 The most influential has been Railton, who defends a version of consequentialism he refers to as sophisticated consequentialism to contrast it with more simplistic implementations of the theory that direct agents to purposefully seek to promote the good at every available opportunity for practical decision-​making. According to sophisticated consequentialism, the question of which decision-​making strategies moral agents ought to adopt is left open in order to respond to different circumstances and endorse whatever is most effective, as a matter of empirical fact, when it comes to promoting long-​term results. In the context of friendship, then, a sophisticated consequentialist need not be someone who deliberately seeks to promote impartial goodness at every opportunity, that is, someone who abandons their friends if an opportunity arises to promote an extra amount of goodness by breaking faith with these friends. A sophisticated consequentialist can instead adopt long-​term dispositions for love and loyalty that promote more overall goodness over time. Indeed, Railton argues that sophisticated agents ought to internalize a set of “enduring motivational patterns, character traits, or prima facie commitments to rules” (158) so that it may be difficult for them to act against the prescriptions of friendship in cases where they might otherwise be able to capture special opportunities for promoting impartial goodness. 266

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To understand Railton’s proposal, it is best to examine his flagship sophisticated consequentialist agent, Juan, who is devoted to his wife, Linda, in ways not simply based on viewing her as an opportunity to promote impartial results. Railton understands the alienation that arises if Juan views this relationship in instrumental terms. Like Stocker’s example of a friend visiting you in the hospital out of dedication to some impersonal cause, if Linda were to realize that Juan was only devoted to her as a proximate means of promoting the good –​seeing her as a kind of strategic investment in goodness promotion because he happens to know the things that increase her well-​being –​this would be to realize that their relationship is lacking the authenticity that makes such relationships valuable. Thus Railton describes Juan as someone with internalized dispositions for genuine love and devotion so that he is the kind of agent who cares for Linda for her own sake and is loyal to her without having to consider instrumental considerations (150–​1). Juan’s moral development has also led him to respect impartial goodness, so his devotion to Linda must be subject to at least some external constraints. (His development has not, for example, shaped him so that he is disposed to kill innocents in order to transfer their possessions to Linda as testaments of his devotion to her.) Nevertheless, the crucial step in Railton’s articulation of sophisticated consequentialism is that agents like Juan need not be motivated at each available opportunity to promote the good; they can instead be motivated by dispositions for authentic love and loyalty that are justified by underlying long-​term empirical calculations based on the kinds of emotional capacities that humans need to function effectively as moral agents. In the example Railton provides where Juan must choose between taking a trip to visit Linda because she is depressed or donating the equivalent amount of money to Oxfam (159–​60), Railton notes that Juan will be the kind of agent who has internalized strong enough feelings for Linda that he will choose what is objectively a wrong action (given how much good can be achieved by Oxfam) because in the long run this kind of love and devotion allows him to avoid cynicism, selfishness, and emotional burnout and thereby promote more overall goodness. There are at least three reasons why Railton’s account of sophisticated agents has been so influential. First, while it is an odd idea that the dispositions enabling authentic relationships allow humans to promote the good by encouraging us to avoid deliberately seeking to promote the good, this justification is presented as the solution to a practical paradox that is similar to many other paradoxes we encounter in everyday life.Whether it is playing tennis (144), trying to act natural at social gatherings (154), or responding to emergencies (153), it is evident that friendship is not the only context in which it is oddly beneficial to avoid deliberately concentrating on achieving one’s principal aims. Thus, Railton’s account of sophisticated decision-​making is rendered more persuasive when it is situated in the context of other ordinary features of our lives. Second, his description of Juan sounds empirically plausible rather than some ad hoc strategy to rescue consequentialism. Railton describes how Juan might respond if he were prompted to justify his relationship with Linda within his broader moral obligations, and Juan’s response is presented as a brief but heartfelt monologue (150) in which he has no illusions about these broader obligations yet describes how vital it is for humans to be able to find emotional refuge and inspiration in personal relationships. It is particularly convincing for this claim about the significance of our relationships that it is delivered in familiar personal terms rather than abstract language. Finally, Railton presents Juan as someone who only justifies his relationship with Linda against his general obligations –​and therefore reflects on the impartial status of his relationship with her –​if he finds himself in situations that prompt him to do so. Initially he answers questions about his devotion to Linda only by stating that he loves her. Full stop. This signals the way in which sophisticated consequentialists deeply internalize the kinds of dispositions for loyalty and commitment that are vital to friendship and romantic relationships. The dispositions are sufficiently ingrained in Juan that it does not initially occur to him to think of his relationship in impartial terms until he is specifically asked to do so. This deep internalization of the emotional capacities necessary for friendship is a key step for the strategy to accommodate it, because an abstract justification of friendship can only avoid contaminating its personal nature if agents act from authentic, unmediated motives.8 These motives 267

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must sometimes be subjected to scrutiny, as Railton notes, but it is critical that consequentialists do not act from motives that reduce their friendships to purely instrumental vehicles for promoting the good. Instead, an ideal consequentialist agent is someone who develops the emotional capacities to engage in relationships from authentic motives, even if this agent retains a responsibility to subject these relationships to critical evaluation. The prospect of this sophisticated agent, who can balance authentic motives with impartial justifications, seems to defuse the intuitive force of the objection that consequentialism is necessarily incompatible with friendship.

The Deeper Authenticity Argument As influential as sophisticated consequentialism has become as a solution to the original friendship objection, it has also provoked dissatisfaction among critics who consider it no better than straightforward formulations of the theory. Neera Kapur Badhwar (1991), for example, maintains that the loyalty required for genuine friendship is not compatible with the impartial prescriptions that drive theories like consequentialism. Additionally, Susan Wolf (1992) argues that sophisticated versions of consequentialism remain incapable of providing the right kinds of reasons for individuals to pursue their friendships, and Diane Jeske (2001, 2008) claims that friendship involves agent-​relative reasons of intimacy that cannot be intuitively understood as derivative from agent-​neutral reasons to promote the good. For these critics, the fine details of indirect or sophisticated consequentialism are deck chairs on a sinking ship, since they believe an ineliminable conflict exists between impartial moral justifications and the features that drive relationships like friendship. Other critics have also presented more specific objections to the consequentialist attempt to incorporate friendship. First, following Stocker’s critique of so-​called modern ethical theories, some critics argue that the psychological requirements for implementing a theory like sophisticated consequentialism are pathological. The concern is that agents like Railton’s Juan must internalize a set of long-​term dispositions, character traits, and virtues that are not consistent with the consequentialist prescription to promote impartial results –​a prescription these agents must accept at some underlying level. Thus, agents like Juan must be committed to a fundamental imperative to promote impartial results at the same time that their ideal, long-​term dispositions encourage them to establish deep commitments to their friends. For critics like William Wilcox (1987), it may be possible for consequentialism to offer an impartial justification for these personal commitments, but for agents like Juan it is not psychologically feasible to reconcile these two discordant commitments from within their individual perspectives. It would mean Juan would have to be both powerfully motivated by his commitments to his friends while simultaneously being able to recognize that these commitments are justified by impartial considerations, and this looks like it would bring about what Stocker describes as a “malady of the spirit” (454) by forcing agents to adopt incompatible allegiances within their psychology. In this respect, friendship is a compelling example for critics of consequentialism to raise in order to claim that the theory is either profoundly alienating to the integrity of agents or else forced to implement strategies that require self-​effacement within the moral psychology of its agents. For Wilcox, and others like Williams (1981, 1988), Elizabeth S. Anderson (1991), Julia Annas (2008), and Nick Zangwill (2018), the second half of this dilemma is a deal-​breaker. It is psychologically disruptive, they claim, for a theory to require agents to suppress its fundamental prescriptions so that they can participate in genuine friendships. It would be equivalent to agents having to continuously hide a core element of their values from their ordinary decision-​making, and critics allege that this is psychologically untenable. Unsurprisingly, consequentialists tend to believe that this psychological objection is overstated. Some deny that there is anything peculiar about agents having dispositions or decision-​procedures that diverge from their foundational criterion of right action. For example, Railton seems unfazed by the concern. He briefly notes that: 268

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The sophisticated consequentialist need not be deceiving himself or acting in bad faith when he avoids consequentialist reasoning. He can fully recognize that he is developing the dispositions he does because they are necessary for promoting the good. Of course, he cannot be preoccupied with this fact all the while, but then one cannot be preoccupied with anything without this interfering with normal or appropriate patterns of thought and action. 154; emphasis in original This view is also expressed by Hare (1988), who seems genuinely puzzled that critics like Williams object to the psychology required for the critical and intuitive levels of thinking in his utilitarianism to operate concurrently. Similarly, Norcross (1997) and Arneson (2003) see nothing deceptive or psychologically injurious about spontaneous feelings of loyalty developing in agents who are nonetheless able to justify these feelings within the limits prescribed by an impartial standpoint. Other consequentialists, however, concede that a peculiar tension exists for agents who need to limit how frequently they subject their personal commitments to scrutiny (Pettit and Brennan 1986; Pettit 1994; Woodcock 2010a, 2010b). Still, they deny that this tension is necessarily pathological. Moreover, the presumption that consequentialism is uniquely vulnerable to self-​effacement compared to rival theories like virtue ethics is not without opponents (Hurka 2001; Keller 2007; Woodcock 2021). Setting moral psychology aside, another more specific objection to sophisticated consequentialism that deserves emphasis concerns the limits that consequentialist agents, like Juan, would have to accept on their dispositions to act from love, devotion, loyalty, and so forth. Let us provisionally accept that sophisticated agents like Juan are possible and that it is psychologically acceptable for them to act from authentic motives for the sake of their friends. Even with these provisions, critics like Dean Cocking and Justin Oakley (1995) argue that these agents would operate according to the underlying prescriptions of their commitment to consequentialism. In Railton’s terminology, sophisticated agents would accept a “counterfactual condition” so that even if they do not seek to promote impartial results at each available opportunity, they would nevertheless change the course of their lives if they did not believe that their motives, character traits, and decision procedures were not generally defensible in consequentialist terms. Juan, for example, can act from genuine care for Linda without his motives being compromised by being embedded in a consequentialist justification for these motives, according to Cocking and Oakley, but it is still the case, they emphasize, that Juan will only allow himself to continue pursuing his relationship with Linda if it remains consistent with his background consequentialist ideals.Thus, Juan must operate according to “governing conditions” that will include a set of terminating conditions for his relationships, and this carries the implication that he would have to break off his relationship with Linda if it was not generally defensible in consequentialist terms. It is this contingency lurking in the background of relationships for sophisticated consequentialists that disqualifies them from being authentic if critics like Cocking and Oakley are correct. Consider a helpful analogy that they provide to better understand the governing conditions in question: the grammatical structure of language (90–​1). This background structure need not serve as the motivation for my sentences, but it informs their nature in the sense that I do not construct sentences that fail to meet its standards. Similarly, Juan need not be understood as an agent who is motivated to seek out friendships (that would end up inauthentic) in direct, instrumentalist terms, yet he is required to limit himself to friendships that meet his counterfactual condition for living a life that can be justified as sufficiently consequentialist. For Cocking and Oakley, this alone is sufficient to ruin the authenticity of a relationship, because consequentialism is still imposing conditions for terminating the relationship that are incompatible with the trust and dedication that we expect from true friends. Note that the objection raised here is not that sophisticated agents will necessarily terminate their friendships prematurely.The deeper authenticity objection is that even if sophisticated agents like Juan never have to invoke their background terminating conditions, there is still something inauthentic 269

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about a so-​called friend who will abandon their relationship with you in certain circumstances.9 In this respect, Cocking and Oakley defend a position that is ultimately similar to the one defended by Badhwar: friendship is fundamentally incompatible with consequentialism no matter how successful agents like Juan might be at developing motives that lead them to care for others. It is this objection that cuts to the heart of the dispute between consequentialists and their critics. For those sympathetic to sophisticated methods of incorporating friendship within consequentialism (Mason 1998; Conee 2001; Card 2004; Tedesco 2006; Upton 2008), the limits implied by background governing conditions are innocuous for authentic friendship. For those like Cocking and Oakley, and others similarly underwhelmed by the details of sophisticated consequentialism (Jollimore 2000; Cox 2005; Jensen 2020), the kind of trust, care, and commitment required for friendship cannot be authentically implemented by agents who operate within these limits, because the limits reveal the way their relationships are ultimately contingent on the slings and arrows of impartial calculations.

The Substantive Consequentialist Reply The stalemate between consequentialists and their critics seems difficult to break at this point. Both sides are driven by powerful intuitions regarding how we ought to combine moral justification with the authenticity of friendship. Nevertheless, in this final section of my chapter I propose a strategy for consequentialists to gain an advantage over their critics. I cannot say that I expect all readers to be convinced by this proposal, but I hope it can provide a more detailed description of what separates consequentialists from their critics. The strategy I propose begins with a simple observation: every reasonable person must accept that authentic friendships are constrained by moral considerations. We may enjoy listening to music or reading poetry that assures us our friends will always be there for support and that those who truly love us will never leave our side.Yet we also know in the back of our minds, if we are forced to think about it by nitpicky philosophers, that even our most intimate relationships are constrained by moral considerations. To think otherwise is to cling to a romantic fiction that, if taken literally, sanctions unacceptable conclusions like the permissibility of a friend murdering the competing applicants for a job you are seeking. A friend may say that they would do anything for you, but this is best understood as poetic license that indicates the depth of their commitment with the presumption of implicitly understood limitations. As Thomas Hurka (1997) notes, even a love as strong as Rick’s love for Elsa in Casablanca must be terminated for a sufficiently worthy cause, and if you find yourself offering up vital information to Nazis for the sake of your personal relationships, then you know that you endorse a self-​absorbed view of the limitations of these relationships. The observation that friendships are limited by more general moral considerations is not controversial when it is made explicit, yet it reveals something important about the deeper authenticity argument against the possibility of consequentialism accommodating friendship. It reveals that this argument is not an objection to any terminating conditions for friendship. As far back as Stocker’s (1981) work there has been acknowledgment of sine qua non conditions (754) that limit friendship without altering its authenticity. The deeper authenticity argument is instead an objection to the consequentialist terminating conditions on a friendship. Critics of consequentialism accept that agents are prohibited from, say, causing unwarranted harm to third parties for the sake of their friends. This is no threat to friendship. The threat is created by the limits that prohibit consequentialists from committing to their friendships if these relationships fail to adequately promote the good from an impartial perspective. At this point, however, the consequentialist can protest that this objection begs the question against consequentialism without capturing anything especially interesting about friendship. Recall that the objection is not based on specific empirical predictions when it comes to consequentialist terminating conditions. The deeper authenticity objection is not that agents like Juan will alienate their friends by exhibiting disloyalty as soon as the impartial math recommends doing so (for that would ignore 270

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the long-​term dispositions sophisticated consequentialism employs), nor is the deeper authenticity objection based on the prediction that agents like Juan will terminate their relationships inappropriately (for that would require presenting empirical details to demonstrate that the termination points of sophisticated agents like Juan are unacceptable, and critics of consequentialism do not present these details). The objection is that having consequentialist terminating conditions, whether they are ever invoked or not, dissolves the authenticity of friendship because it is toxic to have limits imposed by these specific terminating conditions in the background of one’s relationships. Once this is understood, however, it is not clear why consequentialist terminating conditions are so alienating to the authenticity of friendship unless one has already begun with a disparaging view of consequentialism as a moral theory. If terminating conditions for friendship are acceptable in principle, so that critics accept the fact that we are limited to acting in ways that are morally defensible, then it is curious that alienation is created, apart from any specific empirical predictions, just by defining what is morally defensible in consequentialist terms. Indeed, it is no accident that critics of consequentialism set up thought experiments to represent sophisticated measures employed by the theory using characters who are wincingly ambitious (Cocking and Oakley 1995: 97) or else described as being a “moneygrubber or miser” (Jensen 2020: 312). There is no need to worry about contaminating the intuitions derived from these examples if one is already convinced that consequentialism is an unacceptable ethical theory. One wonders, however, if examples like these would have the same impact if the terminating conditions (that might never be invoked) were represented as limits prescribed by situations in which agents were called upon to provide vital, life-​saving aid to innocent persons.10 Are my friendships so fragile that their authenticity is undermined by a background commitment to morality if it were more charitably interpreted? The critic of consequentialism, however, will respond that friendship is indeed a good that is undermined by a background commitment to morality if this commitment is grounded in an impartial, overriding framework. Egoism and consequentialism are just as problematic for the deeper authenticity objection, because the core problem at stake is that agents –​even sophisticated agents like Juan –​ must justify their friendships within a foundational moral perspective that renders commitments to their friends contingent by comparison. This, finally, is the crux of the friendship objection to consequentialism for those who find the view irredeemably alienating. While it is understood that there are moral limits to friendship, critics of consequentialism consider these limits derived from an irreducible plurality of values that cannot be systematized by any single, predominant foundation. From this perspective, the values associated with friendship and the values associated with impartial considerations exist within an overall mixture that allows each value to remain free of being reduced to another. Consequentialism, by contrast, forces values like friendship to fit into a system that ultimately renders these values subordinate to some determinate pattern of aggregation. Egoism may not be quite as compelling as consequentialism, but both justify friendship in terms of a system that sets predetermined limits on personal relationships. In principle, there is always a determinate answer if agents ask whether they can justify the partiality they direct toward their friends, and this saddles agents with a perpetual “one thought too many” that critics of consequentialism find intolerable.11 It seems like we have another stalemate, so how can this discussion of the moral limits on friendship lead to an advantage for consequentialism? My proposal is that the consequentialist embrace the preceding analysis and, like an act of philosophical jujutsu, take the focus on predetermined limits articulated by critics and present it as a feature of consequentialism that is intuitively compelling from both a personal and theoretical point of view. To begin with the personal, why should we accept the claim that agents who accept determinate limits on what is morally defensible cannot have authentic friendships when the alternative is friendship between agents guided by an assortment of values that resist systematization? These may be ground-​level moral intuitions that are difficult to adjudicate, but for my part I find it much more comforting for a friend to be committed to me within principled limits that they can articulate if necessary. This would express an honesty and respect that friends ought to appreciate, whereas it seems alienating to be friends with someone who must accept some 271

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terminating conditions (for the relationship to be morally defensible), but who is incapable of disclosing when these conditions will be invoked. Some may consider it a beautiful mystery for the terminating conditions of their friendships to resist predetermined, overriding limits, but it seems to me no less reasonable to find this indeterminacy unsettling. Returning to Stocker’s original hospital example, it would be deeply alienating for me if Smith reveals that he came to visit me today because he considered it morally defensible, but he admits that the limits of what he accepts as defensible are indeterminate and that he cannot say in advance whether the limits will, or will not, allow him to exhibit loyalty to me in the future. From a theoretical perspective, I believe consequentialists ought to emphasize the merits of putting forward some determinate framework for sorting out the complexity of how our broader moral responsibilities relate to the multifaceted nature of friendship and its highly contextual requirements. The extent of our loyalties varies dramatically from the deep bonds of our family and loved ones to our closest friends to our merely good friends to our friendly acquaintances. There are so many interesting and difficult questions to answer when it comes to justifying the varying levels of partiality we give to our different friends against our broader moral obligations. Consequentialists ought to take pride in at least attempting to provide principled answers to these questions, as ferociously difficult as the empirical predictions might be for these answers. The critic who favors the deeper authenticity argument against consequentialism, by contrast, leaves us with nothing but a promissory note: resist justifying the moral defensibility of our friendships according to some single, determinate framework and rest assured instead that an indeterminate mix of plural and conflicting values will offer just the right balance of commonsense judgments and moral progression to guard against bias and complacency. For the consequentialist, this looks like unwarranted faith or a white flag. The advantage I propose for consequentialism is therefore an intellectual pride in seeking consilience from our otherwise disparate intuitions when it comes to justifying the partiality that we extend to our friends.12 I recognize that this will not be accepted as an advantage by all participants in this complex debate, yet I hope that briefly presenting it has identified some of the key features that separate consequentialists and their critics when it comes to accommodating the authenticity of our friendships with the impartial obligations required to live a morally defensible life.

Related Chapters The Value of Friendship; Friendship and Epistemic Partiality; Partiality to Friends; Are You a Good Friend?

Notes 1 I will refer to friends in most of this chapter, but I will be using this term as convenient shorthand for a broad range of different relations of partiality. 2 For important discussions of the tension between impartial moral theory and different types of partiality, see: Cottingham (1986), Jeske (2008), and Keller (2013). 3 For some of the most prominent readings about moral demandingness, see: Kagan (1989), Unger (1996), Murphy (2003), Cullity (2006), Chappell (2009), Singer (2009) and (van Ackeren and Kühler 2015). 4 I have timed how long it takes to donate online to aid organizations like Oxfam in demonstrations for my students, and I can normally finish the transaction in less than one minute. 5 The terminology is not perfectly consistent in the literature, but the most common way of distinguishing these two categories of consequentialism is to consider direct versions those that directly link their criteria of right action to the promotion of goodness (e.g. act consequentialism) whereas indirect versions propose criteria of right action that track goodness indirectly via some intermediary factor (e.g. rule, virtue, and motive consequentialism). 6 For classic articulations of this strategy, see, for example, Moore (1993), ­chapter 5; Bales (1971); Hare (1981); and Parfit (1984).

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Consequentialism and Friendship 7 Another prominent example is Jackson (1991), but his decision-​theoretic consequentialism is importantly different from the preceding examples because it rejects the separation of a theory’s criterion of right action from what it proposes for practical guidance. 8 It is in this respect that sophisticated consequentialism seeks to capture what Keller (2013) describes as the “phenomenology of friendship.” 9 According to Cocking and Oakley, for example, it is “being disposed to terminate one’s relationships with others whenever these relationships do not maximize the good” (1995, 107, my emphasis) that disqualifies Juan from having an authentic relationship with Linda rather than a particular point that they consider to be counterintuitive for him to terminate the relationship. 10 For a recent example in popular culture, the Galen Urso character from the Star Wars prequel Rogue One faces a choice between his relationship to his daughter and his moral obligation to reduce suffering. In fact, the case is strikingly similar to George the chemist described by Williams (1973, 97–​98). For our purposes, however, what is conspicuous is that a film with as much broad appeal as a Star Wars episode presents this father as a heroic figure who authentically loves his daughter despite his commitment to the greater good. 11 See (Williams 1981, 17–​18). For a direct consequentialist reply, see (Mason 1999). 12 A similar argument for justification via impartial principles acting as a tiebreaker between principles that capture our intuitive judgments can be found in (Hooker 2010).

References Anderson, E.S. 1991. “John Stuart Mill and Experiments in Living.” Ethics 102: 4–​26. Annas, J. 2008. “Virtue Ethics and the Charge of Egoism.” In Morality and Self-​Interest, edited by P. Bloomfield, 201–​21. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Arneson, R.J. 2003. “Consequentialism vs. Special-​Ties Partiality.” The Monist 86: 382–​401. Ashford, E. 2000. “Utilitarianism, Integrity, and Partiality.” The Journal of Philosophy 97: 421–​39. Badhwar, N.K. 1991. “Why It Is Wrong to Be Always Guided by the Best: Consequentialism and Friendship.” Ethics 101: 483–​504. Bales, R.E. 1971. “Act-​Utilitarianism: Account of Right-​Making Characteristics or Decision-​Making Proce­ dures?” American Philosophical Quarterly 8: 257–​65. Brink, D. 1986. “Utilitarian Morality and the Personal Point of View.” The Journal of Philosophy 83: 417–​38. Card, R.F. 2004. “Consequentialism, Teleology, and the New Friendship Critique.” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 85: 149–​72. Chappell,T., ed. 2009. The Problem of Moral Demandingness: New Philosophical Essays. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Cocking, D., and J. Oakley. 1995. “Indirect Consequentialism, Friendship, and the Problem of Alienation.” Ethics 106: 86–​111. Conee, E. 2001. “Friendship and Consequentialism.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 79: 161–​79. Cottingham, J. 1986. “Partiality, Favouritism and Morality.” The Philosophical Quarterly 36: 357–​73. Cox, D. 2005. “Integrity, Commitment, and Indirect Consequentialism.” The Journal of Value Inquiry 39: 61–​73. Cullity, G. 2006. The Moral Demands of Affluence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Driver, J. 2005. “Consequentialism and Feminist Ethics.” Hypatia 20: 183–​99. Friedman, M. 1989. “Friendship and Moral Growth.” The Journal of Value Inquiry 23: 3–​13. Hare, R.M. 1981. Moral Thinking: Its Levels, Method and Point. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hare, R.M. 1988. “Comments.” In Hare and His Critics: Essays on Moral Thinking, edited by D. Seanor and N. Fotion, 199–​293. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hooker, B. 1990. “Rule-​Consequentialism.” Mind 99: 67–​77. Hooker, B. 2000. Ideal Code, Real World:A Rule-​Consequentialist Theory of Morality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hooker, B. 2010. “When Is Impartiality Morally Appropriate?” In Partiality and Impartiality: Morality, Special Relationships, and the Wider World, edited by B. Feltham and J. Cottingham, 26–​ 41. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hurka, T. 1997. “Philosophy, Morality, and the English Patient.” Queen’s Quarterly 104: 46–​55. Hurka, T. 2001. Virtue,Vice, and Value. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jackson, F. 1991. “Decision-​Theoretic Consequentialism and the Nearest and Dearest Objection.” Ethics 101: 461–​82. Jensen, S.J. 2020. “Sophisticated Alienation.” The Journal of Value Inquiry 54: 309–​23. Jeske, D. 2001. “Friendship and Reasons of Intimacy.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 63: 329–​46. Jeske, D. 2008. Rationality and Moral Theory: How Intimacy Generates Reasons. New York: Routledge. Jollimore, T. 2000. “Friendship without Partiality?” Ratio 13: 69–​82. Kagan, S. 1989. The Limits of Morality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Keller, S. 2007. “Virtue Ethics Is Self-​Effacing.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 85: 221–​31.

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Scott Woodcock Keller, S. 2013. Partiality. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Mason, E. 1998. “Can an Indirect Consequentialist Be a Real Friend?” Ethics 108: 386–​93. Mason, E. 1999.“Do Consequentialists Have One Thought Too Many?” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 2: 243–​61. Mill, J.S. 1998. Utilitarianism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Moore, G.E. 1993. Principia Ethica. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Murphy, L. B. 2003. Moral Demands in Nonideal Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Norcross, A. 1997. “Consequentialism and Commitment.” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 78: 380–​403. Parfit, D. 1984. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Pettit, P. 1994. “Consequentialism and Moral Psychology.” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 2: 1–​17. Pettit, P., and G. Brennan. 1986. “Restrictive Consequentialism.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 64: 438–​55. Railton, P. 1984. “Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 13: 134–​71. Sidgwick, H. 1981. The Methods of Ethics, 7th ed. Indianapolis: Hackett. Singer, P. 2009. The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty. New York: Random House. Stocker, M. 1976. “The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories.” The Journal of Philosophy 73: 453–​6. Stocker, M. 1981. “Values and Purposes: The Limits of Teleology and the Ends of Friendship.” The Journal of Philosophy 78: 747–​65. Tedesco, M. 2006. “Indirect Consequentialism, Suboptimality, and Friendship.” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 87: 567–​77. Unger, P. 1996. Living High and Letting Die: Our Illusion of Innocence. New York: Oxford University Press. Upton, C.L. 2008. “Context, Character and Consequentialist Friendships.” Utilitas 20: 334–​47. van Ackeren, M., and M. Kühler, eds. 2015. The Limits of Moral Obligation: Moral Demandingness and Ought Implies Can. New York: Routledge. Wilcox, W. H. 1987. “Egoists, Consequentialists, and Their Friends.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 16: 73–​84. Williams, B. 1973. “A Critique of Utilitarianism.” In Utilitarianism: For and Against, edited by J.J.C. Smart and B. Williams, 77–​150. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, B. 1981.“Persons, Character and Morality.” In Moral Luck, 1–​19. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, B. 1988. “The Structure of Hare’s Theory.” In Hare and His Critics: Essays on Moral Thinking, edited by D. Seanor and N. Fotion, 185–​96. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Wolf, S. 1992. “Morality and Partiality.” Philosophical Perspectives 6: 243–​59. Woodcock, S. 2010a. “Moral Schizophrenia and the Paradox of Friendship.” Utilitas 22: 1–​25. Woodcock, S. 2010b. “When Will Your Consequentialist Friend Abandon You for the Greater Good?” Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 4. www.jesp.org. Woodcock, S. (2021). “Virtue Ethics Must Be Self-​Effacing to Be Normatively Significant.” The Journal of Value Inquiry. Zangwill, N. 2018. “Insane Consequentialism: A Pragmatic Objection to Direct Consequentialism.” Utilitas 30: 317–​32.

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23 PARTIALITY TO FRIENDS Troy Jollimore

Introduction A friend is not just anyone to me: from my perspective, she is special, she stands out from the crowd. I treat her, see her, feel about her, and so on, in ways I do not treat, see, or feel about others, and my relations with her are in important ways unlike my relationships with non-​intimates. This is just to say that we are not impartial with respect to our friends: friendship is, in its very nature, a partial relationship.1 Friend-​directed partiality, moreover, may take various forms. Friend-​directed partiality, like the partiality of personal relationships in general, is frequently pictured as a matter of favoring in the distribution of resources and goods. Such favoring is, to be sure, an important element of friendship. But it is important that we avoid focusing so exclusively on this sort of partiality that we lose sight of the fact that other kinds of partiality, too, play significant and indeed constitutive roles in friendship. In particular, a good deal of friend-​directed partiality takes the form of vulnerabilities of various sorts: to be a person’s friend is, in large part, to open ourselves to them, to let our guards down, and thus to be affected by them, not only in the short term but in ways that, over time, stand to guide our own growth and development and so alter our very identities. In this chapter I want to explore such phenomena as a way of taking some steps toward a more adequate understanding of the partiality of friendship. This is not to deny that the kind of practical favoring we display toward friends –​my doing nice things for them that I do not do for others, devoting more of my time and resources to them than to non-​intimates –​is a salient instance of friend-​directed partiality, and likely the first one we think of when we stop to consider such partiality. Friendship seems to require that I do nice things for my friends that I do not do for others, devoting more of my time and resources to them, offering them greater shares of the goods I command, and so on. (For convenience we can refer to this sort of behavior as friend-​benefiting partiality.) Aristotle, indeed, thought that wishing the good for one’s friend, and doing good things for her, was one of the primary components of friendship (Aristotle 2014: Book IX Chapter 4). And Immanuel Kant seemed to share the view that doing things that enhance a friend’s welfare is a significant part of friendship, writing that perfect friendship “is an ideal of the emotional and practical concern which each of the friends united through a morally good will takes in the other’s welfare” (Kant 1964: 140).

DOI: 10.4324/9781003007012-29

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This may sound like a good thing, but Kant, for one, sometimes expressed serious ethical reservations about friendship and the partiality it involves: Friendship is a restriction of favorable sentiments to a single subject and is very pleasant to him towards whom they are directed, but also a proof that generality and good will are lacking. The latter is much better, and to have no friends, but to be equally well disposed toward everyone is the most noble. By means of [friendship] one absolves oneself of the general duty. All brotherhoods are cabals. Kant 1969: 532 Nor is Kant the only philosopher who has viewed friend-​directed partiality with some skepticism (though passages like this take the skepticism further than most). Friend-​benefiting partiality raises obvious ethical issues, and discussions of friend-​directed partiality frequently take it as the paradigmatic form. Thus, friend-​directed partiality has most commonly been discussed in the context of attempts to adjudicate the competing demands of self-​interest, on the one hand, and morality, on the other. On the first page of his Equality and Partiality, Thomas Nagel writes that the book will address a significant but unsolved problem, that of “reconciling the standpoint of the collectivity with the standpoint of the individual.” His approach to that problem, he writes, reflects a conviction that ethics, and the ethical basis of political theory, have to be understood as arising from a division in each individual between two standpoints, the personal and the impersonal. The latter represents the claims of the collectivity and gives them their force for the individual. If it did not exist, there would be no morality, only the clash, compromise, and occasional convergence of individual perspectives. Nagel 1991: 3–​42 This dualistic scheme is at least broadly identical to the one offered in (Sidgwick 1907), a work whose influence on this debate cannot be overstated. On the one side we have the personal standpoint, that is, the individual perspective. On the other, opposed to and in contention with the “standpoint of the individual,” we have “the collectivity” and its claims. Morality is to be identified with the latter, it seems; for if the standpoint of the collectivity did not exist there would be no morality, and, as Nagel explicitly states, conflicts between distinct individual perspectives do not amount to moral conflicts. Similarly, Samuel Scheffler, in his important book Human Morality, makes it clear right away that the fundamental question of his book concerns “the relationship between morality and the individual.” It is soon made clear, moreover, that “the individual” figures into this scheme primarily, if not solely, in terms of her interests, and that the relevant questions here are questions like “How sharp and how frequent are the conflicts between morality and self-​interest?” and, “do considerations of reason or rationality consistently favor one side or the other, or is it instead the case that neither morality nor self-​interest is always rationally dominant?” (Scheffler 1992: 3). Such a picture places one’s own interests, and the partiality one naturally shows to them and to oneself, on one side of a deep division, while leaving morality on the other. If we then ask where partiality to intimates –​one’s friends and relatives, and so on –​is placed, the answer must presumably be the same. Intimates, one presumes, are not part of the undifferentiated “collectivity” that impinges on us with its moral demands. Indeed, our intimates’ demands will sometimes and likely often compete with those of “the collectivity.” Partiality to our intimates, then, is on this picture naturally conceived of as a part of, or at most a fairly straightforward extension of, the partiality we show to our preferred personal projects and undertakings, the kind of thing we choose to devote a certain portion of our time and resources to, in the hopes, perhaps, of finding pleasure, or fulfillment, or meaning, or something else along those lines. Indeed, on such a picture it is fairly natural to conceive of both partiality 276

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to personal projects and partiality to friends as extensions of partiality to self. This would suggest that friend-​directed partiality will behave in the same way, and be protected (from the incursions of impartial morality, and from other threats) by the same considerations, as self-​directed partiality. Let us call this, then, the Self-​Centered Account of partiality toward intimates. To be clear, neither Nagel nor Scheffler explicitly commits himself to this view, in the passages quoted above; nor am I attributing it to either of them. I do think, though, not only that some version of this view is at least suggested by such approaches, but that it is present in the understanding of a great many people, existing at the very least as a temptation and exerting a certain pressure on our ways of thinking about partiality in general and about the particular relationships in which partiality may be manifested. Its influence is apparent in, for instance, the writings of such critics of impartial morality as Bernard Williams, who takes personal relationships such as marriage as explicit examples of the sort of “ground projects” that give meaning to one’s life, and which ought to be, to some considerable degree, immune to the claims of impartial morality (Williams 1981, 13). The Self-​Centered Account –​the picture of friend-​directed partiality as a subdivision of partiality to self, along with the closely associated picture of friendships as personal projects –​also fits naturally with the tendency, mentioned above, to interpret partiality rather narrowly as a kind of favoring behavior –​that is, as a bestowing of favors –​and so to view the partial agent as a kind of distributor of goods, a person whose primary if not sole agential role is to allocate various resources among various parties. It is, moreover, not only friend-​directed partiality that is frequently pictured in this way; the very concept of partiality itself is often taken in this somewhat restricted manner, either explicitly or implicitly. Brian Feltham’s introduction to a 2010 anthology titled Partiality and Impartiality begins as follows: What is owed to others that I may not keep for myself? What may I keep for myself, even when others are in need? What might be owed to myself that I may not give to others? May I lavish expensive gifts of time, money, and trinkets upon my friends while a stranger goes without a roof or a meal? Feltham 2010, 1 The emphasis, then –​which is consistent in most of the papers in Feltham and Cottingham’s anthology –​is on keeping and giving away, and the conflict between them; that is, on possessions and their allocation. These goods and possessions need not be material in nature: one’s time, effort, and attention might perhaps also be viewed as limited resources in the distributing of which we tend to favor our loved ones. But the overriding picture is clearly one that views the agent as a distributor of the sorts of goods that enhance the recipient’s well-​being, or are otherwise desirable. On such a picture it is natural to think that the primary moral questions that arise here are whether such a tendency can be morally justified, and whether it violates legitimate moral constraints of impartiality. These are, indeed, significant questions. But they are not the only ones; and it seems to me that too narrow a focus on them –​or too strict an adherence to the picture of friend-​as-​distributor-​of-​goods –​risks omitting other significant considerations, and thus distorting our view of the nature of the kinds of partiality that friendship involves.

Identification and Mere Preference: Strong versus Weak Partiality The significance of these questions is undeniable, and there is, no doubt, something at least roughly right in this picture.Tensions between our own self-​interest and the demands of morality are frequently felt in our practical lives, and the idea that friend-​directed partiality is in some way connected with one’s self-​interest, and that one frequently enhances one’s own well-​being by enhancing that of one’s friends, is undeniably plausible. And it is surely the case, too, that many dimensions of friend-​directed 277

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partiality either fit or can be assimilated to the model of benefiting partiality –​straightforwardly in some cases, with a little strain in others. Still, while friend-​benefiting partiality is a significant element of friendship –​and is significant from a moral point of view as well, inasmuch as it raises deep concerns about justice with respect to distributions of goods –​we do not want to focus exclusively on it, to the extent that we lose sight of other ways in which we can be partial to our friends. Friendship is characterized not only by variations in such surface-​level behavior as distributing goods and resources, but also by variations in the psychological structures and dispositions that lie beneath the surface and which explain and are expressed through such behavior. Partiality in the context of friendships and other personal relationships is frequently construed in terms of behavior that differentially affects other people: our inclination to benefit our friends rather than strangers, for instance. But friend-​directed partiality is also, and just as significantly, a matter of being differentially affected by friends, as compared with how one is affected by non-​intimates. It will be useful to draw a distinction between what I will call strong and weak partiality. Weak partiality exists outside of intimate relationships, and it involves little if any identification between the persons involved. Although it is partial, it is, in an important sense, third-​personal. Imagine a teacher who takes a special liking to one of her students. She might favor that student in various ways, exhibiting various forms of preferential treatment toward him, such as seeing to it that he has more access than other students to her aid or to other helpful resources. (After all, in her eyes he is better able to make use of them.) She might also care more about his success than about the success of the students around him. But she does not identify with the student: she feels no real connection with him, nor does she regard the two of them, in any substantial sense, as partners in any sort of joint project; and although she does, in a real sense, take an interest in this particular student, she does not regard her own interests as being bound up in any way with his. If he were to fail in his efforts, or were to abandon them, she would feel disappointed, but not in a personal way; his failure would not represent the failure of one of her projects. Nor is she is tied to him in a way such that, if his desires, projects, or interests were to change, hers would also tend to change in order to try to track or accommodate them. In short, her attitude toward the student, while partial, is still entirely external. It is simply a kind of favoritism, a matter of preference. One might certainly be led by such a preference to devote a disproportionate share of one’s energy and resources to a person one prefers. But such a preference, in itself, falls short of what we find in friendship. What I call strong partiality, by contrast, goes beyond preference and favorable attitudes. It involves a kind of identification in which one person treats another’s attitudes, interests, and projects, not simply as if she were more interested in them than in the attitudes, interests, and projects of strangers (while still fundamentally regarding them as belonging to other people, separate from herself), but as if they were in a very real sense her own. (This contrasts with the Self-​Centered View, which tends to count an agent’s friendships, but not the projects of those friends, as among her projects.) As an example of strong partiality, consider the 1996 film Big Night. The film tells the story of two Italian brothers, the talented chef Primo (Tony Shalhoub) and his younger brother Secondo (Stanley Tucci), who run an Italian restaurant in New Jersey in the 1950s, where the locals do not, for the most part, appreciate the authentic food they serve. As a result of the local population’s lack of sophistication and Primo’s insistence on maintaining the very highest standards of quality and authenticity, they find themselves struggling to survive financially; the restaurant, it seems, is always on the verge of closure. In a memorable scene, Secondo, who manages the business aspects of the restaurant, visits the office of Pascal, a local restaurateur. Because Pascal is willing to compromise on both quality and authenticity, his restaurant has been highly successful. But he admires Primo’s talent, and he wants both brothers to come work for him. Secondo is tempted, but he knows that Primo would reject the idea. In telling Pascal no, he makes the following remark: “I am not just me. I am me and my brother.” Secondo’s statement expresses an important truth about our relations with intimates such as siblings and friends. (It is obvious, indeed, that Primo and Secondo are friends, in addition to being 278

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brothers.) When it comes to interests, at least, one’s identity merges, to a certain degree, with those of one’s friends. Secondo might have said, “I don’t care only about my own interests, but also about Primo’s.” Or: “as it happens, my interests largely coincide with those of my brother.” Both of these would preserve an in principle separation between the two men’s interests, while allowing for some contingent correspondence between them. But he did not say these things. What he said indicates a stronger kind of connection between himself and Primo. He means, I think, to say, first, that there is no possibility of separation here, since damage to his brother’s well-​being would in and of itself constitute an assault on Secondo’s own well-​being. And, second, that his interests and those of his brother would continue to be tied together even if one or both of them were to experience a change in their needs or desires. (The claim need not be that they will track and match each other under any possible change, or could not possibly come apart. The tie is substantial, but defeasible.) Secondo is not merely placing more than the usual weight on Primo’s interests. Rather, Secondo takes Primo’s interests on board as his own. Rather than occupying a view of the world in which Primo looms large, Secondo seems to some considerable degree to occupy Primo’s view. Things that are important to Primo, for example, by virtue of this fact automatically possess a kind of importance for Secondo. This is part of what I mean by saying that Secondo identifies with Primo, rather than merely preferring him or displaying favoritism toward him. Their relationship is strongly, rather than weakly, partial. What does it mean, though, to say that Secondo “takes Primo’s interests on board as his own”? Here I want to draw on an account of friendship proposed by Elijah Millgram. Millgram, taking inspiration from Aristotle’s comment that a friend is “another self,” suggests –​correctly, I believe –​ that being a friend means that in certain cases one takes the same sort of stance toward a friend’s psychological attitude as one does to one’s own attitudes: One’s own beliefs, desires, ends, pleasures, and practical judgments of other kinds enter into one’s thinking directly, that is, as a basis for inference. […] If I want X, I may begin calculating straight off how to get X. That is, if I have a goal, I take the fact that bringing about such-​and-​such would be a way of attaining the goal to be prima facie reason to bring about such-​and-​such; whereas if Smith has a goal, the correlative fact will seem to be no (direct) reason at all. […] This contrast is crisp, however, only provided that Smith is not a friend of mine. For if Smith were a friend, then my relation to many of his practical judgments would be inferentially direct. To make things less confusing, let’s contrast Smith, a stranger, with Jones, my close friend. If Jones is my friend, the fact that Jones wants p is often a direct (if not necessarily overriding) reason to bring about p. The fact that he takes pleasure in such-​and-​ such has immediate consequences for my motivations in much the way that the fact that I take pleasure in such-​and-​such does. […] And one may even stand in inferentially direct relations to certain of the friend’s beliefs, those within what Aristotle regards as the domain of homonoia, the shared views typical of friendship[.]‌ Millgram 1997: 152–​4; emphasis in original According to Millgram, the view that we stand in inferentially direct relations to many of our friends’ judgments, beliefs, intentions, and other attitudes explains a variety of phenomena observed in friendship, including one’s “willingness to accommodate one’s friend’s desires” –​that is, more or less, what we have been calling friend-​benefiting partiality –​as well as the fact that “other things being equal, one takes one’s friend’s ethical and practical views more seriously than those of a stranger” (154, 159). I would argue that this sort of union is just what Secondo likely has in mind when he tells Pascal, “I am not just me. I am me and my brother.” Again, this goes well beyond merely overlapping 279

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interests, or the kind of beneficent concern you might feel when you are fond of someone. Millgram takes his view to be Aristotelian in spirit, and connects it with Aristotle’s famous claim that a friend is “another self ”: “What it is for a friend to be ‘another self,’ ” he writes, “is for such things as the ends, attitudes, and so on, which jointly make up his ‘self,’ to be treated in the same way that one treats analogous items that make up one’s own ‘self ’  ” (157–​8). Julia Annas summarizes the main elements of Aristotle’s account of friendship as follows: A friend, then, is one who (1) wishes and does good (or apparently good) things for a friend, for the friend’s sake, (2) wishes the friend to exist and live, for his own sake, (3) spends time with his friend, (4) makes the same choices as his friend and (5) finds the same things pleasant and painful as his friend. Annas 1998: 1; see Aristotle 2014: 162 (1166a1) The first and third elements clearly involve some form of partiality, though perhaps only what I am calling weak partiality: by (1), I will do more to enhance my friend’s well-​being than to enhance the well-​being of others, and by (3), I will act so as to spend more time with my friend than with other people. The other three elements, read a certain way, may not seem necessarily to require partiality at all. X need not be my friend in order for me to wish that X exists; she might simply be someone I admire, or whose work I value, and so on. And obviously I can make the same choices as Y, or find the same things pleasant and painful as does Z, even though I have no relationship whatever with Y or Z. But in (2), the condition “for his own sake” signals that there is indeed a significant connection: I am not simply glad in an abstract or impersonal way that X exists, but rather, glad because X’s existence enhances my own well-​being. What is involved, then, is not the impartial judgment that X’s existence is a good thing, but a more personal conviction that it is a good thing for me. And (4) and (5), read along the lines of Millgram’s account, clearly involve not only partiality, but strong partiality. Two people might make similar choices, and have similar values, simply because they are similar people, in which case they need not be friends, or have any relationship at all. Friends, by contrast, are committed to sharing certain values, judgments, and goals. At the very least, they must have the goal of spending time together and pursuing at least some joint activities. But a full-​fledged friendship goes well beyond this. In such a relationship, because my friend is another self, many of my friend’s values, judgments, and goals will directly generate reasons for me to act, just as my own values, reasons, and goals do. And one result of this is that friendship changes us: being partial to our friends involves allowing them to shape and influence our progress and development. As Dean Cocking and Jeanette Kennett write, “the self in friendship is, in part, a relational thing that is developed and molded through the friendship” (Cocking and Kennett 2000: 284–​5).

