II—What’s Wrong with Being Lonely? Justice, Beneficence, and Meaningful Relationships

Abstract

A life without liberty and material resources is not a good life. Equally, a life devoid of meaningful social relationships-such as friendships, family attachments, and romances-is not a good life. From this it is tempting to conclude that just as individuals have rights to liberty and material resources, they also have rights to access meaningful social relationships. I argue that this conclusion can be defended only in a narrow set of cases. "Pure" social-relationship deprivation-i.e., deprivation that is not caused, or accompanied, by deficits in liberties and material resourcesmostly generates demands of private beneficence. I suggest that social-relationship deprivation is unjust, hence a rights-violation, only when it is due to factors-e.g., one's race-that are irrelevant to one's being a good participant in social relationships. I thus conclude that access to meaningful social relationships is not a fundamental concern for theories of (personal or political) justice. * I am grateful to Kimberley Brownlee, Chiara Cordelli, Anca Gheaus, and Christian List for very helpful written comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

Feasibility and social rights

“…Surprisingly, there has yet to be a sustained treatment of whether social rights meet the feasibility condition, and qualify as rights (for some engagement, see Brownlee, 2013; Gheaus, 2017; Liao, 2006; Valentini, 2016). This is a problem given that coming to a view on this matter is crucial: not only to clarify the current potential of social rights qua rights, but also to engage with worries that social rights are especially unfeasible in a way that renders them non-existent.…”

“…Indeed, this lack of conceptual clarification elicited a response to Brownlee by Valentini (2016), who claimed – among other things – that Brownlee's right to be a social contributor fails in an important sense because claims to “meaningful social relationships” are unfeasible. Whilst it is not entirely clear what Valentini means by “meaningful” in this context, if we interpret “meaningful” as referring to relationships characterised by affective social labour– which we have reason to think given her focus on friendship as an example of such a relationship – this only reckons with one half of Brownlee's right, leaving it an open question as to how attractive and efficacious the right to be a social contributor is all things considered.…”