Relationships and Responsibilities

Abstract

How do we come to have responsibilities to some people that we do not have to others? In our everyday lives, many different kinds of considerations are invoked to explain these "special" responsibilities. Often we cite some kind of interaction that we have had with the person to whom we bear the responsibility. Perhaps we made this person a promise, or entered into an agreement with him. Or perhaps we feel indebted to him because of something he once did for us. Or, again, perhaps we once harmed him in some way, and as a result we feel a responsibility to make reparation to him. In all of these cases, there is either something we have done or something the "beneficiary" of the responsibility has done that is cited as the source of that responsibility.Not all of our explanations take this form, however. Sometimes we account for special responsibilities not by citing any specific interaction between us and the beneficiary, but rather by citing the nature of our relationship to that person. We have special duties to a person, we may say, because she is our sister, or our friend, or our neighbor. Many different types of relationship are invoked in this way. Perhaps the person is not a relative but a colleague, not a friend but a teammate, not a neighbor but a client. Sometimes the relationship may consist only in the fact that we are both members of a certain kind of group. We may This is a much-revised version of the paper that I delivered at the Eleventh Jerusalem Philosophical Encounter in December 1995. Versions of the paper were also presented to the NYU Colloquium in Law, Philosophy, and Political Theory; the Columbia Legal Theory Workshop; philosophy department colloquia at Arizona State, Stanford, the University of Miami, and the University of Michigan; and my fall 1995 graduate seminar at Berkeley. I am very grateful to all of these audiences for extremely helpful discussion. Special thanks also to Yael Tamir, who was my commentator in Jerusalem, and to Christopher Kutz, JeffMcMahan, Daniel Statrnan, Wai-hung Wong, and a reader for Philosophy C Public Affairs for providing me with valuable written comments.

The Relation Between Policies Concerning Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Philosophical Moral Theories – An Empirical Investigation

“…Other philosophers, such as Nagel, Scheffler, D. Miller and R. Miller, argue that social proximity matters morally; i.e. the social relation between two agents can influence whether one agent has an obligation to help another agent (Miller, 2004(Miller, , 2007Nagel, 2005;Scheffler, 1997). The core of the arguments regarding proximity is that our moral intuitions suggest that distance, whether physical or social, sometimes matters regarding the obligation of assistance.…”

“…the relation is an important factor regarding obligation between agents (Miller, 2004(Miller, , 2007Nagel, 2005;Scheffler, 1997). An example of social proximity is the relation between family and friends.…”

The reality of friendship within immersive virtual worlds

“…In particular, it is commonly held that special obligations arise between friends (Scheffler 1997;Mason 1997;Leib 2007) and the ability to form relationships incurring these obligations remotely has the potential to raise important issues of responsibility and expectation arising from virtual relationships. Friendships elicit responsibility, such that when faced with a choice between acting so as to benefit a friend or to benefit a stranger, the fact that one possible beneficiary is a friend gives a reason to act in their favour.…”

On Firms and the Next Generations: Difficulties and Possibilities for Business Ethics Inquiry

“…To distinguish the types of obligations and concerns we have to next and future generations and its relevance for business ethics, we suggest relying on the distinction between special responsibilities and global responsibilities made by some political philosophers (Scheffler 1997;Miller 2005). 3 To review the distinction briefly, whereas global responsibilities are impartial, agent-neutral, abstract, and can be understood as universal, special responsibilities are partial and agent-relative, based on some type of attachment and generated within groups or communities, the existence of which is perceived as intrinsically valuable.…”

“…By contrast, special responsibilities focus on the relationships between people who are particularly attached or closely related to each other such as spouses, friends, colleagues, teammates, and neighbors; or, in our case, one's direct descendants or colleagues who will continue one's job in the organization. Those who defend this ''split-level view of morality'' (Scheffler 1997;Miller 2005) claim that special responsibilities (sometimes also called ''local'') cannot be reduced to, or derived from, global responsibilities. Further, there can be cases in which we incur in special responsibilities without consent or some other voluntary act, as in the case of children having some responsibilities to their parents, and vice versa.…”