Why a Universal Ideal of Friendship Cannot Be Action-guiding

Abstract The universal normative ideal of friendship is the ideal friendship. It is commonly thought that this ideal is what our actual friendships should be like, and so, it is thought that we ought, as friends, to act in a way that will make our friendships more like this ideal. In this paper, I show that this view relies on the false assumption that we should always aim to manifest, in each one of our friendships, all of the special values associated with friendship. While I remain neutral about whether a universal ideal of friendship exists, I argue that, if it does, it cannot be action-guiding for actual friends. I then briefly give an idea of what such an action-guiding ideal might look like, arguing for a contractualist account according to which friends form a shared ideal of their friendship together.