Iris Marion Young argues we cannot understand others' experiences by imagining ourselves in their place or in terms of symmetrical reciprocity (1997a). For Young, reciprocity expresses moral respect and asymmetry arises from people's greatly varying life histories and social positions. La Caze argues there are problems with Young's articulation of asymmetrical reciprocity in terms of wonder and the gift. By discussing friendship and political representation, she shows how taking self-respect into account complicates asymmetrical reciprocity.

The category of “former friend” is familiar, yet the nature of this relationship type remains underexplored. Aristotle, for example, poses but does not answer the question of what constitute appropriate relations between former friends. To elucidate post-friendship expectations, I promote an account of friendship according to which some of our most significant friendships participate in a type of intimacy characterized by having normative standing to interpret each other in a constitutive manner, which I call the “co-interpretation view” of friendship. Unchecked (...) powers of co-interpretation, however, invite and allow for violations of each friend’s personhood, so I draw on Kantian resources to guide the co-interpretation view and render it more plausible. These Kantian resources help to establish relevant expectations for co-interpretation between friends. This positions me to provide an account of appropriate expectations between former friends, which I analyze in three types of post-friendship circumstance: when the friendship has faded but the parties still share a general outlook; when the friendship has become damaging for the friends but not due to viciousness; and, when the friendship ruptures due to vicious behaviors. (shrink)

My goal in what follows is to argue that Astell endorses what I call the admonisher conception of a friend. For I will argue that, according to Astell, a sufficient condition for whether someone is our friend is that they admonish us in her technical sense. So anyone who admonishes us in this sense—be they Mother Teresa, the sinner sitting in confession, or our professional rival—is a friend to us. Put simply, an Astellian friend is an admonisher. The paper is (...) divided into four sections. Having motivated my reading in section one, section two develops and defends my thesis that admonishment is a sufficient condition for someone to be our Astellian friend. With Astell’s admonisher conception on the table, the balance of the paper shows how Astell might have persuaded us to accept her severe-sounding view by sketching the goods that she thinks flow from having an admonisher as a friend. Section three thus contends that, on Astell’s view, there is a class of deep truths about who we are that only our admonishing friends can reliably access; section four sketches how admonishment enhances our moral reasoning skills on Astell’s picture. Published on 2022-12-12 11:42:32. (shrink)

Intuitively, one who counts a morally bad person as a friend has gone wrong somewhere. But it is far from obvious where exactly they have gone astray. Perhaps in cultivating a friendship with a bad person, one extends to them certain goods that they do not deserve. Or perhaps the failure lies elsewhere; one may be an abettor to moral transgressions. Yet another option is to identify the mistake as a species of imprudence—one may take on great personal risk in (...) counting a bad person as a friend. In this paper, I argue that none of these intuitive explanations are entirely convincing; for many such proposals run contrary to widely accepted features of friendship. However, they do point us in the direction of a more satisfying explanation—one which concerns a person’s moral priorities. An individual who counts a morally bad person as a friend is, I propose, one who betrays a distinct kind of defect in her values. (shrink)

A long standing argument in philosophy purports that friendship plays a considerable role in our self-knowledge and perspectives on the world, much of which can be accredited to the enduring influence of the Aristotelian conceptualisation of friendship. More recent thinking on friendship terminations has given cause to rethink and clarify the basis of such suppositions. This has particular relevance within the realm of childhood where 'friendship termination' is considered a common experience. This article seeks to remind us that friendship can (...) also blind us to the faults of others. We may believe the friend to share the same set of values and commitments, but we can be wrong: we may see our friend through the proverbial rose-tinted glasses and fail to spot the ways in which the friend actively damages our well-being. I concentrate on four interlinked grounds for dissolving friendship within the realm of childhood so that we can better exami.. (shrink)

An important theme in the philosophy of education community in recent years has been the way in which philosophy can be brought to illuminate and evaluate research findings from the landscape of policy and practice. Undoubtedly, some of these practices can be based on spurious evidence, yet have mostly been left unchallenged in both philosophical and educational circles. One of the newer practices creeping into schools is that of ‘No best friend’ policies. In some schools, this is interpreted as suggesting (...) that children should not have just one best friend but a group of good friends. In others, it is interpreted as suggesting that children should forgo having best friends altogether and be friends with everyone. What is common to both is that friendship is seen as somehow ‘dangerous’. This article offers a preliminary examination of what has been referred to as this ‘dark side’ of friendship. Whilst philosophers such as Patricia White have previously alluded to its existence, there has been little philosophical scrutiny in any broad terms elsewhere. I examine three common arguments commonly used to justify ‘No best friends’ practices: that children can be friends with everyone; that young children are developmentally incapable of ‘real’ friendship hence best friendship should be avoided until later age; that only good people can be good friends. I indicate why this unreflective adoption of practices matters so much and why we should be prepared to challenge these cases. I identify practices that we have good evidence to support as making a positive difference in this area. (shrink)

