Andrew I. Cohen

Friendships are voluntary relationships founded and sustained on reciprocated good will and mutual caring. Individuals in end friendships exhibit a mutual regard that is characteristic of those dispositions by which they spontaneously treat one another as ends. But even the closest of friends face challenges that can pit reasons of reciprocity or considerations of morality against friendship. My focus here is to examine how friends may assess their relationships in light of such challenges. This inquiry may then illuminate how the demands of friendship generate reasons.

Apologies are key components of moral repair. They can identify a wrong, express regret, and accept culpability for some transgression. Apologies can vindicate a victim's value as someone who was due different treatment. This paper explores whether acts with vicarious elements may serve as apologies. I offer a functionalist account of apologies: acts are apologies not so much by having correct ingredients but by serving certain apologetic functions. Those functions can be realized in multiple ways. Whether the offenders are individuals or collectives, they can sometimes fulfill such functions through third party agents. Having vicarious elements does not necessarily undermine the reparative reasons offenders hope to provide.

RésuméLes propriétés dynamiques de l'amitié requièrent parfois que les amis réévaluent leur relation à la lumière de raisons de réciprocité ou de considérations morales. Les amis maintiennent leur relation en partie en évaluant leurs rapports de réciprocité. Ils doivent aussi considérer parfois l'impact de raisons morales sur leur amidé; il leur faut résoudre d'occasionnelles tensions entre les exigences de l'amitié et certaines considérations rivales d'ordre moral, et ils doivent agir parfois comme surveillants l'un pour l'autre dans l'ordre moral. Je discute ici la façon dont les amis peuvent gérer leur relation sans compromettre la confiance et le respect mutuels qui sont appropriés entre amis.

This paper argues against an individualist challenge to the possibility of corporate apologies. According to this challenge, corporations always and only act through their members; thus they are not the sorts of entities that can apologize. Consequently there can be no corporate apologies. Against this challenge, this paper argues that even if corporate acts can be analyzed as acts by individuals within certain relationships, there can still be corporate apologies. This paper offers a noneliminative individualist account of such apologies. The paper also responds to various substantive objections to the possibility of such apologies.

abstract Contractarianism roots moral standing in an agreement among rational agents in the circumstances of justice. Critics have argued that the theory must exclude nonhuman animals from the protection of justice. I argue that contractarianism can consistently accommodate the notion that nonhuman animals are owed direct moral consideration. They can acquire their moral status indirectly, but their claims to justice can be as stringent as those among able‐bodied rational adult humans. Any remaining criticisms of contractarianism likely rest on a disputable moral realism; contractarianism can underwrite the direct moral considerability of nonhuman animals by appealing to a projectivist quasi‐realism.

I focus particularly on the case of the glory seekers. Driven by a foolhardy overestimation of their worth, seekers of glory do not value peace as others do. They may not even value peace at all. Their quest for glory then often obstructs peace, which is perhaps why Hobbes condemns vainglory as irrational. But once we clarify what it is that glory seekers seek, it becomes uncertain that gratifying appetites for glory is necessarily against right reason. If Hobbes is then to say that the laws of nature are the dictates of right reason, he must either show that glory seeking is against right reason, or he must explain why the right reason of glory seekers, which argues against the laws of nature, does not count against the normative force of such laws.