Friendship and the structure of trust

Friendship might seem like a bizarre virtue—or not a virtue at all. Unlike courage and generosity, friendship seems to be a dyadic relation between two people. To be a friend is to be disposed to think, feel, desire, deliberate, act, and react in characteristic ways towards a particular person, who is likewise disposed to think, feel, desire, deliberate, act, and react in those same characteristic ways towards you. If no one else is a friend, then it is conceptually impossible for you to be a friend. This chapter describes some of the more interesting features of friendship, then explores the extent to which other virtues, such as trustworthiness, can be reconstructed as sharing those features.