Declaration
Pursuant to The University of Edinburgh’s Postgraduate Research Assessment
Regulations, (section 2.5) I hereby declare that the thesis has been composed by me,
that the work is my own, and that it has not been submitted for any other degree or
professional qualification.
Raymond G. Critch,
Vienna, 2 November 2010
Abstract
In this thesis I explore the possibility for a renewed communitarianism. Rather
than present this as a rival to liberalism, however, I present it as a supplement. I start
from the viewpoint that there are two basic facts with normative consequences the
reconciliation of which is the central task of moral and political philosophy. One fact is
the fact of individuality, which I believe produces a normative requirement that all and
only obligations that respect a certain kind of individual autonomy are legitimate. This
fact is well explained by liberalism, and so I am to that extent a liberal. Where I differ
from contemporary liberalism, and where I think there is room for a renewed
communitarianism, is in explaining the limits of autonomy. There are, I contend, a wide
array of basic and legitimate obligations that cannot be adequately explained (i.e. the
legitimacy of which cannot be explained) by autonomy alone. The role for
communitarianism, then, is to explain the nature of a second legitimating principle and
how these two principles – respect for autonomy and respect for (what I call) fraternity
– can work together to explain when various maxims and policies are legitimate or
illegitimate. In the first part I explain the importance of communitarianism. In the
second, I try and determine the nature of the principle that should be seen as
representing the normative requirements of the fact of sociality: the second inescapable
fact of moral and political philosophy, that while we are individuals we are never alone.
I will ultimately argue for a version of solidarity based on the role ethical obligations
play in incorporating the interests of others in one‟s own set of interests. In the final
part I explain how the ethical obligation at the heart of solidarity should work and then
how to reconcile the normative requirements of the fact of sociality with autonomy.
Acknowledgements
The material in this thesis has been greatly improved from my participation in a
wide array of conferences over the past three years. I am indebted to audiences in
Manchester and Edinburgh for feedback on Chapter 1, in Copenhagen and Pavia, Italy
for feedback on Chapter 5, and in London and Edinburgh for feedback on Chapter 6.
Also, portions of Chapter 5 are drawn from my paper Shelby’s Account of Solidarity and the
Problem of Compatibility, forthcoming in the Journal of Social Philosophy. I am indebted
to the feedback of the three anonymous reviewers there. This level of activity would not
have been possible without the generosity of the School of Philosophy, Psychology and
Language Sciences Research Support Grants.
The three years of my PhD studies would not have been possible without the
Rothermere Fellowship. My great appreciation is therefore due to Memorial University
of Newfoundland for awarding me the fellowship and to the Rothermere Foundation
for providing the financial backing for this wonderful opportunity.
I owe both personal and professional thanks to my doctoral supervisors, Mike
Ridge and Matthew Chrisman. From my arrival in Edinburgh in 2007 they have
challenged and supported me in equal measure. While I will accept the blame for any
errors or flaws in this thesis, they deserve some share in whatever credit accrues from it.
Thanks also are due to Campbell Brown and Jo Wolff, whose thorough criticisms of the
initial version of this thesis have greatly improved (though not perfected) the final
product.
My ridiculous gamble to abandon a career in law for the chance of a career in
philosophy would not have been possible without the boundless support of my parents,
Glenn and Marion Critch, and my wife Erin Drover. I hope they have enjoyed it, and
are happy with the rewards of our risk. I know I am.
Lastly, this work is dedicated to the memories of my grandparents Raymond
Reid and Evelyn Critch, from each whom I have received so much more than my
names.
RGC
Vienna, 2 November 2010
Table of Contents
Declaration……………………………………………………………………………. i
Abstract………………………………………………………………………………. ii
Acknowledgements ……………………………………………………………………iii
Table of Contents……………………………………………………………………. iv
Introduction……………………………………………………………………………1
Part I – Autonomy and the Standpoint of the Collective……………………………. 10
Chapter 1 – Autonomy and the Failure of the Communitarian Critique ………………11
Chapter 2 – The Limits of Autonomy and the Need for Fraternity …………………..40
Part II – Options for the Standpoint of the Collective………………………………. 69
Chapter 3 – Tradition and the Scope of Sociality …………………………………….70
Chapter 4 – Impartiality and the Demands of the Collective………………………….91
Chapter 5 – Solidarity and the Grounding of Fraternity …………………………….118
Part III – Consideration and the Standpoint of the Collective………………………147
Chapter 6 – Solidarity and Consideration……………………………………………148
Chapter 7 – Reconciling Fraternity and Autonomy………………………………….179
Bibliography ………………………………………………………………………. 202
1
Introduction: Dualist Communitarianism
This work is an attempt to revitalize communitarianism by presenting it as a
complement to, rather than a rival of, contemporary liberalism. I believe the failure of
the original communitarian program, which I identify with authors like Sandel, Taylor,
Walzer and MacIntyre, was because it focussed on critiquing liberalism. The version of
communitarianism presented here starts from accepting the validity of liberalism but
claiming that more is necessary to understand what justice requires. To have a just
society we must have one in which all and only genuine ultima facie obligations are
legitimate, or in which there is a minimum possible level of illegitimate obligations. What
I claim is that liberalism offers one principle and communitarianism offers another
which, when combined, can explain what makes various kinds of obligations legitimate.
This project, then, involves three central tasks. The first is to explain the need for
a communitarian principle: what are the shortcomings of liberalism such that a second
principle is necessary to explain what makes legitimate maxims and policies legitimate?
This will be the focus of part one. The second task is to determine exactly what the
communitarian principle should be. I call it fraternity, but this is a label rather than a
principle. It is at this point that the dualist methodology becomes important, which I will
explain in this introduction. Determining what fraternity involves is the focus of part
two. Part three tends to the final task – explaining how the two principles can work to
explain the legitimacy or illegitimacy of various maxims and policies. To this end I
explain how my preferred candidate for fraternity works, and then how it and the
principle of autonomy I draw from liberalism can work together to make maxims and
policies legitimate or illegitimate.
2
Methodologically, I begin with a dualist framework. I believe that the central task
of moral and political philosophy is the balancing of the demands of two different
features of human nature. One is the fact of individuality, which I believe makes
autonomy important. The other I call the fact of sociality, which I will argue requires us
to recognize that a version of solidarity has inescapable value. Thomas Nagel puts this
dualist methodology clearly at the outset of Equality and Partiality, from which I quote at
length.
My belief is not just that all social and political arrangements so far are
unsatisfactory. That might be due to the failure of all actual systems to realize
an ideal that we should all recognize as correct. But there is a deeper problem –
not merely practical, but theoretical: We do not yet possess an acceptable
political ideal, for reasons which belong to moral and political philosophy. The
unsolved problem is the familiar one of reconciling the standpoint of the
collectivity with the standpoint of the individual; but I want to approach it not
primarily as a question about the individual and society, but in essence and
origin about each individual‟s relation to himself. This reflects a conviction that
ethics, and the ethical basis of political theory, have to be understood as arising
from a division in each individual between two standpoints, the personal and
the impersonal. The latter represents the claims of the collectivity and gives
them force for each individual. If it did not exist, there would be no morality,
only the clash, compromise, and occasional convergence of individual
perspectives. It is because a human being does not occupy only his own point
of view that each of us is susceptible to the claims of others through private
and public morality.1
This quote sets out the main issues with which I am concerned in this thesis, and most
of the introduction will be spent explaining those issues, defending my approach to
them, and offering accounts of what I mean by some of the major terms at play here. I
agree with Nagel that reconciling these two standpoints – or, rather, the normative
requirements of the two facts I believe his standpoints represent – is the central task of
moral and political philosophy. I also agree that prior to this reconciliation we must
understand what the two standpoints involve and that the standpoint of the collective
must, in some way, be mediated through the individual. Where we differ is on what the

1
Thomas Nagel, Equality and Partiality, (New York: Oxford UP, 1991) pp. 3-4.
3
standpoint of the collective, or the fact of sociality, requires. While I believe we have an
adequate understanding of the ethical2
demands associated with the individuality, we do
not yet fully understand the normative requirements of sociality. This thesis will explore
why the sociality matters, why certain commonly offered options do not work, and
offers a proposal for a principle that I believe does.
The methodology of the two standpoints should be seen as a form of moral and
political dualism. I interpret the standpoints as representative of facts about the human
condition with normative implications. The standpoint of the individual represents the
fact of individuality, which can only be adequately respected by adopting maxims and
policies consistent with a principle of autonomy. The standpoint of the collective should
be understood as representing the fact of sociality, which is only properly respected by
adopting maxims and policies consistent with a principle I call fraternity. The features of
this definition naturally require explanation. I will start by explaining what I mean by the
facts of individuality and sociality, how these facts connect to Nagel‟s standpoints and
why they entail certain normative requirements.
The fact of individuality is the inescapable feature of human life that we are
separate individuals with ethically inaggregable plans and interests. I will explain this in
more detail in the first chapter where I discuss the nature of autonomy, but for the
moment it is important that we note the connection between the standpoints and the
facts I claim they represent. There is such a thing as a standpoint of the individual
because there exist a certain kind of individuals. That there are individuals of the
appropriate kind makes it wrong to act pursuant to certain maxims or to implement
certain policies that do not adequately accord with the normative requirements that

2 My use of the term ‘ethical’ here means to include both moral and political, as does my use of the
term ‘normative.’ It should not be seen as giving priority to either morality or the political.
4
adhere to individuality. I believe autonomy – which I will characterize as involving a
recognition of the importance of a life led from within through making meaningful
choices – is normatively required by individuality: to this extent, mine is a liberal theory.
If people were not separate individuals in the relevant ways, if we did not have plans and
interests that cannot adequately be aggregated, it would not matter whether we were
treated autonomously.
I believe a similar construction applies to the fact of sociality and the standpoint
of the collective. Individuals invariably have moral and political obligations because of
their ability to impact on the plans and interests of other individuals. This ineliminable
feature of human life I call the fact of sociality. In the same way as individuality requires
us to adopt maxims and policies in accord with autonomy, sociality has normative
demands of its own. To this extent, my thesis is a development on the communitarian
position. The nature of these demands will be the focus of this thesis, but whatever
substantive norms they involve I will categorize them as the principle of fraternity.
Fraternity here is a label rather than a definition, and it is one that I make with
full knowledge of the conceptual baggage that could be attached to my choice. Both in
its etymology and in its historical use, fraternity is a masculine word. Among the
ancients, where its equivalent was an expression of friendship held possible only among
male citizens, and among the moderns, where women were only included in the social
contract through their public connection to a male – their father, their husband or their
sons – fraternity was a sexist concept. In its last moment of prevalence, in the
enlightenment revolutions, it referred to a bond among soldiers in wartime that was also
exclusively masculine. I hope to remedy that defect here. I choose this word in full
awareness of its gendered history. I can only hope the uses to which I put it will be
5
clearly seen as informed by my feminist – that is, sensitive to the moral worth of men
and women – approach to moral and political philosophy. It is this sort of sensitivity
with which Susan Moller Okin critiqued contemporary liberalism for lacking that I hope
to bring to bear here, my central term notwithstanding.3
I choose fraternity for two reasons. First, because I believe all its major uses are
historical: it has largely fallen out of use over the past century. Rawls mentions fraternity
in his discussion of social cohesion and the perpetuation of a just society,4
and Dworkin
discusses it briefly in his explanation of associative political obligations,5
but neither
explains what it really involves or why it would be required. Neither comes anywhere
near to recognizing it as a principle akin to autonomy, representative of a second fact of
ethical importance. As such, while it certainly has conceptual baggage, this is older and
less closely connected to my study than the baggage that might come along with some
other words. But for this problem I might have used solidarity. However given the reemergence of concern with solidarity amongst Anglophone philosophers, there are too
many connections already underway.6 This might not be a problem were I to adopt a
version of solidarity closely linked with one or another of the extant options, the version
I will advocate is idiosyncratic. It is sufficiently different from the mainstream to warrant
a different label. I considered two alternatives: community and alterity. But ultimately
neither is particularly apt. Community seems to imply a wide number of individuals in a

3
Susan Moller Okin, Justice, Gender, and the Family, (New York: Basic, 1989), p. 76.
4
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice 2nd Ed., (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1999), p. 90.
5
Ronald Dworkin, Law’s Empire, (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1986) pp. 195-202.
6
Recent work on solidarity includes Tommie Shelby, We Who Are Dark, (London: Belknap, 2005),
Sally Scholz’s Political Solidarity (University Park, PA: Penn. State UP, 2008) and a special issue of
the Journal of Social Philosophy in 2007 dedicated exclusively to Solidarity, including contributions
from Sally Scholz, Carol Gould, Jean Harvey, Larry May and William Rehg that will be mentioned
elsewhere in this thesis.
6
way that I wish to avoid. Alterity, or „other-focussedness‟ is a relatively obscure term, so
while lacking baggage it might also have difficulty resonating as a valuable principle.
Returning to the methodology, I must defend the dualism of the two facts in
two different directions. Put simply, one objection asks „why two and not one,‟ while
another asks „why two and not more?‟ There is a temptation with dualist theories to
attempt to reduce one principle to the other or both principles to a third. I believe that
the two facts representing the two standpoints are sufficiently different that any attempt
to assimilate them in either direction would fail to adequately appreciate the concerns of
one or both of the principles involved. Attempts to try and explain sociality in terms
that reduce it to a component of autonomy would leave any resultant principle ill suited
to actually explaining what sociality involves. Likewise, individuality and autonomy are
so closely connected that attempting to reduce individuality to some other principle
would undermine individuality, undermine the principle, or leave only tenuous
connection between the two. On the other hand, I should consider whether there are
more than two facts of fundamental relevance to moral and political philosophy. While I
am open to this possibility, I cannot see what these alternative basic facts would be. As I
discussed earlier, while some kinds of community will doubtless require further principle
owing to other necessary features, a basic account of justice must explain what is
required for any society to arise among individuals. This seems to me to involve two
features: that society is the thing that arises among individuals and that individuals are
the things among which society arises. The first feature connects with the fact of
sociality, while the second leads to the fact of individuality. If there are more, they must
arise from particular forms of community that are more advanced than is necessary for
basic moral and political obligations to arise.
7
At this point it might be helpful to explain my use of moral and political
obligations and the role they play in this study. I follow Nagel in holding that the two
facts are critically important in explaining what moral and political philosophy involve,
but I will ordinarily frame this in terms of the legitimacy of obligations, and in particular
of whether one ought to adopt a maxim or policy. Maxim, here, is meant to refer to a
moral decision, while I intend to link policy with some political rule. I make no claims
about the connections between morality and politics apart from that the same two
standpoints underlie each sphere. That they are connected should be clear, but I will
make no effort in this thesis to explain the nature of that connection.
Furthermore, I discuss maxims and policies in terms of legitimacy, but in much
the same way as other authors discuss justice. In part, this is simply a matter of
following Nagel‟s methodology, but in part this reflects a possible difference between
the moral and the political. I believe that Rawls was wrong to claim that justice is the
first virtue of all social institutions, since morality itself is a social institution and justice
is not its first virtue.7 While justice seems an appropriate term for political legitimacy, it
does not quite seem appropriate to call morally right actions just. Likewise, it seems
awkward to call some politically just policies morally right. As such, I will use the more
neutral term legitimacy to describe both. What legitimacy involves will be discussed in
detail in chapter seven when I attempt to demonstrate how to reconcile the principles of
autonomy and fraternity. For the moment, I will simply say that legitimacy involves a
positive connection between a principle and a maxim or policy, such that a maxim or
policy can be legitimate or illegitimate due to its fidelity or infidelity to a given principle.

7
Rawls 1999, p. 1. See also for a response to efforts to expand the category of ‘social institution’ to
encompass things like the family and morality as a whole see Brian Barry, A Theory of Social Justice
Vol. 2: Justice as Impartiality, (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995), p. 72ff. Here, Barry claims that these are
not properly political. For an explanation of why they are see Okin 1989.
8
To whatever extent this discussion applies to political questions it contributes to a
theory of justice, while to whatever extent it applies to moral questions, it contributes to
a theory of rightness. In either case, it is a question of what principle legitimates various
proposed maxims or policies as consistent with the normative requirements of the fact
of sociality.
As mentioned above, this thesis will follow in three parts. In the first part I
explain why a study of the standpoint of the collective is important. This will involve
two chapters. In chapter one I show how autonomy represents the normative
requirements of the fact of individuality. I frame this in terms of a reply to the
communitarian critique. Put simply, liberalism is right to contend that individuality is
important and to whatever extent the communitarian critique relies on the claim that we
are not autonomous individuals in the liberal sense it is doomed to failure. Nonetheless,
I believe there is something left for a communitarian theory to do: to explain what really
is required by our sociality and how these requirements should interact with the
requirements of autonomy. I demonstrate the shortcomings of autonomy in the second
chapter. There are many important maxims and policies, including family partiality and
the obligation to obey the law, that cannot be adequately explained as legitimate by
autonomy. Their legitimacy must come from a second principle, the content of which I
will work out here. Finally, the ways in which autonomy fails here provide us with
criteria for judging among candidates for the principle of fraternity.
Part two involves an assessment of three candidates for the principle of
fraternity. In chapter three I assess whether tradition can play the role required. On its
most plausible interpretation, tradition is insufficiently universalizable to account for the
basic kind of ethical obligations required at the level of bare sociality. Chapter four
9
involves an examination of impartiality to determine whether this commonly discussed
principle can adequately represent the standpoint of the collective. I find that a secondorder impartiality of the kind discussed by Brian Barry is too vacuous to serve,8 while
first-order impartiality of a Nagelian kind is incompatible with the kind of obligations
we are concerned to legitimate.9 Chapter five looks to three different conceptions of
solidarity to determine whether one of these might fit with the needs of the dualist
approach. While a robust version of solidarity found in Tommie Shelby is too strong to
be compatible with autonomy,10 and a weak version based on self-interest is important
but lacks the necessary alterity, I argue that a moderate version can work. This would
involve the idea that the interests of another generate obligations to enter into
relationships of solidarity under certain circumstances and through a very basic ethical
obligation. I call this Moderate Ethical Solidarity, and explain how it is plausible at the
end of chapter five.
Part three picks up with Moderate Ethical Solidarity and attempts to show how
a basic ethical obligation of consideration can play the key ethical role of incorporating
the interests of another into one‟s own interest set. This is the focus of chapter six. This
conception of moderate ethical solidarity via consideration, then, is my proposed
candidate for the principle of fraternity: the fact of sociality requires us to enter into
relationships of solidarity with another when we recognize that a common interest will
be more likely met by such entry, while consideration leads us to have this recognition
when the circumstances exist. In the seventh and final chapter I explain how, on a
dualist approach, this principle can be reconciled with autonomy to explain when a

8
Barry 1995.
9
Nagel 1991.
10 Shelby 2005.
10
maxim or policy is legitimate. Ultimately, I contend that fraternity and autonomy have
different valences of legitimacy. Fraternity requires a process of legitimation, while
autonomy provides a standard below which obligations are difficult to legitimate. This
leads to a stringent approach to legitimacy, one where each principle has a veto over the
legitimacy of a maxim or policy. I defend this result as consistent with the phenomena
involved in choosing from among evil options.
11
Part I: Autonomy and the Prospects for
a Renewed Communitarianism
Abstract: In this part I explain why autonomy is an important but limited
value. We are individuals of the kind Liberalism claims, but this is not our
only morally or politically relevant characteristic. To focus on autonomy
alone is to neglect the importance of our sociality and what principles it
might require. In chapter one I will provide a characterization of autonomy
in the context of explaining the failure of the original communitarian
critique. In chapter two I will explain how the version of autonomy
presented in chapter one cannot, by itself, provide a sufficient condition for
the legitimacy of an important category of maxims. This should show the
value of a renewed communitarian project focussed on explaining how a
second principle can demonstrate the legitimacy of some basic ethical
intuitions.
12
Chapter 1: Autonomy and the Failure of the Communitarian Critique
Abstract
This chapter serves two purposes. Firstly, it argues that the original
communitarian critique has failed. The critique‟s negative claims about liberalism –
specifically that the liberal view of the concept of the autonomous individual is not an
accurate depiction of human nature – depend on its positive claims about the nature of
individuality. Since the positive claim fails – because the communitarian view of the
concept of individuality is itself implausible or misunderstands the liberal project – the
original negative claims also fail. Secondly, this chapter gives an account of autonomy
that accurately represents the liberal discussion and that can serve as a central moral and
political value. This kind of autonomy combines an authenticity condition with the
importance of meaningful choice. This chapter will therefore prepare the way for what
follows in the next chapter, where I discuss the need for a second legitimating principle,
and the remainder of the thesis where I explain what that second principle should be.
Introduction
This chapter will explore the failure of the original communitarian critique. In so
doing, it will accomplish two goals. First, it explains how and to what extent the original
communitarian critique failed. The core of the communitarian critique, in authors like
Sandel, Walzer, McIntyre and Taylor, was a critique of the liberal view that justice
requires us to treat others as autonomous because of our individuality. Communitarians
based their critique on the view that we are not individuals in the way liberals contend,
and so autonomy cannot have the importance it does in liberalism. In my view the
problem with the communitarian critique is that individuals are like liberals believe:
13
separate selves deserving of autonomy. For communitarianism to have any role, then, it
must claim that there is something more to the human condition than individuality that
is relevant for explaining the legitimacy of moral and political obligations.
Second, in defending liberalism against the original communitarian critique I will
present an account of what I believe is at the core of the liberal position. This involves
explaining the nature and importance of autonomy to liberal thought and defending it
against communitarian objections. I will show how autonomy arises from the
separateness of persons. The connection between autonomy and separateness is
different for different theorists. For Rawls it is based on the fundamental intuition that
people are „free and equal.‟ I claim, following Raz, that separateness can be seen as
implying autonomy because of the incommensurability of plans and the importance of
plans to individuality. These values seem, to me following Raz, to only be ensured in a
society that recognizes a principle that individuals ought to be treated in such a way that
they can live life from within through making meaningful choices.
Following this explanation of the source and nature of autonomy I explain why
the original communitarian critique fails. As Kymlicka shows, the communitarian faces a
dilemma. He must either advance a view of people – a basic ontology of human nature
– that is either deeply incoherent or accept one that that is no longer problematic for a
liberal moral/political theorist. However, the communitarian position need not have
failed so easily. It need not be premised on the plausibility of the communitarian
conception of the self, or on the implausibility of the liberal connection between
individuality and autonomy. A communitarian could, instead, argue against the liberal
treatment of sociality. What I believe a communitarian should argue – what remains for
the critique – is that the liberal conception of the self, while coherent, is limited. It can
14
only represent the normative requirements of individuality, and that liberals either omit
or mischaracterize the demands of sociality. The view that autonomy is important
because of individuality is correct, but it is a part, not the whole, of an explanation for
which maxims and policies are legitimate in a just society. While liberals are right that we
are individuals, what remains for the communitarian critique is to show that this is not
all that we are. I will explain the importance of this role in the next chapter and will take
up the task of developing a communitarian principle in the remainder of the thesis.
I. Individuality and the Original Communitarian Critique
At its core, the communitarian critique claims that the liberal connection
between individuality and autonomy is wrong. Rather than disputing the connection
between autonomy and individuality, most communitarians instead challenged the
liberal approach to individuality. Ultimately, the claim is that we are not like liberals
think we are: we are not individuals in the supposedly „atomistic‟ way that makes
autonomy a genuinely valuable principle. There are two stages to the communitarian
argument. The first is to deny the liberal claim of neutrality about the concept of
individuality, while the second is to demonstrate that the conception of individuality
operative in liberal thought, and on which autonomy depends, is implausible. While I
will ultimately argue that this approach fails – that we are the kind of individuals liberals
presume and that autonomy is an important political value – I nonetheless must present
the communitarian critique first, so that we can understand both what fails and what
remains.
Several different arguments are usually framed as communitarian critiques of
liberalism but the important feature these arguments share – which unites them as
communitarian – is an objection to the liberal understanding of the concept of
15
individuality. Of course, since Rawls, their primary target, claimed to be neutral about
the concept of individuality, the first step in the communitarian argument is to claim
that there is an implicit, if not explicit, concept of the individuality at work in liberal
moral and political theorizing. This shows up in Taylor‟s argument against Rawls‟
reflective equilibrium and in Sandel‟s objections to Rawlsian claims of metaphysical
neutrality, as I will discuss here.
In his work on Hegel, Taylor discusses a Hegel-inspired approach to the
Kantian-influenced Rawlsian liberalism. The distinction between moralität and sittlichkeit
is key for both Hegel and Taylor. Moralität is characterized as an attempt to derive
universal ethical principles from a single fixed point. It is meant in contrast with
Sittlichkeit, which is an attempt to define ethical principles based on the practices of a
community. To Hegel, the former is really a veiled attempt to do the latter – to attempt
to bolster the practices of a community by claiming that they have a foundation in
something beyond the community. „Hegel runs counter to the moral instinct of
liberalism then and now,‟ Taylor says. „Between obligations which are founded on our
membership of some community and those which are not so contingent we tend to
think of the latter as transcending the former, as the truly universal moral obligations.‟11
To Taylor, we err in favouring the universal and abstract over the communal and
contextualized. Liberals make this mistake, Taylor claims, because they advance a
conception of individuality that is indeterminate in a Kantian-Hegelian sense; it is
without content, or „empty.‟ According to Taylor, Hegel claims that the desire to be
autonomous in the moralität sense „expresses the demand of [Geist] to deduce its whole
content out of itself, not to accept as binding anything which is merely taken up from

11 Charles Taylor, Hegel, (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1975), p. 377.
16
the outside.‟12 This leaves Geist empty because it leaves an individual who seeks freedom
or autonomy only for the sake of being free rather than for the sake of the plans that
freedom might allow us to achieve; a form of an individual devoid of content. Only
within a sittlichkeit could Geist, grounded in the practices of a community even while
trying to change those practices, find a solid foundation and avoid the view that
freedom is its own reward.
Sandel‟s criticisms attempt to build on Taylor‟s initial critique. In Liberalism and
the Limits of Justice, Sandel claims that the liberal notion of the self is problematically
“unembedded.” Sandel‟s argument is, in part, an argument from phenomena: liberal
claims about the nature of the self violate our perceptions. We do not experience
ourselves as unencumbered individuals. We cannot, Sandel claims, abstract away from
our various characteristics and relationships to find some underlying core upon which
we can then make moral judgements.13 In part, this can be seen as a reaction against the
Rawlsian approach to the original position, but as such an argument it misses the mark.
The original position is a device used to force moral deciders to abstract away from
most of their morally irrelevant considerations, allowing only morally relevant
considerations to influence deliberations about the fundamental principles of justice.
This is not a phenomenal claim – it is not a claim that people are „really like that,‟ or that
people can experience themselves as unencumbered selves. Nonetheless, whether these
abstractions in the original position influence the content of the principles of justice and

12 Ibid. 369. Geist, in Taylor and Hegel’s terms, is a polysemous word. It translates into English as
‘mind,’ ‘consciousness,’ ‘spirit,’ ‘soul,’ or, in some Hegelian contexts, as ‘reason.’ At this point,
Taylor uses the term ‘spirit,’ which is also the term used in most translations of Hegel. However, I
find this nomenclature misleading. It lends a critically important concept a sense of hokey
supernaturality. It should be thought of as something closer to the mind’s consciousness. Particularly
in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Geist, Geist undergoes a journey linked to the growing and unfolding of
consciousness as it explores the phenomenal world.
13 Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1983), esp. pp. 24-28.
17
thereby prejudice the deliberations remains a potentially legitimate concern. Sandel
claims that it does, but in making this claim he relies on a presentation of an alternative
conception of the self. Rather then see ourselves as an ego with accidental traits, we see
ourselves as inextricably „composed of‟ our commitments and attachments. According
to Sandel, individuals self-perceive as a combination of a number of traits (educated,
athletic, blind) and a series of relations (friend, brother, student) rather than as an
underlying, unencumbered ego.14
If people are not individuals in the way liberals claim this might undermine the
importance of autonomy. However, to truly assess the success or failure of the
communitarian position I must first explain what autonomy means in liberal thought.
Only then will I be in a position to explain why it matters and why, insofar as it is an
argument against the importance of autonomy, the communitarian critique must fail.
II. Liberalism and Autonomy
Most theories of justice, or of the legitimacy of moral and political maxims and
policies, have some principle at their core. To borrow Rawls‟ analogy, one
epistemological theory is differentiated from others in part by how they differ about
what knowledge involves or how it can be reached. Moral/political theories are the
same: they differ in which principles are taken to required and how. In this regard I take
a principle requiring respect for autonomy to be the central principle in contemporary
liberal theories. In this section I explain the concept of “central principle” before I
discuss the role of autonomy in contemporary liberal thought.
When I say that the requirement of respect for autonomy principle is the central
principle for contemporary liberalism I claim that autonomy is something that a given a

14 Sandel 1983, pp. 15-24.
18
maxim or policy must be positively connected to in order to be legitimate, or negatively
connected to in order to be illegitimate. This legitimation can work in a two different
ways, corresponding to the positive and negative connections just mentioned. In the
positive context, a principle can provide a source of legitimacy: insofar as a maxim or
policy is formed pursuant to a principle that maxim or policy is legitimate. In the
negative context, failure to satisfy the demands of a principle can render a maxim or
policy illegitimate. I characterize these two versions of legitimacy as “process” and
“threshold,” and they will be discussed in detail in chapter seven, where they play a
critical role in determining how to reconcile the demands of individuality and those of
sociality. As such, I set aside questions of how much autonomy is necessary until then.15
There is no one fixed definition of autonomy. It plays somewhat different roles
in different systems of moral and political legitimacy. A communitarian who wishes to
claim that their theory includes autonomy will be inclined to adopt a restricted definition
of autonomy – one which makes it consistent with the communitarian‟s central moral or
political principle. Conversely, a libertarian will approach autonomy as a much more
exacting standard. Neither approach is necessarily wrong or incoherent. Nonetheless, I
believe the liberal approach best characterizes both the consequences and the sources of
autonomy. However, since not all liberals are in complete agreement about the nature of
autonomy, I will develop a hybrid view that I believe would be largely supported by all
the major thinkers in the contemporary tradition.
My approach most closely parallels Raz‟s in The Morality of Freedom, but it is
reflected, I believe, in Rawls, Kymlicka and other authors who, in my view, represent
the core of the contemporary liberal tradition. Raz presents three central features of

15 See the discussion beginning at p. 183.
19
autonomy: An autonomous individual has the (1) mental capacity and the (2)
independence to choose (3) from a variety of meaningful options.16 All three of these
requirements depend on the role of choice. The first quality sets a precondition of
mental ability under which choice is possible. This reflects the care Raz takes earlier in
The Morality of Freedom to distinguish biological self-interest from well-being.17 This
distinction rests on the role choice does not play in our biological interests. Just as bees
do not choose to work in hives, humans do not choose many of the things that are
important to us. For humans, biological functions can be denied or overridden by other
goals. Children can hold their breath until they pass out. Prisoners can starve
themselves. Clergy can remain celibate. In some ways we might be best off if we did not
have some of our biological urges, but we cannot choose simply not to have them.
Desires to breathe, eat and mate persist even when we deny them indulgence. In the
examples above, the child still has an interest in breathing, the prisoner in eating and the
clergy in sex. In each case a more important interest – the child‟s spite, the prisoner‟s
cause and the clergy‟s spirituality – overrides the biological interest. This ability to
override, to choose, comprises the mental capacity necessary for genuine autonomy.
The second requirement, independence to choose, introduces a threshold below
which choice is not possible. If one is poor in a society where most basic goods and
services require great wealth, ones autonomy is limited. One‟s autonomy would be
limited, perhaps to the point of extinction, even though one would have the mental
ability to choose and options that would be meaningful (to be explained momentarily)
were they within the range of choices possible due to one‟s circumstances.

16 Raz, The Morality of Freedom, (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1986), pp. 372ff.
17 Raz 1986, pp. 289ff.
20
The third criterion‟s dependence on choice is more controversial as it is imbued
with Raz‟s perfectionism. I will briefly explain the role this perfectionism plays, and why
it is not necessarily problematic. What makes an option meaningful for Raz is its ability
to further the well being of the individual involved. This is perfectionistic because it
establishes one feature of human existence as central: by improving that feature you
invariably improve that person‟s life. Fortunately, Raz establishes a very flexible
approach to perfectionism by making well being the central good. Since we can
understand well being in a number of different ways, it is sensitive to the demands of
reasonable pluralism.
What is most important about well being for Raz is its connection with an
individual‟s plans and goals. „Improving the well being of a person,‟ Raz explains, „can
normally only be done through his goals. If they are bad for him the way to help him is
to help him change them, and not to frustrate their realization (except on rare occasions
when this is an adequate way of getting him to change them).‟18 This emphasis on an
established standard – well being conceived of as the satisfaction of plans even when the
plans are wrong – is closely linked with the approaches of supposedly anti-perfectionist
theorists like Rawls and Kymlicka. While for Raz meaningfulness pertains to well being,
for an anti-perfectionist it could be restricted to whatever constitutes meaningfulness for
the individual involved. Raz‟s characterization of well being is broad enough to be
compatible with a certain limited anti-perfectionism. Kymlicka talks about
meaningfulness in showing how leading a life from within is what is important to
liberals.19 This works positively and negatively. On the positive side, the ability to choose
life partners is a meaningful choice because, given the impact one‟s spouse(s) can have

18 Raz 1986, p. 291.
19 Will Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community, and Culture, (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1989), p. 57.
21
on one‟s interests, this choice will almost always have value for the individual involved.
On the negative side, the ability to choose among religions is not a meaningful choice to
a religiously indifferent individual because – in Razian terms – it would not add to her
well being or – in Kymlickan terms – because it is not a choice that has any value for the
individual involved.
The centrality of choice to autonomy is most explicit in Kymlicka‟s Liberalism,
Community and Culture. It comes up in his critique of Sandel‟s approach to embeddedness
that I will discuss in detail at the end of this chapter. For the moment, consider
Kymlicka‟s claims that what is wrong with Sandel‟s view about the importance of
embeddedness is that „on this view, we neither choose nor reject [constitutive]
attachments, rather we find ourselves in [the attachments]; our ends and goals come not
by choice but by self-discovery.‟20 This view is rejected as implausible because „we can
and do make sense of questions not just about the meaning of the roles and attachments
we find ourselves in, but also about their value.‟21 Choice – the ability to determine value
– is a central feature of human life that characterizes autonomy for Kymlicka and other
liberals, whether perfectionists like Raz or anti-perfectionsists like Rawls and Kymlicka.
Rawls usually frames the ability to choose in the more overtly Kantian language
of a life led from within.22 The basic premise of Rawlsian liberalism is that people are
essentially free and equal. This is the central premise that influences the original
position, the deliberation of basic principles and their implementation after the lifting of
the veil of ignorance. To Rawls, living autonomously is how one expresses one‟s
freedom and equality. He says „by acting from these [basic] principles [of justice]

20 Kymlicka 1989, p. 57.
21 Ibid., p. 58.
22 Rawls 1999, 221-227.
22
persons are acting autonomously: they are acting from principles they would
acknowledge under conditions that best express their nature as free and equal rational
beings.‟23 Rawls‟ appeal to rationality fits well with Raz‟s first criterion of mental
capacity, where the value of freedom is shown in autonomy‟s central ability to choose.
The ability to acknowledge principles as our own, rather than because they are the
principles of some other, is the central feature of autonomy. That we are all free and
equal is why we must all be autonomous, otherwise it would make sense for the smart,
strong, or wise to rule over those less capable. It would be in some of our best interests
to rule and in some of our best interests to follow. Moral equality makes such a
circumstance unjust, requiring all lives to be led from within by choosing and evaluating
options for oneself.
Kymlicka also serves as a bridge between the Razian and the Rawlsian approach
to autonomy. While Kymlicka refers to autonomy as choice in some contexts, in others
he adopts the Rawlsian language of the „life led from within.‟ He says, with reference to
the ability to make mistakes in choosing from among meaningful options, that „no life
goes better by being led from the outside according to values the person doesn‟t
endorse. My life only goes better if I‟m leading it from the inside, according to my
beliefs about value.‟24 Furthermore, we can see the language of autonomy as a central
value in Kymlicka‟s Rawlsian formulation as well. Because living a life from within is
always better, and lives are only better when led from within, all other potential political
values must be included only in such a way as not to sacrifice that autonomy. This
adopts the emphasis on choice of Raz‟s approach into language with which antiperfectionists will be more comfortable. For Raz, the choices have to be among

23 Ibid., p. 452.
24 Kymclika 1989, p. 12.
23
meaningful options. What counts as meaningful for Raz includes only those choices
conducive to well being, characterized as the satisfaction of goals. What counts as
meaningful for Kymlicka, Rawls and anti-perfectionists is defined by the values of the
person involved, which is a broader class than for Raz.
Ultimately, then I characterize the value of autonomy as the ability to live
one’s life from within through making meaningful choices. This definition
encompasses both the authenticity condition that we saw as important in Kymlicka and
Rawls and the “meaningful choices” condition found in Raz. What is central to all is the
importance of choice to a life led from within. This does not mean that one must have
unlimited options, or unfettered ability to do whatever one wishes: a meaningful range
of options given one‟s own priorities and inclinations suffices for autonomy. We will
return to this definition of autonomy again in Chapter 7, where we see exactly how
strong a requirement it is, but for the moment I must provide some justification for
thinking that this value is what our individuality normatively requires. This justification
is the focus of the next section.
III. Autonomy and Individuality
Using the criteria for political value and autonomy presented above, a respect
for autonomy is clearly the central principle of liberal political systems. For Rawls,
autonomy plays a critical role in generating the two principles of justice and in their
lexical ordering: it explains both why the difference principle is important as a version of
a principle of equality and why the principle of liberty is more important. For Raz,
autonomy is that central feature of political morality that makes freedom an essential
requirement of legitimate authority. For Kymlicka, our autonomy is at the core of our
natures and explains why an ability to choose among conceptions of the good (and their
24
applications) is of undeniable importance. For all liberals it is grounded in aspects of our
individuality that any moral and political theory must address if it is to explain which
maxims and policies are legitimate.
A. Separateness and the importance of individuality
In each case I believe autonomy gets its value from with individuality because of
a commitment to the separateness of persons. Autonomy might not be linked to
individuality. Collectives can be autonomous too. A collective can make judgements and
have interests apart from the interests of its constituent individuals. Collective interests
are the plans and goals that give rise to collective well being, on this view. Collective
plans involve choices the following of which allow a group to live an authentic, selfdirected life. Collectives, just like individuals, could be seen as institutions demanding
autonomy in the sense that they are institutions that could make use of the abilities
autonomy is meant to encompass and protect. While the metaphysical commitments of
this approach to society are problematic, the liberal claim should try and find a way to
justify that individuals are the kinds of entities to which autonomy primarily pertains.
The liberal claim that autonomy must be a property of individuals cannot be grounded
on the belief that only individuals can have the kind of plans, goals, and ends the
fulfilment of which requires autonomy. If capacity to have ends suffices to give rise to
the importance of autonomy, then collectives could demand autonomy too. As such,
liberals need an argument to claim that what is autonomous is the individual, rather than
some other type of thing that can have interests and plans.
The liberal justification for stressing individual, rather than collective, autonomy
as important relies on the separateness of persons. The separateness of persons makes
collective autonomy different from individual autonomy. Collectives involve either
25
identification or aggregation of interests. Identification of interests happens when two
people each have the same goal and the satisfaction of that goal for one of them
constitutes satisfaction of the goal for both. If I have a goal of stopping global warming
and you also have this goal, were these interests identifiable it would not matter which
of us actually achieved the goal. In this way an identity of interests is different from a
mutual interest. If we had a mutual interest in stopping global warming, this implies that
we coordinate efforts to achieve this goal. If our interests identify, no coordination is
necessary. Identity of interests is a significantly higher standard than aggregability of
interests, since identifiable interests are necessarily aggregable, but aggregable interests
are not necessarily identifiable. Identity of interests is also deeply implausible given what
Rawls calls the „fact of reasonable pluralism.‟25 The fact of reasonable pluralism is the
fact that reasonable people can reach different conclusions about what is important. By
accepting the fact of reasonable pluralism we accept that people have different interests,
and that even when they have the same interests they may value them differently. Since
the fact of pluralism seems true,
26 complete identity of interests is a dubious ground for
judgement, leaving aggregability of interests the only option for showing that persons
are relevantly non-separate.
B. Aggregation and Individuality
What do I mean by the separateness of persons? There are many ways to
express the intuition behind this slogan. Most ways are metaphysical. In one sense, we
are separate people because we do not share a mind: I cannot know your thoughts
without the mediation of some form of communication, nor can you know mine
without similar circumstances. Why, however, would this be of any moral or political

