The Friendship Model of Filial Obligations

Journal of Applied Philosophy, Vol.12, No. I , 1995

The Friendship Model of Filial Obligations

NICHOLAS DIXON

ABSTRACT This paper [I] is a defence of a mod$ed version of Jane English’s model of filial obligations based on adult children’s friendship with their parents. (I) Unlike the more traditional view that filial obligations are a repayment for parental sacrifices, the friendship model puts filial duties in the appealing context of volunta y, loving relationships. (ZZ) Contrary to English’s original statement of this view, which is open to the charge of tolerating filial ingratitude, the friendship model can generate obligations to help our parents even i fwe are no longer friendly with them. (IIZ) Joseph Kupfer has pointed out several ways in which parent-child relationships differ from peer friendships; but his arguments do not preclude our enjoying a type of friendship with our parents. ( IV) Zn response to Christina Hoff Sommers, who objects that feelings of friendship toward our parents are too flimsy a ground for filial duties, the friendship model can provide a plausible, robust account of filial obligations. (V) As for adult children who have never formed friendships with their loving, caring parents, and refuse to give them much-needed assistance, they can be criticised by moral considerations independent of but compatible with the friendship model.

To what extent, if any, are grown children obligated to help their parents? In the light of the immense sacrifices made by our parents as they raised us, should we reciprocate when our parents need our material or emotional assistance? According to Jane English, our duties to our parents are grounded in and vary according to the depth of our friendship with them [2]. The goal of this paper is to develop a more defensible version of English’s view, which I will call the friendship model of filial obligations. I begin with a sketch of English’s statement of the model.

I

English rejects the notion that we owe our parents reciprocal sacrifices. The paradigm case of an obligation to return a favour is when the favour was requested in the first place. Since no child asks to be born and given the benefits of parental care, the notion of ‘repayment’ seems inappropriate [3]. Another obstacle to filial duties to parents is that, once they had us, our parents were obligated to care for us. Their merely doing what was morally required does not seem to generate any reciprocal duties on our part [4].

The innovation of English’s approach is to argue that the question of what we owe our parents, in the light of what they did for us, is poorly formulated. It wrongly casts parental sacrifices as favours that create debts and the obligation to perform reciprocal favours. Such an approach, she argues, cheapens parent-child and other love relationships, which should be characterised instead by voluntary fn’endly gestures given without any expectation of

0 Society for Applied Philosophy, 1995, Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 lJF, UK and 3 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02 142, USA.

78 N . Dixon

‘repayment’. Parental sacrifices should be freely given, instead of being investments made in the hope of a future ‘return’ from grateful children. However, the absence of reciprocal debts ‘owed’ to parents does not exhaust all filial obligations. Friendly gestures are symptomatic of ongoing friendships, and ongoing friendships give rise to duties of friendship. A decent person, that is, will offer help when her friends are in need. Unlike favours, friendships cannot be ‘paid off; and, again unlike favours, my duties of friendship depend on my friends’ needs, and my ability to help, not on whether and how much they have helped me in the past. To the extent that a grown child enjoys an ongoing friendship with her parents, she has the same duties of friendship towards her parents as she would have toward people with whom she has a similar friendship.

Filial obligations, then, are not a repayment for parental sacrifices. Rather, they arise from the friendship that these sacrifices may have played a role in creating. However, argues English, just as duties of friendship in general are contingent on the continuation of the friendship, our special obligations to our parents would dissolve if we were to cease to be friends with our parents [5] .

English‘s account does justice to the intuition that we should help our parents when necessary, at least when we enjoy friendly relations with them. In contrast to the repayment modeE which she criticises, English places our obligations within the appealing context of voluntary, loving friendship with our parents.

I1

Because of the voluntary nature of friendship, and the belief that we should do things for our friends freely and willingly, the idea of duties of friendship may sound odd. Indeed, the voluntariness and spontaneity of friendly gestures is one of the most appealing features of friendship. If we were to discover that a friend’s kindness were motivated only by a sense of duty, we would begin to question our friendship. I have two responses.

First, the fact that our friends’ actions towards us are typically motivated only by spontaneous affection does not preclude the existence of duties of friendship. That duty may coincide with inclination does not diminish its status as duty. Second, while many occasions exist for optional, supererogatory acts of generosity towards our friends, we can easily think of cases in which it is natural to say that we should help them. If a close friend is in desperate need of my help, which would cost me negligible effort, wouldn’t I be wrong, in the light of our long-lasting and ongoing friendship, to refuse? I mean by ‘duties of friendship’ that we ought to help friends in such circumstances. Such duties arise from the particular relationships I have with my friends, and go beyond any general obligation I have to help strangers.

