## 1. The Nature of Friendship



Friendship essentially involves a distinctive kind of concern for your
friend, a concern which might reasonably be understood as a kind of
love. Nonetheless, it is important not to misconstrue the sort of love
friendship involves. Ancient Greek had three words that might
reasonably be translated as love: *agape*, *eros*, and
*philia*. Of these, *agape* through the Christian
tradition has come to mean a kind of love that does not respond to the
antecedent value of its object but instead is thought to create value
in its object, as with the sort of love God has for us persons as well
as, by extension, our love for God and our love for humankind in
general. By contrast, *eros* and *philia* have come to
be generally understood as responsive to the merits of their
objects--to the beloved's properties, such as his goodness
or beauty. The difference is that *eros* is a kind of
passionate desire for an object, typically sexual in nature, whereas
'*philia*' originally meant a kind of affectionate
regard or friendly feeling towards not just one's friends but
also possibly towards family members, business partners, and
one's country at large (Liddell et al., 1940; Cooper, 1977a).
Given this classification of kinds of love, *philia* seems to
be that which is most clearly relevant to friendship (though just what
*philia* amounts to needs to be clarified in more detail).



For this reason, love and friendship often get lumped together as a
single topic; nonetheless, there are significant differences between
them. As understood here, love is an *evaluative attitude*
directed at particular persons as such, an attitude which we might
take towards someone whether or not that love is reciprocated and
whether or not we have an established relationship with
 her.[1]
 Friendship, by contrast, is essentially a kind of
*relationship* grounded in a particular kind of special concern
each has for the other as the person she is; and whereas we must make
conceptual room for the idea of unrequited love, unrequited friendship
is senseless. Consequently, accounts of friendship tend to understand
it not merely as a case of reciprocal love of some form (together with
mutual acknowledgment of this love), but as essentially involving
significant interactions between the friends--as being in this
sense a certain kind of relationship.



Nonetheless, questions can be raised about precisely how to
distinguish romantic relationships, grounded in *eros*, from
relationships of friendship, grounded in *philia*, insofar as
each involves significant interactions between the involved parties
that stem from a kind of reciprocal love that is responsive to merit.
Clearly the two differ insofar as romantic love normally has a kind of
sexual involvement that friendship lacks; yet, as Thomas (1989) asks,
is that enough to explain the real differences between them? Badhwar
(2003, 65-66) seems to think so, claiming that the sexual
involvement enters into romantic love in part through a passion and
yearning for physical union, whereas friendship involves instead a
desire for a more psychological identification. Yet it is not clear
exactly how to understand this: precisely what kind of
"psychological identification" or intimacy is
characteristic of friendship? (For further discussion, see
 Section 1.2.)



In philosophical discussions of friendship, it is common to follow
Aristotle (*Nicomachean Ethics*, Book VIII) in distinguishing
three kinds of friendship: friendships of pleasure, of utility, and of
virtue. Although it is a bit unclear how to understand these
distinctions, the basic idea seems to be that pleasure, utility, and
virtue are the reasons we have in these various kinds of relationships
for loving our friend. That is, I may love my friend because of the
pleasure I get out of her, or because of the ways in which she is
useful to me, or because I find her to have a virtuous character.
Given the involvement of love in each case, all three kinds of
friendship seem to involve a concern for your friend for his sake and
not for your own.



There is an apparent tension here between the idea that friendship
essentially involves being concerned for your friend for his sake and
the idea of pleasure and utility friendships: how can you be concerned
for him for his sake if you do that only because of the pleasure or
utility you get out of it? If you benefit your friend because,
ultimately, of the benefits you receive, it would seem that you do not
properly love your friend for his sake, and so your relationship is
not fully one of friendship after all. So it looks like pleasure and
utility friendships are at best deficient modes of friendship; by
contrast, virtue friendships, because they are motivated by the
excellences of your friend's character, are genuine,
non-deficient friendships. For this reason, most contemporary
accounts, by focusing their attention on the non-deficient forms of
friendship, ignore pleasure and utility
 friendships.[2]



As mentioned in the first paragraph of this section, *philia*
seems to be the kind of concern for other persons that is most
relevant to friendship, and the word, '*philia*,'
sometimes gets translated as friendship; yet *philia* is in
some ways importantly different from what we ordinarily think of as
friendship.
 Thus,
 '*philia*' extends not just to friends but also to
family members, business associates, and one's country at large.
Contemporary accounts of friendship differ on whether family members,
in particular one's children before they become adults, can be
friends. Most philosophers think not, understanding friendship to be
essentially a relationship among equals; yet some philosophers (such
as Friedman 1989; Rorty 1986/1993; Badhwar 1987) explicitly intend
their accounts of friendship to include parent-child relationships,
perhaps through the influence of the historical notion of
*philia*. Nonetheless, there do seem to be significant
differences between, on the one hand, parental love and the
relationships it generates and, on the other hand, the love of
one's friends and the relationships it generates; the focus here
will be on friendship more narrowly construed.



In philosophical accounts of friendship, several themes recur
consistently, although various accounts differ in precisely how they
spell these out. These themes are: mutual caring (or love), intimacy,
and shared activity; these will be considered in turn.


### 1.1 Mutual Caring



A necessary condition of friendship, according to just about every
view (Telfer 1970-71; Annas 1988, 1977; Annis 1987; Badhwar
1987; Millgram 1987; Sherman 1987; Thomas 1987, 1989, 1993; Friedman
1993, 1989; Whiting 1991; Hoffman 1997; Cocking & Kennett 1998;
and White 1999a, 1999b, 2001) is that the friends each care about the
other, and do so for her sake; in effect, this is to say that the
friends must each love the other. Although many accounts of friendship
do not analyze such mutual caring any further, among those that do
there is considerable variability as to how we should understand the
kind of caring involved in friendship. Nonetheless, there is
widespread agreement that caring about someone for his sake involves
both sympathy and action on the friend's behalf. That is,
friends must be moved by what happens to their friends to feel the
appropriate emotions: joy in their friends' successes,
frustration and disappointment in their friends' failures (as
opposed to disappointment in the friends themselves), etc. Moreover,
in part as an expression of their caring for each other, friends must
normally be disposed to promote the other's good for her sake
and not out of any ulterior motive. (However, see Velleman 1999 for a
dissenting view.)