Friend-​Directed Partialities as Vulnerabilities Of course, friends might share values, tastes, goals, and so on for other reasons too. They might be similar to one another even before they meet and form a friendship. Indeed, their similarities may lead to their meeting (perhaps, having similar tastes, they take part in the same activities or spend time with the same people) and, once they have met, encourage them to pursue a friendship. But we should remember that this sort of similarity is neither sufficient nor necessary for friendship, even as we recognize that their being “other selves” for each other, in the sense we have been exploring, is likely to encourage them to become similar in certain respects over the course of their relationship. Admiring each other’s virtues and strengths, they will strive to cultivate the same in themselves; witnessing and contemplating the example set by the other will help them learn how to do so. Trying out things the other likes, they will discover that they enjoy them too, or that they can learn to do so. (Or, in some cases, that they are willing to engage in them for the sake of the friendship, and their friend’s pleasure.) In recognizing someone as a friend, I take her as a trustworthy guide and a reliable judge; I hear her 280

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opinions and suggestions with the presumption that they are valuable and likely helpful, and I allow myself, to a considerable degree, to be shaped and influenced by her. We might worry that on such a picture, friends will be subject to the demands of conflicting goals, plans, interests, values, and beliefs –​and the more so the more friends we have. The latter point is correct, and is presumably the reason why there is a limit on the number of friends we can have. Indeed, as Aristotle reminds us, there are affective demands of friendship that also constitute part of friend-​directed partiality: when a friend is grieving, for instance, I too am called on to grieve; when a friend exults in her triumph, I too ought to feel triumphant. It is also difficult for a large number of people to enjoy together and suffer together as if they were each other’s own kin, since it is likely that being pleased together with one person and grieving together with another will both occur at the same time. Aristotle 2014: 171 (1171a) As Aristotle shrewdly observes, “Those who are many-​friended, and treat everyone they meet as if they were their own kin, seem to be friends with no one, except in a political way –​in fact, people call them ‘ingratiating’ ” (Aristotle 2014: 171 (1171a)). With a smaller number of friends, conflicts may still arise, but will on the whole be manageable. After all, managing conflicts is one of the things that agents do, and even a purely isolated person would still have to do it. My immediate interests may conflict with my long-​term interests; my belief that a certain political party merits my support may conflict with my beliefs about what they have been doing since they were elected; I may achieve a professional success on the same day I receive news of a death in the family. Some such conflicts must simply be endured, but others offer opportunities for change, development, growth. Reasons grounded in desires, intentions, beliefs, and so on, may be defeasible even if they are directly generated, and this is true whether the attitude is my own or my friend’s. It is often ultimately up to me, the agent, to decide what to do. Aristotle’s point about affective partiality reminds us that part of being partial to my friends is being vulnerable and susceptible to being affected by them –​both positively and negatively –​in places where I am relatively immune to being affected by others. (As John Armstrong (2002: 35) writes, “a relationship [is not] a kind of garment which merely goes on top of, and does not in any way change, the inner person.”) In a discussion of the practical role of final ends, Harry Frankfurt makes the following comment: [C]‌ertain things are important to a person only because in fact he does care about them. Consider, for example, a person’s friends. If he did not know those people, or if he were altogether indifferent to them, he might very well not be susceptible either to being hurt or to being pleased by them. It may be entirely on account of his own attitudes toward them, in other words, that they have the capacity to affect him and that they are, accordingly, important to him. Frankfurt 1998: 87 I have been developing a particular picture of how we are affected by our friends, and thus, in Frankfurtian terms, of how it is that our friends are important to us. On this picture, a person’s capacity to affect her friends is not limited to her actions, that is, to what she does. We are also affected, and in profounder ways, by what befalls her (again, we celebrate and grieve in concert with our friends) and by what a friend is, her desires, values, beliefs, and so on. Of course, friend-​benefiting partiality will certainly figure to some degree into this picture. One way a friend might please me is by showering me with gifts. Then again, anyone might shower me with gifts (though strangers are mostly unlikely to), but it would not mean the same thing coming from a stranger as from a friend. As Frankfurt implies, a gift from a friend affects me differently, and does so because of my feelings 281

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toward the friend; conversely, a friend’s failure to provide me with some expected benefit may hurt me, whereas I am not liable to be hurt by a stranger’s omitting to provide a similar benefit, since I do not expect it to begin with.Within the context of friendship, then, I am vulnerable to certain benefits and harms that are more or less excluded from less intimate relationships. Moreover, there are many other ways friends can please me. Presumably, in part, my friends please me simply by being who they are –​that is one of the reasons I befriended them, because they in themselves pleased me.The fact that they accepted my friendship, which implies that I please them in a similar way, pleases me further. (As does the fact that they are pleased that I am pleased.) Likewise, criticism may sting more coming from a friend than from a stranger. That said, the situation is complex: the friend’s willingness to offer such criticism may be a sign of intimacy and trust, and this might well please me. Offering criticism is, after all, sometimes required by friendship, even though, as Kant notes, it can be unpleasant for both parties: From a moral point of view it is, of course, a duty for one of the friends to point out another’s faults to him; this is in the other’s best interests and is therefore a duty of love. But his alter ego sees in this a lack of the respect which he expected from his friend […] [E]‌ven the fact that his friend observes him and finds fault with him will seem in itself an insult. Kant 1964: 141–​2 The phenomenon caring about my friend contains many elements. One of the more obvious ones is caring about the friend’s interests; but an equally significant one is caring about what the friend thinks of me. In general, any behavior that expresses or indicates my friend’s positive assessments of and attitudes toward me will tend to please me. Overt praise and criticism are examples, but other examples may be less direct: her practice of seeking out my company, of sharing information in a way that presumes trust, of asking for help when appropriate or offering to help me without my needing to ask, and so on. I have already alluded to another way in which a friend may please (or pain) me.When friendship binds me to another person I become vulnerable not only to their opinions and attitudes about me, but also to the exigencies of their well-​being and life circumstances. A friend’s successes are to some degree mine; a friend is not harmed without my being harmed, and so forth. Again, much of the explanation, if not all of it, seems to rest on caring. In caring about my friend’s happiness, I make it part of my happiness; in caring about her well-​being, I make it part of my well-​being. As with the phenomena we have already noted, there are levels of mutuality here. I care for and about my friend, which gives her the ability to affect me; but she also cares for and about me, giving me the same ability to affect her. Her being pleased by my successes may please me further. (And again, her being pained by my misfortunes may affect me in complex ways: I might be pained that my distress causes my friend distress, while also being pleased that she cares.) Moreover, at least typically I will care about her in part because she cares about me: that she cares about me is, indeed, one of the things I like about her (and, yet again, vice versa). Closely related to this –​and just as closely related to what I said above, regarding our willingness to be influenced by our friends –​is our willingness to be open with our friends. This is largely a matter of opening ourselves to them: speaking our minds truthfully, even when doing so brings the risk of criticism or ridicule, and dropping the acts and pretenses we adopt in most social situations, placing our vulnerabilities on display, and allowing ourselves to be seen as we truly are. Friendship, then, requires self-​disclosure: it asks that we reveal ourselves, including our hidden selves, to our friends. (For helpful discussion of these themes, see Graham and Lafollette 1989; Thomas 1987; and Martin 1993.) Ideally, a friend is someone who sees you accurately and fully, and who loves you despite your flaws. But to be loved in this way requires that your friend get to see the real you, not the filtered, manicured, and edited version of yourself you present to most of the world. (It is easier, perhaps, but less fulfilling, to get admiration and approval from strangers, who can see our more attractive qualities 282

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but from whom we are often able to hide our less attractive ones.) Genuine friendship, Kant says at one point, is “the complete confidence of two persons in revealing their secret judgments and feelings to each other, as far as such disclosures are consistent with mutual respect” (Kant 2017: 143). This is, obviously, risky behavior, requiring and displaying a considerable degree of trust (as Kant, who may to some degree have exaggerated its dangers, was well aware). Along with this, in addition to wanting to be seen by friends, and behaving in ways that enable this, we also want to see our friends, and know them more deeply and fully than we know others. We are, in general, curious about our friends, and tend to pay more attention to them than we do to strangers; in our perception they stand out from the background of humanity in general. (Call this attentional partiality.) On the whole we are patient with our friends, listening to their explanations of their actions. We want to hear their side of things; we want to see the world from their perspective –​again, a sign that we identify with friends and treat a friend as “another self.” One effect of this is that we will be more likely to approve of friends’ questionable actions, and accept their justifications, or, where no justification (or excuse) seems available, to forgive them (something we might be inclined to do anyway, simply because they are friends) than we are with respect to strangers.3 (This tendency may also be considered a kind of epistemic partiality –​see below.) In part, the desire to be fully seen (without disapproval or disgust) by my friend may be purely subjective: it just feels good to be seen and accepted that way. But there is an objective element as well: we want our own judgments and beliefs –​particularly such self-​regarding beliefs as that we are good, decent, attractive people –​to be affirmed by others; and who better than a friend? Indeed, the acceptance and approval of friends is particularly significant to us, precisely because part of friendship is to take a friend’s view of things seriously; I simply care more about what she thinks of me than I would what a stranger might think of me. Indeed, my friends’ judgments and opinions regarding various aspects of myself –​my own interests and projects, my character, my behavior, my attractiveness, my wit, and so on –​are likely to play a highly significant role in determining my self-​ conception, in stabilizing (or undermining) my self-​confidence, and in decisions that will affect, and aim to affect, not only such matters as what kinds of activities I pursue, what kinds of things I come to value, and how, in general, I spend my time, but also how I behave toward others, which of my qualities I encourage and which I try to diminish or extirpate, and, in general, what sort of person I aim to become. I am, in such respects, highly vulnerable to my friends: their beliefs, perceptions, and judgments can affect me in extremely significant ways, to a substantially greater degree than I am affected by the judgments of others. This is to say, in part, that there is such a thing as credential partiality: a tendency to trust our friends’ statements more than those of other people, to trust their judgment, to take the fact that a friend believes something as a reason for us to believe it, and so on. We might say, briefly, that we take our friends’ views to be authoritative for us in a way that the views of strangers typically are not. (Credential partiality is part of the explanation for why we care so much about what our friends think of us, but it does not exhaust that phenomenon; after all, even if I was convinced that a friend’s negative judgment of me was inaccurate and unfair, I would still be disturbed by it and would want to change it.) The existence of credential partiality follows quite straightforwardly from the fact, mentioned earlier, that I sometimes treat my friends’ beliefs as if they were my own, drawing inferences directly from them rather than indirectly. Rather than trusting friends the way I do strangers (i.e., solely on the basis of evidence –​leading me to conclude, for instance, that certain strangers are reliable experts), in these cases I trust my friends in much the same way that I trust myself: their views, like mine, have a kind of automatic authority for me. (Of course, we do often –​but not always –​take ourselves to have evidence that our friends are at least generally reliable and trustworthy.) Credential partiality might perhaps be understood as one phenomenon falling under a broader umbrella that has received some attention in the recent literature under the name epistemic partiality, typically understood to denote the influence friendship has on our beliefs and methods of forming and maintaining beliefs. 283

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(For discussion, see Keller 2004; Stroud 2006; Arpaly and Brinkerhoff 2018; Goldberg 2019; and Jollimore 2011.). As mentioned above, we frequently tend to adopt, or at the very least feel some impetus to adopt, our friends’ values and goals.This phenomenon, which I am taking to be a core element of friendship, is amplified by some of some of these other forms of partiality we have been canvassing. (Indeed, there is considerable overlap between the different kinds of partiality; I do not take it that they can be cleanly separated.) Knowing that a friend has a certain goal or supports a certain cause may incline me, via credential partiality, to view that goal or cause in a more favorable light.This might lead me to become more curious about the reasons for supporting it, or else simply to assume that, if my friend values it, there must be something to be said for it. Even if I have some desire to maintain a certain distance or skepticism, I am unlikely to dismiss her arguments out of hand, as we are prone to do when positions we are resistant to are presented by strangers. Since sharing activities is an important part of friendship, I might find myself doing things with my friend that promote or support the goals and causes she is interested in. My trust in my friend and faith in her judgment will lead me to believe that these activities are worthwhile –​after all, my friend judges them to be so. As I engage in them, I may come –​with my friend’s help, or under her influence –​to develop a deeper and more nuanced appreciation of their value. I might also end up making new friends with similar values and goals, which will further intensify the process. Even if none of this takes place, the mere fact that my friend has a certain goal will seem to me directly relevant to my own planning and practical reasoning: I would be very unlikely, for instance, to do something that would make it impossible for a friend to achieve an important goal, or that would directly contravene values I know to be strongly held by my friends. And if I cannot see the value in my friend’s goals, the fact that she does, or believes she does, will make me less likely to dismiss the possibility that it is there and I am missing it –​just as a friend’s criticism will render me unable to complacently accept a positive view of myself. Knowing that a friend believes that I am careless and quick to judgment, I have reason to try to become more careful and patient. Her own good example may serve here both as a source of inspiration and of guidance for how to work toward being such a person. Knowing that a friend is deeply interested in jazz, or poetry, I have reason to consider exploring these myself, both because I trust her judgment (“If she finds these to be rewarding, it is likely I would as well”) and because it would provide a further area of shared interest and endeavor, additional common ground between us. Enjoying and talking about jazz, or poetry, would become something else we could do together.

Partialities, Risks, and Costs While these various ways of being open to others are important parts of friendship, all of them carry some risk. Some of the risks are to our own well-​being. We might find ourselves neglecting our own projects, sacrificing our own interests, and spending our resources on our friends to an excessive degree. We might become overly identified with one of our friends (or more than one?), posing a threat to our independence and autonomy. We might associate such risks with romantic love, but in friendship, too, it is possible to lose ourselves, to be in thrall to someone else to the point where we forget who we are.4 Beyond these various risks of self-​neglect, self-​sacrifice, and self-​harm, there are of course moral worries. I began this chapter by talking about some of those, and I noted there that the issue of how much friend-​directed partiality is morally permitted has often been treated as the most significant question, if not the only question, arising in connection with such partiality. Although this chapter attempts to reorient the discussion of friend-​directed partiality to some extent, it should be clear that it leaves intact the kinds of moral worries expressed and reflected in that debate. Indeed, if anything, the view being sketched here may exacerbate and amplify such worries. If friendship is largely a matter of being vulnerable, open, and permeable to one’s friends, of taking many of their values and attitudes as one’s own and as directly and perhaps automatically giving rise 284

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to reasons for us to act, then it is clear that to enter into a friendship is to put oneself at risk from a moral point of view. A morally flawed friend is likely to enlist us in some of her flawed projects; she may invite or demand commitments of our resources that, from a moral point of view, would have been better spent elsewhere; she might infect us with her vices and her less than admirable way of seeing things. And it is not always the case, of course, that we know what we are getting into. Alexander Nehamas emphasizes the fact that we form friendships on the basis of partial knowledge; indeed, for Nehamas, friendship is only possible as long as a friend remains partly unknown and perhaps unknowable. One can see how valuable such indeterminacy can be when befriending people who will be good for us. Perhaps genuine growth is never possible in any area of life without a degree of openness that invites uncertainty and risk. But since, on such a view, one can never know for certain that a given potential friend will lead one in good directions, the risk is genuine: even a morally well-​intentioned person might find herself entering into a relationship whose ultimate effect will be to change her in ways she could not have foreseen and would not, had she known in advance, have endorsed: [T]‌ he forward-​ looking element in friendship makes every relationship risky. When I approach you in friendship my hope is that you will make me wish for things I couldn’t even have thought to wish for without you. I give you power over myself and trust you not to exploit it. I put my identity at risk because, despite the certainty that love inspires, it is impossible for me to know what our relationship will ultimately mean for me and whether it will be for good or bad. Nothing ensures that my feeling or my judgment is right […] Worse, nothing ensures that our relationship won’t harm and degrade my judgment itself, making me feel happy to have become someone I would have hated to be, perhaps rightly, had you not come into my life. Nehamas 2016: 136–​7 Recognizing such risks helps us see that the moral dangers of friendship go well beyond the “spending” model with which we began –​the worry, that is, that I might devote too many of my available resources to my friends, leaving not enough for everyone else. This is a real risk but far from the only one. In addition to simply encouraging me to commit acts of omission –​not helping the needy as much as I should, and so on –​friendship might positively require the commission of certain acts. A friend is having an affair, and needs you to attest to their innocence or provide a false alibi; or they want to get revenge on someone and request your assistance; or they have committed a crime and ask you, rather than or in addition to providing an alibi, to hide stolen goods, or to help move a body. (See Cocking and Kennett 2000 for a discussion of the latter type of case.) And so on. Presumably, some such demands should be resisted: the reasons of friendship are not automatically so powerful and authoritative that we must always act on them, even when doing so means acting immorally. On the other hand, I see no reason for thinking that morality’s demands must always win out over friend-​directed partiality. The line that separates what we must do (as a friend) from what we may not do (as a moral agent) is neither obvious nor, perhaps, entirely stable; as Nehamas’s observations remind us, by the time you are deeply embroiled and embedded in a given friendship, you might well be so changed by it that you will no longer draw that line where you would have before. Perhaps this puts us in mind of Kant’s objection to friendship, quoted at the start of this chapter. “Friendship is a restriction of favorable sentiments to a single subject and is very pleasant to him towards whom they are directed, but also a proof that generality and good will are lacking.” Judging by this statement, Kant seemed to assume that friendship would necessarily lead to a bad result –​at least from the point of view of impartial morality, or of humanity at large. Although it is important to acknowledge that there is some possibility of this –​a possibility, perhaps, we cannot completely rule out or shield ourselves against –​the claim seems an exaggeration. On the other hand, it may be true 285

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that the commitments of friendship will always inflict some costs on our commitments to the world at large, or to the general well-​being of humanity. But of course, the converse is also true: commitments to humanity at large –​or, for that matter, toward a nation, a society, or indeed anything too large to count as an intimate relationship –​will always inflict at least some cost on those relationships of intimacy. And any of these, of course, can be costly to the dear self. Our practical situations would be somewhat easier, and our practical lives clearer, if there were a single perspective from which these various risks, costs, and benefits could be assessed. So far as I can tell, there is no such thing.There are, rather, multiple diverse perspectives –​and significant among these, for most of us at any rate, are the perspectives of those “other selves” whom we call friends.

Related Chapters Friendship and Practical Reason; The Value of Friendship; Friendship and Epistemic Partiality; Epistemic Partiality to Friends and Value Commitments; Friendship and Personal Identity

Notes 1 Nearly everyone agrees on this, though some have denied it. For an example, see (Kagan 1989: 367–​9). I respond to Kagan in (Jollimore 2000), arguing that we will only be inclined to deny that friendship involves partiality if we take too narrow and limited a view of what forms partiality can take –​a point that is important in this chapter as well. 2 Nagel goes on to note in the next sentence that “It is because a human being does not occupy only his point of view that each of us is susceptible to the claims of others through private and public morality.” The reference to private morality is a complicating factor, and may at least raise the possibility that Nagel might have in mind something less strict than the straightforwardly dualistic model. However, it is difficult to know just what is intended here. 3 Though not always. When a friend’s action harms you, it might be harder to forgive her than it would be to forgive a stranger who had performed an outwardly identical action. And when we do decide that a friend has acted badly, we often have a much harder time getting over it than when it is a stranger who has performed some misdeed. 4 The situation is complex, of course, and it is a question of striking the right balance. Since friends identify with one another, one’s friends’ happiness is part of one’s own happiness. So we might hold that some degree of sacrifice and neglect of oneself is necessary in friendship; or, alternatively, we might view the identification in a way that makes it inappropriate to speak of sacrifice or self-​neglect at all –​or perhaps we want to say that such concepts are only appropriate when the line of propriety is crossed, and one is not simply giving, but giving (and giving up) too much.

References Annas, J. 1988. “Self-​Love in Aristotle.” Southern Journal of Philosophy 27 (Suppl.): 1–​18. Aristotle. 2014. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by C.D.C. Reeve. Indianapolis: Hackett. Armstrong, J. 2002. Conditions of Love. New York: Norton. Arpaly, N., and A. Brinkerhoff. 2018. “Why Epistemic Partiality Is Overrated.” Philosophical Topics 46 (1): 37–​51. Cocking, D., and J. Kennett. 2000. “Friendship and Moral Danger.” Journal of Philosophy 97 (5): 278–​96. Feltham, B. 2010. “Introduction: Partiality and Impartiality in Ethics.” In Partiality and Impartiality: Morality, Special Projects, and the Wider World, edited by B. Feltham and J. Cottingham, 1–​25. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Frankfurt, H. 1998. Necessity,Volition, and Love. New York: Cambridge University Press. Goldberg, S. 2019. “Against Epistemic Partiality in Friendship: Value-​Reflecting Reasons.” Philosophical Studies 176 (8): 2221–​42. Graham, G., and Hugh LaFollette. 1989.“Honesty and Intimacy.” In Person to Person, 167–​81. Philadelphia:Temple University Press. Jollimore, T. 2000. “Friendship Without Partiality?” Ratio 13 (1): 69–​82. Jollimore, T. 2011. Love’s Vision. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kagan, S. 1989. The Limits of Morality. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Kant, I. 1964. The Doctrine of Virtue: Part II of The Metaphysic of Morals. Translated by Mary Gregor. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

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Partiality to Friends Kant, I. 1969. Handschriftlicher Nachlass, Anthropologie, Erste Hälfte: Schriften,Vol. 15. Berlin and Leipzig: Walter De Gruyter. Kant, I. 2017. The Metaphysics of Morals. Edited by Lara Denis, translated by Mary McGregor. NewYork: Cambridge University Press. Keller, S. 2004. “Friendship and Belief.” Philosophical Papers 33 (3): 329–​51 Martin, M. 1993. “Honesty in Love.” Journal of Value Inquiry 27 (3–​4): 497–​507. Millgram, E. 1997. Practical Induction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Nagel, T. 1991. Equality and Partiality. New York: Oxford University Press. Nehamas, A. 2016. On Friendship. New York: Basic Books. Scheffler, S. 1992. Human Morality. New York: Oxford University Press. Sidgwick, H. 1907. The Methods of Ethics, 7th edn. London: Macmillan. Stroud, S. 2006. “Epistemic Partiality in Friendship.” Ethics 116 (3): 498–​524. Thomas, L. 1987. “Friendship.” Synthese 72: 217–​36. Williams, B. 1981. Moral Luck. New York: Cambridge University Press.

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24 FRIENDSHIP AND SPECIAL OBLIGATIONS Jörg Löschke

An important assumption both of commonsense morality and of philosophical theorizing about friendship is the assumption that friendship involves special obligations. Such special obligations of friendship are obligations to do things specifically for or with our friends in virtue of the friendship, and in this they contrast with general obligations, which are obligations that we owe to any person in virtue of being a person. So, for example, while Anna has a general obligation to respect the bodily integrity of everyone, regardless of whether she knows the other person or not, likes her or dislikes her, or stands in some other kind of relationship with her, Anna has a special obligation to help her friend Beth in certain situations that she does not have in regard to strangers –​say, she has an obligation to help Beth move house, or to be there for Beth after a bad breakup, or to pick Beth up from the airport at 2 a.m. if Beth has no other opportunity to get home, and Anna certainly does not have such obligations with regard to strangers. The assumption that friendship involves special obligations is widely shared, both by non-​ philosophers and by philosophers who work on the normativity of friendship,1 but it raises several philosophical questions. It clashes with another assumption that is widely shared by philosophers and is an important part of commonsense morality, namely the idea of moral egalitarianism. The idea is that every person is of equal moral worth, regardless of contingent factors such as their race, nationality, gender, or the relation in which we stand to them. Moral egalitarianism expresses the important idea that impartiality is an important feature of morality; but special obligations are not about impartiality. They require us to treat our friends and their well-​being as more important than the well-​being of non-​friends (even if friends can of course acknowledge that the well-​being of the other is not, objectively speaking, more important than is the well-​being of any other person). They are, in other words, about partiality, rather than impartiality. And this presents us with a “puzzle of partiality” (Keller 2013: 5): if moral egalitarianism is true, then how is it possible that our obligations to people differ depending on whether they are our friends or not? This puzzle of partiality is certainly one of the most prevalent issues related to special obligations of friendships, but it is not the only one. Special obligations of friendship raise a couple of interrelated questions, questions about their status, their justification, and their content. I will address some of these questions in this chapter. Before I do so, however, it is helpful to characterize special obligations of friendship in some detail. 288

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1  Special Obligations of Friendship: General Remarks Special obligations of friendship are, of course, not the only obligations that we have. I have already mentioned that we also have general obligations to people in general. And special obligations of friendship are also not the only kinds of special obligations that we have. Special obligations can also arise in other kinds of relationships such as romantic partnerships, family relationships, or co-​citizenship. Hence, it is helpful to identify some aspects of special obligations of friendship, the combination of which makes them rather unique (or almost unique). As a general observation, special obligations (whether those that arise within friendships or other kinds of relationships) are typically positive duties, that is: duties to do things with or for the relationship partner, to help her, to benefit her, and so on. It is an open question whether there can also be negative duties in friendship that take the form of special obligations, where this would mean that we have an obligation not to do things to our friends that would be permissible when done to a stranger, or whether friendship makes the violation of general negative duties more seriously wrong when a friend is involved (Hurka 2017: 174), or whether this only holds in certain cases. For the purposes of this chapter, I will be concerned with positive special obligations of friendship: duties to do things with or for our friends that would be optional (and perhaps supererogatory) in the case of strangers. The first important aspect of special obligations of friendship is their agent-​relative character. This means that the full specification of the obligation includes a reference to the duty-​bearer (McNaughton/​Rawling 1998; Darwall 2006; Ridge 2017). For example, Anna has special obligations to do things for and with Bertha because Bertha is her friend. This agent-​relative character of special obligations of friendship distinguishes them from general obligations. Impartial moral demands are agent-​neutral in the sense that it does not matter who the duty-​bearer and the duty-​holder are, and what relationship they have (although certain contingent factors might matter, such as spatial or perhaps temporal proximity). By contrast, the partial demands of friendship are agent-​relative in the sense that it does very much matter who duty-​bearer and duty-​holder are. Thus, this agent-​relative character distinguishes special obligations of friendship from other kinds of positive moral obligations, such as obligations to help those in need. The second important aspect of special obligations of friendship is that they depend on the previous actions of the duty-​holder. We choose our friends, and we build and maintain friendships. Friendships are not relationships that we find ourselves in (even though some friendships that we form at a very early age might feel that way). This distinguishes special obligations of friendship from other kinds of special obligations such as special obligations of co-​citizenship or special obligations to one’s parents or siblings, since we find ourselves as citizens of a certain state and as members of a certain family, and our membership in these groups does not depend on our previous actions (even though there might be some exceptions). A third (and related) feature of special obligations of friendship is that they are attitude-​dependent. This does not mean that such obligations are conditional on whether the duty-​bearer wants to do what she is required to do: if Anna has a special obligation to help her friend Bertha move house, then she has this obligation even if she would rather spend the afternoon in the park. But they do depend on how the duty-​bearer feels about the duty-​holder. Regardless of which theory of friendship one accepts, one necessary feature of friendship is that friends like one another –​if Anna and Bertha do not like each other, then it can hardly be said that they are friends. And if you stop liking or caring about someone, then this means that at some point your friendship with that person ends. And if the friendship ends, then you cease to have special obligations of friendship to that person. Again, this distinguishes special obligations of friendship from other kinds of special obligations such as obligations of co-​citizenship, where it does not matter how the agent feels about the other person.

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The last important feature of special obligations of friendship is their open character. Special obligations of friendship are open-​ended in the sense that they are never fully discharged once and for all. They exist as long as the friendship exists. Furthermore, it is not possible to determine without contextualization what exactly friends owe to each other. The social practice of friendship leaves room for the friends to shape the normative contours of their friendship, so that different friendships can include different obligations. Even the different friendships of one and the same person can include different special obligations that she and her different friends take themselves to have. Friendship includes a somewhat contractualist element with regard to the special obligations that arise within it in that friends usually reach a mutual agreement of what to expect from one another and what special obligations their friendship includes (Löschke 2017). This open character of special obligations of friendship distinguishes them from other kinds of special obligations –​for example, the special obligations of citizenship are for the most part put into a legal code, and parents have special obligations to their small children that are not merely a matter of agreement between the parents and the children (such as obligations to help the children become autonomous agents, obligations to increase their well-​being, etc.). These are some ways in which special obligations of friendship differ both from general obligations and from special obligations of other kinds. I will now turn to discussing the questions that I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter: questions about the status, the rationale, and the content of special obligations of friendship. This will also illustrate different strategies to solve the puzzle of partiality.

2  The Status of Special Obligations The first question regarding special obligations of friendship concerns their status. By this I mean the question is whether such obligations are obligations sui generis and constitute a distinct class of obligations or whether they can be reduced to some other kind of obligation, appearances notwithstanding. This discussion has been framed in terms of reductionism versus non-​reductionism regarding special obligations (Scheffler 2001). Reductionists think that special obligations of friendship form no distinct class of obligations, and that they can be reduced to other kinds of obligations. Different reductionists hold different views about the kinds of obligations that special obligations of friendship can be reduced to. Possible candidates include (but are not limited to) the obligation not to violate the trust of another person, the obligation to protect the vulnerable, the obligation to reciprocate benefits that have been provided by someone else, the obligation to be grateful and to express gratitude through one’s actions (Wallce 2012: 177–​8), or the obligations that arise from tacit or expressed promises or contracts (Jeske 2008: 76–​83). Another important class of reductionist accounts of special obligations are the different consequentialist attempts to accommodate such obligations such as rule consequentialism (Hooker 2000), motive consequentialism (Pettit 1997), or satisficing consequentialism (Slote 1984). What all these accounts have in common is that they reduce special obligations to some other kinds of obligations –​obligations to maximize the agent-​neutral good (in the case of consequentialist versions) or obligations that stem from general moral principles that apply to cases that involve friends and non-​friends alike. Thus, according to the reductionist view, special obligations are not really special obligations. They are general obligations that we owe to people in general, and the friendship is merely a special case of application (Jeske 1998). By contrast, non-​reductionists think that special obligations of friendship are obligations sui generis. Non-​reductionists take seriously the idea that our special obligations exist in virtue of our friendship, and that we owe our special obligations to our friends as friends, not merely as persons who trust us, who have benefited us in the past, who are vulnerable with regard to our actions, who are tools to maximize the impersonal good, or whatever else might be the reduction base for our special obligations that reductionists suggest. According to the non-​reductionist view, it is the friendship itself that grounds a special obligation.2 290

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The main argument in favor of reductionism is that the view provides an easy solution to the puzzle of partiality. If we accept that we have duties to protect the vulnerable, duties not to betray trust, duties of gratitude, duties to make the world as good as possible, and so on, then special obligations pose no further problem. They are merely instances of those other duties that we already accept. And those other duties hold in every case where the relevant principle applies. Thus, there is no clash between special obligations and the idea of impartiality. The idea that we have special obligations to our friends is no more problematic than the idea that we have a duty to pay someone five dollars if we have promised to do so. Despite this advantage, reductionism has become a minority position in the literature.3 One important argument against it is that non-​ reductionism is supported by common sense (Jeske 2001: 330; Wallace 2012). Our everyday thinking about special obligations clearly suggests that special obligations of friendship are directly generated by the friendship, not by some independent moral principles. When asked why she picks up Bertha early in the morning, Anna will point out that Bertha is her friend, not that Bertha is particularly vulnerable to her or that by helping Bertha, Anna makes the world a better place. Non-​reductionism therefore offers a straightforward account of special obligations that reductionism lacks. Non-​reductionism also seems to be the phenomenologically adequate view that reflects our experience of acting on behalf of a friend.When we help a friend, we are motivated by our friendship, not by general moral principles. And we take the friendship as the reason why we ought to do so. Non-​reductionism understands the aspects that we take to be duty-​ generating as actually duty-​generating. Another argument in favor of non-​reductionism is a conceptual argument. The idea is that special obligations are conceptually linked to friendship: part of what it means to be a friend is to have special obligations to the friend (Raz 1989; Tan 2010). If this is correct, then we do not need any further principles to explain special obligations of friendship. The fact of friendship itself is sufficient to explain special obligations of friendship. In the end, reductionist accounts of special obligations are too detached from our actual experience to offer a convincing account of special obligations. But non-​reductionists still need to provide a rationale for special obligations. Granted that special obligations are a distinct kind of obligations that cannot be reduced to other kinds of obligations, why do we have them, and how can reductionists solve the puzzle of partiality? This is the second question that needs to be addressed.

3  The Rationale of Special Obligations From a non-​reductionist perspective, it is not possible to reduce special obligations to obligations of some other kind. This leaves open the question of how to explain such obligations. Following a helpful distinction put forward by Simon Keller (2013), many philosophers now work within the framework of what Keller calls the Projects View, the Relationships View, and the Individuals View. The Projects View is the view that our reasons to act on behalf of our friends stem from the fact that the friendship is an important project of ours (and the same holds subsequently for our special obligations of friendship) (Williams 1981). This view might provide an easy solution to the puzzle of partiality: when we choose a ground project, we make a commitment and regard this project to be of special value to us, but we are by no means committed to the view that our ground projects (or their content) are objectively more valuable than the ground projects of others (or their content). Hence, we can both maintain that we have special obligations to our friends and that all persons have the same moral worth. This possible advantage notwithstanding, the Projects View is hardly defended in the literature. Its main problem is that it assigns special obligations the wrong focus (Keller 2013; Lord 2016). According to this view, special obligations of friendship are grounded in facts about the agent whose obligations they are. Anna owes Bertha help because the friendship with Bertha is an important 291

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ground project of Anna’s. Thus, Anna’s special obligation to Bertha is about Anna and only indirectly about Bertha. But it seems much more plausible to think that Anna’s obligation to Bertha must have something to do with Bertha, or with the friendship between Anna and Bertha. If Anna contemplates whether she ought to help Bertha and focuses merely on whether Bertha is part of her ground projects, then Anna seems to be self-​centered in a problematic way. A related argument against the Projects View is that it contradicts the phenomenology of partiality that I mentioned before. Suppose that your friend is in the hospital. If you go to visit her, you do not think about yourself, and how she is part of one of your ground projects. You think about her and how it would cheer her up to have some company. This leaves us with the two other alternatives, the Individuals View and the Relationships View. Proponents of the Relationships View argue that special reasons to benefit friends (and subsequently, special obligations of friendship) are grounded in (facts about) the friendship itself, whereas proponents of the Individuals View hold that these reasons (and obligations) are grounded in (facts about) the friend. I will start my discussion with the Relationships View. If special reasons (and subsequently special obligations) of friendship are directly grounded in the friendship, then the question is how exactly the friendship provides such reasons. I have already mentioned one possible explanation: perhaps it is simply a conceptual truth that “being a friend” implies “having special obligations.” But as Simon Keller points out, this conceptual argument cannot be correct because there can be “undemanding friendships” (Keller 2013: 51), that is: friendships that involve no special obligations. Proponents of this conceptual argument are therefore committed to the claim that people who claim to have undemanding friendships are conceptually confused and do not know what it means to be a friend, and this is difficult to believe. A better account of the Relationships View focuses not on the concept of friendship to explain special obligations, but on the value of the friendship.The idea would then be that special obligations of friendship exist because of the value of the friendship that generates them. The question is how to spell out the value of friendship and how to understand the link between that value and the existence of special obligations. A first possibility is to think that friendship is intrinsically good, and that giving preferential treatment to a friend is an appropriate response to that value. Proponents of this view need to explain two things: why friendships are intrinsically good (that is: good in themselves, and not merely instrumentally good in that they help realize other goods for the friends), and why being partial to a friend is an appropriate response to that value. Regarding the first question, proponents of the Relationships View can explain the intrinsic value of friendship in different ways. One possibility is to regard friendship as a fundamental good whose occurrence makes the world a better place and to claim that it is simply a brute evaluative truth that friendships are intrinsically valuable. This is not a particularly promising view, for two reasons. First, it seems odd to say that friendships make the world a better place, independently of the contribution that they make to people’s lives. Second, an account that explains the intrinsic goodness of friendship (and does not simply take it for granted) is philosophically more satisfying. Thus, we should look for an account that actually provides an explanation of the intrinsic value of friendship, an explanation that is in line with a broader theory of intrinsic value. One such view is Robert Nozick’s (1981) theory of intrinsic value. Nozick develops a complex unity view of intrinsic value according to which intrinsic value is constituted by (or supervenes on) complex unity: whenever something is intrinsically good, this is because that entity brings disparate elements into a complex whole. And friendship fits this description. Friendships bring the plans, desires, and goals of two individual persons into a complex whole. And given the diachronic structure of friendships and the common history that friends have, friendships constitute complex unity to a considerable degree. Thus, if complex unity grounds intrinsic value, it follows that friendships are intrinsically valuable; and the view also implies that the closer and longer a friendship, the more 292

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valuable it is because it constitutes complex unity to a greater degree, which is an independently plausible result. Another possible account of the intrinsic value of friendship has been put forward by Thomas Hurka (2001). Hurka identifies three basic goods that are not reducible to one another, namely knowledge, achievement, and pleasure. And according to Hurka, friendship is a complex good that includes all three of these basic goods: friends know each other well, they enjoy spending time with one another, and by pursuing cooperative goals, friends make complex achievements. As a result, friendship inherits its intrinsic value from these other intrinsically good things (and perhaps to an even greater degree –​friendship is a complex whole that unifies intrinsically good things, so one might even combine Hurka’s view and Nozick’s view and argue that friendship is a much greater good than the individual goods that friendship is composed of. Understood this way, friendship could be an organic whole in Moore’s sense in that the value of the whole exceeds the value of the parts). But friendship is also intrinsically valuable in another way. Friends care for one another for their own sakes, and this means that they do not only take pleasure in one another, but more specifically pleasure in each other’s good. They desire and pursue another person’s good for its own sake. And this also explains the intrinsic value of friendship: taking pleasure in intrinsic goods, desiring something that is intrinsically good, and pursuing things that are intrinsically good are all pro-​attitudes toward intrinsic values, and Hurka argues for the general axiological claim that pro-​attitudes toward intrinsically good entities are themselves intrinsically good. Thus, the intrinsic value of friendship can also be explained in terms of this “recursive account,” as Hurka calls it. One possible advantage of Hurka’s view is that it not only explains why friendships are intrinsically good, but also why being partial to a friend is an appropriate response to the value of friendship. Thus, it offers a solution to the puzzle of partiality. If we explain the intrinsic value of friendship solely in terms of the complex unity that friendship constitutes, then it might be difficult to see why an agent ought to prioritize her own friendships over the friendships of others, given that the latter also constitute complex unities. But if the intrinsic value of friendship is explained (at least partly) by the fact that friends desire, enjoy, and pursue each other’s good, then it is not difficult to see why friends ought to prioritize their friendship over the friendship of others. The special concern for the friend is what makes friendship intrinsically valuable in the first place! A possible objection is that if special concern makes friendship intrinsically valuable, and if an agent could promote someone else’s special concern by neglecting her own friend, then this is what she ought to do. The puzzle of partiality would then simply reappear. This, however, would overlook the fact that the value of special concern presupposes that friends do not abandon one another in order to promote other people’s friendships or special concern. Thus, it cannot be the case that people ought to abandon their own friendships to promote the friendships of others: this would undermine the possibility of the very value that is supposed to be promoted in this case, namely the value of friendship. Note that both accounts that I have mentioned so far understand the value of friendship as intrinsic value, that is: friendships are good simpliciter. The second possible way to spell out the value of friendship is to understand friendships not as simply good, but as good for the friends. This might appear a more plausible account: after all, we do not lead friendships to realize value that is independent of our interests and concerns, but because friendships make our lives better and worthwhile. Friendships contribute to our well-​being (at least for the most part) –​why should we form them if they were not good for us? This is the second way to understand the Relationships View, as a view not about the intrinsic value of friendships, but as a view about their contribution to our well-​being. Again, the question is why friendships make this contribution to our well-​being, and why the appropriate response to the value of friendship is to be partial to the friend. With regard to the first question, some authors claim that friendship is a basic good whose occurrence by itself makes a person’s life go better (Railton 1984). This is certainly an initially plausible view: friendships enrich our lives, and we do not lead our friendships for some further benefits 293

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such as money or fame –​if you befriend someone simply for the sake of becoming famous, then you are not a real friend. But again, perhaps it is also possible to give a deeper explanation of why friendships are good for us. This is what special goods theories attempt to do (Keller 2007; Seglow 2013; Brighouse/​Swift 2014; Pettit 2015; Gheaus 2018). The basic idea behind special goods theories is that humans have weighty interests in so-​called relationship goods, which are goods that can only be realized in certain kinds of relationships and can only be provided by the relationship partner. To illustrate this point with a somewhat trivial example, consider the parent–​child relationship. A mother might have an interest in spending Christmas with her son. And this qualifies as a relationship good: it contributes to the flourishing of the mother (although, admittedly, only in a minor way), and, more importantly, it is a good that can only be provided in the relationship, and it can only be provided by the son. It is not as if the good is provided if the son pays some stranger to spend Christmas with his mother. Furthermore, the good does not exist independently of the relationship –​it is created by the interactions of the relationship partners, in this case, mother and son. In this sense, relationship goods are “agency goods” (Seglow 2013: 31): their value depends (at least partly) on the fact that the relationship partners have created them together. Relationship goods can play several theoretical roles. First, they help distinguish different kinds of relationships. According to relationship goods theories, such goods form the normative substance of relationships, and this means that the kind of relationship that two people have depends on which goods they can realize within their relationship. In other words, relationship goods are (at least partly) constitutive of the nature of the relationship. Furthermore, relationship goods help explain the value of personal relationships of different kinds: relationships are valuable to the extent that the participants can realize relationship goods (or do in fact realize such goods). Finally, relationship goods help explain the special obligations that relationship partners have. For the purposes of this chapter, I will focus on these last two possible roles of relationship goods. The value of relationships stems from the contribution that personal relationships can make to the well-​being of their participants, and they make such a contribution because they are the only way to realize the relationship goods that form their normative substance. Hence, it is not the friendship itself that contributes to the well-​being of people, strictly speaking, but the relationship goods that can be realized within the friendship. Friendships are good for the friends to the extent that the relationship goods are realized. Of course, proponents of this view need to identify the relevant relationship goods of friendship. I cannot discuss this question in detail here, but plausible candidates include shared experiences (where it matters that certain things are done together with the friend), intimacy, and mutual concern (Seglow 2013). Now, someone might object that we can realize these goods in relationships of other kinds as well –​for example, we also share experiences with family members, and intimacy and mutual concern are things that characterize many romantic partnerships –​and that these goods therefore do not qualify as relationship goods if relationship goods are goods that can only be realized within specific kinds of relationships. As a response, proponents of the relationship goods account can point out that (1) the kind of experiences that, say, parents and children share differ significantly from friendship experiences, given that friends are more equals than parents and children, and that the kind of intimacy between parents and children or between romantic partners also differs from the kind of intimacy between friends, and (2) that relationships in which the participants can realize these goods of friendship have simply turned into a friendship, in addition to any other kind of relationship that the participants might have. Thus, if parents and children realize relationship goods of friendship, they are not merely parents and children, but also friends (and the same holds for romantic partners). How do we then move from relationship goods to special obligations? The basic assumption is that, whenever a person has a weighty interest in a good and you are in a unique position to provide that good, you have a moral reason to do so. Hence, if our relationship partners have a weighty interest in the relationship goods that only we can provide or co-​create together with them, then we have at least a moral reason to do so. And these moral reasons can then turn into special obligations. 294

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This focus on the relationship partner is important because otherwise we get the problem that the view cannot explain the requiring character of special obligations. If special obligations were justified merely by the contribution to the well-​being of the duty-​bearer, then why do special obligations take the form of duties? After all, people are morally permitted to sacrifice their own well-​being as they see fit (Lazar 2016). The relationship goods account can provide an answer here because it grounds special obligations in the interests of the relationship partner, and these are interests that we are not permitted to simply ignore. The relationship goods account seems also capable of providing a solution to the puzzle of partiality. Relationship partners and strangers have the same moral worth, but we can realize goods with our friends and loved ones that we simply cannot realize with strangers. And since “ought” implies “can,” this means that we have reasons to act on behalf of our friends that we do not have in the case of strangers. Of course, one could still argue that I should sacrifice my own friendships if this will help others realize relationship goods in their lives. But remember that relationship goods are agency goods. Proponents of the relationship goods account can argue that people should be more concerned with their own agency, and the goods that they can realize in their own relationships, than with the agency of others and the goods that those others can realize in their respective relationships. After all, many relationship goods (such as mutual special concern) presuppose that people ought to realize them in their own relationships rather than helping others realize these goods in their relationships.The challenge for proponents of the relationship goods account is then to show that this argument holds for all the different kinds of relationship goods. In light of this problem, proponents of the Relationships View can argue that it is not the value of the relationship that grounds special obligations, but rather the relationship itself (Jeske 2001, 2008). If it is the friendship (rather than the value of the friendship) between Adam and Christian that generates special obligations for them, then we can easily explain why they ought to prioritize fulfilling their own special obligations over helping Becky and Charlotte fulfil their respective special obligations: the friendship of Becky and Charlotte simply does not generate reasons for Adam and Christian. It only generates such reasons for Becky and Charlotte. Proponents of such a view must explain two things. First, they must explain why the relationship grounds any obligations at all. This appears as a brute normative fact with no further explanation, and this is less informative than we had hoped. Second, they must explain why the relationships of others do sometimes generate reasons for us. If Adam can help Charlotte save her endangered friendship with Becky, then Adam seems to have at least a reason to do so. But if the idea is that the friendship between Becky and Charlotte generates no reasons for Adam, then it is difficult to see how this is possible. Proponents of a value-​based version of the Relationships View do not face these problems since the value of the relationship plays an explanatory role in both cases. Hence, the Relationships View can be spelled out in different ways.All versions share the important advantage that already speaks in favor of a non-​reductionist view of special obligations, namely that they are in line with our conversational practices. Every version of the Relationships View claims that special obligations of friendship are grounded in the (value of the) friendship, and we often cite our friendship when we explain why we act on behalf of our friends. The Relationships View captures this way of justifying and explaining our special obligations that is an important part of our everyday practice. Another important advantage of the value-​based versions of the Relationships View is that we certainly do regard our relationships as intrinsically valuable and as constituent parts of what makes our lives go well. Why, then, should the relationships not provide us with reasons? After all, it seems plausible to suppose that there is a strong link between value and reasons: whenever something is intrinsically good, then it provides us with reasons to respond to it in certain ways. Why should relationships be any different? However, we must be careful here. We should not simply assume that our conversational practices correctly track the grounds of our special obligations. One problem with the Relationships View is 295

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that, even though we might cite our friendship as a reason, it is difficult to see what kind of reason the mere fact of friendship is. Reasons speak in favor of actions –​but what action is supported by the mere fact that some person is your friend if you abstract from all other reasons that you have? Friendships by themselves do not speak in favor of anything. To have normative oomph, they need additional normative support by facts such as “she needs help” (Löschke 2018). And this suggests that it is not the friendship, strictly speaking, that provides reasons, but that other normative fact. And proponents of the Relationships View cannot argue that the friendship and the additional fact together provide the reason, because they would then basically abandon the Relationships View: they would be committed to the view that the relationship is only reason-​providing when some other normatively relevant fact is present. But the idea of the Relationships View is that the friendship itself generates reasons. Furthermore, if friendships generate reasons in combination with another normatively relevant fact (such as the fact that a person needs help), then the question is why we need the relationship to explain the existence of the reason. The normatively relevant fact seems to do all the explanatory work. Another problem with the Relationships View is that it also seems to have the wrong focus (Keller 2013; Lord 2016). According to the Relationships View, whenever you do something for a friend, your reason is ultimately grounded in the friendship. This suggests that, for example, if your friend and a stranger are drowning and you save your friend rather than the stranger, your reason for doing so is that the death of your friend will terminate your friendship. And this seems wrong. Clearly, your reason to save your friend must have something to do with your friend, not merely with your friendship. This is the main argument in favor of the Individuals View. The idea of the Individuals View is that reasons of partiality are grounded in facts about the relationship partner (Jollimore 2011; Keller 2013). Applied to the case of friendship, this means that reasons of friendship (that is: reasons to do things for or with the friend) are grounded in facts about the friend (such as the value of the friend, or the predicament of the friend, or whatever). For example, Adam’s reason to help his friend Christian set up a ladder is grounded in the fact that Christian needs help.The reason-​providing fact is a fact about Christian; it is not a fact about Adam and Christian’s friendship. And such reasons can then turn into special obligations. In a way, the distinction between the Individuals View and the Relationships View is not always clear-​cut. Consider again the relationship goods account of special obligations. It usually counts as a version of the Relationships View because the idea is that special obligations are grounded in the value of the relationship, and this value is to be spelled out in terms of the relationship goods that can be realized within the relationship. Special obligations of friendship are grounded in the value of friendships, and friendships are valuable because they are good for the friends. But one could make the reasonable claim that the fact that friendships are good for the friends is only normatively relevant because the friends matter, and that it is ultimately the interest of the relationship partners in relationship goods that generates special obligations to provide these goods –​which would then make the relationship goods account a version of the Individuals View (because special obligations are grounded in facts about individuals, namely their interests), rather than a version of the Relationships View.4 Be that as it may, the Individuals View has an important advantage. It is not vulnerable to the focus objection that can be raised against both the Projects View and the Relationships View (Lord 2016). According to the Individuals View, it is the friend that provides you with reasons to benefit her, and this means that, when you act on behalf of your friend and focus on the normative relevant considerations, your focus should be on her, not on yourself or your friendship. And this seems to be an independently plausible claim, at least in many cases. But the Individuals View also faces an obvious problem. It does not really explain why reasons of friendship are agent-​relative reasons, and it does not help solve the puzzle of partiality.Your friend is no more valuable than any other stranger. If reasons of friendship are generated by facts about your friend, then why do facts about strangers (such as their need for help) not provide you with the same reasons? It seems that we are back where we started. 296

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A promising way to move forward is to understand friendships as intensifiers of moral reasons (Lord 2016; Lazar 2016; Betzler 2016; Maguire 2017; Löschke 2018). The idea is that our reasons to act on behalf of a friend are provided by facts about the friend (her value, her predicament, or whatever). Thus, your friend provides you with the same reasons as every other person, and this accounts for the idea of moral egalitarianism. But that does not mean that you have the same obligations with regard to everyone. Relationships are intensifiers, and this means that your friendship intensifies the reasons that are provided by your friend. As a result, you have stronger reason to act on her behalf than you have reason to act on behalf of a stranger. Hence, if you must choose between providing a benefit for your friend or providing a benefit for a stranger, you ought to provide the benefit to your friend. In fact, this intensification of reasons can lead to you having obligations with regard to your friends that you do not have with regard to others. The intensifier view thus keeps the idea of moral egalitarianism while at the same time explaining the existence of special obligations toward your friends. Proponents of this view face two challenges. First, they need to explain why friendships have such an intensifying role. Several answers are possible here.The intensifying role of relationships could be a brute normative fact; relationships could be intensifiers by providing additional reasons because if I fail to act on a reason that I have with regard to a friend, I do not merely disrespect my friend as a person, but I also disrespect our relationship (Lazar 2016); the intensifying role of relationships could be due to an additional dimension of value that acting on behalf of the relationship partner generates (Maguire 2017); it could stem from the fact that relationships are an important part of a meaningful life (Lord 2016); or the intensifying role of relationships could be indirect, by reducing the cost of acting on behalf of a friend (Löschke 2018). I cannot discuss all these possible options here, but it is important to note that there are in fact several possibilities to explain the intensifying role of relationships. The second and perhaps bigger challenge for the intensifying view is that it does not easily extend to things that you can only do with regard to your friend, but not with regard to a stranger. Take the case of loyalty. Friendship involves an obligation to be loyal to one’s friend. If the intensifying view is correct, then there must be a general reason to be loyal that is generated by facts about your friend and that the friendship intensifies the strength of this reason and thereby turns it into an obligation. But this seems odd.We cannot speak of loyalty to strangers, and the intensifying view therefore seems incapable to provide a general account of all the special obligations of friendship. This is a problem that proponents of the view must solve. These are, then, the three possible views regarding the rationale of special obligations on a non-​ reductive picture. A further question is what the content of our special obligations of friendship are. This is what I will turn to now.

