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Books

The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Friendship

Elaine Coburn dips into different understandings of friendship.

What are the duties of friendship? Can romantic partners be friends? Is it useful to think about political life as animated by civic friendship? How should we understand friendships on social media? Is the love we feel for our friends explicable? Or is each friendship so unique that it is impossible to communicate our love of our friends to others? In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Friendship (2022), Diane Jeske brings together thirty-one short chapters that take up these questions, and more, emphasizing that friendship is worth investigating because it is “one of life’s greatest joys” (p.8). Among many other things, contributors consider the role of self-interest in friendships, whether or not inequalities make friendships impossible, and morally justifiable reasons for ending friendships.

Friendship by Sylvie Reed 2025

Understanding Friendship

We begin at the beginning of the philosophical discussion of friendship, learning about the meanings of male friendships in Plato’s Symposium, including eroticized male friendships. For Plato, friendship among men is supposed to beget “wisdom and the rest of virtue” (p.28) – in contrast with heterosexual relationships, which (merely) beget children. In the Platonic ideal, as CDC Reeves observes, the older male lover must help the younger beloved to become more virtuous, persuading him to philosophical truths.

Then we hear about Aristotle’s three kinds of friendship, rooted in utility (the friend is useful to us), pleasure (the friend brings us enjoyment), and, in the highest form, virtue (the friend is valued by us because they are of good character). In Aristotle’s view, delight in the good character of a friend, with no other motive, is the most satisfying and profound kind of friendship. Such a relationship mutually educates the friends to goodness, so that this kind of friendship, as Kristján Kristjánsson summarizes, is “knowledge-enhancing, virtue-enhancing, and life-enhancing” (p.107). Even if we had all other goods, Aristotle observes, we would still value friendship as salient to the good life: the encounter with ‘another self’ (p.47) makes living worthwhile.

With the Stoics, as Tamer Nawar explains in his chapter, friendship is an extension of self-fulfillment – something like enlightened self-interest (p.49). This fits with the Stoics’ emphasis on self-sufficiency. Nawar suggests that in some Stoical accounts, one type of friendship might be understood as wholly impersonal – a community of the wise and virtuous, whether they know each other or not. The Stoics also warned that friendship with those who are not wise could be dangerous, encouraging people to unwise behaviours.

For Augustine, friendship is not self-evidently about virtue, as Nawar explains. In friendship, human beings may misdirect their need for the love of God to the love of another human being – their friend – so substituting mortal love for the love of the immortal divine. In Augustine’s view, there is a deep sadness in such misplaced affection: “To love mortal things in the manner in which one should love an immortal God… is to be pierced by sorrows.” So Christians ought to love God and their neighbours, but be wary of misplacing the need for divine love onto merely mortal friendships.

In Immanuel Kant’s understanding, friendship, at its best, is characterized by open-heartedness, and includes a balance of love and respect. But such friendship is risky, since open-heartedness leads to vulnerability that may be exploited – a permanent temptation among human beings, whose goodness is all too frail. Still, Karen Stohr suggests in her chapter, if “In Kant’s eyes, friendships can be risky undertakings… the moral value of friendship makes the risks well worth taking” (p.58). For Kant, at its most realized, friendship is a model, not just for intimate, vulnerable personal relations, but for a universal moral community.

In Mary Wollstonecraft’s writings, as Ruth Abbey explains, unequal relationships lead to flattery and servility, this being a perverted form of friendship. True friendship demands rough equality. In marriage especially, equality between men and women is required if fleeting passion is to give way to “the calm wisdom of friendship” (p.74). In the desirable political life, too, equality is a condition for civic friendship. Moreover, merely human friendships among equals under God, whatever their earthly rewards, are inevitably inferior to the relationship with the Creator.

The questions raised by these and other ancient and Enlightenment philosophers haunt the remaining chapters, which ask about the relationship between friendship and virtue, friendship and knowledge, friendship and politics, friendship and vulnerability, friendship and marriage, and friendship and God.

Varieties of Friendship

There are some surprising views of friendship here, at least to my Western eyes. In his chapter, Andrew Lambert invites us to consider Confucian friendship. The idea of friendship based on mutual liking, so prevalent in Western cultures, is not absent from Confucian ideals. There are allusions to friends being those who “appreciate the same tune” (p.12) – that is, the coming together of individuals with deeply felt affinities. Friendship is linked to mentorship, too, where learning and improving the self is an important aspect of good or virtuous friendship. Less familiar, though, Confucians understand ‘friendship’ as describing the delight that emerges from a socially harmonious occasion: friendship is produced in and through shared events, like the creation of music at a concert. Here, ‘friendship’ describes the moment of joy, the unique bond, between musicians and audience members. In this sense, friendship is a broadly shared fellow-feeling. Considerable time and effort may be required, Lambert observes, to cultivate situations where these feelings are likely to arise in an open-ended invitation to shared encounter.

There are many other varieties of friendship. Mary Healy considers friendship among children, including the common practice of having an imaginary friend. Adults, too, may have fantasy friends, she notes; whether characters on television or merely anthropomorphizing an object, such as a car, by giving it a name and personality. This raises questions about whether such relationships are truly friendships, since, as Healy notes, imaginary and fantasy friendships are not reciprocal. Such ‘friends’ may fall short of most philosophical definitions of friendship, then. At the same time, Healy suggests, imaginary relationships may function, usefully, as models of the type of friendship we desire.