To care about something is generally to find it worthwhile or valuable
in some way; caring about one's friend is no exception. A
central difference among the various accounts of mutual caring is the
way in which these accounts understand the kind of evaluation implicit
therein. Most accounts understand that evaluation to be a matter of
appraisal: we care about our friends at least in part because of the
good qualities of their characters that we discover them to have
(Annas 1977; Sherman 1987; Whiting 1991); this is in line with the
understanding of love as *philia* or *eros* given in the
first paragraph of Section 1 above. For this reason, many authors
argue that to be friends with bad people reveals a potentially morally
condemnable evaluative defect (see, e.g., Isserow 2018). Other
accounts, however, understand caring as in part a matter of bestowing
value on your beloved: in caring about a friend, we thereby project a
kind of intrinsic value onto him; this is in line with the
understanding of love as *agape* given above.



Friedman (1989, 6) argues for bestowal, saying that if we were to base
our friendship on positive appraisals of our friend's
excellences, "to *that* extent our commitment to that
person is subordinate to our commitment to the relevant [evaluative]
standards and is not intrinsically a commitment to that person."
However, this is too quick, for to appeal to an appraisal of the good
qualities of your friend's character in order to justify your
friendship is not on its own to subordinate your friendship to that
appraisal. Rather, through the friendship, and through changes in your
friend over time, you may come to change your evaluative outlook,
thereby in effect subordinating your commitment to certain values to
your commitment to your friend. Of course, within friendship the
influence need not go only one direction: friends influence each
other's conceptions of value and how to live. Indeed, that
friends have a reciprocal effect on each other is a part of the
concern for equality many find essential to friendship, and it is
central to the discussion of intimacy in
 Section 1.2.



(For more on the notion of caring about another for her sake and the
variety of philosophical accounts of it, see the entry on
 love.)


### 1.2 Intimacy



The relationship of friendship differs from other interpersonal
relationships, even those characterized by mutual caring, such as
relationships among colleagues: friendships are, intuitively,
"deeper," more *intimate* relationships. The
question facing any philosophical account is how that characteristic
intimacy of friendship is to be understood.



On this point, there is considerable variation in the
literature--so much that it raises the question whether differing
accounts aim at elucidating the same object. For it seems as though
when the analysis of intimacy is relatively weak, the aim is to
elucidate what might be called "acquaintance friendships";
as the analysis of intimacy gets stronger, the aim seems to tend
towards closer friendships and even to a kind of ideal of maximally
close friendship. It might be asked whether one or another of these
types of friendship ought to take priority in the analysis, such that,
for example, cases of close friendship can be understood to be an
enhanced version of acquaintance friendship, or whether acquaintance
friendship should be understood as being deficient in various ways
relative to ideal friendship. Nonetheless, in what follows, views will
be presented roughly in order from weaker to stronger accounts of
intimacy.



To begin, Thomas (1987; 1989; 1993; 2013) claims that we should
understand what is here called the intimacy of friendship in terms of
mutual self-disclosure: I tell my friends things about myself that I
would not dream of telling others, and I expect them to make me privy
to intimate details of their lives. The point of such mutual
self-disclosure, Thomas argues, is to create the "bond of
trust" essential to friendship, for through such self-disclosure
we simultaneously make ourselves vulnerable to each other and
acknowledge the goodwill the other has for us. Such a bond of trust is
what institutes the kind of intimacy characteristic of friendship.
(Similar ideas can be found in Annis 1987.)



Cocking & Kennett (1998) caricature this as "the secrets
view," arguing:



> 
> It is not the sharing of private information nor even of very personal
> information, as such, that contributes to the bonds of trust and
> intimacy between companion friends. At best it is the sharing of what
> friends care about that is relevant here. [518]
> 



Their point is that the secrets view underestimates the kind of trust
at issue in friendship, conceiving of it largely as a matter of
discretion. Given the way friendship essentially involves each caring
about the other's good for the other's sake and so acting
on behalf of the other's good, entering into and sustaining a
*relationship* of friendship will normally involve considerable
trust in your friend's goodwill towards you generally, and not
just concerning your secrets. Moreover, friendship will normally
involve trust in your friend's judgment concerning what is in
your best interests, for when your friend sees you harming yourself,
she ought, other things being equal, to intervene, and through the
friendship you can come to rely on her to do so. (See also Alfano,
2016, who emphasizes not just trust but trustworthiness to make
similar points.)



Such enhanced trust can lead to "shared interests or enthusiasms
or views ... [or] a similar style of mind or way of thinking
which makes for a high degree of empathy" (Telfer 1970-71,
227). Telfer finds such shared interests central to the "sense
of a bond" friends have, an idea similar to the
"solidarity"--the sharing of values and a sense of
what's important--that White (2001) advocates as central to
friendship. For trusting my friend's assessments of my good in
this way seemingly involves trusting not only that she understands who
I am and *that* I find certain things valuable and important in
life but also and centrally that she understands the *value* of
these things that are so meaningful to me. That in turn seems to be
grounded in the empathy we have for each other--the shared sense
of what's important. So Telfer and White, in appealing to such
shared sense of value, are offering a somewhat richer sense of the
sort of intimacy essential to friendship than Thomas and Annis.



An important question to ask, however, is what precisely is meant by
the "sharing" of a sense of value. Once again there are
weaker and stronger versions. On the weak side, a sense of value is
shared in the sense that a coincidence of interests and values is a
necessary condition of developing and sustaining a friendship; when
that happy coincidence dissipates, so too does the friendship. It is
possible to read Annas's summary of Aristotle's view of
friendship this way (1988, 1):



> 
> A friend, then, is one who (1) wishes and does good (or apparently
> good) things to 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.
> 



(4) and (5) are the important claims for present purposes: making the
same choices as your friend, if done consistently, depends on having a
similar outlook on what reasons there are so to choose, and this point
is reinforced in (5) given Aristotle's understanding of pleasure
and pain as evaluative and so as revealing what is (apparently) good
and bad. The message might be that merely having coincidence in
evaluative outlook is enough to satisfy (4) and (5).



Of course, Aristotle (and Annas) would reject this reading: friends do
not merely have such similarities antecedent to their friendship as a
necessary condition of friendship. Rather, friends can influence and
shape each other's evaluative outlook, so that the sharing of a
sense of value is reinforced through the dynamics of their
relationship. One way to make sense of this is through the
Aristotelian idea that friends function as a kind of mirror of each
other: insofar as friendship rests on similarity of character, and
insofar as I can have only imperfect direct knowledge about my own
character, I can best come to know myself--both the strengths and
weaknesses of my character--by knowing a friend who reflects my
qualities of character. Minor differences between friends, as when my
friend on occasion makes a choice I would not have made, can lead me
to reflect on whether this difference reveals a flaw in my own
character that might need to be fixed, thereby reinforcing the
similarity of my and my friend's evaluative outlooks. On this
reading of the mirroring view, my friend plays an entirely passive
role: just by being himself, he enables me to come to understand my
own character better (cf.
 Badhwar 2003).[3]



Cocking & Kennett (1998) argue against such a mirroring view in
two ways. First, they claim that this view places too much emphasis on
similarity as motivating and sustaining the friendship. Friends can be
very different from each other, and although within a friendship there
is a tendency for the friends to become more and more alike, this
should be understood as an *effect* of friendship, not
something constitutive of it. Second, they argue that the appeal to
the friend's role as a mirror to explain the increasing
similarity involves assigning too much passivity to the friend. Our
friends, they argue, play a more active role in shaping us, and the
mirroring view fails to acknowledge this. (Cocking &
Kennett's views will be discussed further below. Lynch (2005)
provides further criticisms of the mirroring view, arguing that the
differences between friends can be central and important to their
friendship.)