4  The Content of Special Obligations of Friendship The question about the content of special obligations of friendship is a question about what exactly friends owe to each other. In a way, there is no objectively right answer to this question. I have already mentioned the open character of special obligations of friendship: what friends owe to one another depends in large part on how they understand their friendship. For example, Adam and Beth might understand their friendship as involving a duty to buy each other thoughtful birthday presents, while Adam and Christian might understand their friendship as involving no obligation when it comes to their birthdays at all. In such a case, Adam has an obligation of friendship to buy Beth a thoughtful birthday present, but he has no such obligation when it comes to Christian. Thus, one might think that the content of special obligations of friendship is merely a matter of how friends explicitly or implicitly understand their friendship. But other views are possible, and they depend (at least in part) on what rationale for special obligations one accepts. For example, the relationship goods account of special obligations not only explains why we have obligations of friendship, but also what the content of those obligations 297

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is: friends owe each other the realization of the relationship goods that they have an interest in (or at least one’s contribution to the realization of those relationship goods). And if the interests in the relationship goods are objective interests, then it is not entirely up to the friends what the content of their special obligations to one another is. Furthermore, friends have no special obligations when they cannot realize the relationship goods of friendship. For example, if lending a friend money does not contribute to the realization of relationship goods of friendship, then there cannot be a special obligation of friendship to lend a friend money. A different picture emerges for example on the intensifying account of special obligations. Here, the content of a special obligation of friendship will match the content of our general reasons to act on behalf of persons in general. After all, the friendship does not provide reasons, but intensifies the strength of already existing reasons to the point that those reasons turn into obligations. The content of special obligations therefore cannot differ from the content of the general reasons that we have to act on behalf of people in general. This illustrates an important assumption that most people in the debate on special obligations of friendship share, namely that such obligations are moral obligations, and that their content therefore must be moral content.This is certainly a plausible assumption, but it is not obviously true. It rules out the possibility that friends have an obligation to do things on behalf of one another that are morally problematic. For example, it rules out the possibility that friends can have a special obligation to tell a lie to benefit the friend if that lie would be impermissible when told to benefit a stranger. This seems to contradict the experience of lived friendships. Many people would probably agree that friends can be required to do things for one another that are morally problematic to a certain degree. This might not include things such as murdering someone, but it might very well include lying for the benefit of the friend or covering minor cases of wrongdoing. Thus, special obligations of friendships are not necessarily moral obligations. In fact, some authors argue that friendship is not a univocally morally good phenomenon, but that friendships have an inherent “moral danger” (Cocking and Kennett 2000): because friendships can include special obligations to do morally problematic things with or for the friend, they can lead us astray. But perhaps such cases do not necessarily count as conflicts between the demands of friendship and the demands of morality. Perhaps friends have a moral obligation to do things that would be permissible outside the friendship: friendships could change the deontic status of certain acts from impermissible to morally required. Thus, such cases could be understood as intra-​moral conflicts and merely show that morality can sometimes be messy. This is certainly one point for further research.

Final Remarks Special obligations of friendship are an important part of our moral life, and they raise several philosophical questions, questions regarding their status, their justification, and their content. While it is now widely acknowledged that special obligations of friendship are duties sui generis and cannot be reduced to some other kind of obligation, there is less consensus regarding their justification; the two main views here are the view that they are directly grounded in the friendship, or that the friendship acts as an intensifier of already existing reasons. This question has direct repercussions for the content of these obligations. In any case, special obligations remain a thriving and fascinating research field in the philosophy of friendship.5

Related Chapters Friendship and the Personal Good; The Value of Friendship; Friendship and Practical Reason; Partiality to Friends; Friendship and Consequentialism

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Notes 1 A notable exception is Shelly Kagan, who argues that special obligations are no necessary part of friendship; see Kagan (1989). Kagan argues that expressing the love for a friend is a necessary part of friendship, but such expressions need not take the form of special obligations. For a critical discussion of Kagan’s view, see Jollimore (2000). 2 However, see Simon Keller’s (2013) non-​reductionist view. Keller thinks that it is not possible to reduce special obligations to general moral principles, but he argues that special obligations are grounded in the value of the friend, rather than the friendship. I will return to this view. 3 For reductionist accounts of special obligations, see, for example, Simmons (1996); Wellman (2000); Gewirth (1998); Goodin (1985); Hooker (2000). Collins (2013) also endorses a reductionist account and argues that, following such an account, there can be an actual duty to make friends. Authors who accept non-​reductionism include Seglow (2013); Scheffler (2001); Jeske (2008); Wallace (2012); Kolodny (2003); (2010); Tan (2010); Mcleod (2010). It should be noted, however, that not all of these authors talk about special obligations of friendship. Some of them talk about special obligations in general, and others are concerned with special obligations that arise within other kinds of relationships. 4 For another way to combine the Relationships View and the Individuals View, see also Löschke (2020). 5 This research has been funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation as part of the research project on “Value-​Based Non-​Consequentialism” (Grant Number PP00P1_​176703). Many thanks to Diane Jeske for very helpful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.

References Betzler, Monika. 2016. “Evaluative Commitments: How They Guide Us Over Time and Why.” In Time and the Philosophy of Action, edited by Roman Altshuler and Michael Sigrist, 124–​40. London: Routledge. Brighouse, Harry, and Adam Swift. 2014. Family Values.The Ethics of Parent-​Child-​Relationships. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Cocking, Dean, and Jeanette Kennett. 2000. “Friendship and Moral Danger.” The Journal of Philosophy 97: 278–​96. Collins, Stephanie. 2013. “Duties to Make Friends.” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 16: 907–921. Dancy, Jonathan. 2004. Ethics without Principles. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Darwall, Stephen. 2006. The Second-​Person Standpoint. Morality, Respect, and Accountability. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Gewirth, Alan. 1988. “Ethical Universalism and Particularism.” Journal of Philosophy 55: 283–​302. Gheaus, Anca. 2018.“Personal Relationship Goods.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2018 edn.), edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://​plato.stanf​ord.edu/​archi​ves/​fall2​018/​entr​ies/​perso​nal-​relat​ions​hip-​goods/​ Goodin, Robert. 1985. Protecting the Vulnerable. A Re-​Analysis of Our Social Responsibilities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hooker, Brad. 2000. Ideal Code, Real World. A Rule-​ Consequentialist Theory of Morality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hurka, Thomas. 2001. Virtue,Vice, and Value. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hurka, Thomas. 2017. “Love and Reasons. The Many Relationships.” In Love, Reason, and Morality, edited by Esther Kroeker and Katrien Schaubroeck, 163–​80. New York: Routledge. Jeske, Diane. 1998. “Families, Friends, and Special Obligations.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 28: 527–​555. Jeske, Diane. 2001. “Friendship and Reasons of Intimacy.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 63: 239–​346. Jeske, Diane. 2008. Rationality and Moral Theory. How Intimacy Generates Reasons. London and New York: Routledge. Jollimore, Troy. 2000. “Friendship without Partiality?” Ratio 13: 69–​82. Jollimore, Troy. 2011. Love’s Vision. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kagan, Shelly. 1989. The Limits of Morality. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Keller, Simon. 2007. The Limits of Loyalty. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Keller, Simon. 2013. Partiality. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kolodny, Niko. 2003. “Love as Valuing a Relationship.” The Philosophical Review 112: 135–​89. Kolodny, Niko. 2010. “Which Relationships Justify Partiality? General Considerations and Problem Cases.” In Partiality and Impartiality. Morality, Special Relationships, and the Wider World, edited by Brian Feltham and John Cottingham, 169–​93. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lazar, Seth. 2016. “The Justification of Associative Duties.” Journal of Moral Philosophy 13: 28–​55. Lord, Errol. 2016. “Justifying Partiality.” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 19: 569–​90. Löschke, Jörg. 2017. “Friendship,Value and Interpretation.” Theoria 83: 319–​40.

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Jörg Löschke Löschke, Jörg. 2018. “Relationships as Indirect Intensifiers: Solving the Puzzle of Partiality.” European Journal of Philosophy 26: 390–​410. Löschke, Jörg. 2020. “Agent-​Relative Reasons as Second-​Order Value Responses.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 50: 477–​91. Maguire, Barry. 2017. “Love in the Times of Consequentialism.” Noûs 51: 686–​712. Mcleod, Colin. 2010. “Parental Responsibility in an Unjust World.” In Procreation and Parenthood: The Ethics of Bearing and Rearing Children, edited by David Archard and David Benetar, 128–​50. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McNaughton, David, and Piers Rawling.1998. “On Defending Deontology.” Ratio 11: 37–​54. Nozick, Robert. 1981. Philosophical Explanations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pettit, Philipp. 1997. “The Consequentialist Perspective.” In Three Methods of Ethics, edited by Marcia Baron et al., 92–​174. Oxford: Blackwell. Pettit, Philipp. 2015. The Robust Demands of the Good: Ethics with Attachment, Virtue, and Respect. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Railton, Peter. 1984. “Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 13: 134–​71. Raz, Joseph. 1989. “Liberating Duties.” Law and Philosophy 8: 3–​21. Ridge, Michael. 2017. “Reasons for Action: Agent-​Neutral vs. Agent-​Relative.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N Zalta (Fall 2017 edn.). https://​plato.stanf​ord.edu/​archi​ves/​fall2​017/​entr​ies/​ reas​ons-​agent/​. Scheffler, Samuel. 2001. “Relationships as Responsibilities.” In Boundaries and Allegiances. Problems of Justice and Responsibility in Liberal Thought, 97–​111. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Seglow, Jonathan. 2013. Defending Associative Duties. London: Routledge. Simmons, A. John. 1996. “Associative Political Obligations.” Ethics 106: 247–​73. Slote, Michael. 1984. “Satisficing Consequentialism.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary vol. 58: 139–​63. Tan, Kok-​Chor. 2010. “Equality and Special Concern.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 40: 73–​98. Wallace, R. Jay. 2012. “Duties of Love.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary vol. 86: 175–​98. Wellman, Christopher Heath. 2000. “Relational Facts in Liberal Political Theory: Is There Magic in the Pronoun ‘My’?” Ethics 110 (2000): 537–​62. Williams, Bernard. 1981. “Persons, Character and Morality.” In Moral Luck. Philosophical Papers 1973–​1980, 1–​19. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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25 ARE YOU A GOOD FRIEND? Simon Keller

Describe the Good Friend How would describe a good friend? Are you a good friend, and if so, what makes you a good friend? You might respond by describing a kind of character. You might say, for example, that a good friend is kind and patient, loyal and reliable, thoughtful and compassionate, honest and principled, a good listener, wise, good-​humored, and fun to be around. Alternatively, you might ask for more information. A good friend of whom? Of what kind? At what stage in life? Under what circumstances? Any friendship is a relationship between two people and exists within a context, and so –​you might say –​the good friend cannot be described in the abstract. (I may as well ask you to describe the person who is “skilled.”You could only reply, “Skilled at what?”) Those two responses represent two contrasting ways of thinking about what it means to be a good friend, and about the relationship between friendship and virtue. On the first response, whether you are a good friend is a matter what kind of person you are: how you are “in and of yourself,” so to speak. Being a good friend, on this way of thinking, is an element of character, and could well be a virtue.When we describe the virtuous person, we might say that she is honest and courageous, among other things, and also that she is a good friend. On the second response, to be a good friend is always to be a good friend of someone, of some kind and in some context. Perhaps you can be a good friend of this kind of this person, and a good friend of that kind of that person, but not simply “a good friend.” (To push the analogy: you can be skilled at this and skilled at that, but not simply “skilled.”) On this approach, the quality of being a good friend is always held relative to a particular friendship. Being a good friend, considered in the abstract, would not then be a quality of character, and could not be a virtue. In this chapter, I want to defend the second response. Being a good friend, I want to suggest, is not a virtue: not because there is anything wrong with being a good friend, but because “being a good friend” is not the kind of quality that could qualify.

Aristotle on Friendship and Virtue In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle’s two chapters on friendship come at the end of his discussions of the virtues. He begins by saying that friendship is “a virtue, or involves virtue, and besides is DOI: 10.4324/9781003007012-31

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most necessary for our life” (1985: 1155a1-​3). But it is awkward to describe friendship as a virtue. Friendship is a relationship, like marriage or sisterhood. A relationship is not a character trait, and hence not a virtue. In making sense of Aristotle’s suggestion, we could say that while friendship is not just like courage, honesty, and the other virtues, it is still a kind of virtue, in two respects. First, it is “most necessary” to life; you need friendship, we could say, to live well. Second, it “involves virtue,” insofar as it can only exist, in its best form, in the life of a virtuous person; perhaps you need to be virtuous to participate in friendships, or in the best friendships. Alternatively, we could try to find a genuine character trait in the vicinity. Earlier in the Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle mentions a virtue that “would seem to be most like friendship”: the virtue of being a person who treats people “in the right way when he meets them” (1985: 1126b11-​30). Interpreters of Aristotle sometimes call this trait “friendliness” (Broadie 1991: 79). Friendliness does appear to be a quality of character, and hence a fair candidate to count as a virtue. Friendliness is of limited relevance to friendship, however. When you describe someone as “friendly,” you might mean that she is helpful, outgoing, interested in others, pleasant company, confident when meeting new people. That a person meets this description does not imply that she will be a good friend. You might know for sure that your hairdresser is friendly while having no idea whether he is a good friend. Conversely, you could share a wonderful friendship with a person who is self-​contained, brusque, and quiet, and who feels uncomfortable around unfamiliar people. A good friend need not be “friendly.” The putative character trait relevant to good friendship is better (if more clumsily) described as “being a good friend.” A person who has the quality “being a good friend” is someone who has friends and acts well toward them, as befits friendship. This is the trait you would want to find in a friend of yours and would want others to see in you. If there is a genuine virtue related to friendship –​ an element of a person’s character that makes her someone you would want to have as a friend –​then it is the virtue of being a good friend, not friendship, and not friendliness.

Identifying the Good Friend Suppose that it is your birthday party, and you have invited a whole lot of people you have known at different times and within different contexts. At one table, the guests share stories about their experiences with you. “She was my boss. She was always straight with me, even if she had bad news. I always knew where I stood.” “We went to school together. Once we skipped class, and the next day, when the teacher asked where we were, she told him exactly what we’d done!” “We worked together in real estate, but she was never going to make it in the trade. She would always tell potential buyers what was wrong with a property and what she really thought it was worth.” “We met when I served her in my shop; I undercharged her by a few dollars, and she came back later that day to return the money.” Sharing those stories, your guests could agree on something about your character: you are honest. Given the evidence, taken from multiple parts of your life, your guests could conclude that honesty is part of who you are.Your honesty, they could conclude, explains why you act as you do.You care about the truth and you do not like to deceive or cheat anyone, even a little; that is why you have acted honestly in such a wide range of contexts. If you stay the way you are, then you can be relied upon to act honestly in other situations in future. Now your guests discuss your qualities as a friend. “We spent a year traveling together. We had hardly any money but we stuck together and had so much fun.” “I have known her since we met at university.We’ve lived in different cities for years, but she still calls me every few weeks just to say hi.” “She helped me get through my divorce. I was a wreck, but she always knew how to settle me down and make me feel better about the future.” “I always look forward to seeing her. No matter how long it’s been, we can pick things up right where we left them.” 302

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Sharing observations like those, your guests could agree that you are a good friend. And surely, given the evidence, they would be right. Across your life, in a variety of situations and within many kinds of friendships, you have performed well as a friend. If your guests were to describe you, based on what they have learned so far, they could say that you are honest and you are a good friend.

Emergent Qualities of Persons and Lives Now consider another conversation among your guests. “We studied literature together. She was devoted to her studies, always so enthusiastic about the texts and always doing extra work.” “She’s a long-​time member of my hockey club. In lean times she has kept the club going almost single-​ handedly: raising money, finding new members, and doing all the maintenance around the clubhouse.” “She doesn’t talk about it much, but she is dedicated to meditation; she fits in her daily meditation session no matter what else is going on.” “We were colleagues at a busy surgery. She was so committed to the work. For years, she wouldn’t take her annual leave, because she couldn’t bear to be away from us and our patients.” Sharing those observations, your guests might come to a further conclusion about your character. You are devoted. After all, you have shown devotion across a long period of time and in a variety of contexts: devotion to studying literature, devotion to your hockey club, devotion to practicing meditation, devotion to your job at the surgery. Should we then say that you have a further character trait, the trait of “being devoted?” On the one hand, to say that you are devoted is to say something informative about you and your life.Your life is marked by devotion. Some people are not devoted to anything or are not capable of devotion, and you are not one of them.You are not flaky or fickle.You are not one of those people who never commit themselves to anything. Your history of devotion tells us something about who you are. On the other hand, to say you are “devoted,” as a matter of character, is probably not to capture your real motives and values. You yourself might find the description a little insulting. You did not study hard because you are “devoted,” but because you love literature. You do not meditate daily because you are devoted by nature, but because you believe in and benefit from meditation.You care about the hockey club.You value your work and your colleagues and patients. Those are the qualities that characterize your life, not the bare quality of devotion. To call you devoted without saying anything about the objects of your devotion might even suggest that you are undiscriminating, as though you could just as well devote yourself to any old thing. Furthermore, saying that you are “devoted” has little predictive power, relative to saying that you are “honest.” If you were to study philosophy, join a tennis club, take up Pilates, or start a new job, would you show devotion in those contexts too? It depends on how much you care about philosophy, are committed to the tennis club, benefit from Pilates, and value your new work. If you fail to demonstrate devotion in these new contexts, that would not show that your character had changed or that you were never really devoted to anything before. In contrast, if you were to act dishonestly in a new situation, that would suggest that something about you has changed, or perhaps that you were never really such an honest person to begin with. It is also consistent with your record of devotion that there are some familiar forms of devotion of which you are incapable. You have shown devotion to studying literature, to the hockey club, to meditation, and to the surgery –​but for all that, you might be incapable of being a devoted spouse or a devoted churchgoer. That you are genuinely devoted to some things does not mean that you could equally be devoted to other things, even things to which many ordinary people show devotion under ordinary circumstances. Here, too, devotion is different from honesty. It is difficult to imagine a genuinely honest person who fails to be honest in some familiar human contexts. A person who is not honest with her spouse, for example, thereby fails to possess the character trait of honesty. But a person who fails to be devoted in some familiar human contexts may be genuinely devoted in others. 303

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Being devoted is, as we might put it, an emergent quality of you and your life. At a more fundamental level, you and your life are characterized by various instances of devotion: your devotion to studying literature, your devotion to meditation, and so on. To say that you are “devoted,” as a matter of character, is to give a higher-​level summary of those instances of devotion, one that does not add much to the lower-​level facts it summarizes. It says something: to say that you are devoted is, again, to say that you are capable of devotion and have lived a life marked by devotion. But that is consistent with your failing to display devotion in any given further context, and indeed with your failing to show some kinds of devotion that we find commonly in others. The guests at your party have identified you as honest, a good friend, and devoted. Is being a good friend more like being honest or more like being devoted?

Friendship and Particularity Think about a person who would be a good friend to you. What would it take for someone to be your good friend? For a start, a good friend of yours would care about you. She would like you, respect you, want the best for you. Her concern for you, further, will be direct, not instrumental or derived. A good friend of yours will not care about you because you are useful to her, for example, or because you are a person and she likes people. Nor will your good friend care about you because she cares about her friends, of whom you happen to be one. (We could not capture her concern for you by saying, “She’s someone who cares about her friends.”) She will care about you directly, as the person you are. Think of it from the other side; think about the concern you feel for a dear friend.When you care about a friend, you care about her as an individual. If you are a good friend of Caitlin, then you like and care about Caitlin, directly and in the first instance. Your concern for your friend is attached to her immediately, so to speak, not by way of any other concern. It is not as though you first care about your friends, notice that Caitlin is your friend, and therefore care about Caitlin. When someone is your good friend, her concern for you will be expressed partly in an openness to you and your special qualities. As philosophers often note, a good friendship is not a passive relationship, in which each of the friends stays the same, even as they pursue the friendship. Friends grow and change together, in response to each other. Part of what you want, when you want a good friend, is someone who takes you seriously and lets herself be guided, in at least some ways, by you (Cocking and Kennett 1998; Nehamas 2016: 208–​10). Thinking of it from the other side, to be a good friend is, in part, to be influenced by your friend as you learn about her, interact with her, and share experiences with her. As Caitlin’s friend, you might try reading a novel by a new author, someone whom you would not have read otherwise, because Caitlin recommends it. You and Caitlin might explore new music together. The two of you might take up a new sport or develop new values, political opinions, or fashion preferences together. Caitlin might introduce you to new people and change your social circles. The point does not need to be overstated.You might be open to the influence of some of your friend’s attitudes and actions but not others.You might be open to meeting Caitlin at her favorite bars but not to joining her knitting circle. But still, part of being a person’s good friend is being open to her influence, in at least some respect. If you simply care about, help, or admire another person, without being in any way changed by her, then you might be her benefactor or her fan, but you are not her good friend. A consequence is that when you are someone’s good friend, you share with her a story. The story of your interactions with Caitlin and of how you and Caitlin grow and change together will be different from the story of your interactions with any other person, involving as it does your response to Caitlin and her response to you, as the distinct individuals you are. Among the qualities you will hope for in a friend will be some that make essential reference to you. It is one thing to have a friend who is kind, insightful, empathetic, and funny. It is another to have a friend who understands you, knows how to cheer you up, appreciates your sense of humor, 304

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recognizes your bad moods and knows how to handle them, knows about your history, and can get you talking when you need to talk.When you imagine a good friend, you will imagine someone with whom you have a connection: someone with knowledge, skills, and forms of empathy and compassion that work for you, not generically. Because a good friend of yours has such particularized skills, knowledge, and emotional reactions –​because she is someone who “gets” you, or with whom you “gel” –​whether you can become someone’s friend is difficult to predict (Phelan 2019: 10–​11). It can be surprising to find that another person can or cannot be your good friend. Someone with whom you appear to have little in common might turn out to be a great friend. Against all expectations, you might find a connection; you might like each other, understand each other, and enjoy each other’s company.You might form an unlikely but deep friendship with a political opponent, or someone who lives an utterly different lifestyle from yours, or someone who shares none of your main interests. Conversely, someone with whom you appear to share a great deal, and whom you respect and admire, might turn out to be someone with whom, for whatever reason, you cannot form a friendship. A person might be kind and compassionate, for example, yet somehow never understand your needs or know how to make you feel better. She might be funny and entertaining, yet somehow leave you cold. She might be fun to be around but fail to have much fun with you.You might find that the two of you have nothing to talk about. That she is a wonderful person who shares your values and interests does not guarantee that the two of you will find a connection that could support a good friendship.

The Many Ways of Being a Good Friend Over your life, you will probably have many good friends, sharing with you different kinds of friendship and making different contributions to your life.Your relationship with a childhood friend might be quite different from your relationship with a work friend, and different again from your relationship with a college roommate, a research collaborator, a parent of one of your children’s schoolmates, a hiking friend, and a friend in a gym class. A good friend might be someone with whom you have wild times, someone with whom you can relax, someone who accepts you as you are, someone who is dependable and constant, someone who encourages you to be your best self, someone with whom you share a long-​term project, someone who gives wise advice, or someone with whom you share deep and absorbing interests, among many other things. That a person is a good friend to you of one kind may exclude her from being a good friend to you of another kind. You might have a friend with whom you share a competitive relationship. Perhaps your friendship is built upon your mutual love of running: training and racing together over years, motivating each other to stick with the sport and stay fit and healthy, always wanting to beat each other in the next race, pushing each other to train and race harder. Or perhaps you are both authors, or both gardeners, or regularly cook elaborate meals for each other, and part of your friendship is your competitiveness, driving each other to new levels of excellence. If you have a friend like that, then you may benefit from having other friends who are different. In addition to your competitive friend, you might have a friend who does not know or care whether you ran well in your most recent race, has no interest in reading your writing, or admires your garden and your cooking but does not try to emulate or outdo it. This person might be a good friend to you partly because you do not compare yourselves to each other or judge each other’s goals and achievements. But to be that friend, she cannot be the competitive friend. You might have a friend who has intimate knowledge of your history, your family, your work, and all your hopes and fears, and with whom you share long, intense discussions about your respective life journeys.You might have another friend whom you enjoy seeing in the moment, who gets you out of your own head and with whom you can simply have a good time, because when you are together, 305

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you leave the rest of your lives behind. You might have a friend who is reliable, ever-​present, and calming, and another friend whom you see when you are both in the mood to do something adventurous. One friend might be your biggest critic, another might always see the best in you. One friend might not be afraid to raise awkward personal questions, another might always respect your privacy. Each of these people can be a wonderful friend to you, each in their own way, but no one person could be all these friends –​not all to you, all at the same time.

The Core of Good Friendship For all the various ways in which a person can be a good friend, there are some kinds of people who cannot be good friends to anyone. You cannot be a good friend if you are thoroughly selfish. You cannot be a good friend if you are deeply cruel, manipulative, or dishonest, or if you lack all compassion and affection for others. It will be difficult for you to be a good friend if you are always more confident in your own judgments than in anyone else’s, if you aspire to be completely emotionally self-​sufficient, or if you never trust anyone. Putting it positively, there are some qualities we can expect to find in any good friend (to anyone). A good friend is able genuinely to care about another person for her own sake; a good friend is trusting and compassionate, at least to some extent and in at least some circumstances; a good friend has the capacity to be open and vulnerable to another person’s influence, in at least some ways; a good friend is able to form emotional connections. There might well be other qualities that will be found in the character of any person who is a good friend (to anyone). But it is difficult to give a more detailed description of the good friend without ruling out some people who are perfectly capable of being good friends, of one kind or another. We cannot say, for example, that any good friend will be sociable, or reliable, or flexible, or principled, or fun to be with, or respectful of boundaries, or patient, or judgmental. A person could be a good friend while lacking any one of those qualities, and her being a good friend, of one kind or another, could in fact be incompatible with her having any one of those qualities.

“Being a Good Friend” as an Emergent Quality Suppose that you act as a good friend, in various ways, toward your various friends. If we explain your actions by saying that you are “a good friend,” then we will probably mischaracterize your reasons and motives.When you act as a good friend to Caitlin, for example, you will do so because you care about Caitlin. Suppose that you help Caitlin through her divorce; you will do it because you care about her, and because you are that kind of friend to her. To explain your treatment of Caitlin by saying that you are a good friend, conceived as a generic quality, might strike you as insulting, suggesting that you are undiscriminating. It overlooks the real driving concerns behind your friendship with Caitlin. It suggests that you are just doing what you do, as the kind of person you are, as though you could equally well be a good friend to any old person. It is quite compatible with your being a good friend to some people that you will not be a good friend to others. As good a friend as you are to Caitlin, you might not be a good friend to Aruna, because the two of you do not “gel.” Perhaps you and Aruna just do not enjoy the time you spend together, for whatever reason; perhaps you are not very good at understanding and responding to Aruna’s needs; perhaps you are not open to changing yourself in the ways that being a good friend to Aruna would require. It would be misconceived to say, “You’re a wonderful friend of Caitlin. Aruna is a great person, so you’ll be a good friend to Aruna too.” That is not how friendship works. Even if you are a good friend of one kind, you might be incapable of being a good friend of another, perfectly familiar, kind. That you are someone’s ever-​present and reliable friend does not mean that you can also be their –​or someone else’s –​fun and spontaneous friend. That you can be a competitive friend does not mean that you can also be a non-​judgmental friend, or a friend who 306

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listens patiently, or a friend who is a resolute critic.That you can delight one friend with your sarcastic sense of humor does not mean that you can settle another with your transparent sincerity.You might be incapable of being one kind of good friend to one person, but that does not mean that you are not any kind of good friend to any person. In crucial respects, then, being a good friend is like being devoted and unlike being honest. To say that you are a good friend is to give a higher-​level summary of the various friendships you have formed and the ways you have treated your friends within each of them. The description of you as a good friend does not capture your motives for acting as a good friend in each case, does not guarantee that you will be a good friend of any further kind or to any further person in future, and does not reveal much that you have in common with other people who also have the quality of being a good friend. To say that you are a good friend is to say something; it is to say that you are not completely selfish, that you are capable of caring for another person and opening yourself to her influence, that you are capable of showing loyalty and compassion for some people under some circumstances. But that is about as far as it goes.

Is “Being a Good Friend” a Virtue? Good friendship is a part of the best human life. It is difficult to imagine someone who flourishes, as a human, in the distinctively human ways, but does not participate in friendships and conduct herself as a good friend.The same, however, is true of devotion.The best human life will include devotion. It is difficult to imagine someone who lives a genuinely good human life without ever being devoted to anything. There are reasons why the quality “being devoted” is not a candidate for being a virtue, and those reasons apply equally to “being a good friend.”That someone meets the bare description “is devoted” does not reveal much about her motives or values or about what she has in common with other people who are devoted, and it does not have much predictive power when we consider new sets of circumstances she might face. Similarly, that someone meets the bare description “is a good friend” does not reveal much about the motives and values that drive her to act as a good friend, within her various friendships, does not tell us much about what she has in common with other good friends, and does not have much predictive power when we consider what new kinds of friendships she might form and how she might conduct herself within them. In all these respects, “being a good friend” is different from honesty and courage, and from other putative virtues like compassion, generosity, justice, and temperance. The honest person, courageous person, compassionate person, generous person, just person, temperate person: these are all kinds of persons, in a respect in which “the good friend” is not. “Being a good friend” is not a substantive quality of character that flourishing humans have in common.

Hierarchies of Friendship I have emphasized the variety of forms of friendship, and of forms of good friendship.There is a tradition in philosophical thinking about friendship, though, of saying that not all friendships are equal, and indeed that not all good friendships are equal, and designating some single form of friendship as the best, or truest, or most real. Aristotle says that the best friendships are “virtue friendships,” within which virtuous persons support each other in carrying out virtuous activity (1985: 1156b7-​ 33). Several contemporary philosophers, too, describe a kind of friendship they take to be “best,” “real,” “deep,” or “true,” and distinguish friendships of that kind from “lesser” or merely “ordinary” friendships (Lewis 1993: 44–​5; Badhwar 1987: 1–​3; Helm 2010: 283–​93). If we accept that one kind of friendship is the best, then we might be able to say something more determinate about the character of the good friend. We might say that a good friend is a person who is suited to the best kind of friendship. Perhaps, for example, the truly good friend is the kind of 307

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person who can participate in a virtue friendship; perhaps the truly good friend is a virtuous person with the disposition to notice and support virtue in other virtuous persons.That may allow us to give a richer description of the good friend, hence to identify a kind of character that any good friend will possess, and hence to say that being a good friend is, after all, a virtue. Even granting that some single kind of friendship is the best, however, and even granting that it takes a certain kind of person to participate in a friendship of that kind, the suggestion that you must be that kind of person in order to be a good friend has some implausible consequences. Most obviously, it will turn out that most –​perhaps all –​your most treasured friends fail to be good friends. Aristotle says that the best kind of friendship is rare, because virtuous people are rare (1985: 1156b25). That will probably be true on other models too; at any rate, many people who are well suited to wonderful friendships with you will turn out not to count as good friends. For a friend of yours to count as a good friend, she would need to be primed to participate in one kind of friendship, which might be different from the kind of friendship that the two of you in fact share. In addition, many of the most important qualities that you would look for in a good friend –​a good friend of you, as you are, in the real world –​are not necessarily qualities that would be possessed by a person who is primed to participate in the best kind friendship. This is due partly to the particularity of friendship. There is no guarantee, for example, that a person who has the character of a good Aristotelian friend, or a character that suits any other single specified kind of friendship, will also share a connection with you. Someone who is primed to participate in the best kind of friendship, whatever that is, might fail to gel with you. Someone who is not at all primed to participate in the best kind of friendship, but is able to participate in friendships of other kinds, might be the person with whom you most easily connect. Also, some of the skills and dispositions you will look for in a friend, given the realities of your own life, will not necessarily be found in a person whose character suits the best kind of friendship. For example, someone might count as your good friend partly because she can recognize and apologize when she makes mistakes, and because she is able to forgive you when you make mistakes of your own.Within a good Aristotelian friendship, however, the friends will always conduct themselves with virtue, so they will do nothing for which they need to apologize and will never be faced with anything they need to forgive. Similarly, whether someone is fun to be around, shares your sense of humour, is a competitive runner of about your ability, knows how to settle you down, respects your privacy, or shares your taste in movies might make a big difference to whether she can be your good friend, of some kind, but does not necessarily bear upon her ability to participate in a friendship of the best or truest kind. For those reasons, the question of what counts as the best kind of friendship should be kept separate from the question of who counts as a good friend. Your relationship with a friend might not meet a given description of the best kind of friendship, but she might be a good friend nonetheless.

Disunified Virtues In asking whether “being a good friend” is a virtue, I compared it with honesty, saying that good friendship involves more particularized motives, skills, and dispositions than honesty; that there are fewer similarities between good friends than there are between people who are honest; and that the description “is a good friend” has little explanatory and predictive power compared to the description “is honest.” But perhaps in using that comparison, I set the standards too high. Honesty is an especially unified virtue. Perhaps the virtue of being a good friend is more like the virtue of courage. Compared with honesty, courage is a disunified virtue. A courageous advocate of socialist reform will have different motives from a courageous advocate of free markets; each will be motivated by thoughts of their own cause and not by any general motive or value of courage. Perhaps the fact that someone is a courageous soldier gives no reason to expect that she will also be a courageous academic, a courageous chess player, a courageous union official, or a courageous musical performer. 308

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Perhaps a description of someone as “courageous” is really a summary of his more fundamental properties of being courageous at this and courageous at that. But courage is still, perhaps, a virtue. So why should similar facts about being a good friend mean that “being a good friend” is not a virtue? The answer, briefly, is that even if the character trait of courage is disunified, it is not as disunified as the quality of being a good friend –​or if it is, then courage turns out not to be a virtue after all. Being a good friend is a more particularized quality even than courage. You could be a good friend to one person while finding that you cannot be a good friend to another very similar person, because you and the other person do not share a connection. It is odd, in contrast, to think that you could display courage in one context but be unable to display courage in another very similar context. Suppose that you are courageous when playing football for one team, but not at all when playing football for another team; or suppose that you show courage as an advocate for social justice but not as an advocate for academic freedom. In these cases, we would have good reason to suspect that something strange is going on. Perhaps it is not really courage you show in playing for the first football team or in standing up for social justice, or perhaps deep down you do not really care as much about the second football team or about academic freedom. It is difficult to believe that genuine courage could be quite so sensitive to context. Furthermore, while courage may come in different varieties, it is difficult to believe that courage of one kind can be inconsistent with courage of another, in the way in which being someone’s good friend of one kind can be inconsistent with being their good friend of another kind. That you are genuinely courageous in one way does not rule out your being genuinely courageous in another way. Courage, while less unified than honesty, still looks like the kind of quality that could be a virtue, in ways in which “being a good friend” does not. What I have said about courage here could be wrong. Perhaps the disposition to act courageously is in fact very situationally sensitive, so that you can be truly courageous in one context while lacking courage in another very similar context, and perhaps there are in fact some forms of courage that are incompatible with others. If that turns out to be the case, however, then courage is not really a character trait. Describing someone as “courageous” would not reveal anything much about what kind of person she is or how she can be expected to behave and be motivated in any given situation. Accordingly, courage, so named, would not be a virtue; it would not be any particular way of being. Rather than having one virtue of courage, we would have many much narrower and more situationally sensitive qualities, each of which is largely independent of the others, each of which does its own explanatory and predictive work, some of which are in competition with others, and each of which needs to be evaluated individually. Courage, and the ethics of courage, would have been deconstructed. The questions asked here about courage could also be asked of other candidate virtues. It is conceivable that compassion, for example, turns out to be covering term for several narrower and sometimes competing ways of thinking and acting, which really merit individual treatment.The important point is that in asking these questions about a candidate virtue, we throw its status as a character trait, and hence as a virtue, into question. If some of the traditional putative virtues turn out to be disunified in just the way that the quality of being a good friend is disunified, that means that they are not virtues, not that being a good friend might be a virtue.

On Being a Good Friend Are you a good friend? On the view I have pressed in this chapter, you can begin to answer that question by looking at your own character. Ask yourself whether you are utterly selfish, or thoroughly cruel and manipulative, or completely closed to the influence of others, or unable to form emotional connections with others. If you are, then you are not a good friend. (Sorry.) Looking to your own character, however, will only get you so far. To find out whether you are a good friend, you cannot ask only about yourself; asking whether you are a good friend is not like 309

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asking whether you are basically an honest person, or a courageous, just, or compassionate person.You should instead think about each of your friends, one by one. What have you shared with each them? How have you treated them? How have you changed and grown together? How have you made their lives better, in the conditions and contexts in which you have found them? What kind of friend have you been to each of them, and how have you conducted yourself in your role as that kind of friend? Whether you are a good friend is a question about your friends, as much as it is a question about you.1

Related Chapters Aristotle on the Nature and Value of Friendship; The Value of Friendship; Partiality to Friends; Friendship and Special Obligations; Friendship and Loyalty

Note 1 I am grateful for helpful comments from Diane Jeske and Joel Van Fossen.

References Aristotle. 1985. Nicomachean Ethics, Translated by T. Irwin. Indianapolis: Hackett. Badhwar, N.K. 1987. “Friends as Ends in Themselves.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 48: 1–​23. Broadie, S. 1991. Ethics with Aristotle. New York: Oxford University Press. Cocking, D., and J. Kennett. 1998. “Friendship and the Self.” Ethics 108: 502–​27. Helm, B. 2010. Love, Friendship, and the Self. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lewis, C.S. 1993. “Friendship –​The Least Necessary Love.” In Friendship: A Philosophical Reader, edited by N.K. Badhwar, 39–​47. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Nehamas, A. 2016. On Friendship. Philadelphia: Basic Books. Phelan, M. 2019. “Rethinking Friendship,” Inquiry. https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​00201​74X.2019.1658​627.

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26 FRIENDSHIP AND LOYALTY John Kleinig

“Bad faith likes discourse on friendship and loyalty.”1 Not an auspicious start to a discourse on loyalty and friendship! However, Milton Cooley’s somewhat jaded observation is focused on the avowals of a (professed) friend rather than the philosophical undergirdings of friendship. What it captures, albeit ironically, is the deep connection between friendship and loyalty, even if that connection is often exploited by those who make an explicit issue of it. That said, not everything that passes as or is referred to as friendship is deeply entwined with loyalty. Facebook “friends” and friends of convenience may possess no more than “loyalty-​lite,” attachment without allegiance, whereas true friendships encompass an intimate, reciprocal, and perseverant relational connection. In this chapter I propose to focus on serious friendships, their connection to loyalty, and the limits –​if any –​to loyalty in friendship.This will involve discussion of friendship as well as an exploration of the notion and requirements of loyalty, with of course, a focus on the normative claims associated with each. Aristotle’s rich discussion provides a natural starting point, especially given his recognition of the centrality of friendship to a well-​lived life. Loyalty is only implicit in Aristotle’s account, and so there follows a more focused discussion of loyalty that brings out the ways in which friendship and loyalty are intertwined. Given the normative claims of both loyalty and friendship, it is natural to consider whether and what moral limits each might be expected to have. As this volume is devoted to the philosophy of friendship, my discussion of friendship will be more truncated than the discussion of loyalty, and most attention will be given to moral challenges to both friendship and loyalty posed by their conjunction.

Preliminary Observations on Friendship and Loyalty: Aristotle I begin, not unexpectedly, with a brief discussion of Aristotle’s views, for few have paid more attention to the importance of the role that friendship occupies in what constitutes a good life.2 The latter, eudaimonia, is, for Aristotle, accomplished primarily in making appropriate choices –​that is, exercising the preeminent human capacity (rationality).The challenge of choosing one’s friends is central to the achievement of eudaimonia. For Aristotle, friendships with others are both a natural outgrowth of our sociality and at the same time a product of determination and judgment. What Aristotle considers to DOI: 10.4324/9781003007012-32

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be the truest of friends (those grounded in perceptions of the worth of the other) constitute a kind of mirror into ourselves in that they are sources of self-​understanding, and the connection with friends heightens our capacities and, as a result, enlarges the possibilities for our own self-​fulfillment (Cooper 1999b 341–​3; cf. Aristotle bk. IX.9). Our friendships may be grounded in any of the kinds of reasons that undergird all human choice –​ reasons of pleasure, utility, or nobility (or worthiness) (Aristotle, bk II.3, 1104b30-​31). It is the last of these that Aristotle views as central to his thesis: exemplary friendships are grounded in recognition of moral merit in the other.3 Although Aristotle acknowledges that relationships grounded in pleasure or utility may be designated friendships, they are, from his perspective, deeply deficient as constituent sources of eudaimonia,4 for they possess a contingency and instability that is unsuitable for the demands of a truly good life. Moreover, given the intimate bond that Aristotle posits between eudaimonia and the virtues (in which he includes phronesis, good judgment), it is hardly surprising that the friendships he sees as both source and substance of eudaimonia are grounded in a perception and acknowledgment of the other’s nobility, from which both pleasure and utility are also most likely to issue (Aristotle, bk VII.3, 1156b12-​17). Although Aristotle does not work with the vocabulary of loyalty, it is clear from the expectations he places on friendship that he holds that true friends care for each other in ways that are not only perseverant, but may also be costly –​even to the point of being self-​sacrificial (albeit not with respect to our virtue). Friends enable us to act virtuously (even if sometimes within a narrow sphere) and offer support when we suffer misfortune (Aristotle, bk IX.11 1171a22-​23). What we think of as loyalty is clearly implicit in Aristotle’s account of true friendship. Fulfilling as it may be, friendship is a demanding relationship in which the parties may have onerous obligations to support the particular interests and well-​being of the other, interests that may not be shared by both parties: I love sports, she loves opera, and we both love travel (albeit to different places). Each does what he or she can to support the other. Friends have an interest in and take steps to further the satisfaction of the interests of the other. Contrary to friendships of the Facebook kind, the kinds of friendships that Aristotle advocates are not created by a mouse-​click but develop slowly over time and their demandingness limits the number of serious friends one can and should have (Aristotle, bk VIII.3, 1156b30-​32). Interestingly, the loyalty of friends may sometimes outlive the friendship they shared: people change but, unless the cause of the disintegration was serious vice, an erstwhile friend may continue to seek or value the good of the former friend.5 Such loyalty obligations do not exist, Aristotle thinks, in the case of friendships whose basis is simply pleasure and utility, for, once the pleasure and utility that forged the bond of friendship no longer exist, nothing remains to bind the parties to one another.6 For the most part, scholars of friendship consider Aristotle’s conditions for friendship to be, at best, aspirational, for we recognize many deep and fulfilling relationships as friendships even though they are grounded in less than the mutual recognition and expectation of nobility.To be sure, mutual moral regard may be part of these friendships, but not its sole axis. Aristotle seems to acknowledge this (as John Cooper has noted, 1990a): his account of friendship focuses on its most fully realized instantiation, whereas actual friendships are likely to be approximations. Given that even true friendships are likely to be approximations to the Aristotelian ideal –​that is, they will usually reflect a mix of moral regard, expectations of pleasure and utility –​we must confront questions concerning both degrees of and limits to the sacrifice and intercessions that can be rightly expected of persons on behalf of their friends. How far should friends go in supporting each other’s endeavors? At what point is the termination of a friendship called for? More pointedly, what are the limits of loyalty in friendship?