25 John Rawls, Political Liberalism, (New York: Columbia UP, 1993), p. 24n and pp. 36-40.
26 The fact of pluralism will be discussed again in more detail in chapters two and five.
26
relevance? Strictly by itself it might not. Suppose there are only two people left on earth,
living at opposite ends. If they never interact, why would their separateness have any
moral and political relevance? From where would the moral and political relevance
come? Furthermore, if people were able to read minds or hear thoughts they would still
believe that the thoughts they would (presumably) be able to tell their own thoughts
from those of others.27 Even if, however, I was wrong about this, I do not depend on
metaphysical separateness for my discussion. I discuss separateness in an ethical context
rather than a metaphysical one. Where the moral and political relevance of the
separateness of persons arises is through the attachment of individuals to interests and
plans. We are separate in a way that is morally and politically relevant because we have
interests and plans of our own, in which other people may or may not figure in morally
relevant ways.
The question of personal identity is an ethical question because it is inextricably
associated with our interests.28 My circumstances and my identity will give rise to a
system of value for me because they make some things appear to be better for me and
other things appear to be worse for me. This valuation is, to some extent, chosen. I am
capable of questioning whether some goal or some activity is „worth it‟ for me. Indeed,
some kind of weighing of interests is inevitable, given the finitude of mental and
physical capacities. My life and its circumstances only provide me with the resources to
accomplish so many of my possible goals. For instance, given the length of time I can
reasonably expect to live and the length of time it takes to become a Symphony
Conductor and a respected Philosophy Professor, I am unlikely to have the chance to

27 This is, however, an empirical question that I, thankfully, cannot answer at this point. In any event,
since we cannot have unmediated access to another’s thoughts, the point is moot.
28 In this, I am most closely, though not exactly, following Raz’s language, as he makes the necessary
distinctions most clearly. I believe the essence of what follows would be acceptable to most liberal
theorists.
27
do both. To my knowledge, no one has. These goals are interests – it would be generally
better for me in the Razian sense if I were to have them satisfied. They might also be in
my interest in a different sense. It might be the case that my life will go better if I
succeed at my chosen or stumbled-upon endeavours. Even if this was false, however,
and I would be better off in the long run if my plans were to fail, it is still an interest (in
the first sense) to have them succeed. In this way countervailing interests override rather
than extinguish lesser interests, as pro tanto reasons for action override other, weaker, pro
tanto reasons.29 Those overridden interests do not cease to have moral weight; rather
their moral weight is overwhelmed by the moral weight of some other interest.
C. How interests require separateness
The explanation of why individuals, rather than collectives, are the kind of
things to which autonomy is important is closely connected with the separateness of
persons, but what effectively demonstrates that persons are separate is some basic
features of ethical concepts themselves. The evidence for this claim is usually framed as
an argument against utilitarianism (in Rawls) or consequentialism (in Raz), but ultimately
it depends on the notion that our ordinary use of the concept of moral obligation is not
legitimately aggregable. Individuals‟ interests cannot be legitimately traded off against
those of other individuals, nor can an individual‟s interests be partially satisfied by partial
satisfaction of a set of individuals‟ interests of which one is a member. In Raz this takes
the form of an argument against comparability. In Rawls it involves the claim that
individuals in the original position would reject such a schema. Ultimately, I believe the
conceptual problem underlies both approaches, but my extreme view is unnecessary to

29 My use of pro tanto and prima facie reasons here follows Shelly Kagan’s use in The Limits of
Morality, (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1986), p. 17. It differs from other uses in that prima facie reasons are
apparently reasons but may not be genuine reasons all things considered, while pro tanto reasons are
always reasons, even if they are not what one ought, ultima facie, do.
28
prove the point. In either event, individual interests cannot be legitimately aggregated,
thus guaranteeing their ethical separateness and that the relevant kind of autonomy
attaches to individuals.
In the Rawlsian framework the separateness of persons plays a key role in
distinguishing a utilitarian theory of justice from justice as fairness. „Utilitarianism does
not take seriously the distinction between persons,‟ 30 Rawls claims because „it does not
matter [to a utilitarian] how this sum of satisfactions is distributed among individuals
any more than it matters, except indirectly, how one man distributes his satisfactions
over time. The correct distribution in either case is that which yields the maximum
fulfilment.‟31 The trouble with this in a Rawlsian framework is that parties in the original
position would not agree to it. Risk aversion means that those who are left worst off by
this maximalist approach will reject it.32 However, for present purposes the Rawlsian
argument illustrates the connection between aggregation and the separateness of (or, in
Rawls‟ term, distinction between) persons. Aggregation is illicit because people are
ethically separate. It matters not a whit to those at the bottom of the social food chain
how happy those at the top are made by the unequal distribution of resources among
them. Aggregation would be rejected in the original position and cannot, for Rawls,
form any direct part of the principles of justice.33

30 Rawls 1999, p. 24.
31 Ibid., p. 23.
32 Raz 1986, p. 164.
33 I side with Rawls here against others like Harsanyi and Broome. While a full discussion of this
problem is beyond the scope of this paper, I should note that non-aggregability is a controversial
point. A series of articles, starting with Harsanyi’s critique of A Theory of Justice in 1975, details the
problem. See John C. Harsanyi, ‘Can the Maximin Principle Serve as a Basis for Morality? A
Critique of John Rawls’s Theory.’ The American Political Science Review, Vol. 69, No. 2 (1975), pp.
594-606, and John Broome, Weighing Lives, (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004). For Rawls’ opposition to
this see Rawls 1999, pp. 19-30 and 160-165.
29
Raz‟s perfectionist approach, however, deals with the problem of aggregation
and separateness by demonstrating the incommensurability of individual plans. In his
view, the incommensurability of individual interests makes them non-aggregable and
thereby demonstrates that it is only by considering the individual and the smallest unit
to which interests and plans attach that we can develop a theory of the legitimacy of
moral and political obligations. Consequentialism depends on a belief that the interests
and plans of individuals are comparable, Raz claims, before presenting an argument that
they are not.
„The reasons for [a person] to be engaged in [a project, pursuit or relationship]
are incommensurate with reasons for him to engage in some other projects,
pursuits or relationships which are incompatible with those he has. There are
two aspects to the proposition. First, the value of many pursuits to people
other than the agent, their value to society, cannot be compared with the value
of many alternative pursuits. Second, their value to the agent, their contribution
to his well-being, cannot be compared with that of many others.‟34
While this can be framed in epistemic terms, as an inability to know which set of
projects is more valuable overall, it is more accurately understood as a version of what
Raz calls incommensurability. Two options are incommensurable when „neither is better
than the other‟ or „there is (or could be) another option which is better than one but is
not better than the other.‟35 Plans and the satisfaction of interests are a key example of
this. While it is difficult enough for one individual to choose among possible life plans,
it is distinctly more difficult to choose among possible life plans for multiple individuals.
Indeed, it is only by treating a collective as though it were an individual that we think
such a comparison possible.36

34 Raz 1986, pp. 340-341.
35 Ibid., p. 325
36 A point Rawls also makes against utilitarians at Rawls 1999 pp. 23-3. For discussion of this
problem see Raz 1986 pp. 358-9.
30
What each of these two approaches shows is that individuality matters to the
satisfaction of plans and interests in a way that makes their aggregation conceptually
illicit. If people‟s interests are aggregable, alike plans would be equal in worth to other
like plans. Plans could be commensurable if, for example, one person‟s success were just
as good as another person‟s success no matter who succeeds. If a theorist treats
individuals solely as the bearers of plans, non-ethically separate individuals would be
individuals whose plans could be aggregated. The satisfaction of plans and interests
could be pooled and individuals would be entitled to a certain percentage of satisfaction
as members of a pool. However, as Rawls points out, the distribution of satisfactions
matters. If aggregability were legitimate, the satisfaction of the plans of one part of the
set is equally as good as the satisfaction of the plans of another part of the aggregation.
However, this is an implausible picture of individuals. Those in the Rawlsian
situation would reject it, while those in the Razian picture would find it an inaccurate
depiction of their circumstances. When individuals are considered as people with plans,
the natural conclusion is that they are separate, and that the satisfaction of one‟s plans is
not equivalent to the satisfaction of another‟s. Any attempt to make people‟s plans
commensurable either involves an implausible approach to plans or an implausible
approach to people. As I believe Raz has shown in my prior discussion, this becomes
clear when we look in detail at what it is to have a plan and to have that plan succeed.
This shows that the picture of the connection between individuals and their interests
that allows pooling of interests is implausible from the start, and that any attempt to
make people commensurable depends on this implausible picture.
31
D. Separateness and Liberalism
The importance of the non-aggregability of individual plans is apparent in the
justification of individual autonomy throughout the liberal tradition. The separateness of
persons permeates Rawls‟ work, arising out of reflective equilibrium‟s key conclusion
that people are „free and equal.‟ However, the connection between „free and equal‟ and
separateness becomes more obvious at certain key points. The clearest presentation
comes in his discussion of why rationality can serve as a thin theory of the good. He
claims that central to the notion of personhood is Royce‟s idea of a plans. He says that
„for Royce, an individual says who he is by describing his purposes and causes, what he
intends to do in his life.‟37 (Theory 358) In this emphasis on plans Rawls is close to Raz
and to the argument from incommensurability above. However, this is one point at
which reflective equilibrium seems to be, in Taylor‟s phrase, holding a lot of the cards.38
We know that for Rawls reflective equilibrium generates the central view that justice
depends on a society where people are „free and equal,‟ but we do not know why. Why
this is unfortunate will be explained in a moment when I discuss the communitarian
critique, but since Kymlicka picks up on the Rawlsian approach, their views should be
examined in tandem.
In Liberalism, Community and Culture, Kymlicka attempts to clarify the concepts of
Rawls‟ Theory in a way that meets, rather than accommodates, the objections presented
by the early communitarian critiques. Individuality is important, and persons are
separate, because the basic unit of choice must always remain with the individual.
Nothing smaller than individuals can make choices based on coherent plans, and no
group can have plans without depending on the plans of individuals; consequently, for

37 Rawls 1999, p. 358.
38 Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self, (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989), p. 89.
32
Kymlicka, as for Rawls, the person, not the self, is the basic unit of morality (55-56). I
am unconvinced by Kymlicka‟s view about the plans of collectives, or for that matter
about the need for individual coherence, but nonetheless believe the connection
between plans and the separateness of persons remains important.
The difficulty in this is that Kymlicka, like Rawls, simply accepts that individuals
are „free and equal‟ as the product of reflective equilibrium. Neither explains why it is
individuals are the things that must be treated as „free and equal‟ nor why they must be
treated as „free and equal‟ rather than as „comrades‟ or „according to rank.‟ Was the
freedom and equality of individuals the only option for a standard for political
legitimacy and the thing to which it attaches, this would not be problematic. However,
because a case could be made for the sovereignty of the community, the state, the family
or some other collective entity, this argumentative gap is problematic. This gap is not,
however, found in Raz, who I follow in presenting the argument from
incommensurability of plans above. Nor is it found in the argument against aggregation
from poolability that I claim underlies both the Rawlsian and the Razian approaches to
the importance of individuality.
Autonomy is central to the liberal program, but it is an individualistic autonomy.
This was not the only option. Collectives, like families and clubs, can be autonomous;
they can have plans and make decisions from an array of alternatives. Therefore the
separateness of persons is a critical value, informing the scope of autonomy in liberal
thought. Separateness arises from a number of possible contexts – from reflective
equilibrium as the view that people are free and equal is but one example – but the most
consistent one is the argument from incommensurability. In clubs or other associations
33
we look at people only as a member of that club, rather than as a member of a number
of possible organizations.
I should note, however, that as Sen discusses in Identity and Violence, our interests
might be incommensurable within individuals as well as between people. One person
can have different, potentially conflicting interests depending on the presence and
strength of their various attachments.39 I have interests that arise from my relationships
with my family, with my culture(s), with my department, and with my friends, inter alia.
Where I differ from the collective, is that when I am choosing among incommensurable
interests my dignity is not violated. I am not less of a free and equal being because of
my inability to choose a good option when I am only left with varying degree of evil. I
am still separate, even though the same intransitivity applies at the personal level just as
it did at the social level. The ability to choose from among plans, even when that choice
is made among incommensurables, is central to autonomy. However, if people are not
separate in the relevant moral and political sense, those plans should be aggregable. That
plans are not commensurable implies that people are separate. The communitarian
critique is problematic insofar as they argue against this approach to individuality.
IV. The Failure of the Original Communitarian Critique
In this section I explain the shortcomings of the original communitarian
critique. Ultimately, communitarians claim that we are not autonomous individuals in
the way liberals claim. I will argue, however, that Taylor‟s approach denies the value of a
particular kind of autonomy, but this is not the kind of autonomy to which liberals are
committed. While Sandel‟s “embeddedness” approach denied the importance of
individuality, this results in a dilemma neither horn of which leaves the communitarian

39 Amartya Sen, Identity and Violence, (London: Penguin, 2006), see esp. Chapter 2.
34
with any room to stand on, as Kymlicka so convincingly demonstrates. Whatever
remains of the communitarian critique it cannot be that we are not individuals deserving
of autonomous treatment in the way liberals claim. What remains will be the focus of
the concluding section of this chapter and the whole of the next.
Most of the various authors associated with the communitarian critique draw on
the work of Charles Taylor. Taylor argued that the liberal elevation of autonomy to the
level of a central principle is misguided because it imagines that freedom can be
something intrinsically good. This might be a legitimate argument against some view of
autonomy or of separateness, but it is not effective against the views presented above. It
would be an effective argument against a view that claimed the exercise of autonomy or
of separateness was good in itself, rather than good as a basic condition for moral and
political legitimacy. Kymlicka allows that some might have said things amounting to the
view that the exercise of freedom is its own reward, but he also agrees with Bernard
Williams‟ arguments that these claims do not work.40 The difference between Taylor‟s
target and the liberals under examination here is in what constitutes freedom.
Communitarians seem to believe that post-Rawlsian liberals are concerned only with
what Isaiah Berlin called negative liberty, when in reality Rawlsians and liberals who
have followed him are more closely concerned with advancing both negative and
positive freedom. Was negative freedom itself the only liberal good, a liberal would then
judge the better life the one lived like Kierkegaard‟s aesthete: flittering from possible
pleasure to possible pleasure, seeking out the new, rather than the better or more
genuine, experience. Likewise, were freedom its own reward the ideal life would be one
lived in single-minded attempt to differentiate oneself from others, choosing only

40 Kymlicka 1989, pp. 47-50. See also Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy,
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1985).
35
activities no one else had already done. Since liberals need not, and usually do not view
autonomy or separateness like this, this kind of autonomy and separateness cannot be
seen as their central value. Liberal freedom, encompassing both positive and negative
liberty, is already situated. It is situated in the judgement of an individual rather than in
the ethos of a community.
Sandel‟s argument – the argument from embeddedness – can be interpreted in
two ways. If embeddedness is interpreted strongly, it relies on the claim that the
particular ends given to a person‟s circumstances are fixed. This claim is implausibly
strong, and rejected by Kymlicka. It seems a clear fact that many of our ends can
change, including, from time to time, some of our most fundamental ends. It seems
quite plausible that changing one fundamental end might, after other changes, involve
changing other fundamental ends such that, in time, all our fundamental ends have
changed. Furthermore, since Sandel also allows for some choice among ends, among
traits and relations, demonstrating that the kind of strong embeddedness he discusses is
unpalatable even to a communitarian.41 This leaves the second communitarian argument
with a view compatible with the liberal project it was meant to critique. If we are able to
choose among options, whether discovered – to use Sandel‟s term – or otherwise, that
choice is enough for the liberal theorist. Kymlicka‟s contention that „the advertised
contrast with the liberal view is a deception‟ holds.42 The communitarian must allow that
we are autonomous in the sense where the central characteristic is choice among
meaningful options, on pain of attempting to argue in favour of an implausibly strong
sort of embeddedness. Furthermore, since the concept of the self is one with plans, the

41 Kymlicka 1989, p. 55-57.
42 Ibid. p. 58.
36
argument for separateness from the incommensurability of plans also applies,
reinforcing that this kind of selfhood is ethically separate.
Since plans are the parts of selfhood or personal identity central to the moral
and political philosophy of Raz, Rawls, and Kymlicka, the positive aspect of the
communitarian critique – its concept of individuality – fails. Since liberal theorists only
need to conclude that we are autonomous enough to form plans and to have interests,
the target of the communitarian critique becomes noticeably smaller. Charges that the
kind of individuals who can do this are characterless, or that this relies on self-interest in
a robust sense, are seen to be misplaced. If there is to be a communitarian critique, it
will have to be on some other ground than the implausibility of the liberal view of the
self because, in both its formulations, that view has become pretty plausible as a
representative of the normative requirements of individuality.
Conclusion – What Remains of the Communitarian Critique?
I wish to claim that while we are, in a morally and politically relevant sense,
autonomous selves, this is not all that we are. Where I think this opening for the
communitarian critique emerges most clearly is in the move from autonomy to
impartiality in Nagel. At the outset of Equality and Partiality, he claims that the „unsolved
problem [of or moral and political philosophy] is the familiar one of reconciling the
standpoint of the collectivity with the standpoint of the individual.‟43 Were this really
what Nagel meant, that there are two morally relevant standpoints, one arising from
autonomy and another arising from our sociality, we would have no quarrel. However,
Nagel goes on to say that this question is „not primarily … a question about the relation
between the individual and society but … as arising from a division in each individual

43 Nagel 1991, p. 1.
37
between two standpoints, the personal and the impartial.‟44 While the standpoint of the
individual is clearly one equated with partiality or self-interestedness, a role is given to
the interests of all – that is, the interests of other people and oneself together, not
simply the interests of others – through impartiality. While I will discuss the problems
of Nagel‟s version of impartiality in chapter four, for the moment is it important to note
that his formulation simply substitutes the impartial point of view for the social point of
view, rather than examining other possible options for what sociality might require. By
taking sociality as a fact of basic moral and political relevance, like the separateness of
persons, I can show how it entails a second source of political legitimacy: the case for
fraternity. This dualism would require a different interpretation of how autonomy
operates. Autonomy would not be able to operate alone, or solely with the separateness
of persons as its influential foundation. Autonomy would have to be balanced against
another principle with another foundation.
This other foundation might, I believe, be found in looking at the
communitarian argument from another angle. Instead of focussing, as earlier
communitarians, on the liberal view of the self, in what follows I will focus on the
liberal view of sociality and what the standpoint of the collective, or our common
sociality as I interpret it, requires. This is somewhat more difficult. Liberals generally
agree on what autonomy constitutes. They approach sociality differently. Nonetheless, I
hope to show in the next chapter that their diverse approaches to society all undervalue
sociality in their accounts of moral and political legitimacy by connecting it to closely
with autonomy. How this plays out is different in for each liberal theory, but they all
seem to have problems with reconciling the demands of sociality with the demands of

44 Ibid..
38
separateness because they treat autonomy, grounded in separateness, as the only central
moral and political value. In different ways, they are all reductive of sociality in favour of
autonomy.
I will claim that this approach to sociality is wrong. Sociality is a centrally
morally relevant part of the human experience just like separateness. While individuals
are, in one sense, separate, we are also, in another morally and politically relevant sense,
deeply social. That our sociality has a number of common features will be fleshed out in
the next chapter, but just as separateness gives rise to the features of autonomy, sociality
and its dependent traits give rise to various norms of moral and political importance:
norms of fraternity. These norms of fraternity should become a central part of a theory
of moral and political legitimacy when they are seen as representative of the normative
requirements of the fact of sociality.
There are a couple of possible liberal replies to this basic claim for fraternity,
which I mention here but will explore further in the chapter to follow. The first is to
claim that while fraternity might be of some moral relevance, autonomy really is of
primary relevance. There might be some circumstances in which the bonds of
community, or family, or nationhood might come into play, but they can only do so, or
can only do so justly, when done in a manner consistent with the principles of justice
derived from autonomy.
I would respond that a communitarian approach that emphasizes the
importance of fraternity would not necessarily be one that undermines the importance
of autonomy. We can take autonomy as central and yet deny its claim to exclusive
centrality. Autonomy must be balanced with fraternity rather than set against it. The
argument in the next chapter will attempt to show that many of the problems that arise
39
for liberal theorists – including questions about the role of moral psychology and the
limits of toleration – raise questions about the plausibility of autonomy-exclusive moral
and political theories. Autonomy alone cannot do all the things required of a plausible
moral and political principle. This failing, however, does not indicate that it is not a
necessary source of moral and political legitimacy, but simply that it is not sufficient,
which is where a new communitarian approach could begin.
A possible further rejoinder claims that liberals were not talking about moral and
political legitimacy in general, but justice, for which a narrower, institutionalized set of
criteria is all that is required. While autonomy, this response claims, might not be
sufficient for establishing general moral and political legitimacy claims, it is enough for
establishing what counts as just.
My rebuttal is to claim that justice goes deeper than the response indicates. If, as
Rawls claims, justice is to be the central value of social institutions, its role must be far
broader than simply legitimating certain narrow politically or constitutionally established
abstract objects like laws and parliaments. If justice is to be the central value of social
institutions it must also apply to, as others have pointed out, the economy, the family,
morality, friendship, international and intercultural relationships inter alia.
45 All of these
are basic social institutions that are explicitly outside the scope of a narrowly conceived
justice.

45 See esp., Okin 1989 and Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Oxford:
Princeton UP, 1990). It is worth noting that Rawls did believe there were non-voluntary natural duties,
but these are problematic in A Theory of Justice. They seem both requirements of justice in that they
are part of the basic social institution of morality, and yet they operate here as pretheoretical
presumptions. This project can be seen, in one way, as an attempt to justify these natural duties
through an exploration of the importance of non-voluntary obligations, about which I will have a great
deal more to say in the next chapter.
40
Chapter 2 – The Limits of Autonomy and the Need for Fraternity
Abstract
In chapter one I argued that autonomy is an important part in accounting for
the legitimacy of moral and political obligations. In this chapter I argue that it cannot be
the only such principle. As such, I will be attempting not to disprove the value of
autonomy but to find its limits. An important limit of autonomy is its inability to
adequately explain the legitimacy of non-voluntary positive obligations. I show that
there are legitimate moral and political non-voluntary positive obligations before arguing
that any attempt to explain these obligations through autonomy only is doomed to fail.
Accordingly, this discussion will show not only that autonomy cannot answer all the
questions demanded by the fact of legitimate obligations, but what an account of
fraternity will need to do to meet this challenge.
Introduction
Proving that autonomy cannot be the only central principle to a comprehensive
assessment of the legitimacy of moral and political obligations is this chapter‟s task. I
will be attempting not to disprove the value of autonomy, but to find its limits. My
argument will take the following form: there are legitimate non-voluntary positive
obligations; the legitimacy of these obligations cannot be adequately explained by
autonomy; accordingly, autonomy cannot be the only legitimating value. I show that
there are legitimate non-voluntary obligations in the first section of this chapter, but the
difficult work will be in the second section when I explain why autonomy cannot
adequately account for these obligations. Finally, I discuss how autonomy‟s
shortcomings are illuminating. By understanding what autonomy cannot do, we will be
in a better position to assess what fraternity as an equivalent value representing the
41
demands of our sociality will need to accomplish. Accordingly, the final section of this
chapter lays the groundwork for the search for fraternity that will occupy part two of
this thesis.
I. Associative obligations and the Legitimacy of Ordinary Moral Opinion
The first stage of my argument is the claim that there are non-voluntary or
associative obligations and that these obligations are legitimate. The strongest evidence
for this claim is what Samuel Scheffler calls „ordinary moral opinion.‟46 In this section I
explain what associative obligations are, which will involve an initial account of why
they are prima facie incompatible with the account of autonomy from Chapter 1. This
explanation will then require me to justify why these associative obligations are
legitimate. My defence of associative obligations involves showing the central role they
play in our ordinary ethical lives. In so doing I will note an interesting feature of
associative obligations that will come to play a key role in my account of fraternity in the
parts of this thesis to follow. Associative obligations seem to be generated by the impact
individuals have on one another. Specifically, the more often and important an impact,
the stronger the obligation and the less dubitable the intuitions involved.
A. What are associative obligations?
Associative obligations are duties „we have only to those particular people with
whom we have had certain significant sorts of interactions or to whom we stand in
certain significant sorts of relations.‟47 Associative obligations are to be juxtaposed with
general obligations. However, to fully understand how they work we must clarify a
number of the concepts in this definition. First, I will confirm how what associative

46 Samuel Scheffler, ‘Families, Nations, and Strangers,’ in Boundaries and Allegiances, (Oxford:
Oxford UP 2002), pp. 48-65.
47 Ibid., p. 49.
42
obligations are contrasted with general obligations in Scheffler‟s thought. Second, I will
clarify the importance of interactions and relations in generating associative obligations.
Third, I will note the important role particularity plays in associative obligations. Finally,
I will distinguish between two sets of associative obligations: voluntary and nonvoluntary obligations. These are two fundamentally different sets of associative
obligations, and they present contrasting problems for autonomy. For voluntary
obligations, autonomy has a difficult time explaining the circumstances under which we
think that an authentic choice can be, nonetheless, illegitimate. For non-voluntary
obligations, the trouble is deeper. Autonomy cannot adequately make sense of how nonvoluntary obligations can be legitimate at all. I use the caveat „adequately‟ carefully here.
I will show, in the next section, how any attempt to construe non-voluntary obligations
in a manner consistent with autonomy does a disservice either to the obligation in
question or to the nature of autonomy.
Before I get into the substance of the question, I must make a few quick
explanations about terminology. I will follow Dworkin‟s terminology rather than
Scheffler‟s. What Dworkin, in Law’s Empire, calls „Associative Obligations,‟48 Samuel
Scheffler calls „Special Duties.‟49 The two are interchangeable, as Scheffler (writing after
Dworkin) notes. I should also note the normativity of the associative obligations in
question. Scheffler speaks of „duties‟ rather than „obligations,‟ due to a belief that
„obligation‟ is best reserved for „moral requirements deriving from promises,‟ and a wish
to avoid any implication that special duties/obligations could be understood
voluntaristically. While I can sympathize with his motive, I feel no such stricture and will
use the terms „duty/duties‟ and „obligation/obligations‟ interchangeably. Furthermore,

48 Dworkin 1986, pp. 195-216.
49 Scheffler 2002, p. 49n.
43
whatever term I happen to be using at the time, I intend always to refer to pro tanto,
rather than ultima facie, responsibilities, unless I clearly indicate otherwise.
Associative obligations become important when they are contrasted with general
obligations. Scheffler formulates the difference as one of scope. I owe general
obligations to all people, regardless of who they are in relation to me. A Kantian
obligation not to lie and a Millian harm principle are good examples of general
obligations in Scheffler‟s approach. If I am in negotiations with you for the loan of your
book, I have an obligation not to lie to you that does not arise because we‟ve entered
into negotiations. This obligation precedes the negotiations. I owe you the truth
because, for a Kantian, lying would mean treating you as a means rather than an end in
yourself, violating the categorical imperative. I think, however, that this formulation
does not go far enough toward explaining the generality involved in a general obligation.
The obligation not to lie to my negotiating partner is too specific for a real contrast with
general obligations; I can simply remain silent and refrain from engaging with you and
still meet my obligation not to lie, but it seems that I have also changed the nature of
our relationship when doing this. By interacting with another, in this case by negotiating,
I have already „particularized‟ an underlying obligation. To preserve the importance of
particularity in associative obligations, I would formulate the matter differently. Rather
than focusing on obligations „to people as such,‟50 I would frame general obligations as
„standing obligations.‟ To use the above examples, I have a general obligation to treat
others as ends, for a Kantian, or, for a Millian, to maximize pleasure and minimize pain.
How those obligations turn into specific acts in particular circumstances seems, to me,
to move them from general to a very broad class of associative obligations: obligations I

50 Scheffler 2002, p. 49.
44
owe to a particular individual because of some relationship, however brief, with them.
The relationship here shifts the obligation from a general one grounded in an agent
neutral reason to a special one grounded in an agent relative one. However, if I am
overstating this difference, little depends on it. Differences in the scope of particularity
and connections between it and interaction don‟t undermine the basic approach to
associative obligations. There will still be a category of associative obligations arising
from interactions and to which particularity is important.
This formulation points toward the important role that interactions play in the
generation of associative obligations. A hermit has general obligations; alone in the
desert he is as subject to the categorical imperative or the greatest happiness principle as
anyone who lives in a crowded city. Where the hermit and the city dweller differ is in
how often they will have associative obligations. Because the hermit does not interact
with anyone, he has very few associative obligations.51 He has no one with whom to
negotiate, contract, or converse. The urbanite, however, is constantly interacting with
others. She must sign a lease or a deed. She must buy food and communicate with
others to achieve her ends. In doing all these things she interacts with others and, in
interacting, takes on associative obligations – applications of the more general
obligations under which both her and the hermit live that have a different character
because of their basis in the relationship.
Because interactions generate associative obligations, particularity will play an
important role in how they are to be satisfied. The city dweller‟s obligation not to lie will
be satisfied only by not lying to the particular people she meets at the particular times
when they meet. It only rises to the level of an associative obligation because they are

51 Because no one is born or raised a hermit even they will have some associative obligations to their
parents, families or early caregivers.
45
already engaged in communication. It is because of the particular nature of associative
obligations that contractual examples play such a central role. They illustrate clearly the
intransitivity of ethical obligations, which gives rise to the importance of particularity. If
I contract with you to provide coffee for a workshop, and someone else gives me
coffee, my contract with you might diminish in importance but it does not lose any of
its enforceability. I still have the (moral, political and, often, legal) right, if no longer any
strong reason, to compel you to bring me the coffee you promised. Furthermore, a
contract is between you and me, so for someone else to bring me coffee does not satisfy
your obligations unless, through some other agreement, you arranged for them to bring
it and I consent to this modification.52
The importance of contractual examples in explaining associative obligations is
overstated and, in Scheffler‟s view, misleading. Within the category of associative
obligations there are two very different kinds: voluntary and non-voluntary obligations.
The emphasis on contracts obscures the significant nature of non-voluntary interactions
in generating associative obligations. Furthermore, the kind of particularity involved in
contracts is not as strict or as tightly connected to the interactions as the kind of
particularity involved in non-voluntary obligations. However, the most problematic
aspect of the emphasis on contract is that it obscures the difficulty an autonomyfocused approach to the legitimacy of moral and political obligations will have in
accommodating both voluntary and non-voluntary obligations. While I will explain this
more fully in the next section of this chapter, some aspects of this feature of non-

52 Ordinarily, a contract would involve something to the effect of compelling consent for an
equivalent service provided on behalf of the promisor. This does not change the special nature
involved.
46
voluntary obligations must be pointed out in order to understand how they work as a
species of associative obligations.
Many non-voluntary interactions give rise to associative obligations. The key
examples so often commented on in the literature are family and friendship,53 but I
prefer to frame this discussion in terms of neighbours. I do not ordinarily choose my
neighbours, nor do they ordinarily choose me. While there are often some predictors as
to the kinds of neighbours I am likely to have that correspond to the neighbourhood in
which I live, these predictors are neither exact about whether I statistically „should‟ be
living in that neighbourhood nor whether my neighbours „should‟ statistically be there
either. Furthermore, even relatively strict residency requirements – racial, economic,
aesthetic – cannot determine which particular people will be living within shouting
distance (an important test) of one‟s residence.54
Without getting too deeply into the specific obligations that can arise from
neighbourliness, I wish to show how what obligations there are arise from interaction.
Let us assume that the neighbours we are discussing all live in a block of apartments.
Neighbours on each floor share a hallway and the stairwell leading up to their level. This
joint ownership is a form of interaction. If the stairwell is particularly narrow (spiral,
perhaps), a neighbour who leaves his bicycle chained to the rail will be impeding the
movement of his neighbours. It seems reasonable that the bicycle-owner has a duty to
store his bicycle in such a way as to minimize his impact on his neighbours: by keeping

53 For a good account of this see John Horton ‘In Defence of Associative Political Obligations: Part
One,’ Political Studies, v. 54 iss. 4, pp. 427-443.
54 My discussion here will focus on urban and, to a lesser extent, suburban living. Rural living
typically involves having fewer neighbours and, owing to the greater distance between residences, less
interaction as neighbours. Rural living typically involves frequent interactions in other capacities –
associated with tradition, community, religion, education, civil government, etc… but these are not
interactions as neighbours in the strictest sense. I will discuss neighbourliness more broadly later, but
that will be a significantly different concept from the use of neighbours as a heuristic here.
47
it in the wider hall or in his apartment, perhaps. The obligation here is not voluntary –
he cannot choose to have it or not to have it. It arises simply by virtue of living in the
same building as others and sharing a narrow stairwell with them. If the bicycle owner
lived in the building alone no such obligations would arise – he would have no
neighbours with which to interact. As such, we can see that the associative obligation
the neighbour has to keep the stairwell clear arises through interaction with the other
residents of his building through their joint ownership of the stairwell.
Likewise, particularity is as important for non-voluntary associative obligations
as it is for voluntary ones. However it is often couched in terms of role rather than
individual. I owe my particular neighbours obligations, rather than the individuals who
happen to be my neighbours. If some of the bicycle-owner‟s upstairs neighbours move,
and new people move in, the duty remains the same even if the individuals to whom the
duty was owed have now changed. Nonetheless, the obligation to keep the stairwell
clear is not something owed to neighbours in general – suburban single-family dwelling
life doesn‟t give rise to this kind of neighbourly obligation. It is owed to the particular
neighbours one happens to have when one happens to have them. A similar feature
could apply to keeping one‟s pets out of the neighbour‟s flowerbed, if that were a
genuine obligation of suburban life. It would apply to whoever owned the particular
flowerbed rather than to a particular individual.
Furthermore, the importance of relationships that arise from the kinds of
interactions that give rise to particular non-voluntary associative obligations illustrates a
closer connection between the interactions involved and the particularity of the
associative obligations in question. One has duties as a brother, friend, or neighbour
because of the interactions implicit in that role, rather than because one happens to fit
48
many of the criteria of that role. Take, for example, Tom, Dick and Harry. Tom and
Dick have the same biological father but different biological mothers. They knew
nothing of one another‟s existence until they were adults, but are nonetheless biological
brothers. Tom and Harry were raised together by the same woman who each
acknowledges as his mother but who is only biologically related to Tom. Who, in this
scenario, is more Tom‟s brother? An ambiguity lurks in this question. One could
reasonably favour the biological or the social and argue in that way. However, if
brotherhood involves certain ethical obligations – say, for example, the obligation to
treat a brother‟s children as one‟s nieces and nephews – I think ordinary moral opinion
would be clearer about that. I think it‟s safe to say that Tom should treat Harry‟s
children as his nieces and nephews, if there is such an obligation. They share a
relationship formed through years of interactions that Tom and Dick do not have, and it
is the relationship founded on interaction on which we base the non-voluntary
obligation. In the neighbours case it is sharing a stairwell that generates the obligation,
rather than the mere fact of neighbourhood.
The difficulties an autonomy-focused theory will have in accommodating nonvoluntary obligations should be apparent. Autonomy aims to protect an individual‟s
dignity by safeguarding their ability to live life from within by making meaningful
choices. If choice is what is central to autonomy, non-voluntary obligations cannot be
directly legitimized by autonomy. However, the relationship between non-voluntary
associative obligations and autonomy is more complex than this basic assessment. There
is more to autonomy than choice, and so a more sophisticated analysis is necessary.
However, in order to make such an analysis worthwhile we must first show that nonvoluntary obligations are important enough to need accommodating. As such, defending
49
the importance of non-voluntary associative obligations is the focus of the next subsection, while assessing the limits of autonomy will be the focus of the following
section.
B. Are associative obligations legitimate?
Non-voluntary associative obligations form an important part of our moral
phenomenology. Nonetheless, denial of their reality is one strategy some use to
undermine the view that they are legitimate. Some, notably A. J. Simmons, claim that
belief in the importance of non-voluntary obligations – specifically „associative political
obligations‟ like the obligation to obey the laws of a jurisdiction – is a product of false
consciousness.55 However, there are two problems with this view. First, it fails to
distinguish between the allegedly illicit „political‟ obligations and other, supposedly
apolitical, non-voluntary obligations that might be genuine. Second, given the
importance of this phenomenology to ordinary human life, a case that this is a product
of mass delusion would have to be very strong to be convincing. Simmons‟ arguments
amount to little more than a repetition of the claim that only voluntary obligations are
legitimate, which merely begs the question against ordinary moral opinion.
Underlying Simmons‟ attack is an implicit division between „political‟ and „nonpolitical‟ obligations. His primary claim is that associative political obligations are illicit,
which says nothing explicit about the status of non-political associative obligations.56 He
claims that advocates for associative political obligations are drawing a false analogy
between the kinds of obligations among family members and the kinds of obligations
among citizens. While his intent is to critique this analogy and claim that the way the

