1. Friendship and character-shaping risks

In asking why friendship with bad people might be problematic, a good place to start seems to be our general conception of friendship. Friendships are characteristically close, intimate and trusting relationships, and this has led various recent philosophers to claim that friendship involves openness to having one’s character shaped by one’s friends. Dean Cocking and Jeanette Kennett, for example, write:

Alexander Nehamas makes a similar claim:

On these philosophers’ conceptions of friendship, friendship constitutively involves being “drawn” or “constructed” by one’s friends, or at least openness to this.Footnote ⁹ Their thought is that friends play an important role in the construction of the self: we give our friends’ interpretations of us a certain authority over us and use them not only as passive descriptions of who we already are but also as guides to direct the process of constructing the person we will become.

This idea could be used to ground one kind of worry that we might have about being friends with bad people.Footnote ¹⁰ If friends shape or construct each other, being friends with bad people involves bad people shaping our future selves (or at least, being in a position to do so). Allowing bad people to shape our future selves would seem unwise given their bad character, and one might worry that they would lead one morally astray. This worry is gestured at by Nehamas:

If this is correct, friendships with bad people risk one’s moral character. They entail risking one’s character being shaped in immoral ways in accordance with the friend’s mistaken attitudes and ideals.Footnote ¹¹

Such a view does highlight one concern that we might have about friendships with bad people. We may worry that their friends’ callousness, casual misogyny or cruelty will “rub off” on erstwhile good people, leaving them morally worse for the friendship. Nonetheless, this response seems inadequate to explain the intuition that being friends with bad people is itself morally problematic. Even if friendships involve significant shaping of one friend by the other, the morally good friend might reasonably hope that the influence will instead work the other way around: they might hope that the bad person’s character will be improved by the friendship, rather than that their own will deteriorate. Perhaps, then, the moral risk would instead be a noble thing to take on—bad people’s friends might risk moral degradation for a morally worthy cause (morally helping the bad person). Alternatively, the risk of moral degradation might be something that one could offset by also being friends with many good people: one might judge that by being friends with many virtuous people, their influence on one’s character would outweigh the pernicious influence of the vicious friend. The moral risk one accepts in such a friendship could thus be minimised by offsetting it with various other influences. The idea that being friends with bad people is bad because it involves risking one’s moral character thus seems unsatisfactory as a general account of the badness of being friends with bad people. Though this is undoubtedly a worry we sometimes have in such scenarios, the risk can be neutralised in various ways.

Importantly, this explanation of what’s bad about having bad friends also seems questionable on a deeper level; it depends on an implausibly strong interpretation of the extent to which our friends shape us. Friends, as such, need not be granted free rein to shape one another’s character. It is not plausible that friends, as such, are always open to having their moral character shaped by one another, since it seems to be at least possible to have significant moral disagreements with one’s friends. Friends—even longstanding friends—may plausibly even appreciate and value their differences from one another. The idea that merely because someone is one’s friend, one risks becoming similar to them with regard to goodness seems to be an overstatement, and plausibly a risk that one could guard against. Individuals do retain some control over their character despite their friends’ influence.

Still, there is an idea in this general region that seems right and that offers the beginning of an account of what is bad about friendships with bad people. A weaker interpretation of the kind of “shaping” mentioned above seems highly plausible. Cocking and Kennett, for example, state that one is characteristically receptive to being shaped by one’s friends, which seems to allow that there remains a significant agential role for individuals to play in their own character development within friendships. As I noted above, whilst friends do often influence who we become, they are not simply given free rein to shape our characters; rather, in becoming friends with someone, their beliefs and attitudes become salient to us as possibilities. The idea central to my account, then, is that our friends shape the options which we take seriously. I will now turn to examine this idea further, and I will argue that it explains what is bad about being friends with bad people.

2. Friendship and taking one another seriously

The striking feature of friendship on which I’ll focus, then, is that friends take one another seriously; friends take one another’s interests, projects, and beliefs as at least prima facie reasons to believe, care, and act in similar ways.Footnote ¹² If, for example, one’s friend has a deep love of opera, that gives one reason to attend a performance and to be at least open-minded about its value. One might attend the opera and decide, on balance, that it’s not to one’s taste. But the friend’s caring about it gives one reason to consider it as a potential option, and to need reasons to reject it: their caring gives one reason to see it as a choiceworthy option. It also gives one reason to remain open to the possibility of opera being valuable even if one has disliked it, and to acknowledge the respects in which one might have failed to appreciate it properly: one might, for example, feel put off by its melodramatic tone, but recognise that the friend’s practised ear is able to discern subtleties that one missed out on.Footnote ¹³ Similarly, if a friend has firm political convictions that matter a lot to them, their conviction itself gives one reason to take that political position seriously, and to need a reason to reject it. Failing to take a friend’s beliefs and attitudes seriously in this way would seemingly be a failure of friendship: a friend who simply dismissed one’s perspective, attitudes, and beliefs out of hand would seem to be a very poor friend, if a friend at all.Footnote ¹⁴