Notes on Loyalty The foregoing questions touch on long-​standing issues in the philosophy of loyalty: the meaning of “loyalty” and the place it should have in our lives. Perhaps the first thing to note is that not all 312

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obligations to an object of loyalty are themselves obligations of loyalty, whether they are to family members, friends, organization, or community. Our obligations of loyalty go to the heart of an associational connection. However, not all of the obligations we have to others, even to those to whom we may also owe loyalty –​the obligation not to be rude to a family member, the obligation to return what we have borrowed from a friend, the obligation to be diligent within an organization, and the obligation to observe speed limits –​are obligations of loyalty. Some of our obligations to others, even within institutional settings, are owed independently of any relational connection. Although some see loyalty as an overriding virtue, with the loyalty of friends (and perhaps family) at its apex,7 it is unlikely that all (and maybe any) obligations arising from that virtue are overriding. Obviously they can be overriding in particular cases –​especially if the alternative to a demonstration of loyalty is some personal convenience. True, some objects of loyalty may appear to demand one’s all –​the biblical dictum that “greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13), or the choice of religious martyrdom. But even if some objects of our loyalty may sometimes exact ultimate sacrifices from us, this should not be seen as a reflection of loyalty’s unconditional nature but rather as the importance that a particular relationship or association has for us. To see this, consider that even loyalty obligations, previously and justifiably recognized by us as overriding many other demands, may themselves come to be overridden. If a family member engages in egregious racist behavior, or a friend commits a heinous crime, or one’s country participates in a genocidal program, then whatever obligations of loyalty we owe to our relative, friend, or country may be outweighed, even to the point of rightly extinguishing our loyalty to the objects in question. Whether the loyalty is justifiably extinguished can depend on the seriousness of the breach and/​or the ability one has to rectify the situation.8 As well, how serious a breach is judged to be may depend on the way in which the associative connection is normatively construed, and so will be judged differently by different persons in diverse circumstances. People variously judge infidelity. Some see it as a critical betrayal; others will be more accommodating, even if disappointed; even those who are accommodating may consider some cases worse than others (say, an affair with one’s best friend, in which the infidelity is also felt to be humiliating). To the extent that loyalty is considered a virtue,9 it is best seen as an executive rather than as a substantive virtue (to utilize one of many ways in which the virtues can be differentiated). Its companions are sincerity and conscientiousness rather than kindness and compassion. Substantive virtues motivate us to act well, to do good –​they are critical to our moral relations with others. The executive virtues, sometimes called enabling virtues or virtues of the will, are important to the implementation of what the substantive virtues (and other obligations) require of us –​sincerity in our compassion, conscientiousness in our charitableness, loyalty in our friendships. They help us surmount obstacles to our doing good or fulfilling obligations. Unlike the substantive virtues –​though even the latter can be corrupted –​the normative (including moral) worth of the executive virtues is closely connected with the moral standing of their objects. One may be sincere in one’s racism as one may be loyal to the Nazi Party. This is not to suggest that the possession of executive virtues, such as sincerity and loyalty, lacks intrinsic normativity –​a person who lacks them lacks important virtues. That is, a person without sincerity, conscientiousness, and loyalty, is poorer for it, as a person. Loyalty is a bulwark, on the one hand, against selfishness and, on the other, against servility. At the same time, we must acknowledge that loyalty and other executive virtues can easily be ill-​directed.

Loyalty and Friendship If we think of serious friendships as goods that are important to a good life, then loyalty in friendship will also figure as important to our view of a good life. Indeed, we often distinguish those who are our good friends from those who are mere acquaintances in terms of the loyalty that is embodied in their relational connection. Few other associational connections carry such implications. Although 313

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we may also be loyal to organizations to which we belong and teams that we root for, belonging to such organizations and support for such teams will not usually have (or imply) the same intimate connection with our well-​being as our friendships. Teams and organizations will often try to secure our loyalty; friendships presume it. Friendship loyalty, even though it is perseverant, need not be permanent. As even Aristotle recognized, people’s circumstances, desires, needs, and personalities change over time and what might originally have drawn two people together may not survive the changes (Aristotle, esp. bk. IX.3). It is easier to see how this can happen in cases in which pleasure and usefulness were dominant factors in the relationship. But even friendships that have been deeply influenced by a sense of the other’s worthiness may fade or be terminated. Drawing on a real case, consider two girls who, during their formative years, develop a very deep friendship, one that penetrates every aspect of their lives. In young adulthood, one of them travels overseas and develops strong and passionate ties to a very restrictive religious group and, on her return, tells the other that because she is now of a different faith she can no longer be her friend.10 With the dissolution of a friendship there will be a termination of most of its loyalty obligations, though there may remain a few exceptions such as those that involved confidentiality understandings.11 In some cases, where vice has terminated the friendship, maybe even obligations of confidentiality can be overridden. There is a moral difference between the forfeiture of loyalty and its dissipation.

Moving House and Moving Bodies It has been said that “a good friend will help you move house, but a really good friend will help you move a body.”12 What is being suggested here is that a really good friend will support you even in cases in which what is required is morally suspect or transgressive. Can –​and should –​friendship loyalty extend so far? The question is a serious one, in part because friends tend to defer to each other. They do so because, in friendship, the friends acknowledge each other’s agency –​not merely in the sense that our everyday dealings with each other should, but also because the nature of their projects and cooperativeness of their friendship often enlists the other’s support. Of course, many of our mundane interactions pay homage to the agency of others –​whether it is a simple “thank you” as we receive change from the cashier or moving aside on the sidewalk so that others are not forced to take evasive action as we pass each other. To all intents we remain respectful strangers to each other. In the case of friends, however, we enter into relation with them and various positive and negative obligations are created by that relationship, obligations that are expressive of it. Friendship involves obligations not to undermine the other’s personal interests as well as obligations to take them into account and respond to them as we go about our lives. The personal interests of the cashier and fellow traveler on the sidewalk lie outside our purview and, beyond the regard that we can be expected to owe any human being, we are not expected to give them a privileged place in our decision-​making. Sometimes we may, as an act of charitable kindness, allow ourselves to be more personally involved, but not as an expression of a personal bond. The bonds and obligations of friendship are not only created by, but are also specific to its relational dimensions. Additionally, they include a perseverant aspect. We cannot walk away from what we owe our friends and simply excuse ourselves for self-​advantaging reasons. This is, in short, the loyalty dimension of friendship –​sticking with our friends and, regarding matters that significantly touch their interests, deferring to them. There is no suggestion here that deference to friends excludes disagreement or even argument, calm or impassioned. If Alice seeks her friend Betty’s help in moving house, Betty, thinking that Alice should stay where she is, points out what she sees as the benefits of Alice’s remaining where she is. Alice replies by indicating why she wants to move. Suppose that after some back and forth, Alice still wishes not only to move but also to move with Betty’s help. Betty, as a good friend, might well 314

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defer to Alice, even if she continues to think that Alice is making a bad choice: sometimes we feel that our friends will have to learn from their mistakes. Suppose, however, that Betty refuses to defer and she tells Alice that she will not only have to ask someone else to help, but also that she will take steps to ensure that Alice remain where she is. The latter imposition –​verging on paternalistic, based on Betty’s assessment of what is best for Alice –​might well undermine their friendship, since it reeks of Betty’s condescension with regard to Alice’s agency. It will do that, even if Betty turns out to have been right. A good friend will help Alice move, and then be there for her if, as the friend believes and perhaps foresees, it turns out badly. We might hope that Alice will learn from her bad decision, and maybe –​recognizing that Betty has some discernment as well as her interests at heart –​she will take Betty’s concerns more seriously in the future. The foregoing may suggest that paternalism between friends is never justified, even if there is no doubt that the friends have each other’s best interests at heart. That would be too hasty a conclusion (Richards 1989; Shogan 1991; Fox 1993; Chan 2000). The following two scenarios suggest when a narrow window for paternalism might open. (1) My friend may confidently insist that he is sober enough to drive home after a party. Having watched his alcohol consumption during the evening, I have good reason to think that he would be placing himself at unreasonable risk –​if not of an accident then of apprehension by the police –​and I call a taxi to take him home. (2) A husband has been experiencing chest pains that his partner, who also has medical experience, believes to be associated with a stroke or heart attack. Knowing that time may be of the essence, she overrides his refusal to go to the hospital emergency room and, against his will, calls for an ambulance. Obviously, there is a risk in such cases –​they rely on a particularized judgment that the errors to which we are all prone can not only be detected by a friend, but also that the friend has a limited license to intervene. They presume that the fallibilist argument John Stuart Mill levels against paternalism is unlikely to apply in the case of close friends (or other intimates).13 Less likely, perhaps, but not negligibly so. More important to our present focus, interventions in cases such as those cited, are not usually going to be seen as instances of disloyalty, even if they are resented.The paternalistic friend is doing something that is more likely expressive of loyalty (even if they invite rebuke) than betrayal of some kind. It is unlikely –​as in most cases of betrayal (Kleinig, forthcoming) –​that the friend’s actions will be seen as motivated by self-​advantaging considerations rather than expressive of genuine care and concern (even if of a problematically overbearing kind). Friendship ordinarily requires that the parties defer to each other, and to do what they can to acknowledge and further each other’s agency. But what if the issue is not “moving house” but “moving a body” –​when there is reason to believe that the latter involves a moral transgression? Some writers invest either friendship or loyalty (or both) with a value that excludes a relationship that countenances the “movement of a body” within the purview of friendship and its characterization as loyal. But should the boundaries of loyal friendship stretch this far? To what extent should loyalties be bound by the constraints of morality? Should deference in friendship sanction wrongdoing if that is what the friend resolutely desires? I am unpersuaded by arguments that would definitionally limit acts of friendship and displays of loyalty to virtuous or at least morally neutral undertakings –​an extreme form of Aristotelianism. To do so may be psychologically congenial but it is morally unpersuasive. Whatever ideals we may have for friendship and loyalty, reality is messier, and we are called upon to make difficult judgments about what friends may do and how their loyalty should be shown. As a matter of social reality, we can conceive of deep friendships in which the violation of moral boundaries is taken as evidence of loyalty and ipso facto of friendship. In other words, a condition of Alice’s regarding Betty as her friend could be a willingness that Betty join with Alice in an enterprise that involves serious wrongdoing. I do not see that as incompatible with friendship, even if it could be argued that such transgressiveness renders trust in friendship less secure. Thelma and Louise of the eponymous film maintain and even deepen their friendship over the course of their disastrous road trip (Scott 1991). Even though they may sometimes elicit our sympathy, there is no doubt that their 315

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friendship involves serious wrongdoing and that this helps cement their friendship. Nevertheless, it is doubtful whether this connection justifies their shared transgressiveness. Of course, many cases of apparent moral transgression are less dramatic. We sometimes protect friends by telling lies in their behalf. Our friend does not want to be disturbed, and so we tell the time-​wasting visitor that he is not home. We learn that our friend is having an affair, but she asks that we tell no one, lying to conceal it, if necessary. In some cases, it seems reasonable that loyalty in friendship would manifest itself in moral compromise of some small kind. Immanuel Kant notwithstanding,14 telling a fib to protect a friend from unwanted intrusion would seem to be an obvious case. Keeping details of an affair secret or denying knowledge of it may be trickier –​especially if the cuckolded husband is also a friend. But that forces us to address the strength of the general moral requirement of truthfulness. Absent special relations such as friendships, are we required to be truthful without exception? Or is truthfulness a demanding but not absolute requirement, overridden when certain harms are likely to eventuate from observing it too strenuously? Might loyalty in friendship take precedence over truth-​telling in situations in which telling the truth would cause unnecessary harm? The point is not that the moral obligations of friendship have no limits but that the boundaries are those that we can ordinarily countenance as situations in which truthfulness might reasonably give way to harm avoidance or other pressing moral concerns. I am not suggesting that judgments of this kind are always easy to make. Hiding a friend’s affair is not as problematic as concealing knowledge relevant to the murder investigation of one’s friend. Loyalty to one’s friend may not reasonably extend to hiding one’s knowledge of bloodstained clothes and a knife. Even in the case just outlined, the seriousness of any violation might depend to some extent on the circumstances surrounding the death and the likely consequences.When Louise kills Harlan, who has tried to rape Thelma, we might sympathize with the friends’ situation, even though Thelma had flirted with Harlan. In a male-​dominated world, flirtation could be reconstructed as consent. Closer to the adage, in Death in Brunswick, Carl’s no-​good co-​worker Mustafa falsely blames Carl for ratting on him and then attacks him, but is accidentally killed. Believing that he will be plausibly accused and convicted of murdering Mustafa, Carl asks his gravedigger friend Dave for help in moving the body. Dave eventually agrees, and Mustafa’s body is buried in a recently dug grave –​but at some moral cost: removing/​hiding a body will deprive Mustafa’s family and friends of answers to which they would be entitled. For cases in which friendship loyalty permits serious harms to occur or not to be appropriately addressed, multiple and complex judgments may be required if the loyalty in friendship is to be morally acceptable. Moral judgments do not occur in social vacuums, but need to take account of the circumstances of justice –​whether, for example, institutions are robust and fair in assessing acts of loyalty that have socio-​legal implications. The general test, I suggest, is whether the act demanded by the loyalty could be seen by a reasonable person to be permissible in the circumstances. I do not think our intuitions here are always very clear, and it may be that in some cases there is no morally satisfactory solution. Moral judgment is often a latticework of crisscrossing considerations. Where, for example, the cuckolded husband as well as the unfaithful wife are both close friends of the person who is expected to remain loyally silent, there may be no entirely satisfactory solution. If Carl convinces Dave that despite his innocence he is legally vulnerable, then Dave may consider his help a reasonable if worrisome option.

Conflicting Loyalties The case of the cuckolded husband is one instance of a larger problem with loyalty in friendship. As we have noted, though loyalties are integral to friendship in a way that most other loyalties are not, our actual loyalties may range over a wide variety of objects. Leave aside whether we may

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legitimately speak of loyalties to principles and ideologies; let us confine our loyalties to persons and collectivities.15 Here we may have multiple and sometimes competing objects of loyalty: loyalty to friends, family, professional colleagues, universities, and ethnic and national groups. Some may garner deep loyalties on our part. Often these loyalties will coexist harmoniously, but sometimes they come into conflict. Jean-​Paul Sartre famously reflects on the dilemma of a young man who must choose between loyalty to his ailing mother and loyalty to his Resistance colleagues (Sartre 1946). He may achieve more overall good if he joins the struggle with his Resistance colleagues; but he may be better as a person if he stays with his ailing mother. If, with Aristotle, we consider that intimate relationships, such as those one has with friends and can have with family, are more central to a life well lived, that may tip the balance in favor of staying with the mother. And there is some argument for thinking that we would be more understanding of the person who exempted himself from fighting (however much he wanted to participate in it) in order to look after his ailing mother. If he has the resources to do both, well and good, but Sartre’s example suggests a realistic either/​or. To some extent, our own response to Sartre’s case hangs on the presumption that the young man’s mother is ailing and that there are no others who will be responsive to her needs. The phenomenon of young men (and sometimes women) loyally expressing and being expected to express loyalty for their country by leaving their girlfriends (and sometimes boyfriends), spouses, and families and going to war on their country’s behalf is deeply embedded in our culture –​contrary to what I suggested might be acceptable in the Sartrean case. We should, however, approach this with a grain of salt. If one’s country –​and, along with it, one’s fulfilling way of life –​is being attacked, then it is understandable that patriotic loyalty might be prioritized. After all, the destruction of patria may also lead to the destruction of amicae and familia. But many wars to which the young are sent are not of this kind; rather, we find ourselves the social products of a patriotic indoctrination that leads to a false prioritization of war initiatives. Even if most soldiers come home, they often return damaged and traumatized. The popular “veneration” of veterans (“heroes”) is a somewhat problematic compensation, albeit politically convenient and exploited. But what if one has to choose between friends? When close friends break up, we are sometimes placed in the position of having to choose one rather than the other, and efforts to maintain friendship with both parties will be seen as betrayal. In some cases, that may be manipulative, especially if the requirement is initiated by one party, and may even weaken the bonds of friendship. But if the cause of the breakup is serious enough –​say, domestic violence –​then maintaining friendship with both parties can carry overtones of bad faith. It is much harder when each party has contributed significantly to their separation. The need to choose between and among friends may also arise in less stark and more subtle ways. Some friends are closer than others, and institutional and geographical shifts, personality changes and realignments of our values, may lead to inevitable shifts in personal allegiances so that we may become closer to some friends and drift away from others. Constancy in friendships is often a function of multiple factors, and though some friendship relations are sustained despite the mobilities of modern life, that may often be because the friends have become life partners as well as friends. Although Aristotle recognizes a variety of ways in which friendships can dissolve, he probably worked with a much more constrained experience of geographic and social mobility. As was implicitly suggested in the previous paragraph, conflicts may arise not only between loyalties that we have to different persons but also between loyalties and other values, including those of a universal kind. If we learn that a close friend has a cruel streak, or if his tendency to cruelty becomes more pronounced, and there is nothing much that we can do about it, we may decide that the moral costs of this particular friendship are no longer worth it. Like most virtues, loyalties need to be moderated by other virtues and values. The perseverance that loyalty honors (and whose lack constitutes betrayal) is primarily perseverance in the face of our self-​advantaging tendencies, not relational perseverance no matter what.

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Concluding Thoughts As Aristotle recognized, humans are social beings. We value the company of others, and many of what we take to be the goods of life are achievable only through and in conjunction with others. Of course, not all of our relations with others will rise to the level of friendships, but those that do tend to have a special place in our lives. Friendships become sites of both satisfaction and growth, of self-​understanding and intimate support, safe harbors that sustain us during the storms of life. The satisfactions of friendship are both intrinsically fulfilling and instrumentally valuable. Our serious friendships are so deeply woven into our lives that they become constituents of our flourishing and reflective of who we are and wish to be. The loyalty that these friendships evoke both expresses and enables much of what we consider to be the best in our lives. However, it is possible and sometimes happens that we are misled about the friendships we form. It may happen that friendships formed and firmed in childhood and youth will pervert our lives, even if we do not appreciate the ways in which our lives are being molded and corrupted. Our desires for meaning and recognition draw us toward gangs or cults. As with the development of some patriotic loyalties, we fail to gain a sense of the potential harmfulness lurking within their distorting partisanship. We feel embraced by the self-​affirmation they provide and lose sight of the wider human values to which we all ought to be subject. These relationships may become so self-​ affirming that we all but lose the capacity to see them for what they are and what they portend for others. Even if intimate friendships are formed at a later point in our development, their closeness can blind us to the moral dangers that are involved. The perils of particularism can screen out the universalistic values that bind us as humans, and friendships can become socially toxic and clannish or tribal. No doubt, this is one of the reasons why both Aristotle and Kant emphasize what they see as an important moral dimension to acceptable friendships, seeking to ensure that legitimate –​or at least worthwhile –​friendships are grounded in and do not violate important social norms. There is good reason to see loyalty as critical to the glue that binds us relationally to the associations that form our identities and give shape to the satisfactions that are constitutive of a good life –​our friendships, familial, political and religious identities. Nevertheless, neither the associations nor the loyalties are on their own sufficient to guarantee the ends for which they are purposed. Of that Cooley’s cynicism reminds us.

Related Chapters Aristotle on the Nature and Value of Friendship; Kantian Friendship; Friendship and Self-​Interest; The Value of Friendship; Epistemic Partiality to Friends and Value Commitments; Partiality to Friends; Friendship and Special Obligations; Are You a Good Friend?; Friendship and Exploitation; Friendship and Personal Identity

Notes 1 Cooley 1992. 2 Aristotle’s primary discussion can be found in Books VIII and IX of the Nicomachean Ethics. Without wishing my brief account to be too one-​sided, I leave the more detailed explication of Aristotle to others. 3 Aristotle, bk VIII.2, 1156a3-​5. They are not exhausted by this recognition, because such friendships must also manifest a caring relational mutuality. 4 It is friendship based on the worthiness of the other that, for Aristotle, is friendship “in the proper sense.” The other kinds of friendship are called friendships “through a resemblance” grounded in pleasure or utility. Each involves a love for another, albeit motivated by different considerations. Beyond this point, there is debate among scholars as to how the lesser kinds “resemble” the “perfect” kind. See Pakaluk 1998, 61ff. Most influential has been Cooper 1999.

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Friendship and Loyalty 5 Aristotle, bk IX.3 1165b34-​36. One thinks of confidences and intimacies that might be preserved after the termination of a close friendship. 6 As for friendships between bad people, Aristotle considers them unstable and evil, drawing the parties away from eudaimonia (Aristotle, bk 9.12, 1172a7-​14). Such friendships are neither “a virtue, [n]‌or involve virtue” (1155a1). 7 “Kith and kin.” Though culturally understandable, I have more problems with kin than kith. See Kleinig 1914, chaps. 8, 9. 8 Extinguishing obligations of loyalty does not imply the extinction of all human obligations; and some extinctions may be temporary rather than permanent.This is not the place to consider the role of forgiveness and its reconciliatory possibilities. See Kleinig forthcoming. 9 Loyalty has its detractors: see Kleinig 1914, chap. 3. 10 In such cases, as often political as religious, the termination of a friendship can be both tragic and problematic. 11 Although it is arguable that what was done or said in confidence during a friendship reverts to being a regular obligation of confidentiality once a friendship has dissipated. But a person in this position might retain the confidentiality on the ground that “we were once friends, and it was taken for granted that what we did or said in certain circumstances was confidential.” 12 Origin unknown. See Cocking and Kennett 2000; Koltonski 2016. I have added further commentary in Kleinig 2014, 152–​4. 13 Even John Stuart Mill comes close to this –​indeed, he may allow it. His critique of paternalism is, after all, of state or societal intervention: “He is the person most interested in his own well-​being: the interest which any other person, except in cases of strong personal attachment, can have in it, is trifling, compared with that which he himself has; the interest which society has in him individually (except as to his conduct to others) is fractional, and altogether indirect; while with respect to his own feelings and circumstances, the most ordinary man or woman has means of knowledge immeasurably surpassing those that can be possessed by any one else” (Mill 1859, chap. 4). 14 Kant 1797. I say “notwithstanding.” There is considerable controversy about Kant’s intent. For just three discussions, see Korsgaard 1986;Varden 2010; Wood 2011. 15 For discussion of this constraint, see Kleinig 2014, 27–​31.

References Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by W.D. Ross. Available at: http://​class​ics.mit.edu/​Aristo​tle/​nico​mach​ aen.html. Chan, S.Y. 2000. “Paternalistic Wife? Paternalistic Stranger?” Social Theory and Practice 26: 85–​101. Cocking, D., and J. Kennett. 2000. “Friendship and Moral Danger.” Journal of Philosophy 97: 278–​96. Cooley, M. 1992. City Aphorisms, Ninth Selection. New York: n.p. Cooper, J. 1999a. “Aristotle on Forms of Friendship.” Reprinted in Reason and Emotion. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 312–​35. Cooper, J. 1999b. “Friendship and the Good in Aristotle.” Reprinted in Reason and Emotion. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 336–​55. Fox, E.L. 1993. “Paternalism and Friendship.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 23: 575–​94. Kant, I. 1797. “On a Supposed Right to Lie Because of Philanthropic Concerns.” Available at: http://​bgille​tte. com/​wp-​cont​ent/​uplo​ads/​2011/​08/​KAN​Tsup​pose​dRig​htTo​Lie.pdf. Kleinig, J. 2014. Loyalty and Loyalties:The Contours of a Problematic Virtue. New York: Oxford University Press. Kleinig, J. (forthcoming). “Betrayal.” In Loyalty, edited by T. Jollimore. New York: Oxford University Press. Koltonski, D. 2016. “A Good Friend Will Help You Move a Body: Friendship and the Problem of Moral Disagreement.” Philosophical Review 124: 473–​507. Korsgaard, C. 1986. “The Right to Lie: Kant on Dealing with Evil.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 15: 325–​49. Available at: https://​dash.harv​ard.edu/​bitstr​eam/​han​dle/​1/​3200​670/​Korsg​aard​_​Rig​htto​Lie.pdf. Mill, J.S. 1859. On Liberty. Available at: www.gutenb​erg.org/​files/​34901/​34901-​h/​34901-​h.htm. Pakaluk, M. 1998. Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics Books VIII and IX, Translation with a Commentary. Oxford: Clarendon. Richards, N. 1989. “Paternalism toward Friends.” In Person to Person, edited by G. Graham and H. LaFollette, 235–​44. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Sartre, J.-​P. 1946. “Existentialism Is a Humanism.” Available at: www.marxi​sts.org/​refere​nce/​arch​ive/​sar​tre/​ works/​exist/​sar​tre.htm. Shogan, D. 1991. “Trusting Paternalism? Trust as a Condition for Paternalistic Decisions.” Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 18: 49–​58. Thelma & Louise. 1991. Directed by R. Scott [Film]. USA: MGM.

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27 FRIENDSHIP AND EXPLOITATION George Tsai

What is the nature of friendship and its normative significance? What is the relation between the  nature of friendship and the different and distinctive ways in which friendships can go normatively awry? Are there special wrongs or wrongings –​distinct forms of mistreatment, abuse, and violation –​that can occur in the context of friendship? Within these broad questions, I want to offer some reflections on friendship and a particular form of mistreatment: exploitation. I shall begin by highlighting some features of friendships, including: (1) what they involve; (2) how they are formed, sustained, and terminated; and (3) how they matter and how the way in which they matter is manifested in thought, action, and feelings. These points then guide reflections on the phenomenon of exploitation in friendship. This part of the discussion begins with some general points about the concept and practice of exploitation and is followed by development of the claim that the possibility of exploitation in friendship is ineliminable, given that vulnerability is an essential aspect of friendship.The final part of my discussion explores the prospect of minimizing our exposure to the likelihood of exploitation in friendship.

Friendship Friendship is not just any kind of relationship. When we say of two people that they are friends, we take it that they have a relationship, meaning that they stand in a relation that goes beyond the thin, logical sense of relation involved whenever two people satisfy some two-​place predicate (Kolodny 2003). In other words, friendships are evaluatively laden relationships: friends do not merely stand in some relation to one another, but they have a relationship with one another, in a sense that has practical and normative implications. T.M. Scanlon (2013: 86) suggests that a normatively significant relationship such as friendship can be thought of just as “a set of intentions and expectations about our actions and attitudes toward one another that are justified by certain facts about us.” While I think the constitutive conditions of a friendship include its members’ intentions, expectations, and dispositions, Scanlon’s account seems to me to leave out the important dynamic element of interaction: the mutual shaping and modification of attitudes, dispositions, and behavior between members in a relationship. These aspects are captured in Dean Cocking and Jeanette Kennett’s (1998) treatment of friendship, in which they argue that friendship is partially constituted by the mutual willingness to be directed and interpreted

DOI: 10.4324/9781003007012-33

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by the other. A crucial dimension of friendship is the mutual shaping and modification of attitudes, dispositions, and behavior between the parties to the friendship. For two people to count as friends, there typically has to be some shared history between the individuals in the friendship: some sufficient degree of engagement, interaction, and regard between them over time. David Owens brings out these interactive and reciprocal aspects of relationships of the sort that he calls “involvements,” which include friendships. “Involvements,” Owens (2012: 97) says, involve “a dynamic syndrome of attitudes, of behaviour that expresses (or purports to express) those attitudes and of norms that govern both attitudes and behaviour.”1 As he observes, these essential elements of “attitude, behavioral disposition, and applicable norm all evolve in tandem: people who start to keep in touch, begin to want to keep in touch and come to feel they ought to keep in touch, all of a piece” (Owens 2012: 98). It is important to note that (virtually all?) friendships –​in particular, their emergence, their coming-​into-​existence –​ could have been avoided. To see this, let us consider more broadly the role of choice in friendship. Friendship is of course different from other valuable relationships, such as the parent–​child relationship, in that it is typically chosen: one does not choose one’s parents –​certainly not in the way in which one could be said to choose one’s friends. (Of course, there are aspects within the relationship between a parent and child that do involve elements of choice, including how the parties conduct their relationship, how they choose to interact, etc.) But at the same time the element of choice involved in friendship is not exactly like the choice to raise one’s arm either. One typically does not choose one’s friends directly, in the way one might choose to raise one’s arm, or choose which cereal to buy (Apple Jacks or Wheaties) at the grocery store. Rather, one makes choices, not in the first instance about whether to be someone’s friend, but about other things that then have implications for one’s relationship to the person in question, including what one may come to owe to that person, what one may expect of that person, what they may owe or expect of us, and –​in light of what’s owed and expected –​whether one is friends with that person. For example, suppose you find yourself taking the bus home from school with a certain classmate, Beatrice. Perhaps Beatrice is not someone you would have singled out for a special relationship. Friendship with her is not something you were explicitly seeking out. Still, in the course of your conversations and exchanges of small favors (What was covered in class last week? Could I borrow your notes? Which professors do you recommend?), a friendship grows between you. You may not be kindred spirits, but you get along well enough and the mere fact of having spent time together changes things between the two of you.With more or less enthusiasm, you become Beatrice’s friend –​ you acquire the feelings, attitudes, and vulnerabilities of a friend. But this could have all been avoided.You could have taken a less convenient bus or contrived not to meet her at the bus stop and so forth. In deciding not to do these things, you allowed a relationship to develop that involves certain expectations, and even obligations on you both.You may not be close (not BFFs yet), but you do now matter to one another, and you now owe Beatrice various forms of aid and concern that you do not owe mere strangers. My point here is that the kind of choice that you have in friendship is characterized by the fact that friendships are the sort of thing you can avoid getting into. One can also choose whether to end a friendship (or end the process in which friendship is emerging). Termination, here, is not (typically) achieved simply by communicating the intention of thereby releasing oneself or the other party from the friendship. That is, one usually does not end a friendship by way of a performative utterance, or speech act. Ending a friendship is not usually like ending a marriage in a divorce. Indeed, it is not even clear that such an utterance would necessarily be sufficient to end a friendship, at least in some cases. (As Diane Jeske has pointed out to me: If I say out of the blue to a long-​standing friend, “we are no longer friends,” the relationship is not erased. It seems that such an utterance may not be performative, but, rather, just false or infelicitous.) Rather, where a friendship is ended, typically this is because one does what one knows will

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loosen the bonds of friendship. One takes a different bus home. Or, having moved, one simply fails to keep in touch. None of this (the beginning or ending of a friendship) has to happen with your full explicit awareness or consciousness. You may be only dimly aware that in riding the bus home with your classmate, you are creating various bonds. And even when fully aware of this, the cost of avoiding this result, of getting another bus, or of ignoring the classmate’s conversational overtures may be rather substantial. The same applies to ending a friendship. A friendship may lapse without either party having explicitly decided to end it, although people at least have some dim awareness that their actions and omissions can lead over time or repeated instances to this outcome. Now I do not deny that, in certain circumstances, people can be obliged to become friends, and not infrequently, one finds oneself having to continue a friendship because one cannot break it off without wronging one’s friend. Nevertheless, one can always decide not to be someone’s friend or break off a friendship and thereby avoid or extinguish the obligations of a friend. Indeed, one can only be obligated to create or sustain a friendship because one has a choice about whether to do so. (In other words, being obligated to do something, entails that you have some measure of choice whether to do it. This, many think, is a conceptual matter.) All of this is consistent with the fact that in terminating a friendship, one may be wronging the other party, and wronging them by violating one of the norms surrounding the friendship. (It is worth noting that there seems to be an asymmetry between terms about terminating an already existent friendship or about not starting a potential friendship. It is perhaps more plausible to think that one can wrong the other in the former case, but perhaps not in the latter, because it is unclear whether anyone has a claim on me that I befriend her.) I have been reflecting on the nature of choice in friendship –​the way in which we can be said to choose it, or choose to end it. I turn now to the role and nature of valuing in friendship. What is it to value something? To care about it? To treat it as important, as mattering? Caring about things, or valuing them, involves a complex of normative judgments or beliefs, motivational tendencies, and emotional vulnerabilities.To value philosophy, or philosophical activity, for instance, is to take it to be a worthwhile form of disciplined inquiry; to find it interesting, in a way that leads one to care about pursuing it; to believe that people who have the requisite ability, interest, and opportunity have reason to study philosophy and engage in philosophical reflection; and to be emotionally vulnerable to how things fare with the practice of philosophy generally as well as with one’s particular practice of philosophy. To give an example of one’s emotional vulnerability in this case, one may feel disappointed, even depressed, for failing to live up to certain standards of clarity, originality, rigor, and insight in one’s philosophical work. Here, I subscribe to a view of valuing that has been articulated by Samuel Scheffler (2012; Kolodny 2003; Wallace 2013). According to Scheffler (2012), valuing any X comprises at least the following elements: (1) Belief that X is good or valuable or worthy. (2) A susceptibility or vulnerability to experience a range of context-​dependent emotions regarding X. (3) A disposition to experience these emotions as being merited or appropriate. (4) A disposition to treat certain kinds of X-​related considerations as reasons for action in relevant deliberative contexts. As concerns our topic of exploitation in friendship, I take special interest in the second element: the idea that valuing something implies emotional vulnerability to it. Indeed, I believe that with respect to most valued objects, if not all, Scheffler’s characterization of the second element could be further broadened. In particular, valuing persons and relationships typically implies forms of vulnerability that

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include but also go beyond those that are strictly emotional in nature. (I shall come back to this point.) According to OED, something is “vulnerable” if it “may be wounded,” either literally or figuratively; it is “susceptible of injury, not proof against weapon, criticism, etc.” We might say that vulnerability, or the state of being vulnerable, is fundamentally a matter of exposure to potential harm.To say that valuing some X implies being vulnerable to X in some relevant way is, thus, to say that valuing X implies the real possibility of suffering X-​related harm, loss, or damage. Among the variety of objects we can and do value are persons and our relationships to persons. Persons and relationships are among the things that we attach the greatest value to in the world, that make the most significant contribution to a meaningful, fulfilling, and textured human life for us. Applying Scheffler’s general account of valuing to the specific case of valuing relationships, we have the idea that valuing a relationship implies (among other things) certain vulnerabilities on the part of the valuer –​that is, the friend. Consider the role in your emotional life of your friendships. For example, you may be cheered by the prospect of seeing and spending time with a friend, disappointed if the two of you rarely have occasion to see one another, keen to support her if she is in need or in a bad way, distraught if serious conflict develops between the two of you, or if the two of you become estranged, and hurt and betrayed if she betrays your trust. Put differently, it is natural to say that we are attached to our friends, and such attachments involve familiar patterns of emotional vulnerability and dependence; we care about the people who are our friends, in a way that renders us susceptible to distress when they are hurt, or when our relationship to them is threatened or damaged. Indeed, friendships bring with them unique opportunities to be hurt by the other (as well as unique opportunities to be benefited by the other). The greater openness between friends, and the greater expectations of trust, imply greater vulnerability. We count on our friends in ways that we do not mere strangers. But this reliance can lead not simply to mere disappointment and unhappiness when our friends fail to come through as we expect, but also a sense of betrayal. There is greater exposure to vulnerability between friends, and we are more deeply hurt when we are let down by our friends.2

Exploitation I shall argue that the vulnerability that is in the very nature of friendship is the source of the possibility of wrongful exploitation in friendships. To do so, I must first say something about exploitation. Following others who have written on exploitation, I wish to understand exploitation as consisting (in part) in the taking advantage of another’s vulnerability (Goodin 1987; Liberto 2014; Sample 2003; Wood 1995). Wrongful exploitation, as I understand it, then, is the wrongful or unfair or unjustified or disrespectful taking advantage of another’s vulnerability, or garnering excessive benefits from them. More precisely, I take exploitation targeted at a person (or group) to involve at least the following three necessary conditions: (1) the use of the target’s capacity or resource to achieve some end or purpose of one’s own (2) through exercise of control or power over that capacity or resource (3) by taking advantage of the target’s being in a condition of vulnerability. Notice that the target’s being in a condition of vulnerability provides someone with an opportunity to make use of, to exercise power over, the target’s capacity or resource. The vulnerability helps explain why the exploiter is able to take advantage of the exploited. It is no accident, then, that there is a connection between vulnerability and the emotions that we are prone to experience as social creatures, such as shame: our susceptibility to feelings of shame is connected to the possibility of having our

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vulnerabilities exposed –​made an object of the gaze of others (real or imagined) in a way that leads us to want to hide, cover up, and self-​protect. The interpretation that I have offered of what exploitation involves preserves exploitation’s connection to use, power, control, vulnerability, and taking advantage of another. These connections are maintained not simply as a matter of stipulation, but because they are needed, in my opinion, to best make sense of why exploitation matters to us in paradigmatic cases –​why we find them specially objectionable. These paradigmatic cases include: (1) Desperately poor people who sell their organs. (2) Women who sell their sexual services or serve as surrogate mothers. (3) Workers in developing countries who work long hours in terrible conditions for next to nothing (e.g., sweatshop labor). I believe that an interpretation of exploitation has to include at least the three conditions stated above in order to capture fully the morally distinctive features that give rise to our moral reactions in paradigmatic cases. In characterizing exploitation in terms of the three conditions, I am deliberately rejecting an overly broad moral definition of “exploitation,” such as one that covers all transactions that are unfair, or all transactions that result in an unfair or unjust distribution of benefits and burdens (for such an account of exploitation, see Arneson 2013). My reasons for favoring a narrower definition that includes the three elements I’ve identified have not to do with the disputed issue of whether we ought to adopt a moralized or non-​moralized conception of exploitation. Rather, my worry is that if we end up using the term exploitation merely to refer to an unfair or unjust transaction or distribution, then the term may end up becoming little more than a thin, pejorative term used to describe any economic system (or ways of dividing benefits and burdens in society) one rejects on moral grounds. It is important that the term exploitation maintain its analytic value as a thick ethical term –​that the term not have its descriptive content thinned out in such a way that it reduces to little more than a pejorative used against one’s political opponents on social justice issues. More specifically, it is important that we retain the connection between the term exploitation and notions like “vulnerability,” “power,” and “use,” for holding onto these connections guards against overlooking relevant moral distinctions and thereby giving an oversimplified description of the moral terrain. Earlier I suggested that friendship involves vulnerabilities. More generally, valuing a thing –​not just the special cases of valuing persons or relationships –​involves vulnerability. It is worth noting that states or attitudes that fall short of valuing –​such as states of need, desire, and even addiction and weakness of will –​can generate vulnerabilities as well. Consider, for example, how the drug addict’s desire or need for drugs may make her vulnerable to the drug dealer or pimp. Or how the very poor –​ who live check-​to-​check, in perpetual struggle to make ends meet –​are vulnerable to entities like “payday” loan outfits, and credit cards with hidden fees. As Allen Wood (1995: 143) observes, “Many human needs and desires can be viewed as vulnerabilities, and accordingly many dealings between human beings can be put in an exploitative light.” Of course, not all needs and desires count as vulnerabilities. If this is right, we might hope for a more precise characterization, a set of sufficient and necessary conditions for one person’s being vulnerable to another person that distinguishes those needs and desires that count as vulnerabilities from those that do not. However, it is difficult to precisely state the conditions which make it the case that one person is vulnerable to another rather than one person simply desiring or needing something from the other that makes the first person do freely and willingly what the second person seeks or requests of the first.Whether a person’s needs or desires count as vulnerabilities is a judgment that has to be sensitive to the details of the context.When focusing on particular cases, it may still be a difficult judgment to make. But even if we cannot provide a clear, discursive account of the borderline –​for

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the borderline may itself be vague –​still we can acknowledge clear cases of need-​and desire-​based vulnerabilities and clear cases of needs and desires that are not vulnerabilities. Being vulnerable means that one is exploitable. For if vulnerability involves being in a condition of relative powerlessness to others, being in such a condition makes one susceptible to being taken advantage of by others. To clarify this point, it helps to distinguish between the broader category of being in a general condition of vulnerability from the more specific category of being in a condition of what I call friendship-​based vulnerability. As human beings are limited, dependent, social creatures, human life involves exposure to all sorts of vulnerability. Vulnerability (in general) includes individual vulnerability such as being physically frail, having some disability, having weakness of will or an addiction, or lacking certain competences or agential powers of certain kinds. One could also be vulnerable to aspects of the natural environment. Friendship-​based vulnerability, as I want to understand it, is vulnerability to someone else or some group in virtue of standing in a friendship relation to them. Such vulnerability is fundamentally a matter of being susceptible to harm as a direct result of being a member in the friendship relationship, harm that one would not be susceptible to otherwise. Consider some sources of this susceptibility to harm: (1) Care and Openness: We are often, not unreasonably, more caring and generous with our friends. This care –​like care more generally –​involves “a consistent pattern of attending to the relevant object: in short, a kind of vigilance for what happens or might well happen to it” (Helm 2010: 57).3 We are also more willing to trust and to believe them, more open with them about our fears, secrets, and insecurities. This caring and openness is closely connected with the special goods that friendship makes available, goods such as: affection, understanding, connection, solidarity, and shared feelings and experiences. But this caring and openness also makes us more vulnerable, more exploitable. It is not surprising that exploitation in friendship often involves emotional manipulation. Our friends and loved ones may be better placed to exploit our affections, insecurities, fears, generosity, gullibility, vanity, loneliness, pride, and so on, in order to get us to do things that promote their own interests, aims, and goals, in ways that are objectionable and unfair. (2) Power:When the things that one values are themselves things that can fare well or poorly –​can be in a good or bad condition, can flourish or be damaged or destroyed –​one’s vulnerability is apt to be greater.This is certainly true of friendships. One’s emotional vulnerability is apt to be greater when the relationship one values is itself vulnerable to changes in its condition or quality. Of course, whether a friendship develops and flourishes or not is partly a matter of the attitudes and responses of the participants. What this means, then, is that if I value my friendship with you, there is a respect in which you have power over me –​power that you have because your attitudes and responses toward me partly determine the condition of our friendship, which matters to me. It can be illuminating, then, to view friendship through the lens of power: to see love in terms of putting oneself in the beloved’s power. To be a friend is to render oneself vulnerable to one’s friend, and so to place oneself under their power in this respect. As a friendship deepens, one’s life becomes more and more enmeshed emotionally and practically with the life of the other, which then generates opportunities for the friend to be exploited, to be unfairly taken advantage of, by the beloved. One could be asked to shoulder additional moral responsibilities and moral risks on behalf of one’s friend that one would not otherwise be willing to shoulder were one not in the relevant relationship.4 (3) Unequal Vulnerability: Participants in friendships are often not equally vulnerable. This asymmetry in vulnerability can be viewed in terms of the participants’ relation to the special goods friendships make available. These goods include those I mentioned earlier: care, affection, mutual understanding, sense of connection, shared feelings and experiences, shared purposes, and joint activities. They may also include benefits and resources that are more material in nature, such as food and shelter. There can be asymmetries in the power relation when: 326

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(a) One party values the goods, benefits, and resources provided by the relationship more than the other does. (b) One party is more dependent on the relationship to enjoy the goods, benefits, and resources than the other is. (In the extreme, the relationship may be the only source of such goods, benefits, and resources for one of the parties but not for the other.) (c) One party has more control (exclusive or discretionary control) over the goods, benefits, and resources than does the other. (For example: control over the financial resources.) In short, when parties to potential transactions (broadly understood to cover both relational and commercial transactions) are unequally vulnerable to one another, the more vulnerable party (the weaker party) is at greater risk of being exploited.There is greater risk of exploitation when there is an asymmetry in the power relation between the two friends.

Minimizing Exploitation I turn my attention now to the issue of remedying, eliminating, or minimizing exploitation: what, if anything, can prevent exploitation or limit its occurrence, in the friendship context? I shall approach this question indirectly by first considering exploitation in the commercial or economic context, drawing on Allen Wood’s insightful analysis in this area. Wood distinguishes between two main ways of remedying exploitation in the economic context: interference and redistribution. Interference consists in “prevent[ing] (or interfer[ing] with) the ability of those in a stronger position to take advantage of the vulnerability of others” (Wood 2004: 261). This strategy is typically pursued through the instruments of law and social policy. Consider two examples. In the case of protecting workers from capitalist exploitation, we might put into place: “minimum wage laws, legal limitations of the length of the working day and the creation and enforcement of regulations insuring healthy work conditions and safety on the job” (ibid.). In the case of protecting surrogate birth mothers from adopting couples, we might make surrogacy contracts legally unenforceable. Doing this would help limit the harms that might come to birth mothers who are “poor” and/​or “young,” and who enter into the contract without full understanding and appreciation of the personal ramifications of giving up a child they have carried. Notice that the strategy of interference does not so much aim at removing vulnerability, but rather attempts to prevent those in the relevant positions of power from taking advantage of those in the corresponding positions of vulnerability. The second strategy –​redistribution –​consists in a transfer of power from the powerful to the powerless, in such a way that those who were previously in a position of vulnerability to others are no longer vulnerable, or are made less vulnerable (ibid.). (The transfer of power can be achieved by transferring wealth or property.) The vulnerable are made less vulnerable, and so less exploitable. In contrast to the strategy of interference, the strategy of redistribution is very much aimed at removing the vulnerability of the exploitable. Wood (2004: 262) argues that Karl Marx’s conception of “the socialist or communist revolution” is best understood as involving (a radical form of) this second strategy: [Marx] thinks of revolution, in other words, not as a social act protecting the vulnerable from their exploiters but rather as the establishing of new social conditions that obviate the need to protect them (by abolishing the very relationships of power within which those roles of exploiter and exploited can exist). In other words, revolution is aimed at establishing new social conditions and relations of equality between members of society that imply the elimination of certain kinds of vulnerability. 327

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Of course, the aim of removing the vulnerabilities of the exploited could be pursued without necessarily seeking to bring about social conditions and relations so radical that they require revolution. For example, the transfer of income and wealth in a non-​revolutionary context is one possible remedy. Another is the more equal distribution of quality primary and secondary school education. Indeed, minimum wage and maximum hours laws that help preserve a threshold of economic welfare and enhance the bargaining power of the poorest people might also be viewed through the lens of serving to make potential targets of exploitative practices less vulnerable.