The notion of duties of friendship would also be severely restricted in the hands of libertarians who restrict all obligations to duties of noninterference. If conjoined with a libertarian approach, the friendship model of filial obligations would require only that we refrain from harming our parents. Since I argue that the friendship model creates the obligation to help our parents in some cases, I am assuming both that there are duties of friendship, and that moral obligations in general go beyond mere noninterference with others [6 ] .

I offer the friendship model as both a justification of the view that we do have duties to our parents, and an explanation of the moral basis of these duties. The friendship model casts

0 Society for Applied Philosophy, 1995

The Friendship Model of Filial Obligations 79

filial obligations as a special type of obligation of friendship. As in the case of duties of friendship in general, exactly what is required of us by the friendship model of filial duties depends on both the circumstances in each particular case, and on the broader social context. For example, filial duties will be more extensive in a society in which the government provides only minimally for the needs of older people than in a society with extensive welfare programmes for the elderly.

As long as grown children enjoy a friendly relationship with their parents, the friendship model and the more traditional repayment model will usually require similar filial duties [7]. However, in the absence of friendly relations, English’s version of the friendship model imposes no filial obligation to help needy parents, since there is no longer any friendship to ground filial duties, no matter how caring the parents were when the children were younger. English’s willingness to embrace this consequence of her view opens her up to the criticism that she is endorsing, or at least tolerating, filial ingratitude. If the end of friendship cancels duties of friendship, so the objection goes, then so much the worse for the friendship model of filial duties, since most people believe that we would still have duties to our parents, even if we were no longer friends with them.

I maintain, on the contrary, that an advocate of the friendship model should not insist that the end of friendship with one’s parents signals the end of filial obligations. English has failed to realise that duties of friendship can in general outlive friendships, whether between peers or between children and parents. The reason why English has overlooked the ‘residual duties’ that can remain even after the end of friendships is very likely the fact that many friendships are relatively short-lived and superficial, and arguably create few if any residual duties. However, if we turn to peer friendships comparable in duration and depth to child- parent friendships, the notion of residual duties of friendship becomes much more plausible.

Consider, for instance, a stranger and a former long-term, close friend (who voluntarily made immense sacrifices throughout our friendship) who both urgently need a blood transfusion using my rare blood type. Any obligation I have to help is stronger in the case of my former friend than in the case of the stranger. It would require an overzealous commitment to impartiality to ignore the extra moral ties created by our former long-term, close friendship. These ties are not precipitately dissolved by our unfortunate estrangement. The longevity of our friendship, and depth of friendship indicated by the sacrifices my former friend made for me [S], make this situation analogous to my relationship with my parents. The existence of filial duties even after my friendship with my parents is over can therefore be accounted for by the friendship model, and does not indicate that filial duties have a different basis.

An analogous situation in which a former friendship can exert a moral claim on us today is the practice of forgiving someone ‘for old times’ sake. ’ The key to forgiveness is being able to separate the sin from the sinner, and forgive the wrongdoer while continuing to condemn her action. One way in which this separation is facilitated is when she is a former friend, and we are able to forgive her in the light of our former friendship, even though we still regard her action as wrong [9].

I suggest that the moral basis of residual duties to former friends is respect for our former friendships, our former friends and ourselves. To treat a former close friend as a stranger (e.g., by refusing to give priority to our former friend in the blood transfusion case) is to discount our former friendship, and indirectly devalues both of us, since we both invested part of ourselves in the friendship. When someone is genuinely unconcerned about the end


80 N . Dixon

of a romantic relationship, we suspect that she held no strong feelings for her former partner. Similarly, when someone treats a former friend as a stranger as soon as their friendship is over, we start to question the depth of her friendship in the first place. It may then be a psychological truth that the genuine moral concern for another which characterises friendship is inseparable from feeling residual duties of friendship even after friendship ends. Even if we allow the possibility of the person who genuinely cares about her friends while the friendship lasts, but whose moral concern completely evaporates when friendship ends, such a person exhibits the vice of inconstancy. Her concern for her friends seems to be fickle, and we would hesitate to trust her.

