On having bad persons as friends

Philosophical Studies 175 (12):3099-3116 (2018)
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Abstract

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.

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Jessica Isserow
University of Leeds

Citations of this work

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On Not Blaming and Victim Blaming.Joel Chow Ken Q. & Robert H. Wallace - 2020 - Teorema: International Journal of Philosophy 39 (3):95-128.
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References found in this work

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Moral saints.Susan Wolf - 1982 - Journal of Philosophy 79 (8):419-439.
The schizophrenia of modern ethical theories.Michael Stocker - 1976 - Journal of Philosophy 73 (14):453-466.
Epistemic partiality in friendship.Sarah Stroud - 2006 - Ethics 116 (3):498-524.
Culpability and Ignorance.Gideon Rosen - 2003 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 103 (1):61-84.

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