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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Kant on Friendship
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1 Sakarya Üniversitesi, İnsan ve Toplum Bilimleri Fakültesi, Felsefe Bölümü 54050, Sakarya,
Türkiye
2 Sakarya Üniversitesi, Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Felsefe Programı 54050, Sakarya,
Türkiye
Received: 10 March 2025 | Published online: 30 June 2025
© 2025 by the Authors. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution -Noncommercial 4.0 International License (CC-by the license) ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ )
Abstract
The concept of friendship occupies a crucial place in Kant’s moral philosophy, both in his lectures before and in his writings after the Critique. The idea of friendship in Kant’s thought can be analysed in three ways. First, it can be analysed within his entire philosophy. We compare the definitions in Kant’s Lectures on Ethics and Metaphysics of Morals, where the concept is frequently discussed: in his first period, Kant seeks an ideal of friendship, while in his second period, he deals with friendship in terms of the possibility of moral friendship and its closely related concepts. From this point of view, the second possible way of analysing friendship is to consider it in terms of Kantian terminology. A conceptual framework accompanies friendship, and Kant presents it through a set of terms such as love, respect and trust. Finally, we can discover the influential friendships in Kant’s life through the biographies available. In particular, J. Green, who influenced Kant’s punctuality, and Wasianski, who was in his service, have an essential place in understanding Kant’s understanding of friendship.
Keywords
Kant
friendship
duty
respect
morality.
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