Conference Agenda
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Daily Overview |
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S55: Political Philosophy & Philosophy of Law 3 Location: 23.01 3B Session Chair: Lukas Naegeli | |
| Presentation 2 | |
3:45pm - 4:30pm
Friendship, Reciprocity, and Relational Sufficiency Central European University, Austria Many relational egalitarians argue that friendship embodies the ideal of equality and can illuminate what it means to relate as equals on a broader social scale (Viehoff 2014, 2019; Scheffler 2015; Kolodny 2014; Wilson 2019). However, Joseph Chan (2021) has provided a forceful critique of this view, arguing that friendship is not governed by the norms of relational equality. While persuasive, Chan’s critique may lead one to think that friendship has no relevance for our normative theorizing. In this paper, I argue that this is not so, and that the model of good personal friendship can inspire a different approach to social justice—relational sufficientarianism (Bengtson & Nielsen 2023; Lippert-Rasmussen 2021). This is because friendship is governed by the norm of reciprocity, which requires us to reciprocate the relational benefits (e.g., care, concern, support, or love) received from our friend. While the norm of reciprocity may sometimes (incidentally) lead to equality of such benefits within friendship, its primary purpose is to prevent our friendships from becoming lopsided. Good friends relate as “sufficients” by not allowing each other to fall below the minimal threshold of relational benefits enjoyed within the relationship. Good friendship, thus, offers us a different understanding of what relational justice requires. | |

