I - Against associative obligations

Summary

This book sets itself the task of showing that the reasons justifying local obligation imply wider duties. That project at once meets a very basic obstacle indeed: the view that local obligations simply need no justifying reasons of a more general kind. The strongest versions of that view hold that all morality whatsoever is essentially local, so that to require further justification of local morality is to make a vain appeal to an empty or imaginary category. More moderate versions accept that there is a general morality that is not tied to local context, but that local obligations do not depend on any more general moral considerations for their force; local and general moralities coexist. Whether we consider the claim's more radical versions (which some would describe as relativistic) or its more moderate versions (best described as “dualist”), we confront, clearly, an issue that must be addressed. If local obligations are sustained by reasons that are themselves essentially local in their reach, the task set by this book is quixotic. If local obligations are self–justifying, we can hardly suppose that further obligations could be extracted from them. This chapter will maintain, however, that such claims about local obligation should be abandoned.

Now it is not at all uncommon to explain our own or other people's action simply by referring to some relevant relationship, or to one person's special position in relation to another.