Isserow, J orcid.org/0000-0001-5900-8363 (2018) On having bad persons as friends. Philosophical Studies, 175 (12). pp. 3099-3116. ISSN 0031-8116
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.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2017, Springer Science+Business Media B.V. This is an author produced version of a paper published in Philosophical Studies. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | Friendship; Partiality; Moral character; Moral complacency |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science (Leeds) > School of Philosophy (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 10 Sep 2018 10:31 |
Last Modified: | 13 Dec 2018 15:38 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer Verlag |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s11098-017-0996-0 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:135454 |