In an interesting twist on standard accounts of the sense in which
(according to Aristotle, at least) a friend is a mirror, Millgram
(1987) claims that in mirroring my friend I am causally responsible
for my friend coming to have and sustain the virtues he has.
Consequently, I am in a sense my friend's
"procreator," and I therefore find myself actualized in my
friend. For this reason, Millgram claims, I come to love my friend in
the same way I love myself, and this explains (a) Aristotle's
otherwise puzzling claim that a friend is "another self,"
(b) why it is that friends are not fungible, given my role as
procreator only of this particular person, and (c) why friendships of
pleasure and utility, which do not involve such procreation, fail to
be genuine friendships. (For more on the problem of fungibility, see
 Section 2.1.)
 However, in offering this account, Millgram may seem to confound my
being *causally necessary* for my friend's virtues with
my being *responsible* for those virtues--to confound my
passive role as a mirror with that of a "procreator," a
seemingly active role. Millgram's understanding of mirroring
does not, therefore, escape Cocking & Kennett's criticism of
mirroring views as assigning too much passivity to the friend as
mirror.



Friedman (1989) offers another way to make sense of the influence my
friend has on my sense of value by appealing to the notion of
bestowal. According to Friedman, the intimacy of friendship takes the
form of a commitment friends have to each other as unique persons, a
commitment in which the



> 
> friend's successes become occasions for joy; her judgments may
> provoke reflection or even deference; her behavior may encourage
> emulation; and the causes which she champions may inspire devotion
> .... One's behavior toward the friend takes its
> appropriateness, at least in part, from *her* goals and
> aspirations, *her* needs, *her* character--all of
> which one feels *prima facie* invited to acknowledge as
> worthwhile just because they are hers. [4]
> 



As noted in the 3rd paragraph of
 Section 1.1,
 Friedman thinks my commitment to my friend cannot be grounded in
appraisals of her, and so my acknowledgment of the worth of her goals,
etc., is a matter of my bestowing value on these: her ends become
valuable to me, and so suitable for motivating my actions, "just
because they are hers." That is, such a commitment involves
taking my friend seriously, where this means something like finding
her values, interests, reasons, etc. provide me with *pro
tanto* reasons for me to value and think
 similarly.[4]
 In this way, the dynamics of the friendship relation involves friends
mutually influencing each other's sense of value, which thereby
comes to be shared in a way that underwrites significant intimacy.



In part, Friedman's point is that sharing an evaluative
perspective in the way that constitutes the intimacy of friendship
involves coming to adopt her values as parts of my own sense of value.
Whiting (1991) argues that such an approach fails properly to make
sense of the idea that I love my friend for *her* sake. For to
require that my friend's values be my own is to blur the
distinction between valuing these things for her sake and valuing them
for my own. Moreover, Whiting (1986) argues, to understand my concern
for her for her sake in terms of my concern for things for my sake
raises the question of how to understand this latter concern. However,
Whiting thinks the latter is at least as unclear as the former, as is
revealed when we think about the long-term and my connection and
responsibility to my "future selves." The solution, she
claims, is to understand the value of my ends (or yours) to be
independent of the fact that they are mine (or yours): these ends are
intrinsically valuable, and that's why I should care about them,
no matter whose ends they are. Consequently, the reason I have to care
for myself, including my future selves, for *my* sake is the
same as the reason I have to care about my friend for *her*
sake: because I recognize the intrinsic value of the (excellent)
character she or I have (Whiting 1991, 10; for a similar view,
see Keller 2000). Whiting therefore advocates what she calls an
"impersonal" conception of friendship: There are
potentially many people exhibiting (what I would consider to be)
excellences of character, and these are my *impersonal friends*
insofar as they are all "equally worthy of my concern";
what explains but does not justify my "differential and
apparently personal concern for only *some* ... [is]
largely a function of historical and psychological accident"
(1991, 23).



It should be clear that Whiting does not merely claim that friends
share values only in that these values happen to coincide; if that
were the case, her conception of friendship would be vulnerable to the
charge that the friends really are not concerned for each other but
merely for the intrinsically valuable properties that each
exemplifies. Rather, Whiting thinks that part of what makes my concern
for my friend be for her sake is my being committed to remind her of
what's really valuable in life and to foster within her a
commitment to these values so as to prevent her from going astray.
Such a commitment on my part is clearly a commitment to her, and a
relationship characterized by such a commitment on both sides is one
that consistently and non-accidentally reinforces the sharing of these
values.



Brink (1999) criticizes Whiting's account of friendship as too
impersonal because it fails to understand the relationship of
friendship itself to be intrinsically valuable. (For similar
criticisms, see Jeske 1997.) In part, the complaint is the same as
that which Friedman (1989) offered against any conception of
friendship that bases that friendship on appraisals of the
friend's properties (cf. the 3rd paragraph of
 Section 1.1
 above): such a conception of friendship subordinates our concern for
the friend to our concern for the values, thereby neglecting what
makes friendship a distinctively personal relationship. Given
Whiting's understanding of the sense in which friends share
values in terms of their appeal to the intrinsic and impersonal worth
of those values, it seems that she cannot make much of the rebuttal to
Friedman offered above: that I can subordinate my concern for certain
values to my concern for my friend, thereby changing my values in part
out of concern for my friend. Nonetheless, Brink's criticism
goes deeper:



> 
> Unless our account of love and friendship attaches intrinsic
> significance to the historical relationship between friends, it seems
> unable to justify concern for the friend *qua* friend. [1999,
> 270]
> 



It is only in terms of the significance of the historical
relationship, Brink argues, that we can make sense of the reasons for
friendship and for the concern and activity friendship demands as
being agent-relative (and so in this way personal) rather than
agent-neutral (or impersonal, as for
 Whiting).[5]



