Partiality [Course Book ed.] 9781400846382

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Partiality •

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P r i n ceto n M ono g ra p hs in P h i loso p h y Harry G. Frankfurt, Editor •

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The Princeton Monographs in Philosophy series offers short historical and systematic studies on a wide variety of philosophical topics. Justice Is Conflict by Stuart Hampshire Liberty Worth the Name: Locke on Free Agency by Gideon Yaffe Self-Deception Unmasked by Alfred R. Mele Public Goods, Private Goods by Raymond Geuss Welfare and Rational Care by Stephen Darwall A Defense of Hume on Miracles by Robert J. Fogelin Kierkegaard’s Concept of Despair by Michael Theunissen Physicalism, or Something Near Enough by Jaegwon Kim Philosophical Myths of the Fall by Stephen Mulhall Fixing Frege by John P. Burgess Kant and Skepticism by Michael N. Forster Thinking of Others: On the Talent for Metaphor by Ted Cohen The Apologetics of Evil: The Case of Iago by Richard Raatzsch Social Conventions: From Language to Law by Andrei Marmor Taking Wittgenstein at His Word: A Textual Study by Robert J. Fogelin The Pathologies of Individual Freedom: Hegel’s Social Theory by Axel Honneth Michael Oakeshott’s Skepticism by Aryeh Botwinick Hegel on Self-Consciousness: Desire and Death in the Phenomenology of Spirit by Robert B. Pippin Locke on Personal Identity: Consciousness and Concernment by Galen Strawson When Is True Belief Knowledge? by Richard Foley Partiality by Simon Keller

Partiality

Simon Keller

princeton university press princeton and oxford

Copyright © 2013 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW press.princeton.edu All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Keller, Simon. Partiality / Simon Keller. pages  cm. — (Princeton monographs in philosophy) Includes bibliographical references (pages ) and index. ISBN 978-0-691-15473-2 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Interpersonal relations—Philosophy. I. Title. HM1106.K4395 2013 302—dc23   2012042597 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available This book has been composed in Janson Text Printed on acid-free paper ∞ Printed in the United States of America 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Contents

Preface vii Chapter 1 Special Relationships and Special Reasons 1 Chapter 2 My Projects 31 Chapter 3 Our Relationship 45 Chapter 4 Your Value 78 Chapter 5 My Response to Your Value 113 References 157 Index 161

Preface

This book is about the ethics of special relationships, or the ethics of partiality. It is about why you should treat someone differently if she is your friend, your spouse, your parent, or your child, or if she shares with you some other kind of special relationship. Special relationships appear to generate a special set of evaluative standards; they make a difference to what you do, what you think you should do, and how you judge what others do. The evaluative standards generated by special relationships are taken very seriously; nobody wants to be a bad friend or a bad parent, and people whom we judge to fail in their responsibilities within their special relationships are the objects of some of our harshest moral criticism. On face value, partiality appears be a distinctive and significant part of our ethical lives. While partiality appears to be a significant ethical phenomenon, our most influential theories of morality do not give it a central place. Our most influential moral theories are mostly impartialist; they are about how we can make the world better, as seen from an impartial point of view, or about what rules or basic rights exist for all people at all times and places. Any claims about why we should be partial to our friends and loved ones, on such moral theories, are derived from deeper impartialist commitments. As many philosophers have noticed, there are good reasons to doubt that impartialist moral theories can do justice to the ethics of partiality. It is frequently argued that utilitarianism, or consequentialism in general, or Kantianism, or deontology in general,

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cannot give a plausible account of friendship, or of love, or of special obligations between parents and children. Defenders of impartialist moral theories have responses to make, and it is in the context of the debate about the prospects of impartialist moral theories that many philosophers come to the ethics of partiality. For many, the main question about the ethics of special relationships is whether it yields a telling objection to impartialism in ethics. I began working on this book with the conviction that philosophers have been better at arguing about whether partiality poses a problem for impartialist moral theories than at providing positive accounts of the ethics of partiality. My hunch is that if we consider the ethics of partiality in its own right, not as a problem case for impartialist moral theories, then we will arrive at an account that looks quite different both from accounts derived from impartialist theories and from accounts gestured at by philosophers as alternatives to impartialism. I begin by trying to regiment the various philosophical approaches to the ethics of partiality. I suggest that there are three basic views: the projects view, the relationships view, and the individuals view. Of the three views, the individuals view looks at first as though it is the least promising, but if the arguments to come are successful, then it turns out to be correct. The idea of the individuals view is that we should give different treatment to people with whom we share special relationships as a response to the value held by those individuals in their own rights. In developing the individuals view, the crucial move is to show how you can find good reason to give special treatment to someone with whom you share a special relationship, in response to that person’s selfstanding value, while at the same time seeing that other people are no less valuable, objectively speaking, than her. My preferred version of the individuals view, which I develop in the last two chapters of the book, draws together elements from each of three different traditions of thought about how we should respond to the value of persons: the consequentialist tradition, the Kantian tradition, and the particularist tradition. If this sounds messy—­well, the view that results is not as messy as you might imagine on the basis of that description, but neither is it

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especially elegant. To say why we ought to give special treatment within certain special relationships, I argue, we need to understand, first, what it means to respond to the value held by a particular person in her own right, not in comparison to the value of other people; and we need to understand, second, why our ways of constructing special relationships make sense for us, as a society or a species—­we need to explain why we accept particular ideals of friendship, for example, or why we have particular expectations about who will take responsibility for raising children. To understand what you should do for someone with whom you share a special relationship, you need to appreciate his value in isolation, but you also need to see him as a participant in a relationship that has a certain social significance and function. The two needs create conflicting theoretical pressures. But neither can be discounted, and neither can be fully explained in terms of the other, so some theoretical messiness is unavoidable. My main goal in writing the book is to provide a broad account of the ethics of partiality, but there are two other things I hope to achieve. One is to provide some support for the view that ethics is ultimately about the good of individuals; to understand the ethics of partiality, I suggest, we do not need to grant basic ethical significance to other kinds of entities, like relationships. The other is to show that there is something to be gained from examining our experience as we act within our special relationships: an experience that I rather grandly call the “phenomenology of partiality.” The phenomenology of partiality, properly examined, involves evaluative commitments, which I think should be granted a great deal of authority. The best argument for the individuals view, in my opinion, is that it makes the norms of partiality look much as we experience them to be. I owe thanks to my editor at Princeton University Press, Rob Tempio, for his support and patience. The book was greatly improved by the penetrating and constructive reports of two reviewers for PUP; I now know that those reviewers were Diane Jeske and Sarah Stroud. I am also grateful for comments provided by my friends and colleagues at Victoria University Wellington and at the University of Melbourne, and by many others. I would especially like to thank Nick Agar, PJ Ivanhoe, Andrew Moore, and

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Kieran Setiya. In preparing the final manuscript I received valuable research assistance from Felice Marshall. I have been encouraged all the way by my wife Maree Henwood. It is a book about partiality, so let me also mention my adored children, Tait and Quentin.

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Chapter 1 Special Relationships and Special Reasons

How Relationships Make a Difference Imagine that you are watching television, and your show is interrupted by a news bulletin. There has been a fire, and several people have lost their homes. How would you respond? You might take no notice. You might feel a twinge of sympathy. If the story has an especially strong effect on you, you might donate some money to help the victims rebuild their lives. Now imagine that as you watch the news bulletin, you recognize one of the houses that have burned down, and you recognize the owners. They are your parents. Now, how would you respond? You would feel much more than a twinge of sympathy, and you would be willing to do much more than donate some money. You would get to the scene as quickly as possible and offer all the support you could. It makes a difference that these people are your parents. If a friend asks you to help him move house, you might happily agree, even though you would never do the same thing for a stranger. If your sister is having trouble paying her bills, you might give her some money, even though you would not help pay the bills of just anyone. If your son needs a new jacket, you might buy it for him, even though you would not buy a jacket for just any child who needs one.

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We give special treatment to those with whom we share certain relationships. You treat a person differently if she is your friend or a member of your family. You may also treat a person differently if she is your colleague, your neighbor, your employee, or your compatriot. You may also favor your own country over other countries, your own team over other teams, or your alma mater over other schools. This is partiality. Not only do we give special treatment to those with whom we share special relationships; we appear to do so for good reasons. We do not do special things for our friends and family members just because we feel like it. Showing a special preference for your friends and family members is not just like preferring chocolate ice cream to strawberry. If you did not treat your own friends and family differently from how you treat strangers, then there would be something wrong with you. When you rush off to be with your parents after hearing of the fire, you will probably take yourself to be doing something you ought to do. Even if you do not especially feel like going to comfort your parents—­perhaps you have had a long day and would like to watch the rest of your television show—­you might go anyway, because you think you should. They are your parents, after all.

Norms of Partiality and Reasons of Partiality The existence of a special relationship can make a difference to what you are required to do; perhaps you have a duty to provide for your own children, but not for all children. The existence of a special relationship can make a difference to what you are allowed to do; perhaps you are permitted to break an appointment to look after your sick husband, but not to look after just any sick person. And, the existence of a special relationship can make a difference to what it makes sense for you to do, without making a difference to what you are required to do or allowed to do; if your friend is renovating his house, you may have a special reason to invite him to live with you for a few weeks, even though you do not have the duty to issue the invitation, and even though you are permitted to issue it to anyone you like.

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In all these ways, and perhaps others too, your special relationships are “normatively significant” or make a difference to your “normative situation.” Putting it another way, your special relationships make a difference to the standards of assessment to which your acts are answerable. An act that would otherwise be optional can be made compulsory; an act that would otherwise be forbidden can be made permissible; an act that would otherwise make no sense can be made perfectly sensible; and so on. The standards to which our acts are answerable can be called “norms,” and the special standards to which our acts are answerable because of our special relationships can be called “norms of partiality.” Sometimes, a special relationship changes your normative situation by giving you reasons to perform some acts rather than others. A reason to perform an act is a consideration that counts in favor of the act, in one way or another. A reason to act, that is to say, is a consideration that really counts in favor of the act, not one that merely seems to count in its favor, or that someone merely thinks to count in its favor. (On this way of talking, all reasons are good reasons; a “bad reason” is no reason at all.) A “reason of partiality” is a reason that is generated by a special relationship, or that you have because you are in some special relationship. Perhaps one consideration that counts in favor of your rushing to your parents’ side after hearing of the fire is that it will bring comfort to your parents. If so, then that is a reason for you to rush to your parents’ side. If it is a reason you have because these people are your parents, then it is a reason of partiality. In other cases, a special relationship may make a difference to your normative situation without generating reasons. The fact that you are in a certain special relationship may give you permission to do something without giving you any reason to do it. Perhaps you are allowed to send your own child to piano lessons, but not to send just any child to piano lessons, but whether you have a good reason to send your child to piano lessons is a separate question. (This case might be explained as one in which your special relationship takes away a reason that would otherwise be there. Perhaps you have a reason not to make other children go to piano lessons, but you do not have the same reason when it comes to your own child; perhaps that is what it is for you to have a special

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permission to make your child go to piano lessons. So perhaps the difference made by your special relationship here can be explained as a difference made to your reasons. But this is neither obvious nor, for present purposes, important.)

Reasons and Motives The considerations counting in favor of our acts are not necessarily the considerations by which we are moved to act. Our reasons can be different from our motives. When you rush off to be with your parents after hearing of the fire, you might be moved by the thought that your parents are in distress and would benefit from your presence, or by the thought that it is your duty to be with your parents in their time of need, or by the thought that people will think badly of you if they find out that you knew about the fire and decided to stay home and watch television. Any of these considerations may be among your motives, but it is a separate question whether any of them counts as a reason.1 Although there is a difference between reasons and motives, in asking questions about the one we can find cause to ask questions about the other. Reasons can sometimes refer to motives; perhaps you have a reason to favor a friend over strangers only if you regard her with the right motives. And our motives can sometimes reveal something about our reasons; we might learn more about your reasons for favoring your friend by looking more closely at your motives for favoring your friend, in a case in which your motives appear to get it right.

The Puzzle of Partiality We are subject to norms of partiality, and from one point of view, such norms are not at all mysterious. Of course it makes a differThe distinction between motives and reasons is sometimes drawn as a distinction between different kinds of reasons. What I call “motives,” some call “motivating reasons,” and what I call “reasons,” some call “normative reasons” or “justifying reasons.” The difference is only terminological. 1

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ence that a person is your mother, and not a stranger. From another point of view, however, partiality is puzzling. There is a natural, compelling picture of morality into which norms of partiality do not appear to fit. One basic moral truth is that everyone matters and no one matters more than anyone else. This thought lies behind an influential picture of morality, which is sometimes called the picture of “impartialist” morality, or of “liberal” or “Enlightenment” morality. According to the picture, the individuals who matter morally are those with some specified inherent property—­some morally significant feature that they hold independently of their relationships with others—­and our job as moral agents is to give a certain response to that property wherever it is found. On one version of the picture, the morally relevant property is the capacity for enjoyment and suffering and our moral task is to maximize enjoyment and minimize suffering, regardless of whose enjoyment or suffering it is; this is a utilitarian moral theory. On another version, individuals matter morally if they are autonomous and our moral task is to treat all autonomous creatures as ends and never merely as means; this is a Kantian moral theory. Another version of the picture might say that individuals matter morally because they have rights and our moral task is to avoid ever infringing on anybody’s rights. If morality is all about promoting overall enjoyment and minimizing overall suffering, or treating all autonomous creatures as ends, or respecting everybody’s rights, then special relationships would not appear to hold any moral significance. No one comes to have a greater capacity for enjoyment and suffering, to be more autonomous, or to have different basic rights just because she is your friend, or just because she has any other particular connection to you. So why should a person’s particular connection to you give you any reason to treat her differently from how you treat others? Why should the fact that someone happens to share some relationship with you make a difference to how you ought to treat her, or how you may permissibly treat her? This is the puzzle of partiality. The puzzle of partiality is not a mere theoretical artifact. We cannot make it go away just by saying that impartialist moral the-

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ories are wrong. The puzzle arises from something true. Those we treat differently from everyone else, within our special relationships, are not more important than everyone else. You prioritize your own children’s needs over the needs of other children, but the needs of other children matter just as much as the needs of yours. You make sacrifices for your friends that you do not make for other people, but your friends do not matter more than other people. Looking at it from one perspective, the puzzle of partiality cannot be avoided. We need some explanation of why we have good reasons for acting partially, rather than impartially. The puzzle of partiality might be easy to solve. On the one side, it could be said that the perspective from which the puzzle arises—­a perspective that takes impartiality as the natural starting point—­is simply mistaken, even if seductive; perhaps the perspective of morality is not an impartial perspective after all.2 On the other side, it could be said that reasons of partiality can easily be incorporated within the impartialist picture; perhaps there are good impartial reasons for each of us to give different treatment to those with whom we share special relationships.3 A glance at the philosophical literature suggests, however, that the puzzle of partiality is a genuine puzzle and that any solution to it will have ramifications for our thinking about the nature of morality. Philosophers use insights about partiality to argue, for example, that consequentialist and Kantian moral theories must be abandoned;4 that liberalism should give way to communitarianism;5 that liberal morality needs to be supplemented by another ethical framework with which it is necessarily in tension;6 and that not all good reasons are moral reasons.7 2 For a very clear statement of this suggestion, see MacIntyre, “Is Patriotism a Virtue?” 3 For one statement of this view, see Jackson, “Decision-­Theoretic Consequentialism and the Nearest and Dearest Objection.” 4 See, for example, Williams, “Persons, Character and Morality”; Stocker, “The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories”; and Cocking and Oakley, “Indirect Consequentialism, Friendship, and the Problem of Alienation.” 5 MacIntyre, “Is Patriotism a Virtue?” 6 Scheffler, Boundaries and Allegiances, ch. 3. 7 Wolf, “Morality and Partiality,” pp. 254–­256.

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Considerations of partiality have also pushed defenders of various impartialist views to make their theories more detailed and sophisticated, and to see more clearly what parts of commonsense morality their theories can and cannot vindicate.8 The debate about reasons of partiality is a site at which higher-­level claims in ethical theory are tested and brought into conflict. One way to try to make progress on the puzzle of partiality is to begin with a particular theoretical perspective and then to see whether it can yield a plausible account of our reasons of partiality. Another, which I pursue in this book, is to begin with norms of partiality, trying to understand what they are and where they come from, and then to see what the significance of partiality is for ethics more broadly. Let me register a quick point about my terminology. The book is about the normative significance of special relationships, and that normative significance is not (or not obviously) all about reasons. My topic is “norms of partiality” in general, not the “reasons of partiality” in particular. But, at places at which I think it makes no difference to the substance of what I am saying, I often talk of “reasons” rather than “norms.” This is because I find talk of “norms” less natural and to lead to some awfully convoluted locutions. When it comes to the philosophy, however, I am concerned throughout the book with all kinds of norms arising from special relationships, not just with reasons.

The Question Why should we give special treatment to those with whom we share special relationships? What, for example, is your reason for treating your friends differently from other people, or your children differently from other children? To make this a question that might have a single enlightening answer, we need to focus on reasons that not only direct us to give 8 Jackson, “Decision-­Theoretic Consequentialism and the Nearest and Dearest Objection”; Railton, “Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality”; Velleman, “Love as a Moral Emotion.”

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special treatment to those with whom we share certain relationships but also appear to have something especially to do with those relationships themselves. Sometimes, when you have a reason to treat someone differently from others, your reason can be derived straightforwardly from some different reason that has nothing especially to do with special relationships or partiality. You might have reason to give somebody special treatment because you promised to give her special treatment; perhaps you promised someone that you would keep an eye on her father. You might have reason to give somebody special treatment because you were instructed to give her special treatment; perhaps your boss has buddied you up with a new colleague. You might have reason to give somebody special treatment because you were assigned the job of giving her special treatment by some legitimate procedure for dividing responsibilities; perhaps it has been agreed that you will look after the baby while someone else takes care of the older children. Your reasons to give special treatment in such cases do not raise any questions about partiality in particular. They instead concern your wider reasons to keep your promises, follow instructions, or carry out your assigned responsibilities. In paradigmatic cases, our special reasons within special relationships are not so easily reducible to other reasons. You have special reason to look after your parents, but you probably cannot point to any particular promise, command, act of assigning responsibility, or anything else from which your reason obviously derives. Your reason seems to have some more intimate connection with your parents and your relationship with them. Reasons can be given at different levels of explanation, and the more finely we distinguish various reasons of partiality, the less they have in common. Your reason to go to dinner at your mother’s house tonight, for example, is not the same as my reason to buy my son a new jacket this winter. Yet, your reason to have dinner at your mother’s appears to have something in common with my reason to buy my son a jacket, but not with your or my reasons to keep our promises or help a stranger in need. You, with your mother, and I, with my son, each have reasons that emerge from special relationships. We work at the appropriate level of explanation when we try to say what that similarity is.

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Whatever our reasons of partiality all have in common, we should not assume that they are thereby set apart from all other reasons. It could be that the right way to explain our reasons of partiality is to show that they fall, after all, within some broader class of reasons. Perhaps our reasons of partiality are reasons to keep implicit promises, for example, or to promote happiness in the most efficient way possible, or to carry out the responsibilities we are assigned (or should be assigned) by society at large. Also, it may be that the class of reasons of partiality is not unified. Perhaps there are many different kinds of explanation for the many different reasons of partiality, and no level at which those explanations share an interesting common character. Those possibilities noted, however, the appearance remains. There do seem to be reasons, all recommending special treatment within special relationships and all unable to be straightforwardly explained by some broader kind of reason, all sharing a distinctive character and presenting a shared challenge to the impartialist picture of morality. Even if the appearance is deceiving, the appearance needs to be explained, and an explanation of why the appearance is deceiving will itself be one kind of story about the nature of the reasons concerned.

An Obvious Answer? Here is an obvious answer to the question of why you should treat your parents differently from how you treat other people: they are your parents, and other people are not. Similarly, your reason to give special treatment to your children is that they, unlike other children, are your children, and your reason to give special treatment to your friends is that they, unlike other people, are your friends. As a general matter, we might say, reasons of partiality are facts about the existence of special relationships. This answer has several virtues. It posits reasons of partiality in the right places; it says that you have special reasons to favor someone over others just in case you share with her a special relationship. It appears to make the right predictions about how our special reasons would differ under different possibilities; you have

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reason to give special treatment to this man, because he is your husband, but if you were married to someone else, then you would have reason to give special treatment to that other person instead. Also, the answer appears to capture some ordinary practices of explaining why we treat some people differently from others. If we are wondering why you are so concerned about the victims of the fire, and you tell us, “They are my parents,” then we have all the explanation we need.9 At some level, indeed, facts about the existence of relationships must count as reasons for giving special treatment within relationships. That, in a way, is the presumption behind this project. In trying to explain how special relationships generate special reasons, we are assuming that special relationships make a difference to what you should do, and so we are assuming, really, that the fact that you participate in a certain kind of relationship can be a reason for you to perform some actions rather than others. The question, though, is whether explanations like “They are my parents” are the deepest or most informative explanations available. They might be; on one view, which we will come to shortly, facts like “They are my parents” are fundamental reasons and cannot be explained by anything apart from themselves.10 On other views, however, there is a deeper explanation of why—­and of exactly when—­a fact like “They are my parents” counts as a special reason. My question about partiality can usefully be understood as asking whether such a deeper explanation exists, and, if it does, what it is. Suppose that I ask you what reason you have to give special treatment to these two people, and you give the answer, “They are my parents.” There are three different kinds of considerations to which your answer might draw attention and, correspondingly, three different things you might mean to say. First, you could be saying something about yourself, as if you are saying, “They are my parents.” Second, you could be saying something about the relationship in which you and your parents stand, as if you are Scheffler, Boundaries and Allegiances, p. 100, Kolodny, “Love as Valuing a Relationship,” p. 139. 10 Jeske, Rationality and Moral Theory, chs. 2–­4. 9

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saying, “They are my parents.” Third, you could be saying something about your parents, as if you are saying, “They are Bill and Mary” (assuming that your parents’ names are Bill and Mary). The distinction between these three different interpretations of “They are my parents” mirrors a distinction between three views about reasons of partiality. On the first view, which I call “the projects view,” your reasons of partiality are explained by facts about you. On the second view, which I call “the relationships view,” your reasons of partiality are explained by facts about your relationships. On the third view, which I call “the individuals view,” your reasons of partiality are explained by facts about the individuals with whom your relationships are shared. This distinction captures the fault lines in the philosophical debate about partiality and it underlies the structure and argument of this book. Let me say a little more about the views that appear within the distinction and how they are manifested in the literature.

The Projects View On the first way of hearing your explanation “They are my parents,” you draw attention to something about you (“They are my parents”). To understand more about your reasons for giving special treatment to your parents, this way of hearing your explanation suggests, we need to look more closely at you, to see which facts about you are the ones in which the relevant reasons are grounded. Speaking generally, reasons of partiality could arise from facts about the agents whose reasons they are. On Bernard Williams’s view, a person’s reasons of partiality arise from her “ground projects.”11 A ground project is a commitment that helps constitute a person’s identity. We understand ourselves as distinct individuals, runs the idea, by seeing ourselves as individuals with distinct projects—­distinctive commitments, values, goals, and concerns. From your own point of view, there are some projects that you could not abandon without thereby abandoning an essential part of yourself. Such projects, Williams sug11

“Persons, Character and Morality,” pp. 12–­18.

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gests, are therefore sources of reasons for you to act in some ways rather than others. Many of our ground projects incorporate commitments to people with whom we share certain relationships. If our ground projects are sources of special reasons, then among those reasons, it is plausible to think, are reasons to prioritize some people over others. Several other philosophers take Williams’s lead, offering versions of the view that reasons of partiality are grounded in truths about our deepest commitments. These are all versions of the projects view. Susan Wolf says that we create and express ourselves as individuals partly through our particular commitments, including our commitments to certain others, and that those commitments are then sources of reasons.12 Many communitarian political philosophers say that our allegiances to particular people and communities are what forge our identities as moral persons.13 Some authors suggest that many of our moral reasons emanate from the structure of the moral self, so that a moral agent is constituted by her relationships with various individuals and communities and her moral reasons are reasons to act well within those relationships.14 On all such accounts, we can explain why we have reasons of partiality by pointing to our own self-­ constituting commitments.15

The Relationships View As a second possibility, when you tell us, “They are my parents,” we could hear you as saying something about the relationship in which you and your parents stand (“They are my parents”). To understand the nature of your reasons, this way of hearing your 12 “Morality and Partiality,” especially p. 252. A helpful background to Wolf’s view about partiality is given in her paper “Moral Saints.” 13 See, for example, MacIntyre, “Is Patriotism a Virtue?”; Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, introduction and ch. 1; and Williams, “The Human Prejudice.” 14 Rorty, “Justice as a Wider Loyalty”; Oldenquist, “Loyalties”; Fletcher, Loyalty, ch. 1. 15 A version of the projects view is also defended in Stroud, “Permissible Partiality, Projects, and Plural Agency.”

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explanation suggests, we need to understand more about the parent-­child relationship, or about your particular parent-­child relationship. As a general matter, reasons of partiality could arise from the ethical significance of relationships. There is a prominent approach to reasons of partiality—­the most popular approach in the recent literature—­according to which our relationships hold a special kind of value, and it is from this value that our reasons of partiality are derived. In a discussion of duties of friendship, Joseph Raz says that friendship is intrinsically valuable, and that the intrinsic value of a friendship is partly constituted by the performance of special duties by the people who share the friendship.16 Samuel Scheffler says that we value our special relationships noninstrumentally, and that to value a relationship noninstrumentally is to see it as a source of special reasons.17 Niko Kolodny says that relationships are sources of special reasons because relationships have “final value.”18 These are instances of the relationships view. The relationships view says that reasons of partiality arise from the ethical significance of relationships. There is a version of the relationships view that speaks not of the value of relationships but instead of the significance of facts about the existence of relationships. The fact that a particular relationship exists, it says, can count in its own right as a reason for giving someone special treatment. This is the claim mentioned earlier, on which a truth like “They are my parents” is a fundamental reason, unable to be explained in more basic terms. The claim is defended at length by Diane Jeske and is also advocated by T. M. Scanlon.19 It counts as a version of the relationships view because it seeks to explain the nature of reasons of partiality by appeal to the ethical significance of relationships, considered directly and in their own rights. “Liberating Duties,” pp. 18–­21. Boundaries and Allegiances, pp. 100–­101, 121–­122; “Projects, Relationships, and Reasons,” pp. 247–­252. 18 “Love as Valuing a Relationship,” pp. 150–­151. 19 Jeske, Rationality and Moral Theory, chs. 2–­4; Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, pp. 161–­162. 16 17

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The Individuals View If we are not to hear your explanation “They are my parents” as drawing attention to something about you, and are not to hear it as drawing attention to something about your parent-­child relationship, then we could hear it as drawing attention to something about your parents (“They are Bill and Mary”). To understand why you have reason to treat your parents differently from how you treat other people, this third way of hearing your explanation suggests, we need to look more closely at your parents. More generally, we might say, our reasons for giving special treatment within special relationships arise from facts about the ethical significance of the individuals with whom we share those relationships. This is the individuals view. Compared with the projects view and the relationships view, the individuals view does not reveal itself as such so clearly in the literature, and the accounts that qualify as instances of the view often have little else in common. In explaining the basic idea behind the individuals view, a good place to start is with Iris Murdoch’s famous but elusive suggestion that to love someone well is to perform an exercise in “really looking.”20 As Murdoch describes it, the experience of loving a person and making good decisions about what to do for him is an experience of focusing your attention on the person as he really is, in his own right. The closer you look at the person you love, the more you yourself drop out of the picture. To see what reasons you have to treat another person well, Murdoch’s discussion suggests, you need really to look at the person, and not, primarily, at yourself, or at the kind of relationship that you and the person share. In expanding on Murdoch’s suggestion, Lawrence A. Blum offers an account that looks more like a general story about reasons of partiality and more clearly like an alternative to the projects view and the relationships view. Within our special relationships, Blum says, we find “Murdochian reasons,” which are grounded in the importance of another person’s “weal and woe for its own 20

The Sovereignty of Good, pp. 17–­18, 89 (emphasis in original).

