Wanting to be a best friend.

Friendships are one of the main contributors to a flourishing life. As such, it seems perfectly legitimate for people to want to be someone's friend. But is the same true of the desire to be someone's best friend? This question has not received any attention from philosophers, which is symptomatic of a wider neglect of the topic of best friendship. In this contribution, my aim is to fill this lacuna. I begin by identifying two objections to wanting to be a best friend as opposed to simply a good or close friend. The first maintains that such desires show a lack of benevolence toward your (would-be) best friend as well as toward your (would-be) best friend's (potential) other friends, given that they can only be satisfied if your (would-be) best friend does not have better friendships with third parties, while the second objection charges these desires with exhibiting a fetishistic, and therefore unjustified, concern with how one ranks relative to other individuals. Next, I show that although both objections have force under certain conditions, depending on the type of best friend that people wish to be-two types are discussed, namely, comparative best friends and institutional best friends-and their motives, desiring this status can be, and sometimes is, appropriate.