Another vice exhibited by the person who treats former friends as strangers is a form of inauthentic&: a desire to disown part of herself. It is comparable to the self-made millionaire who refuses any contact with his family or his former friends from the blue- collar neighbourhood in which he grew up. Aside from the disrespect he shows for others, in some sense he is disrespecting himself, by failing to acknowledge the connections between the person he is now and the earlier stages of his life [lo].

Any residual duties of friendship are of course normally far weaker than those we have toward our current friends. Moreover, if the reason for the end of our friendship was unforgivable behaviour on the part of our former friend, our residual duties may diminish to zero.

The moral ties created by decades of parent-child love, which often develops into friendship from the late teens onwards, are surely even stronger than those of all but the deepest long-term friendships. This is why English’s claim that the end of friendship necessarily signals the end of filial obligations is unjust. Granted, the children of abusive parents are very unlikely to have established any friendly relations with their parents in the first place, and would have no obligation to help their parents under the friendship model. But in the case of children who enjoyed good relations with their parents into early adulthood, but then became estranged after a disagreement, respect for their former good relations arguably requires that they help their parents, when doing so would be easy, and would produce major benefits for the parents (e.g . , providing for life-saving medical treatment.) Such residual duties are of course far weaker than the filial duties of children who currently enjoy good friendships with their parents.

While seeking a formula that would determine the exact extent of filial obligations in various circumstances would be absurd, it is reasonable to regard three factors as central in the case of adult children no longer friendly with their parents: (1) The extent of parental need, and the cost to adult children of meeting it; (2) the depth and duration of their former friendly relations with their parents; and (3) the reason for and the severity of the argument that caused the estrangement. The adult child has to strike a balance between respect for her former good relations with her parents, and, on the other hand, self-respect in the case of parental misbehaviour [ 111. Only in the most extreme limiting case will a child whose friendship with her parents is over have no residual duties to her parents.

Another criticism of the friendship model is to point out differences between parent-child relationships and typical friendships. The key question to decide is whether these



differences invalidate the friendship model, or whether parent-child relationships can naturally be viewed as a special kind of friendship.

The sheer weight of sacrifices typically borne by parents in raising their children creates an inequality unlikely to be met by any services which adult children perform for their parents. Friendship might be a relationship only possible between people who are roughly equal. However, it might be said in defence of the friendship model that the inequality of sacrifices is quite natural, given the parents’ superior ability to help, and is quite compatible with friendship [ 121. We can easily imagine similarly unequal relationships that we would have no hesitation in calling friendships. For instance, a deep friendship can arise between a wheelchair-bound person and the able-bodied person who looks after her. The alleged inequality in such relationships may be only superficial, since the able-bodied person may gain just as much in terms of emotional satisfaction and intellectual stimulation as she gives in physical assistance.

Joseph Kupfer notes two more significant differences between parent-child relationships and peer friendships [13]. First, we will always lack autonomy with regard to our parents, because of the immense influence they had in forming our character and creating our identity. Our self-concept, which ‘includes the history of the unequal relationship with the parent . . . limits the degree to which [we] can function autonomously with the parent’ [14]. An inequality in autonomy will inhibit the formation of an ideal friendship because it will create undue dependence in the less autonomous friend, for whom the more autonomous friend will consequently have less respect [ 151. Second, parents and children lack the independence needed for one characteristic of deep friendships: a voluntary union between two separate people, who achieve a friendship by growing to know and appreciate each other [ 161.

While Kupfer concludes that these two differences between typical friendship and parent-child relationships preclude parents and their adult children from becoming ‘true’ or ‘ideal’ friends, he also asserts that ‘parents and children can enjoy a kind of friendship that is quite worthwhile in its own right’ 1171. I will argue that Kupfer’s discussion makes it natural for us to regard parent-adult child relationships as legitimate friendships, albeit different from peer friendships.

The positive side of adult children’s lack of autonomy from their parents is the ‘mutual identification’ that enables parents to share their children’s successes. The parents know that they played a key role in making their children the kind of people likely to succeed, a point of which the children are gratefully aware [ 181. However, our close peer friends also, to a lesser extent, influence who we are. This may explain why our close friends, especially long-standing ones, often delight in our triumphs just as much as our parents do. It also indicates that we experience a similar, though less pronounced, lack of autonomy with regard to our close friends as we do toward our parents. What follows is that the lack of autonomy with regard to our parents that allegedly precludes parent-child relationships from being friendships is also present, to a lesser degree, in peer relationships we have no hesitation in calling friendships. A similar point can be made about the lack of independence between parents and children. A comparable lack of independence will apply between childhood friends who continue their friendship, without our being tempted to deny to their relationship the status of friendship [ 191.