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sake.”21 It is important to Blum’s account that such reasons are not produced by our own commitments, and he (like Murdoch) never suggests that such reasons can be found in relationships considered in themselves. In one way or another, Blum’s story suggests, it is the value of the individuals with whom we share special relationships that generates our reasons to give those individuals special treatment. Versions of the individuals view can sometimes be found in accounts given by philosophers who are trying to reconcile partiality with a broader impartialist moral theory. To give one example, J. David Velleman gives a Kantian account of love, intended partly to capture Murdoch’s claim about “really looking,” on which to love someone is to be vulnerable to her capacity for autonomy and, in turn, to her status as—­to use the Kantian term—­a self-­ sufficient end.22 In acting well within a loving relationship, Velleman suggests, you respond to the value that another person holds in her own right: a value that would be there even if she did not share some special relationship with you, and that is grounded in the same property that makes her matter from an impartial moral perspective. To give another example, Robert E. Goodin develops a consequentialist story about partiality, saying that our reasons of partiality are reasons to protect and advance others’ interests, in contexts in which those interests are especially vulnerable to our actions. As with Velleman’s account, on Goodin’s story the value that produces your reasons within a special relationship—­in this case, the value of another individual’s welfare—­is there in the individual independently of you and your shared relationship, and is taken to be the same as the value seen in the individual from the impartial point of view.23 All of these explanations of reasons of partiality make mention of relationships, insofar as they speak of the special connections we share with those toward whom we have reasons of partiality. Murdoch and Blum often take the existence of relationships for Friendship, Altruism, and Morality, p. 76; Moral Perception and Particularity, ch. 2. 22 “Love as a Moral Emotion,” pp. 344–­348, 360–­362. 23 Goodin, Protecting the Vulnerable, especially p. 33. 21

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granted when they explore cases in which an agent “really looks” at another person, and relationships help form the particular situations within which, according to Blum’s account, we can act well or poorly.24 Velleman speaks of the significance of your vulnerability to the value of the other, where that vulnerability is most likely to arise within the context of a kind of shared relationship, and Goodin speaks of the special respects in which the other is vulnerable to you as a result of standing to you in a special kind of relationship. On all of these explanations, however, your relationship’s importance comes only from the respects in which it orients you to something that really matters—­another person. The relationship is accorded no basic ethical significance, and neither is the place the individual holds in your own commitments. That, at first pass, is what sets the individuals view apart from the relationships view and the projects view.

Agent-­Relative Norms The puzzle of partiality, as articulated so far, is the puzzle of explaining how we can have reason to give special treatment to the people with whom we share special relationships, even though those people are no more important than other people. Behind the puzzle is the appeal of the impartialist picture of morality, which says that people merit our moral consideration because they possess certain qualities inherently (qualities like autonomy or the capacity for happiness and suffering), and that we should give the same response to those qualities wherever they exist. Another expression of the puzzle presents it as a challenge to say how our special relationships can generate norms that are “agent-­ relative” rather than “agent-­neutral.” If you and I are at the scene of a car accident in which a person whom neither of us knows has been injured, then we each have reason to help the stranger. We each have reason to administer 24 See, for some examples, Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good, pp. 16–­18; Blum, Friendship, Altruism, and Morality, pp. 68–­70; and Blum, Moral Perception and Particularity, pp. 16–­26.

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first aid, call an ambulance, or do whatever else we can do to help. Any other person who was on the scene would also have reason to help the stranger. Our reason to help the stranger is then an agent-­neutral reason. If I am working on my dissertation, and I have only one more chapter to write before it is finished, then I have a reason to write the final chapter and get the dissertation finished. Suppose that you know my dissertation as well as I do and would be just as capable of finishing it. Still, you do not have the same reason to write the chapter. It is my dissertation, not yours, and that makes a difference to my reasons in a respect in which it does not make a difference to your reasons. My reason to finish the dissertation is then an agent-­relative reason. The distinction between agent-­neutral and agent-­relative reasons is natural to draw but difficult to make precise.25 Putting it roughly, a reason of yours is agent-­neutral if a different person in your circumstances would also have that reason, and a reason of yours is agent-­relative if a different person in your circumstances would not have it. It can be helpful to think of the “different person” here as a generic agent: as “any old person,” or as a person with no relevant distinguishing qualities—­no qualities that have special salience for her normative situation in these circumstances. A generic agent at the scene of the car accident would have reason to help the victim; any old person should help a stranger in need. But a generic agent would not have reason to finish my dissertation; my reason to finish the dissertation is not one that I share with just any old person. This, again, is not an especially precise way of drawing the distinction between agent-­relative and agent-­neutral reasons, but for present purposes it will do. When the distinction is drawn in these terms, it allows for the existence of agent-­relative reasons that are reducible to agent-­neutral reasons. Suppose that in the case of the car accident, you, but not I, have advanced training in first aid, while I, but not you, have a phone in my pocket and know what 25 For a thorough exploration of the various strategies for expressing the distinction more precisely, see Ridge, “Reasons for Action: Agent-­Neutral vs. Agent-­Relative.”

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number to call to get help. Then you and I would have reasons to do different things—­you would have reason to administer first aid while I would have reason to call for help—­and perhaps these are not reasons that would be shared by a generic agent; perhaps not just any old person has advanced training in first aid, and not just any old person carries a phone. If so, then your reason to administer first aid and my reason to call for help are each agent-­relative. But, plausibly, our respective agent-­relative reasons here arise directly from a more fundamental agent-­neutral reason plus some obvious facts about our different circumstances. While our narrower reasons to administer first aid and call for help are agent-­ relative, their agent-­relativity is not at all mysterious. It arises straightforwardly from our shared agent-­neutral reason to help strangers in need, plus some obvious facts about our differing circumstances. Reasons of partiality are agent-­relative. When you have reason to do something for someone with whom you share a special relationship, that is a reason that would not be had by a generic agent, or by any old person. You have that reason because you have a relevant distinguishing quality. This person is your mother, your brother, your friend, and that fact makes a special difference to your normative situation. From one point of view, it is difficult to explain why you should have reasons that others lack, just because you participate in certain special relationships. If you have reason to do something for your mother, for example, then why should I not have reason to do the same thing for your mother, if I can? If it matters that your mother receives certain treatment, then why should that not give me, as much as you, a reason to make sure that she receives it? As expressed initially, the puzzle of partiality challenges us to explain how an agent could have reason to give preferential treatment to some people over others, when everyone is inherently equally deserving, just because she shares special relationships with some people but not others. The puzzle can also be expressed as a challenge to say why different agents have different reasons just because they participate in different special relationships. A solution to the puzzle of partiality would be an explanation of how special relationships can generate not just reasons, but agent-­ relative reasons.

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I have talked of agent-­relative reasons, but partiality involves agent-­relativity of other kinds too. As participants in different special relationships, you and I may have different duties and different permissions; I may be required to do things that you are not required to do and allowed to do things that you are not allowed to do. Special relationships appear to generate agent-­ relative duties and agent-­relative permissions, perhaps among other kinds of agent-­ relative norms, as well as agent-­ relative reasons.26 Following from the manner in which I have drawn the distinction between agent-­relative and agent-­neutral reasons, it is a live possibility that the agent-­relativity of reasons of partiality can be explained away. On one view, for example, our special reasons within special relationships are derived from a general agent-­ neutral reason to promote the general utility, plus some facts about our different circumstances. If a view like that is correct, then reasons of partiality can be fully explained by appeal to more fundamental agent-­neutral reasons. As I am thinking of it, to make that claim is not to deny that special relationships give rise to agent-­relative reasons, but rather to say that the agent-­relativity of those reasons is not as deep as it may first appear.

Two Approaches to the Puzzle of Partiality How we try to solve the puzzle of partiality depends partly upon whether we prefer the projects view, the relationships view, or the individuals view. The projects view and the relationships view promise a solution of one kind, whereas the individuals view promises a solution of another. 26 Scheffler is known for his exploration of “agent-­centered prerogatives.” On Scheffler’s definition, an agent-­centered prerogative exists where an agent “is permitted to devote a certain proportionately greater weight to his or her own projects than would be licensed by an exclusive appeal to an impersonal calculus” (Human Morality, p. 104). To understand agent-­centered permissions as Scheffler’s agent-­centered prerogatives, so defined, is, in the context of the present project, to give too much of a head start to the projects view. It is conceivable that the special permissions generated by special relationships are permissions to do things other than just pursuing our own projects.

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According to the projects view, you have special reasons to pursue your ground projects and these reasons are additional to any reasons produced by the inherent moral worth of other persons. Such reasons are agent-­relative; you have special reason to do things that advance your personal projects but I have reasons to do things that advance my, different, personal projects. These agent-­relative reasons are not included in the impartialist picture of morality. The projects view seeks to solve the puzzle of partiality, then, by adding to the impartialist picture an additional source of reasons—­our ground projects—­and saying that it is from this extra source that our reasons of partiality arise. The relationships view, too, posits a source of reasons additional to those countenanced by the impartialist picture. Individuals are not the only things that matter on the relationships view; relationships matter too, and their importance cannot be reduced to the importance of individuals. On the relationships view, the impartialist picture must be supplemented with an extra source of reasons—­the value of relationships or the fundamental reason-­ giving status of relationships—­and the way to solve the puzzle of partiality is to see how the reasons generated by relationships are reasons to treat some people differently from others. If the individuals view is to offer a solution to the puzzle of partiality, then it must take a different path. The view does not add any extra kind of value or extra ground of reasons to the impartialist picture, because that picture already includes the importance held by individuals in their own rights. Instead, the individuals view must say that sometimes, the value found in one individual can give you a certain kind of reason even when the same value found in another individual does not. It is an assumption of the impartialist picture that if two things have the same value, then we ought to give those two things the same treatment, and that is the assumption the individuals view needs to challenge. We have seen hints of three strategies for challenging the assumption. The simplest, encoded in Goodin’s account of reasons of partiality, is to point out that we are able to do things for some individuals that we are not able to do for others. While all individuals may have the same value, some individuals are more vul-

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nerable than others to your actions, and that is why the same value in different individuals can make different demands on you.27 Velleman’s view encodes a different kind of challenge to the assumption. He suggests that individuals have a kind of value that by its nature defies comparison, so that you fail to respond properly to anyone’s value if you insist on responding to everyone’s value similarly. It is a condition of any person’s having the value she in fact possesses, runs the idea, that an impartial response to her value would not give her the respect that she, by virtue of possessing that value, demands.28 Then, there is a particularist version of the individuals view, found in Blum’s account. The particularist suggestion is that we act well when we respond to the evaluative contours of our situation, or to the particular values with which we are confronted. From the truth that we should give one response to one value in one situation, on this view, it does not follow that we should give the same response to a similar value in another situation. There is more to say about how this claim could be defended. But that is an indication of another strategy by which an advocate of the individuals view might try to make progress on the puzzle of partiality.

A Preview of the Book This book examines the strengths and weaknesses of the projects view, the relationships view, and the individuals view, and advocates a version of the individuals view. The rest of this chapter says some more to clear the ground for an investigation into the prospects of the three views, and the remainder of the book examines the views one by one. Chapter 2 looks at the projects view, and chapter 3 at the relationships view. Each of these views, I argue, faces decisive objections. Chapters 4 and 5 develop and defend a version of the individuals view. Chapter 4 gives an argument for the individuals view and says something about which characteristics of individuals are 27 28

Protecting the Vulnerable, ch. 5. “Love as a Moral Emotion,” pp. 344–­348, 364–­370.

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those from which our reasons of partiality arise. Chapter 5 addresses the question of how we ought to respond to those characteristics, exactly, and argues that the individuals view, properly formulated, can provide the best available solution to the puzzle of partiality.

Which Relationships Are the Special Ones? We are talking about special reasons within special relationships—­ but which relationships, exactly, are special? Do you automatically share a “special” relationship with your biological father, even if he has treated you badly, even if you are adopted, even if he is merely a sperm donor? Is your relationship with your cousin a source of special reasons? How about your second cousin? How about your mother’s new boyfriend, or your hairdresser, or your dean, or a compatriot you meet overseas? In one sense, there are “special” relationships everywhere we look. If you and I are presently standing three feet apart, then we share a relationship that neither of us shares with just anyone. It is a relationship, furthermore, that generates reasons. It gives me a reason to answer yes when asked whether I am standing three feet from you, and it gives me a reason not to swing a four-­foot-­long stick in your direction. Relationships between good friends and close family members, however, are special in some profounder sense, and what makes them special—­we can say—­is that they generate evaluative standards whose nature seems intimately connected to those relationships. My reason not to swing a four-­foot-­long stick in your direction, when we are standing three feet apart, is derived from larger reasons, having nothing to do with relationships, or this relationship, in particular. Your reason to rush off to be with your parents after the fire, on the other hand, is not derived from larger reasons—­or if it is, the derivation is not obvious. So here is a truth about which relationships, exactly, are the special ones: they are the relationships that generate special reasons, like the special reasons we find in relationships between good friends and close family members.

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That, unfortunately, is about all we can say at the outset about which relationships are special in the sense that matters for our question. The trouble is that the projects view, the relationships view, and the individuals view, in their various manifestations, all disagree about what makes a relationship special, in the relevant sense, and they all make different predictions about which relationships, under what conditions, generate norms of partiality. To make a principled decision about a difficult case—­ to decide whether you have reason to give special treatment to your hairdresser or your second cousin—­we need to make a principled decision about which account of the ethics of partiality is correct. Some paradigm cases, however, represent common ground between the various accounts in the literature, and give us a reasonably robust starting point. Everyone agrees that if reasons of partiality can be found anywhere, then they can be found in healthy relationships between good friends and close family members, and there is a substantial area of agreement over which friendships are good and which family relationships are close and healthy. So these relationships, everyone agrees, are “special.” If we can work out exactly what makes them special, by saying more about the nature of the norms to which they give rise, then we will be in a position to make principled judgments about which other relationships are special too. The paradigm cases, in which everyone in the debate agrees that we can find norms of partiality, are all cases of relationships between individual persons. Partiality can be shown toward individual persons, but it can also be shown toward nonhuman animals, communities, countries, universities, neighborhoods, political parties, and all sorts of other things besides. (It can also, perhaps, be shown by communities and countries, and by other agents apart from individual persons.) Once we move beyond cases of partiality between individual persons, though, it becomes difficult to find instances of partiality that everyone will agree to be supported by good reasons—­not everyone agrees that we have reason to be partial toward our own countries, for example—­and it also becomes difficult to be sure that we are finding reasons of partiality relevantly similar to the special reasons we find between good friends and close family members. Even if we do have

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reasons to be partial to our countries or our universities, it is not obvious that our reasons are intimately connected to our relationships with those entities, rather than coming from elsewhere. Again, the best way to decide whether we have special reasons in such relationships, explicable as instances of our reasons of partiality more generally, is through an account of reasons of partiality that is plausible on independent grounds.

Might Partiality Be Mistaken? This book is built around three possible stories about what our norms of partiality are. I have mentioned the possibility that there is no single story to tell about reasons of partiality, but I have left aside another possibility. Perhaps there is no story at all to tell about reasons of partiality because reasons of partiality do not really exist. That could be. We take ourselves to have reasons to give special treatment to our friends, children, parents, and so on, but perhaps we are mistaken. One way to argue that we in fact have no reasons of partiality is to make a case against the existence of reasons of some much broader kind. You could argue that there are no reasons, or no reasons for actions, or no reasons apart from considerations of self-­interest. I will say something shortly about the assumptions I am making about the existence of norms and values, but for now, let me just say this: many of us seem ordinarily to take ourselves to be subject to norms, norms of partiality among them, and if we are wrong, then the present investigation can be understood as an attempt to reveal something about the evaluative standards we (wrongly) believe to exist, or something about a myth to which many of us, to judge from our everyday thoughts, are committed. Alternatively, it could be said that while there is no problem with reasons in general, there is a problem with reasons of partiality. You could argue that the idea of reasons produced by relationships is too strange to be an accurate reflection of moral reality. Or you could argue that our belief that our relationships are special is just an evolutionary adaptation, or that the belief in reasons of partiality gives us a useful educative model for good treatment

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of others but should ultimately be cast aside in favor of purely impartial principles. Again, I say nothing much to address this kind of argument directly. The investigation pursued in this book should, however, contribute to any overall judgment about whether there is any distinctive problem with reasons of partiality. Only once we have a better idea of what those reasons are—­or of what we ordinarily believe them to be—­can we decide whether their theoretical ramifications are too implausible to accept, or whether our belief in them can or should be explained away.

What It Is Like to Be Partial We ordinarily take ourselves to have reasons of partiality; you probably take yourself to have good reasons, beyond your mere desires, to treat your parents differently from other people. We also, in at least some cases, have an implicit sense of what those reasons are; when you do something for your parents that you would not do for others, you will be moved by certain considerations, and you may treat those considerations as though they are good considerations—­as though they are reasons. To put it another way: although there is a conceptual difference between motives and reasons, there may be cases in which our motives for giving someone special treatment involve our taking some consideration to be a reason for giving special treatment. There is then a further respect in which we could be mistaken in giving special treatment within special relationships. Perhaps we have reasons of partiality, but not the reasons we take ourselves to have. Perhaps you have good reasons to treat your parents differently from other people, but perhaps those reasons are quite different from the considerations that strike you as reasons as you are moved to act. If we think that there is a discrepancy between our apparent reasons and our real reasons of partiality, then we could regard it as no more than a curiosity, as though it is just an interesting fact about humans that when we act well within special relationships we tend to be motivated by considerations that do not correspond to our reasons. An account of reasons of partiality could go fur-

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ther, however, and say that it would be a positively bad thing for our motives to correspond to our reasons. It could tell us that we act well within special relationships only when we treat certain considerations as reasons and, also, that those considerations are not in fact our reasons. We would then have a “self-­effacing” theory of reasons of partiality, telling a story about what reasons of partiality are and also a story about why those reasons should not move us to action. By way of illustration, consider the following theory. We have reason to favor our own friends (runs the theory) because we have reason to promote the general happiness, and we are better at promoting the happiness of our friends, as it happens, than at promoting the happiness of others. But one thing that makes us so good at promoting the happiness of our friends is our caring about our friends and our friendships for their own sakes, not just for their contributions to the general happiness. It is a good thing that we treat as fundamental reasons propositions like “This is what my friendship demands” or “This is what a good friend would do,” even though they are not really fundamental reasons, because all the fundamental reasons are just about promoting the general happiness. And it would be a bad thing, destructive of the happiness-­producing tendency of friendship (ends the theory) if we treated the proposition “This will promote the general happiness” as our reason to act well toward our friends, even though it really is one. A self-­effacing account of our reasons of partiality could be correct, and self-­effacing accounts should not be ruled out from the beginning. Nevertheless, there are reasons to think that the correct account of reasons of partiality is not self-­effacing, and that the reasons we take ourselves to have within our special relationships, in the paradigmatic cases and when things seem to be going well, are our real reasons. Philosophers have complained that self-­effacing theories rule out the possibility of harmony between our reasons and our motives, where such harmony is itself a good, and they have complained that a self-­effacing theory cannot tell a coherent story about what considerations, in the end, should govern our ethical

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lives.29 Whatever the prospects of those complaints, though, when it comes to reasons of partiality, there is a more pressing concern about self-­effacing theories. The times when we act well toward those with whom we share special relationships—­when we respond immediately to the needs of our parents, make a sacrifice for the sake of a friend, or do something that brings joy to our children—­are some of the times when we seem to see most clearly what matters, when we seem to be in closest contact with the really important things in life. It would be both implausible and depressing to suggest that when we act well within special relationships we systematically misperceive our reasons. It is difficult to see what sort of philosophical argument could convince you that when you act out of your special concern for your friends, your partner, or your family, the things that really provide you with reasons are different from the things that seem to provide you with reasons. Even while trying to keep in view the distinction between reasons and motives, and even while paying adequate respect to the possibility that the best account of reasons of partiality is self-­ effacing, we should grant a great deal of authority to paradigmatic experiences of acting well within special relationships. Our motives can sometimes be used as guides to our reasons. In trying to uncover the nature of our reasons of partiality, we can begin by trying to uncover the considerations that seem to us to be reasons of partiality, when our experiences seem to be getting at the truth.

Love and Partiality Talk of the “experience” of acting well within a special relationship, and of “what it is like” to show partiality to some over others, brings up the emotional component of close personal relationships and hence a topic that (you might think) has been strangely absent from the discussion so far: love. We cannot think 29 Stocker, “How Emotions Reveal Value and Help Cure the Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories,” p. 173; Stocker, “The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories,” pp. 453–­455; Velleman, “Love as a Moral Emotion,” pp. 339–­341.

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about the paradigmatic experience of having special concern for another person without thinking about what it means to love another person. Much of the literature with which my investigation interacts is about love. Murdoch’s act of “really looking” is presented as an act of love, Velleman’s account of reasons of partiality is presented as a Kantian account of love, and Kolodny’s story about attributing final value to relationships is a story about what we value when we love someone.30 I have presented the projects view, the relationships view, and the individuals view as rival accounts of the ethics of partiality. But perhaps they should be presented as rival accounts of love, or of the reasons of love. Love and partiality are overlapping philosophical topics, and many of the paradigm cases in which we have reasons of partiality are cases of mutual loving relationships between persons, but the two topics are not quite the same. There can be love without reasons of partiality, and there can be reasons of partiality within relationships that do not involve love. There is love that is passive, or that ought to be passive. You could love someone from afar; you could love someone who does not even know you exist. Perhaps you see a certain man at the bus stop every morning, and you overhear him discussing his life with others, and perhaps in observing him you come truly to love him, even though the two of you never interact. Your love for someone could be genuine, yet inappropriate; it could be a love you should try to extinguish or a love on which you should never allow yourself to act. Perhaps you are in love with your PhD supervisor or your captor. Cases like these, arguably, are cases in which you can love a person, but in which your love does not give you special reasons to treat the person any differently from others. You might discover that you can no longer love your partner or your best friend. You might fail to love your children or your parents. Your relationship with a workmate might be collegial without being loving. Here, arguably, we have relationships within Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good; Velleman, “Love as a Moral Emotion”; Kolodny, “Love as Valuing a Relationship.” See also Wolf’s “Morality and Partiality,” p. 254, where she refers to conflicts between reasons of partiality and impartial reasons as “conflicts between love and morality.” 30

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which you might have special reasons—­you may yet have special duties regarding the children you fail to love, for example—­but not reasons of love. The connection between love and partiality is complicated. Sometimes, reasons of partiality are preceded, so to speak, by love. Perhaps there cannot be reasons of friendship in the absence of a friendship, and perhaps there cannot be a friendship until there is love. And sometimes, reasons of partiality precede love. Perhaps there are cases in which you ought to love someone—­in which you have reason to love her, whether you actually love her or not—­or in which the experience of loving someone is an experience of finding and responding to preexisting reasons to love her. The focus in this book, in any event, is on partiality, with questions about love to be addressed only as they arise.

Reasons, Values, and Metaethics In setting up my topic, I spoke of reasons and norms of partiality, and of the putative value of relationships and individuals. I will continue to speak of reasons and values as though they are real entities of whose existence we can become aware, and about whose nature we can be correct or mistaken. Taking my ways of speaking literally, I seem to imagine reasons and values to exist independently of our motives and desires. Many will be uncomfortable with this “realist” talk. Is my entire project based on an ambitious, hyperrealist view about the nature of reasons and values? As far as possible, for the sake of this book, I would like to avoid controversial commitments in metaethics, and I think that proponents of most plausible metaethical theories can find friendly interpretations of my normative claims. I assume that we can ask what reasons we have and what things are valuable, but that is consistent with believing that reasons and values are reducible to nonnormative entities, or are constructed out of human attitudes, or are culturally relative. I assume that you can have a reason to do something that you do not presently desire to do, but that is consistent with believing that all reasons are nevertheless

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grounded in our subjective psychological states; your reasons might coincide with your informed desires, or the desires you would have on reflection, or the desires on which you and other rational agents would converge after going through some process of idealization. I assume that you can have true and false beliefs about reasons and values, but perhaps our evaluative attitudes are not really beliefs, and perhaps the standards to which evaluative attitudes are answerable are not standards of truth and falsity; perhaps my claims about reasons and values should be interpreted in noncognitivist terms. So, while I use realist language, I think that my arguments and approach could be shown to be consistent with antirealist, Humean, and constructivist metaethical theories, to the extent to which those theories are plausible in their own rights. As mentioned earlier, I also think that there are ways in which a thoroughgoing moral skeptic—­someone who does not believe in reasons or values at all—­could interpret the discussion so as to make it meaningful and interesting. For all of that, the debate about the ethics of partiality is not completely independent of debates in metaethics. It could conceivably turn out that we need to make certain commitments about the ontological status of reasons or values in order to explain the ethics of partiality, and it could conceivably turn out that the phenomenology of partiality involves finding there to be reasons or values of a particular controversial kind. Perhaps, for example, in loving a person we find her to have value that would be there whether we were there to find it or not. If something like that is the case, then there would be ramifications for metaethical debates. But I am not going to speculate in this book about what those ramifications might be. That is enough by way of setting the scene. In the next chapter, we get into some arguments. One view of our reasons of partiality takes them to emerge from our ground projects. What is this view, exactly, and is it plausible?

Chapter 2 My Projects

The Projects View When you have reason to give special treatment to a person with whom you share a special relationship, the ground of your reason could be in you, or in the relationship, or in the other person. The projects view says that it is in you. To see why we have reason to treat some people differently from others, says the projects view, we need to look more closely at ourselves. In what kinds of facts about us could our reasons of partiality be grounded? Without exception, philosophers who take facts about us to ground our reasons of partiality focus on facts about our most central commitments. By “central” is meant “central to our identities.” We have commitments, say defenders of the projects view, that make us the distinct individuals we are, and these commitments give us our reasons of partiality. Behind any version of the projects view is a story about how our commitments help constitute our identities, and how they then provide us with reasons. On the most ambitious such story, your having certain commitments is literally a criterion of your identity, so that if you lost those commitments, you would cease to exist, and someone else would take your place. (I am not sure whether anyone in the literature really accepts this most ambitious story, but some authors make statements friendly to it.)1 See, for example, Rorty, “Justice as a Larger Loyalty”; and Fletcher, Loyalty, ch. 1. 1

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Bernard Williams gives a more nuanced account, accepted by many subsequent defenders of the projects view, on which the relevant commitments are the “ground projects” that give meaning to our lives or to periods within our lives.2 Our ground projects contribute to our identities, on Williams’s account, by giving our lives direction and by giving us a structure of goals within which it makes sense for us to keep going. A person’s ground projects provide “the motive force which propels him into the future, and gives him a reason for living.”3 However we characterize the commitments that ground a person’s reasons of partiality, on the projects view, not just any commitment will qualify. Nobody thinks that the distinctive kinds of reasons we find within special relationships arise from mere desires, or from fleeting projects or goals. Sturdier, deeper commitments are required. I follow Williams in calling these sturdier, deeper commitments “ground projects”—­but note that not all defenders of the projects view follow Williams’s particular characterization of ground projects. The projects view says that we have special reasons within special relationships because we have ground projects into which certain special relationships are incorporated.

