RESTRICTIVE CONSEQUENTIALISM AND REAL FRIENDSHIP

A familiar objection to restrictive consequentialism is that a restrictive consequentialist is incapable of having true friendships. In this paper I distinguish between an instrumentalist and a non‐instrumentalist version of this objection and argue that while the restrictive consequentialist can answer the non‐instrumentalist version, restrictive consequentialism may still seem vulnerable to the instrumentalist version. I then suggest a consequentialist reply that I argue also works against this version of the objection. Central to this reply is the claim that a restrictive consequentialist is capable of true friendship if the value she aims for is not merely seen as a function of her self‐regarding desires, but includes as a central constituent a form of objective value often referred to as ‘flourishing’ or ‘self‐realization’. ¹ 1 Earlier versions of this paper have been presented to the Ethics Reading Group at Columbia University and to the Department Colloquia at the University of Oslo. I thank the audiences on both occasions for helpful comments.