The upshot of the discussion of the current section is that even peer friendships can to a lesser extent display the features alleged to disqualify parent-child relationships from the status of friendships. It would be wiser to recognise a multiplicity of types of friendship.


82 N . Dixon

Parent-child relationships may involve more dependence than peer friendships, but they are genuine friendships nonetheless.

If one insists that the differences pointed out by Kupfer prevent parent-child relations from being regarded as a type of friendship, only a minor modification of the friendship model will be required. The parent-child relationship described by Kupfer is a long-term, loving, voluntary relationship, and is consequently quite able to generate duties comparable to those of friendship. Just as in the case of friendship, this relationship creates moral ties that can outlive the relationship itself. Exactly what duties are left after the end of the relationship will depend, as in the case of friendship, on the strength of the former relationship and the reason for its dissolution. In other words, all that would be required would be to rename the model, since it would retain all the salient features of the friendship model.

IV

A more fundamental objection to the friendship model of filial obligations can be derived from the work of Christina Hoff Sommers [20]. Sommers dubs as the volunteer theory of obligation the view that all moral requirements fall into one of two categories: (1) universal duties owed to everyone, and (2) voluntarily assumed obligations to particular persons [21]. The friendship model, which makes filial obligations contingent on the voluntary continuation of friendly relations between parents and children, presupposes the volunteer theory. Theories that base moral obligations on the existence of feelings, such as love and affection for one’s parents, are named by Sommers as sentimentalist [22].

Sommers presents an account of filial obligation in direct opposition to the volunteer theory of obligation and sentimentalism. In contrast to the friendship model, according to which ‘there is no such thing as filial duty per se,’ Sommers points out that ‘most people think that we do owe special debts to our parents even though we have not voluntarily assumed our obligations to them’ [23]. Having rejected the ‘dogmatic’ volunteer theory of obligation, ‘we are free to respect the commonsense views that attribute moral force to many obligations associated with kinship and other family relationships’ [24].

Sommers grounds family obligations, including filial obligations, in our family members’ negative right to pursue their ‘noninvasive’ interests (i.e., those that do not violate those of other people.) The particular interests in question are their ‘legitimate expectations’ of our performance of actions in accordance with traditional social roles [25]. The reason why my failure to help my parents is wrong, then, is not because I am violating duties of friendship. It is wrong because I am violating their legitimate (in the context of our society’s practices) expectation that I will support them in their later years. It would be wrong even if I were not friends with them. Adherents of the volunteer theory of obligation, Sommers continues, make the mistake of taking the deliberate act of promising as the paradigm case of particular moral requirements. They ignore particular obligations, such as filial duties, that arise from social arrangements that may have developed without any voluntary commitment on our part.

Sommers concedes to sentimentalists that adult children who help their parents are often motivated by love and friendship. However, she points out that the moral ground df our obligations may be institutional expectations that are independent of our feelings [26].

Sommers criticises sentimentalism as too flimsy a basis for filial obligations. Feelings of



good will toward our parents are fickle, whereas the institutional expectations on which Sommers grounds filial morality guarantee parents the support they deserve [27]. Sentimentalism is ‘ethics without ethos,’ and has a ‘disintegrative effect on tradition’ [28].

My strategy in responding to Sommers is to sidestep her main argument, by insisting that the friendship model provides a robust account of filial duty without reference to obligations created by institutional expectations. I remain neutral as to the existence of duties based on such expectations.

The very feature of the friendship model which Sommers attacks - i.e., that it makes filial obligations contingent on the voluntu y establishment of friendship, as opposed to institutional expectations - is actually a strength. Sommers’ use of the term ‘sentimentalism’ to refer to theories such as the friendship model misleadingly casts them in a negative light which obscures this strength. It implies that ‘sentimentalists’ base moral obligations on mere feelings, which are understood by her as more or less arbitrary passions over which we have minimal control. As applied to the so-called sentimentalist account of friendship, it de-emphasises the voluntariness of friendship, which is instead portrayed as a natural attraction with no moral significance.

In contrast to this caricature of theories of moral obligation that stress feelings and attitudes, friendship involves a commitment to our friends’ well-being. Both the exercise of altruism, and the moral effort which is sometimes required to maintain and deepen friendships, are moral excellences [29]. The friendship model bases filial obligations on the voluntariness that makes this commitment and these excellences possible.