55 Simmons, ‘Associative Political Obligations,’ Ethics, v. 106 no. 2 (1996), pp. 247-273.
56 Simmons 1996 does refer to the possibility of moral obligations with political import (at p. 250 in
his discussion of particularlity in associative obligations), but focuses on overtly political obligations,
specifically the obligation to obey the law.
50
family works cannot explain the way the state works, this move rests on the validity of
the claim that there are non-voluntary familial obligations. Simmons‟s reliance on this
divide is suspect. While the associative political obligation to which Simmons objects is
the obligation to obey the law, there are a whole spectrum of less strident yet
nonetheless political obligations that fall short of the basic duty of citizenship. Feminist
philosophers have been arguing for a generation, convincingly to my mind, that the
family is itself a political institution.57 Political decisions determine what counts as a
family and impact deeply on how families arrange their affairs. Likewise, as Aristotle
recognized, friendship is often political. The highest form of friendship could only exist
among the ethically [including politically] good,58 and some of the lesser forms of
friendship were predicated on individuals being of [potentially political] use to one
another. As such, any critique of the associative obligation to obey the law must show
that it is substantively different from the rest of the spectrum or attempt to undermine
the institution of non-voluntary obligations entirely.
Some of what Simmons says indicates that he would favour the latter option.
For example, he does not attempt to distinguish between the obligation to obey the law
and various other non-voluntary obligations, focusing only on non-voluntary
obligations. However, denying the existence of any legitimate non-voluntary obligations
is a very difficult road. What an opponent of non-voluntary associative obligations must
do is show in some way that, while it is normal to feel the weight of a non-voluntary
obligation, this feeling nonetheless attaches to a maxim or policy that is not in fact
obligatory. He must separate out the legitimacy from the phenomenology. One way to

57 Okin 1989, and Young 1990.
58 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1158b25-1171b28.
51
do that would be to claim that all and only voluntarily adopted obligations can be
legitimate. This is, in the end, Simmons‟ tactic.
Simmons‟ approach is to deny that the phenomenology involved is actually
legitimate. Feeling that I ought to obey the law because I happen to be a citizen, rather
than because I have chosen citizenship, is, for Simmons, inaccurate. This is the most
robust form of what Scheffler calls the voluntaristic objection.59 As he puts it, „this
objection does not deny that we often have special duties to people who are related to
us in certain ways and to the members of various groups with which we are affiliated,
but it insists that such duties or responsibilities must always arise from our own
voluntary acts.‟60 A first problem with the voluntaristic objection arises when we ask
what, then, demarcates the voluntary from the involuntary or the non-voluntary? In
Simmons‟ work this is combined with a cosmopolitan view of the relationship between
the individual and the state to support the claim that we can choose what laws pertain to
us by choosing where we live. However, if the voluntarist‟s target is not simply the
obligation to obey the law but all non-voluntary associative obligations, then the
voluntarist seems to treat as identical links between the family, friends, neighbours and
co-nationals as equally suspect. Are they? This unexplored consequence of Simmons‟
approach is troubling to even the narrowest individualist. Even if a voluntaristic
requirement seems to fit with our basic intuitions about how we interact with our conationals, does it not do great violence to the idea of family? Such rampant voluntarism
is this kind of consideration that leads David Miller to claim that co-nationality is one of
those things, like family and friendship, the lack of which is always a loss.61 Even if this

59 Scheffler 2002, esp. pp. 67-73.
60 Ibid., 68.
61 Miller, On Nationality, (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995).
52
is not true of co-nationality (and arguments could be made in either direction on this
point) it seems unreasonable to deny it about family and friends.
Furthermore, the voluntarist objection – even in its weaker, more plausible form
– seems problematic. The voluntarist claims that obligations arising from non-voluntary
relationships are not legitimate because they are not voluntary. This presumes, rather
than proves that only voluntarily adopted obligations, or obligations arising from
voluntary relationships, are capable of legitimacy. This is a critical issue, and will be dealt
with fully within the next section, but for the time being I should simply point out that
this view seems to lead to a dilemma. A voluntarist might claim that some apparently
non-voluntary relationships are in actuality voluntary, but this seems to fundamentally
misconstrue the nature of those relationships. On the other hand, a voluntarist might
argue that obligations arising from non-voluntary relationships are illegitimate
notwithstanding their importance. However, this kind of voluntaristic fetishism is both
rare and implausible. Any account of the legitimacy or moral and political obligations
that cannot explain the demands of family, friendly and neighbourly relationships as
legitimate seems so remote from ordinary life that almost any other account should be
preferred.
However, there is another, non-voluntaristic objection to non-voluntary
associative obligations. Scheffler is particularly concerned with explaining what he calls
the distributive objection.62 This objection claims that the problem with associative
obligations is not between those involved in the relationships but on the impact these
demands have on those outside the relationships. This view claims that special
relationships create a sort of “in-group,” which will lead to disadvantages for those

62 Scheffler 2002, pp. 56ff.
53
outside the relationships involved. This is particularly important when addressing
questions of global justice and the distribution of wealth between richer and poorer
countries. If co-nationals have relationships that give rise to weighty obligations not
owed to foreigners, and those obligations impact on the distribution of wealth, the rich
are justified in preserving an unequal distribution of resources and perpetuating global
injustice under the moral cover of (potentially non-voluntary) special relationships.
The first response to note when addressing the distributive objection is that it
applies equally well to voluntary and non-voluntary associative obligations. It attacks the
special character of these obligations, rather than their potential for arising from nonvoluntary obligations. Accordingly, the distributive objection does not depend on any
distinction between voluntary and non-voluntary obligations. Nonetheless, it is
important since, if it holds, it undermines the important relational character of nonvoluntary obligations. Scheffler‟s first line of defence doesn‟t adequately take this into
account. In his first assessment of the distributive objection63 he claims it is nonproblematic because it focuses only on the advantages that arise to members of the ingroup through that membership. Essentially, this argument claims that the distributive
objection ignores the reality that belonging to the in-group is just as likely to increase the
burdens on a member as to alleviate them. However, as Scheffler later realizes, this is of
little comfort to the theorist advocating the distributive objection. The distributive
objector realizes that relationships give rise to benefits and obligations, and objects to
each equally. It is the reliance on an in-group to legitimize obligations that worry the
objector. Claiming that these might end up being burdensome to its members does

63 The chapters of Boundaries and Allegiances correspond to previously published material. As such,
the chapter ‘Families, Nations, and Strangers’ derives from his 1995 Lindley Lecture (University of
Kansas). His later discussions, in the chapter ‘The Conflict between Justice and Responsibility,’
follow four years later.
54
nothing to address whether they are the kinds of things that can give rise to legitimate
obligation.
Accordingly, Scheffler takes a different approach in his later work on associative
obligations. He defuses the impact of the distributive obligation while recognizing its
basic legitimacy. All it takes to reconcile the distributive objection with associative
obligations is to recognize the pro tanto character of the latter. That someone is my
neighbour or my co-national is a basic reason to favour their interests, but this basic
reason needs to be weighed against other reasons I have, including the general
obligation to treat individuals as equally deserving of moral wealth. Where the two
conflict, we must acknowledge the conflict rather than claim that one or the other is
simply “not really a reason.” As such, the distributive objection is legitimate insofar as it
reflects a kind of general duty of fairness in distributing wealth, and non-voluntary
associative obligations are legitimate as well, even when they conflict. Otherwise, the
distributive objector must maintain, even more stridently than the voluntaristic objector,
that relationships are simply not the kind of things that can give rise to legitimate
obligations.
II. The Limits of Autonomy
In the end, the legitimacy of non-voluntary associative obligations rests on the
basic intuitions that there are some legitimate maxims and policies that are I do not
choose but that I am nonetheless wrong not to adopt. No account of the legitimacy of
moral and political obligations can do justice to these intuitions and use autonomy alone
as a central principle. Each of these intuitions conflicts with some important aspect of
autonomy, but two are particularly problematic. The first is that there are relationships
that are legitimate despite being unchosen. The second is that, from time to time, one‟s
55
non-voluntary obligations will override other, potentially voluntary, obligations. Shades
of the first problem can be found in Scheffler‟s reply to voluntarism, while the second is
highlighted in his response to the distributive objection. In the end, this section will
show that there are legitimate obligations that cannot be accounted for by an autonomyfocussed theory of the legitimacy of moral and political obligations. Doing this involves
exposing as false the dilemma mentioned earlier, in which an obligation is either
construed voluntaristically or dismissed as illegitimate. I will show that neither option is
really open, and accordingly that a fuller picture of legitimacy requires something more
than autonomy.
A. The Non-Voluntary Character of Obligation
The first approach, adopted by voluntaristic theorists ranging in sensitivity from
the blunt dismissal of Simmons through Kymlicka‟s nuanced and sympathetic
multiculturalism, is to characterize our obligations as voluntaristic. There are two main
lines this approach could take. Simmons dismisses the basic intuition as a product of
false consciousness. This, however, seems too harsh when dealing with such basic moral
institutions as family and friendships. That overreach makes it a less compelling view
when it comes to other, less intimate, forms of society like neighbourhood, conationality and citizenship.64 Kymlicka is deeply sympathetic to the demands of culture,
but he adopts another approach to these obligations that nonetheless misconstrues
them in an effort to reconcile them with his basic liberal voluntarism.65 His aim is to
reconcile minority rights with the basic tenets of Rawlsian liberalism. However, by

64 For the purposes of this thesis I distinguish between co-nationality and citizenship. Co-nationals are
members of the same nation, defined as a cultural group with an historical claim to territory. Citizens
are individuals who fall within the legal jurisdiction of a government. As such, someone who was
born and raised in Glasgow might be in a co-national relationship with someone from Inverness but
not Liverpool, but would be related as a citizen to both.
65 Kymlicka 1989. His later work is more sympathetic to the view presented here, but in no way
makes explicit the connections I will advance later in this chapter.
56
„voluntarizing‟ cultural obligations – characterizing them as involved in advancing the
demands of individual autonomy – he misconstrues their essential nature. What both
Simmonds and Kymlicka‟s approaches attempt to do is claim that what we thought were
non-voluntary obligations either just are voluntary or are intimately connected with other
voluntary obligations in such a way that to serve the non-voluntary obligations implies
serving the voluntary obligations. Both of these approaches fail, and so the voluntarist
cannot truly deny the non-voluntary character of some intuitively central obligations.
Central to Simmons‟ arguments against the legitimacy of associative political
obligations is his claim that their basic intuitional support is a product of false
consciousness. Simmons seems, through most of his essay, to be arguing against the
view that all and only obligations arising from association are legitimate, though whether
this is an accurate characterization of his opponents‟ position is doubtful. He opposes
the claim that „insofar as membership in political societies clearly carries with it certain
duties or obligations, the nonvoluntary character of membership entails that our
political obligations also fall on us independently of our voluntary choices.‟66 As part of
this, he routinely questions the role and the existence of the basic „intuition of
belonging‟ that underlies the non-voluntarist‟s position. He asks
[w]hy would we think that this kind of identification with a social or political
role is either a necessary or a sufficient condition for possessing a moral
obligation to abide by the rules of local practice? … Oppressed people are
frequently brought by long periods of humiliation and indoctrination to identify
with their subservient roles and to acknowledge as their own the degrading,
locally assigned obligations of second-class members … And even when
immoral practices are not at issue, people can mistakenly identify with certain
social roles (and feel obligated by the locally assigned requirements for these
roles) … We should not be likely to conclude from such mistaken identification,
however, that I have certain associative moral obligations for as long as I
mistakenly identify with a role in this way, but cease to have those moral
obligations at the moment the truth is revealed. (264)

66 Simmons 1996, p. 249.
57
In this key passage, Simmons raises two problems. The first is the possibility of false
consciousness through unjust coercion. The second is the possibility of false
consciousness through mistake. The first is a serious concern insofar as it addresses a
legitimate problem that naturally arises through role-based approaches to obligation. I
believe the second presents less of a problem for the associative obligation theorist in
that one could simply accept the intuition Simmons finds controversial. He presents
three examples: false ethnic identification; mistaken parentage; mistake as to whether
another is a neighbour.67 In the case of the first example, belief in the importance of a
particular culture makes that culture important, and would make the cultural obligations
important to the individual involved. Much the same happens in the case of a religious
conversion. In the case of mistaken parentage, again, the associative obligation theorist
can deny the intuition. Parentage, I would claim, is a matter of a social rather than a
biological relationship, and intuitions to the contrary are misinformed. Finally, if I
mistake someone for my neighbour this does not mean that I no longer have obligations
to my neighbour, it only means that I don‟t have obligations to that individual as a
neighbour. I am mistaken about the reference of the „neighbour‟ indexical, rather than
about the obligations owed.
Simmons‟ more troubling claim is the possibility of genuinely false
consciousness produced by something tantamount to brainwashing. Whether the
brainwashing leads an individual to believe they have unjust obligations is not, in itself a
problem. After all, non-voluntary special duties are prima facie, not ultima facie,
obligations. They can still be tempered or overridden by more pressing concerns,
including general duties. Where the brainwashing could be problematic is that it raises

67 Ibid., p 264ff.
58
the possibility that many of our most deeply held and basic intuitions – about
obligations to families, friends, and neighbours as well as to our communities at large –
could be suspect. In the end, however, Simmons will have to do more than raise a
sceptical spectre for his brainwashing point to be taken seriously. That there have been
oppressed peoples, and that people in non-oppressive situations also develop adaptive
preferences, illustrate the reality of the possibility, but they also illustrate the limits of
that possibility. In the end, Simmons‟ claim deserves much the same reply as all sceptical
claims; on what basis should we doubt how we feel, particularly when the object of our
sentiments is something so elemental to society as family, friendship and
neighbourliness? Without serious evidence showing that these widespread intuitions are
suspect, we should give little credence to sceptical posturing.
Simmons does allow for one other approach to non-voluntary obligations that
mirrors an approach better explored in Kymlicka‟s work. This involves an attempt to
voluntarize the apparently involuntary. In Simmons‟ work this is dismissed, justly, as
contradictory with the basic character of non-voluntary associative obligations, but
Kymlicka‟s more subtle approach deserves consideration. Liberalism, Community and
Culture represents Kymlicka‟s attempt to reconcile minority rights with the broad tenets
of a Rawlsian liberalism that is usually antithetical to them. In the Rawlsian schema,
Kymlicka claims,
„individual liberty is so important that the only legitimate ground for restricting a
particular basic liberty for everyone – like the right of political participation – is
to secure a more extensive system of overall basic liberties for everyone. And
the only legitimate ground for unequally distributing such a basic liberty is to
secure for the less free person a greater system of basic liberty than she
otherwise would have had. Other than that, “the system of equal liberties is
absolute.”68

68 Kymlicka 1989, p. 163. Quoting from Rawls, A Theory of Justice; 1
st Ed, (London: Oxford UP,
1971).
59
For Kymlicka, the trouble here is that many measures taken in otherwise liberal societies
to protect minority communities, notably North American aboriginal communities, are
illegitimate under the strict Rawlsian approach to liberty. Measures to restrict voting
rights, property ownership, and to promote the locally dominant, globally minority
culture through the education system create further inequalities and not for the benefit
of the locally disadvantaged. Kymlicka‟s approach is, first, to construe Rawls‟ liberalism
as grounded on the basic value of self-respect. Consequently, a measure intended to
enhance self-respect acquires the status of a primary good. He then claims that the
importance of culture to liberal theorists is in its ability to provide a „context of choice‟69
according to which individuals can come to make evaluations. Without an important
array of cultures, individuals cannot „become aware, in a vivid way, of the options
available to them, and intelligently examine their value.‟70
There are two different issues that undermine this approach. The first is to
wonder whether Kymlicka‟s self-respect focused Rawlsianism is adequate. An analysis of
the role of self-respect in a liberal theory shows that self-respect is associated with
liberalism, but the nature of that association is debatable. Self-interest could inform
autonomy, be on a par with autonomy as a consequence of some prior feature, or be
grounded in autonomy. I think the „grounded in autonomy‟ interpretation is most likely,
and will briefly attempt to show this. The second problem deals with whether
approaching minority rights as intended to foster self-respect is true. This problem is
more important for my purposes. I will show how even if self-respect is a fundamental
part of autonomy, rather than one of many competing values it generates, this will not

69 Ibid., p. 166.
70 Kymlicka 1989, p. 166.
60
reconcile cultural membership with autonomy-only liberalism because doing so
misconstrues what it means to be a member of a culture.
The connection between self-respect and autonomy in Kymlicka is pragmatic.
Kymlicka claims, following Rawls, that self-respect „isn‟t so much a part of any rational
plan of life, but rather a precondition of it.‟71 However this is not closely connected with
his primary justification for minority rights. His main claim is that individuals that lack
self-respect will not be in a position to take advantage of the opportunities that come
with being a member of society. This should be clear, given the current conditions of
aboriginal communities following decades of assimilationist policies.72 Accordingly,
protections for minority cultures are necessary so that the individuals who are members
of those societies can come to respect themselves and engage with the broader society.
Promotion of a single culture within a community is, therefore, good because it allows
the individuals from that community to better engage with the members of the wider
culture.
It seems, however, that there is a deep conflict between Kymlicka‟s goal here
and the means he claims are necessary to achieve that goal. Promotion of individual selfrespect is a laudable goal, one completely consistent with, and potentially demanded by,
liberal individualism. Let us presume, then, that having a „context of choice‟ is a
necessary condition of self-respect. Two problems arise. First, why does the need for a
context of choice justify protection of minority cultures? Second, does not the attempt
to protect minority cultures from the influence of outsiders deny (a) outsiders within the
minority community the same protection and (b) the members of the minority culture a

71 Ibid.
72 Ibid., referencing A. Selzer, ‘Acculturation and Mental Disorder in the Inuit,’ Canadian Journal of
Psychiatry, v. 25.
61
genuine choice? In the end, understanding these problems will show why an autonomyfocused approach cannot adequately account for non-voluntary obligations by
construing them voluntaristically.
The importance of cultural membership in helping individuals generate values –
a major part of living a life from within through making meaningful choices – is
dubious. Earlier in this work I used Kymlicka‟s claims to illustrate the important role of
choosing among values as central to the liberal project, contra the communitarian
critique.73 To now argue that context is a necessary component of choice seems
awkward, given that a communitarian could make much the same argument. However,
why does the need for “context” mean that that context must be “cultural” in the
narrow sense used here? Of course, there must be some “cultural” features that inform
value judgements: some aspects of life must be considered valuable, whether intrinsically
or instrumentally, and „aspects of life‟ are the constituent parts of a „culture.‟ However,
that is not what is meant by „culture‟ in this context. A culture here is a more or less
stable group of social features like language, political structure, religion and other kinds
of what Rawls would likely call „basic social institutions.‟ The importance placed on
culture as providing a „context of choice‟ worthy of protection seems to run counter to
both the basic principles of justice and to the reality of cultural change Kymlicka
recognizes in his discussion of the „Quiet Revolution.‟74

The kind of practical proposals that follow from Kymlicka‟s argument –
aboriginal-language only education, restricted non-aboriginal voting rights and property
rights – might make sense if cultural membership were a primary good, but they also
seem to undermine their own application. If cultural membership is necessary to

73 Kymlicka 1989, pp. 47-59.
74 Kymlicka 1989, p. 167.
62
provide a context of choice, outsiders who enter into aboriginal communities seem to
need the same protections from those communities as the aboriginal community seeks
from the larger body politic. Their „context of choice‟ would be undermined by
requiring attendance at a native-language only school; by elimination of their rights to
civic participation; by the instability that comes with denial of property rights. These
measures seem like an attempt to crystallize aboriginal cultures so that its members can
then engage with the outside world. However, in attempting to accomplish this sort of
“reconciliation without assimilation,” we deny the reality of cultural change and fail to
genuinely reconcile the cultures. We end up ghettoizing one group, thus further
depriving them of the benefits that come from social cooperation liberalism is meant to
ensure. That this separation is accomplished in the name of accommodation is the
ultimate irony.
In the end, Kymlicka‟s focus on trying to justify minority rights as „in the service
of autonomy‟ is misguided. As Berlin frames the issue;
„The desire for recognition is a desire for something different [from freedom,
positive or negative]: [it is a desire] for union, closer understanding, integration
of interests, a life of common dependence and common sacrifice. It is only the
confusion of desire for liberty with this profound and universal craving for
status and understanding, further confounded by being identified with the
notion of social self-direction, where the self to be liberated is no longer the
individual but the „social whole‟, that makes it possible for men, while
submitting to the authority of oligarchs or dictators, to claim that this in some
sense liberates them.‟75
Cultural relationships might advance an individual‟s interests, and therein autonomy, but
Berlin reminds us that these relationships are not of value only when free, and certainly
not because they advance the cause of freedom. While a theorist could tie himself in
knots attempting to reduce the value of cultural membership to some other feature

75 Isaiah Berlin, ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’ in Liberty, Ed. Henry Hardy, (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002)
p. 204.
63
more consistent with autonomy, Kymlicka‟s attempt shows the difficulty. Since
autonomy is the only central value advanced by contemporary liberalism, that we do
value such relationships in non-autonomous terms indicates its limits.
B. The Importance of Non-Voluntary Obligations
But are these limits nonetheless legitimate? The autonomy-focussed theorist has
one option left – deny the legitimacy of obligations that do not further the ability of an
individual to live life from within through making meaningful choices. It seems at this
stage we have entered a war of conflicting intuitions. Those who believe strongly in the
legitimacy of non-voluntary associative obligations find a particular set of intuitions
both basic and compelling, and either (a) reject other intuitions as false accordingly or
(b) reject the view that the two sets are mutually exclusive. I believe either of these
options is open, but those not convinced by my denial of Simmons‟ contradictory
intuitions should nonetheless be satisfied with the weaker, latter, option.
Simmons need not deny the authenticity of our phenomena. He could, and at
times does, deny their legitimacy instead. His denial rests on the basic intuition that we
cannot be held responsible for non-voluntary aspects. For example, while he rejects the
view that people can have obligations arising from involuntarily identifying as a member
of a group due to the possibility of false identification, he seems to claim that a
voluntary identification with the same falsity could nonetheless give rise to legitimate
moral demands. Voluntariness, here, cures all manner of ills. This seems to rest on
something akin to Rawls‟ principle of desert: individuals cannot justly benefit from, or
be harmed by, qualities for which they are not morally responsible. In this principle,
moral responsibility is closely connected with choice: we deserve the consequences of
our intentional acts, and not the consequences of our involuntary acts. The basic
64
intuition underlying this approach seems to be a negative one: I am not responsible for
that which I do not control. There are two ways to counter this view. The first is to
question its primacy; is this intuition really basic? The second is to question whether it
really weighs more than the other intuitions in question – that I am right to prefer the
interests of my family.
Ultimately, the view that the intuitions underlying the principle of desert are not
basic cannot hold. There are better and worse intuitions in a number of spectra: depth,
pervasiveness, indubitability, and elementariness. These spectra are not discrete; they
often blend one into the other. Depth is a phenomenological quality – an intuition feels
deeper or shallower. Pervasiveness is more numerical – a pervasive intuition is one held
by more people. An indubitable intuition is one the contrary of which is difficult to
believe or is self-defeating – Descartes‟ cogito is an example. Elementariness is a quality
of indivisibility – an elementary intuition cannot be easily broken down into more basic
intuitions. On this view, the intuition underlying the principle of desert is a basic one. It
is deep, largely pervasive, difficult to contradict, and hard to divide into more minimal
intuitions. The intuition of responsibility for choice, and non-responsibility for nonchosen outcomes incites the emotions in a way characteristic of a deep intuition. It is
common, and satisfies pervasiveness accordingly. It cannot easily be divided into smaller
intuitions. While it does not have cogito-like certainty, it is still difficult to argue directly
that the intuition is wrong – it is more plausible that it is simply not ultimate.
However, it is equally difficult to dismiss as basic intuitions underlying nonvoluntary associative obligations. This is a version of Bernard Williams‟ „one reason too
many‟ problem.76 The basic intuition in Williams‟ case is that I am right to save my

76 Williams 1985.
65
spouse not simply due to various ethical theories but simply because of our relationship.
The obligations arise directly from the relationships involved. This intuition also
matches the depth, pervasiveness, incontradictability and elementality of a basic
intuition – at least as much as the intuitions on which a voluntarist relies. As such, using
one intuition against the other will result in a stalemate. Both intuitions are basic, but
they have many contradictions.
Given that there are two different, basic intuitions, we cannot reasonably
dismiss both. Some kind of accommodation is necessary. Kymlicka‟s work illustrates
one attempt to do this. As mentioned earlier, he attempts to reconcile liberal
individualism – in which the principle of desert plays a major role – with the importance
of cultural membership. However, his reductive approach will not work. In the end,
reductive approaches like this have one or another problems. Either the „more basic‟
principle is compromised to explain the „less basic,‟ or vice versa. Kymlicka has the
second problem; he characterizes cultural membership as legitimate because done for
the promotion of individual autonomy. For the reasons already discussed, this account
cannot work. What this failure illustrates is a deeper problem. Part of the importance
each of these intuitions has is due to their elemental nature – the one cannot be reduced
to the other in any coherent way without compromising its basic character. This kind of
reductive reconciliation is too much to ask of basic principles. What is needed is a kind
of compatibilist accommodation instead. We must (and, in chapters 6 and 7, I will) find
some way for the principles that arise from these equal yet irreconcilable intuitions to
function together without changing their nature.
66
III. The Demands on Fraternity
Simmons‟ assessment of political obligations as depending on an analogy with
familial obligations is mistaken.77 The link between the obligations of citizenship and the
obligations of family is not analogy. The basic source of all obligations is not the mere
existence of separate individuals, but the relations between separate individuals as
depicted in the relationship between the fact of individuality and the fact of sociality.
There are two operative terms in this ontology, not just one. In an autonomy-centred
liberalism, the individual alone is the basic unit of morality because only individuals have
moral worth. This claim is suspect. While individuals do have moral worth, worth is not
the only kind of basic property for which moral and political philosophy must account.
Obligation is another, and obligation cannot directly arise from the separateness of
persons. Obligations arise because of the other salient term highlighted above: relations.
That obligations ordinarily attach to individuals does not mean that understanding
individuality alone, or reducing sociality to some feature of individuality, will suffice to
explain how they are legitimate. Obligations also attach to communities, to groups, and
to institutions. As such, the existence of separate individuals is not a sufficient condition
for the legitimacy of obligations. Furthermore, that there are separate individuals does
not necessarily give rise to any obligations in itself. An individual alone on an island will
generate no new ethical obligations. He may have prior obligations – a promise he made
to quit smoking, while moot in his current context, is still valid. It is only through
interaction with others78 that obligations arise. Even autonomy, the central ethical
principle generated by the fact of human separateness, only gives rise to obligations

77 Simmons 1996, pp. 257-260.
78 A great deal more could, and perhaps should, be said about whether one can owe obligations to
oneself. I think it unlikely that one could except over time, when the case of one individual is more
analogous to multiple individuals. See Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons, (Oxford: Oxford UP,
1984), p. 327ff.
67
because of the presence of other individuals in a society, which has to be examined on
its own to properly understand how those obligations work.
If we take the relation as the basic unit of obligation, we can see the obligations
of family and of citizenship as two examples of the same underlying phenomenon. We
have, involuntarily, relations with our family members and our fellow citizens. The
former are generated through a life lived together, while the latter are brought about by
being subject to the same laws (which generate an equal moral obligation on all such
subjects). In either event obligations come about through interaction, and when those
obligations come about through involuntary interactions they generate non-voluntary
obligations. In this formulation, general obligations are simply associative obligations
owed universally through universal sorts of relations; for example, membership in the
same species, and occupation of a common planet seem to generate obligations to all.
This account is meant to explain the „ordinary moral intuition‟ that I do have
obligations to others that do not arise from and cannot be explained by my voluntary
actions. This is, it seems to me, an inescapable feature of basic ethical life for all people.
A morality that characterizes inescapable features of ordinary human existence as wrong
is not a morality worth having. While various elements of this schema will play a central
role in the following chapters, the point here is that there is a prima facie plausible basic
ontology that can explain non-voluntary obligations alongside general obligations, that
can account for the duties that arise from a wide array of involvements, and that
explains our moral phenomenology rather than dismiss it like Simmons‟ anarchist
approach or omit it like Kymlicka‟s Rawlsianism.
This is, as should be apparent, a dualist approach to moral and political
obligation. Legitimate obligations are generated by relationships governed fraternity, and
68
must, in some way, coalesce with autonomy as the central value of our inherent
individuality. However, I think what is important here is to find an approach that can
accommodate, rather than reconcile, fraternity and autonomy. This will leave some
situations irreconcilable. However, as a methodological maxim, I believe the purpose of
an account of moral and political obligations is not to find some single unifying
principle, some ultimate calculus that makes one of many. Often, the best an ethical
theory can do is account for and explain irreconcilability. „To demand more than this,‟
Berlin says,‟ is perhaps a deep and incurable metaphysical need; but to allow such a need
to determine one‟s practice is a symptom of an equally deep, and more dangerous, moral
and political immaturity.‟79 As such, the schema set out in the following chapters will not
attempt to find right answers to all the difficult questions. Rather, I will try and set out a
schema that makes clear what makes some questions difficult and accommodate
autonomy and fraternity when I can.

79 Berlin 2002, pp. 217. This is the last sentence of ‘Two Concepts of Liberty.’
69
Part II: Options for the
Demands of Sociality
Abstract:
In this part I examine three alternative candidates for the normative
demands of sociality – tradition, impartiality and solidarity – and explain
why most versions of these do not adequately explain its requirements.
While each has something to commend it, none can ultimately explain the
demands of sociality. However, a characterization of fraternity that
incorporates some of their elements is possible, and will be presented at the
end of Chapter 5 as a version of solidarity.
70
Chapter 3: Tradition and the Scope of Sociality
Abstract
In this chapter I analyze the demands of tradition as a possible candidate for the
moral and political demands of our sociality. First, I explain the way in which some
authors, focussing on Edmund Burke and Roger Scruton, use tradition as a value meant
to legitimate some of the non-voluntary obligations we discussed in chapter two. Both
Burke‟s „entailed inheritance‟ approach and Scruton‟s „cultural‟ approach face serious
problems that make them unacceptable candidates to explain the ethical demands of our
sociality. In addition to potential problems of internal consistency that would undermine
any candidate, tradition cannot be universalized in the way a principle of fraternity must.
I. Introduction: Preliminary Considerations
While this chapter will focus on the question of whether tradition can play the
role required of a principle of fraternity in explaining the basic demands of sociality, a
note explaining the methodology of this section will be helpful at the outset. This part
of my thesis is devoted to explaining what sociality requires. I will proceed by examining
a series of potential candidates, looking both at their philosophical value – measured by
internal consistency and ability to explain the phenomena in question – and at whether
they are appropriate for the role at the heart of this enquiry. At the end of the second
chapter we saw that there are things a principle of respect for fraternity must be able to
do if it is to adequately explain our basic sociality and represent its demands. We are
looking for a principle that is universalizable, that can explain the kind of alterity
involved in non-voluntary obligations, and that is consistent with the version of
autonomy as a life led from within through meaningful choice presented in chapter one.
71
Three major candidates seem to fit some, if not all, of these criteria, and should be
examined to determine whether they fit. In this chapter I examine whether tradition is
an appropriate value to place at the core of fraternity, while in the two that follow I look
to impartiality and solidarity.
The importance of reconciling fraternity with autonomy cannot be overstated.
Nonetheless, unlike the other constraints noted above, it is methodological rather than
substantive. Like any concept, there will be multiple interpretations of fraternity that are
both internally consistent and that meet the substantive criteria. What we should do is
favour the version of fraternity that best accords with our substantive criteria but seems
least likely to conflict problematically with autonomy. Whether such a version is
possible remains to be demonstrated, but I believe that it is. This methodological
principle will, I believe, play a key role, but that will become more apparent as the
examination of the candidate value unfolds. For the time being, the question of
compatibility with autonomy can remain in the background as a straightforward
methodological constraint.
The substantive criteria are more important for this part of the paper. The first
of these, universality, illustrates the scope of a moral and political demand. Any
individual can, prima facie, be in a society with any other individual or any group of
individuals, depending only on circumstances. Simply put, almost any encounter of
more than one person is a kind of society in this context. Consequently, the values
incorporated in the principles by which societies are governed must be capable of being
applied in this universal way. This is not to say that a principle must give the same result
for every individual in the same situation, but that a principle must be capable of giving
72
some answer to every individual in the same situations.80 It must, so to speak, cover the
field. Tradition fails this standard. In most of its advocated versions, tradition as a social
value is of dubious value on general philosophical grounds – it is potentially incoherent
and has little explanatory power at the level of bare sociality – but it also has trouble on
methodological grounds. I raise them nonetheless because the non-universalizability of
tradition shows the way to the next possible candidate, impartiality, which I will discuss
in chapter four to follow.
The second of the substantive criteria arises from the limitations of autonomy.
A theory of moral and political legitimacy cannot hope to be accepted as explaining
sociality if it cannot explain what it is that makes certain institutions legitimate even
though they are not freely chosen and what makes their rejection always a loss. It is this
criterion that makes tradition attractive. It seems like tradition might have some
normative force that can explain why certain non-voluntary obligations, including family
obligations and the general duty to obey the law, are legitimate. Nonetheless, I think the
problems that tradition faces in satisfying my other criteria undermine this apparent
ability to explain the kind of alterity involved in non-voluntary obligations.
In this chapter I will conduct the first of the three examinations required. I will
examine two different accounts of what tradition involves and how it offers an account
of the legitimacy of the kind of non-voluntary obligations discussed in chapter two. The
first version is Edmund Burke‟s „entailed inheritance‟ approach to tradition. This
approach claims that we have certain rights and liberties and duties because our
forbearers acquired them and passed them on to us in trust for future generations. The
non-voluntary obligations may be some of these entailed obligations. Alternatively,

80 It is, I believe, a more limited form of universalization than the kind on which particularists focus
their objections. See Jonathan Dancy, Ethics Without Principles, (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004).
73
Roger Scruton‟s conservative traditionalism involves the claim that our culture
legitimates non-voluntary obligations. His approach here is akin to the Hegelian
Sittlichkeit, but without the idealist metaphysics or methodology. While this position is
more plausible than Burke‟s, it nonetheless has serious conceptual and methodological
difficulties that preclude it from playing the role of fraternity in an explanation of the
normative requirements of sociality.
II. Tradition and the Social
On the surface, tradition does not seem to arise from sociality in the way some
other candidates might. Nonetheless, for some thinkers, it meets some of the criteria of
a legitimating value and plays some of the roles sociality must. Tradition‟s answer to the
question of why some relationships have an unchosen value comes from cultural
background of the people involved in those relationships. I call this view traditionalism,
though it is often seen in various strands of conservative political thought. In this
section I will distinguish between conservatism, which includes many general moral and
political principles also found in other approaches, and traditionalism, which is simply
one aspect of contemporary conservatism, focussed on the legitimating potential of
tradition. I will then show that the proponents of traditionalism face a dilemma. It can
be interpreted strongly, so as to give a substantive role to the purported traditions. This
strong interpretation, however, is a myopic traditionalism, out of sync with many basic
features of ordinary social life that are subject to change without losing their legitimacy.
The weak interpretation, soft traditionalism, while consistent with reality, is nonetheless
inconsistent with the universalizability criterion and is ill suited to serve as a principle
representing the demands of sociality.
74
A. Burke and Tradition as Inheritance
Tradition plays a central substantive role in conservative thought. Nonetheless,
what constitutes conservatism is a point of great dispute, not in the least because of its
position in the claims of partisans and opponents in the political arenas of most western
democracies. Nonetheless, the patchwork nature of conservatism is found in its earliest
clear exposition – Edmund Burke‟s Reflections on the Revolution in France. Originally a letter
to distinguished members of the French Assemblé National, the author‟s reaction to the
revolution, and to claims that the revolution is consistent with the English „Glorious‟
Revolution of 1688, provides a number of possible sources and principles of
conservative thought. However, several of those are more matters of political, moral
and jurisprudential good sense. Two exemplary candidates are prudence and argument
by analogy. Prudence, Burke claims, is a key conservative virtue. His view of prudence is
best summed up in the now-cliché proverb „fools rush in where angels fear to tread.‟81
However, in this way, prudence is more of an ordinary virtue that could be adopted by
liberals, libertarians, or communitarians. Liberals need not be radicals, and
communitarians have often looked like conservatives with the emphasis they put on
social cohesion and the importance of tradition in establishing inflexible social roles.82
Likewise, argument by analogy – the principle that new rules should be made in a
manner consistent with old rules according to the analogousness of the new situations
with old – plays a critical role in the jurisprudence of every common law court and has
since their foundations in the middle ages. Liberal and conservative judges use it, but
simply draw different analogies from similar facts and legal principles.

81 Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, (London: Penguin, 1986), p. 134.
82 A case more plausibly made of Alasdair McIntyre’s Thomist-influenced critique of liberalism than
of others like Sandel and Walzer. See his After Virtue, (London: Duckworth, 1985), and references to
him in Kymlicka 1989, p. 56.
75
The legitimating role of tradition is the truly distinctive feature of conservative
thought. For Burke, the source of rights, responsibilities and other features of the
English constitution provides those features with their value. „The idea of a liberal
descent,‟ he says, „inspires us with a sense of habitual native dignity … By this means
our liberty becomes a noble freedom. It carries an imposing and majestic aspect. It has a
pedigree and illustrating ancestors.‟83 The importance of pedigree in this argument by
analogy is key. Like a show-dog, the basic rights and obligations of Englishmen derive
their value not simply from their current usefulness or attractiveness (a difference
between late-18th century conservatives and reformers like Bentham) but from the line
of their descent.
While the “pedigree” argument by analogy is an interesting one, it is not Burke‟s
primary argument for the legitimacy of tradition. Burke‟s main focus is on rights as an
„entailed inheritance.‟
84 An inheritance is something passed from one generation to the
next, but an entailed inheritance is an inheritance subject to conditions. In this case, the
conditions are twofold – preservation and acquisition. First, the rights are passed on
subject to the condition that they be preserved for the next generation. Such restrictions
were once more common in property arrangements, like family heirlooms and manorial
houses, but have become rare in our culture and are often overruled by contemporary
courts. Second, these arrangements „leave acquisition free; but [they] secure what [they]
acquire,‟85 for future generations. Unlike his mention of „pedigree,‟ Burke‟s discussion of
inheritance is not an argument by analogy. Burke is speaking literally about a matter he

83 Burke 1986, p. 131.
84 Ibid., p. 119.
85 Burke 1986, p. 120.
76
believes to be empirical fact when he talks of the importance of inheritance to the
legitimacy of the rights of Englishmen. He says
„You will observe, that from the Magna Charta to the Declaration of right, it
has been the uniform policy of our constitution to claim and assert our
liberties, as an entailed inheritance derived to us from our forefathers and to be
transmitted to our posterity; as an estate specially belonging to the people of
this kingdom without any reference whatever to any other more general or
prior right.86
This statement shows the importance of inheritance as a legitimating concept in
conservative thought. What is legitimate in a conservative interpretation of a political or
moral scheme is that which is grounded in an inheritance relationship. The “general or
prior” rights any citizens might have are of no value in determining the legitimacy of the
rights in question. Accordingly, they are legitimate whether they are chosen or not, and
indeed because of the „entailed‟ quality, they cannot be shirked or sundered because of
the impact of this change on the liberties and obligations of future generations.
While Burke usually spoke about rights and liberties, he would also include the
obligations of Englishmen in his entailment. A principle of tradition like Burke‟s could
attempt to explain the legitimacy of various non-voluntary obligations, then, by claiming
that they are an entailed inheritance that one does wrong in failing to observe and
preserve. Take, for example, the case of family obligations. Parents have certain rights
over and certain duties to their children that are not voluntary. That these rights are a
part of the tradition of a society might explain why they are legitimate much as
precedent determines judgements in a court governed by stare decisis. How well this
works will be examined in the following sections, but I note here that it is not prima facie
implausible.

