← Return to search results
Back to Prindle Institute

friendship

Posted on

Chris Cuomo, Brotherhood, and Morality

side-by-side photographs of Andrew and Chris Cuomo

On Thursday, CNN suspended its prime-time news anchor Chris Cuomo “indefinitely, pending further evaluation.” By Saturday, he had been terminated. The move comes shortly after documents revealed a “cozy and improper” relationship between Chris Cuomo and the political aides of his brother, Andrew Cuomo, former governor of New York.

Andrew Cuomo recently resigned as governor amid numerous allegations of sexual misconduct. Shortly before that scandal became public, Chris Cuomo held regular friendly, even comic, interviews with his brother. He also reportedly held “strategic discussions” with his brother about how best to respond to the allegations. A few days ago, the New York attorney general’s office released more documents showing Cuomo used media sources to uncover information about those who were accusing his brother of sexual misconduct. This triggered CNN’s move to suspend the anchor. CNN claimed these documents showed “a greater level of involvement in his brother’s efforts than we previously knew.”

Even before these latest revelations, many of Cuomo’s colleagues regarded his behavior as violating journalistic ethical standards, which aim to maintain a healthy barrier between those who report and those who are being reported upon. “This is a no-brainer,” says Mark Feldstein, chair of the broadcast journalism department at the University of Maryland and former staff member at CNN. “Journalism Ethics 101: journalists should never cover family members. It’s a glaring conflict of interest.” Cuomo himself now calls the discussions with his brother and his aides “inappropriate” and a “mistake.”

There is little dispute that Chris Cuomo’s behavior violated journalistic and impersonal ethical standards in seeking to help his brother. But, and here is the philosophical puzzle, was he, at the same time, also being a good brother? Cuomo explained that he was “family first; job second” and singularly committed to “be there for my family, which I must.” If Cuomo was simply being a good brother, does this mean that being a good brother can conflict with being moral? In such a case, which should we choose? Looking for answers to these questions forces us to take sides in a philosophical debate about the bounds of morality.

As the joke has it, a friend will help you move, but a good friend will help you move a body. But at the heart of the joke is a serious point. Sometimes, as Cuomo has discovered, the demands of morality seem to conflict with the demands that our personal relationships put on us.

Some think that this apparent potential for conflict between the demands of morality and those of our personal relationships is just an illusion. Regarding friendship, Aristotle thought that good friends take an interest in their friends’ moral development. We want our friends to be better people — the best versions of themselves. A good friend wouldn’t help you to indulge in immoral behavior or to avoid facing the consequences. A good friend would encourage you to face up to what you ought to do. We might think the same about Cuomo. Perhaps a good brother would not help his sibling to navigate a series of sexual misconduct allegations. Perhaps, then, Cuomo was being both unethical and a bad brother. On this view, there is no real conflict of values. The standards of both morality and brotherhood condemn Chris Cuomo’s behavior.

But this Aristotelian approach is arguably an overly moralized conception of friendship, or, in our case, brotherhood. Contrary to the Aristotelian view, it certainly seems possible for good friends to not particularly care about each other’s moral development. Imagine two kids who enjoy getting into mischief together. The Aristotelian view implies that they simply aren’t good friends, but that doesn’t seem correct. So perhaps the Aristotelian view is false and there really is a tension between the demands of morality and those of our personal relationships.

So, we’re back to the idea that there is a genuine conflict between being a good brother and a morally good person. Let’s examine that apparent conflict more closely.

We generally think morality is impartial. When something is the moral thing to do, it’s the moral thing to do for everybody. At least, this is what the two most famous moral theories — Kantianism and Utilitarianism — claim. According to Kant, we’re acting morally so long as we’re treating peoples’ humanity not merely as a means, but (also) as an end. According to Utilitarianism, we’re acting morally so long as our actions produce the best outcome of the available options. These are both wholly impartial theories of morality. Everyone counts the same as everyone else. It doesn’t matter who the person in front of you is, or what your relationship with them is; morally, you just treat them the same as anyone else!