Safeguards for Relationship Exploitation? In the previous section, I suggested that in the case of commercial exploitation (e.g., exploitation of sweatshop workers), there are two main ways to prevent or mitigate exploitation –​two ways to protect the vulnerable from being exploited.The first, interference, seeks to make it harder for those in the relevant positions of power to exercise their power to take advantage of the vulnerable. The second, redistribution, seeks to help the vulnerable more directly, by removing or minimizing the vulnerabilities of the exploited. Whereas the strategy of interference aims to protect the vulnerable from being taken advantage of, the strategy of redistribution aims to free the vulnerable from their condition of vulnerability and, thus, from any need for special protection. My question now is: How, if at all, might the two stratagems of elimination apply to the context of friendships? How might they serve to reduce the possibility of one participant exploiting, taking unfair advantage of, the other participant’s vulnerability (particularly, interpersonal vulnerability, the sort deeply tied to valuing the friendship)? Consider the application of the first strategy: preventing the less vulnerable party from taking advantage of the less vulnerable party. It is far from clear how this strategy can be operationalized in the context of friendships, especially if we are committed to the notion that the state should not be too intrusive in regulating our friendships (and other private associations). As Jerome Neu (2002: 55) reminds us about romantic love: Love […] cannot be given on demand.We cannot decide to love someone because we think they have a right to be loved by us; we cannot make ourselves love someone because we owe it to them. Moreover (and this is one of the many ironies of the human condition), even if love could be given on demand, that would not satisfy […] for the love that is desired is usually a freely given love –​a response to a desire (backed by a need) rather than a demand (backed by a threat). A love that was coerced (presuming something that was coerced could still be regarded as love at all) would be the wrong sort of love. I submit that the same points apply to friendship –​it too cannot be given on demand, and cannot be a matter that another person has an institutional right to claim or obligation to provide. Moreover, even if such a thing were possible, it would not necessarily be the sort that we would really want for ourselves. There are good reasons not to institutionalize or legalize certain norms of friendship, norms such as considering the other’s feelings, living up to the trust that the other has placed in one, not betraying secrets, keeping promises, not being selfish, not letting the other down. This is because it is important that acts of friendship (acts toward one’s friend that manifest consideration of the other’s feelings, their trust in one, etc.) be performed for the right reasons. Were we to make acts of friendship legally obligatory, that would only obscure motivations and intentions further. We would be in a worse position to decide whether acts of benefiting another are performed out of the sentiments and motivations of friendship –​or out of a desire to avoid legal penalties. (Indeed, such a strategy would also involve invasions of privacy, where such privacy may very well be necessary for intimacy.) Consider, next, the application of the second strategy of vulnerability removal. I argue that removing the distinctive vulnerability of friendship is not a viable option either. Earlier, I made 328

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the case that friendships are partly constituted by the emotional vulnerability of their participants. Removing the distinctive vulnerability of friendship is not a real option, short of impairing the friendship –​or at least significantly altering its relationship nature and value. It seems to me that the special goods of friendship –​such as care, affection, support, mutual respect and understanding, feelings of solidarity, shared experiences, and joint activities –​would not be possible (certainly not in their rich and robust form), if we immunized ourselves completely from the distinctive vulnerabilities of friendship. And anyway, the vulnerabilities of friendship should not be seen as morally problematic in themselves; we may even see them as morally desirable (on the moral value of love, see Velleman 1999). Nevertheless, the vulnerabilities of friendship bring with them risks associated with the abuse of power by one friend to another. It is worth clarifying that the sort of vulnerability bound up with friendship that I have been discussing is distinct from other kinds of vulnerability that may also be contingently present in friendships, due to such factors as one participant coming to the relationship in a state of poverty. In such cases, the likelihood of exploitation can be reduced if the participants strive over time for material or economic equality between the two parties, enabling both to have equal control over the economic resources in the relationship. Of course, there are limits to the effectiveness of this strategy, particularly in cases where one party is in a state of permanent dependency, such as when one party is severely disabled. Let me end by sketching one more strategy for safeguarding against the possibility of exploitation in friendships. Like interference, the strategy I propose seeks not to remove vulnerability but rather to constrain the power of the less vulnerable party to take advantage of the more vulnerable party. Like redistribution (at least in its radical form that Wood associates with revolution), this strategy seeks the creation of new forms of relating. But whereas both of these remedies in the commercial context are meant to be imposed externally –​from outside of the relationship between the economically powerful and powerless, say, through legal regulation, social policy, or proletariat revolution –​the remedy for the friendship case that I propose comes from within the friendship relationship: it is generated by, or out of, the motivations and concerns of the parties to the friendship relationship themselves. The strategy I have in mind involves the promotion and cultivation of egalitarian dispositions, or dispositions that enable friends to relate as equals.Without necessarily removing the vulnerability that is connected with friendship, friends may nonetheless strive to conduct their relationship on a footing of equality. An egalitarian friendship is one where the participants have a reciprocal commitment to regarding the other with consideration and respect, divide up or assign the responsibilities in a fair way, and have equal voice and authority in important decisions regarding the course of the relationship. In such a friendship, each party accepts that the other’s equally significant interests, which depend on that person’s needs, values, and preferences, ought to have equal weight in shaping decisions that are relevant to the friendship.5 These equally important interests would presumably include the interest in not having one’s vulnerabilities lead to one’s being taken advantage of by one’s friend. Both participants in an egalitarian relationship, then, are disposed to treat the other’s interests in not being used (merely as a means). Both are disposed to take into account the other’s interest in not being exploited as playing a role equal in significance to their own such interest in settling choices and decisions within the relationship. As a matter of practice, the attempt to conduct one’s friendship on a footing of equality will mean that, when needed, there will be periodic discussions that take place between the friends to work out the division and assignment of responsibilities in a fair way, and to have preferences and interests voiced when there are important decisions to be made. In the best instances, the participants engage in respectful dialogue, imaginative co-​deliberation, and reasonable compromise and concession with respect to their interests.6 Notice that effective communication and fair-​minded negotiation need not imply that every single decision taken individually must give equal weight to the comparably important interests 329

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(including needs and vulnerabilities) of each party. Sometimes this will be undesirable; other times it will be infeasible. But over the course of the friendship, each participant’s significant interests should play a comparably weighty role in determining the content of the joint decisions in the relationship, given that both parties possess a willingness to treat the other’s interests with equal deliberative significance. Of course, there may be external forms of reducing the likelihood of relationship exploitation as well. If the lack of “exit options” makes exploitation in friendships more likely, then one possible external remedy would be the use of social policy to increase the “exit options” for participants in such relationships. A related remedy is to increase participant’s subjective awareness of their “exit options.” Such awareness of one’s exit options (when one is in a relationship that is exploitative or unhealthy or dysfunctional) could go beyond an awareness of the fact that there are other potential people out there in the world with whom one could be friends. It also includes an awareness of other options more broadly conceived: other valuable projects and activities that one could devote one’s life to, invest oneself in.We could strive to increase such awareness through social instruments such as public education and public service campaigns.

Related Chapters Friendship and Self-​Interest; Are You a Good Friend?; The Value of Friendship

Notes 1 For Owens (2012: 96), “involvements” are “valuable forms of human relationship” that are marked by two features: they are “in some sense chosen” and “entail obligation.” Involvements include relationships between neighbors, acquaintances, guest and host, conversational participants, and friends. But they do not include such relationships as between parent and child, family members, and fellow citizens, insofar as these relationships are (typically) not chosen. 2 Valuing relationships that are thinner than friendship also involves vulnerability. Consider, for example, what Scanlon (1993: 162) calls “a relation of mutual recognition.” People who stand in such relations take themselves to have reasons to act in ways that are justifiable to others on grounds the others could not reasonably reject. They “will refrain from lying to others, cheating, harming, or exploiting them ‘because these things are wrong’ ” (ibid.). Even individuals who stand in relations of mutual recognition are vulnerable to each other, insofar as they are or would be responsive to each other’s normative expectations, complaints, and resentments. 3 For similar accounts that emphasize the orientation of attending to the object of care and the disposition to see the object of care as a source of reasons for action and emotion, see Jaworska 2007 and Seidman 2016. 4 Michael Robillard and Bradley J. Strawser (2016) identify a form of exploitation –​moral exploitation –​that some soldiers face, insofar as they are pressured to shoulder additional moral responsibilities, moral deliberative roles, and moral risks that they would not otherwise agree to shoulder were they not vulnerable. I am suggesting that this sort of unfair outsourcing of moral burdens could also show up in the close relationship context. 5 In proposing the strategy of cultivating egalitarian dispositions in friendship, I have been influenced by Scheffler’s (2015) notion of the “egalitarian deliberative constraint” in social relations. 6 There are other practices that further equality in friendships, particularly when there is disproportionate vulnerability and the possibility of exploitative arrangements. Seana Shiffrin (2008: 502–​10) argues that in intimate relationships, promises “provide a unique and indispensable tool to manage and assuage vulnerabilities,” though she also acknowledges that promises may also generate new vulnerabilities on the part of the promisee.

References Arneson, R. 2013. “Exploitation and Outcome.” Politics, Philosophy & Economics 12 (4): 392–​412. Cocking, D., and J. Kennett 1998. “Friendship and the Self.” Ethics 108: 502–​27. Goodin, R. 1987. “Exploiting a Situation and Exploiting a Person.” In Modern Theories of Exploitation, edited by A. Reeve, 166–​200. London: SAGE. Helm, B. 2010. Love, Friendship, and the Self: Intimacy, Identification, and the Social Nature of Persons. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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PART VI

New Issues in Philosophy of Friendship

28 FRIENDSHIP AND PERSONAL IDENTITY Katarina Perović

1  Friendship and the Persistence Question The most general metaphysical ingredients of a friendship are two individuals standing in a certain type of special relationship to one another. This, of course, happens through time, not just at a time. Friendship is not the sort of thing that is instantaneous, or even a few seconds or minutes long; typically, we tend to think of it as a relationship that takes time to develop and maintain. So all three of the metaphysical ingredients of friendship are cross-​temporal: each of the friends persists through time, as does the relationship of friendship itself. But persistence involves change and so does a persisting friendship. Change can affect friendship by affecting each of the individual people involved in a friendship, as well as the relationship itself. In this chapter, I will be particularly concerned with the question of how change in the identity of persons over time affects friendship.To this end, I will first lay down some groundwork concerning what I take to be the salient features of friendship and the criteria of a person’s persistence through time. Then I will discuss a few hypothetical cases that involve significant changes to the person through time, and examine the repercussions that these changes can have for a friendship.

1.1  Friendship and Its Distinctive Features A great deal of the philosophical literature on friendship has focused on characterizing what it is that is distinctive of the relationship of friendship, what it looks like at its best, and who can enter this sort of relationship. Here, I will go over some of the distinctive features of the relationship of friendship, as they are nicely laid out by Diane Jeske (2019). She highlights the following four: i) mutual special concern; ii) special knowledge of each other; iii) distinctive forms of responsiveness and/​or interaction; and iv) love, or something close to it (28). These features seem fairly straightforward and uncontroversial. i) The special concern that genuine friends have for one another takes the form of caring for the friend “for their own sake.” This means that one should not be interested in one’s friends merely as means to one’s other goals, or, more broadly, as a means to the promotion of one’s own self-​interest (such as, say, becoming more popular or powerful, elevating one’s social status, etc.); rather, in a genuine friendship, friends care about each other’s well-​being and happiness as an end in itself.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003007012-35

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ii) Friends will ordinarily have a certain amount of special knowledge about each other, arrived at through mutual self-​disclosure. Jeske (2019: 37) also points out that there can be significant variability in this respect –​the peculiar form and content that such knowledge will take will vary from friendship to friendship, along with the aspects of themselves that people choose to disclose to one another. What all of the various forms of disclosure have in common is that they are enabled by and rely upon a certain amount of mutual trust, as well as that the characteristic type of self-​disclosure leads to a deeper understanding of a friend’s personality and character. iii) Friends engage in various types of activities together such as talking on the phone, texting, having coffee/​drinks/​lunch/​dinner together, going to the movies, seeing shows, going on walks, attending gym classes, playing or watching sports together, and so on. Spending time together in some way is clearly central to the development and maintenance of a friendship, but it also disposes one to develop a particular kind of responsiveness to one’s friends. Dean Cocking and Jeanette Kennett (1998) discuss “the drawing effect” that friends can have on one another. They note that “as a close friend of another, one is characteristically and distinctively receptive to being directed and interpreted and so in these ways drawn by the other” (503). An example of being directed by a friend involves one’s friend enjoying watching basketball games and leading one to learn more about basketball so one can watch along with one’s friend. Another effect that friends can have on us is to help us interpret ourselves. For instance, we might not be aware of certain features of our character being salient, but when our friends point them out, it might help us become more self-​ aware. For instance, if I think of myself as not very competitive, but a close friend points out that in any game we play together I always exhibit highly competitive behavior, I might reconsider that initial self-​interpretation. iv) Finally, friends have love and affection for one another. As Jeske puts it: Liking, affection, and fondness all connote, as love also seems to do, an enjoyment of the other in some way: pleasure in the other’s company, delight in the other’s ways of expressing herself, and a capacity to be charmed or engaged by the other. 49 These attitudes are, of course, both a cause and a result of different kinds of interactions, activities, and self-​disclosure that friends engage in. We tend to want to spend time with people we like, and as we get to know them better through our common interactions and activities, our love of our friends will grow and we will want to continue to spend more time together. Now, although all four of the features described above tend to be characteristic of the relationship of friendship between two people, they do not seem to be collectively necessary for the obtaining of a friendship. Friendship lives and evolves –​there are times when some of these features might be missing, but the friendship can still continue. For instance, there might be times when one or both parties in a friendship are going through an extremely difficult time (serious illness, mental health issues, stress at work, divorce, extremely demanding family care duties, etc.) and due to this are, for some time, unable to entertain and express the special concern for each other, thus lacking (i). Similarly, during such times of crisis, one or both friends might not be able to pursue the activities that they ordinarily engage in together, such as going for lunch or coffee together, going to the museum or to a concert, and so on, thus missing out on (iii) as well. Due to discontinued contact, the two friends would not be updating each other on the new developments in their lives, and more generally simply not engaging in their customary forms of self-​disclosure, thus not fulfilling (ii) either. If we can imagine features (i), (ii), and (iii) missing from a friendship for some period of time, and yet it still continuing, then it is clearly difficult to maintain that these features are jointly necessary conditions for the persistence of friendship. Some might argue that even feature (iv) can be temporarily absent when two friends are not tending to their friendship, or when they are in conflict and feel betrayed or disappointed with one another. 336

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Of course, if features (i)–​(iv) were not merely temporarily absent but were entirely absent for a significant amount of time, we would most likely describe the friendship in past tense, as once held and maintained, but no longer ongoing, and the person in question as “a long lost friend,” “an old friend I no longer keep in touch with,” and so on.

1.2  The Metaphysical Problem of Personal Identity The metaphysical question of personal identity, as philosophers have understood it since at least John Locke, is concerned with the criteria of persistence of persons through time. The question is often put as follows: in virtue of what is a person P2 at a time t2 the same person as person P1 at a time t1? What are the necessary and sufficient conditions of diachronic identity for persons? Persons change in a great variety of ways –​biological, cognitive, psychological, and so on –​but through those changes, they also seem to remain the same.There is no doubt that I am the same person I was two years ago. I have aged, endured a variety of challenges, gained a certain amount of knowledge, had a great deal of new experiences, made some new memories, lost some old ones, changed some of my beliefs –​and yet through it all, it is not particularly controversial to claim that I am the same person throughout that period of time. The metaphysical question of personal identity tries to unpack what underwrites such judgments of identity. Which features of persons need to continue to persist through time for persons to remain the same, despite all of the listed changes? And how much change is too much change and would disrupt personal identity? It is important to distinguish this metaphysical question of persistence of persons through time –​ I will call it The Persistence Question –​from the more general question of what constitutes a person, what conditions a conscious being needs to satisfy to be a person as opposed to some other kind of entity –​The Conditions of Personhood Question. The latter is intimately related to The Persistence Question, insofar as settling on the conditions of persistence of persons through time will depend on what we take to be central to personhood more generally; and vice versa, conditions of personhood will at least to some degree reflect the features that are central in considering personhood’s persistence through time. In their approach to the persistence question, philosophers have mainly focused on two sets of criteria of personal identity: the physical and the psychological. The proponents of the physical criterion tend to appeal to the persistence of the same brain, or body, or the human organism as a whole as essential for identity of persons through time. The biggest challenge for the proponents of the physical criterion is to articulate how much of the physical body or brain is necessary for persistence of the same person. As soon as they start to focus on the need to have enough of the same physical body/​brain persist so as to sustain the same traits, beliefs, desires, intentions, memories, and so on of a person through time, their original physical criterion is reduced to a version of the psychological criterion.1 The proponents of the psychological criterion have faced their own set of challenges. One of its earlier formulations goes back to Locke, so we can call it Locke’s Memory Criterion. Briefly, according to this criterion of personal identity, P1 at a time t1 is the same person as P2 at a time t2 if and only if, P1 and P2 share all of the same memories. This criterion has encountered two main kinds of objections. Firstly, it has been called too strict –​we cannot recall countless things even from previous days or weeks and yet it does not seem that we have stopped persisting as the same person through that amount of time. Secondly, it has been deemed too narrow –​too much exclusive focus in considerations of persistence of persons has been given to memories, but there is lots more in persons’ psychology that needs to persist through time as well –​this applies to character traits, beliefs, desires, intentions, and so on. Taking these objections into account, contemporary proponents of the Psychological Criterion have made sure to loosen and widen the Psychological Criterion of personal identity. It is no longer required that there be a sharing of all of the same memories, but merely that there be a continuity of memories and of other psychological features. 337

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The distinction between psychological connectedness and psychological continuity is a very important one for advocates of the psychological criterion of personal identity; psychological connectedness requires the holding of direct psychological relations between two stages (i.e., the carrying over of the same memories, beliefs, desires, etc.), whereas psychological continuity requires that there only be overlapping chains of direct psychological relations. This gives a nice intuitive result: it turns out that I am psychologically continuous with myself from 20 years ago, although there are very few direct psychological relations between my current stage and my 20-​year-​younger stage. Were we to rely on psychological connectedness, we would not be able to claim that we are the same persons as our 20-​year-​younger selves. But by relying on psychological continuity, we can say that we are indeed the same persons, albeit significantly matured and changed. The criterion is also broadened to include a wider range of psychological features and states –​not just memories, but also traits, beliefs, desires, emotional and temperamental dispositions, and so on. As a result of these adjustments, we arrive at The Psychological Criterion, which states that P1 at t1 is the same person as P2 at t2 if and only if P1 and P2 are psychologically continuous. This criterion has been challenged by philosophers in a variety of ways –​notably, by Derek Parfit through discussions of thought experiments of fission, fusion, and spectrum cases (Parfit 1971, 1984). I will not be discussing these in detail here, since the main focus in the chapter is on the interface of friendship and personal identity.

2  What Happens to a Friendship When a Person Changes Drastically As noted previously, change affects friendship by affecting each of the people involved in a friendship as well as the relationship of friendship itself. Some of these changes are gradual while others are quite radical and present good test cases for our consideration. I will now discuss a few cases that involve significant changes to the person, and examine the repercussions that these changes can have for a friendship between two people.

2.1  Transformative Experience, Transformative Choice, and Friendship The first case to consider here involves a radical and life-​altering change to a person’s beliefs, desires, intentions, preferences, and so on, while leaving the person’s memories intact. L.A. Paul (2014) has recently introduced and developed the concept of transformative experience, which she illustrates with the following thought experiment of becoming a vampire: Imagine that you have a chance to become a vampire.With one swift, painless bite, you’ll be permanently transformed into an elegant and fabulous creature of the night. As a member of the undead, your life will be completely different. You’ll experience a range of intense, revelatory new sense experiences, you’ll gain immortal strength, speed and power, and you’ll look fantastic in everything you wear. You’ll also need to drink blood and avoid sunlight. […] Suppose that all of your friends, people whose interests, views and lives were similar to yours, have already decided to become vampires. And all of them tell you that they love it. They describe their new lives with unbridled enthusiasm, and encourage you to become a vampire too. […] Suppose that you also know that if you pass up this opportunity, you’ll never have another chance. Paul 2014: 1; emphasis in original An experience is deemed a transformative one, according to Paul, if it is both epistemically transformative and personally transformative. An epistemically transformative experience involves acquiring new experiential knowledge with its accompanying qualia –​learning a new skill (such as learning how to ride a bike), gaining a new sensory experience (such as discovering for the first time what caviar 338

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tastes like), and so on. Personally transformative experiences are those that change a person very deeply, radically altering one’s outlook on life (such as a horrific physical attack, gaining a new sensory ability, having a religious conversion, becoming a parent, experiencing serious illness, losing a loved one, making a major discovery, and so on). Becoming a vampire is a great example of an experience that would both be epistemically transformative –​one would learn a great deal of new skills and have new experiences, as well as personally transformative –​one’s outlook on life would likely be deeply changed by becoming an immortal blood-​sucking night dweller. Crucially, for Paul, many of the most important choices in our lives are every bit as transformative as the hypothetical case of becoming a vampire –​examples include whether or not to go to college or move to another country; the choice of a career path (say, whether to become a philosophy professor or a banker); the choice of whether or not to become a parent; and so on. Similarly, such life choices are susceptible to the same decision-​ making puzzle, as the one that Paul presents for the vampire case: Transformative choices, then, ask you to make a decision where you must manage different selves at different times, with different sets of preferences. Which set of preferences should you be most concerned with?Your preferences now, or your preferences after the experience? 47–​8 It is not the aim of my discussion here, however, to get into the weeds of the decision-​making puzzle that transformative experiences give rise to, for Paul. Rather, what is interesting for our purposes is the aftermath of the transformative choice for the person who makes it, as well as for his or her friendships. For if indeed at the other end of the transformative experience stands a radically changed person, with a wildly different outlook on life and with wildly different values, beliefs, desires, and preferences, how would this affect the friendship? Let us imagine that Lucy has decided to become a vampire, having been convinced by a number of her family members and friends that this would indeed be a life-​altering choice that she will benefit from and that she will thoroughly enjoy. But Lucy’s best friend Mira has decided against such a transformation for herself –​she is convinced that being a regular human mortal suits her perfectly well. It is easy to see how Lucy’s and Mira’s respective choices would put a great deal of strain on their friendship. Lucy would find herself adjusting to her new life, spending a great deal of time learning new skills from other members of her new tribe. Mira, on the other hand, would continue on with her usual human life, embracing its many joys and challenges. But the two friends would now have radically different lives, priorities, and very little time to spend together.With Lucy up all night and asleep during the day, and Mira with an opposite schedule, they would have to work hard to find time for each other when the other one was not too tired. They would also have to work very hard to maintain some of the shared interests and activities (going to the movies, shopping together, or going for walks during daytime would now be very difficult for them both) or find some new ones in these new circumstances (perhaps nighttime walks and conversation). They would also have to show interest in each other’s lives and continue to express the care for one another “for their own sake,” even if they do not exactly understand or approve of each other’s choices. And even if this were not difficult enough, Mira in particular would have to let go and grieve the “old” Lucy, the one that she had shared years with and had great love and fondness for, and learn to love and appreciate the “new” vampire Lucy, with her new vampire quirks, habits, and priorities. Now, the vampire case is a vivid thought experiment that helps us think about transformative experiences and choices. But, as noted above, Paul thinks that equally transformative are experiences that happen in our ordinary human lives. Say, Lucy decided to have a child and become a stay-​at-​ home mom, while Mira decided to remain childless and travel the world; or Lucy decided to join the Amish community, while Mira pursued a career in software development at Google, and so on and so forth. We can imagine many different transformative experiences affecting each friend individually and, in turn their mutual friendship. Each scenario is a different one, but what they all have in 339

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common is that if even only one person involved in a friendship undergoes a transformative experience that changes her deeply, the friendship too, if it is to survive at all, would have to undergo a deep transformation.

2.2  Losing Memories, One’s Self, and One’s Friends? According to the proponents of the psychological criterion of personal identity, crucial to the persistence of persons through time is continuity of one’s psychology, broadly construed to involve one’s memories, personality traits, beliefs, desires, intentions, and so on. Continuity of memory is found to be a core component of both what constitutes the self at any given time, as well as what constitutes a person’s persistence through time. Psychologists talk about long-​term memory containing two systems: i) procedural memory (this involves remembering our know-​hows such as knowing how to ride a bike, how to swim, how to play the piano, etc.); and ii) declarative memory (remembering our know-​thats such as knowing that 2 +​2 =​4; knowing that Rome is the capital of Italy; knowing that water boils at 100º C, etc.). Furthermore, declarative memory is subdivided into semantic declarative memory, which is generic and context-​free; and episodic declarative memory, which involves memories of events as having been experienced at a particular place and time (these are the “what, where, when” of an event that is often presented in the form of narrative experiential knowledge of one’s past). Philosophers and psychologists interested in personal identity have focused on episodic declarative memories as the ones relevant to a person’s persistence. It is because I remember a wide range of experiences happening to me, at different points in my life, that I can confidently claim that I am the same persisting person now as I was at age 35 or 25 or ten. The loss of certain know-​hows, such as forgetting how to ride a bike or how to swim or play piano, could influence my sense of persisting self to varying degrees –​if I were a pianist who after a brain injury was not able to play piano, this would strongly affect my life priorities, but if I only played piano occasionally, as a hobby, this would not present such a huge problem for my sense of self. Similarly, losses of procedural memory could affect my friendships to varying degrees, depending upon how important they were to the friendship itself. If, for instance, my friend Lindsay and I used to spend all our time together going on long bike rides, and after a brain injury I had lost this particular know-​how, this would certainly present a problem. Lindsay and I would have to find a different activity that we enjoy doing together, a different way of spending time together and enjoying each other’s company. Absent such efforts, the friendship might indeed be in danger. But imagine now a person, let us call him Jim, who suffers from a severe and sudden loss of episodic memories due to a serious brain injury. After a biking accident, Jim finds himself with a bad case of retrograde amnesia –​he is no longer able to remember anything about his past. He has no recollection about who he was, what he used to do for a living, who his family members and friends are. His family members and friends keep visiting him and telling him stories about what he used to be like, what they used to get up to together, but he hears these stories as if they are endearing stories about some other person, someone who he is curious to find out about, but nonetheless someone who he feels no connection to. Let us also imagine that despite this, most of Jim’s character traits and dispositions, interests, beliefs, and desires remain somehow miraculously intact. He does not know why he is scared of heights, what past incident might have caused the fear, but he is still very much averse to heights. He has kept his signature dry and dark sense of humor. He likes to watch baseball and knows a lot of facts about it, but he has no recollection of himself having played it as a child, or having been to any games with his friends and family members. And despite not remembering himself working as an elementary kindergarten teacher, he still possesses a great deal of knowledge about how to do his teaching job well. How would Jim’s retrograde amnesia affect his friendships? It is clear that it would present a massive disruption to all of his relationships and that a lot would depend on the future that his 340

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friends would like to build with Jim. As long as Jim is able to make new memories, is enjoying the company of the friends that his pre-​amnesiac self had made, and his friends are willing to patiently build a new relationship with him, there is hope for a continuation of friendship. One could imagine Jim studiously taking notes and relearning the fundamental traits, interests, and all the relevant pieces of information about his friends and their shared history. Moving forward, he could develop special concern and love for each of them, engage in activities with them that would allow him to get to know them better, and create new shared experiences and memories with them. It is not difficult to imagine situations in which Jim’s old and dear friends would describe him as being like “his old self,” exuding the same affection he once had for them, and joking and laughing in similar ways. Jim, on the other hand, could find himself surprised with how warm and affectionate he feels toward certain people –​the ones that everyone else describes as his old friends –​despite not remembering their faces, facts about them, or even a single shared experience. Despite the massive loss of episodic memories, however, in this scenario it is possible to imagine ways in which Jim could reconnect with his old friends and develop new friendships with them going forward. But if Jim’s old friendship with someone, say Richie, was of the sort fundamentally based on revisiting their previous history together and talking about the people they knew from their shared past, then rebuilding a friendship would seem near impossible. If we imagine Jim and Richie’s previous relationship mainly consisting of a once-​a-​month drink at the local bar and rumination over their past college days and experiences and all of the people who they used to know in those days, it is easy to see how this would no longer be a plausible pastime for either Jim (due to his retrograde amnesia) or Richie (who needs his friend to be able to remember those episodic memories of their shared treasured past). Let us now imagine Jim*, who is just like Jim in the above example, except that after his biking accident he is not only suffering from retrograde amnesia, but he is also afflicted by anterograde amnesia.The two amnesias often happen together, and unfortunately Jim* is both unable to recall his past experiences as well as unable to create new memories. Short-​term memory is crucial for one’s ability to navigate even the simplest of day-​to-​day activities: making a meal, going to an appointment, showing up for one’s job and carrying out the various tasks it involves, and so on and so forth. Jim* often finds himself confused, anxious, and upset as he struggles to understand where he is, what he is supposed to be doing, who he knows, and who he should trust and listen to. He does not remember his family members, friends, or acquaintances from the past, and he is unable to reconnect with them in his current circumstances since he cannot keep track from one visit to another, if he had seen them before. This is indeed an extremely difficult situation for Jim* and according to the proponent of the Psychological Criterion of personal identity, given that there is such a radical psychological discontinuity between the pre-​accident Jim and the post-​accident Jim*, the latter can hardly be thought of as “the same person” as the former. In response to this case, someone might wish to push back, and claim that despite such an enormous disruption to Jim’s psychology, there is still something left –​perhaps his calm and warm demeanor, his sense of humor, his preference for a strong coffee and a poppy seed bagel, and so on. The claim might be that there are still certain character traits, preferences, and dispositions that have persisted from Jim to Jim* and that despite the wholesale loss of memories, there is still enough there for the persistence of the self. How convincing one will find this pushback will depend on what view of the self or personhood one takes. For those who think that robust psychological continuity is central to personhood, what seems to persist in the case of Jim* is so weak that we are faced with both the loss of self and the loss of persistence of such self. Sadly, Jim* also lacks the basic capacities necessary for being able to stand in the relationship of friendship. Although he might have retained fondness for the company of some friends, such fondness is a far cry from the love and affection he once felt for them; now he has no memory at all of his 341

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previous interactions with his friends and family, and cannot even remember their faces. He is unable to keep appointments, remember his friends’ interests, preferences, beliefs, intentions, hopes, and so on, and so he holds no general or special knowledge of his friends, and is unable to express anything different than some form of short-​lived generic care and concern for them. This is not to say, of course, that Jim* would not benefit from having friends and family come by and spend time with him. Such interactions could be beneficial to him –​he might spend some pleasant time interacting with people who have been close to him, and this he might find engaging and enjoyable. Such interactions could also be somewhat comforting to those who love him –​Jim’s friends might find it both sad to see Jim* merely a shadow of his former self, but also reassuring that, perhaps in some sense, he is not completely gone. Neuroscientist Daniel Levitin describes this kind of experience when he visited his acquaintance Tom, who due to advancing brain cancer was experiencing both anterograde and retrograde amnesia: “Please forgive me for asking this, but I do this with everybody. Could you tell me your name again and how it is that I know you?” “Um … my name is Dan. Dan Levitin.” There was neither recognition nor unrecognition. Just a calm, interested face staring back at me. “We were students together at Stanford,” I continued. “We took a couple of psychology classes together.” “Oh, yes, I have a degree in psychology.” […] He looked over at me. “So, were we friends?” I just stared. Would it be rude if I told him that I never really thought of him as a friend? I mean, if one person thought of another as a friend, and the other person denied it, that would be hurtful. But Tom had no memory of me one way or the other. As I was thinking this, he spoke. “It’s okay. There’s often this … gray area, I guess you’d call it, in human relationships, isn’t there? We meet people, we see them every day, we say hello, but we don’t really know them. We say they’re our friends, but really, you can’t be friends with the hundreds of people you meet, can you? It’s enough that we had a shared history together.” […] “It was nice of you to come. It was helpful too. It’s comforting to put together the pieces of my life, to see what I’ve done. To know that there were kind people like you who were in it with me. Thank you.” I walked down the stairs, past the rows and rows of identical apartment buildings, back to my car. Then I sat in my car with the key in the ignition, not wanting to move. Professor Pribram felt that when we lose our memory, we lose our entire sense of self. When I saw Tom, something fundamentally Tom was still there. Some of us call it personality, or essence. Some call it the “soul.”Whatever it is, the tumor that took Tom’s memory had not touched it. Levitin 2012 So far in this section I have focused on cases of Jim and Jim* that involve a sudden and thoroughgoing loss of episodic memories. The disruption to one’s sense of self, one’s personhood, and one’s persistence through time is so big that most proponents of the Psychological Criterion would not find the resulting person to have survived such change. Levitin, however, by the end of the above remarks, suggests that perhaps the exclusive focus on memories in personhood is misplaced, that 342

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“something fundamentally Tom was still there” even despite his wholesale loss of memory, and that this something might be thought of as a personality, or an essence, or a soul. I am skeptical of such claims, however. Not because I do not see the importance of continuity of character traits, temperamental dispositions, and preferences, for the persistence of persons. All of these constitute an important part of what philosophers want to refer to, broadly, as “psychological continuity” and it is extremely difficult to weigh different aspects of one’s psychology against one another in real life cases as well as in thought experiments. But what I am wary of is the need to identify personhood solely with memory or solely with “personality”; such exclusive focus on one over the other fails to take into account how complex and intertwined all of these aspects of one’s psychology truly are for the persistence of persons. This sort of exclusive focus on one or the other can spill over into our considerations of friendship as well; but although Tom and Jim* still possess certain personality traits and dispositions that might remind their friends of their old selves, the wholesale loss of memory makes them thoroughly unable to engage in a reciprocal friendship.

2.3  Duplication and Friendship Another interesting case to consider for our purposes is that of duplication. Let us imagine a situation in which a very successful academic, a woman in her early fifties, has just been told that she has early-​onset familial Alzheimer’s disease and that rapidly her memory and her cognitive abilities will drastically decline. Such a scenario was the subject of the 2014 movie Still Alice, starring Julianne Moore. In the movie, Alice turns 50, and shortly after celebrating her birthday with her husband and grown children, she is faced with the devastating diagnosis of early-​onset Alzheimer’s disease. The movie then details many of the ways that this terrible disease affects Alice and her family; it shows us how disorienting and frightening the disease is for Alice and how it robs her of everything that she holds dear –​her eloquence, her intelligence, her reasoning skills, her memories, her physical strength, her independence, her way of relating to her husband and children. Now let us imagine a scenario in which when Alice is told the terrible diagnosis, she is offered the option to preserve all of her cognitive abilities, memories, personality traits, and so on through duplication. The neuroscientist explains that there is a new cutting-​edge treatment that would allow the scientists to duplicate all of Alice’s psychology onto a new organic lab-​g rown brain. After all of Alice’s brain states have been successfully duplicated, the new brain will be implanted into her body, while the old diseased brain will be used for Alzheimer’s research. What should Alice do? Alice might herself hold on to a theory of mind according to which such duplication is not possible. She might be a physicalist who believes that her mind just is her brain, and that there is no way of duplicating it; she is numerically identical with her brain. According to her, neuroscientists might believe that they are duplicating something, but there is just no way that they are duplicating Alice. When her brain goes, she goes. But let us imagine that Alice’s husband John is a fan of the functionalist approach to mind, and thinks that it is Alice’s brain states and processes that make her who she is, and that such states and processes can be realized in different mediums –​in another organic brain, or possibly a bionic brain one day, or perhaps even a robot at some point in the not-​too-​distant future. John is very excited at the possibility of prolonging Alice’s life and avoiding her cognitive deterioration. Now, although Alice is very apprehensive about the procedure, she decides to take the risk. She reasons that she might as well try it, as she believes that possible outcomes are the following three: 1) the procedure is successful and she will survive it and gain her life back (though her theory of mind will have been proven wrong); 2) she will die but get replaced with an indistinguishable replica that to her husband, children, and friends will seem like the same old Alice; or 3) the procedure is unsuccessful and Alice dies in the process. Alice believes that although 3) is the most likely scenario, it is not as bad as dying slowly of Alzheimer’s. Outcome 2) also involves a loss of life for Alice, but she believes that were it possible to have an indistinguishable replica carry on living, it would be far better than having no replica take her place. Indeed, she can imagine how great it would be for her family and 343

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friends to get to spend time with the replica-​Alice, especially if they did not know that it was a replica, and had no way of finding out. This would save them from so much pain and suffering, and the replica-​Alice would continue to be an equally caring and loving mother, wife, and friend. But option 1) would, of course, be the real winner –​the procedure being successful is the best case scenario, and Alice decides that it is worth the risk. To everyone’s delight the transplant is a complete success. Alice’s children and her husband think that post-​transplant Alice –​let’s call her Alice1 –​is exactly the same as the pre-​transplant Alice. They are all very relieved that they acted as quickly as they did, because it allowed them to have their mother and wife back. Her friends feel the same. Alice1 herself, after post-​surgical recovery, has been so happy at how healthy she feels, and how well her new brain is functioning. She claims that her episodic memory is even better than before the procedure. To her heavy academic schedule of courses, conferences, and so on she has now added public advocacy for the new revolutionary brain transplant for Alzheimer’s patients. In the midst of her busy schedule, about a month after Alice was discharged from the hospital, Alice1 receives a call from her neurosurgeon. He is very flustered and apologetic about the news he is about to give her. He explains that when they decided to duplicate her brain states, they were very concerned about their chances of it working out on first try, so they made backups. Three copies to be exact. As it turns out, all three replicas have been amazingly successful. The first brain-​replica is in Alice1’s current body; the second brain-​replica, Alice2, has been placed into a body of a woman who was left brain-​dead after a terrible accident; and the third brain-​replica is in a vat, hooked up to a computer and communicating with its help. Both Alice2 and Alice3 consider themselves to be psychological continuants of Alice; they claim that they miss their old life, and that they urgently need to get back to their work and family obligations. The researchers are very unsure about what to do at this point, and given that their research funding is being cut, they are wondering if Alice1 and her loved ones would like the two other replicas turned over to them. After all, they are family, no? Alice1 is dumbfounded. She is certain that she is the only genuine psychological continuant of her pre-​procedure self. But after visiting the lab and interacting with the two other brain replicas, she realizes that they feel exactly the same –​she appears to have no more claim to the pre-​procedure self than the other two copies.They were all a result of a copying of all of Alice’s brain states and processes, the only difference being, of course, that Alice1 has been back to her ordinary pre-​procedure life in the past month, while the other two copies of herself have been kept and experimented on in the lab. Also, Alice2 finds herself inside a different woman’s body (which has certainly been an adjustment), while Alice3 is in a vat and hooked up to a computer through which she successfully communicates (though the whole setup is a bit awkward and bulky). A friend of the family who is a philosopher informs Alice that the literature on personal identity is in agreement on the fact that identity is a one-​one relation, and hence that the pre-​procedure Alice cannot strictly speaking be numerically identical to all three of her psychological successors. But, thanks to the important work of Derek Parfit (1971, 1984), many philosophers are now comfortable with letting go of their attachment to the notion of identity as what matters in these sorts of situations and are perfectly happy to claim that what truly matters is the relation of psychological survival, which is a one-​many relation, and it can come in degrees.Thus, the pre-​procedure Alice is extremely lucky –​not only has she managed to dodge the deteriorating effects of Alzheimer’s, but thanks to the successful copying of her brain contents and states, she is now succeeded by three top-​notch psychological continuants, though she is not numerically identical to any of them. Alice1 decides to summon her replicas and all of her closest family members and friends to decide what they ought to do going forward. John, her husband, is deeply troubled by the whole ordeal. He loves his wife Alice1 and he takes her to be the only legitimate continuant of Alice. At the same time, as many others point out, he is being inconsistent –​if he genuinely believes that what matters to Alice’s survival is the continuation of her psychology (commitment to psychological criterion of personal identity), and he takes it that Alice’s psychology can be realized in multiple mediums 344

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(commitment to functionalism), then he will be gaining two more replicas of his wife, just differently realized. John muses that often times he wishes to have been able to spend more time with his wife, and that their busy schedules required them to juggle their careers and family obligations in such a way that they would often miss each other’s company. Now, perhaps, he could take advantage of the situation and have Alice2 accompany him on those trips that Alice1 is too busy to go on; he could take Alice2 to the movies that Alice1 cannot make, and so on and so forth. Gradually, Alice’s children start to make similar comments –​they sometimes wish that they could receive more individual attention from mom, and perhaps spending time with the replicas could be used to everyone’s advantage. Alice’s friends get drawn into this way of thinking as well –​remember all those times that Alice could not make it to this or that event due to her family and work commitments? Perhaps now Jack will get to go hiking with Alice1 more often, as it is something they both enjoy doing greatly but do not do as often as they should. Mary might go shopping more often with Alice2 since they both enjoy fashionable clothing very much and love chatting about all sorts of things during such outings. An old friend, Sarah, just likes to sit and drink coffee and chat with Alice about this and that, and she thinks she would really enjoy the company of Alice3, who can communicate very well through the computer, though the sight of her in a vat will require some adjustment. Hearing all of this, all three –​Alice1, Alice2, and Alice3 –​have the same reaction: “But it wouldn’t be me experiencing all of this additional time together, it will be someone else. This someone else is the closest possible relative, but it’s still not me!” So, the extra time with different people in their lives, though it might sound like a clever division of labor, would also be a loss for each of the replicas.The extra time that Alice1 spends with one of her children, will mean that Alice2 and Alice3 will not have shared that time with them; the special time that friend Sarah gets to spend with Alice3 will come at the expense of the time that Alice1 and Alice2 would be spending with her. Each replica will over time have diverged more and more from each other as well as from the original Alice, so that they will have developed their own distinct shared experiences and relationships with the people in their lives. The three replicas would have to keep each other updated on their lives constantly, if they were to try to not drift apart from each other too much, and they would have to keep each other up to date about how all of their different loved ones are doing. The three replicas would also have to guard against inevitable competitiveness and jealousy that would arise; John’s spending most time with Alice1, who is physically the closest continuant of the pre-​procedure Alice, would inevitably be very difficult for Alice2 and Alice3. They would all have to somehow transition from a monogamous relationship to some form of polyamory, an unknown territory to all of them. Friendships too would be greatly affected. After the initial enthusiasm about the possibility of spending more time with one of Alice’s replicas and the apparent benefit that each of them would have, the friends start to worry about the additional emotional and psychological burdens that these relationships will inevitably bring with them. Namely, if friends were to split the replicas between them –​say, Jack would get Alice1, Mary would get Alice2, and Sarah would get Alice3 –​they would lose out on their own relationships with the other two. And yet, the true good old friends that they are, they feel as if they ought to care for all three of Alice’s descendants. They have a shared history with each, special knowledge and ways of interacting with each, love and special concern for each. What is transpiring from these considerations is that even in the best-​case scenario imagined here with a wonderful person like Alice, the challenges to all her relationships would be significant. And while each of these relationships would indeed involve certain gains (more quality time together with certain loved ones for the replica Alice and more time with the replica for the friend or family member), they would also involve significant losses (one replica’s time with one friend will inevitably come at the expense of the special time with the other who would feel a sense of loss and abandonment). Even if the three replicas decided that the fairest solution for all of them would be to always do everything together, each of them would only get one-​third of the time with their loved ones, thus leading to inevitable disappointments, tensions, and awkwardness. 345

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3 Conclusion The aim of this chapter has been to shed some light on friendship and personal identity, through considerations of how radical change in persons affects their friendships. Cases involving transformative experiences have shown that even without loss of memories, persons can undergo transformations that put significant stress on friendships; indeed, it seems that when one or both persons undergo a transformative experience that changes the person’s experience and outlook on life, the friendship too would have to undergo a deep transformation if it is to survive. Scenarios that involve a drastic loss of the memory of one’s past experiences (retrograde amnesia) are a serious challenge both for the persistence of a person, as well as for the persistence of their friendships. It can be imagined, however, that with the ability to form new memories, and the help of old friends in retelling the past, the friendships could continue to flourish. However, when there is a sudden and massive failure of the entire memory system, as in retrograde amnesia with anterograde amnesia, what one is left with is certainly not enough to build a friendship with another person. Perhaps people can still provide comfort and enjoy each other’s company even in these circumstances, as in the case of Tom described by Levitin, but just as the person with such acute memory loss is the shadow of his former self, so too, inevitably, are the relationships with friends and acquaintances. Finally, I considered the case of the psychological duplication of a woman called Alice, and the challenges that having psychological duplicates would pose for the replicas themselves and for the persons involved in relationships with them. Despite initial enthusiasm that one might feel about having a loved one duplicated, the challenges that the new circumstances would bring are significant, if not insurmountable.

Note 1 For this objection to the physical criterion, see Noonan (1989) and Olson (1997). Eric Olson (1997) has developed a version of the physical approach that resists this outcome by insisting on the importance of the persistence through time of the same human animal, but this view itself faces its own setbacks.

References Cocking, D., and J. Kennett. 1998. “Friendship and the Self.” Ethics 108 (3): 502–​27. Jeske, D. 2019. Friendship and Social Media. London: Routledge. Levitin, D. 2012. “Amnesia and the Self That Remains When Memory Is Lost.” The Atlantic December 31, 2012. Noonan, H. 1989. Personal Identity. London: Routledge. Olson, E. 1997. The Human Animal: Personal Identity without Psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Parfit, D. 1971. “Personal Identity.” Philosophical Review 80: 3–​27. Parfit, D. 1984. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Paul, L.A. 2014. Transformative Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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29 FRIENDS-​WITH-​BENEFITS Is Sex Compatible with Friendship? Natasha McKeever

Introduction So-​called friends-​with-​benefits relationships, where friends have a sexual relationship, are increasingly common, at least among young people. One study of American college students found that 42.9–​ 54.3% had had at least one such relationship in the past year, with men more likely than women to have had one, and the authors noted that other studies have found similar results (Owen and Fincham 2011: 317). However, friends-​with-​benefits relationships have been given relatively little consideration by philosophers. It is commonly assumed that romantic relationships are sexual, but friendships are not, and sometimes that sex is what distinguishes these relationships from each other. This view is also found in philosophy. For example, Bennett Helm argues that there is a clear difference between friendship and romantic love in that romantic love involves sex whereas friendship does not (Helm 2017), and Lawrence Thomas states that romantic love “presumably […] has a sexual element to it” whereas friendship does not (Thomas 1987: 221). The concept of “friends-​with-​benefits” tests this distinction, since it involves friends having a sexual relationship that is not romantic. These relationships, therefore, sit outside of the “standard” categories of friendship and romantic relationship. And though such relationships are becoming more common, they can lead to problems, such as one friend developing feelings of romantic love for the other, which are not reciprocated by the other (Bisson and Levine 2009). Some people might think that sex is incompatible with friendship, perhaps because they hold one or more of the following views: that sex will necessarily damage friendship; that friends-​with-​benefits are not really friends at all, but something else; that the goods of friendship cannot be realized alongside the goods of sex.1 In this chapter, I argue that these views are incorrect, and that friendship and sex are indeed compatible. In order to do this, I first consider three core characteristics of friendship: (1) mutual liking, (2) mutual caring, and (3) mutual sharing. I argue that sex is prima facie compatible with each of them. I then consider two potential risks posed by friends-​with-​benefits relationships: firstly, that they blur the boundaries between friendship and romantic relationships, leading to uncertainty over what can be expected from the relationship; and secondly, that sex could damage friendships by leading to one or both of the friends developing feelings of romantic love for the other. I argue that these risks can be mitigated and managed, so, while they are relevant considerations, they do not provide strong reasons against friends-​with-​benefits relationships.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003007012-36

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Part 1: Is Sex Compatible with Friendship? 1.1  What Are Friends-​With-​Benefits? The term “friends-​with-​benefits” is really a misnomer, since it implies that the non-​sexual elements of friendship do not count as benefits. Leaving that issue aside, I want to briefly clarify what a friends-​with-​benefits relationship is, before going on to evaluate it.The way that people use the term “friends-​with-​benefits” will likely vary somewhat. In this chapter, when I use the term, I will be using it to refer to a non-​romantic friendship, which includes a sexual element to it. Of course, what counts as “romantic” and “non-​romantic” is up for grabs and will mean different things to different people. Defining these terms is beyond the scope of the chapter, but for the purposes of our discussion, the key thing is that the friends-​with-​benefits do not themselves count their relationship as a romantic one. Further, for it to count as a friends-​with-​benefits relationship, the friends must have sex on more than one occasion: a one-​off sexual encounter between friends would not make the relationship a “friends-​with-​benefits” relationship. In addition, the friends must actually be friends, not just regular casual sexual partners (sometimes referred to as “fuck buddies”). I will explain my understanding of friendship below, by outlining three of its core characteristics. The final thing to note is that friends-​ with-​benefits relationships need not start off as non-​sexual friendships; they could begin as friends and develop a sexual relationship, but they could also begin as casual sexual partners and develop a friendship, or the friendship and the sexual element of their relationship could develop together. They could also first have a romantic relationship and then change their relationship to be one of friends-​with-​benefits.Therefore, sex is not always an addition to an already existing friendship, and, in any case, adding sex to a relationship can sometimes change it quite fundamentally, so it is not always possible to subtract sex from a friends-​with-​benefits relationship without the friendship changing quite significantly.

1.2  The Characteristics of Friendship We have established what friends-​with-​benefits are. I now want to consider whether, prima facie, a friends-​with-​benefit relationship can be, at the same time, a good friendship, or whether sex necessarily compromises, or even destroys friendship. In order to do this, I will first consider three, I think uncontroversial, core characteristics of friendship: (1) mutual liking, (2) mutual caring, (3) mutual sharing. I will argue that sex is compatible with, and may even strengthen, all of them.There is, therefore, no prima facie reason to assume that friends-​with-​benefits relationships will not also be good friendships.

