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Kristján Kristjánsson, Friendship for Virtue, Oxford University Press, 2022, 240pp., $97.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780192864260.
Reviewed by Mavis Biss, Loyola University Maryland
Some thinkers are attracted to the philosophy of friendship because of their interest in the best possibilities of friendship while others are interested in the whole shebang, virtuous and unvirtuous. Kristjan Kristjánsson falls in the middle, as he takes Aristotelian character friendship as his topic, yet has a rather expansive view of this category. Readers who are accustomed to thinking of character friendship as friendship based in mutual love of each other’s virtuous character may be surprised by Kristjánsson’s conception that allows character friendship between “learners,” between children and parents and between people unequal in virtue and social position. The focus on close friendships between people who are “good enough” to aid in another’s moral development aligns the book’s arguments with commonly held views while…
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