On the other hand, the demands of friendship and family are clearly not impartial. If you are a good friend, the fact that your friend is your friend means you will treat her better than you would a stranger. We often think we shouldn’t treat our friends or family just like we treat everyone else. So, the conflict between morality and friendship/family can be thought of as a conflict between acting impartially and morally, on the one hand, and acting partially, in favor of our friends and family, on the other.

Here is another reason to think there is, contrary to appearances, no real conflict between morality and brotherhood. We might be going wrong in thinking of morality as totally impersonal. Maybe the partial demands of friendship and family are genuine moral demands too. This idea is called “moral pluralism.”

Moral pluralists agree that the impersonal values that morality generally focuses upon — such as promoting general well-being — are important moral values. But they don’t think they are the only important moral values. According to the moral pluralist, Cuomo didn’t face a conflict between the demands of brotherhood and those of morality. Instead, the value pluralist would say Cuomo faced a conflict within morality, between two important moral values — of impersonal morality and of brotherhood. This provides a very different picture of Cuomo’s dilemma.

On this moral pluralist view, Chris Cuomo had good moral reasons to try to help his brother. He also had good moral reasons to maintain his distance and journalistic independence. This leaves us with a difficult question; which should he have done? Here, the moral pluralist faces the task of weighing these reasons against each other to form an overall, all-things-considered judgment.

The kind of dilemma Cuomo faced, between taking particular care of those you are closest to or living up to impersonal ethical standards, is not rare. The same (apparent) conflict can be found in choosing whether to donate to an effective charity or buy a Christmas present for someone you love, or choosing whether to let your friend copy your answers in a school test. These apparent dilemmas force us to confront some particularly tricky philosophical puzzles — puzzles about the nature of friendship, of familial bonds, and which values we include in our conception of morality.

Posted on

Should Republicans and Democrats Be Friends?

photograph of stuffed Republican elephant and Democrat Donkey face-to-face atop American flag

America’s polarization crisis extends to its friendships: a 2017 Pew Research Center survey found that only thirty-one percent of Democrats have at least some friends who are Republicans, while only four-in-ten Republicans said they have some friends who are Democrats. Should we be alarmed by this? Should we be friends with people who hold views we believe to be immoral?

It seems that we have dueling intuitions about the moral permissibility of friendship with those who do not share our values. Consider a peaceful neo-Nazi — someone who has genocidal beliefs but will never act on them. I think most people believe it is wrong to be friends with such a character, and I can think of three arguments in support of this belief. First, there is the “signaling” argument. Being friends with the neo-Nazi will likely be interpreted by others as expressing approval for, or lending credibility to, their beliefs. One ought not signal one’s approval for beliefs one takes to be immoral, so one ought not be friends with the neo-Nazi. The second argument is the “incentive” argument. The idea is that withholding friendship from the neo-Nazi might incent him to abandon his beliefs, which is something we ought to encourage him to do insofar as we believe his beliefs are immoral. If one ought to withhold friendship from the neo-Nazi for this reason, then one ought not be friends with him. Finally, there is the “disesteem” argument, which is that disesteem — that is, feelings of disdain or disapprobation — are an appropriate response to the neo-Nazi’s immoral beliefs, and these feelings are incompatible with genuine friendship. If we ought to A (in this case, feel certain emotions towards the neo-Nazi), and A is incompatible with B (in this case, be friends with the neo-Nazi), then we ought not to B.

So, we certainly have intuitions, backed by reasons, that support not being friends with individuals solely because of their moral beliefs. On the other hand, consider a Kantian and a consequentialist. These two may have fundamental moral disagreements over a host of issues, such as our obligations to the foreign poor, the morally optimal distribution of all-purpose goods, the morality of lying, the morality of infanticide, and whether it is morally permissible to intentionally kill one person in order to save five. Only one of them can be right, so one of them has immoral beliefs. Yet we do not think it would be wrong for them to be friends.