Cocking & Kennett (1998), in what might be a development of Rorty
(1986/1993), offer an account of close friendship in part in terms of
the friends playing a more active role in transforming each
other's evaluative outlook: in friendship, they claim, we are
"receptive" to having our friends "direct" and
"interpret" us and thereby change our interests. To be
*directed* by your friend is to allow her interests, values,
etc. to shape your own; thus, your friend may suggest that you go to
the opera together, and you may agree to go, even though you have no
antecedent interest in the opera. Through his interest, enthusiasm,
and suggestion ("Didn't you just love the concluding duet
of Act III?"), you may be moved directly by him to acquire an
interest in opera only because he's your friend. To be
*interpreted* by your friend is to allow your understanding of
yourself, in particular of your strengths and weaknesses, to be shaped
by your friend's interpretations of you. Thus, your friend may
admire your tenacity (a trait you did not realize you had), or be
amused by your excessive concern for fairness, and you may come as a
result to develop a new understanding of yourself, and potentially
change yourself, in direct response to his interpretation of you.
Hence, Cocking & Kennett claim, "the self my friend sees is,
at least in part, a product of the friendship" (505). (Nehamas
2010 offers a similar account of the importance of the interpretation
of one's friends in determining who one is, though Nehamas
emphasizes in a way that Cocking & Kennett do not that your
interpretation of your friend can reveal possible valuable ways to be
that you yourself "could never have even imagined
beforehand" (287).)



It is a bit unclear what your role is in being thus directed and
interpreted by your friend. Is it a matter of merely passively
accepting the direction and interpretation? This is suggested by
Cocking & Kennett's understanding of friendship in terms of
a *receptivity* to being drawn by your friend and by their
apparent understanding of this receptivity in dispositional terms. Yet
this would seem to be a matter of ceding your autonomy to your friend,
and that is surely not what they intend. Rather, it seems, we are at
least selective in the ways in which we allow our friends to direct
and interpret us, and we can resist other directions and
interpretations. However, this raises the question of why we allow any
such direction and interpretation. One answer would be because we
recognize the independent value of the interests of our friends, or
that we recognize the truth of their interpretations of us. But this
would not explain the role of friendship in such direction and
interpretation, for we might just as easily accept such direction and
interpretation from a mentor or possibly even a stranger. This
shortcoming might push us to understanding our receptivity to
direction and interpretation not in dispositional terms but rather in
normative terms: other things being equal, we *ought* to accept
direction and interpretation from our friends precisely because they
are our friends. And this might push us to a still stronger conception
of intimacy, of the sharing of values, in terms of which we can
understand why friendship grounds these norms.



Such a stronger conception of intimacy is provided in Sherman's
interpretation of Aristotle's account of friends as sharing a
life together (Sherman 1987; see also Moore & Frederick 2017,
which argues that friends must share a life together partly
through the mutual acknowledgment of their shared activity in the form
of a joint narrative that interprets these activities as meaningful).
According to Sherman's Aristotle, an important component of
friendship is that friends identify with each other in the sense that
they exhibit a "singleness of mind." This includes, first,
a kind of sympathy, whereby I feel on my friend's behalf the
same emotions he does. Unlike similar accounts, Sherman explicitly
includes pride and shame as emotions I sympathetically feel on behalf
of my friend--a significant addition because of the role pride
and shame have in constituting our sense of ourselves and even our
identities (Taylor 1985). In part for this reason, Sherman claims that
"through the sense of belonging and attachment" we attain
because of such sympathetic pride and shame, "we identify with
and share their [our friends'] good"
 (600).[6]



Second, and more important, Sherman's Aristotle understands the
singleness of mind that friends have in terms of shared processes of
deliberation. Thus, as she summarizes a passage in Aristotle
(1170b11-12):



> 
> character friends live together, not in the way animals do, by sharing
> the same pasture, but "by sharing in argument and
> thought." [598]
> 



The point is that the friends "share" a conception of
values not merely in that there is significant overlap between the
values of the one friend and those of the other, and not merely in
that this overlap is maintained through the influence that the friends
have on each other. Rather, the values are shared in the sense that
they are most fundamentally *their* values, at which they
jointly arrive by deliberating together.



> 
> [Friends have] the project of a shared conception of
> *eudaimonia* [i.e., of how best to live]. Through mutual
> decisions about specific practical matters, friends begin to express
> that shared commitment .... Any happiness or disappointment that
> follows from these actions belongs to both persons, for the decision
> to so act was joint and the responsibility is thus shared. [598]
> 



The intent of this account, in which what gets shared is, we might
say, an identity that the friends have in common, is not to be
descriptively accurate of particular friendships; it is rather to
provide a kind of ideal that actual friendships at best only
approximate. Such a strong notion of sharing is reminiscent of the
union view of (primarily erotic) love, according to which love
consists in the formation of some significant kind of union, a
"we" (see the entry on
 love,
 the section on
 love as union).
 Like the union view of love, this account of friendship raises
worries about autonomy. Thus, it seems as though Sherman's
Aristotle does away with any clear distinction between the interests
and even agency of the two friends, thereby undermining the kind of
independence and freedom of self-development that characterizes
autonomy. If autonomy is a part of the individual's good, then
Sherman's Aristotle might be forced to conclude that friendship
is to this extent bad; the conclusion might be, therefore, that we
ought to reject this strong conception of the intimacy of
friendship.



It is unclear from Sherman's interpretation of Aristotle whether
there are principled reasons to limit the extent to which we share our
identities with our friends; perhaps an appeal to something like
Friedman's federation model (1998) can help resolve these
difficulties. Friedman's idea is that we should understand
romantic love (but the idea could also be applied to friendship) not
in terms of the union of the two individuals, in which their
identities get subsumed by that union, but rather in terms of the
federation of the individuals--the creation of a third entity
that presupposes some degree of independence of the individuals that
make it up. Even so, much would need to be done to spell out this view
satisfactorily. (For more on Friedman's account, see the entry
on
 love,
 the section on
 love as union.)



In each of these accounts of the kind of intimacy and commitment that
are characteristic of friendship, we might ask about the conditions
under which friendship can properly be dissolved. Thus, insofar as
friendship involves some such commitment, we cannot just give up on
our friends for no reason at all; nor, it seems, should our commitment
be unconditional, binding on us come what may. Understanding more
clearly when it is proper to break off a friendship, or allow it to
lapse, may well shed light on the kind of commitment and intimacy that
is characteristic of friendship; nonetheless, this issue gets scant
attention in the literature.


