Recorded in Ithaca, NY by Cornell University., Sponsored by: Andrew D. White Professors-At-Large Program., Speaker: Professor of the History of Philosophy, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large., Lecture, October 3, 1988.

Friendship, Altruism, and Morality, originally published in 1980, gives an account of "altruistic emotions" and friendship that brings out their moral value. Blum argues that moral theories centered on rationality, universal principle, obligation, and impersonality cannot capture this moral importance. This was one of the first books in contemporary moral philosophy to emphasize the moral significance of emotions, to deal with friendship as a moral phenomenon, and to challenge the rationalism of standard interpretations of Kant, although Blum’s (...) "sentimentalism" owes more to Schopenhauer than to Hume. It was a forerunner to care ethics, and feminist ethics more generally; to virtue ethics; and to subsequent influential interpretations of Kant that attempted to room for altruistic emotion and friendship, and other forms of particularism and partialism. In addition, the work has been widely influential in religious studies, political theory, bioethics, and feminist ethics. (shrink)

L’amitié représente un problème central dans l’éthique d’Aristote, mais plusieurs questions appellent des clarifications. En particulier, celle de son unité. On soutient ici qu’Aristote ne considère pas les différentes espèces d’amitié (amitié de vertu, de plaisir, d’utilité) comme les espèces d’un genre. Par ailleurs, le rapport à une unité focale de signification ( focal meaning ) ne permet pas d’expliquer leurs relations. Néanmoins, les types secondaires d’amitié ne sont pas purement accidentels: Aristote présuppose visiblement que sa définition de l’amitié par (...) les bonnes intentions et actions mutuelles convient aux trois espèces, bien que d’une manière différente dans chaque cas. L’unité de l’amitié s’explique ainsi par une relation de similarité entre les différents types d’amitié. (shrink)

In this essay, Leonard Waks examines John Dewey's account of listening, drawing on Dewey's writings to establish a direct connection in his work between listening and democracy. Waks devotes the first part of the essay to explaining Dewey's distinction between one-way or straight-line listening and transactional listening-in-conversation, and to demonstrating the close connection between transactional listening and what Dewey called “cooperative friendship.” In the second part of the essay, Waks establishes the further link between Dewey's notions of cooperative (...) class='Hi'>friendship and democratic society with particular reference to machine-age technologies of mass communication. He maintains that while these technologies provide the means for extending communications throughout modern industrial nations, they simultaneously undermine the conditions fostering face-to-face listening-in-conversation. It remains an open question, Waks concludes, whether new educational arrangements incorporating interactive digital communication technologies will embody and promote transactional listening-in-conversation and revitalized democratic community. (shrink)

For Simone de Beauvoir, the opposition of subjects is not inescapable as it may be resolved by a relation of reciprocal recognition. I discuss formulations of reciprocity and the problem of the other as outlined in Beauvoir's 1927 diary and her memoir, La Force de l'âge, then turn to examine the account of lesbianism in Le Deuxième sexe.

Concepts of inter-personal relations are most elusive. They conceal assumptions, norms, beliefs and various associated notions, and become even more opaque and potent when they transcend the language in which they are used and come to reflect a culture or a tradition. Escaping the critical gaze of those “in” the tradition, these concepts and their theoretical baggage remain largely alien to those outside it. This gap fosters a sense of alienation, if not of exclusion, on the part of those living (...) outside what they often regard as a charmed circle. No doubt, friendship is unlikely to figure on the danger list of such concepts. Yet, the concept is not innocent. It reflects philosophical and social presuppositions accumulated in the course of its long history and bears the weight of the paradigm shifts it underwent. This essay identifies some of these presuppositions built into it, outlines major steps in its development, and offers reasons why this particulate inter-personal relation came to be conceived the way it is conceived in “the Western tradition”. (shrink)

In order to judge artworks, that is, to understand and to appreciate artworks, David Hume states in his essay Of the Standard of Taste that a good critic needs a particular kind of art education, one summarized in his five criteria for establishing a standard of taste: 1. "delicacy of imagination"; 2. "practice in a particular art and the frequent survey or contemplation of a particular species of beauty"; 3. "form comparisons between several species and degrees of excellence, and estimating (...) their proportion to each other"; 4. "free from all prejudice"; and 5. "good sense," which not only checks the influence of prejudice but also by means of keen reasoning allows the good critic to comprehend the artwork... (shrink)

Introduction: The Nature and Signif1cance of Friendship Neera Kapur Badhwar Philosophers have long recognized that friendship plays a central role in a ...