The extent of our friendship with and affection for our parents is undeniably limited by factors beyond anyone’s control: the complex genetic and environmental factors that can sometimes cause a ‘personality conflict’ even between reasonable and good-willed people. However, this should not blind us to the role of choice in parent-child relations. Especially as a child’s moral awareness develops, and increasingly throughout adulthood, she appreciates the moral effort involved in parent-child relationships. She recognises, for instance, the need for patience in tolerating her parents’ sometimes exasperating ways, and for compromise in reconciling her desire for freedom (both as a child and as an adult) with her parents’ demands and needs. Perhaps more than all but the closest peer friendships, parent-child relationships are worked on, usually over many decades. This sketch reveals parent-child friendship to be a far more substantial basis for filial obligations than one would be led to believe by Sommers’ characterisation of it as a ‘sentimentalist’ theory.

V

I complete my defence of the friendship model of filial obligations by considering some problem cases. Central to the friendship model is that the extent of filial obligations is determined by the extent of our friendly relations with our parents. Exactly the same holds in the case of peer friendships, where deeper friendships generate more extensive duties of friendship.

I have shown in section I1 how the friendship model makes more or less considerable demands on adult children, even when they are no longer friends with their parents. Among the few people who would escape filial duties under the model would be those who have never enjoyed friendly relations with their parents. Since this is most likely to occur when the parents have been uncaring and even abusive, this consequence of the model seems right.


84 N . Dixon

A more troubling case for the friendship model as developed so far is the person whose parents were exemplary in providing her loving care, yet who fails to establish any kind of loving relationship with them. Should she fail to provide her parents with much needed financial or emotional support, when she could have easily afforded it, many would condemn her ingratitude. Since there is no friendship on which to build obligations, the friendship model seems unable to account for this condemnation.

Distinguishing the supererogatory benefits her parents have given her from those that they were morally obliged to give is important. Providing food, clothing, and shelter to children is a minimal responsibility that accompanies the decision to bring children into the world, and can hardly be said to require gratitude on the part of the children. On the other hand, the love and support which go beyond the call of duty give rise, in the majority of cases, to the friendship relations that are, on this model, the basis of filial duties. The problem case for the friendship model, then, is the cold, ungrateful child who never responds to her loving parents’ supererogatory actions by returning their love and by helping them when they are in need.

If her ingratitude upon further consideration should be considered blameless, then the friendship model’s failure to condemn her is an advantage, not a weakness. If, on the other hand, it is culpable, I contend that whatever fault she has can be explained without reference to filial morality per se. The same vice of ingratitude, which she exhibits by her failure to thank her parents for their efforts and to offer them much-needed assistance, can also arise in the context of a peer friendship. More pertinently, since in the hypothetical case we are considering there is no friendship between the child and parents, the obligations of the cold child to her loving parents are based on the general duty to be grateful after a series of generous acts by an acquaintance or even a stranger [30]. We can thus explain the filial obligations of the cold, ungrateful child in a manner independent of but perfectly consistent with the friendship model. I leave open exactly what the general duty of gratitude requires of the child who has never had a friendship with her parents. Expressions of thanks are morally required, but it isn’t clear that any reciprocal services are obligatory in return for unsolicited benefits.

My account of the filial obligations of the cold, ungrateful child in terms of the general duty of gratitude towards any generous person is open to the objection that I am ignoring crucial differences between the cold child’s parents, and, on the other hand, acquaintances and strangers. In reality, the objection continues, the cold, ungrateful child has the same filial duties as any child with loving, generous parents. However, this objection begs the question against the friendship model. While the cold, ungrateful child is biologically and socially related to her parents in the same way that any child is, from an emotional point of view the cold child’s parents are acquaintances or even strangers. If my theory is correct filial obligations are based primarily on friendship. And friendship is simply absent in this case.

A more serious objection is that my admission that duties to our parents exist which are not directly explicable by the friendship model shows that the model is at best incomplete. My response is that the fact that the cold child’s filial duties are not grounded in friendship reflects her impoverished relationship with her parents, and not any inadequacy in the friendship model. The friendship model is an account of the moral basis of filial duties in the vast majority of cases, where adult children either currently enjoy or have enjoyed some degree of friendship with their parents. It is not refuted by the logical possibility of unlikely deviant cases in which filial obligations are based on the weaker general duty of gratitude that we owe to anyone who is extremely generous.