### 1.3 Shared Activity



A final common thread in philosophical accounts of friendship is
shared activity. The background intuition is this: never to share
activity with someone and in this way to interact with him is not to
have the kind of relationship with him that could be called
friendship, even if you each care for the other for his sake. Rather,
friends engage in *joint* pursuits, in part motivated by the
friendship itself. These joint pursuits can include not only such
things as making something together, playing together, and talking
together, but also pursuits that essentially involve shared
experiences, such as going to the opera together. Yet for these
pursuits to be properly *shared* in the relevant sense of
"share," they cannot involve activities motivated simply
by self interest: by, for example, the thought that I'll help
you build your fence today if you later help me paint my house.
Rather, the activity must be pursued in part for the purpose of doing
it together with my friend, and this is the point of saying that the
shared activity must be motivated, at least in part, by the friendship
itself.



This raises the following questions: in what sense can such activity
be said to be "shared," and what is it about friendship
that makes shared activity so central to it? The common answer to this
second question (which helps pin down an answer to the first) is that
shared activity is important because friends normally have shared
interests as a part of the intimacy that is characteristic of
friendship as such, and the "shared" pursuit of such
shared interests is therefore an important part of friendship.
Consequently, the account of shared activity within a particular
theory ought to depend at least in part on that theory's
understanding of the kind of intimacy relevant to friendship. And this
generally seems to be the case: for example, Thomas (1987, 1989, 1993,
2013), who argues for a weak conception of intimacy in terms of mutual
self-disclosure, has little place for shared activity in his account
of friendship, whereas Sherman (1987), who argues for a strong
conception of intimacy in terms of shared values, deliberation, and
thought, provides within friendship a central place not just to
isolated shared activities but, more significantly, to a shared
life.



Nonetheless, within the literature on friendship the notion of shared
or joint activity is largely taken for granted: not much thought has
been given to articulating clearly the sense in which friends share
their activity. This is surprising and unfortunate, especially insofar
as the understanding of the sense in which such activities are
"shared" is closely related to the understanding of
intimacy that is so central to any account of friendship; indeed, a
clear account of the sort of shared activity characteristic of
friendship may in turn shed light on the sort of intimacy it involves.
This means in part that a particular theory of friendship might be
criticized in terms of the way in which its account of the intimacy of
friendship yields a poor account of the sense in which activity is
shared. For example, one might think that we must distinguish between
activity we engage in together in part out of my concern for someone I
love, and activity we *share* insofar as we engage in it at
least partly for the sake of sharing it; only the latter, it might be
argued, is the sort of shared activity constitutive of the
relationship of *friendship* as opposed to that constitutive
merely of my concern for him (see Nozick 1989). Consequently,
according to this line of thought, any account of the intimacy of
friendship that fails to understand the sharing of interests in such a
way as to make sense of this distinction ought to be rejected.



Helm (2008) develops an account of shared activity and shared valuing
at least partly with an eye to understanding friendship. He argues
that the sense in which friends share activity is not the sort of
shared intention and plural subjecthood discussed in literature on
shared intention within social philosophy (on which, see Tuomela 1995,
2007; Gilbert 1996, 2000, 2006; Searle 1990; and Bratman 1999), for
such sharing of intentions does not involve the requisite intimacy of
friendship. Rather, the intimacy of friendship should be understood
partly in terms of the friends forming a "plural agent": a
group of people who have joint cares--a joint evaluative
perspective--which he analyzes primarily in terms of a pattern of
interpersonally connected emotions, desires, judgments, and (shared)
actions. Friendships emerge, Helm claims, when the friends form a
plural agent that cares positively about their relationship, and the
variety of kinds of friendships there can be, including friendships of
pleasure, utility, and virtue, are to be understood in terms of the
particular way in which they jointly understand their relationship to
be something they care about--as tennis buddies or as life
partners, for example.


## 2. Value and Justification of Friendship



Friendship clearly plays an important role in our lives; to a large
extent, the various accounts of friendship aim at identifying and
clarifying that role. In this context, it is important to understand
not only why friendship can be valuable, but also what justifies
particular friendships.


### 2.1 Individual Value



One way to construe the question of the value of friendship is in
terms of the individual considering whether to be (or continue to
be) engaged in a friendship: why should I invest considerable time,
energy, and resources in a friend rather than in myself? What makes
friendship worthwhile for me, and so how ought I to evaluate whether
particular friendships I have are good friendships or not?



One sort of answer is that friendship is instrumentally good. Thus,
Telfer (1970-71) claims that friendship is "*life
enhancing*" in that it makes us "feel more
alive"--it enhances our activities by intensifying our
absorption in them and hence the pleasure we get out of them
(239-40). Moreover, she claims, friendship is pleasant in itself
as well as useful to the friends. Annis (1987) adds that it helps
promote self-esteem, which is good both instrumentally and for its own
sake.



Yet friendship is not merely instrumentally valuable, as is hinted at
by Annis' claim that "our lives would be significantly
less full given the universal demise of friendship" (1987, 351).
Cooper (1977b), interpreting Aristotle, provides two arguments for why
this might be so. First, Cooper's Aristotle claims, living well
requires that one know the goodness of one's own life; however,
given the perpetual possibility of self-deception, one is able
accurately to evaluate one's own life only through friendship,
in which one's friend acts as a kind of mirror of one's
self. Hence, a flourishing life is possible only through the epistemic
access friendship provides. Second, Cooper's Aristotle
claims that the sort of shared activity characteristic of friendship
is essential to one's being able to engage in the sort of
activities characteristic of living well "continuously"
and "with pleasure and interest" (310). Such activities
include moral and intellectual activities, activities in which it is
often difficult to sustain interest without being tempted to act
otherwise. Friendship, and the shared values and shared activities it
essentially involves, is needed to reinforce our intellectual and
practical understanding of such activities as worthwhile in spite of
their difficulty and the ever present possibility that our interest in
pursuing them will flag. Consequently, Cooper concludes, the shared
activity of friendship is partly constitutive of human flourishing.
Similarly, Biss (2019) argues along Kantian lines that friendship and
the sort of trust friendship involves, are a central and necessary
part of the pursuit of moral self-perfection.



So far these are attempts to understand the value of friendship to the
individual in terms of the way friendship contributes, instrumentally
or constitutively, to something else that is valuable to the
individual. Yet one might also think that friendship is valuable for
its own sake. Schoeman (1985), partly in response to the individualism
of other accounts of the value of friendship, claims that in
friendship the friends "become a unique community with a being
and value of its own" (280): the intimacy of friendship results
in "a way of being and acting in virtue of being united with
another" (281). Although this claim has intuitive appeal,
Schoeman does not clearly explain what the value of that "unique
community" is or why it should have that value. Indeed, we ought
to expect that fleshing out this claim would involve a substantive
proposal concerning the nature of that community and how it can have a
separate (federated?--cf. Friedman 1998) existence and value.
Once again, the literature on shared intention and plural subjecthood
is relevant here; see, for example, Gilbert 1989, 1996, 2000; Tuomela
1984, 1995; Searle 1990; and Bratman 1999.