In his chapter, Kristján Kristjánsson asks whether or not parents and children can (or should) be friends. Following Aristotelian criteria, he argues that, yes, they can develop the best kind of friendship: “deep, close and intimate” (p.112). Like the most virtuous form of friendships, parents and children know each other intimately, and, ideally, learn good character from each other. And if parents and children may be friends, they may, in addition, share a love that is beyond and distinct from friendship. Kristjánsson further argues that friendships – both parental and otherwise – are enduring: it is only justifiable to break off such friendships in cases of irredeemable vice in the formerly virtuous friend.

Among other investigations into kinds of friendship, Natasha McKeever investigates ‘friends with benefits’. This euphemism, she observes, hides what’s at stake: an ongoing sexual relationship in which the partners agree that they are not romantically attached. Sex may enhance “trust and intimacy” (p.351), McKeever suggests – traits which characterize important friendships. At the same time, there are risks in such friendships, since in comparison with a romantic relationship, for instance, the duties of friends with benefits may be undefined, leading to uncertainty that may harm the friendship as a reciprocal relationship of trust.

Alexis Elder asks whether relationships on social media are friendships. Are “trusting and vulnerable relationships” (p.362) possible online? Can emojis, for instance, take the place of the in-person expressions of concern and attentiveness that characterize good friendships? Social media sites, Elder argues, may best be complementary to in-person friendships, rather than replacing them: The public sharing of information on Facebook may take place alongside more intimate, private conversations offline. Finally, the quality of online friendships may be less about their mediated character, and more about the virtuous norms that prevail, or fail to prevail, in online interactions.

The Dangers & Joys of Friendships

Moral hazards haunt friendship. Friendships rightly demand loyalty, as John Kleinig argues, but such loyalties may lead to wrong actions. A friend might conceal an affair, agreeing to keep quiet about it – but should a friend remain silent about more serious wrong-doing, like their friend’s implication in violence or murder? Loyalty is virtuous, but there are competing virtues. If a close friend is cruel, writes Kleinig, and friendly efforts to temper the cruelty do not work, then it is right to end the friendship so as not to encourage further cruelty. As Kant reminds us, the particular loyalties of friendship should not outweigh universal moral commitments.

In his chapter, George Tsai is concerned with the danger of exploitation in friendship. Intimate friendships – the most worthwhile kind of friendship – entail significant vulnerability. This may lead to exploitation, as he explains, “Our friends and loved ones may be better placed to exploit our affections, insecurities, fears, generosity, gullibility, vanity, loneliness, pride, and so on, in order to get us to do things that promote their own interests, aims, and goals, in ways that are objectionable and unfair” (p.326). The deeper the friendship, the greater the moral risk and the responsibility not to exploit the vulnerability and intimacy of the relationships. Egalitarian friendships, Tsai argues, ought to be self-consciously created, each friend striving for mutual respect for the interests of the other.

In friendship we may become so swept up that we risk our well-being. To sustain an unequal friendship we may give too much, as Troy Jollimore argues, risking “self-neglect, self-sacrifice and self-harm” (p.294). For the sake of friendship, other relationships may be wrongly neglected and duties to others perverted. “The line that separates what we must do (as a friend) from what we may not do (as a moral agent)”, Jollimore warns, “is neither obvious nor, perhaps, entirely stable” (p.285). The duties we owe to an intimate friend are in tension with duties we owe more impersonally to humanity as a whole.

Moral hazards are heightened precisely because friendships give us so much pleasure and joy. Indeed, as Elder writes, at their best: “Friendships become sites of both satisfaction and growth, of self-understanding and intimate support, safe harbors that sustain us during the storms of life. The satisfactions of friendship are both intrinsically fulfilling and instrumentally valuable. Our serious friendships are so deeply woven into our lives that they become constituents of our flourishing and reflective of who we are and wish to be” (p.318). Friendships shape our changing selves over our lifetimes in deeply meaningful ways, both for better and for worse. But at their moral best, as Aristotle said, friendships help us to become better together, learning to value and mutually sustain the good character of the other. At their worst, they lead us to neglect other essential virtues.

Friendship & the Good Life

The collection explores many other dimensions of friendship. Among other contributions, Jonathan Segelow, for instance, argues that there are rough analogies between friendship and citizenship since, for instance, both demand mutual recognition of the other. This gives rise to the concept of ‘civic friends’ – a political relationship wherein citizens show concern for each other.

For her part, Cheryl Abbate moves away from human relationships altogether, to consider whether or not we may befriend animals, and if they may befriend us. She suggests that our relationship with cats may have all the qualities of friendship, demonstrating “respect for difference, equality, mutuality, and choice” (p.148).

In her contribution, Katarina Perović asks if friendship can be sustained through significant personal transformation. She invokes the fantastical to make her argument vivid, borrowing from L.A. Paul to imagine two long-term friends, one deciding to become a vampire while the other prefers to remain human. Perović’s understated conclusion is that this personal transformation is likely to put ‘a great deal of strain’ on their friendship. We may live and grow together through friendship, or, like this vampire and her friend, we may transform and grow apart.

It is an accomplishment of this wide-ranging handbook that we learn about the complexities of friendship – its political and personal, ethical and morally hazardous, deeply fulfilling and potentially damaging, possibilities – without ever losing sight of friendship’s multifold joys. Perhaps in the end we’re all Aristotelians: ready to take the risks and run the dangers of friendship because, at its best, friendship makes possible the good life, and makes the good life worth living.

Elaine Coburn is Associate Professor of International Studies at York University in Canada.

• The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Friendship, edited by Diane Jeske, Routledge 2023, 390 pages, £40 pb.