Paternalism in Friendship

Several authors have argued that friendship plays a distinct role in the justification of paternalism. But their accounts face several challenges, and they one-sidedly focus on cases in which friendship allegedly provides reasons in favor of paternalism. In response to these accounts, we develop a new Modifying View, according to which relationship-independent reasons determine the (im-)permissibility of paternalism in paradigmatic cases, while friendship only affects its moral quality, both positively and negatively. We then turn to borderline cases, in which relationship-independent reasons do not clearly settle questions of permissibility. We show that, in such cases, friendship can tip the balance for and against paternalism, and we specifically highlight the problematic character of ongoing patterns of paternalism in friendship.