We are now in a position to see a deeper error in the repayment model of filial obligations. It bases all filial duties on the general duty to show gratitude toward generous people. This general duty is the only basis of the filial obligations of the cold, ungrateful child. However, the filial obligations of the vast majority of us have a far more congenial, extensive basis: the friendship which we enjoy or have enjoyed with our parents. The repayment model is an appropriate account of filial obligations only in a deviant, unrepresentative case.

This is not to deny that even those of us who enjoy friendships with our parents should be grateful for the generous things they have done for us. In this respect, we are like the cold child, and any other beneficiary of generous acts. However, the gratitude we should feel is not the basis of our filial duties, which are based instead on our friendship with our parents. Now there may be a contingent link between the amount of sacrifices our parents made and the depth of our friendship, since our gratitude for our parents’ generosity may deepen our friendship. If so, the friendship model may forge a contingent link between the amount of sacrifices our parents made and the extent of our filial duties. But the link is only contingent. Deep parent-child friendships, and hence extensive filial duties of friendship, can exist even though our parents have not needed to make great sacrifices in raising us. At the other extreme, parents who have made many sacrifices may be cold and emotionally distant, and fail to form a close friendship with their children, whose filial duties will hence be weaker than those of children who enjoy a loving relationship with their parents [31]. A second error that the repayment model makes, then, is basing filial duties on just one of the possible causes of friendship - parents’ sacrifices, and their children’s subsequent gratitude - instead of on the friendship itself. The friendship model, in contrast, recognises that the moral basis of our duty to help our parents is just that they are or have been our friends, they need help, and we are able to help them.

Is the child’s failure to become friends with her parents in the first place, even though they are models of devoted care, morally blameworthy? We would not want to allow people to minimise their filial obligations by deliberately forming only a weak friendship, or none at all, with their parents. However, blaming someone for the failure to develop a friendship with someone else sounds odd, however loving and caring that other person may be. At worst, the unloving child is guilty of the vice of coldness. A more plausible analysis of the rare occasions when a child fails to develop affection for her loving, generous parents is that the child suffers from a personality disorder which prevents certain kinds of intimacy. While her parents may justly claim that they deserve better treatment from their child, her inability to love them is beyond her control, and hence blameless.

The friendship model of filial obligations accounts well for the obligations which are felt by most adult children who are friendly with their parents. It 21s; explains how residual obligations can remain even after their friendship has ended. The main problem case for the friendship model of filial obligations is the child who never forms a friendship with her loving, caring parents. However, while the friendship model is unable to condemn her, any blameworthiness on her part can be explained by her violation of the general duty to show gratitude toward generous people. That the usual ground of filial obligations is absent in her case reflects only her deficient relationship with her parents, and indicates no flaw in the friendship model.

I conclude that my modified version of the friendship model provides a plausible, fair framework for determining the extent of our filial obligations. Like English’s original statement of this model, it retains the advantage of stressing the voluntary, loving nature of


86 N . Dixon

sacrifices made by both parents and children, instead of regarding filial duties as repayments for services rendered.

Nicholas Dixon, Department of Philosophy, Alma College, Alma, M I 48801, USA.

NOTES [l] A version of this paper was read at the 1993 American Philosophical Association Pacific Division Meeting. I am

grateful to respondent Rosalind Ekman Ladd, and to Sterling Harwood and Mike Meyer, for helpful comments.

[2] JANE ENGLISH (1979) What do grown children owe their parents?, originally published in ONORA O”EILL and WILLIAM RUDDICK (eds.) Having Children: Philosophical and Legal Reflections on Parenthood (New York, Oxford University Press); and reprinted in CHRISTINA SOMMERS AND FRED SOMMERS (eds., 1993) Vice and Virtue in Eveyday Life, 3rd edition (Fort Worth, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich), pp. 758-65. Page citations for ‘What Do Grown Children Owe Their Parents? will be from Vice and Virtue in Eveyday Life.

[3] ENGLISH, op. cit., What Do Grown Children Owe Their Parents?, pp. 759-60. See also MICHAEL SLOTE Obedience and Illusions, in O’NEILL AND RUDDICK, op. cit., Having Children, p. 320; and JEFFREY BLUSTEIN (1982) Parents and Children: The Ethics ofrhe Family (Oxford, Oxford University Press), excerpted in JOSHUA HALBERSTAM (ed., 1988) Virtues and Values (Englewood Cliffs, NJ., Prentice-Hall), p. 197.