1.2.1  Mutual Liking Friendships, like romantic relationships, but unlike most familial relationships, are chosen and can be ended if the participants so desire. This does not mean that the choice to become friends with someone is always consciously made. As Thomas notes,“one does not shop for a friend in the way that one shops for an article of clothing,” and we can sometimes be surprised to find that we have become friends with someone (Thomas 1987: 218). However, we usually become friends with someone because we like them, and we choose to continue to be friends with them for the same reason. This means that friends must like each other; mutual liking is not sufficient for friendship, but it is necessary (Annis 1987: 349; Jeske 1997: 53). Two people liking each other overall is consistent with them finding some features of each other annoying, or with them not always enjoying each other’s company. For it to count as a friendship, the friends must be choosing to continue to be friends, in part at least, because they like each other and desire that the friendship continue. If two people did not like each other, but continued to spend time together and support each other and so on, only because to do so was mutually beneficial (perhaps because both wanted to gain information from the other, or 348

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because appearing to be friends would benefit their career), then they would not count as genuine friends. Furthermore, the friends must like each other as friends. I can like someone “as a manager” or “as a teacher,” for example, without liking them as a friend. A student might, for example, appreciate the strict discipline his teacher exerts on the class, and her organization, but know that they would not get on at all outside of the classroom. Whether sex is compatible with the mutual liking aspect of friendship thus depends on whether sex would impede friends from liking each other in the way that is appropriate to their relationship.While having a sexual relationship with someone is, of course, compatible with liking them, in some cases it can hamper the proper functioning of a relationship, or the appropriate “mode” of liking. For example, if a teacher starts liking her student sexually, this will impede her ability to like him in the appropriate way for a teacher to like a student and this would likely damage the functioning of the teacher–​student relationship. We can imagine something similar happening in a friendship. If Joanna and Junaid are friends but Joanna develops a sexual attraction toward Junaid, she might start liking him more for the qualities of him that make him sexually attractive to her (his muscular arms and gravelly voice, for example) rather than for those qualities that make him a good friend to her (such as his sensitivity and good sense of humor). Perhaps Joanna only wants to spend time with Junaid in the hope that it will lead to them having sex. This might impact on the rest of their relationship, and Junaid, if he realized this, might reasonably feel like Joanna did not like him “in the right way.” Therefore, the mode of liking that is appropriate in friendship could conceivably be complicated and damaged by the presence of sexual attraction. However, this is not necessarily the case. Joanna’s sexual attraction toward Junaid could lead to her being more drawn to and interested in Junaid; she might end up paying more attention to him and subsequently being a better friend to him overall. She might like him primarily for his sensitivity and good sense of humor, and only secondarily for his muscular arms and gravelly voice. Or perhaps she is simply able to disentangle the reasons for which she likes him as a friend and the reasons for which she is sexually attracted to him, such that her sexual attraction does not interfere with her friendship with him. It might also be the case that Junaid reciprocates her sexual attraction, and the friends might find that being sexually attracted to each other creates a playful and intimate dynamic between them that accentuates their friendship. That sexual attraction may or may not be problematic with regard to the way that friends like each other is a consequence of the fact that friendship has a less clear function than a relationship defined by social roles, such as a teacher–​student relationship. It is an example of, what Thomas calls, a “minimally structured social interaction, where how the parties interact with one another is not primarily a function of social roles” (Thomas 1987: 218). As minimally structured social interactions do not have strict norms governing them, what is crucial for them is that the people involved have “a shared conception of the good” (Thomas 1987: 220). Therefore, in a friendship where one friend thinks that sex can be part of a good friendship, and is sexually attracted to the other, but their sexual attraction is unreciprocated and the other friend thinks that sexual attraction impedes friendships from going well, then the sexual attraction here could cause problems. However, if both friends were sexually attracted to each other, and thought that sex could be a part of a good friendship, then the sexual attraction could be unproblematic.

1.2.2  Mutual Caring Secondly, friends care about each other disinterestedly, meaning they want what is best for each other, and are not friends with each other just in order to gain things for themselves. “Friendships of convenience” exist, of course, such as when work colleagues are friendly with each other, and go to the pub together on a Friday, in order to make their working lives easier.The work colleagues might care about each other too, but only self-​interestedly. For example, Adrian might care that Belinda is ill and 349

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want her to get better soon. He might even drop some medicine round to her house to help her. But if his motivation is only that he wants her to get back to work as soon as possible so that he does not have to pick up her work, then he cares for Belinda but only for self-​interested reasons, not for her own sake. This would, therefore, not count as a genuine friendship. Again, whether sex is compatible with this feature of friendship will depend on whether sex interferes with the friends caring about each other for each other’s own sake. This is possible. To continue with our example from above, if Joanna is sexually attracted to Junaid, she might, in certain circumstances, find it more difficult to truly want what is best for him. For example, when Junaid starts dating another person, Joanna might feel jealous and this could lead her to behave coldly toward Junaid, rather than being happy for him. This is because her sexual attraction toward Junaid has made her focus on what she wants from him, rather than on what is best for him. However, sexual attraction need not lead to a lack of caring about the other for their own sake. Joanna might not expect anything from Junaid as a result of her sexual attraction toward him, and still be happy for Junaid when he starts dating another person, despite her sexual attraction toward him. Jealousy and possessiveness are not necessary consequences of sexual attraction, and feelings of jealousy and possessiveness can be managed in any case.2 Indeed, sexual attraction is usually a part of romantic relationships, but it is not impossible for romantic partners to care about each other for their own sakes. Furthermore, through having sex, friends-​with-​benefits may have more opportunities to show care and concern for each other and contribute to each other’s well-​being. Sex can be highly pleasurable, and so giving someone else sexual pleasure can be a good way of making them feel good. At its best, sex is an activity that involves a great deal of sensitivity and attentiveness to the other’s needs and desires. Sexual partners are vulnerable to each other, and, for things to go well, they need to be able to trust each other. As James Giles describes, sexual activity involves acts that are acts used in other contexts to show care and concern: many of the acts which are typically involved in sexual pleasuring are, in other contexts, used to comfort and to show concern and care to someone who might be vulnerable. Thus hugging, holding, and stroking, in addition to being forms of sexual pleasuring, are also used to comfort or reassure someone who is sad, frightened, or has been hurt. Similarly, kissing, sucking, or nuzzling, which are often part of love-​making, are also frequently used to show care and concern. Giles 1995: 350–​1 This is not to say that sex always involves sensitivity and care. Sex can also, of course, involve selfishness, domination, maltreatment, and disrespect. However, sex is certainly compatible with mutual care and concern in friendship.

1.2.3  Mutual Sharing Thirdly, to really count as a friendship, the friends need to share interests or activities, and information about themselves with each other. My GP and I might like each other and care about each other’s well-​being. I might think she is kind, and feel concerned for her when she seems tired at an appointment I go to. However, we are not friends unless we spend time together outside of the surgery, and share information about ourselves with each other that is not related to our GP–​patient relationship. (I leave aside here the issue of whether a friendship with one’s GP is appropriate at all). Mutual sharing is connected to mutual liking and caring. Liking and caring about someone usually leads to wanting to spend time with and share things with them, but equally, mutual sharing is often a precursor to mutual caring. In general, the more of your life you share with someone else, the more opportunity you have to find things about them to like, to develop affection and intimacy, and to care 350

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about them. Thus, provided you like the person with whom you are sharing activities and personal information (as opposed to just having been “thrust together” by circumstance with someone you hate, for example), the likelier it is that you will become or continue being close friends. It is not just the amount of one’s life that one shares with others that is likely to lead to close friendship, though. Two people might work and live together, but not develop much of a friendship. The type of interests or activities and information one shares with others is also significant. With regard to interests or activities, while we can have friends with whom we share just one or two activities, our “tennis friends” or our “drinking buddies,” for example, the closest friends are likely to be those with whom we share a range of interests or activities, or at least the interests or activities we find most central to our conception of the good life. A political activist, for example, might prefer for her closest friends to also be political activists, since political activism is so central to her life that she finds it difficult to be really close to people who do not care about it. What counts as “shared interests or activities” should be construed quite broadly here. A person might mostly want to have long, deep conversations with her friends rather than “do activities” such as playing games or going on outings with them. Indeed, two people could share no interests despite their love of conversing with each other and still be friends –​pen-​friends, for example, may like and care about each other deeply, and share their deepest thoughts and feelings with one another over letters, but never or rarely actually see one another in person. Furthermore, friends might not start out sharing the same interests, but begin to share more interests as the friendship progresses. Dean Cocking and Jeanette Kennett go as far as to argue that being willing to allow a friendship to change you is central to friendship: “what matters in friendship is that we are responsive to our interests being directed by each other” (Cocking and Kennett 1998: 508). With regard to sharing information about ourselves, while it is not essential to share secrets with a friend, sharing private information with another person can be a good way to develop intimacy with them. Thomas proposes that self-​disclosure and the sharing of private information are crucial to friendship for this is how friends convey intimate trust to one another (Thomas 1987: 223). Indeed, he goes as far as to suggest that someone who is an “open book” would find it difficult to have deep friendships because, as they cannot show trust through disclosure, they will be left with “few, if any, resources left” to convey to another that they trust them intimately (Thomas 1987: 224). Cocking and Kennett agree with Thomas that it is important that friends share “private concerns” with one another, and “have an interest in understanding each other well,” but they point out that people can share private information with each other without sharing an intimate relationship (such as two psychotherapists who are analyzing each other). Conversely, not all private information that I share with others will create intimacy. Cocking and Kennett give the example of information about a person’s morning routine, which might be private, but not generative of intimacy if shared (Cocking and Kennett 1998: 516–​17). They argue that, to develop intimacy, it is more important that the friends share what they care about than that they share secrets (Cocking and Kennett 1998: 518). This seems right. Sharing private information might not be sufficient to develop a friendship, and people who are “open books” can still share what they care about with their friends and develop close friendships. Nonetheless, friends do need to share information about themselves with each other in order to build trust and intimacy, which are important features of friendship. How might sex fit into the mutual sharing aspect of friendship? Sex is an activity, and it could constitute an interest for some people, which may even be central to their life. They might read a lot about sex, spend time in sex clubs at the weekends, and go away on retreats where they learn about sex. Two friends might share a mutual interest in learning about sex, engaging in novel sexual experiences, but also enjoy sharing sex with each other as an activity. However, the friends do not need to have a special interest in sex to enjoy it as an activity and want to share it. For friends-​with-​ benefits, sex will be an activity they share together, and it may be an activity that is important to them. It could also be a way of sharing personal information with each other, such as what they do or 351

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do not like sexually. It is an activity that we, typically, do not share with many others, and it involves sharing information about ourselves that we do not share with many others. This adds to its intimacy and significance. It is also an activity wherein we are vulnerable, and having sex with someone else can feel like a mutual self-​disclosure. For one thing, sex often involves nudity, and, typically we are not naked with very many people very often. Consequently, as Giles suggests, nakedness is “the physical equivalent of self-​disclosure,” and, “an important aspect of clothing is that it allows us to maintain a measure of control over another’s perception of us […] when we are clothed we are, to some extent, disguised and unrevealed” (Giles 1995: 349). All of this means that to share sex with another person can be a very good way of conveying trust and fostering emotional closeness and intimacy. This is not, of course, to say that sex is necessary for friendship, nor that it can be expected. However, having sex with a friend, seems prima facie at least, to be compatible with the mutual sharing aspect of friendship. Indeed, sex might very well increase the intimacy of the friendship, and subsequently deepen the friendship.

Part 2: Risks Posed by Friends-​with-​Benefits Relationships In Part 1, I established that sex can be compatible with friendship, and may even enhance it, so there is no prima facie reason to think that a friends-​with-​benefits relationship could not be a good friendship. However, claiming that sex is compatible with friendship is not to say that, all things considered, friends-​with-​benefits relationships are a good idea. Such relationships might pose significant risks to those involved or to their friendship, which might mean that it is not, overall, a good idea to engage in such relationships. In this part of the chapter, I will explore two potential risks of friends-​ with-​benefits relationships: (1) that, by blurring the distinction between friendship and romantic love, they create troubling uncertainty for the friends; and (2) that the sex may lead to feelings of romantic love that could damage the friendship.

2.1  Blurred Boundaries and Uncertainty One possible risk posed by friends-​with-​benefits relationships is that they blur the boundary between friendship and romantic love, causing uncertainty about what the friends-​with-​benefits can reasonably expect from one another. Relationship boundaries can be useful because they help us understand and navigate where we stand in relation to those close to us, and what we can reasonably expect from the relationships. However, as Eva Illouz writes, “sexualisation creates confusion in yet another way. In enabling and even encouraging the accumulation of sexual experiences, it blurs the very boundaries between relationships” (Illouz 2019: 86). As they are “minimally structured social interactions” (Thomas 1987), there are not clear rules of engagement for friendships or romantic relationships. Subsequently, disagreement over what it is reasonable to expect from each other is a frequent source of tension. However, there are some broadly agreed upon social norms, which provide us with “rules of thumb” over what can be reasonably expected from romantic partners in contrast with friends. For example, it is typically considered reasonable to expect one’s long-​term romantic partner to be physically affectionate with you, but, although friends might be physically affectionate with each other, it cannot be expected. In addition, long-​term, committed romantic partners can usually expect to be involved in each other’s important life decisions, such as where they will live. If we are in a long-​term, committed romantic relationship, my partner arguably has an obligation not only to tell me that he is moving to Greenland, but to make the decision with me about whether or not to move (though his level of obligation will vary depending on factors such as, whether we live together, how long we have been together, whether we have committed to be together, etc.) My long-​term friend, on the other hand, typically has no such obligation (unless, for example, my friend and I had made an explicit commitment to each other to

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always live in the same city as each other). Furthermore, it is usually assumed that –​length of relationship being equal –​a romantic partner has more responsibility than a friend to do such things as: keep in contact with you, spend time with you, be there for you when you need them, and to prioritize your needs. A friends-​with-​benefits relationship is, by definition, not a romantic relationship. However, it contains a significant feature of most romantic relationships, “namely intimacy and sexual passion,” meaning that it could be thought of as “a hybrid relationship, one that is not clearly romantic, nor true friendship, yet it does exhibit aspects of both” (García, Soriano, and Arriaza 2014: 242). Therefore, there is likely to be even more disagreement over what is reasonable to expect from each other in a friends-​with-​benefit relationship than in a romantic relationship or non-​sexual friendship. If my friend-​with-​benefits is trying to decide whether to move to Greenland, for example, it is not clear whether the sexual nature of our relationship means that they have any more of an obligation to involve me in the decision than they would if we had a non-​sexual friendship. Because there is even less of a clear framework for friends-​with-​benefits relationships than for friendships or romantic relationships, such relationships are characterized by uncertainty, which “pertains to the fact that ‘the grounds of an interaction cannot be taken for granted,’ that the definition of a situation is up for grabs, that the rules to conduct an interaction are unclear, while actors aim for clarity” (Illouz 2019: 73). One study found that 48.9% of people in friends-​ with-​benefits relationships reported that they were uncertain how to maintain the relationship and what its future trajectory was (Bisson and Levine 2009). Uncertainty can take a toll psychologically: Illouz argues that its psychological impact “can range from shame, discomfort, and embarrassment to anxiety and insecurity” (Illouz 2019: 73). This lack of a clear framework for a friends-​with-​benefits relationship could be mitigated by the friends communicating explicitly with each other about what each can expect from the other. However, empirical evidence suggests that friends-​with-​benefits are not good at this, with one study finding that 85% of friends-​with-​ benefits reported not communicating about the relationship and 73% not communicating about ground rules (Bisson and Levine 2009). This is not, of course, to say that friends-​with-​benefits cannot be good at establishing ground rules. However, even setting out the boundaries of a friends-​with-​benefits relationship clearly in advance does not necessarily eradicate the potential for felt uncertainty. Two friends might, for example, say at the beginning of their friends-​with-​benefits relationship that their having sex will not change anything about their relationship, and that the sex they are having is “no strings attached,” but find that, nonetheless, they end up having a disparity between what new obligations each thinks are entailed by their sexual activity. For example, if one of them gets bored of having sex with the other and wants to stop, they might not think they have any obligation to explain this to the other, as there has been no agreement to continue having sex open-​endedly. However, the other might still find it hurtful that they no longer seem to want to have sex with them. Moreover, it is simply not possible for either to promise wholeheartedly that they will not develop feelings for the other. Illouz discusses the contract made by the characters in the 2011 romantic comedy film Friends with Benefits. In the film, the protagonists –​Dylan and Jamie –​make a contract to have casual sex without developing feelings with each other. Jamie, however, develops feelings for Dylan. Illouz argues that “the impossibility of properly contractualizing emotions explains why the sexual-​emotional contract is inherently fraught with aporias and uncertainties” (Illouz 2019: 149). We do not have complete control over with whom we fall in love, and sex often does lead to feelings of love and intimacy. Thus, agreements not to develop such feelings cannot be binding. Uncertainty can lead to differing relationship expectations, which can sometimes have a gendered element too. For example, one study found that 24.8% of men in friends-​with-​benefits relationships hoped the relationship would progress into a committed romantic relationship, compared with 39.5% of women (Owen and Fincham 2011: 317).This suggests that, at least in some cases, men and women

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may have differing expectations of the relationship. Illouz discusses how differing societal gendered expectations regarding sex and care could explain this disparity: For women casual sex creates a conflict between relationality and the autonomization of the body, while for men casual sex is the opportunity to accumulate sexual capital and status. Women’s social being remains largely relational because women still provide the overwhelming bulk of care work in society, while for men casual sexuality is a way to perform the main tropes of masculinity: power, detachment, autonomy, instrumentality geared to the satisfaction of one’s pleasure. Illouz 2019: 86 Not all friends-​with-​benefits relationships will involve uncertainty and differing expectations, but it ought to be acknowledged that this is a strong possibility, and that people’s experiences of such relationships will be influenced by social norms, such as those regarding gender, over which they have little control. In addition, any unequal power dynamics within the relationship could lead to the friend with less power finding it more difficult to explain what they want or need from the relationship, or find that they are not listened to when they do. This is true of other intimate relationships too, of course, but it could be exacerbated by the increased uncertainty and lack of social conventions around friends-​with-​benefits relationships. These are significant concerns, but they are by no means insurmountable. If the issue is that there are clearer relationship norms for friendship and romantic relationships, than for friends-​ with-​benefits relationships, then perhaps the friends-​with-​benefits simply need to be more resolute about creating their own relationship ground rules. Friends-​with-​benefits could, for example, learn from the polyamorous community, for whom there are also fewer relationship-​governing norms and conventions, about the importance of emotional work and open and honest communication (Brunning 2018). Moreover, the risk of uncertainty that might be generated by friends-​with-​benefits relationships must be balanced against the advantages of the possibility of such relationships. Although uncertainty in a relationship can be difficult to deal with, there are also benefits to having more options for ways in which to engage intimately with others. Many people find that the monogamous romantic ideal does not suit them, and some people, who identify as aromantic, do not feel any pull toward romantic life at all (Barker 2018: 110–​11), but may still desire to have sexual relationships. Other people might temporarily be in a period of their life where they do not want a committed romantic relationship, but still want to have sex, and they might prefer to have sex with a friend than with a stranger. For all of these people, and for others, friends-​with-​benefits arrangements could add something important to their lives. Therefore, the blurring of the distinction between friendship and romantic relationship could be a feature of friends-​with-​benefits relationships to be celebrated, rather than a reason not to pursue such relationships.

2.2  Sex and Love It is quite common for people to worry that sex could damage a friendship (Bisson and Levine 2009). One of the reasons for this is that people often connect sex with love and so worry that having sex will lead to one or both of the friends falling in love with each other and this will mean that they can no longer continue as friends. Of course, falling in love with one’s friend need not be problematic and, as Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy, authors of The Ethical Slut, point out, “we do love our friends, and particularly those we share sex with.” Discussing friends-​with-​benefits relationships, they suggest that “with practice, we can develop an intimacy based on warmth and mutual respect, much freer than desperation, neediness, or the blind insanity of falling in love” (Hardy and Easton 2011: 48; emphasis in original). This is true, but they highlight the need for practice. Thus, if two friends are 354

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unpracticed at friends-​with-​benefits relationships, and/​or do not have the time or emotional capacity to develop a calmer, less possessive form of intimacy than that usually associated with romantic love, then, even if neither friends wants it, the sex may lead them, unwittingly, to a kind of love that involves “desperation, neediness, or blind insanity.” Although love is, in general, a good thing, romantic love, if unreciprocated, could conceivably damage or even destroy a friendship. One reason that romantic love can be problematic for friendship is that it is often accompanied with a desire that the love be reciprocated, and with feelings of insecurity, possessiveness, and jealousy. If one friend’s feelings for the other are not returned, this could lead to hurt, anger, and resentment, and could ultimately mean that the friendship cannot continue. To assess the significance of this concern, we need to know how likely it is that sex within friendship is to lead to the friends falling in love. We must also acknowledge that people can and do fall romantically in love with friends with whom they have not had sex, so sex does not introduce a totally new risk to the friendship.3 Having sex with a friend might make it more likely that you will fall in love with them, but it does not automatically entail that you will; many people have sexual relationships that do not involve love. It is not a fact that, if friends have sex, one or both of them will fall romantically in love with each other. However, it is a reasonable concern. For one thing, our biology may make it more likely that we will fall in love with someone with whom we have sex –​ oxytocin, a hormone released during sex, generates feelings of attachment toward the person with whom we are having sex. And, as demonstrated by Helen Fisher et al. by putting people experiencing sexual desire and romantic love into MRI scanners, the brain systems for the sex drive and romantic love interact regularly (Fisher, Aron and Brown 2006). Furthermore, sex is not had in a vacuum, but rather in a social context where various meanings are attributed to it, and it is not always easy to disentangle it from these social and cultural meanings that have been imposed on it over time. One of these meanings is that it is connected to love. Indeed, sex is sometimes referred to as “lovemaking” or “making love,” and what I am calling romantic love is sometimes known as “erotic love” or even “sexual love.” This is perhaps connected, partly at least, to the common belief that sex is an important feature of romantic relationships. In a previous paper, I have argued that there are four features of romantic love that make sex a particularly good expression and vehicle for it: i) pleasure, (ii) union/​physical closeness, (iii) intimacy, and (iv) vulnerability and care. In other words, sex, ideally, is: pleasurable; involves physical closeness that can be symbolic and expressive of emotional closeness and union; is an intimate act; and involves the partners being vulnerable with and caring for each other. And romantic relationships are (ideally) enjoyable, involve a sense of union between the partners, are intimate, and involve partners being vulnerable with and caring for each other (McKeever 2016).Therefore, though it is perfectly possible for a good romantic relationship to not include sex, or for a relationship that is not romantic to include sex, we can at least make sense of why sex and love tend to be thought of as connected to each other. Consequently, though it is possible to see sex as just “plain sex,” with sexual desire being understood as purely, the “desire for contact with another person’s body and for the pleasure which such contact produces” (Goldman 1977: 248), it must be accepted that various biological and social forces mean that, for many people, sex will have certain meanings and significance, which can be difficult to resist, even if that is their intention. Empirical studies of friends-​with-​benefits relationships also suggest that at least in some cases, one or both of the friends desires the friendship transition into a romantic relationship. For example, one study found that 25% of people in friends-​with-​ benefits relationships wanted the relationship to transition into a romantic relationship (Machia et al., 2020: 53) and another found that 39.5% indicated that they had a romantic relationship with their friend-​with-​benefits (Williams and Jovanovic 2015: 162). When entering into a friends-​with-​benefits relationship, it is, therefore, important for the friends to discuss and understand how each sees sex, and whether any differences between them over its perceived significance are likely to lead to any problems. In addition, as mentioned in the previous section, the friends-​with-​benefits may need to commit to engaging in emotional work to 355

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try to manage feelings of romantic love, possessiveness, and jealousy that could arise. This is especially important in this kind of relationship, since the basic idea behind it is to have sex without commitment or romantic love, but within a relationship that presumably is intimate and significant to the participants. A friends-​with-​benefits relationship might not lead to love, or to any other emotions or desires that could erode a friendship, but the risk that it may do so ought to be acknowledged. As I have described in this chapter, sex is compatible with friendship and potentially even beneficial for it, and friends-​with-​benefits relationships open up new possibilities for people to be intimate with each other in non-​romantic, but nonetheless caring and intimate, relationships. The weighing up of these potential benefits against the risks is a task which must be done at an individual level.

Conclusion This chapter sought to establish whether sex is compatible with friendship. In order to answer this question, I first considered three core components of friendship: mutual liking, mutual care and concern, and mutual sharing. I argued that friendship is compatible with each of them, and so prima facie at least, sex is compatible with friendship. I then turned to consider two risks posed by friends-​ with-​benefits relationships.The first was that friends-​with-​benefits relationships may generate uncertainty by blurring the boundaries between friendship and romantic relationships. I argued that while this is a concern, it can be overcome, and the benefits of having more options for styles of intimate relationships may outweigh the potential problems. Second, I considered the concern that friends-​ with-​benefits relationships may lead to one or both partners developing feelings of romantic love for the other, which could ultimately be destructive of the friendship. I argued, again, that though this is a reasonable concern, and poses a risk to friends-​with-​benefits relationships, it is not inevitable that feelings of romantic love will develop and the risk must be weighed up against the potential advantages to the friends brought about through them having a sexual relationship.

Related Chapters Friendship and Erotic and Romantic Love; The Value of Friendship; Are You a Good Friend?

Notes 1 With thanks to Katharine Jenkins for highlighting the different ways in which friendship and sex might be incompatible. 2 For a comprehensive discussion of compersion, i.e., taking delight in one’s partner’s sexual pleasure had through sex with another person, see (Brunning 2020). 3 Thanks to Katharine Jenkins for pointing this out to me.

References Annis, D.B. 1987. “The Meaning,Value, and Duties of Friendship.” American Philosophical Quarterly 24 (4): 349–​56. Barker, M.-​ J. 2018. Rewriting the Rules: An Anti-​ Self Help Guide to Love, Sex and Relationships. 2nd edn. Oxon: Routledge. Bisson, M.A. and T.R. Levine. 2009. “Negotiating a Friends with Benefits Relationship.” Archives of Sexual Behavior 38 (1): 66–​73. Brunning, L. 2018. “The Distinctiveness of Polyamory.” Journal of Applied Philosophy 35 (3): 513–​31. Brunning, L. 2020. “Compersion: An Alternative to Jealousy?” Journal of the American Philosophical Association 6 (2): 225–​45. Cocking, D., and J. Kennett. 1998. “Friendship and the Self.” Ethics 108 (3): 502–​27. Fisher, H., A. Aron, and L. Brown. 2006. “Romantic Love: A Mammalian Brain System for Mate Choice.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of Biological Sciences 361 (1476): 2173–​86. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/​ pmc/​artic​les/​PMC​1764​845/​

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Friends-with-Benefits García, H., E. Soriano, and G. Arriaza. 2014. “Friends with Benefits and Psychological Wellbeing.” Procedia, Social and Behavioral Sciences 132: 241–​7. Giles, J. 1995. “A Theory of Love and Sexual Desire.” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 24 (4): 339–​57. Goldman, A. 1977. “Plain Sex.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 6(3): 267–​87. Hardy, J.W., and D. Easton. 2011. The Ethical Slut, Second Edition: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships, and Other Adventures. New York: Crown Publishing. Helm, B. 2017. “Friendship.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by E.N. Zalta, Fall. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Available at: https://​plato.stanf​ord.edu/​archi​ves/​fall2​017/​entr​ies/​fri​ends​ hip/​(Accessed: October 5, 2020). Illouz, E. 2019. The End of Love: A Sociology of Negative Emotions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jeske, D. 1997. “Friendship,Virtue, and Impartiality.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 57 (1): 51–​72. Machia, L.V. et al. 2020. “A Longitudinal Study of Friends with Benefits Relationships.” Personal Relationships 27 (1): 47–​60. McKeever, N. 2016. “Love: What’s Sex Got To Do With It?” International Journal of Applied Philosophy 30 (2): 201–​18. Owen, J., and F.D. Fincham. 2011. “Effects of Gender and Psychosocial Factors on ‘Friends with Benefits’ Relationships among Young Adults.” Archives of Sexual Behavior 40 (2): 311–​20. Thomas, L. 1987. “Friendship.” Synthese 72 (2): 217–​36. Williams, J.C., and J. Jovanovic. 2015. “Third Wave Feminism and Emerging Adult Sexuality: Friends with Benefits Relationships.” Sexuality & Culture 19 (1): 157–​71.

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30 FRIENDSHIP AND SOCIAL MEDIA Alexis Elder

What should we think about friendship and social media? While philosophers are often skeptical about social media’s potential with respect to friendship, I will show why the issue merits thoughtful consideration and even optimism, offering some reasons to think that, despite a variety of well-​ founded concerns, social media can offer valuable tools to support friendship.

Varieties of Social Media Technologies The term “social media” is widely used but not always clearly defined. It is perhaps more helpful to consider examples than to try to give necessary and sufficient conditions for it. For some, the idea of social media is most prominently associated with Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, platforms that allow users to “follow” and share content in roughly peer-​to-​peer configurations, even as more popular “influencers” may have many more followers than those who follow them. Some platforms (like YouTube) allow creators to share short, often video-​based content with followers who interact via comments and can “upvote” or “downvote” content, thus increasing or decreasing the likelihood that it will be circulated to other consumers. Messaging systems like WhatsApp and Signal, as well as image-​messaging systems like Snapchat, support one-​to-​one or small-​g roup message exchange.Video calling platforms like Zoom, Google Meet, and Skype; online gaming platforms; and professional resume-​sharing systems like LinkedIn may all qualify as social media despite functioning quite differently.Video-​and game-​sharing collaborative viewing platforms like Twitch, short video-​based apps like TikTok, chat and voice channels for small group discussions in Discord and Slack, and both older BBSs (bulletin board systems) and newer variants on bulletin board systems like Reddit offer additional variety, as well as distinctive subcategories of social media, like Facebook groups devoted to sharing content on issues ranging from health concerns to houseplants. The purpose of this initial survey is not to pin down the concept of social media so much as to show its breadth, depth, and diversity. Despite this variety, some trends are worth noting. Current revenue models often involve extraction of personal data, so users often have free access to the platform and are encouraged to make frequent and widespread use of it, while the company providing the platform often (but not always) collects user data from both initial profiles and patterns of interaction and uses this to sell targeted marketing space to advertisers and resell the data to third parties (Crain, 2018; Zuboff, 2019).This means individuals are often courted and encouraged to interact, as part of a profit model that treats individual users as sources of data and audiences for advertisements. 358

DOI: 10.4324/9781003007012-37

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At least seven in ten Americans use some form of social media and its popularity is increasing among all age groups, with older users among its most recent adopters (Pew Research Center 2021), disrupting assumptions about social media being a tool primarily for the young. In fact, disproportionate prevalence of misinformation spread among older users suggests the need for generation-​ specific analyses of social media ethics (Guess 2019) and the role of trust in existing friendship networks in facilitating some kinds of misconduct (Vosoughi et al. 2018). A combination of cheaper and more ubiquitous devices, from laptops to tablets to smartphones, is increasing ease of access. While the popularity of different platforms may wax and wane and the technologies that support them may evolve to offer more options for interaction, it appears that social media is with us to stay, at least for the foreseeable future. Some conceptual tools from social media analysis may be useful to those interested in friendship in this context. Synchronous interactions, in which all users interact “in real time,” such as video calling systems, are contrasted with asynchronous interactions, in which users can send and receive messages as it suits them. This offers one potential concern for friendship on social media; that synchronous interactions may support more spontaneity, responsiveness, and emotional intimacy than asynchronous communications, which may reduce felt closeness or other qualities one might consider important to either the possibility or the quality of friendship. Some platforms are primarily public, where users share content with the public or a potentially extensive list of “followers,” like Twitter and Instagram, while others specialize in smaller-​scale communications, whether one-​to-​one or the infamous “group chat,” so that depending on how much one prioritizes privacy or secrecy in friendship, one might find some options rather than others more or less conducive to friendship, or more or less of an obstacle to high-​quality friendship. Some focus on bringing together users who may not have known each other before, on the basis of common interests or potential compatibility, offering new opportunities for friendship while at the same time posing concerns for those who think prior familiarity with a person is important for friendship’s growth, while others are primarily used to keep in touch with social connections first made elsewhere (think of using Facebook to keep in touch with old classmates or neighbors), raising questions about what sorts of interactions and knowledge are necessary for sustaining friendship. Thus, details of one’s account of friendship may have significant implications for what one concludes about the prospects for friendship on different social media platforms or given different social media use practices.1 This extended survey of possibilities should encourage us to avoid essentializing and to engage with the details in analyses. While it is often tempting to focus on one or a few prominent platforms (Facebook is a particularly common paradigm in the philosophical literature), this risks missing the varieties of actual user experiences and design choices on offer, and many of the interesting and salient features of interest to ethicists and social philosophers.

Methods One challenge for philosophers, then, is choosing methods that are appropriately sensitive to the variety of opportunities, issues, and relationships to be found on social media. Methodologically, philosophers working on friendship and social media are perhaps most strongly associated with virtue ethics, particularly Aristotelian virtue ethics. Aristotelian and virtue-​theoretic approaches are prominent in many areas of technology ethics (Bynum 2006; Ess 2006; Vallor 2016), but in addition, Aristotle offers a detailed analysis of friendship that many find helpful in thinking about social media (Aristotle 1999). Aristotle claims, first, that friendship is necessary for the best life, including that “no one would choose to live without friends even if he had all the other goods” (Aristotle, 1999: 119 /​ 1155a5), making a clear conceptual connection between friendship and eudaimonia, or a flourishing and worthwhile life, which is useful for those working in practical technology ethics. Of additional use is the work he does to distinguish several species of friendship: friendships of utility, in which people are friends largely on the basis of mutual usefulness to each other; friendships of pleasure, in 359

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which friends take pleasure in their interactions with each other; and friendships of virtue, in which friends value each other for themselves and consider each other to be good (hence the “virtue” part, which for Aristotle was what was meant by finding another person good) (Aristotle 1999: 121–​3 /​ 1156a5-​1156b30). These varieties are not on a par; rather, virtue friendships are the best and fullest form of friendship, and strife between friends tends to arise when friends take themselves to be virtue friends but are actually motivated by baser concerns like profit (Aristotle 1999: 134 /​1162b5). On an Aristotelian analysis, constitutive and qualitative features of friendship are interrelated; one and the same feature can make the relationship both more friendly and better (as a friendship). Aristotle’s taxonomy of friendships is often taken to be useful in analyzing the diverse opportunities and experiences of social media users (e.g., Sharp 2012), because it allows one to speak to a variety of relationships while also using his categories to sort them into different species of friendship. In addition, his virtue ethics, with its emphasis on habituation, is often taken to be well suited to concerns about the cumulative effects of regular social media use on individuals and interpersonal relationships (Cocking and Matthews 2000; Elder 2014; Fröding and Peterson 2012;Vallor 2012a, 2012b, 2010), although this approach has also been subject to criticisms (Kaliarnta 2016). Other theoretical approaches that can either complement or compete with virtue ethical analyses of social media and friendship include postphenomenology, with its attentiveness to the detailed and multifaceted ways that technologies mediate human experience (Wittkower 2012a), as well as care ethics and its empirically sensitive engagement with diverse forms of care practices and psychological responsiveness in interpersonal relationships (Kaliarnta et al. 2011; Wittkower 2016). Concerns about negative effects of various social media can be captured in Strawsonian analyses of reactive attitudes and objectification (Turp 2020), and deontological approaches can be useful in articulating concerns about reasons, choices, and norms of use, even as they disrupt Aristotelian assumptions about the relationship between whether something counts as a friendship, and whether the friendship is an ethically good one (Jeske 2019).2 The question of the normative status of friendship is a significant one, and has practical implications for social media ethics, as I will show in what follows. In favor of the neutral view, many people at least appear to enjoy quite close friendships that may not be good for them, or have good effects on those around them. But in favor of the normatively laden view of friendship, to call someone a friend seems to be to prima facie say something good about them, and friendships seem to differ in quality in ways that invite normative evaluation (as when we note that a close friend who seems to be bad for you seems not to be a very good friend to you). While there is not space here for an extended discussion of the arguments around this issue, in what follows I will explore the explanatory resources available to the defender of normatively laden friendship, which is (as I have noted) quite common among philosophers working in this area, as well as draw on resources from virtue ethics traditions that endorse this kind of account in order to explore relationships between individual character and friendship as they present on social media platforms.

Major Debates Major debates in the philosophical literature on friendship and social media have tended to focus on three questions: Is online friendship real? Are online interactions conducive to (good) friendship? And are online friendships and interpersonal interactions good for your character? While these are conceptually distinct, individual attempts to answer any one of these questions often draw upon arguments addressing others among this group of questions to make their case. For example, a very early argument against the reality of online friendship is made by Cocking and Matthews (Cocking and Matthews 2000). Working in an Aristotelian framework where disruptions to the quality of friendship are by definition impediments to the very possibility of friendship, they title their paper “Unreal Friends” and focus their argument on qualities of online interaction that 360

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they hold to be obstacles to the possibility of relationships of sufficient emotional intimacy to count as friendship. They argue (in part) that because online interaction is text-​based (as it was at the time of publication back in 2000), it cannot convey the appropriate emotional nuance and context necessary for friendship. That is, they proceed to answer the first question by way of the second. More emotional nuance and shared context, they hold, is both necessary for friendship and a better-​ making feature of it. (It is worth noting that in the 20 years since its publication, the rise of voice-​, video-​, and image-​sharing systems renders their argument from the impoverishment of text-​based communication obsolete, even if one might be inclined to run a parallel argument for these newer communication technologies.) However, even at the time it was published, their criticism of textual communication was not without its skeptics, as for example in Adam Briggle’s defense of online friendship, in which he argues that textual communication allows for more deliberative and emotionally vulnerable interactions that provide the potential for online friendships to be especially enriching (Briggle 2008). Later arguments have challenged the potential for online friendship, or at least online virtue friendship as both the most personally enriching and “best and fullest form of friendship” (Aristotle, 1999: 134 /​1162b5), by appealing to the importance of Aristotelian shared activity, arguing that activities cannot be shared online but only described or portrayed after the fact (Fröding and Peterson 2012;Vallor 2012b), but some have responded either with plausible cases of shared activity that takes place online, such as in immersive virtual worlds and video games (Munn 2012) or by arguing that conversation itself can constitute an Aristotelian shared activity (Elder 2014) or a form of caregiving paradigmatic of friendship (Wittkower 2012a), particularly in mutual support health forums (Kaliarnta et al. 2011). This philosophical debate has been to some extent redirected by emerging empirical evidence about the relationship between friends’ interactions on and off social media. Many early discussions presumed that friendships via social media versus face-​to-​f ace would be largely mutually exclusive, driving some of the early debates about whether social media friendships could count as real friendships. But while it is certainly possible for people’s interactions to be confined to social media, the idea that this would be the dominant mode of relationship turned out to be a mistaken presumption: much of the growth of social media has been fueled by existing friends’ adoption of social media to continue and complement face-​to-​face relationships (Ellison et al. 2007; Ito et al. 2009). Thus, the debate has to some extent shifted from whether online friendships can be real, to how online interactions affect friendships without questioning their metaphysical status, or how friendships that include a social media component can impact an individual’s character or well-​being. While questions about whether online interactions are conducive to friendship have played supporting roles in debates about the reality or unreality of friendship, they can also constitute lines of research in their own right. One might plausibly hold that people can be friends online while asking whether the friendship is likely to be better or worse for taking place (partly or fully) in this medium. This becomes especially pressing when, as noted above, empirical investigation reveals that people use social media to supplement existing face-​to-​face relationships. Many concerns here involve the importance of emotion in friendships, and the roles that social media platforms can play in conveying, eliciting, and controlling emotions. Cocking and Matthews’ argument that much communication on social media is controlled and selected to a greater degree than face-​to-​face ones, where we cannot help but “give off ” information about our emotional states via automatic changes of our facial expressions and tones of voice, for example, retains some force even in an online environment that has transcended the text-​based interactions they focused on in their early paper (Cocking and Matthews 2000). At the same time, Briggle’s response that deliberateness can make for a more enriching experience than one driven largely by habitual and unconscious patterns of interaction remains a salient challenge to this concern (Briggle 2008). While one might be tempted to argue that unconscious 361

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and autonomic changes of expression, posture, and voice provide valuable insights into a person’s character to facilitate the trust and understanding of character necessary for an enriching friendship, this faces at least two important challenges: first, that people can be quite adept at reading mood and affect into even simple text-​based exchanges, and second, that evidence suggests that too much confidence in our ability to “read” people’s characters is itself misplaced. For example, despite voluminous media attention to the threat of online predators, the greatest risk to children and adults alike remains predation by those we know in person: our face-​to-​face friends, family, and neighbors (Elder 2014). Recall earlier concerns about the risks of overgeneralizations of a diverse phenomenon, which we risk when asking whether “social media” writ large helps or hurts friendship (or how the benefits and risks stack up). In addition to these “big question” debates, there are a myriad of interesting investigations of particular social dynamics important to friendship that involve social media. These can help support more nuanced and particular evaluations while helping to answer questions about whether social media interactions can be good for sustaining already established friendship. One might worry, for example, that technologically mediated communication is impoverished relative to face-​to-​face communication, such that while interactions via social media might help people maintain at least some connection when they cannot interact face to face, that it makes a poor substitute and that such relationships suffer by comparison, as friendships. But there may be ways that social media interactions can supplement face-​to-​face interactions, contributing distinctive modes of interaction that can enrich a relationship by adding additional forms of friendly activity. For example, Wittkower investigates the ways in which animated gifs, videos, and imagery can provide affective supplementation in interpersonal communication (Wittkower 2012b), while Elder focuses on the subrational effects of even stylized faces in evaluating the impact of emoji on textual communication, noting that research in behavioral economics underscores the importance of stylized faces in altruistic behavior and even interpretation of communication while introducing a reflective and playful layer to the process of incorporating facial expressions into our social interactions (Elder 2018a), both enriching the experience of text-​based interactions (which are already common communication modes of many friendships) and supporting new opportunities for self-​reflection and play, both of which are plausibly beneficial to friendships. Social media can also provide new opportunities to care for each other, from Venmo-​ing money for a coffee to fundraising to help with medical bills, to showing real generosity and kindness in collaborative online games (Munn 2012). The case of games may be especially interesting, because while Venmo or a text message might be viewed as technologically mediated routes to achieve the same ends achieved by face-​to-​face activities like buying a friend a coffee or asking to see how their weekend went, interactions in video games are often plausible candidates for purely online interactions. Helping a friend in a game by giving them your equipment is not a stand-​in or shortcut for helping them in real life; it really is being generous and providing help, albeit in a way that is only made possible within the game environment (Munn 2012). This last point about the reality of activities online can have implications for assessment of character by inference versus direct observation of behavior; while one might worry that some online interactions are more for show than substantial enactments of relationships, the gaming companion who provides protection, assistance, coordinates and cooperates with their friends really does act helpfully, generously and with consideration. (This raises questions about the extent to which other actions on various social media platforms might be direct examples of friendship in action as opposed to mere evidence of it, a point I will return to later.) These positive features are, of course, compatible with a variety of concerns about the impacts of social media on friendship. Turkle criticizes both textual and asynchronous communication for the temptation it offers to sidestep hard but important emotions in interpersonal relationships, as with people who choose to argue via text message rather than face to face (Turkle 2015). Vallor details the potential effects of delayed response on trusting and vulnerable relationships (Vallor 362

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2010). But resources within the social media landscape may also help us mitigate or resist these hazards, as when danah boyd points out that “read receipts” and ephemeral messages can sharpen attention and transmit valuable information about the seriousness with which others treat one’s communications (boyd 2014b), in addition to incentivizing said attention and responsiveness. And while one might be concerned that interactions on social media are often highly ritualized or expressively constrained (via emoji-​based reactions rather than real facial expressions, or “liking” mechanics instead of individualized responses to social media posts, for example), Broadbent argues that there is distinctive value in seemingly trivial but repeated and ritualistic interactions when it comes to supporting sustained relationships and commitments (Broadbent 2012) and that social media can support friendships and personal relationships precisely because they facilitate these rituals, and work in the social value of ritual more generally suggests that we ought not discount its value in sustaining social connections (Wong 2020). In some cases, in-​principle worries about effects of social media on friendship may turn out not to be supported by empirical data. Turkle, for example, raises worries about the constant accessibility of alternative relationships as a distraction and temptation in any given relationship (Turkle 2011), but Broadbent finds that empirical investigation into how many reciprocal relationships we find among social media users shows that most of us actually reciprocally engage with very few others (between two and ten, depending on the platform) (Broadbent and Lobet-​ Maris 2015). (This is in addition to the broader point that social media may provide us valuable opportunities to connect and build friendships that would otherwise be inaccessible to us, finding supportive peers who can support those of us facing oppression on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, or sexuality (Vallor 2012b).) In addition to questions about the quality of relationship available or likely via social media, there is a robust debate (perhaps unsurprising, in light of this field’s strong ties to virtue ethics) about the effects of online interactions and friendships on individuals’ characters. Are online friendships good for us? What benefits and hazards do they pose? Answering these questions brings us into contested territory about what is good or bad for both individuals and relationships, not to mention the broader societies in which our interactions take place. The issue raised earlier about whether friendship is morally neutral or (as Aristotelians hold) morally good is highly salient here, and empirical results here may prove relevant to that debate. If social media is good for friendship but contributes to the deterioration of friends’ character, this would constitute a strike against the normatively laden Aristotelian view. For example, a growing literature on political polarization focuses on the extent to which our beliefs and dispositions are shaped by and in turn shape news and political content shared among friends. We may share content to signal belonging, block friends who share content we do not wish to see, believe content because it is shared by a trusted connection rather than on the basis of evidential standards, or reinforce each other’s perspectives by supporting existing assessments and explaining away disconfirming evidence (Nguyen 2018). Our friendships may end up trapping us in epistemic echo chambers, contributing to both misinformation and radicalization. Supplementing concerns about the relationship between interpersonal trust and the spread of misinformation, research suggests this is most prevalent among social media users with fewer and more trusted contacts, whose recommendations users may be inclined to uncritically accept rather than scrutinize or fact-​check (Guess et al. 2019;Vosoughi et al. 2018). Besides polarization, one may have other concerns about the influence of social media on character. Turp (2020) argues that we may be more inclined to objectify those we interact with primarily through social media (Turp 2020), while Vallor worries that “easy outs” in difficult interactions can inhibit the cultivation of virtues like patience (Vallor 2010), although Briggle argues that through friendships on social media we may find more opportunities to cultivate reflectiveness and deliberative abilities, not to mention practice being vulnerable in the absence of social pressure to “toughen up” or perform according to social scripts (Briggle 2008). These lines of inquiry may be supplemented by 363

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empirical data about phenomena like the supposed disinhibition effect, in which people may feel less inhibited by social norms and behave more aggressively and with less consideration or respect online (Suler 2004), although there is also research suggesting that perceived gaps between aggression online versus off has more to do with the increased visibility of online hostility versus offline, and that the same people are hostile both online and off (Bor and Petersen 2021). In response to concerns about moral hazards posed by friendship on social media, the defender of moral friendship has two responses available. The first is that insofar as a friendship proves harmful to a friend’s character, that is a failing as a friendship, as friendship plausibly involves concern for one’s friend and interest in promoting their well-​being (which for the eudaimonist virtue theorist includes concern for their character) (Elder 2018b: 56–​69) This would be, on its own, a strike against social media’s potential to support friendship, inasmuch as friendships on social media present moral hazards like the ones identified above. However, this concern can be mitigated. It is a truism in philosophy of technology that simple technological determinism is false; technology does not, on its own, cause people (or societies) to act one way rather than another. Rather, we need to look to sociotechnical systems, involving both human norms and practices as well as the technologies that are used in them, to understand human–​technology interactions. And this consideration directs our attention to an emerging body of social norms around social media use, some of which may provide tools to resist the moral hazards of online friendship and both prevent damage to character and (for the moral-​ friendship advocate) enrich the quality of one’s friendships.