86 Ibid., p. 119.
77
B. Scruton and Culture as a Legitimating Value
More contemporary resonances can be found in a number of conservative and
not-quite conservative authors. David Miller‟s approach to nationality is partly
analogous to, and partly reliant on, a traditionalist approach to legitimacy. Nationality,
like tradition, can require the allegiance of its members over and above any choices they
might make.87 Nonetheless, he attempts to distinguish himself from what he calls
„Conservative Nationalists,‟ like Roger Scruton. While national membership, when
present, requires some loyalty in Miller‟s view, for Scruton and conservatives, the term
used is „piety.‟88 Scruton is best known for his work in aesthetics, but his interest in that
field comes from an underlying moral and political conservatism much like Burke‟s
traditionalism. A society‟s cultural inheritance, particularly its high culture, is what
demarcates one society from others and must, especially in a non-religious society, serve
as the template from which that society draws its ethical doctrines and lessons.89 We
learn what duties we owe because of the appreciation of the art objects of our culture –
its stories, poems, sculpture, architecture, etc. This serves to reinforce the conservative
claim that various ethical norms are valid because of their grounding in a common
culture.90
Scruton‟s views are not new. If anything they are a form of ethical Hegelianism
without the idealist metaphysics or the dialectical methodology. The foundation of

87 Miller 1995, pp. 49-80.
88 Ibid., p. 124.
89 Nussbaum makes a similar point with regard to Ancient Athens in The Fragility of Goodness,
(Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986) while Rorty’s ‘ironic liberalism’ makes a similar move for
contemporary liberal societies in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
1989).
90 See, generally, Roger Scruton, Culture Counts: Faith and Feeling in a World Beseiged, New York:
Encounter (2007), especially C. 3 and 4 on how aesthetic judgement arises and how it influences a
moral education.
78
morals is not located in the individual or rational choice but in the adherence to the
„transcendent‟ or „objective‟ standards of the community. Scruton claims,
Impiety is the refusal to recognize as legitimate a demand that does not arise
from consent or choice. And we see that the behaviour of children toward
their parents cannot be understood unless we admit this ability to recognize a
bond that is “transcendent,” that exists, as it were “objectively,” outside the
sphere of individual choice. It is this ability that is transferred by the citizens
from hearth and home to place, people and country. The bond of society – as
the conservative sees it – is just such a transcendent bond, and it is inevitable
that the citizen will be disposed to recognize its legitimacy, will be disposed,
in other words, to bestow authority on the existing order.91
The success of the central conservative claim – that society imposes unchosen
but legitimate moral obligations on individuals through tradition – does not depend on
whether one accepts the claims about children and parents. Scruton does, but at this
point that example is meant as an illustration rather than an argument. In grounding the
legitimacy of ethical principles in membership in a society, Scruton starts conservatism
down the path to traditionalism, but only because society is viewed as the bearer of
culture and tradition.
Scruton is explicit about his belief that consent is not required for political
legitimacy. Like me, he partly uses the family to make this case. In The Meaning of
Conservatism, family operates as an analogy with society. „The family,‟ Scruton says, „is a
small social unit which shares with civil society the singular quality of being noncontractual, if arising not out of choice but out of natural necessity.‟92 In this statement
civil society is the group from which a culture arises. Natural necessity could be
understood as claiming that the family is beyond political legitimation, but this version
would run into the same problems as the Rawlsian take, as amply illustrated by the

91 Roger Scruton, The Meaning of Conservatism, (London: Penguin, 1980) pp. 32-33.
92 Scruton 1980, p. 31.
79
feminist critique.93 Alternatively, it could mean that whatever their source, choice or
natural necessity, the family and civil society are legitimate institutions because of the
role they play in individual lives. Since tradition is the constitutive principle of these
institutions, it is the principle by which maxims and policies are declared legitimate or
illegitimate within them. While this approach has problems it does not rely on an
arbitrary distinction between types of societies and should be preferred here accordingly.
Scruton‟s claim is that the insufficiency of choice in explaining legitimate
institutions necessarily leads to the view that tradition plays the legitimating role. While
my full arguments against this view will follow in the next section, one point is required
first. In Scruton‟s view society legitimately demands allegiance, and it is in viewing
allegiance as an end, rather than as a means, that his conservatism comes to depend on
the value of tradition. It is through viewing traditions as constitutive of a society that
observance of those traditions is seen to entail the acceptance of the legitimacy of the
society constituted by them. In other words, Scruton claims that by participating in the
rites of a given society, I declare myself a member of that society and furthermore that
the society‟s control over me is legitimate. The American Pledge of Allegiance, or
standing for national anthems, are examples, but Scruton‟s preferred example involves
the British monarchy.
Consider the Enligishman‟s allegiance to the Crown, as he envisages and enacts
it … It is not the personal qualities of the Queen that draw the Englishman to
her, not is it any considered knowledge of the function and the history of the
Crown. It is rather a sense of the monarch as a symbol of nationhood, as an
incarnation of the historical entity of which he is a part.94
In this example, the allegiance owed does not depend on knowledge of the tradition, but
on respect for the tradition without any demand for knowledge. That a policy or

93 Okin 1989.
94 Scruton 1980, p. 39.
80
practice is a part of the society‟s tradition is sufficient to render it legitimate. To fail to
observe these practices would violate tradition and be illegitimate within society or
tantamount to declaring oneself outside the social union: far too heavy a price to pay for
a choice to be meaningful.
II. The Inadequacy of Tradition – Applicability and Universality.
There are two problems with the view that tradition provides an explanation of
the ethical demands of the social.95 The first is that tradition, particularly interpreted in
Scruton‟s strong sense, does not seem to fit with a comprehensive view of what people
are basically like. In this, it corresponds closely to several of the problems Amartya Sen
raises for identity politics in Identity and Violence. The second problem with tradition as a
central social value is that it does not fit one of the important substantive criteria we
found in the last chapter. Tradition is not universalizable. In Scruton‟s formulation it
does not intend to be, but in other formulations it could appear so. Nonetheless, I
believe it is not universalizable in the way that a candidate for the normative
requirements of sociality should be. I believe it is quite possible to be ungoverned by
tradition and nonetheless subject to the kind of unchosen demands important to
sociality.
A. The Applicability of Tradition
In my view Scruton‟s faith in the non-controversial nature of his examples is
misplaced. Institutions he presumes legitimate need not be. While Scruton exempts the
family from the social sphere, this exemption is not as thorough as it seems. The
interconnectedness of civil society and the family is easily seen when we consider the

95 A third problem would be whether it would be reconcilable with autonomy, as Scruton and Burke
explicitly disavow the autonomy of individuals, and in Burke’s case, the autonomy of a society.
However, this problem is one of interpretation. An interpretation of tradition could be proposed that
would not necessarily constantly conflict with autonomy in every sense. None will be given here, and
due to the other more pressing problems with tradition, I feel little motivation to try.
81
example of an abusive family. If the parents are raising their children in ways that
conflict with the interests of society, civil society is permitted or compelled to
intervene.96 However, if the family is a self-contained source of legitimacy, on what does
society ground the legitimacy of its intervention? Two possibilities present themselves.
In the first instance, the society could intervene because happenings in the family sphere
impact on the social sphere. If a family is sufficiently dysfunctional it may impede on the
sphere of the social through involving the criminal justice system in its actions or by
creating children who become a burden on society, either through reduced capacities or
through active criminal behaviour. Alternatively, a society could recognize that what
counts as a family is not some sort of universal constant. Families are mutable,
particularly in the sense that the sphere of individuals to whom a duty is owed changes
between societies. Some norms are constant – while the children are in their minority,
parents have duties of care to their children, and children have duties of obedience to
their parents; every society has incest-related taboos – but other norms are equally
important for a society but are nonetheless not universal. In some cultures, heterosexual
married couples move to the husband‟s family‟s village, while in others they gravitate
toward the wife‟s kin. In some polygamy is accepted, while in others it is forbidden. In
certain western sub-cultures (which Scruton would probably call decadent in the
classical meaning of the term), close-knit groups of friends take on many of the care
responsibilities normally reserved for family members. The notion of a university as an
„alma mater‟ arose from its role of taking on the family‟s supervisory and care role, a

96 This is different from parents who are acting in the violation of the children’s best interests,
interference with which can often be legitimated by principles rooted in autonomy. Here, I will focus
only on parents indoctrinating their children in serious anti-social behaviour.
82
practice that continues in many cases despite changes in the notions of what constitutes
„care‟ for a young adult.
For a traditionalist, either of these options is acceptable, but each raises
problems. Recognition of the impact of one sphere of life on another is not problematic
in itself, but over the long term can expose a traditionalist to another set of problems.
As spheres interact, changes in one sphere will demand changes in others, and
sometimes tradition will be silent on how to approach these changes. Burke and Scruton
speak of an „analogistic‟ approach to gradual change, but there are times when the
analogy approach is not necessarily conclusive, nor is it necessarily gradual. In federal
constitutions, some powers are reserved to the national government while others are
reserved to regional governments. However, problems arise in determining what
happens when an action involves elements the affect both jurisdictions, and in dealing
with new matters not addressed under the original constitution. International relations
are usually reserved to federal governments, while the power to implement social
programs are usually regional. However, international agreements often require local
implementation. Likewise, whole new issues, like environmental protection and
telecommunications, require legislation but since there is no clear delineation, whatever
principle we adopt must find a way to address these problems. However, sometimes
tradition will speak for both possible solutions to the jurisdictional problem. It can, in
other words, contradict itself and is of no help in determining a legitimate outcome
here.
Furthermore, societies can change such that traditions once considered valuable
become obsolete or offensive, indicating that what is really valuable is not tradition for
tradition‟s sake. Quebec in the 1960s underwent what is usually called the „quiet
83
revolution.‟ In the late 1950s, Quebec was an impoverished, culturally backward
province. Its education, infant mortality, birth, and marriage rates were more similar to
third world countries than any of the other Canadian provinces. Its primary moral and
political influence was the Catholic Church. However, by the mid 1960s it was more
ethically liberal, more nationalistic, better educated and less religious than any other
province in Canada. Consequently, what was once considered a valuable tradition like
schooling in strict Catholic schools for francophone children became an unwanted
oppression. Without serious outside influence, a society changed such that policies
tradition would have legitimated were no longer really legitimate for that society.97
Similar circumstances happened in Spain following Franco‟s death and following the
collapse of the Soviet Union.98 Spain‟s example has mirrored Quebec‟s in the shift from
conservative Catholicism to liberal individualism, while near-libertarian individualism
has taken root in the formerly collectivist parts of Russia.
A traditionalist can nonetheless account for some of these problems of
coherence. One could claim that in changing particular traditions, the society is
nonetheless protecting others. The decline of the importance of Catholicism in Quebec
coincided with a rise in Québécois nationalism, such that the traditionalist could claim
that the rejection of the former tradition was connected to the protection of the more
valuable latter. There is, indeed, some evidence for this. Likewise, in Spain, the decline
of many centralizing traditions, including, again, Catholicism, can be connected with
efforts to protect other decentralizing traditions. The rise in Catalan, Basque and

97 When I say ‘without serious outside influence’, I mean only direct influence. Quebec was not
conquered in the early 1960s, nor was it subject to any serious international or interprovincial
influence. Nor, indeed, was this a violent cultural revolution as was its Chinese counterpart. The
Quebec example is discussed in Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity, (Cambridge MA: Harvard
UP, 1991) and Kymlicka 1989.
98 Taylor 1991.
84
Galician nationalism in the years following Spain‟s transition to democracy seems to
evidence this fact. Still, there is a contradiction here, as one tradition – the nationalism –
seems to be in conflict with a second – religion – such that tradition itself leaves no way
of deciding among these.
The problem these examples illustrate is that even if some version of tradition
could be found that was internally consistent, it could not fit the facts of contemporary
life. In explaining how this works I will first explain how there are two different „facts of
pluralism.‟ One is Rawls‟, and traditionalists claim to be able to address this.99 This is the
fact that different people can reasonably disagree about the nature of the good. In
traditionalist language, this is equivalent to saying that different people have different
traditions. These people would then not genuinely be in society with one another, even
if they manage to coexist through a modus vivendi or an overlapping consensus. The other
is Sen‟s. This fact of pluralism is like Rawls‟ only it reminds us that individuals can, and
almost always do, have more than one set of ultimate ends.100 In traditionalist language,
this translates as individuals have multiple traditions and belong to multiple societies.
This raises the possibility of internal conflict of the sort for which traditionalists do not
ordinarily account.
The fact of pluralism in Rawls is the social fact that different people can reach
different reasonable conclusions about the nature of the good. In the terms of a
traditionalist, where what is good is determined by the traditions a person is obliged to
respect, this means people are bound to different, potentially incompatible traditions.
On the surface, this seems problematic for a traditionalist. After all, it sure seems like
people with different traditions form one society from time to time. Scots, English and

99 Rawls 1993.
100 Sen 2005.
85
Welsh, after all, have different traditions or different approaches to the same traditions,
leading to different evaluations of the same maxims or policies in either case.
Nonetheless, they are British as well, and form part of the same society in that way.
However, a traditionalist can account for this much as Rawls accounts for different
conceptions of the good. A traditionalist can claim that there is an overlapping tradition
that binds all these supposedly distinct societies together that runs through the set of
traditions each member is bound to observe. It would thus simply be a part of what it is
to be Scottish, Welsh and English that one is also British.
Nonetheless, this example highlights an additional difficulty for the traditionalist
that cannot be escaped as easily. The second fact of pluralism is not that individuals
have different conceptions of the good, it is that any single individual likely has multiple,
potentially conflicting, conceptions of the good. Each individual is a plurality of goods,
or in traditionalist terms, a plurality of traditions and a member of multiple societies.
This perspective becomes clearest in Amartya Sen‟s Identity and Violence. In a social
context, any individual is not normally associated exclusively with one identity. In Sen‟s
case, he is Bengali, British, Anglophone, Son, Father, Husband, Professor, Alumnus,
Supervisor, Economist, Laureate, etc. He, like anyone, is the sum of multiple different
identities, each with their own particular claims to his allegiance. A traditionalist should
claim that as a member of each society, he is bound to observe the traditions of that
particular society. However, the sheer number of possible identities should make clear
the difficulties involved in this. An example, focussing on the important traditions that
attach to nationality, should suffice to illustrate the problem.
86
Traditionalists are often inclined to adopt something like „the cricket test‟ in
determining social membership.101 This was seriously proposed as a method of
determining whether someone was „truly British‟ or whether one still bore more
allegiance to another country by watching how that person cheers in a cricket match.
Aside from obvious problems of limitation (plenty of people don‟t care about cricket, or
any sport), scope (some people cheer for quality of play or other factors rather than
partisan nationality), and forgery (people can pretend to cheer for a country), the cricket
test fails to account for the second fact of pluralism. Any one person can have multiple
legitimate reasons for each side of a conflicting decision, even when both reasons are of
the same kind. As Sen explains, a person of Bengali origin who has lived their entire
adult life in the UK could easily feel compelled to cheer for both, and could do so. They
could simultaneously feel joy for the victors and sorrow for the defeated. They are
partial to multiple, conflicting traditions, or they could be partial to no tradition at all.
There are two difficulties here. The first is that traditions, even in their more
dispute-resolution modes, can conflict, and do not necessarily provide any way of
recognizing or resolving those conflicts. Second, there comes a point at which tradition
is silent. Just as we are unlikely to have basic philosophical intuitions about extremely
unusual ethical dilemmas, there comes a point beyond which tradition has nothing to
say because the members of a society have not necessarily encountered anything
analogous to a situation before. Such conflicts and such novelty are ordinary parts of the
human experience. Together, they undermine tradition‟s claim to provide an explanation
of the ethical demands of sociality because of internal contradictions within the

101 Sen 2005.
87
principle of tradition itself. If it cannot keep its conceptual house in order it cannot
represent the normative element of our sociality.
B. The Universality of Tradition
The second major problem with tradition is that its view of society is too narrow
for it to play the role of a central legitimating value. There might be some types of
society in which tradition plays a role in making some policies legitimate, but that sphere
is not the broader sphere of the ethical demands generated by the bare kind of sociality
at issue here. The crux of tradition‟s problem is that it cannot be universalized. There
are several different approaches to universality, and it is clear on examination that
tradition meets none of them. The three main approaches are the empirical approach,
the rationalist approach, and the transcendental approach. An empirical approach looks
to instances of society and determines by induction whether tradition is a necessary part
of each of those collectives. A rationalist approach attempts to derive the central
legitimating value from some a priori feature of our sociality. Neither of these
approaches is particularly promising for the traditionalist. Finally, a transcendental
approach asks whether tradition is a necessary precondition of any social ethical
demands. While this seems more like what most traditionalists, including Scruton, have
attempted, counter-examples abound and undermine this possible approach.
The traditionalist claims that tradition plays the same role in society as nature
plays in the family, and attempts to give examples to support this claim. Arguing by
example is sometimes effective, but it depends both on the effectiveness of the
examples and the immunity to counter-example. As I discussed above, the examples
used by Scruton and Burke – particularly of political institutions like the crown – are
highly mutable entitles. In Burke‟s case, his example of the continuity involved in the
88
„Glorious‟ Revolution is greatly overstated, and is further undermined when one looks
to the English Reformation, a hundred and fifty years before the „glorious‟ revolution.102
A society persists, and can persist legitimately, even after one or more radical changes in
their political institutions. France has seen five republics, two monarchies, and a couple
of dictatorships over the last 220 years but persists nonetheless, despite Burke‟s
warnings to the contrary. Countries have rejected many of their founding traditions
when the content of their inheritances have become too burdensome. The United
States, with a great deal of difficulty, rejected slavery. Many south-east Asian nations
have rejected or vastly curtailed their monarchies. My home province of Newfoundland
rejected a tradition of independence to join Canada when the economic burdens of
autonomy overwhelmed that freedom‟s value. Newfoundland, Nepal, Japan, and
America continue to exist even though they have had radical institutional change. When
looking at the world more broadly than Burke or Scruton we find not only that the
examples they use are suspect, but that counter-examples abound.
A rationalist approach, one that tries to derive traditionalism from some a priori
principle of society, remains largely untried by traditionalists. While a transcendental
argument would claim that some kind of concept of tradition was a necessary condition
of the possibility of society, a rationalist argument would claim that the existence of
society necessarily generates tradition as a legitimating value. Set aside, for the moment,
the concerns about the possibility of generating an “ought” from an “is,” since we
should consider society as something already normative. How, then, could tradition be
generated by society in such a way as to be a necessary component of any legitimate

102 Locke’s Two Treatises of Government were written, in part, as a defence of the Glorious
Revolution and the right of citizens to overthrow monarchs. John Locke, Second Treatise of
Government, Thomas P. Peardon, Ed., (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997), see esp.
Chapter XIX, ‘On the Dissolution of Government.’
89
society? I claim it cannot. The non-voluntary obligations at the core of society do not
depend on any kind of tradition to be legitimate, nor do they automatically generate
traditions of their own. Tradition requires a host of background features that would not
be present in many fleeting collectives or in the early stages of more permanent
societies. Again, this is not to say that tradition might not be an important, even
necessary, feature of some kinds of societies. It is, rather, to say that tradition is not an
essential feature of the kind of sociality at the root of all societies.
These problems also seem to pose a problem for a transcendental approach to
tradition as a central legitimating value. Nonetheless, the argument would run in the
opposite direction from a rationalist approach. It would claim, as Scruton does, that one
only has a society when one has a set of established traditions to provide a moral
education.103 I believe this mistakes an epistemic for a ontological solution, and even
then is short-sighted. We may only “know” that we have a society – in some rather
advanced sense of the term like nation or community – when we have a set of
traditions, but that does not mean that without the traditions we have only some kind of
proto-society. Societies exist whether we are aware of their existence, or their practices,
or not. However, even if we accepted Scruton‟s order of explanation, tradition is still
inadequate as a condition of the possibility of society. Some trivial instances of society –
individuals passing one another on a street; fellow passengers on a train – are too
fleeting to develop traditions, yet they are nonetheless collectives that entail moral and
political obligations of the kind a principle of fraternity must explain.
There may be some kinds of societies in which tradition is a necessary
legitimating criterion; societies that cannot be understood without understanding how

103 Scruton 2007.
90
they are governed by various sorts of traditions. However, not all societies have this
feature. Since we are looking here for the most basic kind of legitimating criterion – one
that applies to all possible collectives, however durable or fleeting – tradition is
inadequate. It cannot explain the necessary moral and political demands of sociality.
91
Chapter 4: Impartiality and the Demands of Sociality
Abstract
In this chapter I will examine the second of the two most plausible candidates
for a principle reflecting the demands of the fact of sociality – impartiality. This is the
view, best expressed by Nagel, that liberal societies are premised both on partiality to
the self and objective impartiality. I believe impartiality faces a dilemma, neither horn of
which allows it to legitimate the kinds of maxims and principles a principle of sociality
must justify. While there is one sense in which impartiality might be a central value, I
believe this sense – the sense called second-order impartiality by Brian Barry – is too
vague to be genuinely useful in determining whether a maxim or policy is legitimate
unless it also implies the other, more specific, sense. However, the more specific, firstorder sense of impartiality – more akin to the kind used by Nagel – is far too closely
linked to autonomy to helpfully explain the kind of non-voluntary, relationship-based
maxims the second principle is meant to address.
Introduction
Impartiality, in one form or another, is the principle adopted most often by
liberals to explain the normative implications of sociality. It is not, in my view, up to the
task. The two authors who are clearest about the importance of impartiality in
explaining how maxims and policies are legitimated in a liberal society are Thomas
Nagel and Brian Barry, and as such my efforts in this chapter will focus on
demonstrating the inadequacy of their proposals.
At the outset of Justice as Impartiality, Barry makes the critical point that there are
two different levels of impartiality. First-order impartiality requires individuals to act
from impartial motives or according to impartial reasons in choosing what to do and
92
how to live.104 This kind of impartiality is not what liberals have in mind, Barry claims,
and is unnecessary to ensure the success of the important, second-order kind of
impartiality they believe is required for a just society. He then shifts to focus on secondorder impartiality, the kind of impartiality involved in establishing social norms at the
abstract level of an original position. This kind of impartiality faces a critical dilemma
that leaves it unable to adequately explain the demands of sociality. In the first section, I
explain how impartiality works in Barry and in Nagel. In Nagel‟s case it is the principle
arising from the standpoint of the collective, and maxims or policies that an individual
would like to pursue are to be examined in its light to determine whether they are
legitimate. In Barry‟s case, impartiality is the central requirement of justice,
accommodating both autonomy and equality in much the same way Nagel‟s „two
standpoints‟ approach tries. However, Barry‟s synthesis here leaves some dangerous
ambiguities that come into focus in the critical sections to follow.
I. The Case for Impartiality: Nagel and Barry
Nagel makes the connection between sociality and impartiality clearly, but it
plays an even more significant role in Barry‟s approach to justice. In the first subsection
I discuss how impartiality plays the role of the normative requirements of sociality in
Nagel, in order to demonstrate the problems with this approach in the next section.
Nagel discusses impartiality, framed in terms of equality, as one of two criteria a maxim
or policy must accord with in order to be legitimate. Then, I will explain how Barry tries
to develop a theory of justice grounded in impartiality as its central value, incorporating
both autonomy and equality, which he, following Nagel in a certain way, takes to
represent the normative demands of sociality. Once we understand how impartiality

104 Barry 1995, p. 11.
93
works in these accounts we will be in a better position to understand why it cannot
address the demands of sociality.
A. Nagel and Impartiality as the requirements of sociality
Nagel begins, as I do, from the methodological view that there are two basic
ineliminable factors, each of which generates independent demands that a moral and
political philosophy must appreciate and reconcile. Furthermore, he appreciates that
these factors must both be, in some respect, a part of the individual. That is, insofar as
individuals choose from among, and determine the legitimacy of, maxims and policies
pursuant to principles that accord with one or another of the two standpoints, the
demands of those principles must be acknowledged and balanced by an individual agent.
However, Nagel quickly moves from this internalization of the demands of sociality to
the claim that the sociality requires the individual to assess his desires, wishes, plans, and
reasons for action according to the impartial perspective. I will first discuss what the
impartial perspective, in Nagel‟s view, consists in before I assess its demands. Then I
attempt to explain why Nagel thinks that impartiality is what sociality requires.
We start, for Nagel, in our own partial viewpoint, but given this, he claims, we
are only one abstraction away from understanding the impartial point of view. „Nothing
further than abstraction from our identity (that is, who we are) enters into ethical theory,‟
he claims, juxtaposing this sort of abstraction from the more advanced kind of
abstraction involved in scientific theorizing.105 This is not, however, to claim that the
impartial point of view is all that is required for ethical theorizing. To do this would
omit the importance of partiality and individuality. What Nagel ultimately proposes then
is a two standard test. For a maxim or policy to be legitimate in the lights of each of the

105 Nagel 1991, p. 10.
94
two factors it must be both partially and impartially acceptable. As I explained in
Chapter 1, Nagel‟s approach to the partial point of view accords nicely with the value of
autonomy as other liberals characterize it, but his focus on impartiality here is unique.
Impartiality, in Nagel‟s view, requires that the individual making the judgement
about whether a maxim or policy is legitimate ensure that that maxim or policy respects
a certain kind of equality among individuals. The role of equality is critical here, since it
is not the only option a theorist interested in impartiality might have chosen. From the
impartial view it is not obvious that every individual‟s interests are of equal weight.
Some individuals will have plans that will ameliorate the condition of a great many
people, while others have goals that will make a great many other people worse off.
Impartiality could concern itself with the promotion of the plans of the former
individuals and with condemning the plans of the latter group. This is Hare‟s approach
to impartiality, but it is not how impartiality works in Nagel.106 Hare‟s maximalization
approach violates the kind of autonomy liberals hold important, which is one of the two
aspects Nagel has in mind when he talks about „the duality of the self.‟ Impartiality is the
other. „If we accept the duality of the self,‟ Nagel says, „then from the impersonal
standpoint two general judgements will emerge which there is no obvious way of
combining, viz: 1. Everyone‟s life is equally important. 2. Everyone has his own life to
lead.‟107 In the second of these two judgements we can see the principle of autonomy,
while in the first we find a characterization of how impartiality works for Nagel. He says
„instead of morality being more like politics in its sensitivity to the balance of power, we

106 Nagel 1991, p. 44. In this, as in many other things, Nagel is consistent with the Rawlsian
tradition’s rejection of utilitarianism on the grounds that it fails to respect the autonomy of the
individual.
107 Ibid.
95
should want politics to be more like morality in its aim of universal acceptance.‟108 This
links his project with the Kant-Rawls tradition where the truly legitimate society is one
that achieves unanimity among its members on the central principles, and the only way
to achieve this unanimity is to treat individuals as autonomous and as of equal worth.
Furthermore, given the closeness of these two characteristics, Nagel‟s two general
judgements above have a built-in means of reconciliation: everyone‟s life is equally
important because everyone has his own life to lead. We are equals, then, because we are
all autonomous.
Nagel‟s approach seems to me to fail to adequately appreciate the demands of
sociality. Ultimately on this view sociality produces no demands that would not be
produced by the individuals involved. In other words, it has the normative implication
of reducing society to the sum of individual obligations, without reference to obligations
they might have to one another. This is not enough to explain the demands of sociality.
Society is, to borrow the Moorean phrase, an organic unity; a whole not reducible to the
sum of its parts.109 There are demands that arise uniquely from sociality rather than from
the sum of the demands of individuals. Such an approach to sociality could not justify
the kind of non-voluntary obligations central to the demands for a second principle. It
might recognize that they are legitimate, much as Rawls recognizes some „natural duties‟
as legitimate, but it could not adequately explain their legitimacy as a product of the
theory.110 However, I will explain this criticism shortly, alongside a critique of a similar
issue in Barry‟s approach to impartiality.

108 Nagel 1991, p. 46.
109 G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica, (New York: Barnes and Noble, 2005) at p. 32.
110 For Rawls’ approach to natural duties see Rawls 1999, pp. 98-100. He recognizes their legitimacy,
but cannot explain it as a product of the two principles of justice.
96
B. Barry and Justice as Impartiality
There is a sense in which Barry picks up where Nagel leaves off. Both attempt
to present theories that use impartiality as a central but are nonetheless faithful to the
Rawlsian tradition. However, central to Barry‟s approach to impartiality is a
disambiguation between what he calls first- and second-order impartiality. In Nagel, as
in other liberals and their critics, these two different and not necessarily connected levels
of impartiality are often problematically conflated. In this subsection I explain the
difference between first- and second-order impartiality and discuss Barry‟s approach to
second-order impartiality. He claims that a version of second-order impartiality is a
sufficient principle for explaining when a maxim or policy is legitimate. This discussion
leads to next two subsections where I argue that Barry is wrong. If impartiality matters
in the way that a candidate to explain the normative requirements of sociality must,
there must be a connection between first- and second-order impartiality such that the
latter implies or requires the former. Once we understand this connection it becomes
easier to see how impartiality is either too vague to be a meaningful legitimating
criterion or cannot adequately represent the demands of sociality.
The distinction between first- and second-order impartiality is key to Barry‟s
approach, since most of the criticisms of impartial conceptions of justice focus on
problems with what he calls first-order impartiality. In Barry‟s view, first-order
impartiality is the idea that individuals are to be guided in their moral deliberations by an
impartial ideal and that moral obligations arising from partiality are illegitimate. This is a
quite different kind of impartiality than second-order impartiality. While first-order
impartiality is „a requirement of impartial behaviour incorporated into a “precept,” what
second order impartiality „calls for are principles and rules that are capable of forming
97
the basis of free agreement among people seeking agreement on reasonable terms.‟111
Second-order impartiality, then, is whatever the outcome of an original position-type
exercise will produce given willing participants and a goal of reasonableness. This is,
however, more of a label than a requirement, as becomes clear when we examine exactly
what second-order impartiality requires and how it is supposed to lead to a just society.
Barry‟s approach to impartiality is intended to further the liberal tradition started
by Rawls and further developed by Scanlon.112 The Rawlsian approach used an
autonomy-focussed account of fairness as a central value, but Barry argues that
impartiality plays a key role in explaining the concerns of fairness. He locates this in
Rawls‟ argument against utilitarianism. While Rawls acknowledges that „the utilitarian
principle – maximizing the average expectation – might seem to be an attractive gamble
from the point of view of the original position,‟ Barry claims that „inequalities that arise
under the Rawlsian principles of justice can be justified to those who fare least well
under their application, whereas those that arise under the application of utilitarianism
cannot be justified to those who do least well.‟113 The difference here is that the
Rawlsian position is fairer than the utilitarian position because of its sensitivity to the
least well off. However, in Barry‟s view Scanlon‟s approach to the original position is an
improvement on Rawls‟ take. He notes two key differences – continued awareness of
own interests rather than total ignorance of their position in society and a „desire for
reasonable agreement‟ rather than self-interest – and how these lead Scanlon to the “no
reasonable rejection” standard.114 In Barry‟s view, this standard better reflects the

111 Barry 1995, p. 11.
112 Barry 1995, pp. 52ff.
113 Ibid., p. 65.
114 Ibid., p. 67, quoting Scanlon ‘Contractualism and Utilitarianism’ in Amartya Sen and Bernard
Williams (Eds.), Utilitarianism and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1982) at p, 115, n. 10.
98
impartiality already implicit in Rawls‟ justice as fairness by spelling out how fairness
requires impartiality. For Barry, impartiality is the principle by which informed people
with a commitment to reach agreement choose from among various maxims and
policies. Impartiality requires agreement on principles as fair, Scanlon‟s approach leads
to fair principles through the use of a principle of equality, therefore justice as
impartiality will require a principle of equality.
Barry contends that this second-order impartiality neither implies nor requires
first-order impartiality. He mounts a more thorough defence of non-requirement in the
final part of Justice as Impartiality. He defends his view against three different critics of
impartiality: the Williams, Kohlberg and feminist approaches. The Williams approach
draws from Bernard Williams‟ attacks on the role of impartiality in both Kantian and
consequentialist approaches to morality. Williams argues that failure to accept partiality
is a major shortcoming of every major system of morality, but Barry claims that
Williams‟ arguments are off-target.115 While Williams is right about particular versions of
consequentialism and Kantianism, Barry claims that these versions are themselves
inadequate and, as such, arguments against them have no real bearing on more nuanced
approaches to impartiality like his. Because of this misdirection, Barry holds that
nothing in Williams‟ approach makes it necessary for a second-order impartiality theory
to require first-order impartiality, and so it only has purchase against theories with firstorder impartiality. In this sense, Barry‟s attacks on Williams miss the mark themselves.
Since Williams says nothing about the connections between first- and second-order
impartiality so central to Barry‟s approach, critiquing Williams‟ approach is itself
unnecessary.

115 Barry 1995, pp. 217-233.
99
The Kholberg approach is based on a statistical analysis claiming to show what
ordinary people think morality requires.116 Based on a methodologically unsound set of
studies conducted during the 1960s and 1970s, Lawrence Kohlberg argued that the
apogee of ordinary morality is found in either of a utilitarian or Kantian approach to
impartiality.117 Without getting into too many of the empirical details, Barry
demonstrates quite effectively how Kohlberg‟s approach does not demonstrate any way
in which first-order impartiality is required by second-order impartiality. Rather,
Kohlberg argues in the opposite direction: claiming that the prevalence of commitment
to first-order impartiality should lead political philosophers to use something like
second-order impartiality in establishing the justice of political institutions. In addition
to the clear commission of the naturalistic fallacy here, Barry accused Kohlberg of
skewing the studies to ensure the primacy of the utilitarian/Kantian outcome by
generating an unrealistic scenario on which to evaluate the subjects‟ attitudes and by
arbitrarily limiting the tabulation of results into his overly narrow characterizations.
However, the weakness of Kohlberg‟s position means that while Barry‟s separation of
first- and second-order impartiality is safe for the moment, it remains to be seen
whether it was under genuine attack from Kohlberg to begin with.
The feminist critique of impartial morality grew out of opposition to the
Kohlberg studies. The „ethic of care‟ advocated by Carol Gilligan and many feminist
authors who followed her is based directly on an objection to Kohlberg‟s methodology.
Relationship-based ethics, of the kind many contemporary feminist philosophers
advocate, was allocated a third-level status by Kohlberg, two notches below his

116 Barry 1995, pp. 234-246.
117 For a discussion of the methodological unsoundness of the Kohlberg studies see Carol Gilligan, In
a Different Voice, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1993) esp. pp. 20ff.
100
preferred approaches. In Gilligan‟s view an ethic grounded in relationships, rather than
one grounded in justice, should be seen as a rival to the Kantian and utilitarian camps
dominant in philosophy, but the former approach rejects impartiality while the latter
makes it a central value.118 Barry‟s approach to this is to try and claim that there is room
within an ethics of justice for an ethic of care. When justice is silent for whatever reason
– its considerations balance out or the matter is deemed „private‟ rather than „public‟ in
some relevant way – an ethic of care can appropriately answer the question of what one
ought to do. However, when there are impartial considerations that require a course of
action, Barry contends that the ethic of care does wrong to insist on the value of
partiality in such circumstances.
Barry‟s approach here seems to miss the main focus of the feminist critique, that
the personal is political.119 In this context, deciding about what is public and what is
private is itself a question about which the ethic of care and the ethic of justice might
give different answers and to which neither can presume the legitimacy of pretheoretical intuitions. Take, for example, the decision about whether to hire one
individual or another in a small business. In one sense, we think it perfectly acceptable
that some businesses are able to remain within a family, but when the business becomes
important in some way – by growth or by providing an essential service at a critical
moment – such hiring practices will be seen as problematically nepotistic. While an ethic
of care will promote hiring based on relationship and will consider the family business
to be a personal matter, an ethic of justice insisting on full equality of opportunity will
consider all hiring to be a public matter (since it involves the distribution of limited
goods, namely work opportunities) and will insist on an open competition or some

118 Barry 1995, pp. 246-257.
119 Okin 1989, inter alia.
101
other impartialist procedure. What makes an issue public or private is itself a question
that Barry illicitly presumes should be answered by impartial justice. Failure to
adequately deal with this problem undermines Barry‟s approach, as it demonstrates the
potential for second-order impartiality to require actions that, from some angles, are
seen as private. This makes the second-order impartiality imply the kind of first-order
impartiality Barry sought to avoid as obviously problematic.
II. Second-order Impartiality
Second-order impartiality without first-order impartiality is not an adequate
conception of justice. Put simply, my claim here is that in Barry‟s approach to „justice as
impartiality,‟ impartiality itself is not doing any of the normative work. Rather, all the
work is done by the various principles built into Barry‟s account of what reasonableness
in a Scanlonian „reasonable rejection‟ test would require and that reasonableness is not
equivalent to impartiality. First, I explore Barry‟s contention that a „reasonable rejection‟
test would reject first-order impartiality. While I can appreciate the approach, I find his
objections uncompelling. Then, I move into the explanation of what reasonableness
requires for Barry to demonstrate that impartiality itself plays no real role in determining
whether a maxim or policy is something another could reasonably reject. This leads to
the view that whatever justice requires according to Barry, it does not require secondorder impartiality. Therefore, for impartiality to serve as a principle representing the
demands of the collective standpoint, it must be something more like first-order
impartiality.
A. Does reasonableness preclude first-order impartiality?
Barry‟s strongest argument for the claim that second-order impartiality does not
imply its first-order counterpart is the argument that the former precludes the latter. He
102
argues that individuals in a Scanlonian or Rawlsian original position would fail to
endorse a norm of first-order impartiality. However, I believe the plausibility of his
argument here rests on a failure to adequately examine the standard of reasonable
rejection. Barry says
„that the people in a Scanlonian original position could not reasonably reject
established norms governing first-order impartiality provided they fell within a
certain range. However, this range does not extend as far as a norm of
universal first-order impartiality or anything like it. The people in a Scanlonian
original position could reject a norm that did not leave sufficient scope for
individual discretion.‟120
To this end Barry examines three different problems with a universalized first-order
impartiality: control, coordination, and compliance. I will examine each of these in turn
and demonstrate that they fail to make the case for reasonable rejection.
Barry believes justice as impartiality can reject universal first order impartiality
for three reasons. The first is what he calls „control.‟ This is essentially an argument that
the importance of a sphere of privacy leads individuals in the original position to reject
universal first-order impartiality. „Regardless of our conception of the good,‟ Barry
claims, „we all want some ability to control our own corner of the world … to put it
another way, we all want some room for discretionary choices within the areas that are
the most important to us.‟121 How this would be affected by a norm of universal
impartiality is not spelled out, but should be clear nonetheless. Barry believes that if
there is a requirement of first-order impartiality, the projects, property and well-being of
one individual can be sacrificed for the benefit of another. This, then, is simply a claim
that autonomy, in the sense discussed in the opening chapter of this thesis, is important
enough to exclude first-order impartiality as a principle. However, while this is a good
post-hoc argument for explaining why we might not want to adopt impartiality writ

