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 Notre Dame

Citations of this work

Friendship.Bennett W. Helm - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Irrational Love: Taking Romeo and Juliet Seriously.Natasha McKeever & Joe Saunders - 2022 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 30 (3):254-275.
What’s Bad about Friendship with Bad People?Cathy Mason - 2021 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 51 (7):523-534.
Insult and Injustice in Epistemic Partiality.Jack Warman - forthcoming - Journal of Value Inquiry:1-21.

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References found in this work

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 - 1998 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 103 (1):61-84.
The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories.Michael Stocker - 1997 - In Roger Crisp & Michael Slote (eds.), Virtue Ethics. Oxford University Press.

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