Emerging Norms and Quality Friendship on Social Media As social media becomes more widespread in our social lives, new social norms are emerging to help answer questions one is likely to encounter. For example, given the continued blending of offline versus online interactions, how should one navigate issues like when and how to disseminate information about life changes like breakups and new jobs (face to face? via Facebook post? How does the nature of a particular friendship affect such decisions, and how should one react if one learns something via one channel versus another, like discussing a friend’s romantic partner in person when one learned about it on Instagram?); when to photograph, film, or share others’ images and via what platforms; how to use smartphones to interact via social media with some while interacting face-​to-​ face with others, when to discuss something face-​to-​face versus when to engage online; and so forth. (The anthropologist Stefana Broadbent notes with interest the emerging but quite robust norm about breaking up with someone face-​to-​face versus via text message or on a public platform (Broadbent 2012).) These norms about boundaries and expectations appear to be related to management of some of the risks of constant connection and “easy outs” identified above. This is especially explicit in norms around connection and disconnection. As we have seen, social media platforms facilitate more continuous engagement with others, especially asynchronously, meaning that people face new questions about when and whether to respond to asynchronous messages (that is, how long it takes to respond to a post, tweet, or text); interactions with older posted or shared material (the ethics of “liking” someone’s years-​old Instagram posts and whether or not this is creepy); when and why it might be justified to disconnect from social media platforms or specific users; blocking, unfriending, or sharing user info with others. These discussions are helped by the introduction of concepts like “context collapse,” danah boyd’s term for the fact that information shared on highly public social media is shared with many audiences both concurrently and in perpetuity, so an image a teenager shares with the intention of entertaining her peers may elicit confused or inappropriate responses from parents or grandparents or invite judgment from potential employers down the road (Marwick and boyd 2011). This raises questions about the extent to which social media requires recognition or at least development of widely shared norms about when, whether, and how to recognize if something is “for you” in an era of blurry and overlapping contexts.Wittkower details some such emerging etiquette norms and concepts like those 364

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of “creepers” who fail to respect context and “lurkers” who fail to signal when they are consuming technically public content that nevertheless is shared for purposes of interaction rather than passive consumption (Wittkower 2016). To the extent that social media’s newest users (and hence those least familiar with its emergent norms) appear to be most vulnerable to its ill effects, like misinformation and polarization, this seems to suggest that norm acquisition may help protect against them, in addition to providing tools to navigate constant availability and context collapse. The issue of lurking brings us to a question about the effects of social media use that, while not intrinsically about friendship, nevertheless bears on discussion about it. This is the purportedly negative effects of social media use on mental health. While frequently brought up in the popular press and informal discussions about the advisability of spending time on social media, the extent of the effect is contested and often misinterpreted (Wittkower and Wittkower 2020). In fact, evidence suggests that to the extent that such an effect exists, it arises when and because people “lurk” –​that is, treat social media as a venue for passive consumption of information about others (including friends and loved ones), and that active engagement with others, particularly in reciprocal relationships, has positive psychological effects (Verduyn et al. 2015), especially when such interactions are somewhat limited in time on any given day (spending more than five hours a day on social media appears to correlate with deleterious effects on mental health, although teasing out cause from effect is difficult). One mechanism researchers suspect is at work in the active versus passive modes of engagement is that of comparison versus collaboration; passive consumption of peers’ content invites negative comparisons of oneself to others, with damaging effects on both individuals and their friendships, while active exchanges enhance both relationships and psychological benefits of being in such relationships (Appel et al., 2016; Tandoc et al. 2015; Yoon et al. 2019). Given the extent to which friendships are plausibly taken to involve interaction rather than passive comparison, perhaps this is unsurprising, but the extent to which this point about friendship and shared activity, which dates back at least to Aristotle, has repercussions for mental health in today’s attention economy is evidence of philosophy’s continued relevance in the contemporary world, and the significance of a robust account of friendly shared activity to evaluating social media practices and evolving norms.

Shared Activity and the Ontology of Friendship For a number of reasons, I think we should resist the temptation to believe that friendships on social media are not “real.” First, it would be odd to claim that mediation itself makes relationships “unreal” –​from telephone conversations to written letters to emails to Tweets, Snaps, and Facebook posts, these interactions may look different than face-​to-​face exchanges, but even these are plausibly mediated by human inventions running from language, to social norms, gift exchanges, currency and so on, not to mention features of context like auditory and visual conditions and innate perceptual and information-​processing capacities. Human beings have been using human ingenuity to shape our interactions for thousands of years, and the mere fact that these interactions involve novel tools should not be sufficient grounds for rejecting their role in real, sustained patterns of caring interaction paradigmatic of friendship, whatever one’s theory of what friendship consists in or what helps it flourish. Developments of new social media may certainly prompt us to consider questions about which activities are or can be shared in ways characteristic of friendship, but the bare fact that these activities are mediated by information technologies should not itself lead us to conclude that they are not candidates for friendship; the example of playing games together, whether online or face-​to-​face, is to my mind a convincing case of shared activity both mediated by technology and paradigmatic of friendship (although neither necessary nor sufficient for it). I am also skeptical of attempts to dismiss friendship-​sustaining activities like conversations on social media as “unreal” or unfit for friendship because a) they are conducted in public where others can join in or b) because conversation itself is 365

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not the sort of shared activity involved in friendship (I would be hard-​pressed to find a more central shared activity) (Elder 2018b). While it may be plausible that friendship requires intimacy and perhaps even shared secrets, it does not follow from these premises that all of a friendship must be conducted in private, and I submit that any theory which assumes lack of privacy on social media is an obstacle to its value as one part of a friendship is prima facie implausible as an account of the sorts of friendships accessible to and enjoyed by the vast majority of us. Once we admit that friendship can embrace public conversation, motivations to reject interactions via even highly public social networks like Facebook and Twitter drop out, at least so long as friends can also enjoy private conversations. And while these platforms may be used to share information with audiences indiscriminately, it is also empirically confirmable that they are used for conversations between friends, albeit ones to which others may feel more or less welcome to contribute (hence emerging norms about the ethics of “lurking” and “creeping”). Of course, this leaves open the charge that social media may allow for friendship but tends to be an inferior means to support it, especially in contrast to face-​to-​face interaction. Arguments to this effect, in print and more informally in conversations, often trade on claims about the obvious preferability of face-​to-​f ace interactions as compared to those via social media (of any sort), the importance of making time for each other, the feelings of loneliness and isolation we experience when our only interactions occur via social media, and so on. However, it seems to me that all of these arguments trade on a false equivalence between using social media to connect with our friends, and using it to substitute for face-​to-​face interaction. Social media opens up new opportunities to engage that do not take time away from face-​to-​face interaction and may in fact facilitate it, either by keeping people interacting even when separated by distance or incompatible schedules so that they retain the option of resuming face-​to-​face engagement when such opportunities arise (I have a number of friends with whom I greatly enjoy sharing meals and conversation in person when we are in the same place, as when we attend the same conferences, but remain connected throughout the year primarily via social media), or else by facilitating connection during times when it would not be feasible or even desirable to meet face-​to-​f ace (for example, enjoying friends’ vacation photos while being grateful not to have to pack and spend time in transit, or collective sharing of holiday meal preparations when we can only be in one place at a time and may each choose to devote our time and energy to our own households but can together share the experience of cooking for our respective families). In other words, we should be wary of assuming that social media will substitute for rather than supplement face-​to-​face interaction. And once we admit of this latter possibility, the preferability of at least some face-​to-​face interaction over exclusively social media engagements turns out to be compatible with thinking each has its place. (I love that I can enjoy a solitary hike and still share the view from the summit with my friends.) Once we reject this false dichotomy between face-​to-​face and social media interactions, we can start to explore and engage with the creative possibilities opened up by new communication technologies, to evaluate their potential without the false specter of replacement. We can assess the uses and abuses of asynchronous communications, modified and remixed visual and audio recordings, accelerated circulation of news and entertainment without editorial gatekeeping, and ritualistic exchanges of “likes” and hearts as additions rather than replacements to our existing forms of interaction. This account is somewhat complicated by two factors: the fact that social media is new to our social toolkit, and the fact that friendship may thrive without social media more easily than without face-​to-​f ace interaction. My first point is to note that these two ideas are distinct, even if they can easily run together. Taking them in order: it is certainly true that many friendships have flourished in the past in the absence of social media, but this does not mean there is nothing valuable, or even distinctively valuable about it. People have been appreciating music for millennia,

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but that does not mean older genres have greater value than newer ones, or that there is something morally superior about appreciating classical rather than Atlanta trap music. In fact, it may be important for people to resist the seductive pull of history when it comes to the respectability or artistic significance of new forms of music, and perhaps something similar should be said about ways that friends interact. The second account is more complicated. It is certainly true that many people (young and old, regular or occasional social media users) give special significance to their face-​to-​face interactions with friends, such that they would find it more distressing to give up on face-​to-​face interactions than social media exchanges with their friends. (For many of us living through the COVID-​19 pandemic, this is more than just a thought experiment.) First, this may turn out to be a particular preference rather than universal; it would need to be answered empirically. Perhaps there are some people, or some relationships, that simply work better and contribute more value to people’s lives when they involve social media. This does not seem to be a question that can be settled from the armchair. However, even for people who find some face-​to-​face components of friendship uniquely important in a way that social media interactions are not, it is still entirely consistent to think that we are in the fortunate position of being able to reflect on how and when to use social media to supplement these valuable face-​to-​face interactions in our relationships. Evaluated in this way, the effects of social media may well turn out to be quite mixed. In fact, given the wide range of both people and technologies connected by social media, it might be surprising if they were not. Platforms that make it easier to connect and feel bonded may facilitate both the formation of rewarding friendships and recruitment by organizations and individuals who are willing to prey on others’ trust and good will (we see something similar on college campuses). Constant access to many of our friends may make it easier to keep in touch but harder to focus fully on one interaction at a time, and harder to leave behind relationships that no longer serve us. Creative control over our images and messages may facilitate identity construction and help us connect with others with whom we share important concerns and values, but leave less room for serendipity and require more conscious choice when it comes to revealing our vulnerabilities. Greater access to extended communities may heighten intergenerational tensions, as people struggle to connect but come to these encounters with different norms and expectations. And opportunities for extending friendships via current social media platforms may need to be balanced against concerns about participating in surveillance capitalism. But in many of these situations, I hope to have made the case that there is something important at stake: that because friendships matter to us, and social media offers us powerful but complicated tools for communication and connection, we have reason to attend to the mixed potential they offer, and to consider both individual and collective practices that can make good use of them while navigating around their real hazards –​and that this may need to happen at a number of levels, from formal education to legislation to individual cultivation of characteristics that can help us thrive in our changing technological landscape (Vallor 2016). Thus, we should make sure to pay attention to emerging technical and empirical work. Many of the issues raised by social media can benefit greatly from engagement with philosophical work on friendship, but these connections cannot be made in a vacuum. And in turn, philosophical questions about the impact and potential of social media with respect to friendship cannot be done from the armchair, and given the wide variety of people and technologies involved, should not be limited to observations gleaned from personal experiences. For example, if the youth are avoiding Facebook (Anderson and Jiang 2018) but the old folks working on philosophy of friendship primarily congregate there, their philosophical work on social media may miss important considerations for these youngsters. Fortunately, there is a fascinating variety of work occurring across the humanities and social sciences, providing empirically engaged philosophers and those with interdisciplinary interests with abundant opportunities to bring together work on this topic and contribute to the conversation.

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Conclusion My conclusions about social media and friendship are ultimately hopeful. While current revenue stream models and financial and regulatory incentives can misalign with people’s interests, and the prospects of constant connection can provide temptations to trade immediate gratification for patient sustained attention, they also offer us creative new ways to engage in important relationships. And with creativity and the potential to enrich friendships, in partnership with thoughtful engagements with ethical and social considerations about what friendships are and how they can flourish, we have the opportunity to make good use of these possibilities while avoiding at least some of their perils. This is an area where philosophy of friendship, when empirically engaged and informed, has the potential to make a real, practical difference in people’s lives, to help us to live well together in a changing technological world.

Related Chapters Friendship in the Confucian Tradition; Aristotle on the Nature and Value of Friendship; Kantian Friendship; Friendship and Epistemic Partiality; Epistemic Partiality to Friends and Value Commitments; The Value of Friendship

Notes 1 Other potentially useful distinctions to keep in mind include that some platforms are primarily text-​based while others make it easy to record, modify, and share short video clips, images, and sounds; some content-​ sharing is (relatively) permanent, while others are designed to be ephemeral; some support anonymity, while others encourage users to adopt stable pseudonyms, and still others require or strongly encourage users to associate their accounts with their legal names; some focus on reciprocal connections, while others allow users to “follow” each other without necessitating that the follow be reciprocated. 2 There are also rich resources available to scholars interested in interdisciplinary and empirically informed work. Of special interest may be the field of computer-​mediated communication (CMC) studies in communications scholarship (Walther 2011), Science and Technology Studies (Turkle 2011), digital anthropology (Broadbent 2012), and media studies (boyd, 2014a) as well as extensive research by social and organizational psychologists, and numerous researchers in human-​computer interaction (HCI). Philosophical engagement with questions about social media benefit from interaction with philosophical and philosophically relevant work in these fields. At the same time, these other fields can be enriched by engagement with philosophical methods and concepts, as these researchers grapple with thick, normatively laden concepts like friendship, flourishing, and good lives.

References Anderson, M., and J. Jiang. 2018. “Teens, Social Media and Technology 2018.” Pew Research Center,Washington, DC (May 31). Available at: www.pewr​esea​rch.org/​inter​net/​2018/​05/​31/​teens-​soc​ial-​media-​tec​hnol​ogy-​ 2018/​(Accessed November 24, 2021) Appel, H., A.L. Gerlach, and J. Crusius. 2016. “The Interplay between Facebook Use, Social Comparison, Envy, and Depression.” Current Opinion in Psychology 9: 44–​9. Aristotle. 1999. Nicomachean Ethics, 2nd edn. Indianapolis: Hackett. Bor, A., and M. Petersen. 2021. “The Psychology of Online Political Hostility: A Comprehensive, Cross-​National Test of the Mismatch Hypothesis.” American Political Science Review 116 (1): 1–​18. boyd, danah. 2014a. It’s Complicated:The Social Lives of Networked Teens. New Haven:Yale University Press. boyd, danah. 2014b. “Why Snapchat Is Valuable: It’s All About Attention.” apophenia. Available at: www.zepho​r ia. org/​thoug​hts/​archi​ves/​2014/​03/​21/​snapc​hat-​attent​ion.html (Accessed September 30, 2021) Briggle, A. 2008. “Real Friends: How the Internet Can Foster Friendship.” Ethics and Information Technology 10: 71–​9. Broadbent, S. 2012. “Approaches to Personal Communication.” In Digital Anthropology, edited by H. Horst and D. Miller, 127–​45. New York: Berg. Broadbent, S., and C. Lobet-​Maris. 2015. “Towards a Grey Ecology.” In The Onlife Manifesto, edited by L. Floridi, 111–​24. New York: Springer International.

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Friendship and Social Media Bynum, T.W. 2006. “Flourishing Ethics.” Ethics and Information Technology 8: 157–​73. Cocking, D., and S. Matthews. 2000. “Unreal Friends.” Ethics and Information Technology 2: 223–​31. Crain, M. 2018. “The Limits of Transparency: Data Brokers and Commodification.” New Media & Society 20 (1): 88–​104. Elder, A. 2014. “Excellent Online Friendships: An Aristotelian Defense of Social Media.” Ethics and Information Technology 16: 287–​97. Elder, A. 2018a. “What Words Can’t Say: Emoji and Other Non-​Verbal Elements of Technologically-​Mediated Communication.” Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society 16 (1): 2–​15. Elder, A. 2018b. Friendship, Robots, and Social Media: False Friends and Second Selves. New York: Routledge. Ellison, N.B., C. Steinfield, and C. Lampe. 2007. “The Benefits of Facebook ‘Friends’: Social Capital and College Students’ Use of Online Social Network Sites.” Journal of Computer-​Mediated Communication 12 (4): 1143–​68. Ess, C. 2006. “Ethical Pluralism and Global Information Ethics.” Ethics and Information Technology 8: 215–​26. Fröding, B., and M. Peterson. 2012. “Why Virtual Friendship Is No Genuine Friendship.” Ethics and Information Technology 14: 201–​7. Guess, A., Nagler, J., and J. Tucker. 2019. “Less Than You Think: Prevalence and Predictors of Fake News Dissemination on Facebook.” Science Advances 5 (1). www.scie​nce.org/​doi/​epdf/​10.1126/​sci​adv.aau4​586 Ito, M. et al. 2009. Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the DigitalYouth Project. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Jeske, D. 2019. Friendship and Social Media: A Philosophical Exploration. New York: Routledge. Kaliarnta, S. 2016.“Using Aristotle’s Theory of Friendship to Classify Online Friendships:A Critical Counterview.” Ethics and Information Technology 18: 65–​79. Kaliarnta, S., Nihlén-​ Fahlquist, J., and S. Roeser. 2011. “Emotions and Ethical Considerations of Women Undergoing IVF Treatments.” HEC Forum 23: 281–​93. Marwick, A.E., and d. boyd. 2011. “I Tweet Honestly, I Tweet Passionately: Twitter Users, Context Collapse, and the Imagined Audience.” New Media & Society 13 (1): 114–​33. Munn, N.J. 2012. “The Reality of Friendship within Immersive Virtual Worlds.” Ethics and Information Technology 14: 1–​10. Nguyen, C.T. 2018. “Echo Chambers and Epistemic Bubbles.” Episteme 17 (2): 1–​21. Sharp, R. 2012. “The Obstacles against Reaching the Highest Level of Aristotelian Friendship Online.” Ethics and Information Technology 14: 231–​39. “Social Media Fact Sheet.” 2021. Pew Research Center, Washington, DC (April 7). Available at: www.pewr​esea​ rch.org/​inter​net/​fact-​sheet/​soc​ial-​media/​ (Accessed November 24, 2021) Suler, J. 2004. “The Online Disinhibition Effect.” Cyberpsychology and Behavior 7 (3): 321–​6. Tandoc, E.C., Ferrucci, P., and M. Duffy. 2015. “Facebook Use, Envy, and Depression among College Students: Is Facebooking Depressing?” Computers in Human Behavior 43: 139–​46. Turkle, S. 2011. Alone Together:Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. New York: Basic Books. Turkle, S. 2015. Reclaiming Conversation:The Power of Talk in a Digital Age. New York: Penguin Press. Turp, M.-​J. 2020. “Social Media, Interpersonal Relations and the Objective Attitude.” Ethics and Information Technology 22: 269–​79. Vallor, S. 2010. “Social Networking Technology and the Virtues.” Ethics and Information Technology 12: 157–​70. Vallor, S. 2012a. “New Social Media and the Virtues.” In The Good Life in a Technological Age, edited by P. Brey, A. Briggle, and E. Spence, 193–​202. New York: Routledge. Vallor, S. 2012b. “Flourishing on Facebook: Virtue Friendship & New Social Media.” Ethics and Information Technology 14: 185–​99. Vallor, S. 2016. Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting. New York: Oxford University Press. Verduyn, P. et al. 2015. “Passive Facebook Usage Undermines Affective Well-​ Being: Experimental and Longitudinal Evidence.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 144 (2): 480–​8. Vosoughi, S., Roy, D., and S. Aral. 2018.“The Spread of True and False News Online.” Science 359 (6380): 1146–​51. Walther, J.B. 2011. “Theories of Computer-​ Mediated Communication and Interpersonal Relations.” The Handbook of Interpersonal Communication, edited by M. L. Knapp and J. A. Daly, 443–​79. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Wittkower, D., and L.R.Wittkower. 2020.“Short Circuits in the Information Cycle: An Approach To Information Literacy Instruction.” The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique 1 (1): 1–​21. Wittkower, D.E. 2012a. “ ‘Friend’ Is a Verb.” APA Newsletter on Philosophy and Computers 12 (1): 22–​6. Wittkower, D.E. 2012b. “On the Origins of the Cute as a Dominant Aesthetic Category in Digital Culture.” In Putting Knowledge to Work & Letting Information Play, edited by T. W. Luke and J. Hunsinger, 167–​75. Leiden: Brill Sense. Wittkower, D.E. 2016. “Lurkers, Creepers, and Virtuous Interactivity: From Property Rights to Consent to Care as a Conceptual Basis for Privacy Concerns and Information Ethics.” First Monday 21 (10): 1–​17.

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31 FRIENDSHIP AND FEMINIST VALUES IN FILM Katrien Schaubroeck

Friendship is not a particularly popular topic for movies. One reason for friendship’s relative absence from the screen must be that friendship compared to romance is undervalued in the contemporary Western world. As is reflected in institutional arrangements and in informal assessments of people’s lives being in a romantic relationship is considered a better indicator of success in life than having (many) good friends. It has not always been like that. Aristotle classified Philia (not Eros) among the virtues and Cicero dedicated a book to Amicitia. In The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis deplores the devaluation of friendship in modern times, where friendship has become “something quite marginal, not a main course in life’s banquet; a diversion, something that fills up the chinks of one’s time” (Lewis 1960/​1993: 39). In an attempt to explain this devaluation Lewis suggests that friendship allows to be marginalized because it is “the least natural of loves; the least instinctive, organic, biological, gregarious and necessary” (1960/​1993: 39; emphasis in original). There is no biological urge driving friendship and people clearly can survive without friends. So it is plausible for Lewis that few people value friendship because few really experience it. In defense of his claim that friendship is unnecessary, he distinguishes friends from companions and allies. Companions expel loneliness and allies help fulfill needs. While friends may also play this role, and indeed will lend money to one another or protect each other from harm, these matters of fact are interruptions of the friendship, says Lewis. Friendship according to Lewis is about sharing an insight, an interest, or a taste. While easing needs of a friend might have a place by way of removing an obstacle, the friendship is in essence about exploring an interest together, discussing an insight, enjoying a taste. Or as he puts it, friends essentially ask one another “do you see the same truth?”, not “how can I help you?”. For Lewis, people do not need friendship in the sense that, while friendship might give value to survival, it has no survival value. If friendship is optional, it is logical that it is less often represented in films than the more biologically driven and hence less optional relationship of romantic love. Yet it remains important to acknowledge that the ubiquity of representations of romantic love and its importance, to which everything else is made relative, does do harm. As political philosopher Elizabeth Brake has argued, the belief that heterosexual romantic love is essential for human flourishing has turned into a norm to measure success in life. “Amatonormativity,” a term coined by Brake, makes people who do not find happiness in romantic love, or who just do not want a romantic relationship feel abnormal (Brake 2012).1 This debilitating effect of amatonormativity is especially painful since DOI: 10.4324/9781003007012-38

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people may have very good reasons not to want to engage in marriage or romance, and instead opt for friendships. In particular I want to defend the thesis that in patriarchal structures, friendships may play an important role that is not easily taken up by romance, which (certainly in heterosexual couples) is more prone to reflecting and reinforcing patriarchal gender inequalities. I will develop this thesis with reference to three recent films featuring friendship between women.These films display the value of friendship in general, but more specifically they show how friendship can provide liberation for women when romance cannot. In the first section I will consider the kinds of values that philosophers have accorded to friendship. Using the plotlines of the movies Death in Brunswick and Heavenly Creatures, I will explain how the evaluation of conflicts between friendship’s existential value and its moral value depends on context. In the second section, a discussion of the movies Thelma & Louise and Bagdad Café foregrounds the distinctive value that friendship has for feminist ends. I will argue that this feminist meaning of friendship overthrows a dualism between existential and moral values. Feminist readings of the value of friendship tend to emphasize the social constitution of the self. In the third and last section, I will discuss feminist doubts raised by Serene Khader about the social accounts of self and autonomy. Her criticism calls for realism as to how much social change can be expected from friendship. After all, friendships are themselves social phenomena. Even if friendship can serve as a safe haven, it can only do so temporarily and partially as friends do not live outside of society. The movie Girlhood offers a realistic picture of the limits of friendship while still celebrating the true, be it limited, empowerment that friendship can yield. The narratives of Thelma & Louise, Bagdad Café, and Girlhood support my overall conclusion that, pace Lewis, in contexts of social oppression friendship is anything but “the least necessary love.”

Section 1: The Moral and Existential Value of Friendship Philosophers have distinguished many goods that friendship brings. Echoing Aristotle’s classification friendship may have instrumental and moral value.That friendships may be useful (in bringing pleasure or in helping one reach one’s goals in life) is a rather straightforward thought. But the connection between friendship and morality has been a source of disagreement between philosophers. I will first summarize an influential anti-​moralist account of friendship that was made plausible with the help of a movie plot. I will then bring in another movie on friendship that puts pressure on the anti-​moralist account, and that reveals the importance of the societal context in which friends operate when determining a friendship’s value. In their landmark article “Friendship and Moral Danger” (2000), Dean Cocking and Jeanette Kennett argue against philosophical accounts of friendship that locate the good of friendship within a moral framework. They are skeptical about Aristotelean views that portray friendship as essentially a vehicle for character improvement or moral self-​examination (as exemplified in Nancy Sherman 1989, or Laurence Thomas 1989). For Cocking and Kennett much of the good of friendship has little to do with morality. Even more, they hold that “[i]‌t is part of both the nature and value of friendship that it can lead us morally astray” (2000: 279). To support their anti-​moralist view of friendship’s value, Cocking and Kennett invoke our intuitions about the value of the friendship portrayed in the Australian movie Death in Brunswick (1990, John Ruane). The movie tells the story of two best friends, Carl and Dave. Carl finds a job as a cook in a sleazy nightclub, and accidentally kills a fellow worker, called Mustapha, with a kitchen knife. Carl turns to Dave for help and begs him not to call the police because he is convinced that the police will not believe that the killing was an accident. Dave shares this fear and together they dispose of the body and conceal knowledge about what happened when confronted with the distress of the victim’s family. While the killing was indeed an accident, the disposal of the body and the lies to the family are serious moral wrongs. But, in Cocking and Kennett’s interpretation, the movie’s core message is not that Dave has failed as a moral agent but rather that he behaved as a good friend. Even 372

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more: precisely because he ignored moral considerations, he has proven to be a very good friend –​ ready to put his friend’s welfare first no matter what. For Cocking and Kennett, the value of the friendship between Dave and Carl cannot be of a moral kind. But Lawrence Blum would beg to disagree (Blum 1980/​1993). He has argued that friendship has moral value regardless of whether it fosters moral improvement and regardless of whether one’s friend is virtuous. For him the moral meaning of friendship is located in the sympathy and concern that is, in different degrees, at the heart of every friendship. All friendships are morally good, he says, to the extent that they involve a genuine concern with the good of another for his own sake. The concern is conditional in that it is only shown to someone in virtue of them being a friend, but Blum thinks this conditional aspect does not diminish its moral worth as long as it is a genuinely altruistic, self-​transcending concern. Blum locates the moral significance of friendship in the empathy shown by the one who cares. And indeed, if there is any moral worth in the friendship between Dave and Carl, it has to be located in Dave’s concern. In section 3 I will expand the moral goods that friendship brings by focusing on what friendship does for the one cared for. Cocking and Kennett also think that Blum’s view of the good of friendship is too narrow, because for them “a large part of the good of friendship need not be expressive of any particular moral interest at all” (2000: 284). In other words, the value inherent in a friendship may be moral but need not be. A non-​moral value that they discern is the value in building and preserving a sense of identity. On their own account, called the drawing view, friendship consists in a mutual receptivity to direction and interpretation. Friends have a constitutive influence on each other’s self-​interpretations and each other’s intentions and interests. As Cocking and Kennett point out, this special receptivity allows for transformations including, but by no means exhaustively, moral growth. Friends are just as likely to be directed by each other’s not-​so-​valuable interests (like gambling, or drinking huge amounts of beer), as by their morally (or socially) unquestionable interests like going to museums or enjoying good food. For this reason the drawing view discerns a value in friendship that is not moral: “A friendship that leads us morally astray may not only properly count as a friendship but also may be valuable in its own right” (Cocking and Kennett 2000: 294). I think it is apt to characterize this distinct and non-​moral value as existential: friendship gives direction and content to people’s existence. The Aristotelean distinction between instrumental and moral value of friendship is ill-​suited to classify existential value. Calling friendship existentially valuable differs from calling friendship useful, meaning that it serves an agent’s particular goals. Friendship’s existential value refers to how friendship is constitutive of a meaningful life overall rather than an instrument to reach a specific end. Nor is existential value a moral value since it may conflict with the value of doing what morality requires, as Death in Brunswick shows. I agree with Cocking and Kennett that the existential value of a friendship is not reducible to a moral value. But their argument does not exclude the possibility that there is a moral threshold for assignments of existential value to friendship. Even if they are right, opposing Blum, that moral considerations did not play an active role in Dave’s decision to help Carl, moral features of the case may still influence the viewer’s appreciation of the value of the friendship. What would it do to our intuitions if we changed the following aspect of the plot: what if Carl had killed Mustapha on purpose without a good reason? The moral wrong of lying to a distressed family member (and the police) is apparently not bad enough for viewers to prevent them from sympathizing with Dave and Carl and praising their friendship. But would the moral wrong of a deliberate murder not be fatal to viewers’ imaginative appraisal of the friendship? There are movies that give us reason to think so. Consider another famous Australian movie about friendship and the moral pitfalls it can entail: Heavenly Creatures (1994, Peter Jackson) based on a true story. In 1952, New Zealand was stunned by a brutal murder carried out by two girls, ages 15 and 16, who crushed the skull of one of their mothers with a rock. The girls were sentenced to prison and forbidden to ever see each other again. The movie shows the crime as the result of tragic coincidences. Two teenage girls, 373

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both outsiders in a Christchurch girls’ school, become fast friends, bound by a fascination for the macabre. They become intoxicated by their friendship and by the imaginary country they have created, with dream castles and heroic figures with whom they identify. Adults grow disturbed by the closeness of the girls. Although the word “lesbianism” cannot be spoken, it is decided the girls see too much of each other. In terror at being separated, the girls plan and carry out the horrible murder. Heavenly Creatures is classified as a horror story. And film critic Roger Ebert seems to find this an apt classification, as he was horrified by watching the immoral acts that a friendship can lead to. The insight of Heavenly Creatures is that sometimes people are capable of committing acts together that they could not commit by themselves. A mob can be as small as two persons. Reading in the paper recently about a crowd of teenage boys who beat an innocent youth to death, I was reminded of this film. Sometimes tragedies happen because each person is waiting for someone else to say “no!” […] What makes Jackson’s film enthralling and frightening is the way it shows two unhappy girls, creating an alternative world so safe and attractive they thought it was worth killing for. Ebert 1994 In Heavenly Creatures the friendship between Pauline and Juliette leads to and is the reason for the most serious crime and moral wrong one can do to a person: premeditated murder. As in real life, also in the movie the friends are forbidden to continue their friendship. The drawing view of friendship by Cocking and Kennett can in fact be used to justify the decision to sabotage a friendship for moral reasons. Precisely because friendship entails a mutual reception to interpretation and direction, it is understandable that bystanders want to step in when they see the friends spiraling down a destructive path. While the drawing theory may be right in arguing that from the friendship’s internal perspective moral considerations do not necessarily carry much weight, moral reasons can still be invoked to hinder the blossoming of a friendship altogether. It is psychologically hard, and according to Cocking and Kennett undesirable, to take up this moral perspective as a friend, yet it does not seem undesirable that bystanders take this perspective and warn or, in the case of minors, protect against the dangers of friendship. Heavenly Creatures works as a limiting case for the anti-​moralist drawing view of friendship. Cocking and Kennett could not have used the film Heavenly Creatures to make their point. Even if morality does not play a role in how friends experience the value of their friendship from the inside, moral considerations do limit the evaluation of a friendship from an outsider’s perspective. A moral trespassing can be too enormous, such that all existential value of a friendship evaporates. Filmmakers who want their audience to sympathize with their imperfect heroes/​heroines have to walk a thin line. The invitation to sympathize with Carl and Dave and to experience their friendship as they do themselves (from the inside) is easily taken up because some important moral obstacles are moved out of the way. Carl did not mean to harm let alone kill an innocent victim. Pauline and Juliet did. And while we might sympathize with Pauline and Juliet in their capacity of unhappy outsiders in a small community, there is imaginative resistance against valuing their friendship, given its outcome.2 A comparison between Death in Brunswick and Heavenly Creatures shows that there is a moral threshold that keeps in check our appreciation of friendship’s existential value. I will not define what the threshold precisely consists in, but in the next section I will show that the threshold is dependent on social context. I will argue that the wider social context in which a conflict between existential and moral values takes place makes a difference to our assessment of the conflict. In particular, movies that portray a friendship against the background of a sexist, racist, or homophobic society, help us think about how background oppression makes a difference in our evaluation of moral transgressions provoked by friendship. 374

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Section 2: The Feminist Value of Friendship Another classic movie about a conflict between friendship and morality that Cocking and Kennett could have invoked in their favor is Thelma & Louise, hailed as a feminist road movie (1991, Ridley Scott). It tells the story of two working class women who embark on a road trip for the weekend but never return home. Thelma (played by Geena Davis) is unhappily married to a disrespectful carpet salesman. Louise (played by Susan Sarandon) works as a waitress and has encouraged her friend more than once to have more fun in life. Finally taking her advice, Thelma leaves a note for her husband and the two women hit the road for a weekend trip in Louise’s car. In a bar Thelma dances and flirts with a stranger who later in the parking lot attempts to rape her. Louise intervenes and threatens to shoot, which ends the physical violence but not the verbal threats.The man’s insults trigger a rage inside Louise, who pulls a gun and shoots the man in the chest, killing him instantly. Because the women think that the police will not believe the attempted rape, they see no other option than to head for Mexico. On their way they lose all their money to a handsome thief, after which they rob a convenience store and, a bit later, lock a state trooper in the trunk of his police car when he is about to find out their identities. Heading further west they are chased by dozens of heavily armed policemen who ignore the opinion of one sympathetic investigator (Harvey Keitel) who understands why the women did not report the killing and who foresees what they are up to. A few yards from the edge of the Grand Canyon, the women are cornered. Rather than spend the rest of their lives in jail, Thelma proposes to Louise to “keep going.” The final screenshot shows their car accelerating over the cliff, the two friends holding hands. Responses to the movie were mixed. Some viewers were appalled by the violence against men, seemingly excused by the movie. But the majority classified the movie as a female buddy film, or even a feminist film, narrating the adventures of two close friends. Compare Roger Ebert’s summary of the storyline of Thelma & Louise with what he had to say on Heavenly Creatures: [Thelma & Louise] celebrates the myth of two carefree souls piling into a 1956 T-​Bird and driving out of town to have some fun and raise some hell. We know the road better than that, however, and we know the toll it exacts: Before their journey is done, these characters will have undergone a rite of passage, and will have discovered themselves. Ebert 1991 Thelma and Louise kill a man, and endanger many others.Yet Ebert does not see “a mob of two people” like he saw in Heavenly Creatures. Their friendship is not considered so dangerous that others need to step in to break the negative spiral. Based on the actions performed in both movies, this difference in interpretation seems unwarranted. But part of the explanation must lie in the patriarchal setting of Thelma & Louise. The viewers sympathize with the two women who suffer under various forms of misogyny (sexual violence, rape, condescending husbands, testimonial injustice etc.). It is plausible that their moral trespassings are evaluated in a milder way than the ones committed by Pauline and Juliet because they are set against a background that primes an interpreter’s indignation about the social injustice inflicted on the agents. As said, not all viewers of Thelma & Louise were primed in this way. Here is what film critic Sheila Benson has to say in her review of the movie: “Call Thelma & Louise anything you want but please don’t call it feminism, as some writers are already doing. As I understand it, feminism has to do with responsibility, equality, sensitivity, understanding –​not revenge, retribution, or sadistic behavior” (Benson 1991; emphasis in original). Feminism is not about revenge, Benson insists. It is about women who make their own choices. And that is precisely what Thelma and Louise fail to do, according to her, as the final sequence of the film conveys. That whole, hyped-​up chase sequence is the most bullying part of the movie. Having pushed its characters into a no-​win situation, the filmmakers now cast their deaths as “freedom,” 375

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when, in fact, their fate all along has been determined by men, not their own choice. Some feminism. Benson 1991 While Benson rightly points at the many non-​feminist features of the movie, her interpretation overlooks an important motive that drives both protagonists and that does have feminist value: their friendship and mutual concern for each other.When Thelma and Louise decide to run from the police and to avoid returning home, one might divine different motives. But a plausible one, suggested by the strong bond between the two women, is that they want to protect each other from harm inflicted by men who do not understand their situation. Thelma has a cold, self-​centered husband who seems indifferent to her unhappiness. Louise has a more fulfilling personal life back home, but she is unlikely to have her old life back upon her return. After all, she killed a man who was not assaulting her (nor Thelma) at the very moment of his death but who probably (the movie only suggests it) reminded her of the sexual violence she once fell victim to. The two women reasonably assume that no one will believe that this man had tried to rape Thelma after she had been making out with the man in plain sight. Their decision to run from the police can plausibly be seen as a decision to protect one another from an injustice. It is their friendship that gives their fatal decisions an aura not only of self-​ sacrifice but also of altruistic concern. In full acknowledgment of the shortcomings of the movie and of the danger that it perpetuates self-​sacrifice as a female virtue, I do think that the driving theme of the movie, namely unwavering friendship, not only might explain the movie’s wide acclaim but also warrants a feminist reading (which is not to say that there are not other legitimate and revealing readings of the movie).3 Thelma and Louise act against moral duty when they kill someone at a moment he was no longer threatening them. They also act cruelly when they lock up a man in a trunk in the desert sun. The sympathetic acclaim that the movie received suggests that many people value the reasons of friendship higher than the reasons of morality. But in the case of Thelma & Louise, as opposed to Carl and Dave from Death in Brunswick, the viewers’ approval of their immoral actions can be explained by more than existential value alone. It is not just that Thelma and Louise risk losing a part of themselves when they give up on their friendship and what it requires of them. The drawing view of friendship does not seem to capture all that is of value here. Additionally it is the case that the friendship between Thelma and Louise helps them combat an injustice, namely the constraining, debilitating effects of patriarchy on their lives.Thus the trade-​off between the existential value of friendship and the value of a morally just action is complicated by the feminist meaning of their actions. One might want to simplify the kinds of values involved by reducing feminist value to moral value. Indeed the feminist meaning of the friendship between Thelma and Louise could be cast in the moral terms used by Lawrence Blum. Some of their acts done out of friendship originate in altruistic concern for the other’s well-​being. But it matters that this well-​being is threatened by oppressive surroundings. The concern is therefore expressed in acts that encourage the development of one’s own identity and that enable the use of one’s autonomous agency. Enabling agency, or offering the oppressed an opportunity for autonomous choice has moral value. Yet it is useful to consider feminist value as a distinctive kind of value, that does not play a role for example in our assessment of the moral value of Dave’s altruistic concern for his friend. By highlighting that friendship may bestow agential power on people, the feminist value focuses on the moral good that friendship brings to the one cared for. Friendship or “sisterhood” has long been celebrated by feminists as a powerful, empowering tool for women’s liberation. Marilyn Friedman has explained this feminist importance of friendship in terms of a social theory of the self. In her article “Feminism and Moral Friendship: Dislocating the Community,” Friedman examines the similarities and the differences between anti-​individualist developments in feminist thought on the self and communitarian reactions against abstract individualism. Like feminist theorists of the social self, communitarians like Michael Sandel and Alisdair MacIntyre argue against atomist conceptions of personhood, showing how a person’s identity cannot 376

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be formed without a community. But unlike feminists, their argument invokes the necessity of a shared, historical cultural reservoir of meaning. Their uncritical reliance on tradition is why, against first appearances, feminist and communitarian thinkers are not natural allies, Friedman explains. Communitarians invoke a model of community that is focused particularly on families, neighborhoods, and nations. These sorts of communities harbor social roles and structures which have been highly oppressive for women […] By building on uncritical references to these sorts of communities, communitarian philosophy can lead in directions that feminists should not take. Friedman 1989/1993: 287 Traditional communities have value but they also harbor norms and practices that cannot be endorsed from a feminist standpoint. A view of the self as dependent on social interaction can be saved for feminist purposes, once the focus shifts from traditional communities (what Friedman calls “the family-​neighborhood-​nation complex”) to what Friedman calls “modern friendships” and “urban communities.” The beautiful, dream-​like desert movie Bagdad Café (1987, Percy Adlon) tells the story of such a modern friendship between two women who have, at first sight, nothing in common except a strong desire for connection and understanding. The film opens with the song “Calling You,” by Jevetta Steele, a song expressive of a deep longing for companionship. An unsuspecting viewer might think they are about to watch a romantic drama. But the movie is not about romance, as becomes clear from the first scene when German tourists Jasmin Münchgstettner and her husband have a bitter fight while driving through the Mojave Desert. Foolish but determined Jasmin storms out of the car, grabs a suitcase from the trunk, and starts walking in the desert sun. She makes her way to the remote truck stop Bagdad Café, which is run by Brenda, who also just broke up with her husband. Initially Brenda is suspicious of the foreigner who seems to have no destination and does not know for how long she will be staying. But as Jasmin turns out to be a generous, funny, and diligent worker at the café, the two women become friends. By mistake Jasmin had taken her husband’s suitcase from the trunk. Her external transformation (she no longer wears stiff tweed suits, but wide shirts) echoes an internal liberation from societal expectations and marital norms. And with her warm heart and lust for life, she gradually transforms the atmosphere at the café and all the people in her surroundings. Peace is disturbed when Jasmin’s visa expires and she is evicted. But she returns to Bagdad Café to the great delight of Brenda, and the two women seem to be heading toward a much more peaceful future than Thelma and Louise did, thanks to the friendship between them. Some cracks in their blissful state of isolation are announced in the final scenes of the movie when Brenda welcomes her husband back in the house and a local loner proposes to Jasmin. Jasmin’s answer throws upside down the received view on the relative importance of friendship on the one hand and romantic love on the other. Jasmin does not readily accept. Instead she says: “I’ll ask Brenda.” After that the story might develop in unpredictable ways: inevitably social norms and gender expectations will creep back in, power relations will play out between the different characters, possibly even between Jasmin and Brenda, foreshadowed by the asymmetry in their responses to romantic advances. Equally fond of each other, Brenda does not hesitate nor consult Jasmin when her husband stands remorsefully at the door. But at least we got a look inside, a taste of how life could be, devoid of oppression and hostility between the sexes. And this is what friendship can do: offer a safe space, a room of one’s own, a place and time to discover one’s free self, unencumbered by oppressive social forces. The oasis of peace and friendship in the middle of the desert is exceptional in its spatial remoteness and isolation.The way in which friendship protects from oppression cannot always be so successfully all-​encompassing, because friends normally do have to interact with the outer world, which may mean confronting oppression 377

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on a daily basis.The promise of happiness painted in Bagdad Café is therefore unrealistic but nevertheless heart-​warming and revealing of a valuable dimension of friendship overlooked by only existential or only moral interpretations of friendship’s value. A more realistic and ambivalent picture of feminist friendship in a patriarchal context is painted in Girlhood (2004, Céline Sciamma), the last movie I will use to illustrate the many different goods that friendship may bring. The movie gives us reasons to be careful about what friendship can achieve in an oppressive world, but also about how tightly one should knot society and the self. The effect of an oppressive society on an individual’s autonomy has been explored by socially constitutive conceptions of autonomy, also called relational theories of autonomy, which dovetail nicely with the already mentioned social theories of the self. Serene Khader has leveled feminist objections against these conceptions of self and autonomy that are themselves also qualified as feminist. Khader’s objections will help explain the exceptional merits of Girlhood.