120 Barry 1995, p. 200.
121 Ibid.
103
large, it does not explain why it could be reasonably rejected by individuals in the
original position – particularly if those individuals adopt many of the values Barry seems
to give them elsewhere. Earlier in the book he focuses on the role of equality in the
basic intuitions underlying impartiality, but equality does make impartial demands
limiting the sphere of the private for the benefit of the sphere of the public. Equality
requires transfers of personal property from one individual to another to promote the
cause of a just society. Equality does not care about how important those resources
were to the first party.122 That a multi-millionaire might have done something truly
brilliant with his money is of little comfort to nearby starving children. If equality is
important and implies impartiality, then it implies first- and second-order impartiality
even at the expense of autonomy.
Ultimately Barry‟s claims about control depend on his claims about coordination
and compliance. While control seems to be the factor involved when Barry says „life
goes better if what I do with my toothbrush is my own business,‟123 ultimately his
defence of this claim is not that it is better all things considered if each individual has a
right to a sphere of privacy including personal property but that „I should not be under
any obligation to ask myself whether somebody else could make out a better case for
using my toothbrush than I can.‟124 The core of the problem of control, then, is one of
coordination. It is too difficult for each of us to spend a lot of our time determining
how to best allocate our finite resources. This seems sensible enough, but to presume
that first-order impartiality would require such an effort seems a bit of a leap. First-

122 Or so resource egalitarians claim. See Ronald Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue, (London: Harvard UP,
2000). A welfare egalitarian will tell a different story, but in this case he will care about the
importance of the resources rather than their objective usefuleness to various parties. G. A. Cohen,
Rescuing Justice and Equality, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2008).
123 Barry 1995, p. 201.
124 Ibid.
104
order impartiality could require the optimal distribution of toothbrushes without
requiring each individual to think about how this distribution should be achieved. To a
limited extent, Barry acknowledges this. „Either coordination would have to be done by
some public authority operating impartially according to general norms,‟ He says, „or
[coordination] will have to come about through private actions governed by a norm of
universal first-order impartiality.‟125 Nonetheless he dismisses each of these two
possibilities as ineffective without much explanation as to why.
This dismissal is too quick. A moral and political division of labour is one of the
most ordinary features of modern life. We have rules – ranging in demandingness and
enforceability from norms of etiquette to corporally punishable laws – that govern a
wide range of situations from when to start eating at a dinner party to how much tax an
individual has to pay to when the state can and must kill its citizens. Each of these
egalitarian, first-order norms is a relatively novel invention that we have nonetheless
effectively coordinated. There is no a priori reason to think that first-order impartiality
could not be solved by the same coordinative devices as other moral principles and no
better empirical reason to think this than there was to think the same about taxation and
egalitarian dining practices several centuries ago.
Similar comments apply to Barry‟s use of compliance. He maintains that „in an
attempt to secure strict impartiality in all areas of life a huge number of decisions that
are now left to private judgement would have to be turned over to public officials; and
all decisions left in private hands would be open to scrutiny and censure on the basis of
the hypertrophied positive morality of the society.‟126 Firstly, whether this morality is
hypertrophied depends on whether our current morality is considered healthy, a claim

125 Barry 1995, pp. 204-205.
126 Barry 1995, p. 205.
105
needing support unoffered by Barry. Second, why should we think that justice as
impartiality would stand in any greater need of bureaucratization with a first-order
requirement of impartiality as without? Given the importance of equality to impartiality,
and the great deal of bureaucracy required by an egalitarian state, why should we worry
about it in an impartialist state?
In all of these criticisms of first-order impartiality Barry treats the public/private
divide as thought it were a natural fact rather than as something that is itself a question
of justice. Whether toothbrushes or the use or destruction of other scarce resources is a
private or a public matter is itself a question of justice. To use such a divide in an
attempt to claim what justice does and does not require introduces a problematic
circularity of which Barry seems unaware. This makes it seem as though Barry here is
attempting to use justice as impartiality to claim that no one can reasonably reject the
status quo, when in reality justice as impartiality might require a much more radical
reorientation. In any event, problems arising from control, coordination and compliance
do not have the force Barry believes. They do not prove that a society in a Scanlonian
original position can reasonably reject a principle of impartiality.
B. Does reasonableness require impartiality?
It seems to me that without first-order impartiality, Barry‟s justice as impartiality
does not really involve impartiality at all. I believe the normative work in Barry‟s
approach is done by the concept of reasonableness, which only looks like impartiality
because of the closeness of some of its constitutive principles to first-order impartiality.
As such, if I am wrong in the prior subsection, and Barry‟s approach to second-order
impartiality does not require first-order impartiality, then it is not really a theory of
impartiality. Barry sets out a definition of impartiality at the outset of his approach that
106
is barely reflected, and carries no normative weight in the substantive approach he
adopts. Ultimately, this leaves me with the impression that impartiality is a label for a
theory rather than a description of that theory‟s content. If this is what Barry means by
justice as impartiality, then it becomes quickly clear that this is not a kind of impartiality
that can explain the needs of sociality.
Barry has three questions that set out the methodology meant to guide our
understanding of what a theory of justice must involve. „First, what is the motive (are
the motives) for behaving justly? Secondly, what is the criterion (are the criteria) for a
just set of rules? And thirdly, how are the answers to the first two questions
connected?‟127 Barry‟s answers to these three questions constitute his explanation of
what justice as impartiality involves and his advocacy for it. To this end, Barry adopts
Scanlon‟s reasonable rejection test wholesale and then explains how this test satisfies
each of the three questions.128
The answer provided to the first question involves advocating a desire for
reasonable agreement over mutual advantage as an answer to the „why be just‟ question.
This is in addition to their desires to pursue their individual aims, and so should be seen
as a supplement to the desire for mutual advantage that drives the Rawlsian answer to
the first question. Barry does not discuss how two motives can easily conflict. A desire
to pursue particular ends might be compromised by my desire to reach general
agreement. A goal of world domination might not be possible, or, at least, might not be
just, in a society based on agreement. Even if it were possible, such an end would likely
conflict with my desire to reach agreement with others, unless they all happen to have a

127 Barry 1995, p. 46.
128 Barry naturally does more than just this. He also explains why other approaches, notably Rawls’
and Nozick’s, do not adequately answer these three questions. Here, however, I must focus on his
positive account of what justice as impartiality involves so that I can better demonstrate that it does
not really involve impartiality.
107
desire to be relieved of the burden of governance, a coincidence on which Barry cannot
rely. More importantly, Barry does not explain any way in which this motive (these
motives) leads to impartiality as a requirement. This is not too serious at this point as
impartiality could be involved in the answers to the second and third questions. But it is
noteworthy because if there are difficulties involved in connecting his answers to the
second and third questions with impartiality, Barry cannot use the „desire to reach
agreement‟ motive as a source of impartiality.
The criterion Barry, following Scanlon, adopts is that of reasonable rejection.
Quoting Scanlon, Barry characterizes this as follows: „an act is wrong if its performance
under the circumstances would be disallowed by any system of rules for the general
regulation of behaviour which no one could reasonable reject as a basis for informed,
unforced general agreement.‟129 Naturally, such a principle stands in need of explanation
on several points, and Barry does an admirable job of making its implications clear.
However, these implications do not seem to connect reasonable rejection with any sort
of substantive principle of impartiality. While Scanlon is focussed on acts that are
wrong, Barry is focussed on rules that are just, but little depends on this distinction. The
nature of unforced and informed decision is important for both Barry and Scanlon. An
unforced agreement in their view precludes coercion or allowing for disparate
bargaining power. In other words, that I could do better without an agreement than you
is no good reason for me to reject an otherwise reasonable system of rules. Meanwhile,
Barry claims to depart somewhat from Scanlon on what counts as informed. While
Scanlon would exclude „“agreement based on superstition or false belief about the

129 Barry 1995, p. 67, quoting Scanlon 1982, p. 110.
108
consequences of actions,”‟130 Barry contends that „one person‟s superstition is another
person‟s belief.‟131 While Barry recognizes that some informed belief requirement is
necessary, he believes this should take a proceduralist form. Parties to the original
position should be aware of the way their society works and of the alternatives. This
seems to leave open the possibility of agreement based on superstition or false belief,
provided it is universally held or universally seen as reasonable.
What counts as reasonable is, however, underexplored in Barry‟s account. While
it seems clearly connected with universalizability, this condition is already an explicit
part of the standard. Furthermore, given the possibility of multiple reasonably
acceptable systems of rules, this principle gives no further determination about which of
them to choose. We can look for clues to reasonableness in Barry‟s determinations
about what is and is not reasonable, but in these I find little insight. I find little in the
way of explanation for his claim that „it is one thing to be praised for behaving
generously against a background norm which leaves the act optional and quite another
to be led by generosity to accept a rule that would expose one to moral condemnation
unless one were to sacrifice oneself unilaterally. It would not be reasonable to accept the
latter.‟132 It seems far from obvious to me that there are not circumstances under which
one does wrong not to sacrifice oneself which, on a Scanlonian proceduralist account
makes such acts required by justice. While we can hope for these occasions to be rare
this rarity does not make them any less important for a comprehensive theory of justice.
While the Scanlonian approach to the motive for agreement does incline towards
generosity, Barry seems to wish to tailor this generosity by making what counts as

130 Barry 1995, p. 69, quoting Scanlon 1982, p. 111.
131 Ibid.
132 Ibid., p. 70.
109
reasonable closely tied to the pursuit of one‟s own inclinations. This is quite different
from the approach to rationality in Scanlon‟s later work What We Owe to Each Other,
which focuses on a very restricted approach to irrationality leading to a broad approach
to rationality. For something to be rational, for the later Scanlon, is just for it not to
contradict a proposition one currently endorses.133 That this might involve limiting one‟s
generosity in the original position is a possibility, but neither Barry nor Scanlon explain
how these are to be counter-balanced.
Finally, nothing in this discussion of the Scanlonian approach to justice indicates
the importance of impartiality. There is a certain emphasis on equality, but it is more of
a prioritarian than an egalitarian approach, and a prioritarian approach is less committed
to impartiality.134 Prioritarians explicitly favour those who are worst off and require
amelioration of their position excluding the possibility of levelling down. Inequalities in
the Scanlon/Barry approach must be justified to all, including those who are worst off,
but universality and unanimity do not necessarily require impartiality. This implies that
fairness plays an important role in this approach, but again fairness is not the same as
impartiality. If we start, as Barry does, from the point of view that fairness requires
certain moral features, we are already a significant way from the Scanlonian starting
point where fairness is one of the things that has to be determined by the reasonable
rejection test. Finally, any attempt to insert a more normative version of fairness would
fall afoul of Barry‟s own warning against making too much of the concept of equal
treatment, where he says „we can talk about equal treatment only after we have settled
the prior issue of what should count as relevant and what should be excluded as

133 T. M. Scanlon What We Owe to Each Other, (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1998), at chapter one.
134 Derek Parfit, ‘Priority or Equality’ in Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Anthology (2nd Ed.),
Robert E. Goodin and Philip Pettit, Eds., (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 462-472, and Richard J.
Arneson, ‘Luck Egalitarianism and Prioritarianism,’ Ethics, v. 110 no. 1 (2000), pp. 333-349.
110
irrelevant.‟135 Fairness has to be determined through the original position or via some
process of reflective equilibrium defended on its own merits. Neither of these are
options Barry has available to him at this stage in his enquiry.
What this leaves us with is the label „justice as impartiality,‟ but with no
substantive impartiality in its content. Therefore, to whatever extent impartiality is
required by our sociality it cannot be Barry‟s second-order impartiality. Whether it could
be a different sort of impartiality, closer to how Nagel uses the term, is a final option
that I will examine in the next section. 136
III. First-order Impartiality
Nagel starts from the assumption that impartiality represents the normative
requirements of sociality, but, as mentioned before, I believe his approach here is
mistaken. If some sort of first-order impartiality is an ethical requirement at all it must
be from some other source than the basic demands of human sociality. I believe Nagel
presents this version of impartiality as a sort of equality of autonomy. I contend here
that this version cannot adequately explain the kind of non-voluntary character of the
obligations addressed in chapter two and it fails to explain the kind of alterity that seems
to be important to our sociality. Yet if we understand impartiality more like Barry‟s firstorder impartiality, this principle might be deeply incompatible with autonomy in
violation of another of my methodological presumptions here. In this section I examine

135 Barry 1995, p. 228.
136 One could object that even if Barry’s approach is not genuinely about impartiality it is surely
about some other value that could, even if impartiality cannot, represent the normative requirements of
sociality. Put simply, that might be true, but it does not undermine the claim that if impartiality is to
represent the demands of sociality then Barry’s account of second-order impartiality will not work.
While I will comment further on the possible role for general moral principles in developing an
account of solidarity, the point in this section was to examine whether impartiality could play such a
role. That Barry claimed to be talking about impartiality makes a discussion of him appropriate – that
impartiality does not actually do any of the normative work in his ‘second-order impartiality’ is a
problem for him and, in the context of my assessment of whether impartiality can play the role
required by a second value, a fatal one. This leaves us with Nagel’s approach and the kind of firstorder impartiality it contains and that Barry rightly rejects.
111
each of these possibilities in turn, concluding that the demands of sociality cannot be
properly represented by impartiality.
A. Impartiality as Equality
While my earlier discussion focussed on how Nagel might not have chosen
equality as the requirement for impartiality – he might have followed a utilitarian route
and required maximalization of interests – my discussion here will focus on the fit
between equality and the impartial point of view. For Nagel, impartiality both reflects
and requires equality. It reflects equality in that a sort of formal equality arises from the
abstraction from the personal to the impersonal point of view, while it requires equality
because this is the normative consequence of the abstraction.137 Nonetheless, I believe
this kind of „impartiality as equality‟ cannot be what sociality requires because, strictly
speaking, formal equality does not require anything. The normative force of
egalitarianism comes because of the moral worth individuals are taken to have. In
Nagel‟s case, this arises by making the impartial/egalitarian principle include the
interests of the individual in a way tantamount to autonomy. In this kind of impartiality
autonomy is doing all the work and equality, effectively, none.
While I set out the connections between impartiality and equality briefly earlier
in this chapter, a brief rehearsal is in order before I begin critiquing the position. The
abstraction from the partial point of view to the impartial point of view is accomplished
by omitting from consideration only the fact about which interests are one‟s own. Once
we have abstracted away from our own identities we are left with a world of equal
individuals/interest combinations. The individuals themselves are not necessarily what is

137 Nagel 1991, pp. 10-12.
112
important as much as the individuals and their attached interests. They are equally
important because they are all equally attached to interests and plans.
However, impartiality does not necessarily follow from the kind of abstraction
Nagel presumes here. Some plans and interests are, or seem to be, more important than
others. It does not seem unreasonable to presume that an individual whose plan will
make the plans of many others more likely to succeed ought to be favoured by the
impartial point of view over some other individual whose plans will help fewer
individuals or, indeed, whose plans will harm other individuals. Nagel needs some nonaggregable property here to prevent the kind of aggregation involved in this kind of
maximalization approach. It is in this way that we can see the extent to which the
impartial point of view is influenced by the importance of autonomy. We are all equal,
but the equalisandum, what we are equal in, is autonomy. What is important, then, is not
the satisfaction of plans but the satisfaction of the individuals with plans. Otherwise,
aggregation would be more of a problem for Nagel.
The importance of autonomy to impartiality is, however, pernicious and
undermines Nagel‟s root claim that the standpoint of the collective is best understood as
requiring impartiality. The inclusion of autonomy as the equalisandum by Nagel
demonstrates a key feature of egalitarian theories. While the theories focus on equality,
what we are all equal in is autonomy. We are all equally deserving of having our interests
met and our plans come to fruition. The difficulty with this is that is ultimately reduces
to the kind of autonomy-only theory, the shortcomings of which I explained in chapter
two. Egalitarian theories like Nagel‟s combine an account of formal equality with some
substantive moral principle to determine what sociality requires, or what a just outcome
113
involves. The trouble is that the equality condition is vacuous and the substantive
condition does all the normative work.
I believe there is a bi-conditional at the core of formal equality claiming that we
ought to treat one individual in a certain way (say, as an autonomous individual) if and
only if we ought to treat another individual that way. In this case, we ought to treat A as
an autonomous individual if and only if we ought to treat B as an autonomous
individual. However, the same result – the treatment of A and B as autonomous
individuals – can be accomplished without any reference to equality. If A deserves
treatment as an autonomous individual because A has interests and plans and B
deserves treatment as an autonomous individual for the same reason, then justice
requires us to treat A and B as autonomous individuals. They happen to be treated as
equals because they are both deserving of the same treatment, but equality plays no role
in determining the treatment they are due. This leaves the view that treatment as an
autonomous individual matters, but equality does not. It adds nothing, leaving a fairly
basic conception of desert and the connection of individuals and interests we
characterized as autonomy from the outset, doing all the normative work.
This can be seen in Nagel‟s approach to impartiality as well, particularly in how
he distinguishes his egalitarianism from utilitarian egalitarianism. In Nagel, what we
ought ultimately to satisfy are the plans of individuals (one of whom is oneself), rather
than plans simpliciter, the plans we would see from a level of abstraction one beyond
Nagel‟s, where we abstract away from all individuals as well as from oneself. Interests
simpliciter can be aggregated, and we could legitimately choose to satisfy those leading
to the greatest good. That we cannot do that illustrates the importance of autonomy;
that we cannot aggregate plans means that what is treated as equal is the autonomous
114
individual. Individuals are due treatment according to certain norms of respect, dignity
and through the satisfaction of their plans: a standard roughly equivalent to my
approach to autonomy from chapter one. However, the individuals need not be seen as
equals to accomplish this. They need only both be seen as bearing the same trait
(individuality) entailing the same normative consequence (autonomous treatment).
What this leaves Nagel with is an attempt to represent the standpoint of the
collective as ensuring the autonomy of the individual. This violates the desiderata of
chapter two, in which we discussed the shortcomings of autonomy and how it cannot
adequately explain why certain important features of our ethical and political lives are
legitimate. Nagel‟s impartiality as equality is ultimately a version of impartiality as
autonomy, and cannot adequately represent the demands of the fact of sociality.
B. Impartiality as Non-partiality
It remains to be seen in the final part of this chapter whether a version of firstorder impartiality, of the kind Barry dismisses but to which I believe his theory is
committed, can adequately represent the normative requirements of sociality. Using
Barry‟s characterization, I will briefly explain what first-order impartiality involves.
There are a few different options. As Barry presents it, first-order impartiality could be
an overriding obligation to act according to the results of some impartial utility calculus
such that someone always does ultima facie wrong in failing to act accordingly. Following
Barry, I will call this Kagan-style impartiality, though I believe Barry‟s use of Shelly
Kagan‟s „extreme‟ approach to morality is an uncharitable reading of the latter‟s work.138
Alternatively, impartiality could involve a pro tanto, rather than ultima facie, reason for
action. While this is a more acceptable option than the Kagan-style approach, it

138 Barry 1995, discussing Kagan at p. 24-25, referencing Shelly Kagan, The Limits of Morality
(Oxford: Oxford UP, 1986).
115
nonetheless cannot adequately respond to the type of concerns that a principle of
fraternity representing the demands of sociality is supposed to address. Put simply, there
are obligations arising from partiality that we believe to be legitimate and that any value
attempting to explain the importance of sociality must address. First-order impartiality,
even in its more plausible form, is ill suited to explain the legitimacy of these obligations
and, therefore, is an appropriate candidate for explaining the demands of sociality.
Barry is quick to dismiss first-order impartiality, and therefore his discussion of
it is brief. Nonetheless, in that brief discussion he does provide some guidance as to
what a first-order impartialist approach to legitimacy (or justice, in Barry‟s terms) would
require. Kagan‟s goal in The Limits of Morality is to examine whether there is a plausible
case for what he calls „ordinary moral opinion,‟ but what it results in is a strong case for
a version of „extreme‟ morality. Extreme morality involves a pro tanto obligation to
maximize the good with no legitimate countervailing obligations. This results in an
ultima facie obligation to maximize the good, where the good is viewed impartially. What
this leaves us with is a view that any maxim or policy inconsistent with the dictates of
impartiality is illegitimate, and impartiality requires us to maximize the good.
While there are aspects of Kagan‟s approach to morality that I find convincing,
Barry‟s use of it here as a strategy to explain a consequentialist approach to first-order
impartiality is incompatible with my methodology. I start from the presumption that
there are two facts, sociality and individuality. A framework like Kagan‟s leaves little
room for individuality. If there is always an ultima facie obligation to pursue the good,
there can be no real autonomy since the choices of individuals would always be subject
to the demands of impartial morality. The maximalist approach Kagan uses here
contradicts the separateness of persons explained in chapter one, which is why it
116
undermines the kind of autonomy that relies on the separateness of persons. It is,
therefore, not a particularly helpful candidate for explaining impartiality as an expression
of the demands of sociality.
Nonetheless, Kagan‟s approach to impartiality as the maximalization of the good
could be softened to make it a more plausible approach, though this softening is not
apparent in Barry‟s discussion. If the pro tanto obligation to pursue the good were merely
one pro tanto obligation among many it could offer a form of impartiality that, while also
inconsistent with autonomy (and as such not preferred on my account) might
nonetheless be plausible. In this version impartiality is one reason, while autonomy is
another, and conflicts between the two must be resolved through some procedure I
need explain here.139
I need not get into this explanation because there are deeper problems with
first-order impartiality that infect even more moderated versions. A first-order
impartiality that requires us to maximize the good cannot explain the legitimacy of
special obligations of the kind that played such an important role in chapter two. While
second-order impartiality might allow for, or even legitimate, some special obligations –
particularly those to the family or the obligation to obey the law – first-order impartiality
stands directly opposed to the kind of partiality that is central to such obligation. Family
partiality, obligations to co-nationals, the whole set of special obligations cannot be
justified if first-order impartiality is the legitimating principle invoked. It is too far
removed from the kind of alterity we need here, and as such cannot do the kind of work
that a principle representing the demands of sociality must.

139 I will spend most of chapter seven explaining the different ways to reconcile principles in a dualist
framework, though impartiality will not be one of the principles.
117
Conclusion
While some liberals have used impartiality to explain the demands of sociality, it
is ill suited to explain that fact‟s normative requirements. I believe Nagel‟s approach to
impartiality as an explanation of the demands of sociality is misguided. While secondorder impartiality seems promising, it is ultimately either vacuous or only valuable
because it implies first-order impartiality. However, first-order impartiality, even in its
most plausible version, is at odds with the phenomena any candidate for the principle of
fraternity must explain as legitimate. Impartiality is not, then, what our sociality requires.
118
Chapter 5 – Solidarity and the Grounding of Fraternity
Abstract
In this chapter I examine whether a concept of solidarity might play the role
needed for a value of fraternity. I distinguish between interest- and identity-based
approaches to solidarity, and explain why I favour an interest-based approach. I examine
the normative and motivational requirements of the obligation to enter into solidarity
with others and the obligations that arise from a solidaristic union. Then I analyse three
different kinds of solidarity. While common self-interests alone cannot suffice for
solidarity, they are a necessary feature of a valuable account. Solidarity grounded on
prior relationships seems like a candidate, but violates autonomy in important ways.
However, a version of solidarity where the interests of another are incorporated into
one‟s own interest set through one‟s own conscience seems to me like a plausible
candidate. It may also represent the demands of our sociality.
Introduction
Alterity is at the core of solidarity, and explains why it is a candidate for a
political value that arises from our basic sociality. Alterity in general involves a focus on
the other. In an ethical context, it narrows to a focus on some aspect of the other‟s well
being. Impartiality was lacking in alterity, but solidarity is grounded in it. Solidarity exists
when there is some unity among individuals, some identification with another leading to
common support for a common goal. Initially, I must distinguish some of the normative
features of solidarity. Ordinarily, Solidarity is discussed as a valuing of some common
property individuals share. I argue that this approach to solidarity is short-sighted and
pernicious if solidarity is to help explain the legitimacy of moral and political obligations.
Instead, solidarity ought to be understood as involving identification with the interests
119
of another. I then explain the nature of solidarity‟s normativity. There are two distinct
obligations involved in solidarity: entry and union obligations. While each is a kind of pro
tanto reason for action, one is weak but nonetheless difficult to defeat, while the other is
stronger but more often overridden. This forms the content of the first section of this
chapter.
Once I have explained the nature of the obligations involved in solidarity, I turn
my attention to the mechanism by which another individual‟s interests can become
incorporated with my own. I examine three possible answers. The first, based on
common self-interests, tells part of the story but not all. I explain how self-interest plays
a necessary role in an account of solidarity, but that basing solidarity wholly on common
interests misses critical elements of what the normative requirements of sociality should
include. Some of those elements might be provided by an account built around
individual loyalty, the second possible mechanism. However, since the kind of loyalty on
which solidarity would, I argue, depend is deeply incompatible with a principle of
respect for autonomy it fails on methodological grounds. The third possibility, which I
call „moderate ethical solidarity‟ grounds the solidarity relationship in our pre-existing
ethical obligations. I believe this approach, when combined with the common selfinterest requirement, can give us a plausible account for what fraternity as the value
required by the fact of sociality.
I. What Solidarity Involves
I believe solidarity involves the recognition that individuals identify with one
another through a common interest that will be ameliorated through collective action.
This is clear in the commonly used metaphor „we‟re all in the same boat.‟ My task here is
to explain what this formulation involves: only then will we be able to see whether or
120
how it can meet the requirements of sociality and be reconcilable with autonomy. First,
I explain the identification involved in solidarity. This identification is not with the other
individual as a whole, or with some of that individual‟s traits, but with that individual‟s
interests. Most approaches to solidarity rely on some prior common trait of the
individuals involved to establish solidarity. I call these identity-based approaches, and
contrast them with interest-based accounts. Interest-based approaches ground the unity
solidarity requires in some sort of identification with another‟s interests. Second, I will
explain the normative requirements of solidarity. As there are two types of obligations
involved in any discussion of solidarity, I deal with both entry obligations and union
obligations throughout. Entry obligations are pro tanto obligations to enter into a
relationship of solidarity that can, and I believe often do end up as ultima facie
obligations, while union obligations are stronger pro tanto obligations that result from
entry into solidarity and that must be reconcilable with autonomy. Each kind of
obligation can be overridden, but once solidarity is established, our obligations within
such a union take on added strength because of a prior entry obligation.
A. Identity and Interest
Usually solidarity, when discussed at all, is discussed as an identity-based
practice. Some kind of pre-existing unity is postulated on the basis of a shared identity,
on which the specific obligations are superimposed. I believe this picture cannot do the
work of a foundational value in moral and political philosophy. Instead, I argue for an
interest-based approach to the identification with another involved in solidarity. On this
view, individuals should adopt a form of solidarity because they have a common
interest, on which the union obligations are then based. If individuals do not identify
121
with another‟s interests, entry into solidarity would no longer be ethically or politically
required, and the union obligations would not arise.
The interest approach has a number of advantages over the identity approach,
not the least of which is that so much of identity-based solidarity involves the „dubious
category “race.”‟140 This is well discussed in Tommie Shelby‟s attempt to construct an
interest-based approach to African American solidarity. While Shelby is indebted to the
work of W. E. B. Du Bois, particularly in his assessment of the relative duties of black
elites and the middle and working classes, unlike Du Bois, he moves very deliberately
beyond identity as a basis for entry into solidarity.141 The central problem is that race
and the identity-based approaches that mirror it, no longer have any intellectual
currency. Race depends on a sort of biological essentialism: there is some inescapable
feature of an individual contained in their genes and manifest in their physical traits.142
Shelby wishes to maintain that there is a valuable role for unity among black people
while rejecting essentialism. While the essentialist approaches based their unity or „race
pride‟ on common phenotypic traits, Shelby‟s conception of solidarity is grounded on a
common experience of unjust treatment common interest in remedying that injustice
which happen to arise due to a shared trait.
A key advantage of the interest-based account is that even non-essentialist
notions of identity that attempt to treat it as monistic are now recognized, in philosophy
if not yet in the broader culture, as deeply implausible. While identification with a
particular trait is both common and unproblematic, attempting to identify with only one

140 Shelby 2005, at p. 24. The inner quotes here are in the original.
141 While Shelby’s references to Du Bois are frequent, his deeply sympathetic yet critical discussion
at pp. 60-67 and 78-95 is both thorough and revealing.
142 Shelby has a detailed discussion about the problems of race and identity in developing an account
of solidarity at p. 39ff. See also Sen 2005 and K. Anthony Appiah, The Ethics of Idenitity, (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton UP, 2005).
122
trait is a problem, even when one‟s oppression is due to that one particular trait.
Amartya Sen points out clearly why this kind of biographical monism is difficult. We
are, he claims, all subject to a fact of pluralism in that we all have multiple identities.143
Someone who tries to cling to one of these identities is under what Sen calls the illusion
of „singular affiliation.‟144 One can, if one wishes, cling exclusively to one identity and
deny the others, or one can claim that one identity has overriding normative force.
Nonetheless, Sen claims, in either event one is choosing among identities. However,
choosing one identity over others involves both epistemic error and moral danger. It is
false as a matter of history and anthropology. The concepts of nations, races and tribes
is an old one, but the notion that these were somehow pure or that one‟s nationality,
race, religion or any single trait is the only trait that matters defies our historical and
anthropological record. Humans migrate, cultures move with them and to single out any
trait as essential would be ridiculously arbitrary. History and anthropology also
demonstrate the ethical dangers involved in monism: the 20th century alone provides a
series of horrifically grandiose examples. Nonetheless, this sort of monism is
conceptually pernicious because it is both tempting in its simplicity and generous in its
applicability. It claims to provide a simple either/or test for inclusion and exclusion
while simultaneously simplifying one‟s inner diversity into a small number of traits that
matter and a great number that do not. Race and identity accounts of solidarity depend
on this false and troubling monism, and should be abandoned accordingly.
Identity can play a role in generating the interests involved in solidarity. Indeed,
when the interest involved is racial injustice, it would be difficult for the trait not to
generate an interest, albeit indirectly. What is important, however, is that the interest-

143 Sen 2005.
144 Ibid., pp. 23-28.
123
based solidarity not depend solely on the trait such that people who don‟t have the trait
can‟t share the interest and therefore enter into solidarity with those who do. Blacks in
the United States are not just people who are not treated equally: they are people who
are not treated equally because they are black. They have a common characteristic against
which the dominant political culture continues to act unjustly. While they can recognize
the dubious nature of delineating along that trait, they can also recognize that it is in
their interest to work so that all who have the trait are no longer subject to the same
injustices because of that trait. The solidarity will arise because of the interest, while the
interest is incidentally due to the trait once associated with race. Nothing in this
formulation precludes non-blacks from also having the interest. Take, for example, a
white family in an otherwise black neighbourhood. If the school the white children
attend is underfunded due to racial injustice, they have an interest in alleviating racial
injustice despite not having the problematic trait. On an interest-based account they can
enter into solidarity with their black neighbours even though they are not themselves
black, which would be more problematic if not impossible on an identity-based version
of solidarity. While traits can play a role in establishing entry and union obligations – as
the feature leading to injustice – this cannot exclude those who do not share the trait
from entering into solidaristic relations with those who do, nor can it provide identitybased obligations for those in the solidaristic relationship. Both of these features and the
importance of traits to some solidaristic relationships are better explained by an interestbased account of solidarity.
An analogous form of discrimination might clarify matters here. While there are
blind and deaf communities, there are many other traits that while disadvantageous in
our society do not seem to give rise to the same kind of identity as others. An interest-
124
based approach can deal with new injustices as well as the old ones. Individuals who
cannot walk all share a common trait, but given the plethora of circumstances under
which they came to share this trait and the varying ways of coping with it in a society
organized around its ambulatory majority, it does not seem to make sense to claim that
there is a disambulatory community. Nonetheless, people who cannot walk have an
interest in ensuring that their needs are met by society, which arises from a trait they
share. They do not have to identify with their trait in order to enter into solidarity with
one another, to take pride in one another‟s accomplishments, and to benefit from the
new accommodations made by some with the ambulatory majority. An interest-based
account can explain this type of solidarity and black solidarity equally well, while an
essentialist approach would attempt to distinguish between those who have been
disambulatory since birth (when everyone is fairly disambulatory) and those who have
become disambulatory, just as there is some friction in the deaf and blind communities
between those who have become deaf or blind and those who were never otherwise. An
interest-based account recognizes that insofar as these individuals have common
interests solidarity can exist among them, but insofar as their interests differ due to the
different origin of their traits, their solidarities should also differ.
B. Solidarity, Normativity and Motivation
The above discussion leaves unclear the normative character of entry and union
obligations. One has an entry obligation when one recognizes that one has a reason to
enter into solidarity, while union obligations are those obligations that arise from a
relationship of solidarity one has already entered into. Specifically, I have yet to explain
whether entry and union obligations are pro tanto reasons for action that can be
overridden or whether they are ultima facie obligations. I must also explain the
125
motivational impact that recognition of each kind of normativity would have. I examine
the consequences involved in construing entry and union obligations as either pro tanto
reasons or ultima facie obligations. Specifically, I will show why characterizing both entry
and union obligations as pro tanto reasons for action better fits our basic intuitions about
solidarity than ultima facie obligations can. I also explain how I envision the connection
between the normative character of entry and union obligations and their motivational
aspect.
There are several spectra along which one can distinguish types of pro tanto
reasons. A key spectrum for my purposes is between weaker and stronger reasons. At
one end of the normative spectrum are weak pro tanto reasons. While these are still, in
some sense, obligatory – they have enough normative strength that one does wrong in
adopting maxims and policies pursuant to them, and in other circumstances without
stronger obligations one would adopt such maxims and policies – they are nonetheless
easily overridden by other reasons that present themselves in a set of circumstances.
This is distinct from prima facie reasons, which are also weak but when overridden lose
their normative force. If, however, entry and union obligations are to be genuine
obligations they must at least be pro tanto, rather than prima facie.
I think that ultimately entry obligations are often weak pro tanto reasons, but
subject to a caveat. Any obligation to enter into a relationship of solidarity with another
– a relationship where solidarity amplifies the normative strength of obligations among
you – will be difficult to reconcile with autonomy if it is an overriding or overly strong
duty. Entry obligations generate other obligations, and accordingly ought not to be so
strong as to overwhelm all other obligations, lest they become an unending source of
trumping duties. This sort of unending spiral of obligations would seem to present
126
problems for a life led from within, which is the central feature of liberal autonomy. The
caveat is that while entry obligations are a weak form of pro tanto reason, they are often
difficult to override. I think this difficulty arises from the circumstances under which
they form rather than from the nature of the obligation itself. The catch is that only a
very narrow set of obligations directly contradicts entry obligations: I call these „enemy
obligations.‟ For example, presume I have a pro tanto entry obligation with Mr. X. If,
however, Mr. X were the sworn enemy of someone with whom I already had a
solidaristic union, and my duties to the prior union include an enemy obligation
concerning Mr. X, then this pre-existing obligation would override my reasons for
entering into solidarity with Mr. X. However, only if my prior obligations included the
enemy obligation would this override. If entry into solidarity with Mr. X might lead me
to have obligations to him that would conflict with other obligations I already have this
is not direct enough to block the entry obligation. Accordingly, while entry obligations
are themselves weak pro tanto reasons, they are difficult to override.
Union obligations might be pro tanto, but they might also be ultima facie. If they
are pro tanto, then one can have a union obligation that is not what one ought to do, all
things considered. If union obligations are ultima facie obligations, however, they would
always be what one has most reason to do. I think union obligations cannot be ultima
facie reasons. One cannot have more than one ultima facie obligation. If one appears to
have two or more then there are two possibilities: either the other options are illusory
and the original all things considered judgement stands; or the options are genuine but
the original ultima facie obligations is not actually ultima facie. There are approaches to
ultima facie reasons that allow more than or less than one valid ultima facie reason, but
127
these circumstances involve multiple individuals.
145 While one individual cannot have
multiple all things considered obligations, it is quite easy to imagine two individuals
having two conflicting all things considered obligations. The question „what should they
do,‟ is no less coherent than the clear one-person moral dilemma case where an
individual has equally strong or incommensurable pro tanto reasons. However, it does not
apply to the case of union obligations or entry obligations, where the decision is an
individual one rather than a collective one. The effects of such a construction on
individual autonomy are problematic, but more difficult seems to be the possibility for
internal contradiction in a world with multiple relationships of solidarity.146 If solidarity
generates ultima facie obligations, multiple solidaristic relationships could generate
multiple ultima facie obligations, opening up the possibility for conflicting ultima facie
obligations. These would then not really be ultima facie obligations. Alternatively, if
solidarity were to generate ultima facie obligations it would be acting as a trump, such that
one‟s solidaristic obligations took precedence over all one‟s other obligations in a way
that does not seem plausible.
This reductio ad absurdam of conceiving of union obligations as ultima facie
obligations clearly speaks in favour of characterizing union obligations as pro tanto
reasons for action. However, we still do not yet know what strength of pro tanto reason
we are dealing with here. It seems to me that for solidarity to be a useful concept, the
obligations arising from it must be stronger than the obligation to enter into it. There

145 I think this is particularly problematic in the case of multi-person moral dilemmas. While it is
difficult to imagine one individual having multiple all things considered obligations, it is quite easy to
imagine two individuals having two conflicting all things considered obligations. The question ‘what
should they do,’ is no less coherent than the clear one-person moral dilemma case where an individual
has equally strong or incommensurable obligations. Given that solidarity seems to involve a reciprocal
relationship between more than one individual, consideration of the multi-party dilemma is apt. After
all, solidarity requires multiple individuals to hold a particular obligation simultaneously.
146 This is akin to Rawls’ fact of pluralism. Rawls 1993, p. 4.
128
must be some sort of solidarity bonus that enhances the duties one has to members of a
solidaristic relationship. The obligations of general, impartial morality are owed to
members of both in- and out-groups without distinction. Nonetheless, there are special
obligations owed to members of the in-group that are not owed to members of the outgroup. The obligations that arise from solidarity are, therefore, moral in character but
they are not owed to members of the out-group.147 Imagine that I have two
acquaintances that are looking for a copy of a particular book. One acquaintance is in a
book club with me while the other is not. If I have a spare copy, the acquaintance with
which I am in a book club would have an additional reason to think I did wrong were I
to give the book to the other that is unavailable to the non-member acquaintance. Each
acquaintance could hold it against me that I gave the book to the other, but only one
acquaintance could hold my failure to live up to the duties of a fellow member against
me.
148 The same could not be said of a decision to enter into one of two different book
clubs I might have an interest in joining – the entry obligation version of this scenario.
All else being equal, neither acquaintance would have reason to feel more aggrieved than
the other in that situation. So while union obligations must be pro tanto reasons (because
they cannot be ultima facie obligations), they must be stronger than entry obligations
simply because they arise within the context of solidarity.
A second spectrum of importance for pro tanto reasons for action concerns their
motivational impact. Motivational impact is different from normative strength.
Normative strength relates to something‟s obligatory quality: how wrong it is for me not
to act according to a given reason. Motivational impact deals with how committed I am
to undertaking the obligation as a matter of psychology. Ideally, motivational strength

147 For more on special v. general obligations see Scheffler 2002, pp. 49ff.
148 This view clearly parallels Scheffler 2002, pp. 32-65.
129
would come from normative strength such that the more obligatory a duty the more
one is motivated to act on it, resulting in a situation where motivation tracks
normativity.149 This is, however, an ideal that is not always realized in ordinary life.
People are sometimes more moved by attachments to individuals and things that play a
significant role in their lives than by duties to those people and principles that seem
more removed. As such, while the normative strength of an obligation should serve to
increase its motivational strength, resulting in a tracking relationship among them, this
does not always happen. As such, we must recognize the distinction between normative
and motivational strengths.
That said, I think there is some benefit in holding normative strength as primary
such that whatever motivational strength a solidaristic obligation has should arise from
its normative force. If we expect motivation to track normativity we can explain both
why an individual fails to live up to their obligations and why they were wrong to do so.
However, if we have a view of solidarity where we expect normativity to track
motivation or where we are more concerned with motivation than with normativity, we
will have a more difficult time demonstrating why someone who fails to live up to his
duties is wrong. Ultimately, I think solidarity provides us with a set of obligations that
ordinary people will be moved to follow in ordinary circumstances, and that in unusual
or exceptional circumstances being able to explain why they are exceptional is of
conceptual and practical value. By focussing on normativity we can explain why both
the action and the motivation was wrong. A focus on motivation loses this distinction.

