Marilyn Friedman

{Would that I had the energy to completely rewrite this review in light of I decided she's pretty much wrong. Alas.]
The only real thing to complain about this book is the horrible (and mildly) misleading title. Otherwise this is the best book that I have read on interpersonal relationships. The misleading-ness of the title is that two-thirds of the book are comprised of a general discussion of intimate relationships, and only a third of it is devoted exclusively to friendship as a moral relation.

What is so impressive about this book is how carefully Friedman threads the proverbial needle. Interpersonal relationships have been devalued by traditional moral theory because they demand impartiality. Friedman explores the significance of partial relationships (intimate ones) and their moral demands, and argues that partiality does not require a total rejection of abstract concerns with social justice.

She then turns her attention to the debate in ethics between care and justice. While she believes that care ethics significantly increases the value of interpersonal relationships, she is critical of many of its instantiations. Particularly care ethics' reliance of dyadic and typically unequal relationships, and their inability to account for our obligations to distant others. She argues that care ethics cannot operate as its own theory and advises and integrative approach.

Her most interesting claims about partiality and care come to bear in her discussion of friendship, which she praises as a quasi-voluntaristic relationship (we choose our friends, but once chosen, we have special obligations to them), that has the potential to morally improve the friends. While voluntarism is typically associated with liberal contractarianism (on this view friendship is less binding, and also less ontologically and morally constitutive), Friedman rejects this in favor of a "friendship voluntarism," which recognizes that the elected and intimate nature of the relationship carries with it concomitant and (often) unchosen duties. From the other extreme, Friedman is critical of communitarian approaches to morality because they cannot provide proper justification of their values.

The position she ends up occupying is brilliant. Friendship, while contributing to moral improvement, also contains within it the possibility for engaging in unconventional relations that can be put to the service of moral/political ends. This means that friendship is an important moral site/virtue that allows for resistance to oppression and domination. As someone suspicious of both neoliberalism and communitarianism, this book is a godsend.… (altro)