ABSTRACT
Friendship is a relationship between two people involving certain types of interaction, loving attitudes, and knowledge of each other. It is often thought, following Aristotle, that close friends will have accurate and complete beliefs about each other’s characters and other important features. After all, it might be said, how can it be said that I love a person if I am ignorant of or have false beliefs about her character or central values? I argue, however, that no particular knowledge of the other is essential for love or for friendship; in fact, love and friendship can exist even in the light of false beliefs about core values or key character traits. But what knowledge is required for friendship is determined to a large extent by the nature of the particular individual and the nature of the friendship, so that empirical psychological facts are relevant to determining the knowledge essential to any particular friendship.
