Friendship is often cited in criticisms of impartial consequentialist moralities such as utilitarianism. By requiring equal concern for all people, critics say, these moralities fail to capture the value of our special attachments to friends and other intimates. More recently, T. M. Scanlon has appealed to friendship in arguing against a broader position that he calls the 'teleological' view of value. This view holds, first, that the bearers of value are always states of affairs and, second,

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... t the only response value demands of us is to promote it, or to bring it into and keep it in existence. The teleological view is presupposed by impartial consequentialism but, as Scanlon notes, is in two respects broader. First, it is not committed to full impartiality but can allow agent-relativities in value, whereby a state is good only from one person's point of view or has more value from his point of view than from other people's. Thus, egoism, which tells each person to promote only his own good, can be teleological in form, as can self-referential altruism, which tells each person to give more weight to the good of people close to him, such as his family and friends, than to strangers. Second, the teleological view is not committed to consequentialism about the right, but can allow that there are deontological constraints making it sometimes wrong to do what will have the best consequences. Its only claim is that when value is in play -which it then cannot be in grounding the constraints -the only appropriate response is to promote it. Whatever other reasons there may be, the reasons generated by values are only to bring them into or keep them in existence.