From Projects to Reasons It is quite plausible to think that ground projects, however exactly they are to be defined, exist. There are probably some commitments of yours that you cannot imagine giving up without thereby losing something of fundamental importance for you and your life. It is difficult to give examples of such commitments that do not sound trite, but perhaps your ground projects could include, at a more general level, commitments to staying physically fit, being a critical thinker, or enjoying time in the wilderness. At a more

Williams, “Persons, Character and Morality,” pp. 12–­ 15. See also Wolf, “Morality and Partiality,” p. 253. 3 “Persons, Character and Morality,” p. 13. 2

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specific level, they could include commitments to finishing work on a book, getting a degree, or saving up for a trip overseas. Ground projects can plausibly be said to generate reasons. If your life is presently built around your goal of finishing your thesis, then you have a reason to work on your thesis, even when you could be pursuing other activities that are intrinsically just as worthwhile. If a commitment to a union is a deep part of your self-­understanding, while a commitment to a sporting club is a deep part of my self-­understanding, then that could explain why you have a reason to nominate for a post with the union while I have a reason to nominate for a post with the sporting club—­even if we would each perform equally well in either role. Any reasons produced by ground projects are agent-­relative. Your projects produce reasons for you but not for me, my projects reasons for me but not for you. Reasons generated by ground projects, furthermore, can be reasons to favor one entity over another, even if both entities are of the same kind and have the same value. You might devote yourself to one union or sporting club, or to one artist, one style of music, or one philosopher, while happily admitting that there are other entities of the same kind—­other unions, sporting clubs, artists, styles of music, and philosophers—­ that are just as good and just as inherently deserving of attention. You could have good reason to devote yourself to one thing rather than another, independently of judgments about their comparative objective value.4 In these respects, reasons generated by ground projects appear to be similar to reasons of partiality.

Projects and Relationships When applied to questions about special relationships and reasons of partiality, the suggestion that our ground projects are sources of special reasons promises to have some explanatory power. Some paradigmatic kinds of special relationship cannot exist in the absence of ground projects. For example, to share a 4

Stroud, “Permissible Partiality, Projects, and Plural Agency,” pp. 141–­143.

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long-­term romantic relationship with another person, it must be the case that each of you takes on the project of loving the other and making the relationship a central component of your respective lives. Should one or both of you cease to have that project, the character of the relationship—­and presumably the reasons it generates—­will change. What is true of long-­term romantic relationships is also true of close friendships. The process of becoming close friends with a person is a process of incorporating him into your life and your understanding. Friendships can exist only between people self-­ who choose to be friends, and truly close friendships can exist only between people who commit themselves to each other and arguably—­ their shared friendship, where that commitment—­ involves a level of personal investment sufficient to turn a commitment into a ground project. And there are other kinds of special relationship, perhaps including relationships between colleagues, teammates, and political allies, that can come to be only if the participants form certain projects and understand themselves as inhabiting certain roles. Other special relationships do not appear to depend for their existence upon any particular ground projects or upon the participants’ voluntarily taking on particular roles. It is not because you have made any particular commitments that you find yourself to have certain people as your parents or your brothers and sisters. Even when your special relationships do not depend upon ground projects for their existence, however, they often seem to be the objects of ground projects anyway. You may not have chosen your parents, but still, they and your relationship with them are probably incorporated into the ways in which you understand yourself and your place in the world. You probably care about your parents greatly, you probably find it difficult to imagine yourself sharing a parent-­child relationship with any other parents than them, and you probably have a serious commitment to being a good child to your parents and to doing what you can to serve their needs and interests. Many of the ways in which we naturally describe our reasons for giving special concern within special relationships evoke the ideas behind the projects view. If someone tells you that you really

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should not be paying so much special attention to your own children and should instead try to treat all children equally, then you may complain that you are being asked to abandon a central aspect of yourself. You are likely to feel that if you were to give up your special concern for those closest to you, then there would not be much of a point to your life. Contemplating a future in which you do not have your special concern for your children, or for your parents, your romantic partner, or your best friends, you may feel that you are contemplating a future that would fail to be yours. To that extent, the projects view is on firm ground.

Against the Projects View Even if our ground projects can generate special reasons, it is another question whether our reasons of partiality are among them. The projects view looks less plausible when we start with norms of partiality and ask whether they have a character that our ground projects could explain. There are important differences between the kinds of reasons that could be produced by ground projects, on the one hand, and our norms of partiality as we ordinarily understand them, on the other. The projects view may be able to explain how we come to have some reasons of partiality; it can say that our reasons to pursue our personal projects are sometimes expressed as reasons to give differential treatment to the people (and other entities) in whom we are most deeply invested. But it cannot explain the norms most intimately attached to our special relationships. I have three arguments against the projects view. First, special relationships give rise to duties, but projects do not. Second, the conditions under which reasons of partiality exist are different from the conditions under which reasons are produced by ground projects; you can have reasons of partiality without ground projects, and ground projects can incorporate relationships without generating reasons of partiality. Third, the place taken by reasons of partiality in our motives and deliberations is very different from the place taken by reasons produced by ground projects.

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Projects and Duties There appear to be duties of partiality. Sometimes, that is to say, it would be wrong of you not to perform some act for someone with whom you share a special relationship, even though it would not be wrong of you to fail to perform the same act for someone else. Suppose you discover that some people are hatching a plot against a friend of yours, and, wanting to keep yourself out of trouble, you decide not to tell your friend what is happening. When your friend finds out, she may legitimately feel that you have failed her as a friend. If you had learned of a similar plot being hatched against a stranger, you might have had the right to keep quiet and keep out of it. But you might not have that right if the target of the plot is your friend. As another example, think of a son who fails to provide for his parents in their old age. Imagine that his parents have been perfectly good, loving parents and that they now have needs that their son could perfectly well afford to meet. In choosing not to provide for his parents, we are likely to judge, the son does not merely fail to do something that he has some reason to do, or something that it would be nice of him to do. His moral failing is deeper; he fails in his filial duty. He is entitled to decline to meet the needs of other needy, perfectly good, loving parents, but he is not entitled to ignore the needs of his parents.5 Our ground projects, though they may generate special reasons, do not appear to generate duties.6 If you have the project of completing a novel, then you may have a reason to continue working on your novel, rather than, say, starting a vegetable garden, but it would be going too far to say that you would be doing something wrong if you decided to give up the novel and start the vegetable garden instead. You may be committed to the project of becoming a champion bullfighter, but if you come to believe that bullfighting is morally unjustifiable and you decide to give it up, then you would not be abandoning your duty. No matter how 5 6

260.

See my The Limits of Loyalty, chs. 5–­6. See Scheffler’s discussion in “Projects, Relationships, and Reasons,” pp. 258–­

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great your investment in a project, it would seem, your investment itself cannot bind you morally to the project. If some of our norms of partiality have the status of duties, then they cannot arise from our ground projects. Two responses are available on behalf of the projects view. The first is to say that the ground projects that produce reasons of partiality are not narrowly personal projects but rather joint projects: projects undertaken in cooperation with others. Joint projects can plausibly be held to generate duties. If you and I are writing a novel together, then perhaps I would be failing in a duty to you if I abandoned the novel in order to spend more time on my vegetable garden. If my project of becoming a champion bullfighter is a project shared with others, then perhaps we could find circumstances under which I would have a duty not to cast that project aside, even if I do so for moral reasons.7 The second response on behalf of the projects view is to concede that duties cannot be derived from projects, but then to say that duties of partiality constitute a special case, which can be accounted for by impartial considerations. This is Susan Wolf’s suggestion. While norms of partiality in general are not grounded in impartial morality, she says, duties of partiality are. The fact that you share a special relationship with someone often makes you especially well placed to benefit and protect her, and often leads her to expect that you will put her interests ahead of the interests of others. Our duties of partiality, Wolf suggests, can be traced back to our impartial duties to benefit others where we can and to take proper account of others’ expectations.8 Here is an example designed to challenge both of these replies on behalf of the projects view. A woman learns that she has inherited a sum of money, and she decides that when the money arrives, she will donate it to a foundation that builds eye clinics in impoverished parts of the world, providing cheap cures for blindness to people who would otherwise not be treated. She informs the administrator of the foundation that she intends to donate the money. Then, her two-­year-­old son begins to have recurring epi7 8

See Stroud, “Permissible Partiality, Projects, and Plural Agency,” pp. 143–­149. “Morality and Partiality,” p. 247.

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sodes of breathing difficulty, and he is diagnosed with severe asthma, which will greatly detract from his quality of life. There are things the woman can do to decrease the impact of her son’s asthma and the likelihood that he will be harmed by a serious attack—­she can take out private insurance that will give him access to better treatment, she can move somewhere where he will not be so exposed to environmental triggers, she can buy emergency equipment and medication to keep at home—­but to do these things will be expensive. Given her other financial restrictions, if she is to give her son what he needs to prevent his asthma from being a constant source of suffering and danger, then she will need to use the money from the inheritance and go back on her plan to donate it to the foundation. I think it would be wrong of the woman in the example to leave her own son to face a life of continuous debilitating breathing difficulties, even if her reason for doing so is to cause several other children to be cured of blindness. She may be able to provide greater benefits to others than to her son, but her duty to her son comes first. Her duty to her son is a special duty; she would not have the duty to cancel her donation to pay for similar asthma treatment for some other child. And her duty to her son does not arise from her commitment to a joint project or from impartial moral considerations. The reason why the woman’s duty cannot be traced back to a joint project is that the project of raising her son is not one that she and her son undertake together. Being two years old, he is too young to have a self-­defining commitment to participating in his own upbringing. (It may be that the woman has a partner with whom she is raising the son, and it may be that she and her partner share a project of bringing up a child. But her duty to look after her child cannot arise from that joint project. Her duty is to her son, not to her partner. She would not be released from her duty if she could only get her partner’s permission.) It is difficult to see how the woman’s duty to her son could be an impartial duty. Her son, being two years old, does not have an expectation that his mother will meet his needs for asthma treatment. The foundation, on the other hand, does expect that it will receive the money from the woman’s inheritance. The woman is

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well placed to provide an important benefit for her son, but she is equally well placed to provide greater benefits for the several people who could, if she donates the money, receive treatment for blindness from the foundation. (If you doubt that the benefits provided by the foundation in the example are more important, from the impartial point of view, than the benefit the woman could provide her son, then reverse the conditions. Suppose that the son needs a relatively expensive treatment for blindness and the foundation provides relatively inexpensive treatment to asthma sufferers.) To deal with this case and others like it, a defender of the projects view needs to say either that the case does not really involve a duty or that the duty involved can, through a more sophisticated story, be traced back to an impartial duty. In pursuing either of these lines of thought, however, the defender of the projects view takes us back to where we started, faced with an appearance of reasons of partiality that demands explanation. The projects view is no longer of any help. There are some norms of partiality—­ duties of partiality—­that seem pretty clearly to exist but whose existence the projects view cannot explain.

Reasons without Projects, Projects without Reasons When thinking about the reasons produced by special relationships, it is easy to concentrate on the relationships that play the most significant parts in our personal lives: deep friendships, relationships of romantic love, and close relationships between family members. Reasons of partiality can also be found within other kinds of relationships, however, and in many cases those relationships are not incorporated within ground projects. Consider a relationship you might have with your in-­laws. You may love your in-­laws, and you may be prepared to make significant sacrifices for them. You may treat them very differently from strangers, and think that your doing so is perfectly appropriate, even morally required. We may judge you harshly if you insist on treating your in-­laws just as you treat everyone else. Yet, it might

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be going too far to say that your in-­laws are among the objects of your ground projects. They were thrown in as a bonus when you got married. To see your in-­laws as people to whom you have genuine far-­reaching reasons of partiality, you do not need first to see your relationship with them as a deep part of your identity. You do not need to think that if you lost your relationship with your in-­laws, then you would lose a part of yourself. Friendships, too, can involve reasons of partiality, of the familiar distinctive kind, while being mild or short-­lived. Suppose that someone visits your workplace from overseas for a few months. The two of you might form a genuine friendship, and you might be prepared to do things for her that you would not do for just anyone. You might help her move house and go out of your way to involve her in your social life. Your doing so would not depend upon your giving her a place in the projects that make you the person you are, or upon your considering your relationship with her to be among the commitments that give meaning to your life. You might know all along that you will probably have trouble remembering her name a few years later. Other cases of reasons of partiality without ground projects arise when people do not make commitments to certain relationships, but should. A parent might take no interest in his child and may truly say that his relationship with his child plays no role in his ground projects, but he may still have reasons to give special treatment to his child, even if he does not respond to those reasons. The same may go for a child who fails to care for his needy parents or a person who abandons a friend, and it may also go for an employer who shows no special concern for her employees or a teacher who takes an indifferent attitude to her students. You can be subject to reasons of partiality whether those reasons are supported by your projects or not. Conversely, there are cases in which a person is fully invested in a relationship that does not, in fact, provide her with reasons of partiality. Someone’s ground projects might include a commitment to advancing the welfare of all people who share her hair color, or all people who share her favorite brand of toothpaste. Or, she might have a deep, self-­constituting commitment to an exploitative friend, or to a hateful political party. Regardless of the

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quality and intensity of these commitments, they do not generate reasons of partiality—­not, at least, of the kinds found in healthy friendships and other valuable human relationships. Even if the person’s commitment to her exploitative friend, for example, is on its own terms just as intense and just as self-­defining as are the commitments we find in good, close friendships, that would not be enough to make it the case that she has reasons of just the same kind as those held by good, close friends. To yield a plausible account of how ground projects can be sources of reasons, the projects view needs to concentrate on profound, deep-­seated projects, as distinct from milder desires or short-­lived commitments, but we do not always seem to need to have such projects in order to be subject to reasons of partiality. A defining feature of the projects view is that it lodges our reasons of partiality within our subjective commitments, but then the view cannot give the critical purchase needed to say when our commitments should and should not be directed at particular relationships.9 The conditions under which we have reasons of partiality do not match the conditions under which we have ground projects that incorporate relationships. That suggests that our reasons of partiality must come from elsewhere.

The Phenomenology of Partiality Imagine that a project of yours is in peril. Suppose that you have lost a memory stick containing the only copy of your almost-­ completed dissertation, and you are worried that it may have been put out in the trash. As you search frantically for the memory stick, wondering whether your dissertation is lost forever, you may have some thoughts about the excellence of the dissertation and of what a shame it would be if the world never got to read it. Mostly, though, you will think about all the work you have put into the dissertation, of the place it has in your life and self-­ 9 For similar thoughts about the ethical importance of ground projects, see Ashford, “Utilitarianism, Integrity, and Partiality,” pp. 423–­425; and Buss, “Needs (Someone Else’s), Projects (My Own), and Reasons,” pp. 377–­390.

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conception, of the important part of you that will be lost if the dissertation is not recovered. In one way or another, you will be thinking of yourself: thinking of what you stand to lose if your project is destroyed. Those are not the kinds of thoughts we would expect of a person who is worried that a friend or relative may be in peril, or who is moved to do something for someone with whom she shares a special relationship. When you rush off to help your parents upon hearing of the fire, you will not be thinking of your distressed parents as you would think of your missing dissertation. Your concern for your parents will not be expressed in thoughts about how important your parents are for your life, or how much of you is invested in them. You will be worried about what the loss of the house means for your parents, not about what it means for you. In the paper in which he articulates his version of the projects view, Williams gives the example of a husband who is able to save his wife or a stranger, but not both, from drowning. Williams says that the husband has a good reason to choose his wife over the stranger and it is not a reason of impartial morality. The husband’s act of saving his wife will be justified, from the husband’s point of view, not by the fact that this is his wife and that, in situations like this, people should save their wives rather than strangers, but rather by the simpler fact that this is his wife.10 Williams’s discussion in the paper as a whole suggests that he takes the husband’s motivating thought “This is my wife” to refer to the place the wife holds in the husband’s ground projects, or to the great personal investment of the husband in his wife and his relationship with her. That way of understanding the husband’s reason cannot correspond to a good understanding of his motives or of how his reasons strike him and move him to action, however. The husband will not jump into the water with thoughts of being true to himself, or of retaining his own identity, or of preserving the object of his investment. There is a familiar experience of being moved by thoughts of the importance of our ground projects, and it is quite different from the experience of being moved to give special treatment to someone with whom we share a special relationship. 10

“Persons, Character and Morality,” p. 18.

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In the first instance, the claim here is not about our reasons of partiality but about our motives in acting partially. Even if it is true that we are not usually motivated by thoughts of our own projects when we act well toward our friends and loved ones, it could yet be the case that those acts are justified, or made sensible or obligatory, by facts about our projects. The projects view loses much of its attraction, however, if it is conceded that considerations of our projects cannot stand as motives for acting well within special relationships, even if they do stand as reasons. For one thing, the concession would undercut much of the motivation for the view. Defenders of the projects view often contrast it with various impartialist accounts of reasons of partiality and complain that such impartialist accounts distort the experience of giving special treatment to a loved one; our motives do not take us back to impartial considerations, runs the objection, so neither should the story about our reasons.11 If the projects view too must say that our reasons for acting partially are systematically different from our motives, then it loses that advantage over impartialist accounts. For another thing, as I said in the previous chapter, there is reason to be suspicious of an account of reasons of partiality on which they are sharply different from the considerations that strike us as reasons of partiality. If a theory says that certain considerations stand as reasons of partiality, even though such considerations do not move us as we act partially and even though someone who was motivated by such reasons would not be acting well, then that is a (defeasible) reason to reject the theory.

Assessing the Projects View There is something to be said for the projects view. People have projects that give meaning to their lives and structure to their deliberations. Our ground projects can plausibly be held to supply 11 This is Williams’s argument. When the husband saves his wife, says Williams, his “motivating thought, fully spelled out,” should be “the thought that it was his wife.” Any extra impartialist thought would be “one thought too many,” and this is intended to show that an impartialist account of the husband’s reasons would also be unacceptable. See “Persons, Character and Morality,” p. 18.

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us with special reasons, and in many cases our ground projects are constituted by commitments to those with whom we share special relationships. It is also quite plausible to think that if we were not creatures who tend to make special commitments to particular others—­if we were not disposed to fall in love, to form friendships, to care deeply for our own children and other family members—­then our reasons of partiality would be very different, and perhaps would not exist at all. Perhaps creatures that were by nature utterly solitary, or utterly impartial, would have no reason to give special treatment to some over others. To that extent, it could be that we have reasons of partiality partly because we tend to invest ourselves in particular relationships and particular other individuals. For all of that, our reasons of partiality, as we judge them to be and as we experience them, outrun the reasons produced by our projects. Compared with reasons generated by ground projects, reasons of partiality wield a different level of moral force, exist under different conditions, and play a different role in our deliberations and motivations. The projects view turns out to be a revisionist account of our reasons of partiality. Perhaps it is the best account we can get, but if we are not to revise our ordinary view about when and in what form reasons of partiality exist, then we will need to give them a different explanation, coming from somewhere other than just our subjective commitments.

Chapter 3 Our Relationship

Two Versions of the Relationships View The relationships view is the most popular view about the ethics of partiality in the recent literature. According to the relationships view, special relationships carry ethical significance in their own rights, and this ethical significance explains why relationships are sources of special reasons. Where the projects view finds the ground of your reasons of partiality in you, the relationships view finds the ground of your reasons of partiality in your relationships. There are several different versions of the relationships view. The most significant distinction among them is between those that begin with a claim about value or valuing, on the one side, and those that go straight to a claim about reasons, on the other. The “value-­based” relationships view, as I will call it, says that relationships hold ethical significance in their own rights because they are valuable (or properly valued) for their own sakes, and that this fact about value (or proper valuing) explains why relationships generate special reasons. The “reasons-­based” relationships view, as I will call it, says that relationships hold ethical significance in their own rights because facts about the existence of relationships stand as fundamental reasons; on the reasons-­based relationships view, a fact like “He is my brother” can in itself be a reason for me to treat one person differently from other people.

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Most of this chapter focuses on the value-­based relationships view. After explaining some of the versions of the value-­based view that have been offered in the literature, I articulate a generic version of the view. I then offer several arguments against the generic version of the value-­based view. Then I explain how my arguments against the generic version of the value-­based relationships view apply to other versions of the value-­based view too. I conclude by explaining how my arguments against the value-­ based relationships view also apply to the reasons-­based view.

Valuing Relationships Several of the best-­known accounts of the ethics of partiality are built on the idea that relationships hold a special kind of value, or that it is proper to value relationships in a special kind of way. That is the idea behind the value-­based relationships view. In his discussion of the duties of friendship, Joseph Raz says that friendships are intrinsically valuable and that the intrinsic value of a friendship is partially constituted by the performance of special duties of friendship. We cannot see what is valuable about a friendship, says Raz, unless we see it as a source of duties.1 In offering an account of reasons of partiality, Samuel Scheffler says that we value relationships noninstrumentally, and that if you value a relationship noninstrumentally, then you see it as a source of special responsibilities.2 Niko Kolodny, in his discussion of the reasons of love, says that to love someone is to believe your relationship with her to have final value, and that to believe a relationship to have final value is to believe there to exist special reasons within that relationship.3 Raz starts with a distinction between intrinsic value and extrinsic value, Scheffler with a distinction between noninstrumental value and instrumental value, and Kolodny with a distinction between final value and nonfinal value. Where Raz says that rela“Liberating Duties,” pp. 18–­21. Boundaries and Allegiances, pp. 100–­101, 121–­122. 3 “Love as Valuing a Relationship,” pp. 150–­151. 1 2

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tionships have a certain kind of value, Scheffler and Kolodny say instead that we value relationships in certain ways; neither Scheffler nor Kolodny quite says that relationships in fact possess the kinds of value that we, on their respective views, attribute to them.4 What these accounts share, though, is the idea that we do and should value relationships not only for the good things they provide but also for their own sakes. What does it mean to value a relationship for its own sake? Think about special bonds between parents and their children. You might value parent-­ child relationships because they bring health and security to children, because they bring happiness and fulfillment to parents, and because they produce better citizens for society. But you might also think that special bonds between parents and children have a value that goes beyond their contribution to values like these. You might think it a good thing, in and of itself, for children to share special bonds with their parents. You might think it better, all else equal, for goods like health, security, happiness, fulfillment, and good citizenship to be produced by parent-­child relationships than by something else. If that is what you think, then you may value the special bond between parent and child, conceived as a kind of relationship, for its own sake. Consider the special bond you might share with your own child. You may value your relationship with your child for the happiness and wisdom it brings to your life, for the contribution it makes to your relationship with your partner, and for the many goods it brings to your child. But you might also treat your relationship with your child as something important in its own right. All other considerations aside, you might think that if your special bond with your child were not to exist, then something of value See especially Scheffler’s “Projects, Relationships, and Reasons,” p. 258, n. 10. Scheffler in fact speaks, at least some of the time, not of what we value but of what “we have good reasons to value” (see, e.g., Boundaries and Allegiances, p. 103). In the context of Scheffler’s view as a whole, this is a puzzling formulation. It appears to make Scheffler’s relationships view consistent with the claim that our good reasons to value our relationships noninstrumentally are themselves instrumental; a utilitarian, for example, might say that we should value our relationships noninstrumentally because if we do then we will promote the general happiness. Yet Scheffler presents his view as though it is an alternative to such “reductionist” stories (Boundaries and Allegiances, pp. 97–­100). 4

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would be lost. If that is how you think, then you value your relationship with your child for its own sake. To value a relationship for its own sake, then, is to take it to have value that does not come down to its contribution to other, independent, more fundamental values. The value-­based relationships view says that that is in fact how we value (or should value) relationships and that recognizing this fact is the first step toward understanding the nature of reasons of partiality.

From Value to Reasons and Duties Having said that relationships are properly valued for their own sakes, each of Raz, Scheffler, and Kolodny offers a conceptual argument from the claim about value to the existence of reasons of partiality. They each say that it is a conceptual fact that if you value a relationship in the way they respectively suggest—­if you see a relationship as intrinsically valuable, or if you value it noninstrumentally or finally—­then you must see it as a source of special reasons for its participants. For Raz and Scheffler, the conceptual move goes a step further. They each say that properly valuing a relationship means seeing it as a source of special duties, not just of special reasons.5 One objection to the projects view is that it is difficult to see how personal projects could be sources of duties. As Scheffler notes, if there really is a conceptual connection between valuing relationships properly and seeing them as sources of special duties, then the relationships view can claim an immediate advantage over the projects view. The relationships view, as expressed by Raz and Scheffler, purports not only to make it possible that a special relationship will generate duties but to guarantee it.6

5 Scheffler, Boundaries and Allegiances, pp. 51, 100, 121–­122; Raz, “Liberating Duties,” p. 19. 6 In “Projects, Relationships, and Reasons,” p. 260, Scheffler compares the reasons produced by relationships with those produced by projects.

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A Generic Version of the Value-­Based Relationships View For now, I shall focus on a generic version of the value-­based relationships view, intended to capture the basic idea behind the view without having always to come back to the differences between the formulations given by different authors. The generic version of the view is this: special relationships are intrinsically valuable, and the intrinsic value of special relationships explains why they generate reasons of partiality. Something has “intrinsic” value, as I shall use the term, if it is valuable for its own sake or in its own right. Something has only “extrinsic” value if its value is completely explained by its contribution to other things. To the extent to which something is intrinsically valuable, we can explain its value just by looking more closely at the thing itself. To the extent to which something is extrinsically valuable, we can explain its value by looking at its connections with other things, whose value is independent and more fundamental. As we shall see, this is neither the only nor the most precise way of distinguishing between something’s being and not being valuable “for its own sake,” but it is a good enough start.7 My generic version of the value-­based relationships view speaks of the value that relationships actually possess, not of how they are or should be valued. It says that relationships are intrinsically valuable, not just that we should treat them as though they are intrinsically valuable. How this affects the underlying issues is considered later in the chapter. In arguing against the generic version of the value-­based relationships view, I try to establish three claims. The first claim is defensive: the view cannot deliver a guarantee that valuable special relationships produce duties. The second claim is analogous to a complaint I expressed about the projects view. Just as it is 7 For more on intrinsic and extrinsic value, see Zimmerman, “Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Value.” For more on other possible distinctions between more and less fundamental values, see Langton, “Objective and Unconditioned Value.” Note that I am not using “intrinsic” versus “extrinsic” value to refer to value had by virtue of intrinsic versus extrinsic properties.

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possible for reasons of partiality to exist in the absence of ground projects, I argue, it is possible for reasons of partiality to exist within relationships that are not valuable (let alone intrinsically valuable). The third claim goes to the heart of the relationships view. I offer several arguments to suggest that relationships do not possess intrinsic value at all, or not in any form in which such value could ground special reasons.