149 Motivation could track normativity for other reasons: they might both be responding to a common
cause, for instance. As such, when I discuss this ideal tracking relationship I am not bound exclusively
to the ‘normativity causes motivation’ account.
130
Also important here is to note that it is recognition of reasons for solidarity that
gives rise to obligations, rather than the mere existence of reasons. I am largely
convinced by Scanlon‟s approach to external reasons, so I must acknowledge that there
are reasons for entry into relationships of solidarity in a wide array of circumstances.
However, these reasons will only actually come to have the normative weight of an entry
obligation if one recognizes them as a reason. To argue otherwise, to claim that one had
entry obligations whenever one had a reason for entering into a relationship of
solidarity, would mean that one was acting irrationally in failing to enter into solidaristic
relationships with others one has never met in situations one has never considered. To
avoid this problem, I believe that recognition of reasons, rather than the mere existence
of reasons, is required for entry into solidarity.150
The two types of solidaristic obligation – entry and union obligations – each
have different normative strengths. While entry obligations are relatively weak but
difficult to overrule pro tanto reasons for action, union obligations are stronger but
nonetheless pro tanto reasons. What can justify entry into a situation where strong
obligations are generated is the focus of the next section, where I examine different
approaches to entry obligations to determine if there is a way for solidarity to arise in a
manner consistent with autonomy.
II. Types of Solidarity
In this section I examine three distinct conceptions of solidarity, based on three
different ways that one can identify with (i.e. adopt as one‟s own) the interests of
another. The first involves only an identity of pre-existing interests. While self-interest
will play a critical role, it alone cannot generate the kind of alterity solidarity requires.

150 This will take on additional importance in the version of solidarity I advocate at the end of this
chapter and my explanation of how it works in Part III.
131
The second – strong solidarity – involves taking the interests of another as my own
because of some relationship. Consequently, while it lives up to the needs of alterity, it is
ill suited to explain entry obligations. Finally, I present a third option – moderate
solidarity – that incorporates the alterity required of solidarity. In the next section I will
explain how moderate ethical solidarity can provide the kind of normative strength that
makes the appeal to solidarity an attractive candidate in articulating the demands of
fraternity.
A. The Uses and Abuses of Self-Interest
Self-interest plays an important role in determining whether an entry obligation
is possible, but common self-interests cannot be all that there is to solidarity. First, I
must explain the kind of role it can have before I demonstrate why common interests
alone cannot constitute solidarity. This involves understanding the kinds of impacts
common interests can have on one another. If two individuals have an interest in the
same state of affairs occurring, this can lead them to cooperation or conflict, depending
on the circumstances surrounding the interest. Only a subset of common interests could
possibly provide a foundation for solidarity. Second, once we understand what kinds of
common interests can play this role, we must determine what exactly the role is that
common self-interest is trying to play. Again, there are a number of different
possibilities, but I ultimately favour a minimal approach, whereby having the right sort
of mutual interest is a necessary but insufficient condition for entry into solidarity:
without the interest, entry into solidarity is impossible, but the obligations do not
necessarily depend wholly on the interest, and can persist when the interest disappears.
When more than one person has an interest in a given state of affairs occurring,
they have what I will call a common interest. Whether this common interest is also a
132
mutually exclusive, mutual or shared interest is another question that must be answered
prior to understanding which type (or types) of common interests are suitable
candidates for solidarity‟s entry obligations. In the event that two people have a
common interest but the satisfaction of one individual‟s interest precludes the
satisfaction of the other‟s, their interest is a mutually exclusive interest. Take, for
example, two sons who each have an interest in securing their mother‟s antique wedding
ring for their spouses. Each of the brothers might, ordinarily, wish for the other to have
such a ring as brothers can ordinarily be supposed to want one another‟s plans to
succeed. However, in this situation there is only one such ring, and since only one son
can have the ring if one has his interests satisfied the other cannot. These are mutually
exclusive interests, and are not suitable candidates for entry into solidarity. Solidarity
requires that the other person‟s interests become a part of my interest set. Entry into
solidarity due to a mutually exclusive interest would lead to a contradiction in one‟s
interest set that was not there before. At the very least, this would contradict the preexisting interest, diminishing its normative and motivational strength. This would make
solidarity a more difficult state than it ought to be.151
Fortunately, not all common interests are mutually exclusive. There are at least
two more types of common interests that might ground entry obligations. Firstly, there
are interests where the satisfaction of one person‟s interest has neither a positive nor a
negative impact on the second person‟s interest. These are what I call shared interests,
since they are an interest that each party can have at any given time without impacting
on the other person‟s interest. Members of a book club, for instance, have a shared
interest in reading a book as long as there are enough copies for everyone. If one person

151 This is not to say that mutually exclusive interests cannot exist or arise among friends, family
members or other more advanced states of society than the bare sort of sociality we are assessing here.
133
reads the book that does not improve the standing of each person‟s interest in reading
the book, nor does it preclude the satisfaction of this interest. As such, satisfaction of
shared interests does not impact on the others who share the interest. In this way shared
interests are distinct from both mutually exclusive and mutual interests. Mutual interests
happen when the satisfaction of one individual‟s interest positively affects the second
person‟s interest. The impact here can range from a simple increase in the probability of
satisfaction to joint satisfaction. As an example of the first impact, if I win a case on a
particular legal issue and your case also depends on the same issue, in a system based on
precedent my success will increase the probability of yours. However, if we are
members of a class action suit of which I am the representative plaintiff, my success will
not just make the satisfaction of your interest (in winning your suit) more likely, my
success means you have succeeded.
One might be tempted to restrict the kind of self-interest that leads to entry
obligations to this final case, a joint-success condition mutual impact. I have no doubt
that this kind of self-interest often leads to strong entry obligations, but I do not believe
this is any reason to preclude the possibility of establishing solidarity based on shared or
weaker mutual self-interests. It seems to me that one individual reading a new and
exciting book can all incorporate their fellow readers‟ interests in enjoyment and success
into their interest-set without contradiction. Indeed, it might heighten their enjoyment,
or provide a new type of enjoyment, to feel that their apparently solitary reading is
actually part of something larger. This is of course not a necessary feature of shared
interests: actually sharing them might not improve the quality of the experience, but if it
does or can then it seems that there might be some obligation to enter into solidarity
arising from it. With these considerations in mind, I am inclined toward an open
134
approach to the connection between common self-interest and solidarity‟s entry
obligations. So long as the interests are not mutually exclusive, they can ground
solidarity. From here on, when I discuss common interests I refer to both common and
mutual interests, excluding only mutually exclusive interests.
However, there is one caveat I must make before I proceed to examine the
limits of self-interest in an account of solidarity. As I said at the outset, some form of
common self-interest is a necessary component of solidarity. What that means is that
without some shared or mutual interest, no solidarity is possible. This is the „common
plight‟ condition of solidarity. If union obligations are to differ in normative strength
from our basic moral obligations, including particularly any obligations of general
beneficence we might have, there must be something distinguishing the in-group from
the out-group. On identity accounts this distinction appeared easier: if one had the
relevant trait, one was a member of the in-group and those who did not have the
relevant trait were excluded. However, the problems with the identity account
demonstrate that this demarcation of in- and out-groups along trait lines is more
difficult than it appears. The presence of a common plight, involving a common
interest, is the interest-theorist‟s way of demarcating in- and out-groups. Insofar as
solidarity involves in- and out-groups, such a condition is a necessary part of any
plausible account.
But not all common interests can appropriately give rise to solidarity. Let us
presume that you have an interest in giving a flawless performance of Beethoven‟s
Appassionata, and I, as an audience member, have an interest in you giving a flawless
performance too. That said, there is no entry into solidarity with you will make it more
likely for our common interests to be met. It is only when entry into solidarity improves
135
the likelihood of the common interest being satisfied for either party that entry
obligations can arise. Thus, while self-interest is an important component of solidarity
not all interests are appropriate for grounding this kind of unity.
Common interests alone are not enough to ensure that solidarity will arise
among individuals. The presence of such an interest is not a sufficient condition for
solidarity. Firstly, the mere presence of such an interest does not guarantee the right sort
of bond among individuals who have the interest. Simply because it is in my interest to
end racial injustice does not guarantee that I will recognize that it is also in others‟
interest and that I will act on their behalf while acting on my own. Likewise, a plaintiff
in a class action suit might not care about their fellow plaintiffs – they might only care
about their own interest in getting compensated or in punishing the defendant. If
someone joined a book club more as a way to push himself to read more different
works, he might not care whether the other members had read the book at all. Neither
shared nor mutual, not even joint-success mutual interests require solidarity without
some additional feature making the interests of the other a part of one‟s own set.
Ultimately what this shows are the limits of self-interest. Common self-interests
are not sufficiently alteristic to ground solidarity by themselves. In order for there to be
genuine solidarity, my concern for another needs more than a concern for some goal I
already have for myself prior to the entry into solidarity. Insofar as solidarity matters, it
has to arise from something more alteristic than self-interest.152 The following two

152 Insofar as her account relies primarily on a self-interest in overcoming oppression or fighting
injustice, these problems would also impact on Sally J. Scholz’s account of Political Solidarity
presented in ‘Political Solidarity and Violent Resistance,’ Journal of Social Philosophy, Vol. 38 No.
1, Spring 2007, pp. 38-52. However, whether the interest in justice is genuinely a ‘self’-interest is
more debatable, as is Scholz’s focus on combating injustice as a necessary component of solidarity.
See also her Political Solidarity, (University Park, PA: Penn. State UP, 2008).
136
alternatives are an attempt to remedy what is lacking in a self-interest exclusive account
of solidarity.
B. Loyalty, Subservience and Letting Down
Concern for other individuals is the more obvious solution to what common
interests lack. One individual‟s concern for another individual creates a group, which is
why this kind of motivator is so often discussed in terms of membership in a group.
This does seem to involve the kind of union Feinberg characterizes as „the sort that
exists when each member’s integrated set of interests contains the integrated interest set
of each of the others.‟153 Take, for example, two friends who have been invited to a
couples-only dinner party. Friend A is married and as such has a date, but Friend B is
single and has an interest (we presume) in securing a date for the party. Friend A wants
Friend B to be able to go to the party, and so has an interest in Friend B securing a date.
As such, for different reasons, the two friends have a common interest. This common
interest satisfies the necessary condition presented by self-interest. The solidarity must,
however, come from somewhere else since self-interest alone cannot provide it. In this
case, their friendship is likely to explain why B‟s interests (and supporting reasons) can
become incorporated into A‟s set of interests.
We have yet to understand how some sort of concern for an individual can
generate the interest-incorporating move that solidarity requires. Again, an identitybased approach to solidarity has an easier time with this problem too. One can simply
postulate a relevant trait and claim that a group forms around that trait. However,
Shelby‟s work makes clear that the kinds of relationships that can give rise to solidarity
depend on more than some trait in common. One must, rather, view oneself as a part of

153 Joel Feinberg, ‘Collective Responsibility’ The Journal of Philosophy, v. 65, no. 21 (1968), pp.
674-688 at p. 678.
137
a group. Whether the group has to form around the interests in question or whether the
group might form prior to recognition of the common interest is a potential source of
conflict, but one I believe can easily be defused. There is no reason solidarity can only
form in groups that already exist, so we need not presume that the group must precede
the interests in common. The friends in my example above were friends before they had
a common interest. Indeed, to whatever extent the friendship led Friend A to want
Friend B at the party we can say that their friendship generated the common interest. As
such, I feel comfortable claiming that the kind of inter-personal concern that, when
combined with a common interest, can generate solidarity need not arise from the
interest in question.
There are many ways to characterize inter-personal concern, but the one I think
best to focus on first is membership in a group. In this case, what brings about the kind
of inter-personal concern that can move individuals to enter into solidarity is
membership in a group. The critical element here is loyalty, which plays a critical role in
Shelby‟s approach to solidarity. Loyalty involves taking the other person‟s interests as
your own simply because they are the other person‟s interests. In Shelby, loyalty serves
to bind individuals to the goals of the group in such a way as they are more inclined to
make an extra effort in the service of those goals and that group. Loyalty determines inand out-group distinctions as well: those who are loyal to a set of individuals become
the in-group while those who are not moved to make the extra effort in pursuit of the
goals are, by default, in the out-group.
However, to predicate entry into solidarity on loyalty is to put the cart before the
horse. Solidarity might cause loyalty among the members of the group. For loyalty to
cause solidarity reverses this order. Loyalty is not a necessary ground for entry into
138
solidarity. While loyalty might be an important part of union obligations because
preserving the union might be one of the common interests, to only have solidarity with
those to whom one was already loyal would reverse the causal order among them. It
would thereby limit solidarity to those with whom one had a pre-existing relationship,
which strikes me as an arbitrary limit. Therefore, if there is a role for loyalty in solidarity
it is not the role of incorporating the interests of another into my own set of interests.
To whatever extent this happens, it cannot be simply due to a pre-existing relationship.
Further difficulties for solidarity arise if we base entry obligations on pre-existing
relationships. Firstly, for solidarity to be the kind of concept that can play the role of
fraternity and explain the basic ethical demands of sociality, it cannot depend on preexisting relationships but must be able to emerge from new and unforeseen situations. It
must be a potential consequence when there is no or minimal pre-existing relationship.
However, there are serious methodological difficulties with relationship-based solidarity
that overwhelm this conceptual problem. It is difficult to see how we can reconcile
loyalty to another individual with autonomy. However, we are as yet unclear about what
is central to loyalty. If loyalty is chiefly characterized by adherence to the wishes of
another individual, then it seems autonomy might be in jeopardy. This is the kind of
loyalty servants have toward good masters, or soldiers to their commanding officers. If
this sort of adherence is what loyalty involves then the decisions of another might
override any choices I have already made. If a servant or a soldier wants to pursue some
course of action they must first confirm that that course of action will not conflict with
the wishes of their master or commanding officer. Furthermore, if the servant or soldier
is in progress toward some freely chosen end, and the master or commander changes
course in a way that conflicts with the servant or soldier‟s desires, loyalty demands that
139
the latter must suborn their wishes to the former. Autonomy in such a relationship is
highly contingent and deeply problematic. If this kind of loyalty is what solidarity
involves, solidarity is not reliably compatible with autonomy.
Alternatively, loyalty could simply involve a common adherence to the other
individuals in a group. However, even in this circumstance the „letting down‟ problem
with autonomy persists. Imagine a basketball team. While some teams form to win, and
others just to play, each team is characterized by collective engagement in the activity.
This goal of enjoyment or of winning is the principle around which the team forms. We
are now in a position to see how the requirements of fealty to a principle differ from the
requirements of loyalty to individuals. When we are loyal to a principle we must act in
the service of that principle, but there are a whole host of actions that take place outside
the sphere of the activity in question that do not impact on one‟s ability to serve that
principle and about which fealty is silent. In the case of a basketball team, one‟s choices
in an array of off-court situations do not matter. Provided one is still a reliable member
of the team – capable of playing your role and aiding others in playing theirs – one has
not been disloyal to the principle. However, if we have to be loyal to the individuals
involved the demands of solidarity will begin to impact on our off-court behaviour. If
the other members of my team believe some behaviour is wrong to engage in such
behaviour can be seen as letting down the team. Unfortunately, examples of team mates
imposing their sexual mores on their fellows abound, ranging from objections to one
team-mate‟s involvement with another‟s spouse through to an institutionalized
homophobia. While the actions involved here range from the prurient to perfectly
harmless, for loyalty to make demands on them violates the autonomy of an individual
in a way that fealty to a principle does not. The common goal of winning does not
140
declare major parts of one‟s sexuality as in violation of a collective ethos in a way that
one‟s team mates can and often do. In this way fealty to a principle interferes less with
one‟s ability to live life from within through making meaningful choices than does
loyalty to individuals.
C. Moderate Ethical Solidarity
In my view, what we need is a conception of solidarity that allows for the
interests of another to become a part of one‟s own set of interests but that does not
violate the authentically meaningful choices at the heart of liberal individualism. There
are other ways to show concern beyond loyalty that might provide such a mechanism. I
believe the seeds of such an idea are found in Kant and have come to fruition in
Stephen Darwall‟s The Second-person Standpoint. By now, we should not be surprised to
find Kant at the bottom of a liberal approach to individuality. While Mill and Locke
played the most significant role for classical liberals like Berlin, Rawls made grounding
individual liberties in Kantian autonomy acceptable again. His views and those of his
followers now occupy much of the mainstream of contemporary political philosophy.
Central to Kantian individualism is the juxtaposition of autonomy and heteronomy. An
autonomous being is free because it is guided by its own laws, unlike a heteronymous
individual who is unfree because its actions are determined by laws that are not its own;
usually those of tradition or other people or his own animalistic inclinations. In
Darwall‟s view, this connects with concerns raised by Peter Strawson and Samuel
Pufendorf. In order for a reason to be ethically legitimate it must address itself to our
moral faculty – specifically our will. I think a version of this could be applied to
141
solidarity to allow for some kind of equilibrium between the demands of others and the
requirements of autonomy.154
Kant makes clear the close connection between freedom and autonomy at the
core of liberal individualism. Freedom, for Kant, means not being determined by any
thing other than by the practical reason that constitutes one‟s will. It is, therefore,
tantamount to goodness, because reason provides the categorical imperative according
to which we can determine right from wrong. However, we can accept some version of
the Kantian approach to autonomy without necessarily accepting the rest of his
structure, and particularly the connection between freedom and morality. Critically, his
approach to freedom as self-determination fits nicely with both of Berlin‟s formulations
of freedom.155 Berlin‟s formulation of negative freedom is that it concerns an
individual‟s capacity to do things unhindered by other individuals. This is not directly
applicable to the Kantian approach, but when we look at solidarity as involving the
demands of others it becomes clear that being guided from within, a key part of
autonomy, involves incorporating the interests of others into one‟s own interest set in a
way that leaves one free in the relevant sense. Berlin‟s formulation of positive freedom,
as concerning the question of who is in control of an individual, seems more closely
allied to the Kantian approach. While Berlin was concerned about the ability to skew
positive freedom into something undeserving of the label, we can avoid most of his
problems if we recognize some fact of pluralism discussed earlier. There is no general
will to which an individual must submit himself to be truly free. Rather, one can remain

154 I do not, however, equate autonomy with the moral law. Not all autonomous actions are moral, nor
are all moral actions necessarily autonomous. While Raz’s approach to autonomy draws from the selfgoverning tradition of Rawls and Kant, he and I omit the equation that finds such a prominent role in
Korsgaard’s approach to Kant. See ‘Morality as Freedom,’ in Creating the Kingdom of Ends,
(Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996), pp. 159-187.
155 Berlin’s ‘two questions’ formulation is in ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’ in Isaiah Berlin, Liberty, Ed.
Henry Hardy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) at 169.
142
free and yet submit the demands of others to one‟s own conscience, as will be mirrored
in my approach to solidarity as explained in the next section. This approach is consistent
with the Kantian approach to autonomy and should not have the totalitarian overtones
that so legitimately trouble Berlin, particularly since everyone else should also be
incorporating your interests into their consciences as well. Furthermore, this approach
leaves us with a recognition that while freedom necessarily entails autonomy, autonomy
does not necessarily entail recognition of the universal will. Heteronomy, in this
formulation arises from failing to mediate the demands of others through one‟s
conscience. It is still possible, and still serves as the opposite of autonomy, but becomes
much more restricted than when it meant any deviation from universal reason and the
moral law.
Darwall advances this discussion by clarifying how the interests of others should
be mediated through one‟s conscience. His The Second-person Standpoint advocates a
Kantian approach to morality whereby the fact that we are called upon to address others
in and from a second person presupposes a number of ethical claims about oneself, the
other, and the relations between self and other. For our present purposes the conclusion
of his argument is not critical. What I wish to borrow is how what he calls Strawson‟s,
Fichte‟s and Pufendorf‟s Points combine to show that some features of reason for
action are required by our moral sense in order to be legitimate to our conscience. While
Darwall combines these to different effect, I explain these features of his argument
separately and then show how they combine with the approach to autonomy used here
to allow a Kantian version of solidarity. Solidarity can coalesce around a basic moral
duty of consideration that is informed by Darwall‟s approach to ordinary human
interaction.
143
Strawson, in „Freedom and Resentment‟ claims that social desirability is not the
kind of thing that can justify punishment. In Darwall‟s terms, „desirability is a reason of
the wrong kind to warrant the attitudes and actions in which holding someone
responsible consists in their own terms.‟156 If we wish to hold someone morally
responsible, justification for that reactive attitude cannot simply rely on pragmatic
reasons like “the world goes generally better.” The most frequently offered example is
epistemic, but the principle extends throughout our conceptual universe. That someone
has offered you a large sum of money to believe in a proposition for which you have no
affirmative and significant negative evidence is not something you can ordinarily do.
More importantly, it is not something you should do. There is some normative structure
to our basic rationality such that reasons of different kinds should not come to bear on
one another. In the moral sphere, this entails what Darwall, paraphrasing Williams, calls
the „morality in, morality out‟ principle. In Darwall‟s schema this is a limiting principle.
It serves to exclude quite a variety of potential reasons for moral obligation. In the case
of solidarity through consideration, it is important because self-interest and is a wrong
kinds of reason for generating solidarity without some other binding force.
In Darwall‟s view, the second-personal nature of addressing other people
necessarily involves making claims on their will. This is what he refers to as Fichte‟s
point. „Only in this way,‟ Darwall, following Fichte, claims, „can [an address]
simultaneously address and direct her as a free agent.‟157 Some kinds of reasons fall afoul
of this provision, and are the wrong kinds of reason for moral action accordingly. Selfinterest, for instance, does not address itself to the will in the right way because it is
insufficiently concerned with the interests of the other for it to imply solidarity.

156 Stephen Darwall, The Second-person Standpoint (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2006), p. 15.
157 Darwall 2006, p. 21.
144
However, what is especially important is that the demands of others in solidarity, as a
kind of address, must appeal to our conscience rather than to our self-interest or to our
purely calculative faculties. They must provide us with reasons why some course of
action or some set of obligations are right or wrong, rather than that they are in our best
interests or a logical consequence of our commitment to a particular group.
This becomes clearer in light of “Pufendorf‟s point.” Pufendorf claimed that
divine moral law‟s legitimacy lies not in the possibility of damnation as punishment for
sins, nor in its divine source, but because we can know and recognize evil. As Darwall
puts it, „this is the difference between a kind of coercion, on the one hand, and free selfdetermination by an internal acceptance of an authoritative demand, on the other.‟158 If
God wants to make something wrong, Pufendorf claims, he would have to do so by
making it immoral rather than by providing us with damnation to scare us into
compliance. Darwall connects this to Fichte‟s point with Strawson‟s „wrong kind of
reason‟ argument. Pufendorf‟s point entails that all legitimate moral addresses have to be
framed in terms that are ultimately second-personal and therefore address our
conscience. In the context of solidarity, it entails that demands from others that appeal
to our self-interest or other features are inconsistent with the kinds of reasons that are
appropriate for moral action because they address themselves to our conscience rather
than our interests or our purely calculative faculty.
Following Darwall‟s use of these three principles, we can see the possibility for a
moderate account of solidarity. Solidarity with someone requires that we us to recognize
the interests of others as reasons for adopting particular maxims or policies, but if we
are to be autonomous these demands must be mediated by something internal to the

158 Ibid., p. 23.
145
subject. Self-interest alone is not up to the task at hand, nor can we rely on relationships
to generate demands that, in the right context, can reconcile with autonomy. I believe
our basic morality, as explained by Darwall‟s approach to the second-personal
perspective, can play the necessary mediating role. The basic thesis can be put as
follows: attempts to coerce rather than to counsel are, because of their failure to address
our conscience (or will), the wrong kinds of reasons for moral action.. I think this is a
legitimate account of how interpersonal morality must work, and will build on it in the
next chapter, when I explain how a basic ethical duty of consideration will provide for
this kind of solidarity.
III. Conclusion – Solidarity and Sociality
I believe a conception of moderate ethical solidarity [MES] can meet the needs
of fraternity and can serve as a central value reflecting our inherent sociality. While I will
deal fully with the mechanics of how this works – including explaining consideration
and the key role it plays – in the next chapter, at the end of this one I will explain how
my preferred account of solidarity fits the basic conditions set out at the end of chapter
two. The MES conception incorporates the alterity we find lacking in impartiality and
other forms of solidarity. Furthermore, since it is compatible with autonomy it need not
result in the kind of philosophical quagmire dualist approaches so often end in. It can
ground an ethical obligation that will in turn explain how we can have legitimate moral
and political obligations that do not arise from autonomy, unlike the kind of impartiality
that, in its ideal formulation, reduces to a requirement for autonomy. Furthermore, with
the appropriate ethical obligation as its core, it can be universalizable in the way
tradition is not.
146
Since fraternity is meant to provide a political value that arises from our
sociality, alterity is critically important. Society involves, at a basic level, our relations
with other people: the simple fact that we encounter others on whose interests we
impact gives rise to a particular obligation. While MES does not fully explain how this
can work, the consideration approach I will explain in the next chapter works with MES
to explain how the interests of other can come to influence me. Given that I have
shown why respect for autonomy is a necessary condition of the legitimacy of moral and
political obligations, I cannot advocate a second principle that would violate the first.
MES accommodates autonomy because of the important role of self-interests in
establishing obligations and because of the benign nature of the basic ethical obligation
of consideration. I have shown, using Darwall‟s formulation, how an approach to
solidarity that puts the interests of others in terms of a basic ethical obligation is
reconcilable with autonomy. This approach internalizes the interests of others without
necessarily overriding or undermining our own interests. We still have the ability to live
our lives from within through making meaningful choices while also recognizing the
impact the interests of others ought to have on our judgements about what to do.
This chapter has shown how one particular conception of solidarity can serve as
the value at the core of a principle of fraternity that will allow for the legitimacy of
moral and political obligations in a manner consistent with the demands of autonomy
and of our basic sociality. It grounds a principle according to which we can understand
the impact of the interests of others on our moral and political obligations. It seems able
to explain the requirements of sociality. Whether and how it works, however, is the
focus of the next chapter.
147
Part III: Consideration
and Reconciliation
Abstract:
In this part I examine moderate ethical solidarity via consideration to
determine what it requires and whether it is compatible with the
requirements of the sociality. In chapter six I make clear what consideration
involves and how it can play the role of the mediating ethical obligation
solidarity requires, while in chapter seven I demonstrate a way in which this
approach it can be reconciled with autonomy. This leads to the view that
moderate ethical solidarity via consideration is what fraternity involves and
explains the normative demands of our common sociality.
148
Chapter 6 – Solidarity and Consideration
Abstract
In chapters three, four, and five we saw why tradition, impartiality and most
kinds of solidarity cannot adequately explain the basic conditions of sociality. We also
saw that the right kind of solidarity can account for the demands of sociality in a way
that is compatible with autonomy. What remained was to fully explain the ethical
obligation involved in Moderate Ethical Solidarity [MES] and how this can work to
serve as a principle of fraternity. In this chapter I explain how a basic ethical obligation
of consideration can play that role. I set out what consideration involves, how this
approach works with MES to mediate the interests of others through one‟s conscience,
and how this legitimates the kind of moral and political obligations with which our
sociality is most concerned.
Introduction
As we saw in chapter five, the demands of our sociality can be met by a
particular kind of solidarity I call „Moderate Ethical Solidarity‟ [MES]. The demands of
others can be incorporated into one‟s own set of interests through one‟s conscience in a
way that should be compatible with autonomy. I then claimed that a basic ethical
obligation of consideration can play the mediating role. In this chapter I explain how
consideration makes individuals as agents aware of reasons for action they have based
on their ability to impact on the interests of others. In the appropriate circumstances –
i.e. when the other‟s interest corresponds with one of one‟s own interests and when
solidarity improves the probability of satisfying the interest – these reasons for action
can generate obligations of solidarity.
149
I begin by offering an explanation of what consideration involves. I explain it as
a three-part process through which one becomes aware of reasons for action. The first
stage requires an openness to one‟s ability to impact on the interests of others. This is a
practical account of a normative requirement – one does ethically wrong by failing to be
cognizant of one‟s impact on the interests of others in one‟s surroundings. Openness
leads to the second stage‟s requirement to interpret the interests and impacts involved
from the perspective of the other. Openness involves a significant alterity, but it is not
as impossible a standard as some critics claim. The products of these two stages
combine at the third to make the individual involved aware of reasons for adopting
maxims or policies that reflect a proper response to the datum from the first two stages.
This awareness involves being properly disposed toward particular circumstances, where
what is „proper‟ is always acting as the other wishes. In this way we avoid the problems
of generating problematic reactions from the outcomes of the first two stages.
Having explained how consideration works, I then must explain how it can be
used in establishing obligations to enter into relationships of solidarity. Using two
examples – one apparently trivial, the other deeply problematic – I will show how
consideration leads an individual to recognize that she has an interest in common with
another and that the common interest will be ameliorated by coordinated or collective
action: a common interest of the right kind. While there can be multiple descriptions of
the same set of circumstances, if one of those descriptions involves a common interest
of the right kind then some form of solidarity can emerge in that encounter, however
tenuous. I then shift my focus to clarifying exactly how MES via consideration fits with
the methodological constraints established in chapter two and with the depiction of
solidarity in chapter five. This will lead me to the conclusion that MES via consideration
150
can explain how we have pro tanto obligations that can play the role required of fraternity
in a dualist theory of the legitimacy of moral and political obligations.
I. The Nature of Consideration
Consideration is a three-stage ethical demand. I label the three stages openness,
imagination and recognition. Openness requires agents to be aware of their places in the
world and of their ability to impact on the interests of others. Imagination requires the
agent to assess the impacts and interests to which the first stage has alerted her
according to their role in the other‟s “web of norms.” Recognition requires that the
agent respond appropriately to the content that they became aware of because of the
first stage and that has been given clear content in the second stage. I characterize an
appropriate response as one that acts as the other should wish. Together, these three
stages lead an agent to be aware of reasons for adopting maxims or policies. Once we
understand how consideration works we will be in a position, in the next section, to
explain how consideration combines with moderate ethical solidarity to explain the
obligations of our basic sociality.
A. Openness and Consideration
Openness to one‟s ability to impact on the interests of others is the first stage of
the consideration. The first-order obligation of consideration is the ethical requirement
to be aware of one‟s ability to impact on the interests of others. In this subsection I
explain what this openness consists in and then argue that failure to be appropriately
aware is ethically wrong. There are both instrumental and intrinsic explanations for this
wrongness. Instrumentally, a failure of openness is wrong because it increases the
likelihood of adopting wrongful maxims or policies, or acting wrongfully. Failure of
openness is intrinsically wrong in that it is a morally inferior version of a morally
151
superior action. Alternatively, we could see a failure of openness as intrinsically wrong
because it is itself inconsiderate. Finally, I explain how this openness leads to the thirdstage obligations that will be discussed in more detail in following subsections.
Openness is a practical requirement that an individual agent should be aware of
her place in the world, the situations of others around her, and how those situations are
likely to change through what she does. When walking down the street, we have to be
aware of the other individuals coming toward or passing us not simply to facilitate our
own progress but in order to avoid impeding theirs. Stepping to the side in order to
avoid walking in the same path as the handicapped woman walking towards you is an
action, but that action arises because you were aware of the possible impact on her
interests. That awareness is itself openness. Long-term examples also make the
importance of openness clear. If I am deciding between job offers, I do wrong if I am
not aware of the impact my choice will have on my immediate family. My children will
have to attend school, my spouse to adjust or change her career; that my decision will
impact on each of these interests should play a role in my decision, and they come to
play this role because of my openness to my impact on their needs. I should note that I
don‟t believe the long- and short-term versions of openness are fundamentally different:
they‟re the application of the same basic disposition to different needs, but the practical
requirement of openness remains the same in each. The impacts on autonomy will,
naturally, be much greater in long-term planning than in most short-term situations, but
this should be addressed at the appropriate stage and should not be built into the
account of openness itself.
I have claimed throughout this discussion that openness is an ethical
requirement – that we do morally wrong in failing to be aware of our ability to impact
152
on others. This claim stands in need of justification, and I can think of three, presented
here in increasing order of strength. Firstly, a failure of openness is instrumentally
wrong because it makes one more likely to perform negative consequences. Here, what
is actually morally wrong are all the negative acts one will do because of the failure of
openness, but this nonetheless makes the failure of openness part of the wrong. In the
examples discussed above, failing to notice other people walking down the street –
perhaps I am distractedly text-messaging a friend, confirming dinner plans – is wrong
because it makes it more likely that I will have a negative impact on the interests of
others walking down the street. If I choose a career without thought as to the well-being
of my family members I will be more likely to harm them in my decision than if I am
aware of the impact my decision will have on them. Openness could have prevented
these wrongs and is, from the point of view of my fellow pedestrians or my family, is
wrong because of its contribution to the intrinsically wrongful (because harmful) acts.
However, I believe there is something intrinsically ethically wrong about the
failure of openness, something I think the above examples show. There is nothing
wrong with text-messaging or taking a job per se, but in these circumstances these
actions evidence a failure to be aware of the impact my actions can have on others and
is, because of that, wrong. Even if, counterfactually, I choose the job that my family
would wish – that provides the optimal opportunities for my wife to develop her career
and that allows my children to preserve treasured friendships – I do wrong in not
recognizing that this is a reason why I should take that job rather than some other. The
text-messager does wrong not simply in impeding the flow of traffic, but in doing so
oblivious to the fact that he is having such an effect. In each case, though more directly
153
in the family scenario, the failure of openness is itself a legitimate grievance for the
wronged parties.
The ideal test for a claim of intrinsic wrongness is to imagine two almost
identical scenarios where openness is the only variable. Let us presume that in two
otherwise identical worlds a child is afloat in the sea on a small raft that will capsize in
minutes, drowning the child. They have strayed from a crowded beach on a busy day. In
each world a swimmer, on his way from a nearby island to the crowded beach will save
the child. In the first world, a considerate individual will notice that the child‟s raft has a
rope attached to it, and he will clench the rope in his teeth and drag the child and raft to
shallow waters. In another world an unaware swimmer will accidentally get the
equivalent rope caught in his teeth and will inadvertently tug the child to shallow waters.
It seems clear to me that the actions of the swimmer in the first world have a morally
valorous quality that the actions of the swimmer in the second world lack. While both
have done good in some sense by saving the child, only the swimmer in the first world
has done all that he morally ought. There is, then, some morally positive quality lacking
in the second swimmer‟s actions. What is lacking is the openness to the impact on the
interests of another, which because of the difference it makes in determining the morally
good from the morally lucky, should be seen as good in itself.159
The consequences of a failure of openness become clear when we see the
impact openness has on the other parts of consideration. Openness should make one
aware of the considerations that, when clarified by the imagination, induce one to
endorse particular maxims or policies in the third stage. Furthermore, it sparks the

159 This is not to say that it would not also be wrong, indeed possibly morally worse, to be aware of
one’s impact on the interests of others and act in such a way as to fail to improve the situation
(including making it worse). This is an example of failure at the third stage of consideration, which
can, depending on the circumstances in question, be worse than failure at the first. This problem
should become clearer in my discussion of the third stage, below.
154
second, imaginative stage and serves to reinforce an important point about the
difference between a failure of imagination and failing to imagine. The content of these
obligations is determined by the second stage of considerateness; the imaginative stage.
This provides some direction for openness, which could otherwise succumb to what I
call the problem of callousness. How this works is the focus of the next section.
B. Consideration and Imagination
The second stage of consideration involves a cognitive requirement. We must
judge our impacts on the interests of others according to the other‟s own understanding
of those impacts and interests: the role those impacts and interests play in another‟s
“web of normativity.” In explaining this term I will offer an account of what
consideration requires of the imagination and before I defend it against two sorts of
criticisms. Individual agents must, to be genuinely considerate of others, understand
their impact on the interests of others from the point of view of the others in question.
I believe that it is only through this persepectival shift that genuine consideration is
possible. There are two main lines of criticism of this approach, each of which is a
version of an argument from implausibility. Once I have explained the basics of what
consideration requires of imagination, I will clarify it by defending it against these
attacks.
Each of us has a “web of normativity.” I adopt this term by analogy with the
term “web of beliefs,” but the connections between a web of normativity and a web of
beliefs are not merely analogical. An agent‟s web of normativity is the connections
between the various norms that he recognizes, endorses and rejects. It is closely
connected to our web of beliefs such that some of our beliefs will have normative
implications, but it also includes desires and other interests, other things that make our
155
lives go better, that are not necessarily reducible to beliefs or desires. Just as some
beliefs provide evidence for others, some norms provide justification for the
endorsement or rejection of others. Take, for example, a norm of abstaining from eating
bacon. In different individuals this norm will be connected to a different set of other
norms, in a couple of different ways. For a vegetarian, not eating bacon will be one of a
number of norms that follow from a deeper norm of abstaining from eating food that
comes from animals. It will have sister norms of abstaining from steak and chicken. For
an observant Jew, not eating bacon follows from a deeper norm of not eating „unclean‟
foods, where unclean refers to a particular test of what is and is not kosher. For
someone on a diet, not eating bacon could attach to a deeper norm of not eating
unhealthy foods. What consideration requires of our imagination is to determine which
of these possibilities may be the case and, given the various options, determine how the
individual would wish to be treated given the role the interest in question plays in their
web of normativity.
This becomes important for consideration because without this kind of alterity
individual agents would not fully appreciate the impact of their interests on others. Let
us return, for a moment, to the example of deciding among job offers discussed in the
previous subsection. In acting considerately of my family members, I have to imagine
the impact on their interests my decision will have from their perspective in order to be
genuinely considerate. I have to ask myself questions like whether it is important for my
children to go to good public schools, or whether my wife‟s current career is important
to her or is she looking to change directions. If my wife is looking to change directions,
then the career she currently holds will have less importance to her than will be obvious
when taken from an outsider‟s point of view. Furthermore, while my career might be
156
important to be consideration requires that I not assume that the same holds for her and
her career. To fail to assess the importance of an interest from the perspective of
another makes it more likely that one will err in determining how to act. Indeed, such an
error seems to underlie the problem of well-intentioned paternalism. If I act to impact
another‟s interests such as I would like if I were in their position this can be paternalistic
if their interests do not play the same role in their web of normativity as my interest
does in mine.
This sort of imagination goes beyond Hannah Arendt‟s approach to alterity.160
Her approach was best explained as analogous to spending some time in another‟s
home. We look at their belongings and their arrangements and make judgements about
their character from these bits of information. Ultimately, however, in her approach we
are judging others according to our own standards, which seems at least capable of
leading to the kind of well-intentioned paternalism I warned about and is not genuinely
considerate even if benign. The point of my formulation here is to judge our impacts on
others according to the others‟ own understandings. Simply being aware of the impact
one has on the interests of others is a start, but it is insufficient if the impact and
interests in question are assessed in light of one‟s own normative framework rather than
as a part of the other‟s web of morality.
Some authors, notably Iris Marion Young, objected to the attempt to predicate
ethical obligations on this level of alterity.161 Responding to the central role that taking
the perspective of the other plays in Habermasian ethics, Young argues that such