Section 3: How Society Constrains Friendship’s Liberating Power The movie Girlhood (French title: Bande de filles) by French filmmaker Céline Sciamma tells the coming-​of-​age story of Marieme, a young black Parisian girl growing up in the projects. She is 16, and carries the responsibility for her younger sister Bébé and the toddler Mini. There is no father. There is an older brother, Djibril, who abuses, assaults, or manipulates Marieme in every scene in which we see them together. Their mother is mostly absent and has no idea of what is going on at home. Marieme is desperate after being told by a teacher that she cannot go to college, and that she can only take a vocational training given her grades. When higher education is no longer an option, Marieme looks for other ways to escape her environment. She joins a local girl gang, where she is given a new name: “Vic –​for victory,” a bittersweet expression of hope and power by girls who at a certain level fully realize the limitations of their options in life. However, these girls do not want to feel defeated, hence they fight and steal and bully girls from other gangs. But they back down whenever they encounter their brothers, fathers, or boys from the local gangs. The movie succeeds better than Thelma & Louise in showing the morally problematic aspects of a self-​liberating friendship that uses violence to strengthen the friendship bond. Sciamma does not excuse the violence; she does not glorify revenge (although there is the symbolically poignant moment when Vic takes the red bra from her opponent’s body and triumphantly holds it in the air as if it were a red flag). The movie contains delightful close-​up scenes of smiling girls’ faces conveying the sheer joy of friendship, but it also shows the exclusionary forces of friendship. In this regard Girlhood is more balanced than Thelma & Louise. In another regard it is more balanced than Bagdad Café in that it documents the empowering potential of friendship in full acknowledgment of its inability to effectively achieve social change. In the very powerful opening scene of the movie we see a game of American football, with fierce players who, after taking off their helmets, turn out to be all girls. After the game they walk home together through the night, laughing and joking, chatting away until they near a group of boys from the neighborhood. Their voices quieten, their laughter dies out, and they bow their heads as they walk past the boys with their eyes cast down. They peel off one by one from the group and return to their separate homes, vulnerable again. As the reviewer Sue Harris writes, the scene is “a sobering and impressively effective demonstration of the place of these girls in a world of intense social pressures, and of the liberating potential of female solidarity if only it can be allowed to take root” (Harris 2015: 74). The friendship theme runs throughout the entire movie: girls support one another, spark a sense of agency in one another, but they are repeatedly backed down and held in check by aggressive brothers, fathers, gang leaders. They struggle against various forms of oppression, rooted in race, in gender, in class deprivation. And they themselves adopt methods of oppression when they intimidate or use physical violence to get their way. Because the lead actor delivers such a strong 378

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performance, one might interpret the movie as telling the story of one girl, Marieme, transforming herself from an obedient girl into a smart, strong young woman trying out different identities for herself. But the focus on individual growth (see also Lucy Bolton’s Murdochian interpretation of the movie, Bolton 2019) downplays the role of friendship in the film. Perhaps the English title of the movie invites such an individualistic interpretation of the story line, but the original French title is more apt as it puts the girl gang, the friendship between four girls in a hostile environment, firmly in the center. Importantly, the film does not romanticize or apologize for the girls’ criminal acts. The film does not endorse the gang’s violent and criminal activities, but it shows as neutrally as possible how it feels to be a member of a girl gang. The dynamics of inclusion and exclusion are beautifully portrayed in dance scenes and other things that young girls do to bond, in which their sense of belonging and thereby also their self-​confidence grows, next to scenes of fighting and bullying. Clearly the friendship between Marieme, Lady, Adiatou, and Fily comes at the expense of exclusion. This might count as a reason against considering their friendship of moral value. But as Blum has argued, there is always pro tanto value in caring for someone, regardless of the payoffs. By defining themselves as a gang of four, they empower each other and, especially in the case of Marieme, we witness her inner growth. As it is described in the drawing theory by Cocking and Kennett (2000), Marieme defines herself in interaction with the other gang members, discovering what she likes (dancing, being in power), what she is good at (fighting, defending others, being brave), what she wants (an independent life). All this happens in the context of exploring legal and moral limits: they steal, intimidate, bully, fight. They expose their power, and enjoy showing off to other girls. This collective rebellion surely is part of how the friendship empowers them and gives them back a sense of agency. Girlhood beautifully shows the moral ambivalence of friendship: it can play at the same time a damaging and a nurturing moral role. But because it shows friendship specifically between oppressed individuals, the movie reveals an aspect of the moral significance of friendship that has been overlooked by the likes of Aristotle and C.S. Lewis. Remember that for Lewis friendship is non-​natural; it has no survival value. But this does not sound convincing once we take into account the lives of oppressed people. For Marieme and the other girls of her gang, the friendship between them keeps them alive while enduring the hostile treatment and horrible threats by brothers or fathers. Fellow sufferers offer not only companionship, as Lewis thought, but life-​enabling understanding. Aristotle’s taxonomy was modeled after the free male world. The friendship between slaves or between women does not figure in his theory. Yet there is something peculiar about these friendships that reveals, by extension, something about all friendships. Friendship creates a space free from social oppression where persons can reinvent themselves. This feature comes into focus when one looks at friendship in oppressive circumstances, but it reflects on the value of friendship in general, and points toward a specific good that friendship brings. While friendship might play a role in offering friends a chance to express concern (Blum), in nurturing moral growth (Sherman and Thomas), in directing intentions and steering self-​interpretations (Cocking and Kennett), friendship also does something much more basic and prior to all that: it creates a space where a person is seen. People enjoy being seen, being recognized as a person in their own right, as an irreplaceable center of a world. People long for someone who pays attention to their unique individuality. That is the true longing behind the lead song of Bagdad Café. “I am calling you” is not a cry for romance but a cry for friendship. What Jasmin and Brenda give to one another is “psychological visibility” (Branden 1980/​1993). They flourish because someone is paying attention. They gain self-​confidence and enjoy their lives better than before. They steer their lives in accordance to their values, and together they rise above the marital oppression they suffered. A natural way to explain why there is moral value in giving back a sense of agency to the downtrodden is to interpret autonomy as essentially constituted by social interactions. Only when Jasmin is treated with respect by Brenda and given the room to make her own decisions, is she able 379

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to establish her full autonomy. Socially constituted conceptions of autonomy have been offered by feminist thinkers in close alliance to the already mentioned social theories of the self. Marina Oshana (2006), for example, has argued that in order to be autonomous, agents need equal opportunities and the absence of domination. Applied to Girlhood, none of the girls would count as autonomous on Oshana’s account of autonomy. One may find this outcome problematic precisely for feminist reasons, as has been explained by Serene Khader (2020). Her objection against Oshana and other defenders of socially constitutive accounts of autonomy (SCA) is that they derive from the obvious fact that oppressive conditions limit effective self-​direction the more contestable conclusion that having to resist or negotiate oppression is evidence of compromised autonomy. This conclusion is contestable on feminist grounds. First, as Khader points out, if autonomy is constituted by social features, the very absence of these features worrisomely warrants paternalism. If Marieme is not autonomous, Djibril does not violate her autonomy by bullying her. That seems counterintuitive and also in conflict with traditional feminist arguments. Secondly, and more relevant for the analysis of Girlhood, SCA leads to troublesome advice for those who want to oppose oppression. If autonomy is defined as constituted by external conditions, what should women who find themselves in a misogynistic environment do? If autonomous choices are only possible if society allows for it, why would Marieme bother to try to escape her oppressors? “SCA either say that oppressed agents should act as though the opportunities constitutive of autonomy are present or [they] end up saying nothing about what oppressed agents should do” (Khader 2020: 509). If Marieme ignores the oppressive forces, her actions will lead to self-​sacrifice. If she succumbs to them, nothing will ever change. Marieme settles for a kind of “bargaining with patriarchy” (a term coined by Deniz Kandiyoti 1988), which in the definition of Oshana is far from giving her autonomy, but which is the best she can do in the non-​ideal situation she is in. An analysis of Marieme’s choices underwrites Khader’s plea for a non-​ideal theory of autonomy: also in non-​ideal oppressive circumstances women can be autonomous. On the one hand Marieme’s environment is hostile and violent toward women, and viewers cannot be naive about the risks she takes by refusing, for example, to kiss her drug dealer boss. The movie does not romanticize such heroic acts. On the other hand Sciamma does succeed in showing Marieme as strong and resourceful and fully autonomous depending on how far we zoom out. If we picture her as operating within a circle of friends and friendly companions, she is successful in exercising her autonomy. The misfortune of the girls in Girlhood is that they, as opposed to Jasmin in Bagdad Café, don’t have the material resources to escape their milieu. They are therefore bound to define themselves always in relationship to the oppressive forces. There is only so much friendship can do. We suspect, and the movie gives us reason to suspect, that in the end all the power that matters is in the hands of unfriendly people. But perhaps, who knows, Marieme and her friends do succeed in finding and sustaining a more stable friendly environment in which opposition against the patriarchal forces does not result in self-​sacrifice. Thelma and Louise ultimately do not succeed, at least not in the way one would wish. Jasmin and Brenda do succeed to an extent, helped by the remoteness and seclusion of their home. Perhaps Marieme and her friends can create such a microcosmos as well, a blissful patch of peace, a community with its own rules holding oppression at bay.Whether she succeeds or not, on the way there Marieme will always have to calculate her options and negotiate what she is willing to give up on and what not. This does not seem to me evidence of compromised autonomy, but rather expressive of a very resourceful and creative and strong autonomy. Girlhood is, in the end, a movie about resilience and friendship against the bleak background of patriarchy and poverty.The movie does not portray Marieme as a victim, but neither does it show her as a naive agent operating in an imagined ideal world. She will not sit there and accept her powerlessness. She will not pretend that there are no obstacles. But she will navigate them. Confronted with the dilemma of having to choose between self-​subordination or self-​sacrifice, she chooses neither and rather builds friendships. Within this circle of friends the relational conception of autonomy

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offers an accurate description: the existence and performativity of Marieme’s autonomy depends on relationships in which her will is recognized and respected. At one point in the movie the girls of her gang criticize her plan to work for the local drug dealer Abou. But Marieme replies: “What else can I do?” She will not work as a cleaner like her mother and she no longer wants to be hassled as a slut. She does not want to get married and “be a little wife and have kids.” She cannot go to college. She does not want to stay home under the abusive control of her brother. She throws a question back at the other girls: are the lives that they are leading any better than that of a drug seller? “You are going nowhere,” she bites. But Lady, the leader of the gang, sees the vulnerability behind the assertiveness and knows what to do. No advice nor criticism, no words can convey what Marieme needs: acceptance, understanding, love. “Come here,” Lady says, and the four of them hug each other on the big hotel bed. They laugh, they giggle, and they cry. One cannot do right if circumstances are wrong. But in their small bubble of four (in their bande de filles), the friends come closer to care, concern, respect, and consequently they give room to each other’s autonomy to be exercised. Lady makes an effort to understand Marieme’s needs and thoughts. Insofar as such efforts ask for self-​transcendence, they amount to the moral achievement inherent to friendship as understood by Blum. With reference to feminist-​inspired movies, I wanted to highlight another valuable achievement of friendship, namely its creation of a space to develop autonomous agency. Depending on the intrusiveness of the surrounding oppressive rules, the very creation of this safe space may call for moral trespassings, and it will certainly call for negotiation and implicit confirmation of the oppressive rules. The emancipatory power of friendship is therefore dependent on the social setting it operates in. This awareness makes Girlhood a much more realistic tribute to the feminist value of friendship than Thelma & Louise or Bagdad Café.

Conclusion Movies like Girlhood, Thelma & Louise, and Bagdad Café put pressure on Lewis’s statement that friendship is the least necessary love. Lewis critically dismisses contrary statements as confusing friends with allies (Lewis 1960/​1993: 43). Surely, he says, we need people who feed us, protect us, comfort us, but friendship is not about easing needs. Friendship, for Lewis, is about sharing an insight, an interest, or a taste. But as these three movies show, friendship can also be about creating the conditions in which one can discover what one finds true, interesting, or agreeable. For Lewis, finding someone “who sees the same truth” has no survival value. But for some individuals, gaslighted into distrusting their thoughts and neglecting their needs, finding a friend who sees the same truth does have survival value. For Marieme, friends are not optional.Thelma and Louise valued their friendship so much that they were prepared to die for it. For Jasmin and Brenda, friendship saves them from a bleak, unhappy, depressing life. These women’s craving for friendship is intimately tied to their experience of being oppressed. Friendship’s potential to counter the debilitating effects of oppression gives it a distinctive feminist value that cannot be reduced to existential value (because the friendship gains meaning from its contribution to social progress as much as to individual growth) nor to moral value (because friendship may still come into conflict with concerns about impersonal justice). As feminist theorists have long recognized, friendships may function as communities in which victims of oppression form new, non-​oppressive rules. Yet these communities are not islands, and friends must always reckon with the racist, sexist, or otherwise oppressive social forces that constrain the liberating potential of friendship. As movies as different as Heavenly Creatures and Thelma & Louise illustrate, our assessment of whether friends have made the right trade-​off between the existential, moral, and feminist values of friendship will highly depend on context. More good movies featuring friendship would help us disentangle the considerations that go into the assessment, and would make us value friendship as the rich and multifaceted phenomenon that it is.

381

Katrien Schaubroeck

Related Chapters Aristotle on the Nature and Value of Friendship; Friendship and Personal Identity; The Value of Friendship

Notes 1 Amatonormativity refers to “the assumptions that a central, exclusive, amorous relationship is normal for humans, in that it is a universally shared goal, and that such a relationship is normative, in that it should be aimed at in preference to other relationship types” (Brake 2012: 88). 2 There are detailed discussions in aesthetics about imaginative resistance, but I only draw on the contrast between two movies without going into the details of how imaginative resistance works. 3 It is telling that Susan Sarandon refers to the movie’s theme of friendship as what attracted her to do the movie. In an interview in 2016, 25 years after the release, she explains: “You never get to be in a film with another woman, hardly ever and you never get to be friends with the woman. If you are in a film with another woman you automatically are competitive, and hate each other for whatever reason. So that was a big deal.”

References Benson, Sheila. 1991. “Review of Thelma & Louise.” LA Times, May 31. Available at: www.lati​mes.com/​archi​ves/​ la-​xpm-​1991-​05-​31-​ca-​2730-​story.html Blum, Lawrence. 1980/​ 1993. “Friendship as a Moral Phenomenon.” Reprinted in N. Badhwar, ed. Friendship: A Philosophical Reader. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, pp. 192–​210. Bolton, Lucy. 2019. Contemporary Cinema and the Philosophy of Iris Murdoch. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Brake, Elizabeth. 2012. Minimizing Marriage: Marriage, Morality, and the Law. New York: Oxford University Press. Branden, Nathaniel. 1980/​1993. “Love and Psychological Visibility.” Reprinted in N. Badhwar, ed. Friendship: A Philosophical Reader. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, pp. 65–​72. Cocking, Dean, and Jeanette Kennett. 2000. “Friendship and Moral Danger.” Journal of Philosophy 97 (5): 278–​96. Ebert, Roger. 1991. “Review of Thelma & Louise.” Available at: www.rog​ereb​ert.com/​revi​ews/​the​lma-​and-​ lou​ise-​1991 Ebert, Roger. 1994. “Review of Heavenly Creatures.” Available at: www.rog​ereb​ert.com/​revi​ews/​heave​nly-​ creatu​res-​1994 Friedman, Marilyn. 1989/​1993. “Feminism and Modern Friendship: Dislocating the Community.” Reprinted in N. Badhwar, ed. Friendship: A Philosophical Reader. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, pp. 285–​302. Harris, Sue. 2015. “Review of Girlhood.” Sight & Sound 25 (5): 73–​4. Available at: www2.bfi.org.uk/​news-​opin​ ion/​sight-​sound-​magaz​ine/​revi​ews-​reco​mmen​dati​ons/​film-​week-​girlh​ood Kandiyoti, Deniz. 1988. “Bargaining with Patriarchy.” Gender and Society 2 (3): 274–​290. Khader, Serene. 2020. “The Feminist Case against Relational Autonomy.” Journal of Moral Philosophy 17 (5): 499–​526. Lewis, C.S. 1960/​ 1993. “Friendship –​the Least Necessary Love.” Reprinted in N. Badhwar, ed. Friendship: A Philosophical Reader. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, pp. 39–​47. Oshana, Marina. 2006. Personal Autonomy in Society. Aldershot: Ashgate. Sherman, Nancy. 1989. The Fabric of Character: Aristotle’s Theory of Virtue. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Thomas, Laurence. 1989. Living Morally. A Psychology of Moral Character. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

382

INDEX

Adam and Aaron, sins of 54 advantage, friendship for 206 Aelred of Rievaulx 55 affinity-​based view, of friendship 15 agalmat’ aretês 27 agent-​neutral reasons, for friendship 202 agent-​relative reasons, for friendship 202–​3 agonistic democracy 134 Alcibiades 28; love story 26 Alexander of Aphrodisias 49 Allen, Danielle 134 altruism 48–​9 Alzheimer’s disease 343 amatonormativity, notion of 371, 382n1 Ambrose of Milan 52 amicae, destruction of 317 Analects (Lunyu) 12; portrayal of friendship in 15–​18; readings of 19; voluntary friendships of affection and mutual liking 15 Anderson, Elizabeth S. 268 animal-​children 145 Annas, Julia 268 “another-​self ” metaphor 109 Aquinas, Thomas 53, 55 argumentum ad verecundiam 110 Aristodemus 27 Aristotelian friendship 48; analysis of 44; cases of pleasure and utility friendships 42; character-​based 40; characterization of 35; considerations of 43; contribution to happiness 44; definition of 37–​8; on friends as external goods 41–​3; on friendship between children 89; goodwill 39; heterogeneity of 41; on importance of living together 43–​5; kinds of 36–​9; moral characters of 36; moral deficiencies 39; more or less friends 39–​41; nature and value of 42; Nicomachean account of 39; and other self 40; for overall well-​being 42; as personal friendship 133; of pleasure 59; taxonomy of 360; time and intimacy to establish 48; typology of 81, 89; value of 41; vice

of pleonexia 134; virtue ethics 359; wishing goods to the friend 40 Aristotle 2, 7, 25, 65, 201–​2, 205–​6, 216, 275, 379; account of friendship 3, 35, 48, 59; account of true friendship 312; “another-​self ” metaphor 109; on character friendships 107; classification of political friendship 132; on close friendship 11, 106; conception of love as selfless and disinterested 167; conditionality of value on virtuous activity 42; criteria for friendship 106; on friendship and virtue 301–​2; influential account of civic friendship 126; Magna Moralia 211n5; moral framework 60; observations on friendship and loyalty 311–​12; on sense without virtue 60; on three kinds of friendship 36–​9; treatment of the dispute 43; views on friendship that hold states together 132; views on physician–​patient relationships 96; worries about moral developmental barriers 106–​8 art of love (ta erôtika) 24, 28, 30, 33 asexuals 173 Ashford, Elizabeth 265 associative duties, of friendship 162 Athenian paiderasteia, ideology of 27–​8 Athenian social construction 25 Augustine 5; Contra Academicos 56n11; engagement with Neoplatonic accounts of virtue 56n10; on friendship and vice 52–​5; views on role of friendship 53 Austen, Jane 179 authentic friendships 265, 271 autonomy: development of 140; non-​ideal theory of 380 bad friend, idea of 241 Badhwar, Neera Kapur 268 Bagdad Café (movie) 372, 377, 379, 381 balance in friendship 62 bargaining power 328 bargaining with patriarchy 380

383

Index behavioral economics 362 beneficence, duty of 62, 65 Bennet, Elizabeth 179 bias, notion of 234 Big Night (film) 278 Black Lives Matter movement 136 Blum, Lawrence 373, 376 bonds of fellowship 54 bonds of friendship 323 Book of Songs (Shijing) 14–​15 brainstorming 224–​5 Brake, Elizabeth 182–​3, 371 Brewer, Talbot 108 Briggle, Adam: defense of online friendship 361 Brink, David 266 bulletin board systems (BBSs) 358 Bultmann, Rudolf 118 Burke, Edmund 69; Reflections on the Revolution in France 69 business partners 253 business ventures 253 Caesarea Philippi village 117, 121 cardinal relationships 12, 18–​20 celibacy 183 Chapman, Mark 86, 89n2 character friendships: Aristotle’s views on 107; “ethical complexities” rule 108; raison d’être of 107 child, concept of 88 childhood friendship 3, 81; Aristotelian tradition of 86; associated with identity exploration 84; authenticity of 86–​7; and child’s social development 84; control over peer social networks 82; development of 83–​4; ethical implications of 88; first claim 82–​3; “friend-​like” relationships 88; imaginary friends 84–​6; implication for education 82; importance of proximity 83; intimate and long-​term relationships in adulthood 81; moral development 81; and personal well-​being 83; philosophical examinations of 86; Piagetian project on 84; positioning of 82–​3; in school settings 87–​9; second claim 83; significance of 83–​4; social and cognitive 83; Social Network Theory and 81; social relationships 82; stage theories of 84; third claim 83; value-​beliefs about children and childhood 88 children, concept of 88 choice in friendship 143 Christian life 53–​5 Christian views of friendship 55n8 Christ, Jesus: God’s revelation in 118; Gospels’ portrait of 118; and inquiry about God 116–​22; moral authority in being God’s unique representative for humans 119; moral challenge 118; moral character of 120; question about an inquirer 119 Cicero: De amicitia 55n7, 69; remarks about friendship 52, 56n11 citizenship: analogies and disanalogies with friendship 129–​30; comparison with friendship 126–​7; and cultural identity 129; democratic dimension

of 127, 130, 133; duties and responsibilities of 128; essentially contested concept of 127; good citizenship 130; and national identity 131; notion of 127–​9; points of connection with friendship 130–​1; rights of 127; status-​based equality 131 civic friendship: Aristotle’s influential account of 126; attitudes of 132, 135; for citizens 134; defense of 133; equitable self-​interest 134; ethical conduct 132; ideal of 130; political theory of 131–​6 civic republicanism 135 Clement of Alexandria 52 close friendship, notion of 105 closeness, idea of 19 co-​citizenship, obligations of 289 Cocking, Dean 224–​5, 227, 269–​70, 321, 336, 351, 372 cognitive dispositions 233 Cohen, Howard 141 “collectivist” children 141 common goods, knowledge (epistēmē) of 51 commonsense morality 288 communication technologies 361 computer-​mediated communication (CMC) 368n2 Conditions of Personhood Question,The 337 Confucian familial ethics 13 Confucian friendship: classical thought on 14–​16; concept of 19; doubts about 11–​14; event-​ based friendship 19–​21; features of 16; as fifth relationship 12; friendship theory of society 15; in Han dynasty 12; historical perspectives of 11; and its subservience to family 11–​14; literary tradition of 12, 16; and personal cultivation 13, 16–​19; portrayal of 19; prioritizing of family and state 12; in Qin dynasty 12; in Shang dynasty 14; sociocultural context of 14; value of personal recognition or understanding 16; from Warring States period 14; from Western Zhou period 14; in Zhou dynasty 12 Confucian social life 16 Confucian society, ethics and social structures of 14 consequentialism, in friendship: acts of 263; challenge of 263; critics of 268; decision-​making strategies 266; deeper authenticity argument 268–​70; demandingness objection 264; direct versus indirect formulations 266; formulation of 266; impartiality of 264; implementation of 265; initial alienation objection 264–​5; integrity objection 264, 265; motive consequentialism 290; psychologically feasible 268; Railton’s articulation of 267; rule-​consequentialism 266, 290; satisficing consequentialism 290; significance of 263; sophisticated 266–​9; standard consequentialist reply 265–​8; substantive consequentialist reply 270–​2 contribution of friendship, to happiness 44 convenience, friends of 311, 349 Cooley, Milton 311 Cooper, John 132 costs of friendship 204 courage 308

384

Index COVID-​19 pandemic 130, 367 Cratylus 25 crib test 203, 211n4 cross-​cultural exchange, impact on friendship 12 cultural identity 129 D’arms, Justin 174 Darwall, Stephen 172 Daxue 17 De Anima 167 Death in Brunswick (movie) 316, 372–​3, 376 Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen 69 “deflationary” conception of friendship 4 democratic citizenship 127, 133; definition of 130 De officiis 52 De Sousa, Ronald 169 de Talleyrand, Charles 71 Dewey, John 19 Diary of a Future President 143 differences in friendship, respect for 144 Digeser, Peter 132 Diotima’s love story 28–​9 dispositions of friendship 59–​60; attentional, affective, and agential partiality 233–​6; cognitive or doxastic partiality 236–​44; cognitive responses 233; counterargument 242–​4; descriptive question 236–​9; human tendencies and 235; normative question 239–​42 dispute, Aristotle’s treatment of 43 distinctive goods: friendship and 220–​2; personal relationships 220; reciprocation to friendship 221 divine–​human alliance, in mutual care 120 divine–​human friendship 124 divine madness 31 division of labor 188 divorce 197 Doctor and Patient (book) 93 Doctrine of the Mean,The 12 dogmatic/​doctrinaire parenting 141 doxastic dispositions 233, 241 doxastic partiality 236, 238–​40, 242–​3 drinking buddies 60, 351 Driver, Julia 266 Early Latin Christian views, on friendship 52 Easton, Dossie 354 Ebels-​Duggan, Kyla 225–​9 egalitarian deliberative constraint, in social relations 330n5 egalitarian friendship 329 egoism 271 elenchus 25 emotional fit 174 emotional intimacy 138, 168, 359, 361 emotions: anger-​type 169; in friendship 73; love as a paradigmatic complex 171; love as a socially situated 171–​3; perceived-​response theory of 171 end-​sharing, in friendship 230–​1 enlightened self-​love 49, 70

Entralgo, Lain 93 Epicurus 48 episodic memories, loss of 342 Epistemic Partiality in Friendship (EPF) 283; Agency-​ Based Argument (ABA) for 248–​9, 254–​5; business partners 253–​4; Care-​and-​Support Argument (C&SA) for 248, 253, 255; counterargument 242–​4; differential responses toward our friends 233; doxastic partiality 240; good friends 250–​1, 254; “negative” hypothesis 252; other valued human relationships 250–​4; political groups 252–​3, 254; proponents of 249, 252, 254, 256, 258; “propriety constraint” objection 258–​9; social practices or institutions 254–​6; subject-​matter-​ invariant 240; team member 251–​2, 254;Value-​ Commitment Argument (VCA) for 247–​8, 250, 255; valued social groups 256–​8 equality: dissemination of 69; in friendship 68, 143–​4 equals, relationship of 65 erastês 25 eromenos 25 erôs 24, 26 erotic love 24–​5, 30, 72, 355 Essay Concerning Human Understanding, An 208 eudaimonia 208, 311, 312, 359 eudaimonic friendship 108 Eudemian Ethics (EE) 36–​7, 43, 45n2, 47 eunoia 48 Euthyphro problem 172 event-​based friendship 19–​21 exploitation, in friendship: definition of 325; due to care and openness 326; interpersonal vulnerability 328; likelihood of 329; minimizing of 327–​8; moral exploitation 330n4; power 326; safeguards for relationship exploitation 328–​30; significance of 321; sources of susceptibility to harm 326–​7; strategy of vulnerability removal 328–​9; unequal vulnerability in 326–​7; vulnerability, friendship-​ based 326; wrongful 324–​7 Facebook 358, 364–​6 FaceBook friend 7–​8, 311–​12 face-​to-​face relationships 361, 367 “fake” friendships 16 familia, destruction of 317 familial-​friendship 207 familial love 202, 213, 220 familial relationships 3–​4, 68 family-​neighborhood-​nation complex 377 family relationships, friendship in 2, 289; agent-​ relative 156; authentic self-​disclosure 161; benefit-​ based 156; contributory value of friendship and 154–​5; directed duties 156; distinctness of 160; “dual character” concepts 160; focus on child-​ rearing 159; friendships and 153; ideal of 161; justification of associative duties 157–​63; mutual other-​direction in 161; non-​harm-​based special duties 156; normative identity 154; positive duties 156; relationship-​duties nexus 155; relationship

385

Index goods 160–​3; shared internal normative structure of 155–​7; value of social roles in 159; values of biological ties and social roles 158–​60; values of freedom of choice, equality, and mutual affection 157–​8; voluntarist objection 157 family unity 141 fantasy 27, 86 father–​son relationship 13; ideals of intimacy and caring 16; Mencius’s account of 16 feline–​human relationship 147 fellowship, friendship of 59 Feltham, Brian 277 female friendships 7; constrains on liberating power of 378–​81; sisterhood, notion of 376 feminism, notion of 375 feminist values in film: anti-​moralist view of 372; constrains on liberating power of 378–​81; moral and existential value 372–​4; moral significance of 373; romantic relationship and 371; sense of identity 373; theme of friendship 375–​8, 382n3 fictional friendships 7 fictive kinship, use of 13 fides qua creditur 121 fides quae creditur 121 filial duties toward parents, neglect of 13 Fisher, Helen 355 flourishing, concept of 112–​13 Frankfurt, Harry 281 frank self-​disclosure, risks of 64 fraternity, principle of 133 French Revolution 68–​9, 75 Friedman, Marilyn 376 friend-​benefiting partiality 275–​7 friendliness, attitudes of 132 friends: as a second self 206–​8; of superior character 17 friend’s ends versus moral judgment 227–​30 friendship 193–​4, 201–​3; in ancient ethical and political thought 47; for character 106; comparison with citizenship 126–​7; concept of 126–​7; concern with another 206; constitutive and qualitative features of 360; core and syndrome of 203; definition of 115; desirable features of 142; duties attached to 48; instrumental advantages of 201; and mutual advantage 204–​5; as mutually beneficial relationships 204; and transcending individual limitations 205–​6 friendship love 176; desires for reciprocity and emotional intimacy 168; difference with romantic love 166, 169 friendship of disposition, notion of 3 friendship skills, development of 88 friendship utilitarian 18 Friends with Benefits (film) 353 friends-​with-​benefits relationships: advantages of 354; blurred boundaries and uncertainty 352–​4; characteristics of 347, 348–​52; definition of 353; framework for 353; intimacy and sexual passion 353; issue of sex and love in 354–​6; love-​making

350; meaning of 348; mutual caring 349–​50; mutual liking 348–​9; mutual sharing 350–​2; relationship-​governing norms 354; risks posed by 347, 352–​6; sexual relationship 347; social conventions 354 Frost, Robert 110 fuck buddies 348 Fumerton, Richard 4 Gartner, Corine 167 gender discrimination 182 gender inequality 72 gender pay gap 182 generic goods: friendship and 214–​17; friendship as intensifying 217–​20 genital relationship 24 genuine friendship 51, 268, 350; virtue and wisdom necessary for 51–​2 Gibbard, Alan 169 Giles, James 350 Girlhood (movie) 378–​81 globalization, impact on friendship 12 Gnomologium Vaticanum 48, 55n1 God: character, moral goodness of 120; Christian conception of 4; commandments 118; human redemption as volitional reconciliation to 121; life-​giving spirit 124; moral character of 118, 120; reconciliation of humans to 122; righteous love 120 good enemy, idea of 241 good friend: Aristotle’s views on 301–​2; character of 309–​10; description of 301; disunified virtues of 308–​9; emergent qualities of persons and lives 303–​4; identifying of 302–​3; many ways of being 305–​6; particularity of 304–​5; quality of 306–​7; virtues of 307 good friendship 347; core of 306; hierarchies of 307–​8; ideal of 234, 241, 250–​1, 253, 306 good life: concept of 351; importance of friendship for 48 good marriage, idea of 181 good spouse, idea of 181 good-​will, generality of 66 Great Learning 17 Green, Joseph 60 Green, T.H. 201, 208 “grit-​friendly” policy 249 grittiness, virtue of 249 Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals 61 Grunebaum, James 145 guojia 12 guru–​disciple relationship 110 Han Dynasty 12 Hardy, Janet 354 harmful friendship, types of 12 harmony, Confucian ideal of 19 Harvey (film) 81 health-​care system 94

386

Index Heavenly Creatures (movie) 372–​5 Helm, Bennett 225, 230, 347 heteronormativity, cultural dominance of 182 Hippocratic ethic 94 Hippocratic Oath 94, 97–​8 Hippothales 24–​5 Hobbes, Thomas 195 homoerotic/​sexual relationships, practice of 2 honesty 308 Hooker, Brad 266 Hubbard, Thomas 173 human–​animal bonds: based on utility or pleasure 138; befriending animals 146–​7; humans as “parents” of animals 145; instances of friendship 138; as loving relationships 138; modeling on parent–​child relationship 140; parental responsibilities and 140; against parenting animals 144–​6 human-​computer interaction (HCI) 368n2 Human Morality 276 human parenting 75 human relationships, social ecology of 84 human–​robot friendship 89n5 human selfhood, concept of 109 humans’ natural sociability 50 human–​technology interactions 364 Hume, David 3, 61, 195 Hurka, Thomas 270, 293 Illouz, Eva 352 Imaginary Friend (IM) 84–​6, 89n1 imagined friendship 85 immorality, acts of 7 immortal good 48 “incomplete” friendships 81 Individuals View 291–​2 Instagram 358 intellectual fecundity 136 interest in friendship 1, 225 interference, strategy of 327 interpersonal communication 362 interpersonal interaction, modes of 7 interpersonal psychological continuity 209–​10 interpersonal relationships 2–​3, 187, 360, 362 interpersonal vulnerability 328 intimacy: of friendship 66, 69, 161; in friendship love 168; and mutual receptivity of friends 161; in parent–​child relationship 162; in romantic love 168; sexual 170 intimate friendships 108, 318 intimate relationship 185, 210, 220, 265, 270, 278, 282, 286, 317, 351, 354, 356 intrinsic value, theory of 292 Jacobsen, Daniel 174 Jeske, Diane 193–​4, 197, 268, 335–​6 John’s Gospel 116, 118 John the Baptist 117, 119 justification of friendship 205–​6

Kagan, Shelly 299n1 Kantian deontology 6 Kantian friendship: comparison with Aristotelian friendship 58; definition of 61; emphasis on mutual enlightenment in friendships of taste 60; ethics of 59, 66n1; ideal of 61; moral duty of 64; moral friendships 60; mutual assistance pact 64; types of 59 Kantian morality 169 Kantian’s wife 170–​1 Kant, Immanuel 169, 215, 275–​6, 316; conception of moral relationships 59; discussions of friendship 58–​9, 65; Doctrine of Virtue 60, 65; force of repulsion 222; on importance of trust in personal relationships 60; on marriage as a form of reciprocal self-​giving 65; moral philosophy 170–​1; notion of a “friendship of disposition” 3; picture of friendship 66; requirement of undemandingness 66; on self-​love and self-​conceit 61; unsocial sociability 61; writings on friendship 62 Keller, Simon 291–​2 Kennett, Jeanette 224–​5, 227, 321, 336, 351, 372 Khader, Serene 372, 378, 380 kinds of friendship 36–​9, 206 Kingdom of Ends 66 kinship relationships, of mutual support 14 “knowing on purpose” method 123 Korsgaard, Christine 66 Kupfer, Joseph 108 Latin Christian tradition, role for human friendship within 55 Laws 33 Lectures on Ethics 58, 59 Lennon, John 86, 89n2 Leviathan (1994) 199 Levitin, Daniel 342 Lewis, C.S. 371, 379 Lewis, David 211n7 Lewis, Jerry 197 LGBTQ+​ identity 131 Liang, Shuming 13 liberal democracies 127–​8 liberalism, rights-​based 128 LinkedIn 358 living together as equals 180, 184 Locke, John 208, 337 Locke’s Memory Criterion 337 love: Aristotle’s conception of 167; Crazy Love (2009) 176; defined 169; emotional defenses 170; epistemic and normative reasons for 173–​6; goal-​ oriented approaches to 166–​8; influential theory of 168; Kantian morality on 169; Kantian’s wife 170–​1; ladder of 29–​30; as moral emotion 168–​71; as paradigmatic complex emotion 171; and person’s dignity 169; Platonic art of 33; primary object of 30; and rhetoric 30–​2; robust concern view 167; as a socially situated emotion 171–​3; Socrates’ defense of 32; telling the truth about 32–​3;Velleman’s

387

Index account of 169, 171; see also friendship love; romantic love love-​making 350, 355 love story 33; Alcibiades’ 26; Diotima’s 28–​9 loyalty, in friendship 7; conflicting 316–​17; demand for 217; displays of 315; dissolution of 314; importance of 313–​14; moral transgression and 316; moving house and moving bodies 314–​16; notes on 312–​13; obligations to 313; preliminary observations on 311–​12 Lysis 25, 30, 36 Mackintosh, H.R. 123 Madonna–​Whore complex 170 Magna Moralia 205 Mandela, Nelson 112 marital relationship: equality argument for 184–​7; idea of 181 Mark’s Gospel 117 Márquez, Gabriel García 107 marriage: assumption of “amatonormativity” 183; Austen’s critique of 182; case against 182–​4; characterization of 181–​2; cultural dominance of 182–​3; desirability of 183; discrimination against same-​sex couples 182; as form of personal relationship 180; as form of reciprocal self-​giving 65; as friendship 68, 72, 180–​2; as friendship among equals 202; good marriages 202; institution of 179, 182; legal status of 180–​1, 183–​4; as a life goal 182–​3; living together as equals 180, 184; as personal relationships 277; philosophical debates about 183; politics of 187–​8; problem of 179–​80; role of sexual desire within 68; social marginalization 179; women’s dependence on 182 “marriage-​free” state 180 martial relationships 68 Marx, Karl 327 master–​apprentice-​type relationships 127 McKeever, Natasha 168 Mencius 12 meta philosophôn logôn 31 metaphysics of friendship 208–​10 Metaphysics of Morals 58, 61 Mill, John Stuart 202, 264–​5, 315, 319n13 minimally structured social interactions 352 minimum wage laws 327 misogyny 375 moral agency 229 moral agents 265 moral community 64 moral conflicts 276 moral decision-​making 124 moral egalitarianism 288, 297 moral exploitation 330n4 moral friendships 60, 65–​6; constraints of 62; ideal version of 62; in Metaphysics of Morals 61; reciprocity in 65; relationship of 66; self-​disclosure in 63; as source of liberation 64 morality and virtues of friendship 6–​7

moral rationalism, supremacy of 154 moral relationships, conception of 59 moral scrutiny 224, 227 moral superiority/​inferiority 65 moral trespassing 374–​5, 381 Moshe, Ben 4 mother–​daughter relationship 76 Münchgstettner, Jasmin 377 mutual caring 349–​50 mutual liking 348–​9 mutual love, value of 214 mutual respect, in friendship 62 mutual self-​disclosure 352 mutual sharing 347–​8, 350–​2, 356 Nagel, Thomas 276–​7 nature of friendship: Aristotle’s account of 3; mutual caring and sharing 2; versus other interpersonal relationships 2–​3; as sexual and/​or erotic relationships 2 need, friendship of 59 Nehamas, Alexander 223, 285 Neu, Jerome 328 neuropathology 86 New Testament Gospels 117, 123 Nicomachean Ethics (NE) 35–​6, 41, 43, 45n2, 47, 53, 76, 132, 167, 173, 213, 223, 301–​2 Nicomachean version, of friendship 36 noble sophistry 25 non-​sexual friendships 348, 353 norms of friendship 241 Nozick, Robert 292 Nussbaum, Martha 138, 174 Oakley, Justin 269–​70 oneness of mind 51 ongoing learning (xue), Confucian ideal of 19 online friendship 360; Briggle’s defense of 361 online interaction, qualities of 360 open-​heartedness, idea of 64 “Oscar Got the Blame” story 85 Owens, David 322 Pahl, Ray 83 paiderasteia, norms of 25, 29 Pandemotic love 27 paradigmatic of friendship 361 “parental” hugs 108 parental responsibilities 140 parent–​child relationships 16, 139, 143, 148, 161, 208, 294, 322; acts of caregiving 140; Aristotle-​ inspired virtue ethics in 112; benefits of “heavy valuing” 146; breakdown of unconditionality 111; Brewer’s characterization of 108; child’s autonomy in 111; deep friendships 108; deficit model of 111; flourishing, parenting, and friendships 112–​13; idea of parents as potential friends of their children 113; intimacy in 162; Kupfer’s considerations about the impossibility of 110; Kupfer’s psycho-​structural

388

Index argument on 109–​10; Kupfer’s unequal-​autonomy argument on 110; moral developmental maturity to form friendships 109; norm of unilateral caregiving 140; and parenting as a social practice 139; parents as creators of 145; psycho-​structural and socio-​structural barriers 108–​12; significance of 162; social dependency relationship 110; society’s “heavy valuing” of 145; unique strengths of 111; see also guru–​disciple relationship parenting: power of parents over children 141; problematic features of 140–​2 parenting, as a social practice 139–​40; parent–​child relationship and 139, 142; versus parenting ideal 139 Parfit, Derek 344 partial relationship: authoritative 283; credential partiality 283; epistemic partiality see Epistemic Partiality in Friendship (EPF); friend-​directed 275–​7; friends as extensions of 277; identification and mere preference 277–​80; Kant’s objection to 285; nature of 275; personal relationships 275; risks and costs of 284–​6; Self-​Centered Account of 277; strong versus weak partiality 277–​80; vulnerabilities of 280–​4 Pascal 54 paternalism, in friendship 5 patriarchal clan lineages, networks of 14 Paul, apostle 122 Paulinus of Nola 52 Paul, L.A. 338 peng-​friends 18 perceived inequality in friendships, threat of 65 performative utterance 322 personal cultivation: and Confucian friendship 13, 16–​19; process of 18 personal friendship 133; mutual receptivity in 136; within social structure 12, 15 personal good 203–​4; concern test 203; crib test 203 personal identity, in friendship: concept of 208, 344; criteria of 337; distinctive features of 335–​7; duplication and 343–​5; interface of 338; losing memories, one’s self, and one’s friends 340–​3; metaphysical problem of 337–​8; Persistence Question, The 335, 337; proponents of 337; psychological criterion of 337–​8, 340–​1; transformative experience, transformative choice, and friendship 338–​40; when a person changes drastically 338–​45 personal relationship 85 personal well-​being 87 Phaedrus 30, 33 philia (amicitia) 52 philia, Greek concept of 201 phronesis 312 physician-​assisted dying (PAD) 93, 98–​101 physician–​patient relationships: Aristotle’s views on 96; clinical interaction 94; de facto moral obligations and responsibilities 95; Emanuel and Emanuel’s “deliberative model” of 96; friendship model of 4, 93–​6, 102n7; Hippocratic Oath and 97–​8; ideal of equality in 97; imbalance of power

in 95; impact on medical decision-​making 95; MacIntyre’s views on 96; mutuality and reciprocity in 95; overview of 93–​6; physician-​assisted dying (PAD) 93, 98–​101; physician-​qua-​friend model 93, 95, 96–​101; sustenance of 95 pillars of friendship 72 plain sex 355 Plato 2–​3, 201, 205; account in the Symposium 25, 33, 56n12; explorations of love 25; Lysis 36; Philebus 203; on physician–​patient relationship 93; views of friendship 25 Platonic Form of Beauty 29 Platonic friendship: erotic love 25; frottements des deux épidermes 24; genital relationship 24; ideal of 25; love and Socratic questioning 24–​5 Platonic love 24 Platonic philia 24 pleasure, friendship for 59, 206, 359 politeness and courtesy, practices of 255 political friendship, Aristotle classification of 132 Politics,The 132 polyamory 181 polyandry 181 polygamy 181 Projects View 291 Protagoras 33 Protasi, Sara 142 prôton philon (primary object of love) 30 psychological causes, of friendship 41 psychological connectedness 209 psychological continuity 209, 343 psychological hedonistic egoism 196 psychological reductionism 209 psychological reductionist 208 public benefactors 265 purposefulness, sense of 20 pursuit of friendship 50 puzzle of partiality 288, 291 Qin dynasty 12 qualities of friendship 68 quid pro quo contract 199 Quill, Timothy 99 Railton, Peter 266–​8 rationality of friendship 4–​5 rational scrutiny 224 Rawls, John 133 reasons of direction, in friendship 224–​5 reception of friendship 11 reciprocity in friendship 142–​3 redemptive friendship: cooperation between God and humans 115; disclosure of purpose 122–​4; divine–​human friendship 124; goal-​directedness of 122; God’s moral character and its central role in 119; intentional powers 122; as interpersonal reconciliation to God 115–​16; Jesus and inquiry about God 116–​22; Jewish and Christian writings on 115; loyal commitment to worthiness of

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Index worship 115; moral decision-​making 124; portrait of God 118; purpose-​oriented confrontation 123; self-​referential application for 117; self-​referential feature of 120; theological and historical beliefs 116; as volitional reconciliation to God 121 redistribution, strategy of 327 Reeve, C.D.C 2 relationships, types of 12 Relationships View 291–​2, 296 relative good 50 reproductive labor 133–​4 Republic: appetitive element 30; rational element 30 respect, motivational force of 169 retrograde amnesia 340–​2, 346 Rhetoric 167 Ricci, Matteo 13 righteous love, God’s moral character of 118 Ring of Gyges 204 Rochefoucauld, La 76 romantic liaisons 167 romantic love 72, 176, 220, 352, 356; concept of 29; desires for reciprocity and emotional intimacy 168; difference with friendship love 166, 169; goal-​ oriented approaches to 166–​8; as moral emotion 166, 168–​71; motivational structure for 167; motivational tendencies of 173; sexual arousal in 170; sexual intimacy in 170; sexual relationships in 173 romantic relationships 2, 267, 289, 347, 348, 353, 355, 371 Ross, W.D. 214 Rousseau, Jean-​Jacques 69 ruler–​subject relation 13 Sanders, E.P. 117 Sartre, Jean-​Paul 317 satisfaction of friendship 73 scala amoris 30 Scanlon, T.M. 321 Schaubroeck, Katrien 7 Scheffler, Samuel 240, 276–​7 Schoeman, Ferdinand 141 school brother 13 school-​readiness, promotion of 88 Schwarzenbach, Sybil 133 self-​conceit, reasons of 61 self-​cultivation: importance of 18; paradigm of 18 self-​deception 87 self-​determination, value of 159 self-​disclosure, notion of 65 self-​improvement, relationship of 17 self-​interest: concept of 18, 194; to form friendships 198; implicit contracts and commitments 198–​9; reasons to make and keep friends 196–​8; Stockholm syndrome 196 self-​knowledge 109, 127 self-​love: enlightened 70; reasons of 61 self-​protection 63 self-​respect: capacity for 65; sense of 70

self-​revelation, risk of 61 self-​sacrifice 380; cases of 226 self-​understanding, sources of 312 Selman, Robert 144 Seneca 50 sentiments 171 sex clubs 351 sexual attraction 72, 86, 349, 350 sexual desires 24, 355; fear of 74; within marriage 68, 72–​4; between married couple 73; for physical beauty 29–​30 sexual encounter, between friends 348 sexual intercourse 29 sexual intimacy, in romantic love 170 sexual relationships 173, 183, 347, 349 sexual violence 375 Shakespeare, William 26 Shang dynasty 14 shared life, notion of 87 sharing your friend’s ends 225–​7 Shpall, Sam 173 Sidgwick, Henry 266 Signal 358 sisterhood, notion of 376 slavery for the sake of virtue 27 Soble, Alan 172, 175 social capital 180 social dependency relationship 110 social gatherings 267 social hierarchy 69 social labor 133 social learning 139 socially constitutive accounts of autonomy (SCA) 380 socially situated account of love 2 social media: Aristotelian virtue ethics and 359–​60; developments of 365; emerging norms and quality friendship on 364–​5, 365–​7; group chat 359; human–​technology interactions 364; idea of 358; impact of emoji on textual communication 362; major debates in the philosophical literature on friendship 360–​4; misinformation spread through 359; moral hazards posed by friendship on 364; online friendship 360; potential to support friendship 364; risks of overgeneralizations 362; technological determinism 364; technology ethics 359; text-​based interactions 361; varieties of technologies 358–​9 social mobility 317 Social Network Theory 81 social norms 364 social practice, of friendship 142 social relationships 76 social reproduction, of families 133 society, friendship theory of 15 Socrates 24, 27, 30, 32, 203; on art of love 25; defense of love 32; inversion of paiderastic norms 25–​8; lessons in love and friendship 25; response to Agathon’s fancy speech 28; Symposium 25–​7 Solomon, Robert 173

390

Index sophisticated agents, Railton’s account of 267 special obligations, of friendship 288; agent-​relative character 289; of co-​citizenship 289; content of 297–​8; feature of 289; versus general obligations 290; general remarks 289–​90; rationale of 291–​7; reductionism versus non-​reductionism 290; status of 290–​1 speech act 322 Steiner, Leslie Morgan 176 Stocker, Michael 265, 267, 270 Stockholm syndrome 196 Stoic: accounts of “appropriation” (oikeiōsis /​ conciliatio) 49; cosmopolitanism 52; definition of goodness 49; notions of cosmic communities of the wise 55n9; on pursuit of friendship 50; views of friendship 48–​52; on virtue necessary for genuine friendship 52; on virtues of living beings toward self-​preservation 49; on wise person capability of genuine love 51 Stroud, Sarah 247 Stuart, James 81 suicide, physician-​assisted 98, 103n9 symmetrical relationship, in friendship 204 Symposium 25–​7, 30, 32–​3, 207 taste, friendship of 59–​60 teacher–​student relationship 349 tennis friends 351 Teresa, Mother 112 Thelma & Louise (movie) 372, 375, 378, 381 Thielicke, Helmut 121 Thomas, Laurence 167, 347 ti, importance of 13 TikTok 358 transformative experience, concept of 338 treatise on friendship 49 true friend 25 true love, image of 26 Twain, Mark 7 Twitter 358, 366 ultimate responsibility, idea of 185 “Unreal Friends” paper 360 unsocial sociability, notion of 61, 67n4 upward progression, ideal of 18 Uranian love 27 utilitarian ethics 265 utility friends 43 utility, friendships of 359

value-​based commitment 253 valued relationship 12, 330n2 value of friendship 4–​5, 44, 293; and generic goods 214–​17 value of living 43 Velleman, David 166–​8, 169, 172 “veneration” of veterans 317 video-​based content 358 Vindication of the Rights of Men, A (1790) 68, 69–​71; references to friendship 70 Vindication of the Rights of Woman, A (1792) 68, 71–​7 virtue-​friendship 206–​7, 215, 307, 360 vocational training 378 volitional self, impairment of 140 vulnerability, friendship-​based 326 well-​being, theory of 154 Western medical tradition 93–​4 Western philosophical thought on friendship: Aristotle’s influence of 3 WhatsApp 358 Whiting, Jennifer 211n8 Wichert, Rachel 138 Wilcox, William 268 Williams, Bernard 170–​1, 264, 277 Wolf, Susan 268 Wollstonecraft, Mary 68; attacks the social and political inequalities 69; “back to basics” agenda 70; Duty to Parents 75; on forms of friendship 70–​1; on friendly families 74–​6; on friendship and equality 69–​70; on friendship and religion 70; on friendship’s frequency 76–​7; on gender inequality 72; on marriage as friendship 72; on sexual desire 72–​4; Vindication of the Rights of Men, A (1790) 69–​71; Vindication of the Rights of Woman, A (1792) 71–​7 women’s craving for friendship 381 xenophobia 252 xiao, importance of 13 Xunzi 12 Yan Zhitui 12 YouTube 358 Zangwill, Nick 268 Zeng Xi 17 Zhongyong 12 Zhou dynasty 12

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