Valuable Relationships without Special Duties Scheffler and Raz each suggest that the relationships view, unlike the projects view, can offer a straightforward explanation of duties of partiality. There is a conceptual connection, they each say, between valuing a special relationship correctly and seeing it as a source of special duties for those within the relationship. Taking the generic version of the relationships view as a model, if we accept that a relationship is intrinsically valuable, do we thereby accept that it involves special duties? It is obviously possible to see intrinsic value in a relationship without seeing it as a source of duties. The following string of claims is perfectly coherent. “You and I look beautiful standing next to each other—­more than twice as beautiful as either of us looks alone. Beautiful things are intrinsically valuable. Our relationship of standing next to each other is therefore intrinsically valuable. But while beauty is intrinsically valuable, no one has a duty to cultivate it. Moral duties do not arise from purely aesthetic value. So, you and I share an intrinsically valuable relationship, but we do not share any special duties.” People can have all sorts of opinions about which relationships are intrinsically valuable and all sorts of opinions about which conditions produce duties, and the two kinds of opinions need not go together. If there is a tight conceptual connection between valuing a relationship and seeing it as a source of duties, then it must concern our ways of valuing special relationships in particular; the conceptual connection must concern the ways we value relationships like those between friends and family members. But we value many

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such relationships in perfectly familiar ways without taking them to involve duties. Consider the following case. I am friends with the owner of my local coffee shop. We only ever see each other at the coffee shop, but we like each other, look forward to seeing each other, and talk freely about all sorts of things. Our relationship seems to be a source of special reasons. I have reason to continue going to his coffee shop, even if the place across the road offers better coffee at a lower price in nicer surroundings, and we each have reasons to grant a favor to the other if asked. None of these reasons, however, gives rise to a duty. I would not be failing in my duty if I started going to the place across the road, and he would not be failing in any duty to me if he closed up and moved away without warning. My friendship with the owner of my local coffee shop can be called an “undemanding” friendship. As such, it is not unusual. You might share a similar friendship with a colleague you see occasionally at conferences, or with someone you regularly meet for a lunchtime jog. Undemanding friendships can involve durable, genuine, mutual love and concern, without involving duties beyond those that hold between persons generally. One of the things we may value about an undemanding friendship, indeed, is that it does not generate duties. Nobody would want all of her friendships to be undemanding friendships, but neither does every friendship need to be serious and heavy. You do not need to believe that you have special duties to someone in order to count him a genuine friend.8 The right conclusion, I think, is that there is no tight conceptual link between—­on the one hand—­seeing a relationship as intrinsically valuable, or as a genuine friendship, or as a valuable special relationship, and—­ on the other hand—­ seeing it as a Raz says that “a relationship between two people who enjoy amusing themselves in each other’s company but do not owe each other any special duties is not friendship,” but he does not consider any cases and does not provide an argument, and does not consider the possibility that a friendship could involve more than “amusing themselves in each other’s company” without being a site of duties (“Liberating Duties,” p. 19). Similarly, Scheffler often states but never argues for his claim that every noninstrumentally valued relationship must be considered a source of duties, as well as (mere) reasons. 8

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source of duties. That is not to say that the value-­based relationships view, in its generic form, is false. It is just to say that the view does not have one of the virtues that value-­based versions of the relationships view are sometimes said to have. It does not yield a straightforward conceptual derivation of the existence of duties of partiality.

Special Reasons without Valuable Relationships In arguing against the projects view, I said that you could find special reasons within a relationship that does not figure in your ground projects. The relationships view faces an analogous problem. You can find special reasons within a relationship you do not value. In Martin Amis’s novel Yellow Dog, King Henry IX and Princess Victoria have a trusty chief of staff named Brendan Urquhart-­ Gordon, known to the royals as “Bugger.” Bugger’s relationship with the king and princess is one of subservience. He is treated as an inferior, his tasks are often demeaning, and the king has a habit of humiliating him in public. Yet, Bugger is devoted to the king and princess and goes to enormous efforts to keep them out of trouble. And behind it all, he has a secret; Bugger is a republican. He disapproves of the institution of royalty and the kind of relationship in which he by his role participates. He continues to serve the king and princess, however, because he knows they need him, and he loves them. “What he did here, what he had been doing for a quarter of a century, it was for love, all for love”—­as opposed, that is, to any fondness for the relationship within which the love is given.9 Bugger does not value his relationship with the king and princess, still less does he value it intrinsically, but he takes it to involve special reasons nonetheless. Keeping things highbrow, consider the character Ted, played by Ben Stiller, in the movie There’s Something About Mary. Ted’s relationship with the Cameron Diaz character, Mary, is, for Ted, a source of crippling embarrassment and self-­loathing. It is consti9

The quote is on p. 20.

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tuted by such interactions as Ted’s catching his scrotum in his fly while in the bathroom at Mary’s parents’ house, and Ted’s hiring a private detective, against his better judgment, to track Mary down and stalk her after she moves to another city. It is a relationship of bungling obsessive to oblivious crush object, and Ted does not consider it valuable, let alone intrinsically valuable. Yet the point of the movie is that Ted, of all Mary’s many suitors, is the one who truly loves her and truly wants what is best for her. He is even willing, near the end, to get out of Mary’s life so that she can find happiness with the footballer Brett Favre. The examples of Bugger and Ted show, at the least, that we can find special reasons within a special relationship without finding that relationship intrinsically valuable. More than that, though, the examples suggest that special reasons never arise directly from the value of relationships. Bugger and Ted find themselves in relationships that are unfortunate, in some respects, but there is nothing aberrant about Bugger’s commitment to the king and princess or Ted’s commitment to Mary. It is not as though Ted suddenly comes to love Mary differently, or finds that his reasons to give her special treatment take a completely different character, once he comes (in the last scene of the movie) to share with her a relationship he does value. It is doubtful that if Bugger were to convert to monarchism, his concern for the king and princess would suddenly take a completely different form. The value of their relationships, that is to suggest, has nothing to do with it. In two respects, then, the idea that relationships can be intrinsically valuable does not have the strong conceptual connection with reasons of partiality that some renderings of the relationships view would suggest it to have. There is not a strong conceptual connection between seeing a relationship as intrinsically valuable and taking it to generate duties, and there is not a strong conceptual connection between taking a relationship to be a source of special reasons and seeing the relationship as valuable—­ let alone intrinsically valuable. For all of that, it could still be said that some relationships are intrinsically valuable and that those relationships do generate special reasons, even if it is an open question whether those relationships generate duties and even if we do not need to find intrinsic value in a relationship to see it as a

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source of reasons. To that extent, the relationships view could yet be correct. Even in that weakened form, however, the relationships view is implausible.

The Extrinsic Value of Relationships The value-­based relationships view, in its generic form, says that our reasons of partiality arise from the intrinsic value of our relationships. It depends upon the claim that some special relationships are intrinsically valuable and that their intrinsic value is of a kind that generates special reasons. But special relationships, I want to argue, do not hold intrinsic value, or at least not in any form that could ground our reasons of partiality. (To explain the qualification: I am not going to worry about kinds of intrinsic value that a relationship might hold independently of considerations of reasons of partiality. I am not concerned to argue that a relationship could never hold intrinsic aesthetic value, for example.) When I say that special relationships are not intrinsically valuable, I am not saying that special relationships are not valuable at all. The claim is just that any value held by relationships is purely extrinsic. The claim is easy to misinterpret, so let me begin with some things that it does not imply. Extrinsic value need not be paltry. Whether or not we think that special relationships can be intrinsically valuable, we should agree that they can be very valuable. Their extrinsic value is enough to establish that. Friendship, for example, is a source of happiness, understanding, recognition, flourishing, and security. Whether friendship is intrinsically valuable or not, you have plenty of reasons to want to have friends. The disagreement is not over whether special relationships have great value, but whether any of their great value is intrinsic.10 10 Scheffler frequently conflates the distinction between seeing relationships as very valuable and seeing them as noninstrumentally valuable. See, for example, “Morality and Reasonable Partiality,” p. 105.

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Extrinsic value need not be replaceable. That a relationship has only extrinsic value does not mean that its value could be just as easily produced by something else. Regardless of the disagreement over intrinsic value, it is plausible to think that some important extrinsic goods can be produced only by certain kinds of relationships. There are many good things in life that you can get only if you have friends, or if you have a loving relationship with your parents, or if you have a child.11 Extrinsic value need not be selfish. It is possible to value a relationship extrinsically without valuing it only because it makes you better off. You can value Oxfam only for the good things it does without valuing Oxfam only for the good things it does for you. You can value the good of people apart from you, and so you can value a relationship for its contribution to the good of people apart from you. Extrinsic value, finally, need not be agent-­neutral, and it need not be easily reducible.12 My tennis racket can plausibly be held to have special value relative to me, and its value is certainly extrinsic. I am sure that my local high school is extrinsically valuable, but I cannot produce anything like a complete derivation of the school’s value. You can say that the value of a relationship is purely extrinsic even while admitting that it is agent-­relative and that the story about its derivation is complicated and elusive. The value of special relationships may be immense, irreplaceable, agent-­relative, and not straightforwardly dependent upon some single independent value, and a person may see such value in a relationship without valuing the relationship for selfish reasons, but none of that is relevant to the suggestion that the value See my The Limits of Loyalty, ch. 6; and Brighouse and Swift, “Legitimate Parental Partiality,” pp. 51–­56. 12 Something has “agent-­relative” value if its value can be understood only by reference to some particular agent (so that what is valuable relative to me may be different from what is valuable relative to you). Something has “agent-­neutral” value if its value can be fully understood independently of any mention of any particular agent. See Schroeder, “Teleology, Agent-­Relative Value, and ‘Good,’ ” pp. 272–­279; and the discussion of agent-­neutral and agent-­relative reasons in chapter 1 of this book. 11

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of special relationships is purely extrinsic. In saying that relationships do not possess intrinsic value, I am saying only that their value, whatever else may be true of it, is all derived from other, more fundamental values. I have five arguments for the claim that relationships possess only extrinsic value, insofar as their value is relevant to the generation of reasons of partiality. The first two arguments are directly concerned with the value of relationships: What has to be true of a relationship in order for it to be valuable? The three following arguments are concerned with the source of reasons of partiality: Given some truths about reasons of partiality, is it plausible to think that such reasons are grounded in the intrinsic value of relationships?

First Argument: “At Least It’s a Relationship” When something has intrinsic value, there is something good about it, independently of what else is going on around it. If you think that all pleasure is intrinsically valuable, for example, then you think that wherever there is an instance of pleasure, there is something good, regardless of the pleasure’s causes, effects, or context. It is an instance of pleasure, you think, so at least it has that going for it. Some relationships lack the extrinsic value that relationships of their type ordinarily possess. Most friendships are sources of happiness and flourishing, but some are not; some are dysfunctional, causing the friends to be worse, less happy people than they would otherwise be, and making life miserable for others nearby. Some marriages are long lasting yet abusive, and some family relationships produce only jealousy, competitiveness, and insecurity. Such thoroughly destructive relationships are not good and may be positively bad. There is no reason for them to continue or be cultivated. Once we know that a relationship produces nothing but misery and that it makes everyone involved worse off, we know that there is nothing to recommend the relationship. There is no further question to ask. We should not say, for example, “I

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can see that this friendship is not doing any good for anyone, but at least it is a friendship. At least it has that going for it. So there is something good about the relationship, even if there are bad things about it too.” If special relationships could be intrinsically valuable, then it would be an open question whether a thoroughly destructive relationship is in any respect a good relationship. But this is not an open question. A relationship that is no good for anyone is no good at all. That is one reason to think that relationships cannot hold intrinsic value. When they lack extrinsic value, they lack value completely.13 The force of the objection could be reduced if it were conceded that the intrinsic value of a special relationship can always easily be outweighed. It could be said that a thoroughly dysfunctional friendship, for example, could still hold intrinsic value, but that any such value could not be enough to make the relationship valuable on the whole, or to make it worth persevering with, once its extrinsic badness is taken into account. There are two drawbacks to this response. First, it leaves open the possibility that a relationship will still be valuable on the whole even when it does only bad things for individuals. So long as the intrinsic value of a relationship counts for something, it will sometimes outweigh the damage the relationship does to the lives of individuals, so long as the damage is not too great. That is still an implausible result. The second drawback to the response is that it downplays the importance of the value that the relationships view supposes to be the very ground of reasons of partiality. If the intrinsic value of special relationships is so easily outweighed by other values, then it is difficult to believe that the intrinsic value of relationships could explain why relationships produce such important and far-­reaching reasons. Another response to the objection is to say that it depends upon too crude a reading of the claim that special relationships can have intrinsic value. Perhaps it could be said that a thoroughly destructive relationship could never be intrinsically valuable, beFriedman makes a similar criticism of the relationships view in What Are Friends For? p. 42. 13

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cause a relationship can have intrinsic value only if it also has certain kinds of extrinsic value. Perhaps a relationship’s having intrinsic value is conditional upon its performing a certain function, so that a friendship, for example, gets to be intrinsically valuable only if it contributes in certain ways to the lives of the friends. Or, perhaps a relationship is of a kind that brings intrinsic value only if it also has the right sort of extrinsic value, so that a relationship qualifies as a friendship, for this purpose, only if it makes the right kinds of positive contributions to the lives of individuals. That response is available, and it does avoid the objection, but it leaves the suggestion that special relationships have intrinsic value looking unmotivated. Consider an analogy. I claim that winter coats are intrinsically valuable, meaning that they have value additional to the good they do in keeping people warm. You say that it seems implausible to think that a winter coat could be valuable even when it does nothing to keep anyone warm. I reply that it wouldn’t be; I say that the intrinsic value of a winter coat is conditional upon the coat’s also having the value of keeping someone warm, or perhaps that a winter coat that does not keep anyone warm is not really a “winter coat” in the sense in which I use the term. You would be within your rights to think that I am just trying to make trouble. Given my concessions, what more could I possibly need to see that the value of a winter coat is purely extrinsic? For analogous reasons, it is not an attractive view to say that relationships are intrinsically valuable only if they are also extrinsically valuable. In any event, there are other problems with the relationships view.

Second Argument: Introducing Relationships Just for the Sake of It Suppose we discover a society in which a certain kind of special relationship is entirely absent. Imagine that children in this society are raised communally and that there are no special loving bonds between children and their parents. Suppose that the communal arrangement appears to work very well and that the society

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functions no less successfully than ours. People in this society, as compared to ours, seem just as happy, just as virtuous, just as secure, just as respected, and so on. Were we to learn more about this society, we might find that the children and parents within it are in some respects worse off than they would be if they participated in special parent-­child relationships like ours. Perhaps they lack some of the special goods that healthy parent-­child relationships can produce. Even without learning more about the imagined society, though, the claim that some special relationships are intrinsically valuable, conjoined with the claim that parent-­child relationships are among them, implies that there is a respect in which the imagined society is worse than ours. If loving relationships between parents and children have intrinsic value, then there is something valuable that we have and they lack. It would be better if their happiness, virtue, and so on were produced by special parent-­child relationships than by communal parenting arrangements. On the claim that relationships have intrinsic value, then, there is something to regret about the imagined society, and some reason for it to be rearranged so that the people within it come to share loving parent-­child relationships, whether the rearrangement would be to their benefit or not. That, surely, is not the right approach to the question. Whether the society’s arrangements are good or bad, and whether there is a reason to change them, are matters of how the people within the society fare, not of the bare structure of the relationships in which they participate.

Third Argument: Judgments about Reasons Not all kinds of relationships involve special reasons; you do not have reason to treat someone differently just because she shares your hair color or your favorite brand of toothpaste. Not all instances of usually valuable special relationships involve special reasons; there exist oppressive marriages, irredeemably dysfunctional families, and exploitative friendships. Whether special reasons exist within many kinds of relationships is unclear and sen­sitive to the circumstances; it is not clear, without further

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investigation, whether special reasons exist within your relationship with your hairdresser, or your friend’s parent, or your father’s new girlfriend, or your second cousin. If the value-­based relationships view (on the generic version I am considering here) is correct, then the way to determine whether special reasons exist in such cases is to ask whether the relevant relationships carry intrinsic value. A relationship that carries intrinsic value will give rise to reasons of partiality, and a relationship that does not carry intrinsic value will not. As its defenders point out, the relationships view is perfectly able to judge that some relationships generate special reasons while other relationships do not, and is perfectly able to deliver judgments on controversial cases. It can say that some relationships, but not others, are intrinsically valuable, and hence that some, but not others, give rise to special reasons.14 The trouble for the relationships view, though, is that it yields an implausible story about the basis of such judgments and about how we should go about making them. When deciding whether a relationship is valuable, we do not try to isolate the relationship from its context and effects. We do not try to set aside its extrinsic value and see whether any value remains. Instead, we decide whether a relationship is valuable by asking whether it makes its participants better off, whether it involves exploitation or oppression, whether it advances anyone’s flourishing, and whether it serves a valuable social purpose. Similarly, when asking whether a relationship is a source of special reasons, we do not try to detach it from other things that matter and consider it only in its own abstract right. If you want to know whether you have reasons to give special treatment to your father’s new girlfriend, you will think about the context of the relationship, what the relationship means for you, her, your father, and perhaps other people, and what could be achieved and what would be lost if you were to treat your father’s new girlfriend as you would treat a mother, or perhaps an aunt, a sister, or a friend. If someone claims of something that it is intrinsically valuable—­if someone says this of pleasure, for example, or of wisdom, 14

Scheffler, Boundaries and Allegiances, pp. 102–­103.

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the natural world, a deserved punishment, or a piece of art—­then the way to assess the claim is to try to separate the thing from other values, to conceive of it in abstraction, to ask whether it holds value regardless of its consequences and context. That is not what you should do when trying to decide what special reasons you have as a participant in a particular relationship. Contrary to the prediction of the relationships view, when we make judgments about whether particular relationships generate special reasons, we properly do so by conceiving of the relevant relationships as possible sites of extrinsic value.

Fourth Argument: The Content of Special Reasons For the most part, the reasons we have within our special relationships are reasons to nurture and improve those relationships. Sometimes, however, they are reasons to end a relationship. Though you love your wife, you may realize that she needs to leave your marriage if she is to flourish. Though I love my friend and he loves me, we may realize that we are incompatible, always interacting in ways that leave each of us bitter and depressed. In such circumstances, you have a reason to allow your marriage to end for the sake of your wife, and my friend and I have a reason to end our friendship out of concern for each other. Reasons to end a relationship can exist even when the relationship is in many respects a healthy one. People who truly love each other and who make profound contributions to each other’s lives may at the same time prevent each other from thriving. They may have better lives available outside the relationship. A relationship that should end for such reasons need not be abusive or destructive. It could be a relationship to be left with sadness, not with relief. Your reason to end a relationship can be a reason of partiality—­a special reason regarding you, your relationship, and the person with whom the relationship is shared—­and it can exist within a relationship that is valuable, in some respects, in much the way that special relationships usually are valuable. It is diffi-

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cult to see how such a reason could be produced by a relationship’s intrinsic value, or how the value of the relationship, considered in itself, could be governing your reason. You have a reason to sacrifice a relationship for the sake of the individuals within it. You do not have a reason to sacrifice individuals so that the relationship, or its putative intrinsic value, can survive.15

Fifth Argument: The Phenomenology of Partiality Again In discussing the projects view, I complained that our motivations in acting well within special relationships are not the motivations we would have if we were acting out of regard for the importance of our ground projects. An analogous problem arises for the relationships view. In acting upon reasons of partiality, we are not characteristically motivated by thoughts of the importance of our relationships. To see the point here, think about some cases in which you are moved to action by explicit thoughts of a relationship and its value. When you have had a fight with a friend, you might swallow your pride and apologize, for the sake of the friendship. When you and your spouse have been drifting apart, you might arrange to take some time off work and have a vacation, for the sake of the marriage. When you do not want to drive for several hours to visit your parents for the weekend, you might do it anyway, for the sake of your relationship with your family. In cases like these, you conceive of a relationship as something valuable that needs to be tended. To that extent, your motives in such cases are unusual. Usually, when we are moved by reasons of partiality, we are not driven by thoughts like those. Think again of some of the cases discussed in previous chapters. Imagine that when you rush off to be with your parents after hearing of the fire, you are moved by thoughts of the damage that the fire could do to your parent-­child relationship; imagine thinking, “I must get over there quickly. My relationship with my parents depends on it!” Imagine that when the husband in Williams’s 15

See the discussion in Friedman, What Are Friends For? p. 42.

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example jumps into the water to save his wife, he is moved by thoughts of the damage his wife’s drowning would do to his relationship with her; imagine that he looks into the water, sees his wife drowning, and thinks, “It’s my marriage!” These would be odd thoughts to have. They would not reflect well on those who display them and are not the motives you would hope for in your own child or spouse. A person who characteristically thinks of her relationships when she acts well toward others is not someone you would want as a friend or a loved one. A friend who is always thinking of improving your friendship, a colleague whose main concern is with the value of collegiality, a parent who thinks mainly of how important it is to have a good relationship with his child—­all of these characters are annoying to have around, and all of them seem to be missing what really matters in their relationships. In a relationship with such a person, you may feel that he cares less for you than for his relationship with you. He cares less for you yourself than for a role that he wants you to fill. When we act well within special relationships, it is not to the value of our relationships that we respond. This point, as with the analogous objection to the projects view, is in the first instance a point about motives, and it leaves open the possibility that what is true of our motives is not true of our reasons. It may be that the intrinsic value of relationships provides our reasons of partiality, even if it ought not figure in our motives as we act in accord with those reasons. Still, as with the analogous objection to the projects view, the value-­based relationships view will lose much of its attraction if it concedes that thoughts of the value of relationships should not be motivating. Defenders of the relationships view often say that their account captures our everyday ways of experiencing and thinking about our reasons of partiality. That claim is considered later in this chapter, but the argument offered in the present section suggests that it is false.16 Also, the cases in which we imagine people moved by thoughts of the value of their relationships do Scheffler makes this claim frequently; see, for example, Boundaries and Allegiances, p. 100; and the opening pages of “Morality and Reasonable Partiality.” See also Kolodny, “Love as Valuing a Relationship,” p. 139; and Jeske, Rationality and Moral Theory, pp. 14, 63–­64. 16

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not appear to be cases of people who see their reasons accurately (even if it would be better if they did not). The motives of such people appear to be not only unfortunate but also mistaken.

A Progress Report That concludes my case against the generic version of the value-­ based relationships view. The view cannot offer any guarantee that there exist duties of partiality; it is possible for reasons of partiality to exist in the absence of intrinsically valuable relationships; and relationships, anyway, do not have intrinsic value, or not in any form in which it could ground reasons of partiality. I now want to explain how the objections to the generic version of the value-­based relationships view apply to other versions of the relationships view. I start with the value-­based relationships views of Scheffler and Kolodny, who speak respectively of valuing a relationship noninstrumentally and of believing it to have final value, rather than of a relationship’s having intrinsic value. (Raz’s version of the view is in essence the same as the generic version of the view, which I have already criticized.) Then I look at the reasons-­based relationships view, defended by Jeske and Scanlon. All of that done, the rest of the chapter considers a popular argument for the relationships view that I have not yet been in a position to address: the argument that the relationships view is the view of common sense.

Scheffler and Noninstrumental Valuing Scheffler says that we take ourselves to have reasons of partiality because we value certain relationships noninstrumentally and valuing a relationship noninstrumentally means seeing it as a source of special reasons, and indeed of special responsibilities.17 You value a relationship noninstrumentally, Scheffler says, if you “do not value it solely as a means to some independently specified 17

Boundaries and Allegiances pp. 100–­101, 121–­122.

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end.”18 To value a relationship only instrumentally, Scheffler says, is to value it, for example, “solely as a way to advance one’s career, or to realize one’s social aspirations.”19 You have a “responsibility” to perform an act, for Scheffler, if it would be wrong of you not to perform it; a responsibility is a duty.20 My first two claims about the generic version of the value-­ based relationships view apply straightforwardly to Scheffler’s view. First, whether or not we ordinarily value special relationships noninstrumentally, it is quite possible to value a special relationship in the way we ordinarily do without seeing it as a source of special duties. You can consider a relationship to be a normal, valuable friendship, for example, and to be a source of special reasons, without thinking it to involve duties. Second, it is possible to find special reasons within a relationship that you do not value at all—­not intrinsically, and not noninstrumentally—­so Scheffler’s version of the relationships view cannot be the full story about how we come to find special reasons within our relationships. (Scheffler, I should note, is open to this possibility.)21 My third claim about the generic version of the value-­based relationships view is that relationships do not hold intrinsic value, or not of any kind that could ground reasons of partiality. To translate this claim into an objection to Scheffler’s view, we need to get a little clearer about what it means to value a relationship noninstrumentally. There are two ways in which you might value something noninstrumentally. First, you might treat it as though it is intrinsically valuable, taking it to have value independently of its relationship to any other valuable things. My arguments against the generic version of the value-­based view yield reasons to think that this is not how we usually value our relationships, insofar as we see them as sources of special reasons. We do not seem to be committed to Boundaries and Allegiances, p. 100. Boundaries and Allegiances, p. 121. 20 On p. 97 of Boundaries and Allegiances, Scheffler uses “responsibilities” and “duties” interchangeably. See also his comments about “wrong-­making” in “Projects, Relationships, and Reasons,” p. 260. 21 Scheffler accepts that the relationships view may not account for all special reasons within special relationships. Boundaries and Allegiances, p. 103, n. 7. 18 19

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the claim that a relationship can have value independently of the good it does for individuals (see the first and second arguments), we do not seem to think that our reasons of partiality are controlled by the value of relationships considered in abstraction (see the third and fourth arguments), and we are not usually moved by thoughts of the value of relationships when we act on our reasons of partiality (see the fifth argument). The second way to value something noninstrumentally is to value it extrinsically, but not as a means to something else. For example, you could value a family heirloom without valuing it intrinsically—­you might not think that it has value independently of its place in the history of your family—­and without valuing it for its resale value or for anything it produces either. You might value it for what it represents. It is possible to value a relationship noninstrumentally without valuing it intrinsically. You might value our friendship as the symbol or fruit of the good times we have had together, for example. Then you would value our friendship extrinsically, for its connections with other valuable things, but you would not value it merely as an instrument for bringing about any valuable things apart from itself. Valuing a relationship extrinsically but noninstrumentally, however, has nothing much to do with our reasons of partiality. The reasons why are given in the fourth and fifth arguments against the claim that reasons of partiality arise from the intrinsic value of relationships. I have argued (in the fourth argument) that our reasons of partiality are not guided by the value of our relationships, and my argument holds whether the value in question is noninstrumental or not. And I have argued (in the fifth argument) that usually the value of our relationships, noninstrumental or not, is not the object of our motives as we act upon our reasons of partiality. When we look at the content of our reasons of partiality and at the motives we have in acting on them, it is difficult to believe that reasons of partiality are grounded in the extrinsic noninstrumental value of relationships. For all of my objections to Scheffler’s view about reasons of partiality, I cannot deny that many people find it very natural and compelling, and I suspect that my objections to the view do not

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quite get to the source of its attraction. I think that much of the view’s attraction is due to a non sequitur that Scheffler does not commit explicitly but which his formulations and examples encourage. Scheffler points out that we do not value our special relationships only for selfish reasons—­we do not value our friendships only for the happiness they bring us, for example—­and then moves very quickly to the claim that we must value relationships noninstrumentally.22 But that, for reasons given earlier, does not follow. It is possible to value a relationship for the value it produces for someone else; it is possible to value a friendship, for example, for the happiness it brings to your friend.23 You can value a relationship instrumentally, but not selfishly. Once this possibility is noticed, I think, Scheffler’s claim about how we value relationships loses much of its initial attraction.