160 Hannah Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, Ed. Ronald Beiner, (Chicago: U of
Chicago P, 1992). See also Seyla Benhabib, Situating the Self, (New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 89-
146.
161 Iris Marion Young, ‘Asymmetrical Reciprocity: On Moral Respect, Wonder, and Enlarged
Thought,’ Constellations, v. 3 no. 3 (1997), pp. 340-363.
157
symmetry of perspectives is neither prudent nor possible.162 Drawing on examples such
as surveys indicating that many people would consider a disabled life „worse than death,‟
the cross-examination of Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas conformation hearings,
and non-Lakota Indians performing sacred Lakota rites, Young claims that taking the
perspective of another often distorts the original perspective which is itself a form of
mistreatment. However, this argument would have little purchase against the kind of
approach here. In my outline, we are to use our imaginations to understand the meaning
of an action for the other within their own context. The examples Young uses are
simply failures to achieve this alterity. While the survey respondents and the non-native
spiritualists simply fail to achieve the necessary imaginative leap, I wonder whether the
members of the Senate Judiciary Committee made a genuine effort. On my view, the
survey respondents and non-native spiritualists were cognitively wrong, while the
members of the Senate Judiciary Committee might have been morally wrong for failing
to be open to Hill‟s perspective in the first place.
Young‟s second claim, that such alterity is impossible, would be more difficult
for my proposal, but I believe her arguments on this point fail to address the kind of
imaginative act I envision. Young claims that symmetry between self and other, in the
way Habermas and, Young‟s primary target, Seyla Benhabib claim, is not possible.163
Young‟s argument for the impossibility of symmetry relies on the claim that there will
always be something of oneself incorporated into the standpoint of the other or that
there will always be something of the other omitted from the first person‟s account.
These two remainders indicate, for her, the impossibility of symmetry, leading to her
advocacy of an „asymmetrical‟ approach to alterity. However, Young is setting the bar

162 Benhabib 1992, pp. 23-67.
163 Young 1997, pp. 348-9.
158
higher than Habermas, Benhabib and I need to reach in order to justify the role alterity
plays in consideration. Consideration requires an understanding of the other‟s point of
view on their own terms, but this does not mean it requires full submersion of the self
in the thoughts of the other. It only requires enough alterity to tell us what matters to
them and why. As Young recognizes with her own proposal, pure symmetry is not
necessary for genuine alterity to arise. As such, while Young‟s metaphysical arguments
might have some impact, they do not have enough impact to undermine the plausibility
of the imaginative requirement offered here.
Another critique might not question only the plausibility of this kind of
imagination, but whether it is really the kind of insight on which to ground a moral
theory. Richard Holton and Rae Langton‟s article „Empathy and Animal Ethics‟
provides an example of such an attack, only targeted at Peter Singer and R. M. Hare.164
Their contend that „the utilitarianism of Hare and Singer risks being not impartial
enough. It is too parochial if it ties ethics to what we can in principle imagine.‟165
Because we are more able to imagine the experiences of those most like us, they claim,
any ethics that depends on the imagination will be dangerously narrow. They claim that
in justifying universalization both Hare and Singer are committed to the claim that
„whenever I believed that someone in certain circumstances desired to do a certain
thing, I would desire that if I were to find myself in those circumstances.‟166 In their

164 Richard Holton and Rae Langton, ‘Empathy and Animal Ethics,’ in Dale Jamieson, Ed., Singer
and his Critics, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999) pp. 209-232.
165 Holton and Langdon 1999, p. 228.
166 Holton and Langdon 1999, p. 215. This is actually an abridged form of Holton and Langton’s
reformulation of Hare’s argument. The full principle includes an ‘if I was fully rational’ clause at the
beginning and a ‘I would do it’ clause at the end, but these two clauses can be separated from the
central implication. They add a rationality condition, such that belief that an action is desired by
another rationally requires desiring that action. For my purposes, the connection between the desires
(or beliefs, or normative attitudes) of another and one’s own desires (or beliefs, or normative attitudes)
is what matters.
159
view, this sort of imaginative requirement demands of individuals that they achieve a
significant level of empathy: specifically, they must appreciate the “what-it-is-like-to-bea-Xness” – i.e. the phenomenal character of being an X – in order to assess the desires
of the X in question. Holton and Langton claim that such a deep phenomenal
understanding is both impossible and an inadequate ground for ethics. Insofar as it is
impossible, the utilitarian approaches of Singer and Hare fail, however, for my purposes
it matters more that they claim that it is an inappropriate ground for ethics. „If,‟ they
contend, „we owe moral concern to the sentient, then we cannot restrict that concern to
those whose shows we can, in imagination, borrow. Sentience transcends
imaginability.‟167 Sentience in Singer is the ability to feel pleasure and pain, which would
count as interests in my formulation. As such, I am also implicated in Holton and
Langton‟s critique of imagination.
My defence here is similar to my defence to the feminist critique. I believe Hare
has overstated the demands of universalizability and that in targeting this standard
Holton and Langton leave an opening beneath which my lesser imaginative
requirements can pass through. Holton and Langton argue that Hare and Singer‟s
approach requires them to assess the desires of another from a “what it would be like to
be them” standpoint, but I believe this interpretation of the proposition discussed above
is unnecessarily strong, albeit possibly apt when applied to Hare and Singer. An alternate
reading of this principle would not require us to appreciate the desires of another from
the standpoint of their phenomenal character, but from a standpoint that recognizes the
place of that desire in their web of normativity. My approach is one such standard. I do
not require that we know everything about another: let alone that we appreciate the

167 Holton and Langdon 1999, p. 229.
160
phenomenal character of their lived experience. What I require is an attempt to grasp
what role a particular norm plays in another‟s web of normativity, which is a more
limited form of alterity than empathy requires. This is a lower standard, requiring much
less of the imagination than the kind of empathy Holton and Langton contend that
Singer and Hare need. If someone has a norm, this norm is usually derived from some
deeper norm that it reflects or it has some derivative norm(s) that reflect it. In either
direction, the lower or higher norms will illustrate something about the content of the
norm in question, just as knowing whether chicken is acceptable will distinguish the role
of a bacon-abstention norm in vegetarians and observant Jews. This does not require
the kind of symmetry that the „what it is like to be the other‟ standard requires, and as
such should not be an argument against my approach here.168
On this approach to consideration, openness to one‟s impact on others
generates recognition, while the imaginative leap provides a full content to that
awareness. This is not enough, however, for consideration to exist. The recognition
created by the first stage and defined by the second must be crystallized into reasons the
strength of which can then be adjudicated. It is the task of the third stage to take the
recognition and its content and leave us with a reason to act pursuant to the recognition.
Explaining how this works, how and when our openness and its content turn to
recognized reasons for action, is the focus of the next section.
C. Consideration and appropriate responses
The third stage of consideration, called „recognition,‟ requires that the agent
respond appropriately to the data that they became aware of because of the first stage

168 While this construction of consideration leaves open the possibility of obligations towards children
and non-human animals, it would be difficult for these obligations to arise to the level of solidarity for
other reasons, most significantly the difficulty of engaging in collective action with children and nonhuman animals. The phrase, ‘herding cats’ comes to mind.
161
and that has been given clear content in the second stage. In this section I explain the
importance of appropriate reactions to consideration using the basic example of
recognizing the pain of another. In consideration, the appropriate response is to
recognize that you have a reason to adopt such maxims and policies as you understand
the other to wish.169 This will lead to possible demandingness objections that I must
address before explaining how consideration can play the role needed of an ethical
obligation in establishing solidarity.
Imagine a scenario where someone is in pain that you are in a position to stop.
Take, for example, someone who has been stung by a wasp and is having an allergic
reaction that is painful but not fatal. Let us assume further that I am able to stop their
allergic reaction at no cost to myself but the few seconds it takes to administer some
medication, or by killing the individual. The first stage of consideration should provide
the recognition that I can stop their pain, while the imagination condition provides me
with knowledge that the person in pain wishes to have the reaction stopped rather than
to die.170 As such, I now have the recognition that they wish me to stop the pain by
administering the medication. It is nonetheless an open question as to how one is to
deal with the awareness that arises from the first and second stages. A sadist could take
pleasure in the suffering of the other, while an amoral person might simply take note of
the state of affairs while having no normative response. However, there is something
ethically flawed in either of these approaches. They understand the situation but have
failed to have the appropriate response.

169 Recognition is key here. Without recognition a reason might apply but cannot rise to the level of
an interest the individual has and on which solidarity can be built. Just as there are unrecognized
reasons that apply to individuals, individuals also have unrecognized interests. However, without
recognition an interest cannot serve as a common interest on which solidarity can be built. On this sort
of ‘external’ approach to reasons, see Scanlon 1998, while a comparable approach to interests can be
found in Raz 1986. See also the discussion of this point in Chapter 5 above.
170 This may not be true in every case of an individual in pain.
162
A failure at the first stage of consideration is a failure to be aware of some state
of affairs. A failure at the second stage is a failure to adequately appreciate the nature of
the state of affairs. However, a failure at the third stage is a failure to adopt such maxims
and policies as your appreciation of the state of affairs should dictate. However, I have
yet to explain why the appreciation of a state of affairs should lead to any particular
maxims or policies. I believe consideration requires that the appropriate response to a
state of affairs is to recognize that you have a reason to adopt such maxims or policies,
or to act, as you understand the other individual involved in the state of affairs would
wish you to adopt, or to act: I call this the alterity maxim. Without such a maxim the
potential failures of the prior sections could resurface and new problems would arise:
any of which problem would undermine consideration.
Let us start with the trivial pedestrian example. If I am walking down the street I
am under an obligation to be aware of my fellow pedestrians and how I can impact their
interests. I become aware of an elderly man walking towards me with great difficulty, in
a path that would lead us to bump into one another. Based on the available data, I can
imagine that he wishes to continue walking down the street unimpeded. What reaction
ought I have to this awareness? Furthermore, if we presume that we are each aware of
the other, I can reasonably presume that he has recognized the eventual conflict, and
wishes for us to avoid it. He might even think of his own frailty and my relative agility
and believe that I ought to adjust my path. On this basis, I ought to endorse the maxim
„the elderly man has a more difficult time adjusting his path than I, so I should adjust
my path.‟ I believe this maxim is the natural moral response to the scenario presented.
More importantly, it fits with the requirements of the alterity maxim.
163
Consider next the family situation discussed earlier. I have two job offers, one of
which, in Alpha City, will be better for my wife and children, than a competing offer in
Betatown. I recognize that my decision will impact on their interests, and that I imagine
that they wish that I would take the offer in Alpha City. I should then recognize that I
have a pro tanto reason to take the job in Alpha City, even if the offer from Betatown is
more appealing. If I do ultimately take the Betatown job this will be because I believed
the reasons to pursue that course of action were stronger than the reasons to do what
consideration required, but this is not a problem for this stage in the argument. What is
important here is that I recognize that consideration gives me a reason to adopt a
particular course of action that would not have existed if the decision did not impact on
the interests of others. Furthermore, the content of that reason is that I do as the others
wish.
To turn to the example of the wasp sting, our ordinary moral intuitions are that
we have reason to do what the other wishes. In this case, we are aware of his suffering
and we can imagine quite clearly that he wishes us to end his suffering by administering
the medication. The ordinary result of such a situation is that we recognize that we have
a reason to administer the medication, rather than to observe his suffering or to take joy
in watching him die. I believe that the reason we have this intuition is because
consideration‟s third stage requires us to recognize that we have a reason to adopt the
maxims or policies an individual on whose interests we can impact wishes.
I think this maxim explains a great many of our intuitions, but it nonetheless
presents potential problems. A key set of problems can be categorized as „expensive
taste problems.‟171 These are problems that arise because someone else wishes

171 I follow Dworkin 2000 in this terminology, though not all of the examples will be his.
164
something that, for one reason or another, they ought not to wish. Sometimes this will
be a morally reprehensible wish, while at other times they will simply be a wish that is
unduly demanding given the circumstances. In either case, my answer will be the same:
consideration nonetheless provides us with a pro tanto reason to act pursuant to the
expensive taste in question. We have a pro tanto reason to help others perform immoral
actions, and to give in to those individuals who have expensive tastes. Nonetheless, each
of these problems needs a different defence.
Sometimes what we have most reason to do is something that is on some
account immoral. In one sense, this is a key part of the phenomenology of moral
dilemmas. A moral dilemma is usually framed as occurring when one agent is morally
obliged to carry out two mutually exclusive actions. Antigone is required to care for her
traitorous brother‟s corpse by burying it, but she is also required to obey the laws of
Thebes by not burying it. Agamemnon is required by some of the gods to protect his
daughter, and by others to sacrifice her. However, these dilemmas are usually framed in
terms of ought and obligation. At this point we are talking about something much
weaker – reasons for adopting a particular maxim or policy. For some reason we do not
feel as torn about mutually exclusive reasons as we do about mutually exclusive
obligations. In part, this is because we are used to talking about a plurality of reasons
where conflicts are frequent, but obligations seem to end discussion about what one
ought to do. This is more of an attempt to explain away the problem rather than to
address it head on, but to whatever extent it softens‟ our concerns about the plausibility
of moral dilemmas it might be of some use. However, if we can have most reason to do
something immoral it should not seem so implausible to claim that we can have a pro
165
tanto reason to do something immoral, nor that the source of that reason can be our
consideration for another.
If I am wrong about this, however, and a comprehensive and accurate theory of
morality explained that there could not possibly be moral dilemmas, this would not
really affect the third stage of consideration. What it would mean is that what I have
been calling pro tanto reasons would really be prima facie reasons. The third stage would,
on this account, lead to a prima facie rather than a pro tanto reason but it would appear
to the individual involved to lead to a reason nonetheless. Since recognition of the
existence of a reason is what is important here, I will remain officially open to the
possibility that the reasons in question are prima facie reasons (and therefore may not
really be reasons in some stronger sense), while nonetheless sceptical about the
possibility of such a comprehensive and accurate theory of morality emerging and
excluding the possibility of moral dilemmas.172
This discussion also illustrates my approach to the more directly “expensive”
version of the problem of expensive tastes. Such cases arise when, through
consideration, I appear to have a reason to act in some way that is based on the
idiosyncratically expensive tastes of another. I think that the result here is a pro tanto
reason for action. Consider first the case of someone with a relatively benign expensive
taste: someone who has a deep phobia of stepping on sidewalk cracks. If I am walking
toward someone who I know from prior experience has this phobia (it is not the kind of
thing one has reason to imagine, given most ordinary situations), consideration seems to
give me a pro tanto reason to stay out of his way and allow him to continue to walk on
solid concrete. Where is the harm in this? If I had countervailing reasons, if I was in a

172 I will have more to say about moral dilemmas in chapter seven.
166
rush to pick up my child, I might have more reason to ignore his phobia. However, if
no stronger reason arises it seems clear to me that I do have reason to accommodate his
harmless phobia. It seems clear to me that I do. Now consider someone with more
harmful expensive tastes – someone who can only walk in new and very expensive
socks. If I can provide this person with such socks, consideration will give me a reason
to do so, but it is quite likely that I will also have countervailing reasons to do other
things that conflict with the reason provided by consideration. If those reasons are
relatively trivial, I might nonetheless have ultima facie reason to give in to the individual
with expensive tastes.
Ultimately, my response to the problem of expensive taste is to claim that
consideration only provides the individual agent with a reason for action, not with an
ultima facie obligation. Given this limitation, we should be more comfortable with the
alterity maxim and recognize it as a guiding rule for explaining what an appropriate
response to the first two stages of consideration will be in any given situation. Together,
these three stages lead to the view that we have a basic ethical obligation to be aware of
our impact on the interests of others as they understand them and to recognize that we
have reason to adopt maxims and policies as the other wishes. In the next section I will
explain how this obligation can help an account of moderate ethical solidarity explain
the demands of our sociality.
I believe there is one limitation to the scope of consideration I must note before
moving on to explain how consideration can play the role an ethical account of
solidarity requires. There is a limit to how far consideration can make one acknowledge
some behaviour as a reason. This limit is reached when there is a mutually exclusive
interest involved in one‟s consideration of others. If two people are applying for only
167
one job, each person is capable of impacting on the interests of the other by
withdrawing or by deliberately botching the interview. They should be aware of this in
the sense required by the first stage of consideration, and they can imagine clearly that
the other might wish the first person to remove herself from competition in either way.
However, the fact that the first person has an interest in obtaining the post that would
directly conflict with any description of the situation, she is justified in refusing to
endorse that she has a reason to withdraw from the competition. Most situations lends
themselves to many descriptions, but in the case of a genuinely mutually exclusive
interest no description of the situation can make it such that the consideration would
not lead to an internal contradiction if the first person were required to recognize the
impacts on the interests of the other as an reason for her.
173 While a similar approach
might also resolve some „expensive taste‟ style cases, I believe it should be restricted to
genuinely mutually exclusive interests.
II. Consideration and Fraternity
While any ethical obligation can work with Moderate Ethical Solidarity, few are
as suited to explain the demands of sociality or fit as well with the nature of solidarity as
consideration. In this section I claim that consideration works within moderate ethical
solidarity to generate entry obligations under the right conditions. Consideration can
make us recognize that both we and another have a common interest in some object,
and will also help explain whether coordinated action will make it more likely for us to
achieve that object. After this I will attempt to explain why consideration is particularly
important in incorporating a value of solidarity into a principle that can represent the
demands of sociality. Any principle that claims to represent the normative requirements

173 This would make the person irrational in the strictest sense, as explained by Scanlon 1998, pp. 22-
30.
168
of our sociality should be capable of explaining the bonds at work in any relationship,
however trivial or tenuous. While moderate ethical solidarity explains how and when
non-voluntary obligations can be made legitimate, consideration offers one way of
explaining how and when non-voluntary obligations arise. It is, then, how MES works
to incorporate the interests of the other into one‟s own set of interests. I will conclude
claim that a principle of MES via consideration meets with the methodological
requirements set out at the end of the first part and should be recognized as a principle
of fraternity.
A. Consideration and Moderate Ethical Solidarity
Moderate ethical solidarity allows for the incorporation of the interests of
another into one‟s own interest set in a way consistent with one‟s autonomy. It is
consistent with autonomy because rather than being bound to the will of another
individual, someone entering into moderate ethical solidarity is only bound to his own
conscience. Consideration is the ethical obligation that brings the interests of others to
the conscience of the individual agent. Nonetheless, consideration has both internal
limits and limits that arise from its combination with solidarity that differentiate it from
impartial benevolence.
The examples discussed above illustrate how consideration can lead to
awareness of ethical obligations on which solidarity can be built, given the right
circumstances. The case of individuals walking down the street is a trivial example, but it
shows that even in such trivial situations consideration and solidarity together can
represent the normative demands of sociality. It also leaves us with an excellent example
of one important feature of this approach. There are many different ways to describe
the situations of two individuals walking down the same street. In most of them, the
169
two individuals do not have a genuinely common interest. One has an interest in
walking in one direction down the street, while the other‟s interest is in walking the
other way. One‟s interest is in himself walking without obstruction, while the other has
an interest in his own walking unobstructed. Each of these descriptions of the situation
do not involve a common interest that could give rise to an entry obligation.
Consideration makes the interests of the other person something I also have a pro tanto
reason to ameliorate, thereby incorporating their interests in my set of interests insofar
as I have a defeasible interest in the things that I have reason to do. Without
consideration, we each have a reason to achieve different states of affairs, but with
consideration I have a reason to achieve the same state of affairs that forms the content
of his reason. We thereby have a common reason that can, in this particular situation, be
improved by collective action. It is in this way that consideration leads us to have pro
tanto entry obligations.
The consideration example is even more effective in the „book club solidarity‟
example discussed in the previous chapter. There is a description of the individuals in
the „walking down the street‟ scenario where they do have a common interest that might
be more likely met through collective action: they each have an interest in the free flow
of pedestrian traffic on a given sidewalk. The book club, I believe, does not have such a
description. It does not matter to me either way whether I read a book as a member of a
club or independently, but it matters to my acquaintance. Without consideration there
would be no common interest. However, consideration makes it such that I am aware of
a pro tanto reason to join the book club because I am aware that it is what my friend
wishes. Consideration makes me aware of a reason I have to want her to read the book:
it is what she wants and I am aware of this desire. This then gives me an obligation to
170
enter into solidarity by joining the book club because it is only through collective action
that our common interest in her reading the book can be achieved. A similar set of
circumstances would affect the often discussed case of aid for those who cannot
contribute to a joint enterprise. The able-bodied have obligations of consideration to
help those who cannot help themselves. In such an instance the less-able might not be
able to contribute greatly to the collective enterprise, but in what way they can they are
concomitantly obligated. Nothing in consideration implies that the ultima facie
obligations will be equal: indeed, it implies that the most able will have the strongest
obligations. What is important for our purposes here is that consideration incorporates
the interests of others in my own set such that, under the appropriate circumstances (i.e.
lack of valid mutually exclusive interest, increased likelihood of success) I ought to
recognize that I have a reason to enter into solidarity with them.
The „under the appropriate circumstances‟ clause of the prior sentence is
important. Not every possible object of consideration leads us to recognize will be able
to lead to solidarity. Mutually exclusive interests are one omission. For instance, in war
one has an interest in staying alive and in killing one‟s enemy. One‟s enemy also has
equivalent interests, but with the referents reversed. As mentioned earlier, consideration
is not so strong as to require one to adopt a mutually exclusive set of interests, so there
is no requirement to act pursuant to the interests of another when those interests are
mutually exclusive with interests one already has. This is not to say that one cannot
adopt mutually exclusive interests, but to say that consideration cannot obligate one to
do so. Other ethical relationships – friendships, family, love – might lead to mutually
exclusive obligations, but consideration is, as mentioned earlier, not as these demands.
Despite this exemption, the occasions when one will have mutually exclusive interests is
171
limited. Even in war, once someone is a prisoner they are no longer a threat and
consideration could require one to keep prisoners in good health including, if it were
not implicit in a „good health‟ clause, refraining from torturing them.
In addition to mutually exclusive interests, some interests will not be ameliorated
by coordinated or collective action. However, examples are difficult to find. After all,
most situations can be redescribed in some way that will lead to a common interest that
collective action can ameliorate. In the last chapter, I discussed the case of the concert
pianist and the audience member. I then described the common interest as a in a good
performance which cannot be ameliorated by collective action, but other descriptions of
the same situation could, via consideration, lead to a common interest that collective
action can ameliorate. The audience member can impact on the pianist‟s interest in
having a silent hall during her performance, and can imagine quite clearly what the
pianist would wish him to do. He should then recognize that he has an interest in
staying quiet and in silently urging his fellow audience members to remain quiet (ideally
through easily understood gestures). This kind of coordination between the audience
member and the pianist is a form of collective action, illustrating that it can appear in
even apparently unlikely scenarios. Nonetheless, this cannot eliminate the possibility
that there will be situations where consideration leads us to recognize a reason for
action but there is nothing for solidarity to do to ameliorate the scenario.
The possibility of such limits differentiates the requirements of solidarity via
consideration from the requirements an obligation of universal benevolence would
offer. An obligation of benevolence does not observe any difference between mutually
exclusive interests and other interests. In this way it requires sacrifices that consideration
does not. Consideration is further tempered by its connection with solidarity. Solidarity
172
requires both common interests, which cannot be found in every circumstance, and that
the common interests be ameliorable through collective action. Benevolence makes no
such „collective action‟ requirement. Charity, an example of benevolence, is not a
collective action. Charity is a unilateral act of giving to another regardless of whether the
other accepts the gift. Likewise, charity does not require that the interest in question be
a common interest: that the other needs it suffices for benevolence in a way that is
precluded by the self-interest condition of solidarity. While there might be some moral
role for benevolence, it is not the same a consideration, let alone moderate ethical
solidarity via consideration.
B. Consideration, Sociality and Solidarity
Consideration leads us to recognize reasons for action based on the interests of
others. In the appropriate circumstances – i.e. when they correspond with one of one‟s
own interests and when solidarity improves the probability of satisfying the interest –
these reasons for action can generate obligations of solidarity. However, given my
formulation of solidarity here, it seems plausible that any ethical obligation could
provide me with a reason for entry into a relationship of moderate ethical solidarity.
While this is true, it is only MES via consideration that can explain the kind of bare
sociality needed to represent the demands of sociality. Moderate Ethical Solidarity needs
consideration if it is to explain these demands.
Firstly, consideration is broader than most ethical duties in the sense that it
applies to a wider array of circumstances than most others. An ethical obligation not to
murder only applies when I am capable of killing other people, which I often am not
and which some people almost never are. Such an obligation is more live to someone
who is strong or armed than it does to the diminutive or ill-equipped. The obligation
173
not to lie is fairly basic, but allows withholding the truth in a way that may be
inconsiderate. These sorts of basic obligations are universal in scope – they apply to
anyone who happens to find themselves in a situation, but they do not permeate our
dealings with one another in the way that consideration does.
Other core moral obligations – like the obligation to act pursuant to the
categorical imperative or to do no harm or to maximize the good – have the same sort
of permeability as the obligation of consideration, but they do not seem to have the
same kind of connection to sociality that consideration does. Obligations to maximize
the good do not depend on the presence of other people, in the way that consideration
does.174 Likewise, the categorical imperative applies to any maxim regardless of whether
it will impact on the interests of others. Consideration, however, is only an ethical duty
because individuals can impact on the interests of others. If there is no one on whose
interests one can impact, one‟s obligation to be considerate is silent.
It seems, then, that consideration has both a connection with sociality that no
other ethical obligation both in how very often it matters (what I referred to as its ability
to permeate our dealings with others above) and in when it does not matter. Therefore,
while solidarity explains the importance non-voluntary obligations of the kind we
recognized as important in the second chapter, consideration connects solidarity with
the normative requirements of sociality. When consideration leads one to recognize that
there is a reason to adopt a maxim or policy, and that maxim or policy will be more
likely served by collective action than not, solidarity arises. If there is no possibility for

174 Questions of whether one can be considerate to oneself, whether present past or future, are beyond
the scope in inquiry here. We are concerned with the standpoint of the collective, which implies that
we are only concerned with situations where there is more than one person involved.
174
ameliorating the interests involved through coordinated action, there seems to me to be
no relevant sociality involved, or it would make no genuinely normative demands.
C. Consideration and the Methodological Requirements of Fraternity
Having argued for an account of solidarity based on consideration, I must now
turn to whether it fits with the methodological conditions established earlier. There were
three major methodological criteria that an account of fraternity must meet. The first is
that it must be universalizable. The second is that it must explain the kind of alterity
involved in non-voluntary obligations, while the third is that it must be compatible with
autonomy. First, I explain how MES via consideration can explain the legitimacy of
non-voluntary obligations, including obligations to one‟s family and the obligation to
obey the law. Then I will discuss how it is nonetheless universalizable in a more
substantive way than the tradition, as detailed in chapter three. Lastly, I will claim that it
is compatibility with autonomy. MES via consideration is a suitable candidate for
fraternity.
The importance of universalizability is closely connected with the ultimate goal
of demonstrating the legitimacy of non-voluntary aspects of ethics and political
morality. If a principle is to explain why a maxim or policy is or is not legitimate, it must
be capable of explaining that for everyone, rather than merely for some subset of the
population. It must, so to speak, cover the field. This does not mean that it must deem
a given maxim or policy legitimate for everyone, or illegitimate for everyone, just that it
is capable of deciding the question in all circumstances. A given principle can generate
the conclusion that a given maxim could be legitimate for one segment of the
population and illegitimate for another, depending on the individuals involved and their
respective circumstances. What universality requires is that that there must not be some
175
individuals for whom the proposed principle neither legitimates nor illegitimates the
given maxim.
As we saw in chapter three, a failure of universality is the problem with
tradition‟s ability to serve as the value at the heart of a legitimating principle for ethics
and political morality. While tradition could legitimate a maxim or policy for that
segment of the population to whom the tradition applied, it neither legitimated nor
illegitimated the same maxim or policy for those segments of the population who did
not have that tradition. Imagine a situation where the government assumes control of a
church to which half the population belong and to which that half regularly pay 10% of
their income. The state takes over the properties, the employment contracts and
assumes the functions of this church including education, welfare and medical care. The
state then issues a law requiring everyone to pay 10% of their income to the church.
Half the population has such a tradition, while the other half does not. As such,
tradition leads half the population to recognize that they have a reason for why they
ought or ought not continue (it may or may not be legitimate for them – the tradition
may or may not be broken by state involvement) but provides no such recognition to
the half of the population who have no such tradition. This does not make it necessarily
an illegitimate policy, merely one the legitimacy of which cannot be decided by tradition.
For MES via consideration to do better, it must explain why a given policy or
maxim would be legitimate or illegitimate for everyone. I believe MES via consideration
is particularly well placed to address the universality requirement. Ethical obligations like
consideration do not only apply to part of the population, part of the time. Everyone is
under a general obligation to be considerate. Furthermore, consideration does have
something to say to everyone on whether the state enforced tithe of the previous
176
example is a legitimate or illegitimate insofar as it is either consistent or inconsistent
with the demands of MES via consideration.175 Consideration covers the field in a way
tradition does not.
The second key methodological criterion with which I must deal is alterity. The
key problem with autonomy is its inability to explain the legitimacy of many obligations
we ordinarily take to be legitimate. As such, for a second principle to do the kind of
work we would like it to do, it must be able to explain why non-voluntary obligations of
various sorts can be legitimate or offer a good account of why they are illegitimate that
does not depend purely on their voluntary nature. This is not to say that MES via
consideration will legitimate all non-voluntary obligations. Sometimes an obligation will
be unjustified by consideration, while others maxims or policies will be illegitimate
because they will involve a genuine infringement of autonomy. What the alterity
condition requires here is simply a reason that speaks in favour of why non-voluntary
obligations might be legitimate. A pro tanto reason will suffice.
MES via consideration offers such a reason. In the case of the example above,
consideration provides one with some reason why paying the tithe is legitimate. This is
because it is inconsiderate to break the law. If there is a law, any individual who absents
himself from the requirements of that law is impacting on the interests of others; by
acting as a free rider, he makes those who follow the law dupes. Furthermore, the failure
of some part of the population to participate in a collective enterprise either reduces the

175 I will not, at this point, get into the question of whether the policy in this particular example is
legitimate. While it is adequately described to illustrate the non-universality of tradition, it is
underdescribed when it comes to determining what the maxims involved would be, in particular
whether this is state support for a religious institution or state destruction of a religious institution.
This would matter in determining whether a maxim was a violation of autonomy or in how it could be
supported by consideration. It will play another role shortly, but not a role that involves the particulars
of whether the policy in question could by itself be justified by consideration or reconciled with
autonomy.
177
level of service possible or increases the costs to the participants. This is an impact on
an interest, as viewed from the perspective of the others involved, which gives one a
reason to obey the law. In this way, MES via consideration generates pro tanto reasons to
legitimate non-voluntary obligations: failure to do so would be inconsiderate while
sharing in the common interest in the services provided and the increased difficulty of
achieving the services without the collective obligations raises the value of coordination
that makes solidarity helpful in achieving a common interest. While this reason is pro
tanto, and might be outweighed by other considerations, specifically those from
autonomy, it suffices to establish that MES via consideration can explain why nonvoluntary obligations might be legitimate in a way autonomy cannot.
One question remains. Are the obligations of MES that arise from consideration
consistent with the kind of autonomy under discussion? I believe they are. First, not all
duties arising from consideration will necessarily generate solidarity with another. Only
those that are consistent with a common interest and those for which solidarity will
improve the likelihood of success will lead to entry obligations. Ultimately, I believe this
will be a large number of interests, but it will not be all of them. Not every action for
which consideration provides me a reason will be an action in which I have an interest,
nor will all common interests be improved by solidarity. Consideration leads one to
have interests in other people‟s interests, but through one‟s own conscience rather than
through some attachment to the other.
Second, the obligation of consideration itself has little impact on an individual‟s
ability to lead a life from within through making meaningful choices. It has some
cognitive demands, but imagining the life of another does not in itself interfere with
one‟s own life. Even in circumstances where it seems to interfere, where the vivid
178
realization of the impact of one‟s actions on another leads to a reluctant change in one‟s
lifestyle, this is a change brought about by oneself. Ebenezer Scrooge‟s autonomy was
not undermined when he changed from a miser to a saint (though whether the ghosts
might have violated his autonomy in a way consideration does not seems to me a fair if
frivolous question). One could, ultimately, continue to act as one had prior to the vivid
realization. Consideration might be the cause of the change but since consideration is a
part of one‟s conscience the change is not heteronymous.
Conclusion
In this chapter I have examined what is involved in an account of Moderate
Ethical Solidarity via consideration and explained how this account can meet the
methodological criteria required by the overall project. Consideration requires us to be
open to our ability to impact on the interests of others, to see these interests and
impacts from the other‟s point of view and leads us to recognize that we have a reason
to act for the amelioration of the other‟s interest. This can, when the interest in question
is shared and solidarity itself will improve the likelihood of success, lead to obligations
of solidarity. However, these obligations are pro tanto and must still be reconciled with
the demands of autonomy. Explaining how this reconciliation can work is the task of
the next chapter.
179
Chapter 7 – Reconciling Fraternity and Autonomy
Abstract
In this chapter I explain how to reconcile the two central values of my dualist
approach. First, I discuss how there are two types of legitimacy before explaining how
each of fraternity and autonomy corresponds well to one of the types. Then I explain
how to reconcile these two demands, favouring an approach that gives each principle a
veto over the legitimacy of the obligation. Finally, I defend the strident view of
legitimacy this account leaves us with as consistent with the methodology of the two
basic facts.
Introduction
In this chapter I explain how we should approach accommodating the two basic
ethical principles: respect for fraternity (as set out in chapter six) and respect for
autonomy (as set out in chapter one). Since the goal here is to explain how the principles
function to determine whether a maxim or policy is legitimate or illegitimate, we must
first understand what legitimacy involves. I will explain at the outset that there are two
different types of legitimacy: process legitimacy and threshold legitimacy. I offer an
account of process legitimacy that requires that a maxim or policy issue from an
appropriate process for it to be legitimate, but it also determines how strong the reasons
supporting a maxim or policy are. My version of threshold legitimacy, on the other
hand, requires only that a maxim or policy not allow the individuals involved to fall
beneath a certain standard. I believe that fraternity is best understood as a form of
process legitimacy, while autonomy provides a source of threshold legitimacy. The
complication with this is that our ordinary intuitions seem to view autonomy as I
defined it in Chapter 1 as generative of both process and threshold legitimacy. I think
180
this intuition reflects an ambiguity between a principle of respect for the value of
autonomy and a principle of advancing autonomy as an interest. I explain this ambiguity
and show that the right use of autonomy here is as a value we respect rather than as a
value we advance. As such it generates reasons for action that reflect a sort of threshold
legitimacy, rather than providing a substantive goal toward which our moral and
political lives must necessarily be structured. While there is a second possible point of
distinction – between whether the standards in each case are absolute or flexible – in
explaining this distinction I show that a flexible approach to the two principles is
inconsistent with the dualism I am examining here.
Once we have this account of legitimacy and its relationship with the two
principles, I will set out my preferred method of accommodating their different
concerns. This involves determining whether the principles should be exclusive or nonexclusive and the order in which they should be assessed. I favour a non-exclusive
approach because it fits better with the inflexibility of the principles and the values they
reflect. I believe a straightforward serial approach where one principle comes first not
because of any normative priority but because it has an explanatory impact on the
second principle, is the best way to resolve their competing, and sometimes conflicting,
demands. Since fraternity provides reasons for particular maxims or policies, we should
examine the reasons it provides first. If something cannot be justified by consideration it
will not matter whether the maxim or policy would be supported by autonomy, since
each principle has a veto over legitimacy. Nonetheless, fraternity should go first because
it gives us a fuller characterization of what a maxim or policy involves that we can then
use to determine whether it would violate autonomy. This generates two countervailing
standards, each of which must be satisfied to call a maxim or policy legitimate. This
181
approach leads to a stringent test. Only those maxims and policies that are adopted in a
manner consistent with the process required by the principle of respect for fraternity
and that do not interfere with an individual‟s ability to live their life from within through
making meaningful choices (i.e. that respects autonomy) can be legitimate. Sometimes,
this will leave decision makers choosing from among illegitimate options, but I believe
this accurately reflects the phenomenology of choosing the lesser of two evils, and will
defend this consequence of my account in the final section of this chapter.
I. How Legitimacy Works
As I mentioned but set aside in Chapter 1, I must explain what it means to say
that a principle legitimates a maxim or policy. Legitimacy involves determining whether
a maxim or policy is consistent with the content of a principle, such that a legitimate
maxim or policy is one that is consistent with the content of the principle while an
illegitimate maxim or policy is one that is inconsistent with the content of the principle.
Ultimately, there are two different ways for the consistency involved here to work out.
A maxim can be consistent with the content of a principle because it derives from that
principle. This is what I refer to as process legitimacy. It is akin to what H. L. A. Hart, in
discussing the legitimacy of laws, called pedigree legitimacy.176 In the legal case, a law is
legitimate when it has the proper pedigree: when it is generated by the right procedure,
or approved by the proper officials in the correct order. In the case of a more general
maxim or policy, process legitimacy requires the maxim or policy in question arise from
the concerns established in the principle. However, not all principles require process
legitimacy. Other principles are satisfied with non-contradiction, and will consider all
maxims legitimate so long as they do not interfere with the content under protection.