A question closely related to this question of the value of friendship
is that of what justifies my being friends with this person rather
than with someone else or no one at all. To a certain extent, answers
to the question of the value of friendship might seem to provide
answers to the question of the justification of friendship. After all,
if the value of friendship in general lies in the way it contributes
(either instrumentally or constitutively) to a flourishing life for
me, then it might seem that I can justify particular friendships in
light of the extent to which they contribute to my flourishing.
Nonetheless, this seems unacceptable because it suggests--what is
surely false--that friends are
 fungible.
 (To be *fungible* is to be replaceable by a relevantly similar
object without any loss of value.) That is, if my friend has certain
properties (including, perhaps, relational properties) in virtue of
which I am justified in having her as my friend (because it is in
virtue of those properties that she contributes to my flourishing),
then on this view I would be equally justified in being friends with
anyone else having relevantly similar properties, and so I would have
no reason not to replace my current friend with someone else of this
sort. Indeed, it might even be that I ought to "trade up"
when someone other than my current friend exhibits the relevant
friendship-justifying properties to a greater degree than my friend
does. This is surely objectionable as an understanding of
friendship.



In solving this problem of fungibility, philosophers have typically
focused on features of the historical relationship of friendship (cf.
Brink 1999, quoted above). One approach might be found in
Sherman's 1987 union account of friendship discussed above (this
type of view might be suggested by the account of the value of
friendship in Schoeman 1985). If my friend and I form a kind of union
in virtue of our having a shared conception of how to live that is
forged and maintained through a particular history of interaction and
sharing of our lives, and if my sense of my values and identity
therefore depends on these being most fundamentally our values and
identity, then it is simply not possible to substitute another person
for my friend without loss. For this other person could not possibly
share the *relevant* properties of my friend, namely her
historical relationship with me. However, the price of this solution
to the problem of fungibility, as it arises both for friendship and
for love, is the worry about autonomy raised towards the end of
Section 1.2 above.



An alternative solution is to understand these historical, relational
properties of my friend to be more directly relevant to the
justification of our friendship. Thus, Whiting (1991) distinguishes
the reasons we have for initiating a friendship (which are, she
thinks, impersonal in a way that allows for fungibility) from the
reasons we have for sustaining a friendship; the latter, she suggests,
are to be found in the history of concern we have for each other.
However, it is unclear how the historical-relational properties can
provide any additional justification for friendship beyond that
provided by thinking about the value of friendship in general, which
does not solve the fungibility problem. For the mere fact that this is
my friend does not seem to *justify* my continued friendship:
when we imagine that my friend is going through a rough time so that
he loses those virtues justifying my initial friendship with him, why
shouldn't I just dump him and strike up a new friendship with
someone who has those virtues? It is not clear how the appeal to
historical properties of my friend or our friendship can provide an
answer.



In part the trouble here arises from tacit preconceptions concerning
the nature of justification. If we attempt to justify continued
friendship in terms of the friend's being this particular
person, with a particular historical relationship to me, then it seems
like we are appealing to merely idiosyncratic and subjective
properties, which might explain but cannot justify that friendship.
This seems to imply that justification in general requires the appeal
to the friend's being a *type* of person, having general,
objective properties that others might share; this leads to the
problem of fungibility. Solving the problem, it might therefore seem,
requires somehow overcoming this preconception concerning
justification--a task which no one has attempted in the
literature on friendship.



(For further discussion of this problem of fungibility as it arises in
the context of love, as well as discussion of a related problem
concerning whether the object (rather than the grounds) of love is a
particular person or a type of person, see Section 6 of the entry on
 love.)


### 2.2 Social Value



Another way to construe the question of the value of friendship is in
more social terms: what is the good to society of having its members
engaged in relationships of friendship? Telfer (1970-71, 238)
answers that friendship promotes the general good "by providing
a degree and kind of consideration for others' welfare which
cannot exist outside it." Blum (1980) concurs, arguing that
friendship is an important source of moral excellence precisely
because it essentially involves acting for the sake of your friend, a
kind of action that can have considerable moral worth. (For similar
claims, see Annis 1987.)



Cocking & Kennett (2000) argue against this view that friendly
acts *per se* are morally good, claiming that "I might be
a perfectly good friend. I might just not be a perfectly moral
one" (287). They support this conclusion, within their account
of friendship as involving being directed and interpreted by
one's friend, by claiming that "I am just as likely to be
directed by your interest in gambling at the casino as by your
interest in ballet" (286). However, Cocking & Kennett seem
to be insufficiently sensitive to the idea, which they accept (cf.
284), that friends care about promoting each other's well-being.
For if I am concerned with your well-being and find you to be about to
embark on an immoral course of action, I ought not, contrary to what
Cocking & Kennett suggest, blindly allow you to draw me into
joining you; rather, I ought to try to stop you or at least get you to
question whether you are doing the right thing--as a matter of my
directing and interpreting you. In this context, Koltonski (2016)
argues that one ought to ensure that one's friend is properly
engaging in moral deliberation, but then defer to one's
friend's judgment about what to do, even when one disagrees with
the moral conclusion, for such deference is a matter of properly
respecting the friend's moral agency.



These answers to the social value of friendship seem to apply equally
well to love: insofar as love essentially involves both a concern for
your beloved for his sake and, consequently, action on his behalf for
his sake, love will exhibit the same social value. Friedman (1989),
however, argues that friendship itself is socially valuable in a way
that love is not. Understanding the intimacy of friendship in terms of
the sharing of values, Friedman notes that friendship can involve the
mutual support of, in particular, unconventional values, which can be
an important stimulus to moral progress within a community. For
"our commitments to particular persons are, in practice,
necessary *counterbalances* to our commitments to abstract
moral guidelines, and may, at times, take precedence over them"
(6). Consequently, the institution of friendship is valuable not just
to the individuals but also to the community as a whole. On the
other hand, however, we might worry that friendship can have negative
consequences for society as a whole. As Thomas (1999) and Lintott
(2015) argue, we tend to privilege in our loves and friendships
"people like us", which can give rise to biases in favor
of certain social identities like race, class, and sexual orientation
that can perpetuate inequalities among these groups, reinforce
epistemic injustices, and limit our moral development.