Kolodny and Final Value Kolodny’s version of the relationships view is offered as a theory about the reasons of love. To love someone, Kolodny argues, is, in part, to believe that your relationship with her has final value, and thereby to believe that the relationship stands as a reason to give her special treatment.24 Kolodny’s theory is about special reasons within loving relationships specifically, but he suggests that it may also reveal something about special reasons within relationships that are not ordinarily described as relationships of love, like some relationships between friends and colleagues.25 To believe that something has “final value,” as Kolodny uses the term, is to “value [it] and to see [it] as the source of your reaBoundaries and Allegiances, p. 121. Scanlon makes the same mistake. He notices that we do not value friendship only for reasons of impersonal morality, and do not value friendship for purely selfish reasons (so as to procure for ourselves “the benefits of friendship”), and moves straight to the conclusion that we must then value friendship as “something desirable and admirable in itself”; see What We Owe to Each Other, pp. 161. He does not consider the possibility that you may value a friendship for the good it does for someone apart from you. 24 “Love as Valuing a Relationship,” pp. 150–­151. 25 “Love as Valuing a Relationship,” p. 137. 22 23

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sons for valuing [it].”26 Final value is not quite the same as intrinsic value, because it is conceivable that something could be finally valuable even though it inherits part of its value from elsewhere. Such a thing would not be valuable in isolation from other valuable things (so would not hold intrinsic value), but it might nevertheless be itself a source of reasons for valuing it (and hence hold final value). To use Kolodny’s example, we might think that your commitment to a valuable project—­like curing a disease—­can have final value, but only because the project has value independently of your commitment to it.27 The notion of final value is more demanding than the notion of noninstrumental value. If you value something finally, then you value it noninstrumentally, but you can value something noninstrumentally without valuing it finally. You may value your family heirloom noninstrumentally, while taking the reasons to value the heirloom to be located not in the heirloom itself but in the valuable things the heirloom represents. One of my claims about the generic version of the value-­based relationships view raises a special problem for Kolodny’s theory about the nature of love. The cases of Bugger and Ted are supposed to show that you can find reasons of partiality within a relationship you do not value. They also show that you can love someone without valuing your relationship with her, let alone valuing it finally. Bugger loves the king and princess, and Ted loves Mary, but Bugger does not value his relationship with the king and princess, and Ted does not value his relationship with Mary. (We could not stave off the counterexamples by showing that the relationships in which Bugger and Ted participate are finally valuable after all, even if Bugger and Ted do not realize it. It must be shown that Bugger and Ted respectively believe themselves to be in finally valuable relationships. If they had such beliefs, the point of each story would be ruined.) That point made, my arguments against the generic version of the value-­based relationships view apply to Kolodny’s view much 26 27

“Love as Valuing a Relationship”; see p. 150, and p. 186, n. 21. “Love as Valuing a Relationship,” p. 186, n. 21.

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as they apply to Scheffler’s. We do not appear to value relationships intrinsically. It remains possible that we value relationships finally, by seeing them as sources of reasons by virtue of their connections with certain independent values. Perhaps we do, but our doing so would not have much to do with our reasons of partiality. It is not the value of our relationships, considered in themselves, to which we appear to respond when we act well within them.

Relationships as Reasons That is all I have to say about the value-­based relationships view. Now for the reasons-­based relationships view. The reasons-­based version of the relationships view says that our reasons of partiality are derived from the special ethical significance of relationships but does not take that special ethical significance to be a matter of value. Instead, says the reasons-­ based view, relationships are special because they take a fundamental place in our reasons. A fact like “He is my brother,” on the view, can be a fundamental reason to give a person special treatment. It can be a reason in its own right, says the view, needing no explanation by reference to other reasons. The reasons-­based relationships view is given its most thorough articulation by Diane Jeske.28 As Jeske puts things, we have reasons in virtue of our “intimate” relationships, and “it is our intimate relationships themselves . . . that ground those reasons.”29 Putting it metaphysically, Jeske says that relationships themselves generate fundamental reasons. Putting it epistemically, she says that the reasons generated by relationships are directly knowable; we can know that such reasons exist without making inferences from the existence of other reasons.30 On Jeske’s view, the fact that Jeske does suggest at one point that intimate relationships, on her view, are “intrinsically good,” but the claim about goodness does not do any work in her argument about the source of reasons of partiality. Rationality and Moral Theory, p. 45. 29 Rationality and Moral Theory, p. 2. 30 Rationality and Moral Theory, chs. 2–­3, and pp. 63–­64. 28

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you share a special relationship with someone—­that he is your friend, your child, or whatever—­is a reason to give him special treatment, and there is nothing more to say about where that reason comes from. Not all of my arguments against the generic version of the value-­ based relationships view can be turned into arguments against the reasons-­based view, but some of them can. Although the reasons-­based view is not committed to the claim that relationships are valuable in their own rights, it does, I think, overstate the ethical significance that a relationship can have independently of other considerations. Reasons of partiality can exist within relationships that are not valuable and are not valued by those within them; that is the point made by the cases of Bugger and Ted. The wider point, though, is that in such cases the relationships, considered in their own rights, do not have anything much to do with the reasons of partiality that exist within them. Bugger’s relationship with the king and princess is a relationship of subject to superiors. Bugger feels that he has special reason to look after the king and princess, but that reason is not “They are my superiors” or “I am their subject.” Ted loves Mary and finds reason to show her special concern, but his reason cannot be found by looking more closely at the relationship they share. His reason is not “I am her stalker” or “She is my oblivious crush object.” So there can be reasons of partiality, it would seem, even when no reason is provided by the bare nature of a relationship. Conversely—­adapting aspects of the first and third arguments against the generic version of the relationships view—­the fact that a relationship is of a certain kind is not enough to tell us whether it produces reasons of partiality, or what form any such reasons take. Whether “He is my friend” is a reason for you to give someone special treatment depends upon whether your friendship is healthy or destructive, close or distant. Whether you have reasons of partiality regarding your hairdresser or your father’s new girlfriend is not to be discovered by meditating more closely on the normative significance of the facts “He is my hairdresser” or “She is my father’s new girlfriend.” Furthermore—­adapting the fifth argument—­facts like “They are my parents” and “It is my wife” do not usually serve as our

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motivations for acting well within special relationships, if they are read as directing us to the relationships themselves. It is not the thought of your parent-­child relationship that moves you to rush off to comfort your parents after the fire, and it is not the thought of his marriage that moves the husband to jump in and save his wife from drowning. So even though the reasons-­based view expresses the special ethical significance of relationships by speaking of reasons rather than value, it shares with the value-­based view some of the problems that arise when we focus too much on relationships themselves. To understand how special reasons exist within a relationship, we need to look at the relationship’s context and effects, especially as they bear on the interests of the individuals within the relationship. Considering the kinds of relationships in which reasons of partiality do and do not exist, and considering the motives we properly have in acting on our reasons of partiality, it is unlikely that such reasons could be better understood by looking at relationships in isolation. There is an obvious response to some of my concerns about the reasons-­based view, which is to say that the facts that stand as our reasons of partiality include more details about relationships, allowing them to be sensitive to more finely grained distinctions between kinds of relationships. Instead of focusing on a fact like “She is my friend,” for example, we might focus on a fact like “She is someone with whom I share a friendship that is close and healthy.” Bugger’s reason may be not “I am their servant” but rather “They are people I love and who need me.” The trouble with the response is that it brings in additional considerations of the relationship’s context and effects, making the putatively reason-­giving fact look less concerned with the existence of the relationship itself and less likely to be a fundamental reason. In saying more about what exactly counts as a close and healthy friendship, for example, we are likely to refer to such things as the interests of the friends involved, the expectations the friends have of each other, and the distinctive contribution that friendships of the relevant kind can make to human flourishing. As we distinguish the relationships that do generate reasons of partiality from the relationships that do not, our attention will be

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placed less and less on relationships themselves and more and more on the good that relationships can do.

The Relationships View and Common Sense Those are my arguments against the relationships view in its various manifestations. There remains an argument for the relationships view, one offered by several of its proponents, that I have not directly addressed. The argument is that the relationships view is the opinion of common sense, so anyone who rejects it must offer a reforming view, undermining the place our relationships ordinarily take in our talk and thought. Scheffler says that it is “manifestly” true that we attach noninstrumental value to our relationships, and he describes proponents of the relationships view as the people who “believe that our [everyday] perception of things is basically correct” and take ordinary thoughts about reasons and relationships “at face value.”31 Jeske refers to her version of the relationships view as “the commonsense account of reasons of intimacy”; she says that “common sense demands that reasons of intimacy not be derivative”; and she suggests that only a philosophical motive, not felt by “plain men and women,” could make us want reasons of partiality to be anything other than fundamental.32 My arguments against the relationships view give some reason to think that the relationships view is not, in fact, embedded in common sense. The relationships view has counterintuitive implications and it does not capture our ordinary ways of thinking about and being moved by our reasons of partiality. To that extent, we have seen already that common sense is not so friendly to the relationships view. It would be something of a surprise, furthermore, if the relationships view, in anything like the forms in which it is defended in the literature, were written into our everyday practices and beliefs. The distinctions that figure in the various versions of the relationships view—­distinctions between intrinsic and extrinsic 31 32

Boundaries and Allegiances, pp. 121, 100. Rationality and Moral Theory, pp. 14, 63–­64.

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value, final and nonfinal value, noninstrumental and instrumental valuing, fundamental and derived reasons—­are all esoteric, important for philosophers but not necessary for much everyday thought. They are unlikely to be essential to the commonsensical understanding of such basic and universal phenomena as love and special concern for others. We of course do, as a matter of common sense, have certain values and see certain considerations as reasons, but to see how those values and reasons should be divided according to various philosophical distinctions we need to go beyond common sense and do some philosophy.33 All of that said, two arguments can be found within the assertions that the relationships view is the view of common sense. The first concerns ordinary conversational practices and the second concerns ordinary modes of caring. When we explain why we have special concern for certain others, we naturally do so by mentioning our relationships with them. To use an example of Kolodny’s, suppose that your mother is in hospital and you are waiting worriedly outside her room. If someone comes by and asks you why you are so concerned about this patient, then the most obvious and informative answer you could give is “She is my mother.”34 You reveal your reasons of partiality in the bare mention of the existence of the relationship. That suggests, it could be claimed, that we ordinarily take relationships considered in their own rights to be the sources of our reasons of partiality. This argument moves too quickly from an observation about what we say to a claim about what we think. Our ordinary practices of explanation may show that we take relationships to have Scheffler often says that we normally value relationships “non-­instrumentally” but never says what kind of attitude he thinks noninstrumental valuing to be. Kolodny, in contrast, makes it clear that he takes valuing to be a species of belief (“Love as Valuing a Relationship,” pp. 150–­151), so that to value something “finally” just is to have the belief that it has final value. In being clear on this point, though, Kolodny makes his central claim about love—­that to love someone is to value finally your relationship with her—­very implausible. Surely you can love someone without having any belief so esoteric as “My relationship with this person has final value.” 34 “Love as Valuing a Relationship,” p. 139. See also Scheffler, Boundaries and Allegiances, pp. 98–­100. 33

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ethical significance, but they do not show what we think about the nature or structure of that significance. To explain your concern for the patient in the hospital room by saying “She is my mother” is not necessarily to say that your mother-­child relationship is intrinsically valuable, or is valuable for its own sake, or carries ethical significance in its own right. The implicature of such talk is opaque. When you say, “She is my mother,” you could be interpreted as implicitly adding, “which of course means that I share with her an intrinsically valuable relationship,” but you could just as well be interpreted as implicitly adding, “which of course means that she has a central place in my ground projects,” or “which of course means that I am especially concerned with her value as an individual in her own right.” These interpretations, among many others, are equally available and equally tendentious. The interpretations that favor the relationships view are no better than the others. The second argument for seeing the relationships view as the view of common sense rests on the observation that our special relationships are often objects of intrinsic cares and desires. You want a good life for you and a good life for your husband, but more than that, you want to be responsible for some of the goods in his life and you want him to be responsible for some of the goods in yours. You would not be indifferent between a future in which you live well together and a future in which you each live well with other partners. That suggests, perhaps, that you take your relationship with your husband to be important in its own right, or to be itself a source of some of your reasons to keep the relationship alive and healthy—­and that looks like a commitment friendly to the relationships view. We should not assume, however, that the structure of our desires and cares mirrors the structure of our values or our views about reasons. As a general point, desiring or caring about something is not the same as valuing it.35 You may have an intrinsic desire that the Red Sox win the pennant without thinking it intrinsically valuable that the Red Sox win the pennant. You may think it intrinsically valuable that I enjoy the taste of a nice cold 35

See, for example, Frankfurt, The Reasons of Love, pp. 12–­14.

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beer with my dinner without caring whether I enjoy the taste of a nice cold beer with my dinner. Beyond the general point, there are various reasons to doubt that our cares and desires regarding our special relationships reveal commitments to theses about values and reasons. You may care about your relationship with your husband for its own sake, in such a way as to want the relationship to continue even if you would both be better off in relationships with others, but that does not mean that you think it would be good for the relationship to continue under such circumstances. You may reluctantly agree that if it would make everyone better off, then the relationship should end, without really wanting that to happen. Furthermore, there are clear strategies by which the views that rival the relationships view could explain our cares and desires regarding our relationships. Following the projects view, it can be said that we often care about things for their own sakes as a result of the place they take in our ground projects. You may have an intrinsic desire to finish your thesis not because you believe that your finishing your thesis is intrinsically valuable, or anything like that, but just as an expression of your investment in the project of finishing your thesis. Following the individuals view, it can be pointed out that when we experience something as valuable in its own right, we often respond by wanting, for its own sake, to spend time with that thing. If I think that a local forest, for example, is intrinsically valuable, then I may want not only that the forest be enjoyed and preserved but that I enjoy it and that I contribute to its preservation. But that is a matter of my response to the value of the forest; it is not, necessarily, that I have the additional opinion that it is intrinsically valuable that the forest be enjoyed and protected by me. Common sense is complex and confusing, especially when it comes to questions about values and reasons, and the questions that are important when we are trying to come up with philosophical theories about partiality are not necessarily questions to which common sense needs clear and ready answers. It may be true, in the end, that the relationships view offers the best regimentation of commonsensical attitudes about reasons of partiality (though the arguments of this chapter suggest otherwise), but it is

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a mistake to imagine that the relationships view, or any other theory about reasons of partiality, is right there in common sense, inhabiting our prephilosophical view of the world and waiting to be extracted.

Against the Relationships View Behind my antipathy to the relationships view, and motivating all of the objections of this chapter, is a sense that the view strips away all the things that really matter about relationships. Friendships, strong parent-­child bonds, healthy relationships with siblings, and so on are so profoundly important for human welfare and human flourishing. They make our lives better in so many crucial respects. Yet the driving idea behind the relationships view is that the importance of relationships for real human lives is not what matters when it comes to explaining the special reasons that relationships produce. The view asks us to understand the ethics of partiality by isolating relationships from their significance for human needs and interests. Suppose, for the purposes of a kind of reductio, that relationships do generate reasons in their own rights, independently of their importance for human needs, human interests, and human flourishing. Suppose that I then suggest that we all ignore those reasons and respond only to the reasons that relationships produce by virtue of their connections with the interests and flourishing of real humans. Would it not then be better from everyone’s point of view if we all accepted my suggestion? And does that not suggest that the posited reasons were never there in the first place? The concern expressed here is blunt and sweeping, and I know it will not be found compelling by those who defend the relationships view. It is not a substitute for the objections offered earlier in the chapter. But it is intended to identify a tendency within the relationships view to reify the importance of relationships: to treat that importance as though it must be intrinsic or fundamental, and ultimately, in one sense, inexplicable. It is common in discussions of the ethics of special relationships to underscore your

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point with a term of abuse. Scheffler says that anyone who fails to value relationships noninstrumentally is “pathological.”36 My abusive description of the relationships view is that it is misanthropic. It attempts to explain the importance of human relationships by dissociating them from the contributions they make to human needs and interests. It drags human relationships from their human context.

The Truth in the Relationships View The relationships view says that relationships matter fundamentally, intrinsically, for their own sakes, or in their own rights. Though that claim is implausible, we cannot get away from the truth that relationships matter. How you are placed with regard to someone else can make a big difference to what reasons you have, and so to how you should behave. Whether it is your similarities, the history of your interactions, your biological connection, your shared expectations, or something else, there is something about our special relationships that is ethically significant. So far in the book, I have rejected the suggestion that the ethical significance of relationships can be explained through the role relationships take in our goals and self-­conceptions, and I have rejected the suggestion that the ethical significance of relationships can be found within the bare nature of relationships themselves. That does not leave me with many places to go. The next two chapters bring together the concerns expressed in my arguments against the projects view and the relationships view and show that they underwrite a quite different approach to the ethics of special relationships: one that locates the source of norms of partiality in the self-­standing value of individuals.

Boundaries and Allegiances, p. 121. See also Velleman on “fetishism”: “Love as a Moral Emotion,” p. 370. 36

Chapter 4 Your Value

The Individuals View We have reasons to give special treatment to people with whom we share special relationships. If someone is your friend, for example, then you have reasons to do things for her that you would not do for just anyone, and you may also have duties toward her that you do not have toward just anyone, and you may be permitted to do things for her that you would not be permitted to do for just anyone. These are “norms of partiality,” and the question of this book is how they are to be explained. On the projects view, they are explained by facts about us. You have reason to give special treatment to your friend, says the projects view, because your friend takes a special place in some of your most central commitments. On the relationships view, our reasons of partiality are explained by facts about our relationships. If the relationships view is correct, then you have reason to give special treatment to your friend because friendship—­ or your friendship—­has value for its own sake, or because the fact that someone is your friend is a fundamental reason to give her special treatment. In the previous two chapters, I have argued that the projects view and the relationships view are both implausible. Following the taxonomy with which the book began, that leaves us with the individuals view.

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The individuals view says that norms of partiality arise from facts about the individuals with whom our special relationships are shared. Your reasons to give special treatment to your friend, according to the individuals view, are explained by something about your friend: something that would be there even if she did not take a special place in your projects, and even if the two of you did not share a friendship. To find the source of our reasons of partiality, says the individuals view, we need to look more closely not at ourselves or our relationships but at the particular other people with whom our special relationships are shared. A natural first reaction to the individuals view is to think that it is hopeless. If we are asking why we have reason to give special treatment to some people over others, then it can be difficult to see how the individuals view could even take the form of an answer. The whole problem is that the people with whom we share special relationships are not more important than everyone else. I have reasons to give special treatment to my friends, parents, and children, but nobody thinks that my friends, parents, and children matter more, in their own rights, than other people do. The value of another person may give me reasons, but how can it give me special reasons? That is the main question for the individuals view. I think that it can be answered—­or at least that the individuals view can give just as good an answer as its rivals—­but I will not be in a position to say how until I have said more about why the individuals view is attractive in the first place. In this chapter, I offer (what I think to be) the best argument for the individuals view, I identify some further advantages that the view holds over its rivals, and I give a first expression of my preferred version of the view. The next chapter tries to develop my version of the individuals view so as to allow it to explain why we may and should give good treatment to some individuals over others.

Partiality and Motivation: Two Famous Examples The projects view and the relationships view, I have argued, are subject to phenomenological objections. The experience of acting

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out of love or friendship is quite different from the experience of responding to the importance of a personal project or relationship. When you rush off to be with your parents after hearing about the fire, for example, you will not be driven by thoughts of how much your parents mean to you or of the importance of the parent-­child relationship in which you participate. The strongest reason to accept the individuals view is that it is truer to the phenomenology of partiality. It places our reasons of partiality exactly where they appear to us to be as we act upon them. The individuals view best captures our experience of finding ourselves to have reasons of partiality, and this is a very strong reason—­a stronger reason than philosophers have tended to realize—­to think that the individuals view is correct. That is the claim that the next several sections of this chapter try to establish. Let me start by going over the background to the contemporary debate about partiality, some of which will be familiar from earlier chapters. It is sometimes argued that reasons of partiality are derived from deeper, impartial reasons. A utilitarian may say that we have reason to do whatever generates the most happiness, with nobody’s happiness counting for more than anybody else’s, but also that the way for a person to generate as much happiness as possible is to focus his attention on those with whom he shares special relationships. A world with as much happiness as possible, the utilitarian is likely to say, is a world in which everyone takes special care of his own.1 Similarly, a deontologist may say that we have reason to follow the moral rules, where the moral rules are universal and generated entirely from impartial considerations, but also that the moral rules require us to treat some people differently from how we treat others. It might be a moral rule, for example, that you must honor your father and mother.2 In the literature, impartialist accounts of partiality are faced with two famous examples. The first is given by Bernard Wiliams, Jackson, “Decision-­Theoretic Consequentialism and the Nearest and Dearest Objection.” 2 For an instance of this deontological approach to partiality, see Nathanson, Patriotism, Morality, and Peace, p. 70. 1

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and was discussed in chapter 2.3 A man is standing on a pier. On one side of the pier, his wife is drowning. On the other side, a stranger is drowning. The man can save his wife or the stranger, but does not have time to save both. An impartialist might be able to tell us that the man has reason to save his wife, but imagine that the man is moved to save his wife by the considerations that appear in an impartialist account of partiality. Imagine that he dives into the water thinking, “That’s my wife, and the world is a happier place if we each favor the interests of our nearest and dearest, so I’ll save her,” or “That’s my wife, and the moral rules instruct me to favor my wife in situations like these, so I’ll save her.” Those would be very strange motivations and would suggest that the man is not being moved by genuine love for his wife at all. As Williams puts it, if the man is motivated by impartialist considerations, then he has a “thought too many.”4 To find a reason to save his wife from drowning, he should not need to refer to considerations of the general utility or of moral rules. It should be enough that this is his wife. The second example is Michael Stocker’s.5 You are in hospital, recovering from an operation and feeling a little lonely and glum, when a friend of yours surprises you by coming to visit. You are delighted to see her, and you exclaim, “You are so busy; you have so many other things you could be doing. What moved you take the time to come and visit me?” Your friend gives the honest answer, “I am here because visiting you in hospital will make you happy, and there is nothing else I could be doing right now that would generate more happiness than I am bringing to you by being here.” Or perhaps she answers, “I am here because you are my friend, and it is a moral rule that we should all look after our own friends, and in my circumstances today there is no other moral rule that overrides that one.” Any such answer would be deflating. If that is really how your friend is motivated, then she is not acting out of true friendship at all. “Persons, Character and Morality,” p. 18. “Persons, Character and Morality,” p. 18. 5 Stocker, “The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories,” p. 462. 3 4

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The two examples show that when we act out of love and friendship, we are not characteristically moved by impartial considerations. To put it another way, our motives as we give special treatment within special relationships do not correspond to our reasons for giving such treatment, if those reasons are what impartialist accounts say they are.

The Standard Story about the Famous Examples: Self-­Effacing Theory Faced with the examples, a defender of an impartialist view could, in principle, say that ordinary views about the motives of love and friendship are misguided and that there would in fact be nothing to regret about a husband who saved his wife or a friend who visited you in hospital moved by strictly impartial considerations. The examples, however, appear to bring to light a deeply ingrained truth about the nature of love and friendship. To resist the point of the examples would be to say, effectively, that there is nothing especially good or authoritative about attitudes of love and friendship as they actually exist. For the impartialist who is trying to support ordinary views about the existence of special reasons of partiality, this is not an attractive claim to make. The more common impartialist response is to say that the examples reveal something important about desirable motives of partiality, but not about reasons of partiality. Following this strategy, the impartialist can maintain that our reasons of partiality are fundamentally impartial, while accepting that we should not be moved by direct consideration of those reasons as we act upon them.6 An impartialist, depending upon the particular view to which she subscribes, may indeed say that it would be a positively bad thing for us to take impartial reasons as our motives. An impartialist theory of partiality could be self-­effacing; it could tell For versions of this view, see Railton, “Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality”; Parfit, Reasons and Persons, especially pp. 24 and 43–­45; Herman, The Practice of Moral Judgment, chs. 1–­2, 9; and Baron, “Patriotism and ‘Liberal’ Morality,” pp. 70–­71. 6

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one story about our reasons and then, in light of that story, another story about how we should be motivated. The most straightforward example of a self-­effacing impartialist theory of partiality is a consequentialist theory. The consequentialist says that we have reason to make the world better, as seen from an impartial point of view. A better world, plausibly, is one in which people enjoy all the goods of love and friendship. We often make the world better, plausibly, when we act out of love and friendship ourselves; we make the world better by being good friends and good parents, for example. To act out of love and friendship, as the two famous examples show, is not to act with the motive of making the world better, as seen from the impartial point of view. So, to make the world better, we must sometimes be moved by motives other than the motive of making the world better. The impartialist consequentialist account of partiality can then tell us, on its own terms, that reasons of partiality are impartial and that our motives of partiality should not be. The discussion of the famous examples in the philosophical literature is focused mostly on the question of whether self-­effacing theories are acceptable. Stocker builds his “hospital visit” example into a case against impartialism by saying that it forces impartialist theory to be self-­effacing and then by arguing that self-­effacing theories fail as ethical theories. First, he says, self-­effacing theories do not tell us what should motivate us, so they do not tell us how to live, so they fail to perform a function that an ethical theory should perform. Second, he says, self-­effacing theories preclude the attainment of a psychologically harmonious life, in which the agent is motivated by the things that she values and values the things by which she is moved.7 Others have offered similar criticisms of self-­effacing theories.8 Defenders of impartialist theories, for their part, have argued either that it is possible 7 See “How Emotions Reveal Value and Help Cure the Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories,” p. 173; and “The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories,” pp. 453–­455. 8 See the discussions in Swanton, “Virtue Ethics and the Problem of Indirection: A Pluralistic Value-­Centered Approach,” pp. 168–­170; McKerlie, “Aristotle and Egoism,” pp. 531–­537; and Annas, “Virtue Ethics and the Charge of Egoism.”

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to maintain a form of impartialism without accepting a self-­ effacing theory or that a theory’s being self-­effacing is not, in fact, a good reason to reject it.9 As the debate turns to questions about the acceptability of self-­ effacement in ethical theory, it turns away from questions about partiality. If the point of the Williams and Stocker cases is to show that certain ethical theories must be self-­effacing, then the fact that the cases trade on insights about love and friendship is not very important. To make the point about self-­effacement, all we need is some case or other in which it clearly would not be desirable for an agent to be moved by the considerations that are taken to provide reasons within impartialist theories; then we have enough to show that any plausible impartialist theory must be self-­ effacing, and the debate about the acceptability of self-­ effacing theory can proceed. In my opinion, the direction taken in the discussion of the famous examples overlooks the real problem they pose for impartialist theory. There is a different message to be taken from the examples, which concerns reasons of partiality in particular and has force independently of the debate about self-­effacement.