176 H. L. A. Hart, The Concept of Law (2nd Ed), (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994).
182
Speed limits are an example of thresholds. One can legitimately drive only so fast;
beyond the threshold one‟s speed becomes an illegitimate action.
In my view fraternity and autonomy are best understood as corresponding to
one of these types of legitimacy each. Fraternity fits well with process legitimacy, while
autonomy as a value functions best as a form of threshold legitimacy. I think this
becomes clear when we look at the content of each of the two principles. For a maxim
or policy to be consistent with MES via consideration it must either arise from an actual
process of consideration or be consistent with an equivalent hypothetical process. For
such a maxim to be legitimate, then, seems to involve either a particular process or
compatibility with such a process. This resonates more clearly with the kind of
legitimation involved in process legitimacy. The case of autonomy is more difficult
because there is a sense in which autonomy can serve as a source for legitimate
obligations or as a threshold beneath which obligations are illegitimate. I will claim that
this confusion, however, involves two different senses of autonomy. Insofar as
individuals have an interest in being treated autonomously it can serve to ground the
kind of maxims and policies legitimated by fraternity. However, as a value rather than an
interest, autonomy has the normative requirement that individuals not be treated in such
a way as to violate their ability to live their lives from within through making meaningful
choices. The content of autonomy as an interest can, through fraternity, lead to
particular maxims, while the content of autonomy as a value provides a threshold
beneath which policies are no longer legitimate. Once we appreciate the different kinds
of legitimacy each principle grounds we can better appreciate how to reconcile them.
A. The Two Types of Legitimation
183
When we try and determine what makes a maxim or policy legitimate, we are
really asking how a maxim or policy fits with principles we already take to be good, just
or legitimate. There are, however, two different ways for this „fit‟ to work. First, a
maxim can reflect the content of a given principle. If I have a principle that individuals
are to be treated equally, a policy that involved splitting resources between individuals
evenly would reflect the content of that principle while a policy dividing resources
according to size would not. The first policy would be legitimate, while the second
would be illegitimate and their legitimacy would arise from their failure to reflect the
content of the principle. Second, a policy can fit with a principle when it does not
offend that principle‟s content. If we have a principle requiring people not to be
harmed, some maxims would offend this principle, some would reflect it but a great
many maxims would neither offend nor reflect the principle. However, in this case all
those actions that did not offend the principle would be legitimate. These two types of
fit correspond to the two types of legitimation.
Process legitimacy can exist either directly or indirectly. It exists directly when a
maxim or policy is formulated in accord with a specific procedure that means to reflect
the principle in question. This is what Hart means by pedigree legitimacy. A law is
legitimate, he claims, when it is formulated in accordance with secondary rules of
recognition. For example, in a constitutional monarchy, a law is legitimate when it is
approved by a majority vote in the legislative chamber (or chambers) and ratified and
promulgated by the duly appointed monarch. In the case of the more abstract
connection between a principle and various maxims or policies, direct process legitimacy
exists when the maxims or policies in question are formulated following a procedure
established by the principle. If we take the Universal Law Formulation of the categorical
184
imperative as an example of a principle, we can see how it establishes a procedure that
can be followed in developing legitimate maxims. The universal law formulation
requires that individuals act pursuant only to such maxims as they can will to be a
universal law. This could be seen as giving rise to a procedure according to which
maxims can be made legitimate. One starts with a proposed maxim, and then examines
it to determine whether it can be willed universally. Such a process might involve two
stages: first, one could examine whether one can also will others to pursue the maxim –
does it impinge on one‟s own interests to will a maxim universally; second, one can then
ask others whether they can will the maxim – is it in conflict with their interests for it to
be willed universally.177 A maxim that passed each of these two stages would be
legitimate, while a maxim that failed either stage would be illegitimate.
While direct process legitimacy involves following the procedure established by
the principle, such close adherence is not entirely necessary for a maxim or policy to be
process-legitimated. A maxim or policy can be legitimated through indirect process
legitimacy. Not all principles, the categorical imperative included, lend themselves to
neat and tidy tests for legitimacy in the way Hart‟s pedigree approach imagines.
Nonetheless, maxims can be recognized as legitimate because they reflect the principle
in question in much the same way they would were they developed by a principlereflecting procedure. In part, this can be accomplished by an „as if‟ test: would the
maxim in question be adopted by a procedure derived from a given principle; if so, then
it is legitimate in the same was as if it had been so derived. However, we need not be so
literal with indirect process legitimacy. As long as a maxim furthers the principle in
question, it should be understood as legitimated by that principle. To return to the

177 I am not here suggesting that the universal law formulation actually be interpreted like this. I am
merely using this as an example of what a direct legitimation process would look like.
185
equality example discussed above, a policy of dividing resources evenly among members
of a community reflects equality in a way that dividing resources according to gender
does not. On a process legitimacy account only the former is consistent with the
principle, i.e. legitimate, while the latter policy, which does not flow from the principle,
is illegitimate.
However not all principles lend themselves particularly well to process
legitimacy of either kind. If a principle is such that maxims or policies either reflect their
content or do not, then process legitimacy might be appropriate. However, if a principle
intends to protect a particular class of interests it will not be offended when a maxim or
policy ameliorates those interests or leaves them unharmed. Such a principle would
generate a legitimacy threshold. Only those maxims or policies that expressly
contradicted the principle or harmed those values protected by the principle would be
illegitimate. This use is closely linked to the general ethical notions of permissibility and
impermissibility. Presume, for example, that one has to punish a criminal. If one has a
norm that declares some kinds of punishments impermissible – say, those that are cruel
or unusual – that still leaves legitimate a wide array of possible courses of action, any
one of which will be legitimate simply because it does not offend the principle. This is a
weaker approach to legitimacy, but one that nonetheless explains one of the ways in
which maxims and policies can fit with principles in addition to the serving as a source.
B. Fraternity and Process legitimacy
Having explained the two types of legitimacy, I now show why each of the two
central principles of political legitimacy fits one type of legitimacy better than the other.
Here I explain why fraternity is best understood as grounding a kind of indirect process
186
legitimacy, while in the next subsection I show why autonomy as a value most closely
grounds a version of threshold legitimacy.
To understand what kind of legitimacy something like autonomy requires we
must look to the content of the value. Fraternity requires individuals to recognize,
through consideration, that they have obligations to enter into solidarity with others, or
to preserve relationships of solidarity, insofar as such unity makes it more likely that
some common interest is ameliorated. Consideration turns an interest another has, on
which I can wilfully impact, into a reason for me to act accordingly. It generates
obligations of solidarity by showing me when and why I have reason to act in the
interests of another. This seems to point toward a process obligation rather than a
threshold obligation because consideration already acts as a source for the obligations of
solidarity. Without fraternity, some duties would not exist because the process of
consideration that led to their existence would not have happened. While this is not a
conclusive argument, it does indicate a certain resonance between the value at the root
of the principle and the type of legitimacy that should be indicative of an appropriate
relationship.
Second, while threshold legitimacy leaves a number of duties neither required by
nor opposed to the principle involved, process legitimacy seems to more broadly cover
the field. On a process legitimacy account, if an obligation exists, for it to be legitimate it
must be derived from a valid legitimating principle. There would be no obligations
about which it was silent. This seems to be the case with fraternity. This is not to say
that fraternity requires direct process legitimacy – that all obligations arise from a
process of consideration. Rather, fraternity requires indirect process legitimacy. All
obligations can be treated as if they arose from a process like consideration. In this way
187
various habits we have because they are consistent with our obligations need not be
thought-up anew every time we come across a circumstance that would require us to act
upon them. The habits are justified if they would be the product of a process of MES
via consideration, were one undertaken at that moment.
Take, for example, the general obligation to obey the law. I have an interest in
ensuring that others obey the law: it provides for the smooth functioning of society.
Consideration makes me realize that others also have an interest in my obeying the law:
they also have an interest in the smooth functioning of society, or in not being made a
dupe. Each of these interests is more likely to be satisfied if we take on the additional
reasons for action provided by solidarity. As such, fraternity can be seen to ground a
general obligation to obey the law. This obligation may be defeasible but explaining how
will be the focus of the next section. The importance here is in showing that if some
obligation like a general obligation to obey the law can be legitimized by a principle of
respect for fraternity, then this would be a form of process legitimation rather than
threshold legitimation. Ultimately, then, for a maxim or policy to be legitimate because it
reflects the principle of respect for fraternity, that reflection must take the form of
direct or indirect process legitimacy.
C. Autonomy and Threshold Legitimacy
There are two factors that increase the difficulty of explaining how autonomy
legitimates maxims and policies. The first is that when dealing with autonomy I have to
consider how it has been dealt with by other authors in the liberal tradition. Unlike
fraternity, which has suffered from too little discussion since the Second World War,
autonomy suffers from overexposure. Too many authors have too many views about
what counts as autonomy and why it is important to our individuality. Despite this
188
problem, I will keep to the characterization of autonomy developed in chapter one, as
this approach was partly intended to cover the mainstream of contemporary liberal
thought. To this end, I define autonomy as the ability to live one‟s life from within
through making meaningful choices for the reasons discussed in the first chapter. The
second difficulty cannot be so easily dismissed. This is that there is an ambiguity with
autonomy that makes it seem as though autonomy can be a source of legitimacy as well
as a threshold of legitimacy. Here, I will argue that this ambiguity involves conflating
autonomy as an interest with autonomy as a value. I will attempt to distinguish the two
and will explain why autonomy as a value is what we are discussing here and why it is
best understood as providing a threshold condition for legitimacy.
There is a clear sense in which autonomy can be used as a source of process
legitimacy. Liberal writers do this all the time. Kymlicka‟s attempt to ground linguistic
and economic protections for minority communities is an example.178 Laws prohibiting
the use of English on signs or requiring a long period of residency before allowing land
ownership are all both violations of an individual‟s ability to live a life from within
through making meaningful choices, but because autonomy requires a degree of selfrespect which is only possible within some background culture, these anti-individualist
measures are justified. Autonomy, then, plays the role of a source of process legitimacy
for otherwise heteronymous measures. These measures are taken to be legitimate
because they reflect the demands of autonomy, which is itself taken as a central good.
In my view, this mistakes autonomy as an interest for autonomy as a value. As
an interest, autonomy can generate positive obligations, but as a value its scope is
narrower. People have an interest in many of the components of autonomy, including

178 Kymlicka 1989, esp. chapters 9 and 10.
189
respect and self-determination, but as an interest these will work through the principle
of respect for fraternity to ground positive obligations. If an individual has an interest in
a world in which individuals are respected, and others also have an interest in such a
world, which that is more likely to occur through union, then fraternity will provide for
such an obligation through MES via consideration. The same can be said of selfdetermination. However, these obligations arise through consideration and solidarity
just as obligations based on the interest individuals have in adequate food and shelter.
If autonomy were to provide a source for legitimate obligations, this would
mean that all and only obligations that promote an individual‟s interest in autonomy –
that leave him or her more autonomous than they were at the outset – would be
legitimate. Such a construction is, however, implausible in part for reasons addressed in
Part I: there are important aspects of our ordinary moral and political lives that
autonomy cannot adequately ground. It is also implausible on its face. This is the
„freedom for freedom‟s sake‟ view that Williams mocked and Kymlicka denied.179 On
this view simply having more choices, or having the choices one has made more
meaningful, would be enough to ensure autonomy, but it should be clear that this is not
what is really important to autonomy. What is important is not that everyone‟s choices
be as meaningful as possible, but that everyone‟s choices be above a certain threshold of
meaningfulness. Since seems important about autonomy is not its maximization but its
preservation. Since autonomy as an interest speaks in favour of maximization rather
than preservation it seems problematic in ways that autonomy as a value would not be,
since it would be more concerned with maintaining a certain level of autonomy than
with advancing autonomy endlessly.

179 Kymlicka 1989, pp. 49-50.
190
Furthermore autonomy as an interest can give rise to conflicting demands, like
the demands of self-respect and community and the demands of self-determination and
individuality. As a value representing the normative requirements of individuality,
Autonomy should be univocal. A maxim or policy is either consistent with the principle
of respect for autonomy or it is not. It either permits an individual to live her life from
within through making meaningful choices or it interferes with one or another aspect of
this definition. This binary nature leads to the view that autonomy provides a threshold,
beneath which a maxim or policy is illegitimate. While this threshold might not be at the
same point for each individual – as each individual requires different things to ensure a
life led from within and meaningful choices – autonomy as a value provides an ideal that
cannot be violated. Some individuals have a harder time making choices than others for
a variety of reasons connected to their particular psychological quirks. As such, what
would not violate the autonomy of a relatively resilient individual might violate the
autonomy of someone with a more fragile psyche. In either event, while the standard of
autonomy will change for each individual along with the particulars of how to live a life
from within, any maxim or policy that violates this the standard should be recognized as
illegitimate.
II. Accommodating of the Two Principles
The previous section shows that each of the two principles involved in this
approach have different relationships with the maxims and policies through which a
moral or political philosophy functions. If a maxim or policy is not consistent with
fraternity as a source – if it could not have arisen as if it were a product of consideration
and solidarity – then it will be illegitimate. On the other hand, failure to respect
autonomy as a value – failure to allow an individual to lead a life from within through
191
making meaningful choices – will also make a maxim or policy illegitimate. However,
there are a couple of different ways these two principles can be accommodated. The
first task of this section is to explain these different ways and defend my choice of an
exclusive serial ordering. I begin by explaining the difference between exclusive and
non-exclusive relationships among principles. Exclusivity claims that each of the
principles is independent from one another, such that if a maxim or policy is strongly
supported by fraternity, this is irrelevant to determining whether it is illegitimate due to
a failure to adequately respect autonomy. The two legitimating principles are measured
separately, and a failure to satisfy one principle or the other will render a maxim or
policy illegitimate. Non-exclusivity claims that neither fraternity nor autonomy is
absolute and, as a result, we must balance their various demands to achieve a solution. I
defend the claim that only an exclusive approach can adequately satisfy the demands of
my dualist methodology.
Having established the importance of exclusivity in accommodating the
demands of autonomy and fraternity, I must then deal with how the relationship
between the two principles is to function. I propose a simple serial ordering, rather than
a normatively laden lexical ordering, with fraternity first and autonomy second. I believe
examining the demands of fraternity has an important explanatory role that makes it
important to understand what fraternity requires before we assess how a maxim or
policy might violate autonomy. This way, we do not attempt to assess the impact a
policy or maxim will have on one‟s autonomy until we understand why it is important in
the first place. Nonetheless, placing autonomy last should not be seen as providing it
with any more or less of a veto than it already had through exclusivity. Where the order
matters is because we need to assess what fraternity requires before we can determine
192
how these demands will impact on the autonomy of the individual. Neither principle has
a trump that the other does not; fraternity merely has an explanatory role that leads me
to believe it should be assessed before autonomy. In the end, no matter how strongly
fraternity advocates some maxim or policy, if it violates the autonomy of an individual
such a maxim or policy cannot be legitimate. This leaves me with a stringent approach
to the legitimacy of moral and political obligations. Ultimately, I will defend this as an
explanation of the phenomena involved in the problem of choosing among evils.
A. Exclusivity and Dualism
The chief difficulty of a dualist theory is in understanding how the two
principles work to produce answers to the basic questions involved. In this case, we
have to understand how autonomy and fraternity work together to assess the legitimacy
of various moral and political maxims or policies. The degree to which the principles are
exclusive is one important dimension in developing such an understanding. If principles
are exclusive, then failure to satisfy the demands of one principle will lead to a negative
outcome: each principle has a veto on the legitimacy of a maxim or policy. But when
principles are non-exclusive, the fact that one principle has some problem with the
outcome is not necessarily determinative. While it seems like an exclusive account has a
problem explaining the importance of the principles, ultimately I believe this apparent
problem is exactly why an exclusive account is required.
In a non-exclusive account neither principle has a veto over the determination
of whether a maxim or policy is legitimate. There are life-and-death situations that make
this seem plausible. Imagine an entire community is threatened with elimination,
perhaps due to some disease. Clearly everyone in the community has an interest (indeed,
several different interests) in the continued existence of the community that is more
193
likely to succeed through collective action. The demands of fraternity are, therefore,
satisfied. However, if the community can be saved by the death of one individual, the
carrier, for that community to kill the carrier without his consent would violate his
autonomy. On an exclusivity account, such an action is illegitimate because it violates
one of the two central principles. This seems to make the non-exclusive account more
plausible because it shows the difficulty in the absolute nature of the exclusive approach.
If fraternity declares that an interest is of particular importance, we often think that the
autonomy of the individual should be set aside. Alternatively, if an interest cuts to the
heart of autonomy we think that no obligation could force one to act counter to that
interest.
However, because each of the principles is so important, a non-exclusive
account will not work. The two principles cannot be played off one another and still
adequately protect or advance the basic values at their core. If one principle can be
suborned to the other then we no longer have two principles but one central principle
and a secondary principle. In addition to making for a cleaner approach to reconciling
fraternity and autonomy, exclusivity adequately captures our intuitions about the
relationship between the two facts – the fact of individuality and the fact of sociality – at
the core of this approach to moral and political philosophy. The point of this exercise
was to examine what kind of moral and political structure can be built from taking
seriously the claim that both individuality and sociality matter. A maxim that was
critically important according to the principle of respect for fraternity is nonetheless
illegitimate if it impairs the autonomy of the individual in question, and vice versa: to do
otherwise would suborn one of individuality or sociality to the other.
194
Furthermore, an exclusive account can explain the phenomena involved in the
example presented above and leaves us with a possibility for a legitimate outcome. A
legitimate outcome is reached if the carrier consents to being killed or kills him or
herself. This would be consistent with fraternity since it would ensure the continued
existence of the community, which is in the carrier‟s interest, but since the carrier would
choose his or her death, autonomy would be satisfied. This seems like an unfortunate
result, but even in these dire circumstances it is not the only possible outcome. There is
a way for the two principles to be satisfied and to save the community, albeit at the cost
of one of its members.
Ultimately, then, I believe an exclusive account is necessary. Given the
importance of the two facts, neither of their respective principles can be satisfied by a
non-exclusive account, where either principle can be sacrificed to meet the needs of the
other. Each of autonomy and fraternity must be independently satisfied for a policy or
maxim to be legitimate. Without this important characterization, this would not be a
genuinely dualist theory.
B. The Order of Principles
While this discussion of exclusivity answers many of the questions about the
relationship between the principles, it nonetheless leaves others open. I think the order
of principles is also important to understanding how the principles function on their
own and together. Given that there are two principles involved here there are at least
two different ways in which to order them. However, before we decide which principle
should be examined first, we must discuss the kind of ordering involved. There are, as I
see it, two ways to order these principles. One option, a lexical order, involves giving
normative priority to one principle by satisfying it fully and then satisfying the other
195
principle insofar as its satisfaction does not conflict with the demands of the first
principle. A second option is a straightforward serial order, where we come to
understand a maxim or policy involved more fully by examining its application to the
first principle, and then apply this fuller understanding to the application of the second
principle, but with no normative priority. Here I explain how each sort of ordering
works to show why a serial order placing fraternity in the lead position is a more
appropriate way of reconciling the demands of the two principles.
The key feature of a lexical order is that it implies a normative relation of
dominance between the principles. The first principle of a lexical order dominates the
second principle such that the second principle only makes normative claims when these
do not conflict with the first principle. Some principles inherently involve lexical
ordering. Isaac Asimov‟s „laws of robotics‟ are such an example.180 In these, the second
law requires robots to follow orders except where such orders would contradict the first
law of not harming or allowing harm. Likewise, the third law of self-preservation
contains a clause rendering it void should it interfere with either the first or second laws.
On a plain reading of these principles, then, they involve a lexical ordering where the
demands of the third are sacrificed to the first and second, and the demands of the
second are subordinate to the first. Other principles are not so perspicuous. Rawls
makes clear that his two basic principles of justice are to be interpreted lexically,181 but
he must since there is nothing internal to the principles that would necessitate such an
interpretation. The first principle, requiring equal access to what Rawls terms „primary

180 While these laws make many appearances in Asimov’s work, what scholarly work there is on
them usually starts with his 1976 short story ‘The Bi-centennial Man’ in Isaac Asimov, The
bicentennial man and other stories, (New York: Doubleday, 1984)
181 Rawls 1999, pp. 37-40.
196
goods‟ cannot be sacrificed in order to satisfy the second principle, requiring inequalities
to benefit the worst off members of a society.
My formulation of the principles of fraternity and autonomy here do not contain
explicit references to lexicality, so if this is a requirement it will have to be one done
through interpretation rather than through implementation. However, I believe that a
lexical ordering is not the appropriate way to reconcile these two principles. While a
lexical ordering would provide certainty in how to reconcile the two principles, I believe
such certainty is unnecessary at this stage and runs counter to the methodology
involved. The desire for certainty here seems to involve a desire to have a ranking of
just and unjust outcomes that tells us exactly which maxims and policies to favour over
others and why, including the degree to which illegitimate maxims and policies are
illegitimate so that we can favour one option even now. It seems to reflect what Berlin
called the temptation to look for final solutions.182
Furthermore, lexical ordering is inappropriate here for many of the same
reasons that non-exclusivity was not an appropriate way for the two principles to
interact. Lexical ordering makes one principle subordinate to the other in a way
incompatible with the two facts the principles are meant to represent. Insofar as these
are two basic principles representing the two basic facts of political morality –
individuality and sociality – neither can validly be subordinated to the other. If fraternity
were to trump autonomy this would fail to respect the demands of individuality, while if
fraternity were subordinate to autonomy this would undermine the needs of sociality. A
lexical ordering would give primacy to one position over the other in a way that would

182 Berlin 2002, pp. 212.
197
be incompatible with the two facts I took at the outset of this work as my investigatory
premise. No theory can incorporate a lexical ordering and still be genuinely dualist.
This commitment to a dualist theory leads me to conclude that a serial order is
more appropriate for accommodating the demands of autonomy and fraternity. In a
serial order one principle is examined before the other principle because of some
explanatory advantage the first principle has over the second, but neither principle has
normative priority. Usually, the basis on which we examine the connections between a
maxim or policy and a principle first is because understanding these connections is
important to understanding the interaction of the maxim or policy with the second
principle. There is, then, no normative priority to their placement in the order. This
better respects the dualist approach because it allows each principle to more fully
interact with the maxim or policy than a lexical approach would, which is necessary
when each principle has a veto over the legitimacy of a given maxim or policy.
On this approach, any given maxim will be considered legitimate only if it
accords with the principle of respect for fraternity and the principle of respect for
autonomy. This leaves many possible maxims that might be strongly supported by one
aspect of our nature illegitimate because they violate the principle required by the other
aspect. This is a stringent approach to legitimacy, as the example of the community and
the contagion above illustrates. There is a legitimate outcome in that situation, but the
only legitimate way for the community to save itself is for the individual who carries the
contagion to sacrifice him or herself for the benefit of the whole. In the next subsection
I will defend this kind of stringency as a valuable illustration of what really happens
when we have to choose from among evils.
198
C. In Defence of Stringency
The result of this dualism is a stringent result. By this I mean that many maxims
and policies will be declared illegitimate because of their failure to adequately respect
one or another of the principles involved. Nonetheless, I think this result is both
justified and does a good job of explaining many of our basic intuitions about moral and
political hard cases.
Earlier I discussed the example of the community and the contagion. In that
scenario the only legitimate outcome is for the individual to sacrifice herself for the
benefit of the community. Indeed, we can claim that the individual does wrong if she
does not make such a sacrifice. However, for a community to adopt a maxim by which
they can kill her to save their village nonetheless violates her autonomy because it
interferes with her ability to continue living a life from within by making meaningful
choices. It interferes in this way because she has made a choice, to refuse to sacrifice
herself, that is meaningful and reflects the ability to live her life from within. The
community might still end up killing the carrier, but because they are choosing from
among illegitimate options. This would then be a situation where the relevant authorities
are choosing from among evils.
Situations of direct conflict between principles should be rare, despite the
inflexibility involved in their reconciliation. In large part this is because of the flexible
approaches to autonomy and fraternity adopted earlier. Direct conflicts between the two
principles should be possible only in extreme cases like the scenario discussed above.
An examination of a slightly different case should make this clear. Imagine a different
contagion case: one where someone is trying to enter an area in violation of a quarantine
zone established to prevent spread of the contagion and to preserve order within the
199
zone. Whether an absolute quarantine is legitimate will depend on the circumstances of
the individuals involved. For what reason are they trying to enter the zone. If she is
trying to enter the zone to be reunited with family with no intention of leaving or of
causing a disturbance, then this sort of forced separation prevents her from living her
life from within and thereby violates her autonomy. In this case, however, consideration
requires us to allow the woman to enter the contagion zone, since her introduction
would not allow spread of the contagion outside the zone nor would it impede on the
imposition of order in the zone. It requires an exemption in the circumstances of the
original policy. Alternatively, if she is trying to enter the zone because it is the most
efficient way to reach a destination on the other side of the zone, this would not violate
her autonomy since she can still has an array of choices about whether and how to reach
her ultimate destination. Provided one is always ready to temper maxims and policies to
individual circumstances – which can usually be done even in the most bureaucratic of
states – the demands of autonomy and fraternity can usually be satisfied. It will be
occasions where the circumstances or policies cannot be so tailored – due to emergency
or extreme cost – that conflict will arise. However, we should resist the temptation to
treat „hard cases‟ as something to which we simply have yet to find an easy solution.
Hard cases are hard for a reason. It is to what we do in hard cases that I now turn.
Firstly, I think that the methodology of the two aspects still has some relevance
here, even though it has declared both actions illegitimate. Fraternity and autonomy
provide two standards by which illegitimate actions can nonetheless be measured for
degrees of illegitimacy. In the scenario under examination the obligation to save the
community seems like a very serious requirement, involving very strong union
obligations among the individuals involved. Likewise, the choice of the individual in
200
question is meant to preserve her autonomy, but her autonomy will be of little value
once she is wiped out along with her community. Her choice, then, can be seen to
reflect autonomy in a way that is of little (but not no) value, since due to circumstances
beyond her control she will not be able to live her life from within or make meaningful
choices for very much longer. In other words, while one of the two values is screaming
for a particular course of action, the other is holding out despite being trampled by
circumstance. In any event, the two aspects and their respective principles are still useful
as evaluative guides even among illegitimate maxims and policies.
Secondly, this account is faithful to the phenomenology of choosing among
evils. Historically available scenarios often involve such a vast scale of interests and
obligations that determining what to do is difficult even given a clear account of the
principles involved. However, when we examine competing evils at a smaller level the
value becomes clear. Assume we have to choose from among breaking a promise to
meet a friend or lying to my neighbour. To further make clear the connection, let us
assume my neighbour wishes for me to watch her child for an hour so she can go to an
important job interview. However, my neighbour is very insistent and will only let me
go if I tell her I have serious plans – a meeting with my lawyer, perhaps. If I am to meet
my friend for coffee I will have to lie to my neighbour about the importance of my
plans, but if I am to help my neighbour I will have to break my promise to my friend.
Let us assume, reasonably, that each of these is an illegitimate option. We can claim with
reason that promise-keeping and truth-telling are each required by fraternity and
consistent with autonomy. Each of these options, then is an illegitimate act. When we
choose among them we ordinarily feel that the other will be entitled to some
resentment, for which we usually feel an apology or an explanation is in order.
201
Fraternity and autonomy can be of help here, likely telling us that our neighbour‟s need
is more important at this time than our friend‟s feelings, but what is important for the
moment is that our choice does not make an option legitimate. When choosing among
evils we must be aware of the wrong we are doing to the other and act accordingly, to
mitigate or compensate where possible and to always acknowledge the unfortunate
character of the situation.
Conclusion
In this chapter I have explained how the two principles of my liberal dualism
mean to interact to explain when and how a maxim or policy is legitimate. First, I
explained what legitimation involves and characterized each of the central principles as
requiring a different form of legitimacy. Fraternity requires a legitimation process, while
autonomy provides a threshold for legitimacy. I then explained the interactions of these
two principles and their differing approaches to legitimacy. I argued that trying to treat
these principles as non-exclusive or as lexical is ultimately incompatible with the dualism
at the root of this approach to moral and political questions. I then motivated an
exclusive, serial approach to reconciliation. This approach leaves me with a stringent
account of moral and political obligations, but I defended this as consistent with the
basic phenomena of choosing among illegitimate options. Once we see how these two
principles can work together to explain the legitimacy of various maxims and policies we
should see the potential for a renewed communitarianism focussing not on what is
wrong with liberal individualism, but on how to supplement it with a second principle.
Autonomy is important because we are individuals, so communitarianism should claim
instead that Fraternity – or moderate ethical solidarity through consideration – is
important because we are necessarily in society with one another.
202
Bibliography
Agamben, Giorgio. The Coming Community. Trans. Michael Hardt. Minneapolis, MN: U
Minnesota P (1993).
Anderson, Elizabeth. „What is the Point of Equality?‟ Ethics, v. 109 (January 1999), pp.
287-
337.
Appiah, Kwame Anthony. The Ethics of Identity. Princeton: Princeton UP (2005).
Arendt, Hannah. Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy. Ed. Ronald Beiner. Chicago: U of
Chicago P (1992).
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Ed. Terrence Irwin. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett (1999).
Arneson, Richard J. „Luck Egalitarianism and Prioritarianism.‟ Ethics, v. 110, no. 1, 333-
349
Asimov, Isaac. The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories. New York: Doubleday (1984).
Barrett, Helen. Attachment and the Perils of Parenting: A Commentary and a Critique. London:
National Family and Parenting Institute (2006).
Barry, Brian. A Treatise on Social Justice, Volune II: Justice as Impartiality. Oxford: Oxford
UP
(1995).
Bell, Daniel. Communitarianism and its Critics. Oxford: Oxford UP (1993).
Benhabib, Seyla. Situating the Self. New York: Routledge (1992).
Berlin, Isaiah. Liberty: Incorporating Four Essays on Liberty. Ed. Henry Hardy. London :
Oxford
UP (2002).
– The Crooked Timber of Humanity. New York: Knopf (1991).
Broome, John. Weighing Lives. Oxford: Oxford UP, (2004).
Brunkhorst, Hauke. „Globalizing Solidarity: The Destiny of Democratic Solidarity in the
Times of Global Capitalism, Global Religion and the Global Public.‟ Journal of
Social Philosophy, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 93-111.
– Solidarity: From Civic Friendship to Global Legal Community. Trans. Jeffrey Flynn. London:
MIT Press (2005).
203
Burke, Edmund. Reflections on the Revolution in France and on the Proceedings in Certain Societies
in
London Relative to that Event. London: Penguin (1790, 1986).
Butler, Joseph. Human Nature and Other Sermons. London: Cassell (1887).
Cohen, Gerald Allen. If you’re an Egalitarian How Come You’re so Rich? London: Harvard
UP
(2000).
– Rescuing Justice and Equality. Cambridge MA: Harvard UP (2008).
– Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality. Cambridge: Cambridge UP (1995).
Darwall, Stephen. The Second-person Standpoint. London: Harvard (2007).
Dussel, Enrique. „From Fraternity to Solidarity: Toward a Politics of Liberation.‟ Journal of
Social Philosophy, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 73-92.
Dworkin, Ronald. „Equality, Luck and Hierarchy.‟ Philosophy and Public Affairs, v.31,
n.2,
pp. 190-198.
– Law’s Empire. London: Fontana (1986).
– Sovereign Virtue. London: Harvard UP (2000).
– Taking Rights Seriously. London: Duckworth (1978).
Feinberg, Joel. „Collective Responsibility.‟ The Journal of Philosophy, v. 65, no. 21
(1968),
pp. 674-688 at p. 678.
Frankel Paul, Ellen, Fred D. Miller Jr., and Jeffrey Paul, Eds. The Communitarian Challenge
to
Liberalism. New York: Cambridge UP (1996).
Freeman, Samuel (Ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Rawls. Cambridge: Cambridge UP
(2003).
Goldman, Alvin I. Simulating Minds: The Philosophy, Psychology and Neuroscience of
Mindreading.
Oxford: Oxford UP (2006).
Gould, Carol C. „Transnational Solidarities.‟ Journal of Social Philosophy, vol. 28, no. 1,
pp.
148-164.
204
Harsanyi, John C. „Can the Maximin Principle Serve as a Basis for Morality? A Critique
of
John Rawls’s Theory.‟ The American Political Science Review, v. 69, no. 2
(1975), pp. 594-606.
Hart, H. L. A. The Concept of Law (2nd Ed), Oxford: Clarendon (1994).
– „Rawls on Liberty and its Priority,‟ U Chicago Law Rev.; v. 40 n. 3; pp. 534-555.
– Law, Liberty and Morality. London: Oxford UP (1963).
Harvey, Jean. „Moral Solidarity and Empathic Understanding: The Moral Value and
Scope
of the Relationship.‟ Journal of Social Philosophy, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 22-37.
Herman, Barbara. „Mutual Aid and Respect for Persons.‟ Ethics, v. 94 (July 1984), pp.
577-
602.
Heyd, David. „Justice and Solidarity: The Contractarian Case against Global Justice.‟
Journal
of Social Philosophy, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 112-130.
Holton, Richard and Rae Langton. „Empathy and Animal Ethics.‟ In Dale Johnson Ed.
Singer and his Critics. Oxford: Blackwell (1999).
Holtung, Nils and Kaspar Lippert-Rasmussen. Egalitarianism. Oxford: Oxford UP
(2005).
Horton, John. „In Defence of Associative Political Obligations: Part One.‟ Political
Studies;
v. 54 i. 4; pp. 427-443.
– „In Defence of Associative Political Obligations: Part Two.‟ Political Studies; v. 55 i. 1;
pp.
1-19.
Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. New York: Penguin (1739, 1969).
Kagan, Shelly. The Limits of Morality. Oxford: Oxford UP (1986).
Kolodny, Niko. „Which Relationships Justify Partiality? The Case of Parents and
Children.‟
Philosophy and Public Affairs, v. 38, no. 1, pp. 37-75.
Korsgaard, Christine. Creating the Kingdom of Ends. New York: Cambridge UP (1996).
– Self-constitution. Oxford: Oxford UP (2009).
205
Kymlicka, Will. Contemporary Political Philosophy, 2nd Ed. Oxford: Oxford UP (2002).
– Liberty, Culture and Community. Oxford: Oxford UP (1989).
Levinas, Emmanuel. Otherwise than Being; or Beyond Essence. Trans. Alphonso Lingis.
Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne UP (1998).
MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue, London: Duckworth (1985).
May, Larry. „The International Community, Solidarity and the Duty to Aid.‟ Journal of
Social Philosophy, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 185-203.
Miller, David. On Nationality. Oxford: Oxford UP (1995).
Musschenga, Albert W. „The Debate on Impartiality: An Introduction,‟ Ethical Theory
and
Moral Practice, v. 8 (2005), pp. 1-10.
Nagel, Thomas. Equality and Impartiality Oxford: Oxford UP (1991).
– The View from Nowhere New York: Oxford (1986).
Nancy, Jean-Luc. The Inoperative Community. Trans. Peter Connor et al. Oxford: U
Minnesota
P (1991).
Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia. Oxford: Blackwell (1975).
Nussbaum, Martha. The Fragility of Goodness. Cambridge: Cambridge UP (1986).
– Frontiers of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP (2006).
Oakeshott, Michael On Human Conduct. Oxford: Clarendon (1975).
Okin, Susan Moller. Justice, Gender and the Family. New York: Basic (1989).
Otsuka, Michael. Libertarianism Without Inequality. Oxford: Oxford UP (2003).
Parfit, Derek. „Equality and Priority,‟ in Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Anthology (2nd
Ed.). Robert E. Goodin and Philip Pettit, Eds., Oxford: Blackwell (2006), pp.
462-472.
– Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Oxford UP (1984).
Pensky, Max. „Two Cheers for Cosmopolitanism: Cosmopoltan Solidarity as SecondOrder
206
Inclusion.‟ Journal of Social Philosophy, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 165-184.
Rawls, John. „Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical,‟ Philosophy and Public Affairs.
v.
14, no. 3, pp. 223-251.
– Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia UP (1993).
– A Theory of Justice: Revised Edition. Cambridge, MA: Belknap (1971, 1999).
Raz, Joseph. The Morality of Freedom. Oxford: Oxford UP (1986).
– The Practice of Value. Oxford: Oxford UP (2003).
Rehg, William. „Solidarity and the Common Good: An Analytic Framework.‟ Journal of
Social Philosophy, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 7-21.
Rorty, Richard. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge UP (1989).
Sandel, Michael. Liberalism and the Limits of Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge UP (1982).
Scanlon, Thomas. Moral Dimensions. Cambridge, MA: Harvard (2008).
– What We Owe To Each Other. Cambridge, MA: Belknap (1998).
Scheffler, Samuel. Boundaries and Allegiances. New York: Oxford (2001).
– „Choice, Circumstance and the Value of Equality.‟ Politics, Philosophy and
Economics,
vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 5-28.
– „Equality as the Virtue of Sovereigns: A Reply to Ronald Dworkin.‟ Philosophy and
Public Affairs, v. 31, no. 2, pp. 199-206.
– Human Morality. New York: Oxford UP (1992).
– „What is Egalitarianism?‟ Ethics v. 31, no. 1 (2003), pp. 5-39.
Scheler, Max. The Nature of Sympathy. Trans. Peter Heath. London: Routledge (1954).
Scholz, Sally J. Political Solidarity. University Park, PA: Penn. State UP (2008).
– „Political Solidarity and Violent Resistance.‟ Journal of Social Philosophy, vol. 28, no.
1,
pp. 38-52.
Schwartz, Joseph M. „From Domestic to Global Solidarity: The Dialectic of the
Particular
207
and the Universal in the Building of Social Solidarity.‟ Journal of Social
Philosophy, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 131-147.
Scruton, Roger. Culture Counts: Faith and Feeling in a World Besieged. New York: Encounter
(2007).
– The Meaning of Conservatism. London: Penguin (1980).
Sen, Amartya. Inequality Reexamined. Oxford: Oxford (1992).
– Identity and Violence. London: Penguin (2006).
Shelby, Tommie. We Who Are Dark. London: Belknap (2005).
Simmons, A. J. „Associative Political Obligations.‟ Ethics; v. 106 i. 2; pp. 247-273.
Smith, Adam. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Oxford: Oxford UP (1976).
Tamit, Yael. Liberal Nationalism. Princeton, NL: Princeton UP (1993).
Taylor, Charles. „Cross-purposes: The Liberal-Communitarian Debate,‟ in Nancy
Rosenblum, Ed. Liberalism and the Moral Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP
(1989).
– The Ethics of Authenticity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP (1991).
– Hegel. London: Cambridge UP (1975).
– Sources of the Self. Cambridge: Cambridge UP (1989).
Timmermann, Jens. „Value without Regress: Kant‟s “Formula of Humanity” Revisited.‟
European Journal of Philosophy, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 69-93.
Velleman, J. David. How We Get Along. New York: Cambridge UP (2009).
Walzer, Michael. Spheres of Justice. Oxford: Blackwell (1984).
Wilson, Catherine. Moral Animals. Oxford: Clarendon (2007).
Wolff, Jonathan. „Fairness, Respect and the Egalitarian Ethos.‟ Philosophy and Public
Affairs, v. 27, no. 2, pp. 97-122.
Young, Iris Marion. „Asymmetrical Reciprocity: On Moral Respect, Wonder and
Enlarged
Thought,‟ Constellations, v. 3, no. 3 (1997), pp. 340-363.
– „Impartiality and the Civic Public: Some Implications of Feminist Critiques of Moral
and
208
Political Theory,‟ in Selya Benhabib and Drucilla Cornell, eds. Feminism as
Critique. London: Polity (1987, 1994).
– Justice and the Politics of Difference. Oxford: Princeton UP (1990).