This conception of friendship seems highly intuitive, and it has been assumed by various philosophers writing on friendship. Alexis Elder, for example, connects the requirement that friends take one another seriously with the idea of “closeness.” Closeness, she claims, is partly constitutive of friendship. She understands it as follows:

That is, Elder understands closeness with one’s friends as a matter of taking their perspective and subjective interests (i.e., those things they conceive of as their interests) seriously. And, again, she regards this closeness, and thereby taking one’s friends seriously, as a constitutive part of friendship itself. Elder is not alone in this view; Marilyn Friedman, for example, suggests something very similar:

Again, Friedman here suggests that friendship involves being open to new possibilities through taking seriously those things that our friends care about. Whilst she allows that this does not entail that one will simply adopt the friend’s cares and interests, she nonetheless suggests that friendship involves the “inclination” or “invitation” to do so.Footnote ¹⁵

Taking one’s friends seriously, then, is a matter of taking their projects, beliefs, and attitudes as prima facie valuable or as prima facie choiceworthy. This is not to say that one needs to actually take on one’s friends’ beliefs or adopt their attitudes. But it does involve taking them to be prima facie valuable, needing a reason to reject them, and being open to the possibility that there might be something in them.

A background reason to think that taking another’s attitudes and perspective seriously is crucial to friendship is the idea that friendships are paradigmatically equal relationships. This is unlike love, which can be one-sided, or a relation like parenthood, where the parent’s relation to the child (namely, parenthood) can differ radically from the child’s relation to the parent. As Laurence Thomas notes, friendship demands a certain kind of equality; it requires that “neither party to the relationship is under the authority of the other” (Reference Thomas1987, 221).Footnote ¹⁶ Friendship seemingly requires viewing the other party as someone who has fundamentally equal standing to oneself, and thus as someone whose general perspective is prima facie trustworthy and worth taking seriously.

The equality requirement in friendship can be contrasted with other close relationships such as parent-child relationships. In those relationships, the parent can seemingly have a fully loving relationship with the child without assuming that the child’s perspective is trustworthy or worth taking seriously. A parent need not take seriously, for example, their child’s fondness for bright clashing colours or their love of highly processed, sugary foods; they do not need to work with a presumption that their child’s preferences are revealing of anything important. This does not seem to be specific to familial relations involving children either: one can plausibly have loving familial relationships with cousins, aunts, grandparents, and so on without taking their perspective seriously. But friendship seems very different, and taking one’s friends to be one’s equals (again, a constitutive part of friendship) plausibly does require taking one’s friends’ perspectives to be prima facie valuable. Dismissing one’s friend’s love of opera in the way one might be justified in dismissing one’s child’s love of clashing colour would seem to be a failure of friendship, and a friend who was dismissive of one’s general perspective would seem like no friend at all.Footnote ¹⁷

One might, of course, regard a friend as unequal to oneself in some limited domain such as gardening or cooking and either defer to them or reject their views there. Friendship does not require taking every belief or attitude of one’s friend seriously. But what is important for my argument is that one must view one’s friends as equals overall, or as people with equally valid overall perspectives. Friends’ overall perspectives and their deeply held or overarching beliefs and attitudes cannot be dismissed or rejected out of hand. Those features of one’s friends that are important aspects of their overall character and perspective should be taken seriously. Crucially, this importance can be objective or subjective: things can matter because they matter to the friend or because they matter objectively. It might be acceptable, for example, to dismiss a friend’s passing interest in opera, but not to dismiss their deep, sustained care about it and commitment to it. Similarly, gardening skills do not usually affect the way in which one views a friend overall. However, it is not plausible that moral character could be hived off in this way, particularly when the moral views and attitudes at issue are serious ones. Moral character seems an objectively important part of one’s overall perspective, and thus does not seem to be the kind of thing that friends could simply dismiss. More specifically, any trait sufficiently bad to count as a serious deficiency seems to thereby be an important part of a friend’s character, and therefore must be taken seriously by their friends.Footnote ¹⁸

It thus seems plausible that friendship requires that friends take one another seriously. This in turn entails that the friend’s moral attitudes, beliefs, and overall perspective are taken as prima facie valuable, choiceworthy, and as things which one needs a reason to reject. Like the previously considered claim, this claim that friendship requires taking one’s friends seriously does entail that our friends characteristically shape who we become morally. However, this weaker version does not entail that the shaping is direct or that the person who is influenced by the other need be passive in the process. On this conception of friendship, being friends with someone involves taking their beliefs, attitudes, and projects seriously, which might lead to their being adopted but need not do so. Indeed, one might take a friend seriously whilst ultimately rejecting a great many of their attitudes, beliefs, and projects, and thus without any actual shaping occurring at all.

