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Duties to Make Friends

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Abstract

Why, morally speaking, ought we do more for our family and friends than for strangers? In other words, what is the justification of special duties? According to partialists, the answer to this question cannot be reduced to impartial moral principles. According to impartialists, it can. This paper briefly argues in favour of impartialism, before drawing out an implication of the impartialist view: in addition to justifying some currently recognised special duties, impartialism also generates new special duties that are not yet widely recognised. Specifically, in certain situations, impartial principles generate duties to take actions and adopt attitudes in our personal lives that increase the chance of new or different special relationships being formed—new or different friendships, family-like relationships, relationships akin to co-nationality, and so on. In fact, even if one thinks partialism is the best justification of the duties we have once in special relationships, impartialist justifications for taking steps to form such relationships should have some sway. Moreover, a little reflection shows that these duties are not as demanding or counterintuitive as one might expect.

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Notes

  1. Jones (2012) gives a full account of this feature within relationships of love. I will not distinguish loving special relationships from other kinds here.

  2. or claims or authority or rights-fulfilment or preferences or wellbeing or…

  3. or preserve or protect or bring about or respect or fulfil or…

  4. Some (e.g. Wolf 1982) deny that partiality falls within morality’s domain. Unfortunately I lack space to fully discuss this view (though see the brief discussion in §4.3), and will pursue the topic from within the moral purview.

  5. Wellman (1997, 186–7) denies that one wrongs, for example, one’s sister by choosing not to attend her wedding. For Wellman, the choice merely reveals one to have a bad character. Even if Wellman is correct that one does not wrong one’s sister, the character-based view seems committed to a moral reason to be the kind of person that would attend her wedding (and so a moral reason to be the kind of person who is partial).

  6. This phrase derives from Scheffler (2010, 196).

  7. Kolodny (2003, 180–1) explicitly does not argue that partiality reasons are moral reasons. But we can imagine his view being extended to generate moral justifications. I am here considering such an extension.

  8. I am grateful to Seth Lazar and Nic Southwood regarding this response and rejoinder.

  9. There may be candidates for (2c), (2d), and so on. For example, Owens (2012) suggests that special duties are justified by serving our ‘normative interests.’ So we could imagine 2c: one has a duty to promote (or respect or fulfil or…) the normative interests of oneself and others and 3c: special duties are the best way to promote (or respect or fulfil or…) the normative interests of oneself and others. I take (2a) and (2b) to be the principles most commonly appealed to by impartialists.

  10. I remain agnostic on whether the best consequentialist practice can include wrong acts, or whether all acts included in the best consequentialist practice are right, by virtue of being part of that practice.

  11. I am here talking about a broadly Kantian approach, focusing just on universalisability. The nuances of Kant’s views on partiality are discussed in Cottingham 2010.

  12. This mirrors Korsgaard’s (1985) discussion of false promising and logical contradiction. Friendship is easier apply to this test than, for example, parent–child relationships. One might think that there can be a parent–child relationship, even if one party (but, I suspect, not the other as well) consistently fails to fulfil the duties entailed by the relationship.

  13. This universalisability test derives from Korsgaard’s (1985) preferred test.

  14. Scanlon sees friendship (and possibility other special relationships) as beyond the scope of this principle. I include it here for formulaic completeness.

  15. I thank Liz Ashford for pressing me on this.

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Acknowledgements

For helpful comments, I thank Bob Goodin, Nic Southwood, Liz Ashford, Jonathan Farrell, Luara Ferracioli, and audiences at the Australian National University and the 2012 meeting of the British Society for Ethical Theory.

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  1. School of Philosophy, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia

    Stephanie Collins

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Collins, S. Duties to Make Friends. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 16, 907–921 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-013-9422-7

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