A Different Story about the Famous Examples Motives for action are sometimes experienced as brute desires or drives. If you have ever had the urge to giggle in the middle of a funeral, then you have probably experienced a motive that pre­ sents itself as no more than an urge, backed by no good reasons and making no sense. In other cases, however, motives for action are experienced as more than brute desires, so that in having a motive you have not only the impetus to perform a particular action but also a sense of why performing that action would be worthwhile. When you see a child in need and feel moved to do something to help, for example, you will probably experience your motive as a fitting response to the needs of the child. In havFor more on the problem of self-­effacement, including a broader survey of the literature, see my “Virtue Ethics Is Self-­Effacing.” 9

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ing the motive, you see the act of helping the child as an act that makes sense. You find yourself to have not just a desire but also a reason to help. When we are moved to act well toward our friends and loved ones, we do not typically experience our motives as mere urges. Your motive for rushing off to be with your parents after hearing of the fire, for example, will present itself not merely as a desire but also as a response called for by the situation. In wanting to be with your parents, you will take it to matter that you are with your parents in their time of distress; you will see there to be a good reason for you to be with your parents. Similarly, in being moved to leave work early so you can spend time with your children, or in being moved to set your alarm so you can wake up early to collect a friend from the airport, you will see the relevant acts as acts worth performing. Inseparable from your motives, in such cases, is a sense that your acts of partiality are merited, or supported by good reasons. The characters in the two famous examples—­the man who saves his wife from drowning and the friend who visits you in hospital—­have motives that involve their taking impartial considerations as reasons for their actions. What is objectionable about the characters in the examples is not that they take their acts to be supported by reasons. What is objectionable is that they take their acts to be supported by the wrong reasons. In being motivated to act well toward our friends and loved ones, we take ourselves to have reasons, but not reasons of impartial morality. We may see the motives of the characters in the examples not only as strange and unattractive but also as mistaken. In taking themselves to have purely impartial reasons for giving good treatment to their friends and loved ones, they get it wrong. If they were seeing things correctly, then they would take themselves to have reasons of a different kind. Accordingly, if all of this is correct, then a defender of an impartialist account of reasons of partiality must say that when we take ourselves to have reasons within our relationships other than impartial reasons, we make a mistake: a useful mistake, perhaps, but a mistake nonetheless. When the impartialist looks at the motivations we ordinarily hold within our special relationships, she

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must say not only that our motivations are different from the motivations we would hold if we were moved by our real reasons but also that we are taking ourselves to have reasons that are not really there. Here, then, is my suggestion about the problem raised for impartialist theories by the famous examples. Impartialist theories tell a story about our reasons to give special treatment to our friends and loved ones, and that story conflicts with our experience of acting out of love and friendship. The phenomenology of partiality involves our treating certain considerations as reasons, and impartialist accounts tell us that those considerations are not really reasons. So we must choose between accepting an impartialist account of partiality, on the one hand, and trusting our experience as we act out of love and friendship, on the other. Absent some very powerful argument, it is reasonable to insist that our experiences of acting out of love and friendship are not illusory. In telling us that our reasons of partiality are ultimately impartial reasons, impartialist accounts of partiality seem simply to get it wrong. The objection to impartialist theories here is not an objection to self-­effacement in ethical theory, and so it stands as a different objection from those pursued in most discussions of the two famous examples. You can agree that impartialist theories seem to get our reasons of partiality wrong while also thinking that it is perfectly acceptable for an ethical theory to be self-­effacing. A theory might say, for example, that, as you play tennis, you should have motives that involve taking it to matter that you win the match, even though, really, it does not matter whether you win; it only matters that you have fun. Such a theory would be self-­ effacing, but that does not mean that it faces the objection I am articulating here. There might be nothing inherently problematic about a theory’s having the formal property of being self-­effacing. But it might also be that when it comes to reasons of partiality in particular, impartialist ethical theories are simply unbelievable. A further point to note is that the worry about impartialist theories here does not have anything deeply to do with impartialism. It can stand as an objection to any account of reasons of partiality that conflicts with our ordinary experience of acting well within

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special relationships. In earlier chapters, in fact, I have offered variants of just this objection in criticizing the projects view and the relationships view. Both views fail to be true to the phenomenology of partiality. The experience of acting out of concern for a friend or loved one is not an experience of acting for the sake of a personal project or for the sake of a valued relationship. To find an account of reasons of partiality that is not subject to the objection, we need to learn something about what we do take to be our reasons as we experience the motives of love and friendship. When the man jumps in to save his wife or the friend comes to visit you in hospital, what kinds of motives should they have? And what, in having those motives, will they see as the reasons for their actions? The way to answer these questions, I want to suggest, is to see what information we require in order to have full knowledge of our reasons, when we act well toward people with whom we share special relationships.

A Distinction in Knowledge of Reasons It is possible to know that you have a reason for performing an action while failing to know what that reason is. There is a difference between knowing about the existence of a reason and knowing about the nature of a reason. Consider the following example. You and I are standing in a room, in which there is a button. We are friends and you trust me completely. You know, in addition, that I have access to a great deal of information to which you do not have access. Suddenly, I say to you, “Quick! Press that button one hundred times as fast as you can! I’m telling you: you have a very good reason to press that button one hundred times as fast as you can!” If I am speaking truly and you really do trust me, then you now know that you have a reason to press the button one hundred times as fast as you can. But you do not know what that reason is. You do not even know what kind of reason it is. For all you know, it could be a reason of self-­interest, a moral reason, or a reason of some other kind. Perhaps pressing the button one hundred times will win you some money; perhaps it will bring a benefit to some-

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one you care about; perhaps it will save some innocent strangers from being harmed; perhaps it will prevent a beautiful forest from being destroyed. You know, through my testimony, that it makes sense for you to press the button one hundred times, but you do not know why it makes sense. You know you have a reason, but that reason, for all you know, could be anything. Having heard about the existence of your reason, you may come to have a motive to press the button one hundred times as fast as you can. The quality of your motive, however, will evince your lack of knowledge about the nature of your reason. As you press the button, you will wonder why you are doing it. Because you do not know what considerations count in favor of your act, your motive for performing the act will have nothing to grip on to, so to speak. There will be no goal or value on which you can focus as you press the button, nothing the thought of which can pull you on as you try to press the button more and more quickly. Not knowing what reason you have for performing the act, there is a kind of motive—­what we might call a “fully shaped” motive, or a motive that “grips on” to a particular consideration—­that you are unable to have. Suppose now that I gradually give you some further pieces of information. I have told you that you have a reason to press the button one hundred times as fast as you can. Now I tell you, “Your reason to press the button is a reason of self-­interest!” Then I add, “If you do not press the button one hundred times as fast as you can, you will suffer some physical pain!” Then, “If you do not press the button one hundred times, someone will come into the room and cause you an injury!” Then, “If you do not press the button one hundred times, someone will come into the room and break your leg!” And, “It will be your left leg!”; “And he will break it with a hammer!”; “And he will hold the hammer his right hand!”; “And as he swings the hammer he will whistle the national anthem!” As you receive these pieces of information one by one, your motive to press the button will take a more determinate shape. Eventually, you will reach a point at which you have all the information you need in order to have a clear and settled motive for pressing the button one hundred times as fast as you can. At this

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point, you will have a motive that grips on to a particular consideration: a consideration on which you can focus as you drive yourself to complete the act. By the time you learn that your would-­be assailant will whistle the national anthem as he breaks your leg, the extra information you are receiving will no longer make a difference to your guiding motive. By then, you will already have all the motivation you need to press the button as fast as you can. It is not as though you will find a greater sense of urgency, or suddenly have a clearer goal on which to focus, once you find out about the whistling. The example is not very realistic, but here are the points it is supposed to make. First, it is possible to know that a reason exists without knowing what that reason is. Second, there exists a strategy for working out what we take to be our reason for action as part of our having a particular motive. At what point, as you go through the process of receiving more information, will you come to have a motive that fully grips on to a reason? At what point will it seem to you that you fully understand why you should press the button one hundred times as fast as you can? At what point does further information become merely incidental?10 If your motive would be fully shaped upon learning that by pressing the button you will avoid an injury, then that would suggest that your reason to press the button, as represented by your motives, is that by pressing the button you will avoid an injury. If, however, the quality of your motive would change upon learning about the prospect of having someone break your leg—­if the thought of having a broken leg would give you a more tangible consideration on which to focus as you press the button—­then that would suggest that you are treating as your reason a fact that includes an extra detail; you take it as a reason, perhaps, that by pressing the button you can prevent your leg from being broken. If it would make a further difference to your motive to learn that your left leg, in particular, is at stake, then that would suggest that you take your reason for acting to have something particularly to do with your left leg, and that your reason to act is to prevent your left leg (not just any leg) from being broken. If it would not 10

I am grateful to Toby Handfield for improving my formulation of this idea.

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make a further difference to your motive to learn that it is your left leg that will be broken, then that would suggest that you take it as your reason that you can prevent a leg of yours (whichever leg) from being broken. And so on. As a guide to determining what a person takes to be her reason for performing an action, when she has a certain motive for performing it, we can ask what she needs to believe about the action in order for her motive to be fully shaped. To the extent to which the quality of her motive depends upon her having a belief, the content of that belief is likely to play a part in (what she takes to be) her reason. So here is my suggestion for learning more about our reasons of partiality, as we experience them: take a case in which we do something for a person with whom we share a special relationship, try to imagine the motive we would have in the case, and see what pieces of information are required for that motive to be fully shaped, or fully to grip on to a consideration in light of which the act appears to make sense.

The Two-­Leveled Pier The case I want to consider is a more complicated version of Williams’s example of the man on the pier. You and I are standing on a pier that has two levels. I am on the upper level, standing at the top of a flight of stairs, and you are on the lower level, at the bottom of the stairs. From my position on the top level of the pier, I have an unimpeded view of our surroundings but I do not have easy access to the water below. From your position on the bottom level of the pier, you have easy access to the water but you do not have a good view of our surroundings. You and I can easily communicate, we are friends and you trust me to tell you the truth, and you know that with my better view of our surroundings I have information that you lack. And you are standing next to a life preserver, which is held to the pier by a tightly coiled rope. I yell down to you, “Quick! Throw the life preserver into the water!” “Why?” you ask me. “I’m just telling you,” I reply. “Throw the life preserver into the water! You have a very good reason to do it.”

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If we assume that I am speaking truly and sincerely and that you really do trust me, you now know that you have a reason to uncoil the rope and throw the life preserver into the water. But you do not know what the reason is. Perhaps someone is drowning and you can save her, or perhaps someone has just promised to give $1,000 to the first person who throws a life preserver into the water, or perhaps I can see a poisonous spider on the life preserver and know that you will avoid being bitten only if you throw the life preserver into the water as soon as you can. So, while you may at this point have a motive to uncoil the rope and throw the life preserver into the water, your motive will have no particular consideration to grip on to. Your motive will not be fully shaped. Now, I begin to give you further pieces of information. Having told you that you have a good reason to throw the life preserver into the water, I add, “There is someone drowning in the water!” Then I tell you, “Someone you care about is drowning in the water!” Then, “A good friend of yours is drowning in the water!” Then, “Donald is drowning in the water!” (Suppose you have exactly one good friend called Donald.) Then, finally, “Donald is drowning by inhaling water through his nose, not his mouth!” In the process of receiving all this information, piece by piece, you come to learn that you have two kinds of reason to throw the life preserver into the water. First, you have an impartial reason. A person is drowning, and you are in a position to save him by throwing him the life preserver. You have a reason to save him, whoever he is. The presence of this impartial reason, if all is going well, will be felt within your motives. As you move from knowing merely that you have a reason to knowing that your reason has to do with saving a person from drowning, you will come to have a relatively determinate motive, a clearer sense of purpose, and a stronger sense of urgency. As you uncoil the rope and throw out the life preserver, you will act with the purpose of saving a person’s life. In addition to your impartial reason to throw the life preserver into the water, you have a reason of partiality. There is a special reason for you to throw in the life preserver, because the person

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drowning is not just anyone; he is your friend. How will your motives be influenced by the information bearing upon the nature of this second reason? When you hear that the person drowning in the water is someone you care about, not just a stranger, your motive for throwing out the life preserver will change. You will no longer be driven only by humanitarian sentiment but will come to have a more palpable sense of personal involvement. Your act of throwing out the life preserver will strike you as something that it is important for you in particular to do; you will no longer feel only the motive of a generic agent who is in a position to prevent something bad from happening. But, you are still likely to yearn for more information. You can now be driven by the thought that something you care about is at stake, but you are not yet able to think of the thing itself. Upon receiving the further news that the drowning person is a good friend of yours, your motive will change in quality again. As you rush to uncoil the rope and throw out the life preserver, you may find yourself drawn on by thoughts of friendship, and of what friends do for each other. Your act will strike you not just as an act of humanitarian concern, and not just as an act of averting the loss of something you care about, but also as an act of playing your part in a friendship. Your motive will now be the motive of doing something for a friend. Still, though, your motive will not be fully shaped. If we assume that you have more than one good friend, then in having your motive you will wonder which of your friends exactly is the one who is drowning and, hence, what exactly you will achieve through your act. Once you are told that the drowning person is Donald, your motive will change again. Now, as you rush to uncoil the rope and throw out the life preserver, you will be thinking of Donald. You will no longer be acting just to prevent the loss of someone or other for whom you care, or just to play your part in a friendship. Now, you will be acting for Donald. At this point, it seems to me, your motive will be fully shaped. In being moved to save Donald from drowning, knowing that it is Donald, your motive will have something—­your concern for Donald—­to grip on to. Any further information, such as the information that Donald is drowning by inhaling water through his nose, not his mouth, will, so far as this

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motive is concerned, be incidental. (Perhaps extra information will give you a new motive—­perhaps you once made a bet that Donald will not die by inhaling water through his nose—­but it will not be needed to fill out this motive: the distinctive motive of friendship.) Once you know that Donald is the person drowning, you will have all the information you need in order to have something tangible on which to focus as you act. Your motive will now, as we might put it, be closed. I have used every expression I can think of to try to describe the experience you would have in being motivated to uncoil the rope and throw out the life preserver at each of the various stages in the process of receiving more information. The point is that the crucial piece of knowledge in shaping your motive is the knowledge that Donald, in particular, is in danger. In light of what I have said earlier about how an examination of our motives can serve as a guide to our perceived reasons, that would suggest that the fact that Donald is in danger is a crucial component of your reason, as you see it, for throwing out the life preserver. So far as your motive is concerned, your reason to throw out the life preserver is not to prevent the loss of something you care about, nor to play your part in a friendship. Your perceived reason to throw the life preserver is that by doing so you will save Donald. The point generalizes. When you are moved to do something for your child, friend, or parent, you are likely to be thinking directly of your child, friend, or parent. When you are struggling for motivation to make a sacrifice for your child, friend, or parent, the way to overcome your hesitation is to think more closely of your child, friend, or parent. As we give special treatment to those with whom we share special relationships, thoughts of individuals are what draw us on.

The Main Argument for the Individuals View There is a distinctive experience associated with acting out of love or friendship, or giving special treatment to a person with whom you share a special relationship. That experience involves being moved to perform certain actions, and incorporated within it is a sense of why those actions are worth performing, or by what

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reasons the actions are supported. One way to determine what those reasons are is to ask what information we need for our motives of partiality to be fully shaped, so that we have a determinate consideration in light of which our acts seem to us to make sense. The point of the preceding example is to show that a motive of partiality becomes fully shaped only when we are aware of the identity of the individual for whom we are performing the act in question. It is only when we can think directly of the person for whom we act that we can have a clear sense of why we act. So far as our motives of partiality are concerned, then, our reasons of partiality make essential reference to particular, specified individuals. Fully to articulate our reasons of partiality, as we experience them within our motives of partiality, we need to mention the particular people with whom our special relationships are shared. When you act for the sake of your friend, parent, or child, it seems to you as though the source of your good reason for acting is there in your friend, parent, or child herself. All of this is to suggest that the phenomenology of partiality supports the individuals view. The individuals view says that to understand our reasons of partiality we need to look more closely at the individuals with whom our special relationships are shared. When we act upon our reasons of partiality and when we see ourselves to have reasons for our acts, our attention is drawn not to our projects or to our relationships but instead to particular individuals. If the individuals view is indeed the view of the phenomenology of partiality, then that is a strong reason for thinking that the individuals view is correct. Any view of reasons of partiality apart from the individuals view will have to say that our reasons of partiality are not, in fact, what we take them to be, even as we act upon them.

A Complication It is possible to agree with almost everything I say in my case of the two-­leveled pier without thinking that the case supports the individuals view. Your motive for saving your friend will become

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fully shaped, I have said, only once you know that it is Donald drowning in the water, and this suggests, I have said, that you take your reason for action to be generated by Donald himself. A defender of the projects view or the relationships view could agree that your motive will become fully shaped only when you learn that the drowning person is Donald, but still insist that this does not show that Donald, considered in his own right, is the source of your reason. Rather, it could be said, the case shows that it is only when you learn that it is Donald who is drowning that you learn which of your projects or which of your relationships is at stake. Your reasons of partiality, it could be said, are grounded in particular projects, or in particular relationships. So, perhaps, you can become fully acquainted with your reason to save Donald only once you learn that it is your personal investment in Donald, or your friendship with Donald, that is the source of your reason. So: suppose, again, that I am on the top level of the pier, and you are on the bottom level. I call out, “Quick! Throw the life preserver into the water! A good friend of yours is drowning!” As you rush to uncoil the rope, I give you some more information. “It’s the friend you met on your first day of university while waiting in line to join the debating society!” “It’s the friend you used to go hiking with—­the one you were with when you got lost in the mountains!” “It’s the friend who moved into your house for a week after he broke up with his girlfriend!” “It’s the friend who has invited you for dinner this coming Saturday! Come on: you know the one!” As you rush to uncoil the rope, you panic, and find that you cannot think straight. You know you have a friend whom you met on the first day of university, with whom you got lost in the mountains, who lived in your house for week, and who has invited you for dinner this coming Saturday. You know you love this friend dearly, and now you know that this friend is the one drowning in the water. But, overwhelmed by the stress of the moment, you cannot remember who he is. Let me be clear about the case. It is not that you remember who the friend is but cannot recall his name. And it is not that you have complete amnesia and are taking it on trust that you have a friend you met on the first day of university, who has invited you

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to dinner this Saturday, and so on. Rather, you are remembering a friendship, without being able to remember the friend. You are like a person with dementia, who may remember that she has a daughter while having no idea who her daughter is. In your distressed situation as you rush to uncoil the rope, you know which project of yours is at stake and you know which friendship of yours is at stake. You are not wondering whether you will be acting in the service of this or that project, or of this or that friendship. Yet your motive for performing the act will not be fully shaped. In failing to remember which person is the object of the relevant project, or which person is the one with whom you share the relevant friendship, you will be groping for more information, feeling that you do not know why, exactly, this is such an important act to perform. Remembering that you share a particular, specified relationship with someone, or that someone has a particular, specified place in your ground projects, feels very much like knowing that you have a reason to treat someone well; but if you do not know who that someone is, then you do not know what your reason is. Suppose that I jolt your memory by finally calling out, “You know the one! It’s Donald!” At this point, your motive will change in quality. The knowledge that Donald is the person with whom you share the relevant friendship will not be incidental to your motive. Knowing which ground project or which relationship is at stake is not enough. Now that you know your act will save Donald from drowning, the focus of your motive will be on Donald, not on your project or your friendship. To the extent to which thoughts of your friend himself can be distinguished from thoughts of your particular ground project of caring for that friend, and from thoughts of your particular relationship with that friend, it appears that thoughts of your friend himself do the most important work in forming your motivations of partiality. That suggests that you really do see your reason of partiality to have most to do with your friend, not with your project or your friendship. And that, for all the reasons given earlier, suggests that the phenomenology of partiality supports the individuals view.

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Some Further Arguments for the Individuals View That is my main argument for the individuals view, but let me mention some further reasons, emerging from the objections to the projects view and the relationships view given earlier, to think the individuals view correct. The projects view and the relationships view, I have argued, each fail to yield satisfactory stories about which relationships give rise to special reasons. We do not decide whether a particular relationship produces special reasons by asking only about how it figures in someone’s projects or by asking whether it carries ethical significance in isolation from all other considerations. The individuals view is better placed to explain which relationships give rise to special reasons, because the considerations that determine whether a relationship gives rise to special reasons all concern the needs and interests of individuals. Whether a relationship produces reasons of partiality depends upon such things as whether it improves the lives of the participants in the relationship, whether it involves the oppression or abuse of individuals, and whether it produces the distinctive goods for individuals that can come from good friendships, good family relationships, and so on. Whether you have special reasons within your relationship with your second cousin depends upon what you and your cousin can do for each other. Whether the institution of marriage is ethically defensible depends upon whether the institution is generally such as to improve the lives of individuals. The individuals view requires a great deal of further elaboration before it can offer any precise criteria for determining which relationships, exactly, are those within which special reasons exist, but in saying that reasons of partiality are ultimately grounded in facts about individuals, it is on the right track. Another reason to favor the individuals view is that it promises a plausible story about the content of our reasons of partiality, or about the particular acts toward which such reasons direct us. As part of my case against the relationships view, I said that the content of our reasons of partiality does not appear to be guided by

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the ethical significance of relationships, considered in their own rights. It is very common to have a reason to do something for a person with whom you share a special relationship; reasons of partiality are often reasons to do something that will be good for an individual. It is odd to imagine that a reason of partiality could be a reason to do something that is good for a relationship, where the operative good for the relationship cannot be explained ultimately as a good for certain individuals. So far as reasons of partiality are concerned, when the good of a relationship clashes with the good of the individuals within the relationship, the good of the individuals takes priority. Suppose you have a friend who is engaging in self-­destructive behavior, and suppose you know you could intervene in a way that will likely cause her to stop engaging in this behavior, but will also likely bring your friendship to an end. You may then be in a situation in which you have to choose between the good of your friend and the good of your friendship. In such a case, all things being equal, you would not be a good friend if you decided to let your friend continue to suffer, so as to keep the friendship alive. Your special reason, as a friend, is a reason to put your friend before your friendship. That suggests that the considerations guiding your reasons of friendship are considerations of the best interests of your friend. To put the point generally: our reasons of partiality have the content they would be expected to have if they were formed in response to the good of individuals, but not the content they would be expected to have if they were formed in response to the ethical significance of projects or relationships. The individuals view, then, is very plausible, for several different reasons. There are many things the individuals view gets right but the projects view and relationships view get wrong. But the individuals view, as so far articulated, does not say very much. Our reasons of partiality, on the individuals view, are grounded in the ethical significance of the individuals with whom our special relationships are shared. Your reason to give special treatment to a friend is grounded in the ethical significance of your friend. But what is so ethically significant about individuals, and how does their ethical significance generate reasons? And how, in particular, does the ethical significance of individuals generate agent-­relative

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norms of the kind we find in our special relationships? In the rest of this chapter, I shall say something about how to understand the ethical significance of individuals as it bears upon the ethics of partiality. The next chapter asks how the ethical significance of individuals, so understood, can generate norms that direct us to treat some people differently from others.

Individuals and Value The preceding chapter distinguished between “value-­based” and “reasons-­based” versions of the relationships view. The same sort of distinction could, in principle, distinguish between different versions of the individuals view. In asking why you have reason to give special treatment to your friend Donald, the individuals view could start with a claim about Donald’s value, or it could start with a claim about the reason-­giving status of facts like “This will help Donald” or “It’s Donald.” In its appearances within the philosophical literature, however, and certainly in the form in which I develop it over the remainder of this book, the individuals view is expressed as a “value-­based” view. It starts by saying something about what is valuable and moves from there to norms of partiality. In talking of the reasons posited by the individuals view, I have sometimes used language that suggests that such reasons are grounded in the significance of individuals and hence that a value-­ based version of the individuals view should start with a claim about the value of individuals. At other times, though, I have used language that suggests that reasons of partiality are grounded in the significance of certain states of affairs and hence that a value-­ based version of the individuals view should start with the value of certain states of affairs. When you rush off to be with your parents after the fire, your reason could be “This is for Bill and Mary,” calling on the importance of your parents: two individuals. Or, your reason could be “This will bring comfort to Bill and Mary,” calling on the importance of your parents’ having comfort: a state of affairs. There is some significance to whether we speak of the value of individuals or states of affairs or things of a differ-

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ent kind, because there is a debate to be had about what kinds of things—­individuals, states of affairs, lives, objects, experiences, and so on—­are value bearers.11 It might be thought, for example, that individuals cannot bear value, because valuable things are to be promoted or maximized, and it is not clear how you could promote or maximize an individual. In expressing my version of the individuals view, I find it most helpful to speak of the value of individuals themselves, rather than the value of states of affairs, or of any other kind of entity. But that is not necessarily to make a commitment on the question of what kinds of entities can bear value. The individuals view can avoid taking sides in the debate about value bearers, if the following two points are noted. First, when the individuals view speaks of an individual’s being valuable, it can (and should) take the value of that individual to have the power to change the normative situation of other agents. The value of an individual may be such as to demand that certain others try to bring about certain states of affairs, or to perform certain acts, out of respect or concern for that value and that individual. If Donald is valuable, then his value need not (and presumably will not) be idle; some other individuals, at least sometimes, at least in principle, will have reasons, or duties, or permissions, existing in response to Donald’s value. Second, it is possible to speak of the value of entities apart from particular individuals themselves—­to speak of the value of certain states of affairs, or experiences, or lives, or whatever—­while yet speaking of the value of entities that essentially involve particular individuals. We may say, for example, that there is value held by the state of affairs of Donald’s being happy, without necessarily saying that its value comes down to the value of someone’s being happy (no matter who it is) or of there being more happiness in the world (no matter whose it is). The relevant state of affairs, which may hold value in its own right and may be a source of reasons of partiality, can be Donald’s being happy, so that you can 11 See, for example, Ronnow-­Rasmussen, “Hedonism, Preferentialism, and Value Bearers.”

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bring the relevant value about only by doing something that brings happiness to Donald, in particular. Similarly, even if the individuals view is not ultimately to be expressed as speaking of the value of individuals themselves, it could speak of the value of the experiences, or lives, or whatever, of particular specified individuals, so that it is only when particular individuals are involved that the relevant value can be realized. There is a further point to note as we plunge into talk about value of individuals. A valuable individual is “good” in one sense but may fail to be good in others. In particular, a person may be valuable without being a good person—­that is, without being at all virtuous. You may see your father as a mean, corrupt, selfish man and may even wish that you had had somebody else for a father, while yet thinking that your father matters, and that it is important that he receive good quality medical care, or enjoy time with his grandchildren, or have somewhere safe and comfortable to live. When we talk about people who have value, we are not necessarily talking of good people.

The Value of Persons Different kinds of individuals have different kinds of value. The initial focus of the individuals view, however, is on individuals of one kind: persons. (You might also, conceivably, have a special relationship with an individual of another kind: an animal, an institution, or a deity, among many other things. But we are leaving such relationships aside for now.) So, what is valuable about persons? To that question there are three well-­explored answers, each emerging from a different tradition in moral philosophy. A person can be considered valuable in her capacity, first, as an individual who has interests, or a welfare; or, second, in her capacity as an individual who can flourish, or live an excellent human life; or, third, in her capacity as an individual who is autonomous, or has a will of her own. (In the next chapter I use a different but similar three-­way distinction in talking about traditions of thought about how we should respond to the value of persons.)