Friendship, then, requires that one take one’s friends’ perspective, attitudes, and subjective concerns seriously. And this has very concerning implications regarding friendships with bad people. Relating to bad people as equals whose views and attitudes are to be taken seriously entails that the friend takes the bad person’s immoral views and attitudes seriously, at least initially. That is not to say that they ultimately accept them or are shaped by them (as per the argument outlined above). However, it does mean that the immoral views and attitudes are salient to them as options, that they consider them carefully, and so on. This is a problem because considering deeply immoral views and attitudes in this way is itself a moral failing.

Recall that at issue is whether it’s bad to be friends with people with serious moral deficiencies, not merely minor flaws. The kinds of beliefs, attitudes and projects that the mere friend “takes seriously,” then, would not be matters on which there is genuine and sincere moral disagreement, but beliefs, attitudes, and projects that are seriously morally repugnant, such as deeply racist attitudes. Taking such views, attitudes, and actions seriously seems itself to be morally bad; such views should not be among one’s moral options even if one ultimately rejects them. At no point should one regard those beliefs and attitudes as choiceworthy or prima facie valuable: they should never be among one’s moral options at all. Imagine, for example, someone who takes seriously some deeply misogynistic beliefs, such as the belief that “women are not deserving of respect.” They ponder this as a possibility and weigh the appeal of the claim before ultimately rejecting it. Despite their rejecting the belief, we would think the worse of them for it; such beliefs simply should not be among one’s options. The very willingness even to question women’s moral status seems like a kind of misogyny.

Elizabeth Anscombe memorably expresses a similar point about the significance of our moral beliefs:

Here, Anscombe suggests that there is something deeply morally awry with taking seriously certain morally objectionable views. Taking such deeply immoral views and attitudes seriously, she suggests, would itself be morally bad.

I am not claiming here that a desire to understand why people hold certain views is morally objectionable, or that enquiring into why certain attitudes are objectionable is a bad thing. Such enquiry can be helpful and sometimes morally desirable.Footnote ¹⁹ In one sense, then, it is permissible (and often good) to take immoral views seriously. For example, one might seriously ask why it is that procuring the judicial execution of the innocent is wrong, or why it is that so many people hold misogynistic attitudes. These seem like valuable lines of enquiry. However, these questions need not involve taking the claims seriously in the sense I intend here, since they need not involve taking “procuring the judicial execution of the innocent being good” as a real possibility or taking misogynistic attitudes to be potentially valuable. If, in exploring why misogyny is widespread, one took it as a real possibility that it was in fact a good attitude to hold, then I take it that doing so would be seriously morally defective. Fortunately, the former kind of enquiry can easily proceed without taking immoral views and attitudes seriously. Friendship, I have suggested, requires taking one’s friends’ perspectives seriously in the thick sense of taking them as a real possibility rather than merely wishing to understand their views and attitudes. It is this thicker “taking seriously” that is morally bad.

In being a friend to a bad person, then, the friend considers deeply objectionable views, attitudes, and projects as real possibilities, and this is a moral failing. But taking the immoral perspective seriously, as discussed above, is plausibly an important constitutive part of friendship; it would not be possible to have a (deep) friendship with a bad person without taking their objectionable views seriously, and thus without doing something morally bad. Both becoming friends with a bad person and sustaining a friendship with a bad person are thus pro tanto bad, since entering or sustaining a morally bad relationship is plausibly itself morally bad. Being friends with a bad person is thus bad because it inherently involves taking seriously views and attitudes that are deeply morally wrong.

3. Friendship and loyalty

I have argued that friendship with bad people is a moral failing because friendship involves taking seriously the beliefs, attitudes, and projects of the other person, and some beliefs, attitudes, and projects ought not to be taken seriously. But one might worry here that this does not speak to one common reason why people are friends with bad people, namely that the friendship predates the person’s becoming morally bad. One might therefore worry that the intuition that there is something bad about friendships with bad people is incompatible with the intuition that loyalty is an important aspect of friendship. Is a good person making a moral error if they remain friends with a person who becomes bad? Would dropping the friend when they morally decline not seem disloyal? Can these two intuitions be made compatible?Footnote ²¹

The first thing to note here is that not all kinds of loyalty seem equally valuable. Loyalty to one’s friends throughout their low points and times of struggle seems important and valuable, and someone who dropped their friends as soon as their company was not pleasurable would seem to be a very bad friend indeed. In fact, it is plausibly an intrinsic requirement of friendship that one stick with one’s friends in such circumstances. But loyalty to one’s friends when they become bad people who are cruel or deeply disrespectful to others seems somewhat different to this. Loyalty to those who are struggling and in need is plausibly very different to loyalty to those who are seriously immoral.Footnote ²² Whereas loyalty in the former context is clearly valuable, it is far from obvious that loyalty in the latter context is valuable. So, it may be that our intuitions regarding loyalty are more fine grained than has been acknowledged thus far, and that we, in fact, value loyalty only in some circumstances.

