ABSTRACT
This chapter examines what Rawls says in A Theory of Justice about friendship as an interpersonal relationship. Section I contends that Rawls is thinking of friendship as well as the family as one of society’s smaller associations or social unions, even if he does not always state this. Section II observes that he numbers friendship among the human goods, and I advance friendship as the clearest of his examples of a complementary good. Section III looks at the role of friendship in TJ’s analyses of guilt and shame. Section IV uncovers the central role that friendship plays in the morality of association stage of moral development. Section V shows that a focus on friendship brings the more Aristotelian features of Rawls’s thinking to light. The Conclusion points to some of the ways in which this depiction of friendship dovetails with some of the other strands of Rawls scholarship. Although friendship is not synonymous with the common good, it is a common or shared good that also requires a shared understanding of its goodness.