## 3. Friendship and Moral Theory



A growing body of research since the mid-1970s questions the
relationship between the phenomenon of friendship and particular moral
theories. Thus, many (Stocker 1976, 1981; Blum 1980, 1993; Wilcox
1987; Friedman 1989, 1993; Badhwar 1991; Cocking & Oakley 1995)
have criticized consequentialist and deontological moral theories on
the grounds that they are somehow incompatible with friendship and the
kind of reasons and motives that friendship provides. Often, the
appeal to friendship is intended to bypass traditional disputes among
major types of moral theories (consequentialism, deontology, and
virtue ethics), and so the "friendship critique" may seem
especially important and
 interesting.[7]



At the root of these questions concerning the relationship between
friendship and morality is the idea that friendship involves
*special duties*: duties for specific people that arise out of
the relationship of friendship. Thus, it seems that we have
obligations to aid and support our friends that go well beyond those
we have to help strangers because they are our friends, much like we
parents have special duties to aid and support our children because
they are our children. Indeed, Annis (1987) suggests, such duties
"are constitutive of the relationship" of friendship (352;
but see Bernstein (2007) for an argument that friendship does not
involve any requirement of partiality). Given this, the question
arises as to what the relationship is between such special duties of
friendship and other duties, in particular moral duties: can our
obligations to our friends sometimes trump our moral duties, or must
we always subordinate our personal relationships to morality in order
to be properly impartial (as, it might be thought, morality
demands)?



One concern in this neighborhood, articulated by Stocker (1976), is
that the phenomenon of friendship reveals that consequentialist and
deontological moral theories, by offering accounts of what it is right
to do irrespective of the motives we have, promote a kind of
"*moral schizophrenia*": a split between our moral
reasons on the one hand and our motives on the other. Such moral
schizophrenia, Stocker argues, prevents us in general from harmonizing
our moral reasons and our motives, and it does so in a way that
destroys the very possibility of our having and sustaining friendships
with others. Given the manifest value of friendship in our lives, this
is clearly a serious problem with these moral theories.



What is it about friendship that generates these problems? One concern
arises out of the *teleological conception of action*, implicit
in consequentialism, according to which actions are understood in
terms of their ends or purposes. The trouble is, Stocker (1981)
argues, the characteristic actions of friendship cannot be understood
in this way. To be a friend is at least sometimes to be motivated to
act out of a concern for your friend as this individual (cf.
 Section 1.1).
 Although actions done *out of* friendship may have ends, what
characterizes these as "friendly acts," as we might call
them, is not that they are done for any particular purpose:



> 
> If acting out of friendship is composed of purposes, dispositions to
> have purposes, and the like, where these are purposes properly
> so-called, and thus not essentially described by the phrase 'out
> of friendship', there seems ... no guarantee that the
> person cares about and likes, has friendship for, the
> 'friend'. [Stocker 1981, 756-57]
> 



That is, actions done out of friendship are essentially actions
motivated by a special sort of concern--a concern for this
particular person--which is in part a matter of having settled
habits of response to the friend. This, Stocker concludes, is a kind
of motivation for action that a teleological conception of action
cannot countenance, resulting in moral schizophrenia. (Jeske (2008)
argues for a somewhat different conclusion: that in order to heal this
apparent split between impartial moral obligations and the partial
obligations of friendship, we must abandon the distinction between
moral and nonmoral obligations.)



Stocker (1976) raises another, more general concern for
consequentialism and deontology arising out of a conception of
friendship. Thus, although *act consequentialists*--those
who justify each particular act by appeal to the goodness of the
consequences of that act, impersonally conceived (see the entry on
 consequentialism)--could
 justify friendly acts, they "cannot embody their reason in
their motive" (1976, 70), for to be motivated teleologically by
the concern to maximize goodness is not to be motivated out of
friendship. Consequently, either act consequentialists must exhibit
moral schizophrenia, or, to avoid it, they must understand
consequentialist reasons for action to be our motives. However,
because such consequentialist reasons are impersonal, taking this
latter tack would be to leave out the kind of reasons and motives that
are central to friendship, thereby undermining the very institution of
friendship. (Cf. the discussion of impersonal justification of
friendship and the problem of fungibility in
 Section 2.1.)



The same is true, Stocker argues, of *rule consequentialism*
(the view that actions are right if they follow principles or rules
that tend to result in the most good overall, impersonally
conceived--see the entry on
 rule-consequentialism)
 and on *deontology* (the view that actions are right just in
case they are in accordance with certain rules or principles that are
binding on all moral agents). For even if rule consequentialism and
deontology can provide moral reasons for friendly actions in terms of
the rule that one must benefit one's friends, for example, such
reasons would be impersonal, giving no special consideration to our
particular friends at all. If we are to avoid moral schizophrenia and
embody this reason in our motives for action, we could not, then, act
out of friendship--out of a concern for our friends for their
sakes. This means that any rule consequentialist or deontologist that
avoids moral schizophrenia can act so as to benefit her friends, but
such actions would be merely *as if* friendly, not genuinely
friendly, and she could not therefore have and sustain genuine
friendships. The only alternative is to split her moral reasons and
her motives for friendly acts, thereby becoming schizophrenic. (For
some discussion about whether such moral schizophrenia really is as
bad as Stocker thinks, see Woodcock 2010. For concerns similar to
Stocker's about impartial moral theories and motivation for
action arising out of a consideration of personal relationships like
friendship, see Williams 1981.)



Blum (1980) (portions of which are reprinted with slight modifications
in Blum 1993) and Friedman (1993), pick up on this contrast between
the impartiality of consequentialism and deontology and the inherent
partiality of friendship, and argue more directly for a rejection of
such moral theories. Consequentialists and deontologists must think
that relationships like friendship essentially involve a kind of
special concern for the friend and that such relationships therefore
demand that one's actions exhibit a kind of partiality towards
the friend. Consequently, they argue, these impartialist moral
theories must understand friendship to be inherently biased and
therefore not to be inherently moral. Rather, such moral theories can
only claim that to care for another "in a fully morally
appropriate manner" requires caring for him "simply as a
human being, i.e., independent of any special connection or attachment
one has with him" (Blum 1993, 206). It is this claim that Blum
and Friedman deny: although such universalist concern surely has a
place in moral theory, the value--indeed the moral value (cf.
 Section 2.2)--of
 friendship cannot properly be appreciated except as involving a
concern for another for his sake and as the particular person he is.
Thus, they claim, insofar as consequentialism and deontology are
unable to acknowledge the moral value of friendship, they cannot be
adequate moral theories and ought to be rejected in favor of some
alternative.