The starting point of this paper is a statement that Benjamin makes in a group of notes he writes for his project of a detective novel. Benjamin writes here that «criminal and detective could be so friends [so befreundet sein] as Sherlock Holmes and Watson». We’ll try to understand the meaning of this statement through the investigation of the detective topic in two moments of its fore and afterlife: its fore life in Benjamin’s meditation on the baroque and its after (...) life in Sherlock Holmes’s most recent apparition, in the BBC series Sherlock. One of the most interesting elements of this series is in fact the relationship – which is barely sketched in Conan Doyle’s stories – between Sherlock Holmes and his antagonist, the maths professor Jim Moriarty. We’ll see that in Benjamin’s notes for a detective novel the criminal is not a maths professor but a psychoanalyst. What is the difference, anyway, between professor Moriarty’s knowledge and Sherlock’s knowledge? In fact, we will find out that criminal and detective are closer to one other than what we may be induced to think – close but not coincident. (shrink)

Aristotle's discussion of friendship provides an inclusive analysis that, along with common everyday understanding, tries to take into account approaches as different as that of the sophists and Plato's meditation on this theme. The present essay examines the complexity of the phenomenon of friendship —especially the difficult intersection of friendship as loving intimacy between excellent individuals and friendship as a genuinely political bond. Above all, it attempts to cast light on the political relevance of perfect (...) class='Hi'>friendship. Thus understood, friendship is disclosed as the end or destination of politics and may even presage the self-overcoming of politics as mere legality. This opens the way for an understanding of political finality as no mere expediency and for thinking the political on the basis of pathos and singularity. (shrink)

Lawrence Anthony and Françoise Malby love animals-so when they hear that a herd of wild African elephants needs a new home, they welcome the herd to their wildlife sanctuary-Thula Thula-with open arms. What follows in this beautifully illustrated true story is an extraordinary cross-species friendship that will move readers and warm the hearts of animal lovers at every age.

Drawing extensively on letters sent to me by him over fifty years, this paper tries to present a vivid picture of Paul Hirst in different aspects of his life. The first section covers the huge amount of work he did at the universities of London and Cambridge—in teaching and writing philosophy of education, high-level administrative university responsibilities, and involvement in national education policy. This is followed by a glimpse into his passion for music, especially opera. Final sections show him as (...) an academic mentor and friend. (shrink)

이 논문은 최근 한국 사회의 ‘뜨거운 감자(hot potato)’가 된 차별금지법안 찬반을 통해 논의되는 동성애 관련 내용에 관해 경제사와 성서해석학, 그리고 종교 신학의 관점에서 분석하려는 것이다. 이것은 인간 공동체의 새로운 지평에 관한 논의이다. 곧 주체의 변화를 통해 재구성되는 주체에 관한 탐구이다. 따라서 먼저 경제사의 관점에서 동성애라는 표현의 시작이 어떠한 시대 경제 상황에서 시작되었는지를 밝히고, 또 성경이 말하는 동성애금지 구절이 본질적으로 무엇을 의미하는지를 성서해석학을 통해 밝히고자 한다. 특히 논문의 본론에서 동성애 관계를 영적 우정의 관계로 승화시킨 웨슬리 힐의 윤리적 입장을 살펴볼 것이다. 힐은 (...) 동성에 끌리는 현상의 심리적 뿌리에 집착하면서 그 근원을 찾으려고 하는 것보다, 자신이 속한 교회공동체에 무엇을 기여할 수 있는가에 초점을 맞추라고 권면한다. 곧, 동성애 성향이 ‘유혹’이건 ‘연약함’이건 ‘타락’이건, 그것을 어떻게 사랑의 소명을 발견하는 기회 혹은 상황으로 이해할 수 있는가를 물어야 한다는 것이다. 물론 힐에 대한 반론도 있다. 따라서 이 논문은 힐의 주장과 반론을 소개함으로, 한국 사회에 동성애 관련 논쟁에 있어서 윤리적으로 좀 더 풍성한 논의를 할 수 있는 마중물이 될 것이며 동시에 변화되는 인간 주체성에 관한 좀 더 깊은 논의의 장으로 이끌 것이다. (shrink)

We argue that companion friendship is not importantly marked by self-disclosure as understood in either of these two ways. One's close friends need not be markedly similar to oneself, as is claimed by the mirror account, nor is the role of private information in establishing and maintaining intimacy important in the way claimed by the secrets view. Our claim will be that the mirror and secrets views not only fail to identify features that are in part constitutive of close (...) or companion friendship, but that they miss the mark quite broadly and fail to capture anything significant and distinctive about the ways in which friendship has an impact on the self. The article will proceed as follows. In the first section we outline our account of the self in friendship. In the next two sections we examine the mirror and secrets views and develop our own view in counterpoint to these. In the final section we defend our own account by showing how it provides the governing conditions which do distinguish friendship from other kinds of relations between persons. (shrink)

