Jonathon D. Jones
PHL 490
4-30-03
Friendship’s Role in Morality
In this paper, I will examine the
duties of friendship. I will look at
arguments in favor of the view that there are special moral duties involved in
friendship, but will ultimately reject this view. I will then explain what role I see
friendship having in morality even without these duties.
In Richard White’s article
“Friendship and Commitment”, White argues that friendship is an “inherently
moral activity” (81). He argues that
part of being a friend is having certain obligations, like being helpful or
emotionally available. These are
obligations that are above and beyond what we owe to a stranger. He also thinks that being a friend involves a
commitment. He says specifically, “when
I spend time with someone, accept their help, and make myself available to that
person, by sharing the more intimate aspects of myself, I am also creating an
expectation that is equivalent to a commitment, given the institution of
friendship and all that it commonly entails” (82). In being someone’s friend, aside from the
commitments and obligations, he argues, you are also morally endorsing her. That is, you are implicitly saying that there
is something valuable about them – that your friend is someone worth knowing.
Let us suppose that all of this is
actually the case – that friendship really does imply certain commitments,
obligations, and endorsements. Do any of
these matter morally? I’ll address
endorsements first, followed by obligations and commitments.
When someone is your friend, this
seems to imply that you think there is something valuable about that
person. But the things I find valuable
in her might have nothing to do with morality – for instance, she might be
intelligent and able to argue effectively.
She might make me laugh. She
might be fun to be with. None of these
are morally relevant, and yet a combination of them would probably be
sufficient for me to be friends with someone.
As such, it seems that being a friend with someone does not actually
imply a moral endorsement of that person.
An objector might reply that none of
her friends are immoral people, and that in fact she would never be friends
with anyone she thought was immoral.
This is undoubtedly true for a number of people. For instance, I probably wouldn’t be friends
with someone who just uses other people for their money, which is an immoral
act. But this seems to be more of a
preference than an inherent part of friendship.
The reason I’m not friends with people like that isn’t because I think
“he is immoral, so he doesn’t deserve to have friends”. Instead, it’s just that I don’t like people
like that. The only way that you could
convincingly say that friendship is a moral endorsement, rather than merely a
preference, would be if you could show that everyone has this predisposition to
dislike anyone they think is immoral. I
don’t think that this is the case. I
personally have friends who I am certain think I’m immoral, and yet I’m equally
as certain that they are my friends. I
also have friends who I feel are immoral, and yet, again, I am friends with
these people. Given all of this, I think
it’s clear that friendship doesn’t have to carry with it a moral endorsement.
Obligations and
commitments are, as far as I can tell, pretty much different names for the same
thing, and as such I’ll treat them together.
Let us assume that White is correct in asserting that friendship does
bring with it these commitments and obligations, that there are duties inherent
in the nature of being a friend.
Obviously, to neglect these duties would be to fail to be a good
friend. But would neglecting these
duties carry a moral condemnation as well?
An example, I think, will make things clear.
Suppose your friend has been jailed
and needs to be bailed out. You are, in
fact, his only friend who is available.
For simplicity, let us assume he is innocent, and you know it. If you are a good friend, it seems clear that
you should help him. It’s also clear
that you wouldn’t have this kind of obligation with a random stranger in
jail. As such, it seems to be a genuine
“friend only” obligation. Is this
obligation a moral one?
I think it is. If this situation was to occur, and I didn’t
help, I would be more than a bad friend – I would have failed morally. It would be perfectly justified, I think, for
my friend to call me a “jerk” (or something much more harsh), which is a clear
moral condemnation. And this is not an
isolated case, either – when friends need your help, and you can easily help
them, it seems clear that you are not a very good person if you would not
help. And it also seems clear that, even
if you should help any innocent person with their bail (which is doubtful),
this requirement is less strong than it is for helping your friends. If I needed money for college (believe me, I
do), and I wrote a letter to David Letterman (who doesn’t know me) asking him
to help me out, and he didn’t, I would seem silly. I would seem even sillier if I then sent a
barrage of hate mail to him condemning him as a jerk – it just doesn’t make
sense. If I were friends with him, it
would make more sense, especially if I was clearly suffering under the weight
of debt.
