ABSTRACT
There is wide agreement that friendship is marked by deep and particularized care that friends have for one another. Often this care is understood as practical concern for the friend’s good. Caring for her as the kind of thing she is – as an agent – seems to be not exhausted, however, by such a concern to benefit her, and so the reasons your friendship with her gives you will be more than just reasons to benefit her. Indeed, some of these other reasons of friendship can conflict with and sometimes take priority over your reasons to benefit her. This chapter aims to trace these complications by mapping out some of the ways in which you, as someone who cares for your friend as an agent, ought to respond to her reasons – those she has on account of her own projects, aims, and relationships – and incorporate them into your own practical reasoning.