In reply, Railton (1984) distinguishes between subjective and
objective consequentialism, arguing that this "friendship
critique" of Stocker and Blum (as well as Friedman) succeeds
only against subjective consequentialism. (See Mason (1998) for
further elaborations of this argument, and see Sadler (2006) for an
alternative response.) *Subjective consequentialism* is the
view that whenever we face a choice of actions, we should both morally
justify a particular course of action and be motivated to act
accordingly directly by the relevant consequentialist principle
(whether what that principle assesses are particular actions or rules
for action). That is, in acting as one ought, one's subjective
motivations ought to come from those very moral reasons: because this
action promotes the most good (or is in accordance with the rule that
tends to promote the most good). Clearly, Stocker, Blum, and Friedman
are right to think that subjective consequentialism cannot properly
accommodate the motives of friendship.



By contrast, Railton argues, *objective consequentialism*
denies that there is such a tight connection between the objective
justification of a state of affairs in terms of its consequences and
the agent's motives in acting: the moral justification of a
particular action is one thing (and to be undertaken in
consequentialist terms), but the motives for that action may be
entirely separate. This means that the objective consequentialist can
properly acknowledge that sometimes the best states of affairs result
not just from undertaking certain behaviors, but from undertaking them
with certain motives, including motives that are essentially personal.
In particular, Railton argues, the world would be a better place if
each of us had dispositions to act so as to benefit our friends out of
a concern for *their* good (and not the general good). So, on
consequentialist grounds each of us has moral reasons to inculcate
such a disposition to friendliness, and when the moment arrives that
disposition will be engaged, so that we are motivated to act out of a
concern for our friends rather than out of an impersonal, impartial
concern for the greater
 good.[8]
 Moreover, there is no split between our moral reasons for action and
our motives because such reasons may in some cases (such as that of a
friendly act) require that in acting we act out of the appropriate
sort of motive. So the friendship critique of Stocker, Blum, and
Friedman
 fails.[9]



Badhwar (1991) thinks even Railton's more sophisticated
consequentialism ultimately fails to accommodate the phenomenon of
friendship, and that the moral schizophrenia remains. For, she argues,
a sophisticated consequentialist must both value the friend for the
friend's sake (in order to be a friend at all) and value the
friend only so long as doing so is consistent with promoting the most
good overall (in order to be a consequentialist).



> 
> As a non-schizophrenic, un-self-deceived consequentialist friend,
> however, she must put the two thoughts together. And the two thoughts
> are logically incompatible. To be consistent she must think, "As
> a consequentialist friend, I place special value on you so long, but
> only so long, as valuing you thus promotes the overall good."
> ... Her motivational structure, in other words, is instrumental,
> and so logically incompatible with the logical structure required for
> end friendship. [493]
> 



Badhwar is here alluding to a case of Railton's in which,
through no fault of yours or your friend's, the right action
according to consequentialism is to sacrifice your friendship for the
greater good. In such a case, the sophisticated consequentialist must
in arriving at this conclusion "evaluate intrinsic goods [of
friendship] and their virtues by reference to a standard external to
them"--i.e., by reference to the overall good as this is
conceived from an impersonal point of view (496). However, Badhwar
argues, the value of friendship is something we can appreciate only
from a personal point of view, so that the moral rightness of friendly
actions must be assessed only by appeal to an essentially personal
relationship in which we act for the sake of our friends and not for
the sake of producing the most good in general and in indifference to
this particular personal relationship. Therefore, sophisticated
consequentialism, because of its impersonal nature, blinds us to the
value of particular friendships and the moral reasons they provide for
acting out of friendship, all of which can be properly appreciated
only from the personal point of view. In so doing, sophisticated
consequentialism undermines what is distinctive about friendship as
such. The trouble once again is a split between consequentialist
reasons and friendly motivations: a kind of moral schizophrenia.



At this point it might seem that the proper consequentialist reply to
this line of criticism is to refuse to accept the claim that a moral
justification of the value of friendship and friendly actions must be
personal: the good of friendship and the good that friendly actions
promote, a consequentialist should say, are things we must be able to
understand in impersonal terms or they would not enter into a properly
*moral* justification of the rightness of action. Because
sophisticated consequentialists agree that motivation out of
friendship must be personal, they must reject the idea that the
ultimate moral reasons for acting in these cases are your motives,
thereby rejecting the relatively weak motivational internalism that is
implicit in the friendship critique (for weak motivational
internalism, see the entry on
 moral cognitivism vs. non-cognitivism,
 and in particular the section on
 motivational internalism and the action-guiding character of moral judgements).
 Indeed, this seems to be Railton's strategy in articulating his
*objective* consequentialism: to be a good person is to act in
the morally right ways (justified by consequentialism) and so to have,
on balance, motivations that tend to produce right action, even though
in certain cases (including those of friendship) these motivations
need not--indeed cannot--have the consequentialist
justification in view. (For further elaborations of this strategy in
direct response to Badhwar 1991, see Conee 2001 and Card 2004; for a
defense of Railton in opposition to Card's elaboration of
sophisticated consequentialism, see Tedesco 2006.)



This means that the debate at issue in the friendship critique of
consequentialism needs to be carried on in part at the level of a
discussion of the nature of motivation and the connection between
moral reasons and motives. Indeed, such a discussion has implications
for how we should construe the sort of mutual caring that is central
to friendship. For the sophisticated consequentialist would presumably
try to spell out that mutual caring in terms of friendly dispositions
(motives divorced from consequentialist reasons), an attempt which
advocates of the friendship critique would say involves insufficient
attention to the particular person one cares about, insofar as the
caring would not be justified by who she is (motives informed by
personal reasons).



The discussion of friendship and moral theories has so far
concentrated on the nature of practical reason. A similar debate
focuses on the nature of value. Scanlon (1998) uses friendship to
argue against what he calls teleological conceptions of values
presupposed by consequentialism. The teleological view understands
states of affairs to have intrinsic value, and our recognition of such
value provides us with reasons to bring such states of affairs into
existence and to sustain and promote them. Scanlon argues that
friendship involves kinds of reasons--of loyalty, for
example--are not teleological in this way, and so the value of
friendship does not fit into the teleological conception and so cannot
be properly recognized by consequentialism. In responding to this
argument, Hurka (2006) argues that this argument *presupposes*
a conception of the value of friendship (as something we ought to
respect as well as to promote) that is at odds with the teleological
conception of value and so with teleological conceptions of
friendship. Consequently, the debate must shift to the more general
question about the nature of value and cannot be carried out simply by
attending to friendship.



These conclusions that we must turn to broader issues if we are to
settle the place friendship has in morality reveal that in one sense
the friendship critique has failed: it has not succeeded in making an
end run around traditional debates between consequentialists,
deontologists, and virtue theorists. Yet in a larger sense it has
succeeded: it has forced these moral theories to take personal
relationships seriously and consequently to refine and complicate
their accounts in the process.