I will assume that Democrats and Republicans have moral disagreements, for example over abortion. The question is whether friendship with someone of the opposing party is like the Kantian’s friendship with the consequentialist or like being friends with a neo-Nazi.

It might be argued that the neo-Nazi’s immoral beliefs include immoral beliefs about how others can be permissibly harmed, which distinguishes them from the beliefs of Kantians and consequentialists, or Republicans and Democrats. But from a Republican’s perspective, Democrats impermissibly believe that it is permissible to harm the unborn; and from a Kantian perspective, consequentialists impermissibly believe that it is permissible to intentionally kill one in order to save five. Furthermore, since the neo-Nazi is peaceful, her genocidal beliefs cannot be distinguished from the others in terms of disposing her to act violently.

The Kantian’s friendship with the consequentialist also nicely illustrates why the distinction between cross-party friendships and friendships with neo-Nazis cannot lie in the sheer number of disagreements, or their moral importance. The Kantian has a large number of fairly fundamental moral disagreements with the consequentialist, including over what makes actions morally right or wrong. Nor can the distinction lie in the idea that Democrats (or Republicans) shouldn’t believe that Republicans (or Democrats) as such hold moral beliefs, while they should believe neo-Nazis hold immoral beliefs. Either the Kantian or the consequentialist should believe that the other’s beliefs are immoral, yet they are seemingly still permitted to be friends.

Nor can the distinction lie in the confidence with which we hold the moral beliefs that differ from our opposite party friend. Plenty of people are just as confident that consequentialism (or Kantianism) is the correct moral philosophy as that racism, or racially motivated genocide, is morally right or wrong. Yet confident consequentialists should not disdain friendships with Kantians and vice versa. On the other hand, we should not be friends with a neo-Nazi just because he is not confident about his genocidal beliefs.

We might try to appeal to the admittedly vague idea of reasonability to distinguish between cross-party friendships and friendships between Kantians and consequentialists on the one hand, and friendships with neo-Nazis on the other. The thought is that the disagreements that occur in the former cases are reasonable, but not in the latter case. It’s not clear that all would agree that this feature does distinguish them, since many people think the beliefs of people of the opposing party are unreasonable. For these people, if reasonability is what distinguishes friendships between Kantians and consequentialists and friendships with neo-Nazis, then cross-party friendships will fall on the side of friendships with neo-Nazis. These people will have to conclude that people of the opposing party do not deserve friendship, that being friends with them lends credibility to their views in a morally problematic way, and that disesteem that is incompatible with friendship is an appropriate response.

More fundamentally, if it’s true that having what we take to be immoral beliefs unfits a person for our friendship, it’s hard to see why they should be unreasonable immoral beliefs. What’s doing the work in our intuition that we ought not to be friends with people because of their beliefs is the moral character of their beliefs, not their rationality or reasonability. Just because a prima facie compelling argument can be given for consequentialism and not Nazism does not make the consequentialist’s beliefs less morally heinous from the point of view of the Kantian.

Another suggestion is that neo-Nazi beliefs are somehow simply worse than, for example, the beliefs of Democrats as viewed from the perspective of Republicans, or the beliefs of consequentialists as viewed from the perspective of Kantians. However, the “signaling,” “incentive,” and “disesteem” arguments are not based on Nazis’ ideas being particularly heinous in the eyes of others, but just on their being believed to be immoral.

We’re left, then, with a troubling conclusion. If one ought not be friends with neo-Nazis solely because of their beliefs, then there is in principle no way to distinguish such friendships from cross-party friendships, insofar as each member of a cross-party friendship believes that the other side holds immoral views.

Still, perhaps we ought to deny the claim that we should not be friends with neo-Nazis, at least in its unqualified form. Some former Nazis strike up friendships with neo-Nazis in order to de-program them; ought we condemn that action? Similarly, if a Democrat believes his Republican friend is racist, might he not justify his friendship on the ground that he is likely to be more successful at persuading his friend to abandon his racist beliefs by remaining friends? A friend of this conception of cross-party friendship might point out that withholding friendship is but one way, and perhaps not the most effective way, to incent others to abandon their beliefs; that simply because feelings of disesteem are appropriate does not mean they are morally required, all-things-considered; and that there are ways to signal one’s disapproval of a friend’s beliefs.