This being the case, I think it is
perfectly plausible that at least some of the obligations of friendship are
moral obligations. I don’t think they
are particularly strong moral obligations; I can’t think of an example where
failing to be a good friend would bring with it the title of “evil”. When measured up against stronger obligations
(not to kill people, for instance), they seem to be crushed. You’re not a bad person if you don’t help
your friend kill someone, or to deceive his wife so he can cheat on her. However,
whether or not these obligations are strong or not, they are still moral
obligations. The question that has to be
answered now is whether these obligations are actually a function of the
friendship, or are there because of something else. That is, it is not sufficient merely to show
that these obligations exist – they must be shown to exist because of
the friendship. Dan Passell, in his
article Friends, makes the argument that these duties are not, in fact,
because of the friendship, but rather that any actual duties are there because
of some other reason– that there are no duties unique to friendship (4).
Where would these duties come from,
then? The answer is that the duties
would come from precisely the same place they were when we found them in
friendship – in some of the parts that made up friendship, but that did not by
themselves actually create a friendship.
All of the obligations of friendship can be shown to apply to
relationships that are not friendships.
Here are a few examples. First, I’ll reuse the bail one. Suppose that the person in the example wasn’t
actually your friend. As we said before,
you probably shouldn’t be expected to bail him out of jail. But of course, this is only a probability –
I could easily find times when you would be expected to bail him out of jail,
even if he isn’t your friend. For
instance, suppose he has bailed you out a few times before. Even if you hated him, you still seem
obligated to bail him out now. Or
suppose that he recently paid for your college education – again, you would
seem ungrateful and a jerk if you then refused to help him now. So, clearly, in this example at least, the
uniqueness of the obligation to friendship is lost.
Other examples will show the same
problem. Even the most extreme cases
have it. For example, if any obligation
is unique to friendship, it seems like it would be emotional availability. A more specific example is this: someone
(we’ll call her Kim) is having some relationship problems. Her boyfriend just cheated on her, let’s
say. She wants to talk about it with me.
Clearly, if I am Kim’s friend, I
should listen. That is part of what
makes me her friend – my willingness to listen to her and help her, to comfort
her and so on. And also seemingly clearly,
if I don’t like her I shouldn’t have to listen – why should I care about
that? But, just like the jail example, I
think there are cases where this isn’t true.
Suppose I had, a week ago, a falling out with my parents and, in a state
of desperation, had talked to her about it.
I didn’t like her, but I talked to her about it anyway. She listened, and was very helpful. I still don’t like her. Wouldn’t I seem like a jerk to ignore her
now? Don’t I have an obligation to
listen to her? It seems, at least to me,
that I would. It seems like I should be
emotionally available for the person that paid for my college tuition as well -
again, I’d seem ungrateful if I was not.
In fact, I cannot think of an
example of an obligation that would be truly unique to friendship. At this point my objector might be saying
“ah, but who cares? Why does a duty to
friendship have to be unique to matter?”
The answer is this: we seem to think friendship, as a whole, matters
morally. But if I’m right in stating
that there are no obligations that are unique to friendship, it looks like the
obligations are actually from aspects of a relationship which are not
sufficient to create a friendship. To
put it another way, the only reason friendship matters morally is because it is
made up of aspects which matter morally.
These aspects are independent of friendship, in that for a relationship
to have one of these aspects it is not necessary for that relationship to be a
friendship. What I’m saying, then, is
that it is these relationship aspects which morally matter, and that there is
no reason to look at friendship except as shorthand for talking about the
combination of these aspects.
That being the case,
it seems that there are no moral obligations that uniquely belong to friendship
and justify our treating it as a special moral relationship. But I don’t think this is really very
surprising after all. If we examine
friendships as we actually have them, and think about the things we do for our
friends, we find something interesting - obligations tend not to enter into
it. If I bail my friend out of jail, it
isn’t because I feel obligated - it’s because I actually care about him and
would rather he not be in jail. If I
listen to my friend and comfort her, it isn’t because, if I don’t, I’ll be an
immoral person. I want to comfort her -
I want to be an emotional outlet for her.