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The first story about the value of persons emerges from the welfarist tradition in moral philosophy. (The welfarist tradition significantly overlaps with, but is not identical to, the utilitarian tradition.) The central idea of the welfarist tradition is that ethics is all about advancing the welfare of individuals, where to advance an individual’s welfare is to serve her best interests, to advance her well-­being, to benefit her, or to make her better off in the most fundamental sense.12 There is a great deal of disagreement among philosophers over the question of what welfare is, exactly. Some say that welfare consists in the enjoyment of pleasurable experiences; some say that welfare consists in the satisfaction of desires, perhaps those that would be had under conditions of full information; some say that welfare consists in the enjoyment of certain objectively specified goods, like wisdom or genuine achievement; and there are many other theories of welfare apart from these.13 All of these theories set out to capture a rough intuitive notion of welfare, and for the purposes of the present book, we can rely on that intuitive notion rather than choosing between the various theories. To the extent to which it construes a person’s value in terms of the value of her welfare, the individuals view will tell us that our reasons of partiality are reasons to advance the best interests of the people with whom we share special relationships. On the second story about the value of persons, which emerges from the Aristotelian tradition in moral philosophy, a person is valuable in her capacity as an individual who can flourish.14 A good human life, runs the idea, is a life of human excellence, and we treat people well when we help them to become more excellent humans. It is sometimes argued that welfare ought to be explained in terms of human flourishing, but at the conceptual level, welfare and flourishing can be distinguished.15 Perhaps eating an ice cream would advance your welfare without making a contriOn welfarism and its relationship with utilitarianism, see my “Welfarism”; and Sumner, Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics, ch. 7. 13 For surveys of the various theories of welfare, see Parfit, Reasons and Persons, pp. 493–­502; Sumner, Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics; and my “Welfare as Success.” 14 See, for example, Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, chs. 9–­10; and Foot, Natural Goodness, chs. 3, 5. 15 See Arneson, “Human Flourishing versus Desire Satisfaction.” 12

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bution to your flourishing; perhaps learning to speak a foreign language would make you a more excellent human being without making you better off. To the extent to which it construes a person’s value in terms of the value of her flourishing, the individuals view will tell us that our reasons of partiality are reasons to help those with whom we share special relationships to become better humans. The third story about the value of persons emerges from the Kantian tradition in moral philosophy and says that the value of a person is explained by the value of her autonomy.16 The correct attitude toward a person, on this story, is an attitude of respect, and you respect a person by respecting her own autonomously formed decisions about how her own life should be lived. In respecting a person’s autonomy, you might support her in her pursuit of a project you know to be misguided, or that you believe will not make her happier. Or you might try to keep her in a state in which she remains autonomous, even if it is not a state in which she is well off or in which she flourishes—­a state, for example, in which she lives in pain but is still able to make decisions for herself. To the extent to which it construes a person’s value in terms of the value of her autonomy, the individuals view will tell us that our reasons of partiality are reasons to respect the autonomously formed preferences of the individuals with whom our special relationships are shared.

Valuing Persons within Special Relationships The three stories about the value of persons emerge from three rival traditions in moral philosophy, but they are not mutually incompatible. It is possible that persons are valuable in their capacities as individuals with interests, and as individuals who can flourish, and as individuals with their own autonomous wills. Also, it is possible that a single story about the value of persons could incor16 See Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, especially pp. 39–­42. For a relevant contemporary statement, see Velleman “Love as a Moral Emotion,” especially pp. 344–­348.

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porate the importance of welfare, flourishing, and autonomy. Perhaps, for example, a concern with a person’s flourishing, properly understood, will turn out to include within it both concern for her best interests and respect for her autonomy. In any event, the individuals view about reasons of partiality can incorporate insights about the values of welfare, flourishing, and autonomy without inconsistency. As we respond to persons within our various special relationships, indeed, we appear to respond sometimes to each of these three brands of personal value. Most obviously, our actions within special relationships are often driven by concern for the welfare of other individuals. If you and I share a friendship, for example, then we may do things together because they are fun, and I may do things for you because I know they will make you happy. Many acts of friendship—­our watching football together, your buying me a birthday present, my turning up at your house after work with some beer and a pizza—­are easy to describe as acts in which we bring each other benefits, or advance each other’s welfare, but difficult to describe as acts that help us to flourish, or that manifest respect for each other’s autonomy. The same holds for many other kinds of special relationship. To be a good brother, a good parent, or a good teacher, you must show special concern for another person’s welfare, whether or not that concern coincides with a concern for her flourishing or her autonomy. As a parent, you will show special concern for your child’s welfare, but you are also likely to have a separate special concern for her flourishing. Much of what we do as parents is directed towards making our children good and virtuous people. We teach them to care about others and tell the truth, and we encourage them to develop their minds and cultivate their talents. We may believe that a virtuous child will grow into a happy adult or that in bringing up good children we are bringing up children who will be better off, but, for many of us, the concern with a child’s flourishing cannot be straightforwardly reduced to a concern with her welfare. It makes perfect sense to want your child to be a good person, even if you doubt that being a good person is the best strategy for achieving happiness. The point carries to other relationships too. You may make a special effort to make a friend ful-

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fill his obligations to his family, or to make a colleague pursue his dealings with honesty and integrity, because you have a concern for the flourishing of your friend or colleague—­where that concern cannot be reduced to a concern for welfare, and is not a concern you have for just anyone. To respect another person’s autonomy is, largely, to respect his right to make his own decisions about his own life. I respect your autonomy when I refrain from interfering in your choice of religion, when I allow you to speak your mind, when I refuse to judge your choice of romantic partner, and so on. To some extent, the respect we show for the autonomy of our friends and loved ones is likely to be similar to the respect we try to show for the autonomy of all people; we recognize their right to make important decisions for themselves. But there are other kinds of concern for autonomy that we often show toward those with whom we share special relationships, but not toward just anyone. You may have a concern to make a person more autonomous; you could do things that bring him into a state in which he is better able to make decisions for himself, and you could remove external obstacles to the exercise of his autonomy. In bringing up a child, for example, you may have a special concern that she grow up to be a fully autonomous adult and that she live in an environment in which she does not find others interfering with her own choices about how she should live. Out of respect for the autonomy of a friend, you might intervene to prevent her from becoming addicted to a drug, or to prevent someone else from forcing her to live a life that she does not herself endorse. These might be acts you would perform for the sake of someone with whom you share a special relationship, but not for just anyone. It may be possible to have a special concern for the autonomy of a particular person by seeing more clearly the value of her autonomy and by being more emotionally vulnerable to her autonomy, as compared with the autonomy of others. J. David Velleman develops at length a Kantian account of love, according to which loving a person essentially involves perceiving and becoming vulnerable to his capacity for autonomy.17 On Velleman’s pic17

“Love as a Moral Emotion.”

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ture, you may be aware that all people have the capacity for autonomy and, as a result, acknowledge and respect the associated rights of all people to live the lives they autonomously choose for themselves, while yet having a special intimate acquaintance with and vulnerability to the capacity for autonomy held by the people you love.

Special Goods Reasons of partiality, I suggest, are grounded in the value of individuals, where the value of an individual can incorporate the value of her welfare, her flourishing, and her autonomy. In finding ourselves to have reasons of partiality, we find particular individuals to be valuable, and we hence find there to be treatment that those individuals merit or that it would be good for them to receive. You have reason to give good treatment to a person with whom you share a special relationship because that person merits that treatment, by virtue of the value he holds in his own right. The reason why you should rush off to be with your parents after hearing about the fire, for example, is that you will then provide them with something that it would be valuable for them to have. It would be good for your parents to be comforted, and your presence will provide them with comfort. The good you would provide to your parents by rushing to be with them after the fire is not the good of their having some person or other around to offer them comfort. What would be good for your parents is to have the presence and support of their child—­you—­in their time of distress. It is a good, that is to say, that only their child can provide. If your parents are to receive the good of having their child to comfort them after they lose their house in a fire, then you (or one of your siblings) will have to be the one who provides it. The good your parents receive when you go to comfort them is hence a “special good.” A good is special if a full description of its nature implies that there is only one person, or only a few people, by whom it could be provided. Many of the goods we receive

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within special relationships are special goods, in this sense. Think of the goods of having your children home for Christmas, having a parent to call when you are feeling sad, having a friend visit you in hospital, and having your spouse to come home to after a difficult day of work. Think more widely of the goods of having friends, having children, and having a long-­term romantic partner. These are all goods that come only within certain relationships and can be provided only by the people with whom those relationships are shared. Truths about what an individual merits, just by virtue of his own self-­standing value, can hence implicate certain particular others. In seeing that it would be valuable for a person to receive certain special goods, we can see why the person’s value generates reasons for some other people, but not all other people, to act. That is one respect in which the existence of a special relationship can make a difference to your reasons. As a result of sharing certain relationships with certain others, we are able to give them things—­the love of a parent, the concern of a friend—­that we cannot give to just anyone and that they merit and cannot receive from just anyone.18 By recognizing that reasons of partiality are often reasons to provide special goods, we can also see why different kinds of reasons are generated within different kinds of relationships. The benefits of having a loving parent are different from the benefits of having a loving child and different again from the benefits of having a good friend. Depending upon what kind of special relationship you have with a particular person, in having reasons to provide her with special goods you may find yourself with reasons to play the part of a good friend, or a loving parent, or a romantic partner, or a loving child, or something else. Suppose that someone needs some medical treatment she cannot afford to pay for herself, and suppose that you could afford to pay for the treatment, though not without some sacrifice. If the person in question is your young child, then, it is natural to think, See my The Limits of Loyalty, ch. 6; and Brighouse and Swift, “Legitimate Parental Partiality.” 18

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you have an obligation to ensure that she receives the treatment. If she is your sibling, your grown child, or your parent, then, all things equal, you probably have a very strong reason to pay for the treatment. It would be pretty lousy of you to refuse to help a member of your immediate family who is in serious need. If the person needing treatment is your friend, then you may have a special reason to pay for the treatment—­a reason that would not be there if the person were a stranger—­but you would probably not have an obligation to do so. If you decided to pay for a friend’s treatment, you would be going beyond the requirements of good friendship, maybe even doing something with which your friend would be uncomfortable. This may be so even if you are much closer to your friend, in many respects, than to your grown child, parent, or sibling. Conversely, there are goods that it would be perfectly natural to provide within a friendship but odd to provide within a relationship with a family member. Perhaps you would find it perfectly appropriate to give a friend advice and support regarding his sex life but would not want to do the same for your parent, child, or sibling—­regardless, again, of how close or healthy your relationship with your parent, child, or sibling may be. One of the good things about having a healthy relationship with a family member is that she will be there to look out for your material needs, even if the two of you do not enjoy spending time together. One of the good things about having a friend, of a certain kind, is that he is someone from whom you can seek advice about your love life, even if the two of you are not inclined to share your material wealth. Different special relationships of different kinds give rise to different kinds of special reasons. The reasons we find within a special relationship are not simply reasons to prioritize one person over others but rather include reasons to perform particular kinds of acts appropriate to the nature of the relationship. The individuals view, once it incorporates insights about the existence and nature of special goods, can, in principle, explain why. Some important goods are best provided, or can only be provided, within particular special relationships.

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Generic Goods When you throw the life preserver into the water to save your friend Donald from drowning, you provide Donald with a good; it is to Donald’s benefit to be saved from drowning. In this case, however, the good you provide does not have anything important to do with friendship, or with you. What is good for Donald is that he is saved from drowning, whether by a friend or by someone else. To see the difference between this good and the good provided when you rush off to be with your parents after the fire, imagine how you would respond if you noticed that a stranger was trying to perform your act ahead of you. If a stranger were heading over to comfort your parents after the fire, it would make perfect sense for you to say, “No, wait. Let me go. I am their son.” If a stranger were about to throw Donald a life preserver as he drowned in the water, you would not say, “No, wait. Let me throw it. I am his friend.” Where the good of your parents’ being comforted by their child is a special good, the good of Donald’s being saved from drowning is a “generic good.” It is a generic good because there is nothing about its very nature that has to do with any particular relationship or any particular other person. A generic good can be provided, in principle, by anyone. In sharing a special relationship with someone, you sometimes have extra reason to provide her with goods that she could just as easily receive from someone apart from you, and that you could just as easily provide to someone apart from her. Perhaps you have some reason to perform a certain kind of act for any person but a further or stronger reason to perform the same kind of act for someone with whom you share a special relationship. When you have a reason of partiality to provide someone with a generic good, that reason can exist outside the context of any familiar kind of special relationship, and it can direct you to do things that undermine the relationship or its specialness. In this respect, reasons of partiality can fail to serve or follow from the nature of a special relationship. Consider two cases. First, think about the case from the previous chapter, taken from the film There’s Something About Mary, in which Ted is

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prepared to sacrifice his chance to have a romantic relationship with Mary because he believes that Mary will be happier with somebody else. Ted experiences his decision as one he ought to make for Mary’s sake. He acts out of love for Mary, and he makes the sacrifice out of special, particularized concern for Mary. Yet, his act is not well characterized as essentially the act of a friend or a romantic partner, or as any other kind of act that involves his playing his part in a special relationship. Ted and Mary (at this point) are not friends or romantic partners; if they have any relationship, it is the relationship of distant admirer to bemused crush object. Ted acts simply as someone who loves Mary and cares about her interests. His reason to do what is best for Mary appears to be a special reason—­to that extent, a reason of partiality—­ but not a reason that exists within a special relationship. For a second case, suppose you have a colleague with whom you share a professional relationship, not a close friendship, but whom you have come genuinely to like and respect. Suppose you have good evidence that your colleague is suffering a serious personal problem, unrelated to her work; perhaps you suspect that she is becoming an alcoholic, is trapped in a destructive relationship, or is developing an eating disorder. Should you intervene? Should you try to talk it through with her, or mention your concerns to a friend of hers, or offer to take her to see a counselor? Depending upon the circumstances, you might sensibly hold all the following beliefs. First, you should not make such an intervention into the life of just anyone; it is not up to you to go around trying to solve the personal problems of strangers. Second, intervening would not be the appropriate act of a colleague; part of the point of a professional relationship is that you do not go delving into each other’s nonprofessional lives. But, third, you ought to intervene, in some way or other; this is someone you know and care for, and you should not leave her to suffer when she seems to be in need of help. If that is how things stand, then you would have a special reason to give good treatment to this particular person, but that reason would exist outside—­even despite—­the relationship in which the two of you stand. You could have a reason of partiality that directs you to provide a kind of good that you really ought not seek to provide within the context of the operative special relationship.

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These are unusual cases, but they demonstrate an important point. It is easy to assume that to act in accordance with reasons of partiality is, by definition, to play your part in a good special relationship. But that is not true: not by definition anyway. In some cases, it would seem, reasons of partiality exist without any special relationship and may even conflict with the standards of behavior to which the operative special relationship gives rise.

Reasons of Partiality In the latter parts of this chapter, I have started to build the version of the individuals view that I think most plausible. On my view, our reasons of partiality are reasons to provide goods to individuals, where a good, in the relevant sense, may be something that advances an individual’s welfare, helps her to flourish, or manifests concern or respect for her autonomy. Sometimes, such goods are special goods, which is to say that they can be provided only within the context of a particular relationship, and that in providing them we play a role within a relationship; we provide someone with the good of having, for example, a true friend, a loving parent, or a good colleague. In other cases, the goods we provide in acting on reasons of partiality are generic goods, which is to say that they are goods we could in principle provide to anyone—­goods that do not depend upon the context of a particular relationship—­but that we nevertheless have special reason to provide to some people rather than others. Why are we subject to norms of partiality? Because the individuals with whom we share our special relationships are valuable and their value is such as to make them merit the special treatment we give them. The individuals with whom we share our relationships do not have the relevant kind of value only because they have a place in our ground projects or share with us certain relationships. While reasons of partiality are reasons to give special treatment within special relationships, the ground of such reasons is in the value of individuals as they stand in their own rights, not in the ethical significance of relationships themselves.

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So far, I have developed and argued for the individuals view by focusing on the individuals with whom we share special relationships and asking what we should do for them. I have not said much about why we should not do the same things for individuals with whom we do not share special relationships. To that extent, I have not shown why the reasons found on the individuals view can count as special reasons, or as reasons to treat some people differently from others. That is the subject of the next chapter.

Chapter 5 My Response to Your Value

Partiality and the Value of Individuals You have reasons to give special treatment to people with whom you share special relationships. Where do these reasons come from? According to the individuals view (or my version of it) they come from the value of the individuals with whom your special relationships are shared. If you ask why you have reason to do something special for your friend, then the answer, I say, is that your act would advance your friend’s good, in some respect or other; it would further his best interests, manifest concern or respect for his autonomy, or help him to become a more excellent human being. A reason of partiality, though, is a reason to treat one person differently from others, and people who are not your friends do have interests, are autonomous, and can flourish; in these respects, they are no different from your friend. If we are focusing on the value held by your friend in her own right, then it would seem that any explanation of why you should advance your friend’s good would also be an explanation of why you should advance the good of everyone else. We still have no explanation of how you could have reason to treat your friend differently from how you treat other people, or of how the individuals view could make reasons of partiality look like special reasons. This is the main problem for the individuals view.

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Another way to state the main problem for the individuals view is to say that the view does not seem equipped to solve the problem of partiality. People are valuable because of how they are inherently. Nobody is more valuable just because she shares some special relationship with you. So why should you give different treatment to those with whom you share special relationships? Behind the puzzle of partiality, and behind the main problem for the individuals view, is the assumption that if two entities have the same kinds of value, then any reasons generated by the value of the first entity must also be generated by the value of the second entity. If the individuals view is to succeed, then it must challenge that assumption. It must find a way to say that you can have a reason to give certain treatment to one person, because he has a certain value, without having the same reason to give the same treatment to another person, even though she has the same value. I want to show that the individuals view, properly understood, can challenge that assumption and solve the main problem for the view—­and solve the puzzle of partiality. More accurately, I think that the individuals view can offer as good a solution to the puzzle of partiality as can reasonably be hoped for and, in any case, just as good a solution as can be offered by either the projects view or the relationships view. In making my case, I begin by returning to the projects view and the relationships view, taking a more critical look at their attempts to explain why reasons of partiality are special reasons.

A Problem for All Think again about Williams’s famous case of the person standing on a pier, deciding whom to save from drowning. Suppose that you are the one standing on the pier. To your left, there is a man drowning in the water, and to your right, there is another. You have time to save one of the men, but not both. The man on the left is a stranger, and the man on your right is your husband. They are both people who matter. We may presume that they are equally important in their own rights and have equally valuable

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lives to live. What reason could you have to save your husband on the right rather than the stranger on the left? We could answer by saying that the value held inherently by the two people in the water is not all that matters. In the spirit of the projects view, we could say that you also need to pay attention to the ethical significance of ground projects, and your husband has a place in your projects that the stranger does not. In the spirit of the relationships view, we could say that you also need to pay attention to the ethical significance of relationships, and you share a significant relationship with your husband that you do not share with the stranger. But neither of these claims, as so far expressed, makes a difference to the underlying problem. Grant that projects generate reasons. Your husband has a special place in your projects, true, but the stranger, we may presume, has an equally special place in the projects of other people. Ground projects are at stake on both sides of the pier. There are people who care about the stranger just as much as you care about your husband, and no reason to presume that the projects that depend upon your husband’s survival are any more important than the projects that depend upon the stranger’s survival. To show that you have a special reason to save your husband, it is not enough to say that projects generate reasons. We need to say why some projects—­your projects—­generate special reasons for you, while other projects—­like the projects of the people who love the stranger—­do not. Now grant that relationships, considered in their own rights, generate reasons. Yes, the man on the right is your husband, but the man on the left, we may presume, is somebody’s husband too. The stranger’s marriage, we may presume, is just as valuable as your marriage. So, again, it is not enough to say that relationships generate reasons. We need to say why one relationship—­your marriage—­ produces special reasons for you, while other relationships—­like the stranger’s relationships—­do not. When the projects view and the relationships view are expressed in their most rudimentary forms, they too are subject to versions of the main problem for the individuals view. They need to say more before they can claim to offer a solution to the puzzle of partiality. They need to do more than just point to extra enti-

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ties, like projects and relationships, and say that those entities are ethically significant. They need to say more to explain how some projects or relationships could generate certain reasons for you, while other equally valuable projects or relationships generate different reasons for others.

Special Reasons and the Projects View The projects view can easily say more. The reasons generated by projects, it can say, are not simply additional to the reasons produced by the self-­standing value of individuals but are also of a different kind. You need to respond to the inherent value of all people, the projects view can say, but you do not need to respond to the projects of all people. As you stand on the pier you do not need to think about all the projects at stake in your decision about whether to save your husband or the stranger. You can concentrate on your projects. The projects of other people, like the stranger and the people who care about him, may matter, but they do not matter for you—­not in the way your own projects do, anyway. This is a natural answer on behalf of the projects view because it follows from the considerations that motivate the view in the first place. In arguing that ground projects are sources of reasons, proponents of the projects view give reasons to think that ground projects have special importance for the agents whose projects they are. Proponents of the projects view say that you must have a special concern for your own ground projects in order to count truly as an agent, or in order to have a distinctive identity as a person, or in order to have the kind of self-­understanding you need if you are to have any commitments at all. There is then a special significance, for proponents of the projects view, in individuals’ having special concern for their own projects.1 Reasons generated by ground projects, then, can naturally be seen as agent-­relative reasons. For various expressions of these ideas, see Williams, “Persons, Character and Morality”; Rorty, “Justice as a Larger Loyalty”; Wolf, “Morality and Partiality”; and (for an especially clear account) Stroud, “Permissible Partiality, Projects, and Plural Agency,” pp. 141–­143. 1

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The projects view can explain why projects produce agent-­ relative reasons, and to that extent it can explain why different projects generate different reasons for different agents and can thereby solve the problem of partiality. The method by which it solves the puzzle, however, leads it into other problems. Reasons of partiality, on the projects view, arise from certain subjective attitudes that differ between different individuals. Different people have different ground projects, and that is why different people, on the projects view, have different reasons. As we saw in objecting to the projects view in chapter 2, however, differences in individual subjective attitudes cannot plausibly be held to underlie the kinds of differences in norms that we find when we look at the ethics of partiality—­not in any straightforward fashion, anyway. The problem is that the differences in the norms of partiality to which different agents are subject do not correspond to differences in their subjective attitudes. You can have duties of partiality within a certain relationship whether you think you have them or not, and whether you are subjectively committed to the relevant relationship or not. You can be allowed to show partiality of a certain kind toward one individual (like your child) but not toward another individual (like your neighbor’s child), regardless of how the two individuals figure in your subjective goals and projects. The projects view can perhaps explain why you are permitted to give special treatment to someone you love. If we are convinced that ground projects produce reasons, then we will understand why you could legitimately prioritize your own proj­ ects over others’ projects. We will then see why you can le­giti­mately give special treatment to the individuals to whom you are committed through your having certain ground projects, even when other individuals are, from the impartial point of view, equally deserving. But the projects view—­and differences in individuals’ subjective attitudes generally—­ cannot explain how norms of partiality can include agent-­relative ethical requirements and restrictions. When we take reasons of partiality to be grounded in individuals’ subjective commitments, we can make such reasons agent-­relative, but not in the right ways. That is how the projects view’s solution to the puzzle of partiality leads it into other problems.

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Special Reasons and the Relationships View According to the relationships view, the ground of norms of partiality is in the ethical significance of relationships. The challenge for the relationships view is to say how our own relationships could generate special reasons for us, while other relationships, equally significant in their own rights, do not. An additional example might make the challenge sharper. We may say that you have reason to do something special for a friend, because you share with her a friendship and friendships generate reasons. As well as having opportunities to do good things within your own friendship, however, you may have opportunities to do good things for other friendships between other people. Perhaps you are a very skilled and efficient counselor with a special talent for persuading people to act well toward their friends. You may conceivably face a situation in which you must choose between acting well toward your own friend, on the one hand, and persuading several other people to act well toward their friends, on the other. Others’ friendships matter just as much as yours, objectively speaking, so it is not clear, without further explanation, why attention to the ethical significance of friendship should yield a reason, on the whole, for you to prioritize your friend. A reason of partiality, however, is a reason to act well within in a relationship, not a reason to promote the performance of good acts within relationships generally. Proponents of the projects view, as we have seen, can explain why the reasons generated by projects are agent-­relative by appealing to their independent reasons for thinking that projects generate reasons in the first place. Proponents of the relationships view cannot give an analogous explanation, because they do not give independent reasons for thinking that relationships generate reasons. To the extent to which anyone gives an argument for thinking that relationships generate reasons, the argument is just that relationships must generate reasons in order to provide an explanation of the ethics of partiality.2 Accordingly, most propo2 See, for example, the structure of the arguments in Scheffler, Boundaries and Allegiances, p. 100; Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, p. 161; and Jeske, Rationality and Moral Theory, chs. 2–­4.

