This is philosophy bites with me David Edmonds and me Nigel Warburton.

Philosophy bites is available at www philosophy bites.com.

What special duties and obligations do we have towards our friends that we don't have towards

strangers?

Friendship plays a central part in most people's lives, and Alexander Nehemas, a distinguished professor of philosophy at Princeton, argues that it's a subject deserving of close philosophical scrutiny.

Alexander Nehemas, welcome to Philosophy Bites.

I'm delighted to be here. Thank you very much for inviting me.

The topic we're going to talk about today is Friendship. I wonder if you could tell me how you became

interested in the topic. Friendship is an extraordinarily important relationship in almost everybody's life, not to say in everybody's life.

But peculiarly enough it has been a subject that has not been discussed very much in modern or for that matter contemporary philosophy.

So I thought that it was important to try to think about friendship, to see what contribution

it makes to life and whether we can have a view of it that explains the importance that it has for most of us or all of us.

Why do you think it has been neglected as a topic of discussion for philosophers?

Well, a major reason I think is the following.

Since the Enlightenment and particularly in the last 75 years or so,

we have had a tendency to identify all value with moral value, the values of morality, where the values of morality

are the values that enjoin us to treat everybody equally, to give the same respect and

the same consideration to everyone in the world independently of their status, gender, class,

and everything else.

Now, what's essential about friendship is that precisely you don't treat everybody equally.

You give preference to your friends.

You treat your friends better than you treat other people.

...