Note that even if these counterarguments are successful, they will not justify a “de-politicized” or “de-moralized” friendship — a friendship wherein at least one person believes the other has immoral beliefs, but decides to do nothing about it. But this raises a further problem, which I can only gesture at: if genuine friendship requires accepting the friend as they are in some sense, then the kind of cross-party friendship that seems morally permissible may not be genuine. In the end, then, it may turn out that genuine cross-party friendships are morally impermissible.

Posted on

Why Act When It Doesn’t Make a Difference?

This post originally appeared on May 28, 2015.

I’ve got a friend who’s suffering from depression. He’s been holed up in his house for the last two years; living first on sick pay, then savings; venturing out only for fish and canned vegetables. (“They’re healthy.”) I visit him from time to time, which isn’t often enough, and I excuse the infrequency with a lame thought: it doesn’t matter whether I go.

The problem is not that I’m wrong. He doesn’t want visitors, we have the same conversation each time, and he isn’t getting any closer to the man he once was, all bright and bounding. If I’m showing up to make a difference, I’m probably wasting my time.

This defense of inaction is psychologically powerful. We know how the election will play out, so we don’t vote. We know that having tofu won’t save a cow from slaughter, so we have the burger. We know that Old Navy isn’t going to notice whether we shop elsewhere, so we may as well save some money. When we can’t make a difference, why bother?

Sometimes, because we’re wrong. It only seems like we can’t make a difference because so many people contribute to the effect. This tends to be the story in consumer ethics: industries don’t care about what any one person does, but they certainly care about what lots of people do, and “lots of people” don’t do anything if we don’t do something.

In other cases, we really can’t accomplish what we’d like—too few are willing to take up the cause—but we can do something else worthwhile. Consider, for example, participating in Adjunct Walkout Day. My university isn’t going to start paying adjuncts a living wage, so canceling class for their sake feels pointless. By joining in, though, we stand in solidarity with those who aren’t being treated fairly, insisting that wrongdoers be held accountable. That’s a far cry from achieving securing fair wages, but it still isn’t trivial to encourage and criticize, respectively, those who deserve encouragement and criticism.

All that said, my friend’s depression isn’t a collective action problem; it isn’t as though a few more supporters will tip the scales. Protest won’t help either: depression may be a thief, but it can’t be shamed. And we could conclude, on this basis, that my excuse is a good one. But I remain unsatisfied by it. When I drive the twenty-two miles to his door, I’m his friend. When I pick up a book instead, I’m not. And that choice isn’t trivial.

It might sound like I’ve just made this about me. “I can’t make a difference in my friend’s life, but I can make a difference in mine: I can choose what sort of person I’ll become, the ideals that I’ll embody.” And although those things are true, they’re beside the point.

Which is this: sometimes, difference-making doesn’t matter. If I’m going to be a friend, I’m going to sit with him in his depression. Not at the expense of everything else in my life—that’s martyrdom. But at real expense, since that’s what friendship involves. Likewise, if I’m a citizen, I vote; if I’m compassionate, I don’t want anything to do with factory farms. That’s what it is to be a friend, or a citizen, or compassionate. And that’s why we aren’t bad friends or citizens if we fail, or a little less compassionate when we keep eating animals. Rather, we are “friends” and “citizens” and “compassionate.” We have different versions of these relationships and roles and virtues—the paltry, calculating ones where “This is my country” isn’t argument enough for voting, and “That creature suffered needlessly” isn’t argument enough for abstaining. Not so with the versions worth having: they settle how we ought to proceed. (Indeed, that’s much of why they’re worth having.)

Why act when it doesn’t make a difference? In some cases, because it does—though only with some help, or not how we’d hoped. But often enough, this is the wrong sort of question to ask, and the right kind is much simpler:

Are we friends?