Justice and freedom

     
                        OBLIGATIONS BEYOND CONSENT

   Are we bound by some moral ties we haven't chosen and that can't be traced to a social contract ? Rawls's answer would be no. On the liberal conception, obligations can arise in only two ways --as natural duties we owe to human beings as such and as voluntary obligations we incur by consent. Natural duties are universal. We owe them to persons as persons, as rational beings. They include the duty to treat persons with respect, to do justice, to avoid cruelty, and so on.  Since they arise from an autonomous will (Kant) or from a hypothetical social contract (Rawls), they don't require an act of consent. No one would say that I have a duty not to kill you only if I promised you I wouldn't.
   Unlike natural duties, voluntary obligations are particular, not universal, and arise from consent. If I've agreed to paint your house (in exchange for a wage, say, or to repay a favor) , I have an obligation to do so. But I don't have an obligation to paint           everyone's house. On the liberal conception, we must respect the 
dignity of all persons, but beyond this, we owe only what we agree to owe. Liberal justice requires that we respect people's rights (as define by the neutral framework), not that we advance their good. Whether we must concern ourselves with the good of other people depends on whether, and with whom, we have agreed to do so. 
   One striking implication of this view is that "there is no political obligation, strictly speaking, for citizens generally." Although those who run for office voluntarily incur a political obligation (that is, to serve their country if elected), the ordinary citizen does not. As Rawls writes, "it is not clear what is the requisite binding action 
who has performed it." So if the liberal account of obligation is right, the average citizen has no special obligations to his or her fellow citizens, beyond the universal, natural duty not to commit injustice. 
   From the standpoint of the narrative conception of the person, the liberal account of obligation is too thin. It fails to account for the special responsibilities we have to one another as fellow citizens. More than this, it fails to capture those loyalties and responsibilities whose moral force consists partly in the fact that living by them is inseparable from understanding ourselves as the 



























particular persons we are --- as members of this family or nation or people ; as bearers of that history ; as citizens of this republic. On the narrative account, these identities are not contingencies we 

should set aside when deliberating about morality and justice ; they are part of who we are, and so rightly bear on our moral responsibilities. 
   So one way of deciding between the voluntarist and narrative conceptions of the person is to ask if you think there is a third category of obligations ---call them obligations of solidarity, or membership--- that can't be explained in contractarian terms.  Unlike natural duties, obligations of solidarity are particular, not universal ; they involve moral responsibilities we owe, not to rational beings as such, but to those with whom we share a certain history. But unlike voluntary obligations, they do not depend on an act of consent. Their moral weight derives instead from the situated aspect of moral reflection, from a recognition that my life story is implicated in the stories of others. 


     THREE CATEGORIES OF MORAL RESPONSIBILITY

1. Natural duties; universal; don't require consent

2. Voluntary obligations : particular ; require consent

3. Obligations of solidarity: particular ; don't require consent 

                     SOLIDARITY AND BELONGING 

   Here are some possible examples of obligations of solidarity or membership. Decide for yourselves whether you think they carry moral weight, and if so, whether their moral force can be accounted 
for in contractarian terms. 


                                    FAMILY OBLIGATIONS 

   The most elemental example is the special obligation of family members to one another. Suppose two children are drowning, and you have time to save only one. One is your child, and the other is the child of a stranger. Would it be wrong to save your child ? Would it be better to flip a coin ? Most people would say there's nothing wrong with rescuing your own child, and would find it odd 









































to think that fairness requires flipping a coin. Lying behind this reaction is the thought that parents have special responsibilities for the welfare of their children. Some argue that this responsibility arises from consent; by choosing to have children, parents voluntarily agree to look after them with special care.
   To set aside the matter of consent, consider the responsibility of children to their parents. Suppose two aging parents are in need of care ; one is my mother, and the other is somebody else's mother. Most people would agree that, while might be admirable if I could care for both, I have a special responsibility to look after my mother. In this case, it's not clear that consent can explain why this is so. I didn't choose my parents ; I didn't even choose to have parents.
   It might be argued that the moral responsibility to care for my mother derives from the fact that she looked after me when I was young. Because she raised me and cared for me, I have an obligation to repay the benefit. By accepting the benefits she conferred on me, I implicitly consented to pay her back when she was in need. Some may find this calculus of consent and reciprocal benefit too cold to account for familial obligations. But suppose you accept it. What would you say of a person whose parent was neglectful or indifferent ? Would you say that the quality of the child-rearing determines the degree to which the son or daughter is responsible to help the parent in his or her time of need ? Insofar as children are obligated to help even bad parents, the moral claim may exceed the liberal ethic of reciprocity and consent. 

                                  FRENCH RESISTANCE 

   Let's move from the family to communal obligations. During World War II, members of the French resistance piloted bombing runs over Nazi-occupied France. Although they aimed at factories and other military targets, they were not able to avoid civilian casualties. One day, a bomber pilot receives his orders and finds that his target is his home village. (The story may be apocryphal, but it raises an intriguing moral question.) He asks to be excused from the mission. He agrees that bombing this village is as necessary to the goal of liberating France as was the mission he carried out yesterday, and he knows that if he doesn't do it, someone else will. But he demurs on the grounds that he can't be the one to bomb and possibly kill some of his people, his fellow villagers. Even in a just cause, for him to carry out the bombing, he thinks, would be a special moral wrong. 
   What do you make of the pilot's stance ? Do you admire it or consider it a form of weakness ? Put aside the broader question of how many civilian casualties are justified in the cause of liberating France. The pilot was not questioning the necessity of the mission or the number of lives that would be lost. His point was that he could not be the one to take these particular lives. Is the pilot's reluctance mere squeamishness, or does it reflect something of moral importance ? If we admire the pilot, it must be because we see in his stance a recognition of his encumbered identity as a member of his village, and we admire the character he reflects.