[4] BLUSTEIN, in op. cit., Virtues and Values, p. 197. [S] ENGLISH, op. cit., What Do Grown Children Owe Their Parents?, pp. 761-63. [6] For a defence of the view that the existence of rights between friends is perfectly compatible with friendship,

see MICHAEL J. MEYER (1992) Rights between Friends, yournu1 of Philosophy, Vol. LXXXIX, pp. 467-83. My paper depends on the weaker claim that, regardless of whether rights exist in friendships, obligations of friendship exist.

[7] The models will diverge when the degree of parent-child friendship does not correspond to the extent of parental sacrifices. In section V, I will argue that these divergences show the superiority of the friendship model. My residual duties to my former friend are not a repayment for the sacrifices he made for me, since this would be a return to the repayment model which I reject. Instead, his sacrifices are relevant to my duties of friendship only insofar as they deepened our friendship. Extensive residual duties may persist after the end of any deep friendship, even if it did not involve any great sacrifices. Respect for our former friendship (see text below for more detail), and not the repayment of moral debts incurred as a result of my former friend’s generosity, is the basis of my residual duties to him. See JEFTRIE MURPHY (1982) Forgiveness and Resentment, Minnesota Studies in Philosophy, Vol. VII, Social and Political Philosophy; reprinted in op. cit., Virtues and Values, p. 131.

[lo] Michael Meyer has suggested to me that the faults I have been describing can be characterised as a lack of integrity.

[ l I] Cf., again, Murphy’s account of forgiveness, op. cir., in which he stresses maintaining self-respect by avoiding

[12] ‘[Flriends offer what they can give and accept what they need, without regard for the total amountsof benefits

(131 JOSEPH KUPFER (1990) Can parents and children be friends?, American Philosophical Quarterly 27:l. pp. 15-

(141 Ib id . ,p . 17. [15] I b i d . , p . 16. [16] Ibid. , pp. 20-21. [I71 Ibid., p. 15. [18] Ibid. , pp. 21-23. [19] Kupfer, ibid., p. 20, note 11, mentions the lack of independence between adult friends who became friends in

childhood. [20] CHRISTINA HOFT SOMMERS (1986) Filial morality, Journal of Philosophy, pp. 439-56; and Philosophers

forgiveness unless substantial reasons exist for it.

exchanged,’ ENGLISH, op. cit., What do Grown Children Owe Their Parents?, p. 761.

26.

against the family, reprinted in SOMMERS AND SOMMERS, op. cit., Vice and Virtue in Eveyday Life, pp. 80-G 29.

[21] SOMMERS, Philosophers against the family, p. 820



[22] SOMMERS, Filial morality, p. 448. [23] SOMMERS, Philosophers against the family, pp. 82C2 I. Sommers’ assertion that the friendship model

recognises no filial duties per se is a little misleading. While the model treats filial duties as a special type of duty of friendship, it does not preclude recognition of the uniqueness of our duties to our parents.

[24] Ibid. , p. 822. [25] SOMMERS, op. ctc., Filial morality, pp. 445-48. [26] Ibid. , pp. 449-50. [27] Ibid. , pp. 45S51. [28] Ibid. , p. 455. [29] See LAURENCE BLUM The Morality of Friendship, reprinted in Halberstam, op. cir., Virtues and Values,

pp. 205-14. [30] In asserting that we have duties of gratitude after unsolicited acts of generosity, I depart from the volunteer

theory of obligation, since I concede that there can be particular duties that are not voluntarily assumed. The main ground of duties of gratitude is that respect for generous people requires that we treat them as ends in themselves, and not merely as sources of benefit for us. See FRED R. BERCER (1975) ‘Gratitude’, Erhics 85:4, pp. 298-309.

[31] The view that parental sacrifices do not in themselves create filial duties is supported by English’s claim that a child who was adopted as a newborn has no obligation to repay her biological mother for the sacrifices she made to go through with pregnancy. Her only duties toward her birth mother arise from any friendship they may develop. See ENGLISH, op. c tr . , What do grown children owe their parents?, p. 763.


Date post:	03-Oct-2016
Category:	Documents
Upload:	nicholas-dixon
View:	271 times
Download:	8 times

The Friendship Model of Filial Obligations

Documents