How Friendship doesn’t Contribute to Happiness: A Reply to Leibowitz

Friendship and happiness are intimately connected. According to a recent account provided in Leibowitz (2018) friendship contributes to happiness because friends value each other and communicate this valuation to each other, which increases their self-worth, and this in turn increases their happiness. In this paper I argue that Leibowitz’s account of how friendship contributes to happiness is mistaken. I first present Leibowitz’s view, and then argue against it. I have two main worries with his account. One worry is that increase in self-worth is not characteristic of friendship and hence it is problematic to use it for explaining the connection between friendship and happiness. The other worry is that the distinctive way in which increase in self-worth contributes to happiness seems to be in an important way different from the distinctive way in which friendship contributes to happiness. Finally, I point to what I take to be the right direction in explaining the connection between friendship and happiness.