However, there are other responses available that can accommodate the intuition that loyalty in friendship is generally important. The first is that it is possible both that there would be something bad about their being friends with the bad person, and that there would be something bad about their disloyally dropping the bad person. That is, so long as one holds that tragic dilemmas are possible, there may be something bad (and something good) about both courses of action. Perhaps there is simply no good line of action here, or no action that will not involve sacrificing something of great moral importance. Moreover, my claim has not been that it is always wrong or even that it is overall a bad thing to be friends with bad people. Rather, my claim is simply that there is something bad about such friendships. This is consistent with there being other values that are realised by the friendship, perhaps even values that are more significant than the badness of taking bad views and attitudes seriously. The idea that there is something bad about such friendships does not therefore directly entail anything about whether such friendships ought to be ended.

In addition to this, ending a friendship need not entail disloyal abandonment of the friend, because friendship is not the only kind of loving relationship there is. As I have explained it, the badness of having bad friends arises specifically because the equal relationship of friendship involves taking one’s friends seriously. But friendship is not the only valuable relationship we can stand in to other people, and there are loving relationships of other kinds that do not constitutively require taking one another seriously, such as the familial and mentoring relationships mentioned above. As such, there are loving relationships which do not involve openness to the other’s pernicious beliefs and attitudes: one could continue caring about the other person, trying to help them, and so on. Not all loving or meaningful relationships involve taking the other person seriously, and thus not all loving relationships with bad people are morally problematic. Even ending a friendship, then, need not amount to disloyal abandonment, but might instead herald the beginning of a different kind of loving relationship.

4. A comparison with Isserow

I want to end by comparing the account I have offered to the only other recent treatment of this topic in Jessica Isserow (Reference Isserow2018). Isserow offers an alternative account of what is wrong with friendship with bad people that focuses on forming friendships with bad people. On her account, making friends with a bad person reflects poorly on the friend because it suggests a flaw in their moral priorities. She notes that friendship is a relationship we voluntarily enter into: it involves a degree of choice in that we have the capacity to reflect on our attraction to possible friends and evaluate whether or not we should be thus attracted.Footnote ²³ As such, she argues that the choice to enter a friendship requires evaluating the other person positively overall, and thus that befriending a bad person suggests that one regards serious moral vices as forgivable, or as overridden by other charms (3111).

Isserow’s account is consistent with my own; there might be various things that are bad about being friends with bad people.Footnote ²⁴ However, there are some independent reasons to doubt the account she offers. Isserow’s account depends on the idea that we choose our friendships. On one interpretation, it also depends specifically on the idea that this choice is based upon an overall positive evaluation of the other. On another, it depends merely on the idea that some bad qualities should be a bar to friendship.Footnote ²⁵ The former would seem implausible; friendship does not seem to require overall positive evaluation, and we don’t seem to choose friends on this basis. It seems plausible that we make friends with people in whom we see something appealing or attractive, but it is not obvious that we need regard our friends in an overall positive light. It seems perfectly possible for friendship to coexist with a high degree of disappointment in one’s friends’ tastes, beliefs, or choices, for example. Friends will often be aware of one another’s flaws, and it is not obvious that those flaws need be outweighed or excused by positive traits in order for the two individuals to be friends.

Moreover, on either interpretation my account seems better placed than Isserow’s to explain why it is that it is specifically friendships with bad people that seem troubling, rather than loving relationships in general. This is because Isserow’s account of what’s wrong with friendships with bad people turns on the idea that friendship involves choice. But having a loving relationship of any kind seems to involve a choice, at least to the same degree that friendships do.Footnote ²⁶ For example, we may have historically embedded and developed relationships with our parents, but the same is true of many friendships. Simply standing in a parent-child, cousinly, or mentor-mentee relationship as such may not always be a matter of choice, and feeling love for those others may also not be under our control. However, having a close or loving relationship of those kinds would be a matter of choice. It therefore seems as though Isserow’s account risks overgenerating cases of problematic relationships, entailing that there’s something wrong with many kinds of loving relationship with bad people (i.e., any that involve a significant degree of choice) that seem intuitively unproblematic. By contrast, the account I have offered ties the badness of friendship with bad people to a feature of friendship which is not common to all kinds of loving relationship. It is therefore better placed to explain the initial intuition—the intuition that there is something specifically bad about friendships with bad people—than Isserow’s.