Humanities scholar Alexander Nehamas: “The major point is that morality is supposed to be impartial and universal. … Contrary to morality, friendship is a kind of value that is absolutely partial and preferential. In other words, it’s essential that I treat my friends differently from the way I treat everyone else. I will do favors for you and I will help you in ways that I will feel absolutely no obligation to do for someone else. And that doesn’t fit with our conception of morality, which says you should treat everyone the same.”