Lesson 5 Assignment 1

“In friendship, both caring and fairness are valuable. Although friendship does not usually center on formulating rules and applying them to cases, it typically does involve, as Marilyn Friedman has pointed out, a division of responsibilities in a more or less extensive mutual support system. A good friendship is fair about such divisions. Such fairness may even be a requirement of caring. Fairness in friendship also requires responsiveness to personal deserts or worthiness…” (Claudia Card).

I picked this paragraph because I really liked the way Claudia described friendship. The paragraph basically says that friendship doesn’t have rules or regulations to follow but is more of a mutually respectful relationship between two people who generally care about each other. Being a good friend is showing you care and sometimes just being there. I agree with what Claudia has to say because I agree with those definitions of friendship. I think that friendship is something that is earned between two people and is something to be valued. Friendship doesn’t need rules that you might have in some relationships either.

My understanding of ethics of justice is treating someone with equality and ethics of care is about the happiness of a person. When these two ethics are put together you would treat someone in order to make them happy but also think about what’s best for them in terms of being fair too. These two things are especially important in relationships whether it is friendships or otherwise because they are important ethical standards people should abide by in order to make the friendship/relationship work.

I think it is difficult to put together an exact list of qualities of friendship because there are so many different kinds. However, some of the qualities I think in friendship are trust, loyalty, and caring are pretty important qualities in friendship. Trust and loyalty are important because a friend is someone you tell your secrets too and they know personal information about you that you might not want others to know so if you don’t trust he/she and they tell other people without your permission, that isn’t a friend by my definition. Caring is also a big quality in friendship because you want someone who is going to take into consideration your feelings when they give you advice, and support you emotionally when things aren’t going so well.

My definition of empathy is being able to understand and share the feelings of someone. Basically it means you can understand what someone is going through because you’ve been in the same or a similar situation before. An example of me feeling empathy for someone is that a girl at my work wasn’t being treated so nice by our boss and was very upset by it. I was able to give her advice on the situation because my boss isn’t so nice to me sometimes. I think there is a lot to learn from empathetic situations because if something happens to you and someone has been in that situation before or something similar the y can tell you how they reacted and what they recommend you do to deal with it and I think it’s better than someone who hasn’t been in the situation giving you advice.

I don’t think that putting too much caring on personal caring relationships will lead to bigger ethical issues. I think that we should put more emphasis on personal caring relationships because it’s how people relate to one another. If we had people just using ethics of justice, a lot of feelings would be hurt. I think that is why bad things happen around the world because there aren’t enough personal caring relationships. I think that people need support systems in order to be happy.

This is a picture of my boyfriend Jared and I. I chose this picture because Jared and I are best friends. He’s one of my best friends because we have fun with each other, trust each other, and care for each other. He understands me and is able to offer me advice based off of what he thinks is good for me and what won’t hurt me. He’s the best!

The song I chose to represent friendship is “You’ve got a friend” by James Taylor. This is basically a song about friendship that lets someone know they can count on you and they’re there for you.