This paper seeks to examine the plausibility of the concept of ‘Civic Friendship’ as a philosophical model for a conceptualisation of ‘belonging’. Such a concept, would hold enormous interest for educators in enabling the identification of particular virtues, attitudes and values that would need to be taught and nurtured to enable the civic relationship to be passed on from generation to generation. I consider both of the standard arguments for civic friendship: that it can be understood within the Aristotelian typology (...) as either a form of utility friendship or as a form of virtue friendship. I argue that civic friendship may not be the most appropriate model and that attempts to resolve the problems through looking on it as a political metaphor leave it unable to fulfil the function for which it was originally designed in Ancient Greece. Finally, I emphasize the need to carefully consider which particular metaphors we choose for civic relationships and how we subsequently use them. (shrink)

The loss of friendship can be a frequent occurrence for children as they explore their social worlds and navigate their way through the demands of particular relationships. Given that friendship is a relationship of special regard, and associated with a particular partiality to our friends, the ending of friendship and the subsequent interactions between former friends, can be difficult areas for schools to deal with. Whilst there has been considerable research on the formation and maintenance of friendship, a consideration of (...) what happens after friendship has had surprisingly limited attention. Much of our current understanding of issues on moral behaviour fails to fully address the positioning of former friends in our moral thinking particularly as regards matters arising from the priority of attachment. Recent empirical research seems to indicate that the memory of prior encounters has a far greater influence on future reciprocal exchanges than previously accepted. This paper considers suggests that this view of memory can be played out in two contrasting ways. First, a prudential view suggests that as our former friends were previously given access to our intimate secrets and confidences, self-interest would seem to indicate that we treat them well. Secondly, a residual duties view suggests that some obligations remain after the friendship has ended based on the history of the relationship. Finally, I then draw out some of the implications this may have for schools and the education of children. (shrink)

Friendship, as understood here, is a distinctively personal relationship that is grounded in a concern on the part of each friend for the welfare of the other, for the other's sake, and that involves some degree of intimacy. As such, friendship is undoubtedly central to our lives, in part because the special concern we have for our friends must have a place within a broader set of concerns, including moral concerns, and in part because our friends can help shape who (...) we are as persons. Given this centrality, important questions arise concerning the justification of friendship and, in this context, whether it is permissible to “trade up” when someone new comes along, as well as concerning the possibility of reconciling the demands of friendship with the demands of morality in cases in which the two seem to conflict. (shrink)

Aristotle considers friendship the greatest external good, one integral to the attainment of happiness. However, while Aristotle limits distrust to what he calls imperfect forms of friendship, subsequent philosophers have stressed our uncertainty regarding the benevolence, beneficence and loyalty we may expect of friends. They do so in part because overcoming this uncertainty requires the exercise of the virtues of trust and loyalty if our friendships are to survive intact. For example, insofar as Aquinas holds that we cannot scrutinize the (...) wills of others - thus inviting uncertainty regarding their present and future conduct - he argues that friendship requires the virtue of hope as a cause of friendly love, a hope which helps us to make virtuous presumptions about others' wills. Likewise, Kant argues that all de facto friendships are plagued by epistemic uncertainty regarding the wills of others. In consequence, he treats loyalty as an unenforceable ideal of virtue. Kierkegaard goes further, framing his treatment of non-agapic love - in which he argues that friendship cannot be ethically justified - with a discussion of deception in Works of Love. If Aristotle is correct in thinking that friendship `is a virtue, or involves virtue', and that `loving is the virtue of friends', then addressing the epistemological, conceptual, and normative concerns these philosophers have regarding trust and loyalty between friends is needed to understand a central goal of the ethical life: the perfection of love. After a historical survey of the thought of these four thinkers regarding the relationship between friendship and loyalty, this study suggests that contemporary problems about the origins, nature, and limits of loyalty can be fruitfully resolved using insights derived from the historical survey. (shrink)