Ethical conflicts arise when there is no unity between the team members and shared ethical priorities. This study aimed to identify the relationship between ethical value unity, team knowledge hiding, the relationship between the lack of shared ethical priorities and the team knowledge hiding. Workplace friendship was taken as a moderating variable to check its regulating role between the ethical conflicts and the team knowledge hiding. Data of this study were collected from the staff working in different colleges and (...) universities. There are a total of 480 responses collected through convenience sampling technique and analyzed under a five-point Likert scale. The partial least squares-structural equation modeling technique is used in this study. The key reason was that this approach has the fewest requirements for data normality and is a better tool for evaluating exploratory connections empirically. The output of the measurement model assessment confirms that all measurement scales are reliable. The result indicates that there was a significant and positive relationship between ethical value congruence and knowledge hiding. It was also established that there was a relationship between lack of shared ethical priorities and knowledge hiding. Workplace friendship moderated the relationship between ethical conflicts and team knowledge hiding. This study extends the literature on ethical conflict and knowledge hiding behavior. This study highlights that one of the main reasons for knowledge hiding behavior at the team level in the organization is which helps the business practicians for a design of an effective strategy to mitigate the knowledge hiding behavior in the organization. (shrink)

In this paper, I describe some of what I take to be the more interesting features of friendship, then explore the extent to which other virtues can be reconstructed as sharing those features. I use trustworthiness as my example throughout, but I think that other virtues such as generosity & gratitude, pride & respect, and the producer’s & consumer’s sense of humor can also be analyzed with this model. The aim of the paper is not to demonstrate that all (...) moral virtues are exactly like friendship in all important respects, but rather to articulate a fruitful model in which to explore the virtues. Section 2 explores the relational nature of friendship, drawing on Aristotle’s discussion of friendship in the Nicomachean Ethics. Section 3 catalogues four motivations for taking seriously the friendship model of virtue. Section 4 applies the friendship model in depth to the virtue of trustworthiness. (shrink)

I intend to argue that good friendship sometimes requires epistemic irresponsibility. To put it another way, it is not always possible to be both a good friend and a diligent believer.

Simon Keller and Sarah Stroud have both argued that the demands of being a good friend can conflict with the demands of standard epistemic norms. Intuitively, good friends will tend to seek favorable interpretations of their friends’ behaviors, interpretations that they would not apply to strangers; as such they seem prone to form unjustified beliefs. I argue that there is no such clash of norms. In particular, I argue that friendship does not require us to form beliefs about our (...) friends in the biased fashion suggested by Stroud and Keller. I further argue that while some slight bias in belief-formation might be permitted by friendship, any such bias would fall within the bounds of epistemic propriety. (shrink)

Love, Friendship, and the Self presents a reexamination of our common understanding of ourselves as persons in light of the phenomena of love and friendship. It argues that the individualism that is implicit in that understanding cannot be sustained if we are to understand the kind of distinctively personal intimacy that love and friendship essentially involve. For love is a matter of identifying with someone: sharing for his sake the concerns and values that make up his identity (...) as the person he is. Moreover, in friendship the friends share not only a concern for each other but also their activity, their lives, and even potentially their selves. By providing a detailed analysis of these notions, Bennett Helm argues for an understanding of persons as essentially social. (shrink)

This article takes issue with two prominent views in the current debate around epistemic partiality in friendship. Strong views of epistemic partiality hold that friendship may require biased beliefs in direct conflict with epistemic norms. Weak views hold that friendship may place normative expectations on belief formation but in a manner that does not violate these norms. It is argued that neither view succeeds in explaining the relationship between epistemic norms and friendship norms. Weak views inadvertently (...) endorse a form of motivated reasoning, failing to resolve the normative clash they seek to avoid. Strong views turn out to be incoherent once we consider the question of whether the requirement to form an epistemically partial belief is independent of whether the belief in question would be true. It is then argued that an epistemology of friendship should recognise the special role that understanding plays in friendship. On this view, friendship normatively requires understanding the truth about our friends. This entails that epistemic partiality, far from being a requirement, is in fact at odds with good friendship. (shrink)

Friendship and happiness are intimately connected. According to a recent account provided in Leibowitz (2018) friendship contributes to happiness because friends value each other and communicate this valuation to each other, which increases their self-worth, and this in turn increases their happiness. In this paper I argue that Leibowitz’s account of how friendship contributes to happiness is mistaken. I first present Leibowitz’s view, and then argue against it. I have two main worries with his account. One worry (...) is that increase in self-worth is not characteristic of friendship and hence it is problematic to use it for explaining the connection between friendship and happiness. The other worry is that the distinctive way in which increase in self-worth contributes to happiness seems to be in an important way different from the distinctive way in which friendship contributes to happiness. Finally, I point to what I take to be the right direction in explaining the connection between friendship and happiness. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn Freedom’s Right, Axel Honneth articulates the social freedom of friendship with reference to its institutionalised norms. These action norms, however, are not specific to friendship; they apply to modern intimacy per se. Such non-specificity cannot adequately account for the experience of social freedom in friendship. Addressing this issue, I evaluate friendship as a form of recognition and identify a generative recognition deficit functional to its relational autonomy. Then, taking Honneth’s institutional approach to friendship as (...) a point of departure, I ascertain an institutional deficit that both sustains friendship’s autonomy and constrains the generalisability of its social freedom by way of institutional connectivity to heterosexuality. I suggest that only a differentiating approach to friendship that fathoms its extraordinary position among interpersonal relationships can yield new insights. That done, friendship can in turn provide a prism through which to assess the conceptual approach... (shrink)