My argument, then, is that the moral
specialness of friendship does not appear in the obligations, but rather in the
motivation. I’m not sure how you could
really care about someone and argue that you are not their friend. Note, here, that I think it is entirely
possible and frequently occurs that someone is friends with their mother,
brother, lover, and so on. Given any
normal definition of duty, it’s clear that pretty much anyone you really care
about is also your friend. And it is
this caring, this compassion and concern, that really is where friendship
intersects with morality.
How does concern match up with
morality? Commonsense morality[1]
would tell us that our motivation for an action has a lot to do with the
morality of the action. If I kill
someone because they are about to kill someone else, I’m generally seen as a
moral person. If I kill the exact same
person at the same time, but it was because I wanted the money they had in
their wallet, I am a morally corrupt person.
The examples are so obvious and numerous as to make their writing
unnecessary. The point is, then, that motivation
makes a difference. Let’s look at our
two examples again to see this difference.
With the prisoner in jail, when I
bail him out, there are some reasons that are better than others for doing
that. If I did it because I knew I would
personally benefit, it doesn’t sound like I was being all that moral. If I did it because I felt obligated, it
seems good, but not wonderful. But if I
did it because I felt compassion and concern for him, it seems like I was being
quite moral.
If I listen to Kim because I’m
hoping she will, in her emotional distress, sleep with me afterwards, I don’t
seem very wonderful. If I do it because
I feel like “I should”, because I feel obligated, again, good but not
great. If I do it because I am concerned
and care about her, then it seems like a very nice thing for me to do. A moral thing for me to do.
As these examples
show, friendship’s role in morality is not in obligations. When I do something for someone because I
care about them, I’m going above and beyond what morality requires of me. And I think this is precisely what doing
things for friends is all about - going beyond what is required and doing it simply
because you like the person and care about them. To do this is to act morally, and to act
beyond the requirements. To fulfill the
requirements is to be a morally good person.
To go beyond is to be morally excellent.
Friends are people who are morally excellent towards one another.
It could be that the objector that
has been plaguing me throughout this paper would also be troubled by this last
point. She might be thinking now “you
seem to think it is obvious that to do things out of caring is more noble than
to do it out of duty, but I fail to see that this is obvious at all. In fact, I fail to see that caring is really
very morally important at all”. As such,
I’ll expand upon this idea somewhat. I
will try to give some reason to think caring might actually be important.
For anyone who has
read any feminist ethics, talk about caring in ethics should seem
familiar. It is precisely this caring
and compassion, and a focus on interpersonal relationships, that feminists are
so keen on including in the moral realm.
As Marilyn Friedman points out, “The substantive concern for th[e
female] moral voice is care and responsibility, particularly as these arise in
the context of interpersonal relationships.
Moral judgments, for care reasoners, are tied to feelings of empathy and
compassion” (92). These ideas are from
Carol Gilligan’s work showing that, although women and men seem to reason
differently about ethics, it is not because women are less intellectually
mature, but rather that it is simply a different way of reasoning.
Friedman is
certainly not the only one to see the value of Gillian’s ideas. The whole realm of feminist ethics basically
stems from it. And the most consistent
idea running through feminist ethics is the idea of caring and compassion as
valuable and important to ethics. They
also see relationships with people as being particularly important, including
friendships. My point is, then, that if
feminist ethics has any real merit, than caring and concern must be considered
part of the moral realm.
I have argued that,
insofar as the duties of friendship are of moral concern, these duties do not
belong uniquely to friendship. I have
also shown that the important part of friendship to morality is in the
compassion and concern one friend has for another.
Works
Cited
Friedman, Marilyn. What
are Friends For? Cornell University
Press, 1933.
Passell, Dan. “Friends”.
The Journal of Value Inquiry.
Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1980. Issue 14: 1-6.
White, Richard. “Friendship and Commitment”. The Journal of Value Inquiry. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999. Issue 33: 79-88.