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nents of the relationships view do not try to explain why relationships generate special reasons. Why are my valuable relationships of special significance for me, while your relationships are of special significance for you? Why are the reasons produced by relationships agent-­relative, not agent-­neutral? The answer given by most proponents of the relationships view, whether explicitly or implicitly, is: “They just are.”3 Samuel Scheffler is a possible exception. Scheffler confronts the question about agent-­relativity directly, and he makes some brief remarks about how his version of the relationships view could respond to it. On Scheffler’s view, we have reasons of partiality because we value relationships noninstrumentally: [T]here is an important difference between recognizing the value of a relationship in which one is not a participant and valuing a relationship of one’s own. The value of the relationships may be—­and may be seen to be—­the same. But they will affect one’s perceived reasons for action in different ways. If I value a relationship in which I am a participant, then I will treat that relationship as presenting me with reasons that differ from the reasons generated by other relationships of the same type in which I am not a participant. And, of course, the participants in those other relationships will take a reciprocal view of my relationship and the reasons it generates. In general, then, one will see one’s own relationships as giving one reasons for action of a kind that other relationships do not. That is simply what is involved in valuing a relationship of one’s own.4 It is simply a fact about how we value relationships, according to Scheffler, that we take our own relationships to generate reasons for us that other relationships do not. It is simply a fact about human valuing that we take the reasons generated by relationships to be agent-­relative and, presumably, to underlie agent-­relative Jeske is most forthright in giving this answer; see Rationality and Moral Theory, especially pp. 63–­64. See also the discussion in Kolodny, “Which Relationships Justify Partiality? General Considerations and Problem Cases,” pp. 170–­177. 4 “Projects, Relationships, and Reasons,” p. 249. Scheffler makes very similar remarks on pp. 104–­105 of “Morality and Reasonable Partiality.” 3

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ethical requirements and restrictions. There are two possible readings of Scheffler’s argument. On the first reading, Scheffler is not trying to explain why reasons generated by relationships are agent-­relative but is instead offering his own version of the suggestion that they just are. As a matter of fact, Scheffler says, we just do value our own relationships differently from other relationships. To encode our patterns of valuing within an account of reasons of partiality, he may then continue, we should say that the reasons produced by our own relationships just are different from the reasons produced by others. There is a second reading of Scheffler’s argument, however, perhaps supported by some of his comments elsewhere, on which he is doing something more ambitious.5 On this second reading, Scheffler does mean to explain why the reasons produced by relationships are agent-­relative. Our own relationships generate special reasons for us, Scheffler may be saying, because we value them differently from other relationships. You may then have reason to act well within your friendship, in preference to promoting the cause of friendship generally, because you have a special way of valuing your own friendship—­and, we may add in the spirit of Scheffler’s argument, because your way of valuing your own friendship is not anomalous but expresses a characteristic mode of human valuing. It is not just you who has this way of valuing your relationships; most normal people value their relationships in this way too. Scheffler’s view, on the second reading, can explain why there are differences in people’s reasons of partiality. You and I each value certain relationships noninstrumentally. You value your relationships in ways that lead you to take yourself to have certain reasons generated by those relationships but not by others. I value my relationships in ways that lead me to take myself to have certain reasons generated by those relationships but not by others. So, it is reasonable to allow you to act on the reasons you take yourself to have in your relationships—­to accept that those reasons are real reasons—­and to allow me to act on the reasons I take See “Projects, Relationships, and Reasons,” p. 258, n. 10; and “Morality and Reasonable Partiality,” pp. 101–­106. 5

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myself to have in my relationships. So your reasons, as generated by relationships, are different from mine. As far as this goes, Scheffler then has an explanation of the agent-­relativity of reasons of partiality and a positive solution to the puzzle of partiality. If that is how we understand Scheffler’s suggestion, then his version of the relationships view has something in common with the projects view. Like the projects view, it explains reasons of partiality by reference to our subjective attitudes toward our relationships. Where the projects view refers to the place relationships take in people’s ground projects, Scheffler’s view refers to the place relationships take in people’s values. And like the projects view, Scheffler’s version of the relationships view, so understood, can give a reasonably good answer to the question of why we are permitted to give special treatment to the people with whom we share special relationships. On Scheffler’s story about valuing, we—­we humans—­characteristically value our own relationships in a way that involves judging ourselves to have reasons to treat some people differently from others. If we take ourselves to have certain reasons, and do so as an expression of a characteristic mode of human valuing, then perhaps there is a presumption in favor of the conclusion that we are permitted to act upon those putative reasons. Perhaps it would be odd to agree that humans characteristically believe themselves to have certain reasons, while denying that we are (even) permitted to act on them. Like the projects view, however, Scheffler’s view, so understood, purchases its ability to explain the agent-­relativity of permissions of partiality at the cost of the ability to explain how special relationships can give rise to special ethical requirements and restrictions. Requirements and restrictions on acts of partiality do not arise straightforwardly from an individual’s subjective attitudes, including her ways of valuing her relationships. Imagine a parent who values his relationship with his neighbor’s son noninstrumentally, in a way that involves his thinking that he has special reasons to give his neighbor’s son favorable treatment, but who does not similarly value his relationship with his own son. Imagine a member of a hateful political party who values her relationship with the party noninstrumentally, taking it to give her special reasons to promote the party’s interests. Imag-

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ine that you are the skilled and efficient friendship counselor and that you are genuinely unsure about whether you should prioritize acting well within your own friendships over encouraging others to act well within theirs, just considering the value of the relationships involved. The explanation of why your reasons of partiality really direct you to act well within your own friendships, why the party member does not really have reason to promote the interests of the party, and why the parent really has special reasons regarding his own son cannot appeal to the values of the agents concerned. The whole problem is that their reasons are not reflected in their values. Their reasons of partiality must come from somewhere other than their own ways of valuing their own relationships. A possible response, in the spirit of some of Scheffler’s formulations, is to say that the nature of our reasons of partiality is determined not by how we as particular individuals value our relationships but instead by how humans characteristically value their relationships. The point of the examples just given, on this response, is that they involve agents who fail to exhibit characteristic human modes of valuing. Some particular parents do not value their relationships with their own children noninstrumentally, but because characteristically parents do, perhaps there exist reasons for all parents. The response on behalf of Scheffler’s view does not solve the deeper problem, however. First, it is very doubtful that truths about characteristic human valuing always correspond to truths about our reasons of partiality. The person who values her relationship with the hateful political party, for example, is wrong to believe that she has special reasons to favor the party, but it is not at all clear that she thereby fails to exhibit a characteristic mode of human valuing. Second, truths about characteristic human values do not carry the normative force that they would need to carry if they were to generate genuine reasons for particular individuals who fail to exhibit those values. The explanation of why you have a certain reason cannot be that most humans in your situation would believe themselves to have that reason. The explanation of why your reasons of partiality, as the skilled and efficient friendship counselor,

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direct you to act well within your own friendships, rather than to promote the cause of friendship generally, is not that that is what most humans would think they should do. Ethical requirements and restrictions need a firmer foundation than that. Scheffler’s version of the relationships view, we have seen, can be construed either as saying that relationships simply do generate agent-­relative reasons or as offering an explanation of why relationships generate agent-­relative reasons—­an explanation that calls upon the ways in which we happen to value our relationships. Construed in the second way, as an attempt to say why relationships generate agent-­relative reasons, the view does no better than the projects view; it offers a good explanation of agent-­ relative permissions of partiality, but that is it. The best option for Scheffler’s version of the relationships view, then, is to stick with the first construal of the view and hence with the suggestion embedded in most versions of the relationships view. The relationships view should say that norms generated by relationships just are agent-­relative and just do include moral requirements and restrictions. In endorsing this suggestion, the relationships view makes a claim about where the explanation of reasons of partiality must come to an end. The idea is that wherever there is a relationship, of a certain kind, there exist reasons, of a certain kind, and there is no deeper explanation of why this should be the case. On the relationships view, it is a “primitive” fact, as we might put it, that a relationship generates particular norms. The relationships view solves the puzzle of partiality by saying that relationships generate norms and then by endorsing “primitivism” about the character of those norms. Why (on the relationships view) should we give special treatment to the people with whom we share special relationships, even though other people matter just as much? Because relationships themselves are ethically significant; they are valuable in their own rights or stand themselves as sources of reasons. Why should we pay special attention to the relationships in which we ourselves participate, even though other relationships are just as ethically significant? To this, on the relationships view, there is no answer. We just should.

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Progress Report and Preview So far in this chapter, I have tried to show that the main objection to the individuals view can be translated into a challenge to the projects view and a challenge to the relationships view, and that the projects view and the relationships view are less successful in meeting the challenge than it would initially appear. The main objection to the individuals view is that it seems unable to say why you should respond differently to the individuals with whom you share special relationships, even though those individuals are no more inherently valuable than other individuals. The challenge for the projects view is to say why you should show a special concern for your own projects, even though your projects are no more inherently important than the projects of others. The challenge for the relationships view is to say why you should show a special concern for the ethical significance of the relationships in which you participate, even though your relationships are no more inherently ethically significant than relationships in which you do not participate. Faced with that challenge, a defender of the projects view or the relationships view can respond by saying that what reasons you have regarding a special relationship depends upon how you yourself think about that relationship—­how the relationship figures in your projects or how you yourself value the relationship. This line of response, however, yields an explanation only of how your own projects or relationships may give you special permissions. It does not explain how your own projects or relationships can generate other kinds of norms of partiality, including special ethical requirements and restrictions. A different strategy is pursued, whether implicitly or explicitly, in most versions of the relationships view: this is the primitivist strategy. The primitivist says that it simply is the case that the norms generated within special relationships are agent-­relative, and that it simply is the case that those norms include ethical requirements and restrictions; no further explanation, says the primitivist, can be given. With all of that in the background, the next part of this chapter responds to the main objection to the individuals view. I begin by arguing that the individuals view can give a response to the objec-

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tion that is just as good as the primitivist response given by the relationships view. Then I try to show that the response on behalf of the individuals view can be improved and that, once improved, it is plausible on its own terms. In introducing the individuals view in chapter 1, I mentioned three versions of the view: a consequentialist version, a Kantian version, and a particularist version. To see how the individuals view might respond to the main objection, I begin by looking at the resources offered by each of these three versions of the view. (It might be worth saying again: this three-­way distinction between traditions in moral theory is similar to but not the same as the three-­way distinction made in the previous chapter between different traditions of thought about the value held by persons.)

A Consequentialist Version of the Individuals View On an impartialist consequentialist theory, all ethical reasons are derived from considerations of what makes the world better, as seen from an impartial point of view. If an impartialist consequentialist theory is carefully expressed, then it can incorporate much of what is compelling about the individuals view.6 A consequentialist can say that our reasons of partiality are reasons to do good things in response to the value of the particular individuals with whom we share our special relationships, but also that the explanation of why we have reasons to do those things (and not others) for those individuals (and not others) is that we thereby bring about good consequences, as seen from the impartial point of view. Why, for example, should you give special treatment to your own child? The consequentialist may answer that your child is 6 Goodin appears to incorporate the central claim of the individuals view—­that reasons of partiality are grounded in the self-­ standing value of individuals—­ explicitly within a consequentialist theory, in his Protecting the Vulnerable; see especially pp. 11, 33–­35. Pettit also appears to be committed to something very close to the individuals view, and to place it within a broader consequentialist theory, in his “The Paradox of Loyalty,” and in his discussion of “motivational particularism” in “The Consequentialist Perspective,” pp. 97–­99.

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valuable and it matters that things go well for her. When you are moved to action directly by thoughts of your child’s good, you are then moved by considerations that truly ground your reasons to act. The reason why you should do good things for your child is that your child has needs and interests that matter, and when you act well toward her you meet those needs and serve those interests. Yes, but other children are valuable too, so why should you have special reasons arising from the value of your own child, without having similar reasons regarding all other children? Because, the consequentialist will say, when you give a special response to the value of your own child, you make the world as a whole a better place. The consequentialist will tell a story that takes equal account of the needs and interests of all children and leads to the conclusion that we should all pay special attention to our own. That story could take any of a number of forms, depending upon the variety of consequentialism being advanced. The consequentialist might say that as a matter of fact you are able to do more for your child than you can do for other children, so the most efficient means by which you can promote the general good is by concentrating on the good of your own child. Or the consequentialist might say that as a general rule the world is better if parents give special attention to their own children, so we should follow the rule that every parent should put her own children first, as opposed to other possible rules; this is the kind of story that might be told by a rule consequentialist. Or the consequentialist might say that when you show special concern for your own children, you manifest a certain character trait, where the world is better on the whole if people manifest that trait as compared to other traits; this is the kind of story that might be told by a virtue consequentialist. The point, for the consequentialist version of the individuals view, is that reasons of partiality arise in response to the self-­standing value of particular individuals, and we can explain why those reasons take their distinctive form by explaining how our acting on such reasons has good consequences, impartially assessed. However exactly the consequentialist view is expressed, its great strength is that it places norms of partiality within a broader

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context. For the consequentialist, how you should behave within a particular relationship depends upon how relationships like yours conduce to the general improvement of the world. The crucial truth in the consequentialist view is that the standards to which we are subject within our special relationships are, partly, social standards and can be evaluated as such. What you ought to do for a friend, for example, depends partly upon how friendship is understood within your society. Is yours a society in which you are expected to be there to help a friend move house; or to take in your friend and her family if they are in need; or, if you have a financial windfall, to share your wealth with your friends? And whether those are expectations to which friends ought to be answerable, in your society, is a question of what is best for your society and for the world as a whole. Is it better or worse, on the whole, if we conceive of a good friend as someone who would help a friend move house, take in a friend in need, or share a financial windfall? The accompanying weakness of the consequentialist picture, however, is that it makes our norms of partiality depend too much upon assessments from the impartial point of view. It is doubtful that the picture can adequately account for some of the most obvious truths about the ethics of partiality. In discussing the projects view in chapter 2, I gave the case of a parent who needs to choose between giving her child the treatment he needs for his severe asthma, on the one hand, and making a donation that will save several children from blindness, on the other. The parent appears clearly to have the duty to care first for her child, but it is hopeful, at best, to think that the consequentialist view, which pays equal attention to the interests of all the children concerned, will be able to generate such a duty. Often, it would seem, when we act upon our reasons of partiality, we do not make the world better on the whole. While the consequentialist picture has the resources to explain the form of reasons of partiality—­how we could have (derived) agent-­relative reasons, and how they could be morally significant—­it will struggle to explain their content. A second result of the consequentialist picture’s dependence upon impartial assessment is that it leads to a conflict with the

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phenomenology of partiality. The consequentialist can say that our reasons of partiality are grounded in the value of the individuals with whom we share special relationships, and to that extent it can leave the phenomenology of partiality intact. The view refers to considerations of overall goodness, however, in explaining why we have those reasons of partiality, and that means that we can only know what we ought to do within our special relationships once we pay attention to the overall picture. Often the experience of finding reason to act well toward someone with whom you share a special relationship is an experience of focusing closely on that person, looking at her in isolation from others and hence not from the impartial point of view. Your reasons of partiality often become more evident the more you focus on the individual in front of you and the less attention you pay to the wider context. The norms of partiality can be responsive in important respects to values that appear from a more objective point of view—­what you have reason to do for your friend depends partly upon how friendship is understood in your society—­but it would be a mistake to think, so far as the phenomenology of partiality is concerned, that norms of partiality are determined always and only by impartial considerations. As you see your husband struggle in the water, for example, you may find yourself called on to act as a direct response to his needs, independently of any sense of what spouses ought to do generally or of what will improve the world as seen from the impartial point of view. When you favor your own child over other more needy children, you may well have the experience of thinking, “This is not an act that would be recommended from the impartial point of view, and I do not think that it is something that parents in general do or should do for their children, but it is what my child needs, and that is good enough reason for me.” None of this is to suggest that the reasons you find within your relationships cannot be outweighed by impartial reasons. Whatever we say about the nature of reasons of partiality, we should admit that they are not the only reasons there are. The question, rather, is about what our reasons of partiality tell us to do, whether or not that is what we have reason to do, all things considered. The phenomenology of partiality suggests that there is a differ-

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ence between seeing what reasons of partiality you have and seeing what you ought to do from an impartial point of view. The consequentialist can accept that we do not in fact find our reasons of partiality by adopting the impartial point of view, and may even say that it is a good thing that we are not moved within our relationships by considerations that appear from the impartial point of view. Perhaps the world is better on the whole if people often focus closely on those with whom they share personal relationships, rather than always thinking impartially. But the consequentialist will still have to say that when we take ourselves to have reasons that are not answerable to assessments from the impartial point of view, we make a mistake. And, as I argued in chapter 4, if a view says that our ordinary experience of partiality is mistaken, then we have good reason to reject it.

A Kantian Version of the Individuals View Another way to try to bring the individuals view within a broader impartialist moral theory is to make a Kantian claim about how we should respond to the value of persons.7 The Kantian claim is that every person has a value that defies comparison; every person has a dignity, not a price. Within the Kantian framework, this value is understood to flow from the autonomy of persons, so that a person has value in his capacity as a rational agent who can act according to his own autonomous will. In principle, though, the Kantian thought could be adapted so as to apply to the value held by persons in their capacities as creatures with interests, or as beings that can flourish. The important claim, for present purposes, is that the value of a person can be appreciated from an impartial point of view and by its nature defies comparison. To say that a value defies comparison is to say that you cannot properly appreciate it while also weighing up its demands against the demands made by other values. Suppose I were to explain the value of a great work of art by comparing it with other valuable 7

374.

I am following the account in Velleman, “Love as a Moral Emotion,” pp. 364–­

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items, or by placing it along some external measure of value; suppose I were to say that this painting is as valuable as that painting plus that sculpture plus that cathedral, or that the beauty of this symphony is equivalent in value to US$400,000. Once I am in the game of making such comparisons, it might plausibly be thought, I have shown myself to misunderstand the very nature of the value that the work of art holds. If persons have value of a kind that defies comparison, then in perceiving the value of a person you may find not only that it makes demands on you but also that the force of those demands cannot be meaningfully compared with the force of other demands. A parent who fully appreciates the value of her child, for example, may resist any comparison between the importance of giving good treatment to her child and the importance of giving good treatment to other children—­not because she does not think that other children are valuable, but because the activity of comparing children is inherently misguided. On the Kantian view, it can make sense to give special treatment to one person over others, even though all persons have the same value, because the proper response to the value of any one person is to focus on the demands it makes of you, without comparing them to any demands coming from elsewhere. As J. David Velleman puts it, the value of a person “calls for a response to the object in itself, not in comparison with others.”8 The Kantian view captures something central to the phenomenology of partiality. It seems exactly right to say that when we give special treatment to someone with whom we share a special relationship, we often find ourselves to be responding appropriately to her value, as it stands in its own right, not as it compares to the value of other people. As we respond to the value of particular individuals, the value of other individuals seems to be, somehow, irrelevant. One problem for the Kantian view, as so far developed, is that it is focused much more on permitting partiality than on explaining how partiality could be a matter of moral duty, or the subject of its own distinctive set of ethical requirements and restrictions. 8

Velleman, “Love as a Moral Emotion,” p. 364.

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That you have intimate acquaintance with the value of one person may explain why you find reason to give her treatment that you do not extend to people in general. But the Kantian view does not appear to have the resources to say why you should focus on the value of some people, rather than others, or why you must respond to that value in some ways, but not in others. All people have incomparable value, which merits attention in its own right. Why would it be wrong of you to focus on the value of your neighbor’s child, at the expense of the value of your own? In this respect, the Kantian view turns out to be similar to the projects view, and to Scheffler’s version of the relationships view as interpreted on the second reading above. While the Kantian view grounds our reasons of partiality in the value of individuals, it does so by reference to certain of our own subjective attitudes. We have reasons to respond to the value of some individuals, and not others, because we perceive—­or are vulnerable to, or are struck by—­the value of those individuals, and not others. The view, as a result, does not appear able to take a critical stance on our patterns of perceiving and responding to the value of individuals. The view as it stands might explain permissions of partiality, but it does not explain partiality’s ethical requirements and restrictions. A further problem for the Kantian view is that its claim about incomparability, taken literally, is implausible. It is often easy to compare the importance of demands made by one person’s value with the importance of demands made by the value of others. If you must choose between treating your child’s asthma and saving several other children from blindness, then you may choose to put your child’s interests first, but you could not say that there is no comparison in importance to be made between the two options. You can at least see that if a neutral observer had the choice between funding your child’s asthma treatment and funding the treatment of several other children for blindness, then she would have greater reason to give money to save the several children from blindness. That, really, is all we need in order to see that the needs of your child can indeed be compared, perfectly sensibly, with the needs of others. The Kantian view suggests that we find reasons of partiality partly through a refusal to compare the de-

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mands made by the value of one person with the demands made by the value of another. But what is more accurate to say, and still in need of explanation, is that we often compare the demands made by the value of one person with the demands made by the value of another, find that the demands made on behalf of the second person are more important, and yet find reason to follow the demands made on behalf of the first person nevertheless.

A Particularist Version of the Individuals View The consequentialist version of the individuals view tries to explain the character of reasons of partiality by identifying a role that partiality can play in bringing about good consequences, as assessed from an impartial point of view. The Kantian version tries to explain reasons of partiality by saying that persons, even when viewed impartially, possess a kind of value that, once encountered in a particular person, demands special treatment. Each of these explanations goes further than the explanation provided by the primitivist relationships view, which says that relationships just do generate agent-­relative reasons: no need to explain why. The consequentialist story and the Kantian story each face objections. Perhaps the individuals view will be more successful if it takes its lead from the relationships view and does a little less explaining. On the story told by the primitivist version of the relationships view, it is a primitive fact that relationships, considered in their own rights, generate agent-­ relative norms, including agent-­ relative ethical requirements and restrictions. An analogous story on behalf of the individuals view would posit an analogous primitive fact about norms generated by the value of individuals. It is easy to assume that any reasons generated by the value of individuals must be, at the deepest level, agent-­neutral. When we talk of reasons arising from the innate dignity of persons, for example, or from persons’ innate susceptibility to suffering, we talk of reasons why every person should respect the rights of every other person, and why every person should refrain from causing unnecessary pain to any other person.

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It is conceivable, however, that some reasons produced by the value of individuals are agent-­relative, and it is conceivable that the innate value of individuals can underlie agent-­relative moral requirements and restrictions. When you ask why you have reasons to perform certain acts for a friend, for example, the answer could be that your friend is valuable and the acts in question will advance her good; that is why you should perform them. And when we ask why your friend’s value generates special reasons for you, the answer, perhaps, is that it just does. That an act would advance a particular person’s good, in a particular respect, may be a reason for one person to perform the act—­may even give one person a duty to perform the act—­without being a reason for someone else to perform the act. And your having reason to advance the good of one person, in a particular respect, need not mean that you have reason to advance the good of every other person, even in that same respect. These could be primitive truths about the reasons produced by the value of the person concerned, admitting of no further explanation.

The Particularist View Restated: Favorers and Enablers Let me explain the idea a little differently, and at greater length, using some distinctions developed by Jonathan Dancy. I start by showing how Dancy’s distinctions help generate a clearer statement of Scheffler’s version of the relationships view (understood on the primitivist reading above) and then show how they can help express an analogous primitivist version of the individuals view. Scheffler says that you find yourself to have reasons of partiality because you value your relationships noninstrumentally. You do not find your relationships to be more valuable than other relationships, on Scheffler’s view, but you do find them to produce reasons for you that they do not produce for others, as you find others’ relationships to produce reasons for them that they do not produce for you. The fact that a relationship is yours, then, does not make the relationship more valuable, but it does make a dif-

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ference to the reasons the relationship produces. For Scheffler, the fact that a relationship is yours is not itself a reason, but it is somehow relevant in determining what reasons you have. Using Dancy’s terminology, Scheffler’s view can be expressed as making claims about which facts are “favorers” and which facts are “enablers.” In Dancy’s terms, it is possible for one fact to favor an action and for a different fact to enable the first fact to favor the action. A favorer is a “reason-­giving fact,” whereas an enabler is a fact that allows another fact to be a reason-­giving fact, without being a reason-­giving fact itself. Here is one of Dancy’s examples.9 Suppose you promised to collect me from the airport. The fact that you made the promise is then a reason for you to collect me from the airport; it favors your collecting me from the airport; it is a favorer for your collecting me from the airport; it is a reason-­giving fact. The fact that you made the promise would not be a reason for you to collect me from the airport, however, if you had made the promise under duress. So, the fact that your promise was not made under duress is a further fact that is somehow relevant to your having reason to collect me from the airport. But its relevance does not consist in its being a further reason, or a further favorer. It is not as though you have two reasons to collect me from the airport: one, that you promised, and two, that you did not make your promise under duress. Instead, the fact that your promise was not made under duress is an enabler. It enables the fact that you promised to collect me from the airport to favor your collecting me from the airport. It is an example of a fact that enables you to have a certain reason, without itself being a reason.10 Applying Dancy’s terminology to Scheffler’s view, we can say that the fact that a relationship is noninstrumentally valuable can act as a favorer—­it can be a reason of partiality—­and the fact that you yourself participate in the relationship can act as an enabler—­it enables the first fact to be a reason of partiality for you. Your reason to give special treatment within a special relationship Ethics without Principles, 38–­40. I should say: this is Dancy’s example, plus some extra details of my own. 10 Dancy, Ethics without Principles, 38–­41. 9

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is that the relationship is noninstrumentally valuable.11 That fact stands as a special reason for you because you are a party to the relationship. None of this is to explain why the fact that you participate in a relationship should enable facts about the value of the relationship to be special reasons for you. The view does not offer an explanation at this point, and that is what makes it a primitivist view. That you participate in a relationship just does enable facts about the relationship’s value to count as special reasons for you, on the primitivist version of Scheffler’s relationships view. Here is how we can give an analogous presentation of the primitivist version of the individuals view. On this view, reasons of partiality are facts about the value of individuals, so when you give special treatment within a special relationship your reason for acting is that your act would be good for the person with whom your relationship is shared. This is your reason-­giving fact; it is the favorer for your action. What enables that fact to be your reason—­ what enables it to be a favorer—­is the further fact that this person is someone with whom you share a particular relationship. Speaking generally, on the particularist version of the individuals view, facts about the value of individuals are reasons, and facts about relationships are enablers. The fact that you share a relationship with someone is not itself a reason of partiality, but it enables other facts to be reasons of partiality. As with the primitivist version of the relationships view, there is no explanation here of why the fact that you share a relationship with someone should enable her self-­standing value to generate special reasons for you. That you share a special relationship with someone, on the primitivist version of the individuals view, just does enable her value to generate special reasons for you. For Scheffler’s relationships view, the fact “I participate in this friendship” enables facts about the value of the friendship to be special reasons, without itself being a reason. The analogous fact for the 11 It is not clear what facts count as reasons of partiality, for Scheffler. He says that to value noninstrumentally a relationship in which you participate is to find it to generate special reasons for you. Perhaps this suggests that on Scheffler’s view, the fact “This relationship is non-­instrumentally valuable” is your reason; that, anyway, is what I shall assume.

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primitivist individuals view is “This person is my friend”; that fact is not itself a reason, but it enables facts about the value of the person to be special reasons for you. (A final note, while we are using distinctions from Dancy. As well as distinguishing favorers from enablers, Dancy draws attention to “intensifiers” and “attenuators.”12 An intensifier is a fact that makes an already-­existing reason a stronger reason, and an attenuator is a fact that makes an already-­existing reason a weaker reason. The fact that you share a certain relationship with someone will often count as an intensifier, rather than an enabler, on the particularist version of the individuals view. Perhaps, for example, the fact that a person needs help favors your helping her, and the fact that the person in question is your friend makes that favoring relation stronger. Perhaps, that is to say, the fact that someone needs help is always a reason for you to provide him with help, but it is a much stronger reason if the person needing help is your friend.)

Is the Particularist View Still a Version of the Individuals View? Once the individuals view takes on primitivism about the character of reasons of partiality, it becomes trickier to distinguish it from the relationships view. I have just set a version of the relationships view apart from a version of the individuals view by saying that the former takes facts about relationships to favor acts of partiality, whereas the latter takes facts about relationships to enable other facts to favor acts of partiality. Is there really an important distinction here? If a proponent of the individuals view is happy to say that facts about relationships make a difference to our reasons, why not just say that they are our reasons? To keep the individuals view from merging with the relationships view, we need to give it a formulation on which it can take advantage of the arguments for the individuals view, given in chapter 4, and avoid the arguments against the relationships view, 12

Ethics without Principles, pp. 41–­42.

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given in chapter 3. Accordingly, in formulating the individuals view, even on its primitivist version, we should insist that relationships are not valuable for their own sakes, even though they can make a difference to what we should do in response to the things that are: individuals. We can then avoid saying that relationships ought to be maintained or promulgated just for the sake of it, and we can continue to say that the content of reasons of partiality must always be set by considerations of what is good for individuals, not of what is good for relationships. And, in approaching questions about motivation, we should insist that the entity for the sake of which an agent acts, when she acts upon a reason of partiality, should always be another individual, not a relationship. As you act well toward a friend, the question to ask yourself is, “What should I, as this person’s friend, do for her?” and not, “What should I, as a participant in this friendship, do for it?” With sufficient subtlety, I think, the individuals view, even if it takes the character of reasons of partiality to be primitive, can keep for itself a real and consequential difference from the relationships view. The particularist version of the individuals view articulated here has a close relative in the literature. On Lawrence A. Blum’s view of reasons of partiality, which follows his interpretation of Iris Murdoch’s view about love, reasons of partiality are considerations of an individual’s “weal and woe for its own sake.”13 For Blum, these “Murdochian reasons” are by nature agent-­relative, so that my having a reason in response to one person’s good does not mean that I have the same reason regarding the good of everyone, or that everyone else has the same reason regarding the good of this person. Blum’s view is a kind of particularism, insofar as it says that acting morally is often a matter of responding to the particular values we encounter within particular situations.14 The value of a person can give you certain reasons within a given situation, on Blum’s view, without its being the case that the same Blum, Friendship, Altruism, and Morality, p. 76. Note that this is just one sense in which we can use the label “particularism.” There is no direct connection here with the “particularism” defended by Jonathan Dancy (see Dancy’s Ethics without Principles). 13 14

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kind of value in any person would give you similar reasons in any situation.15 It seems to me a fair expression of Blum’s view, though not one the Blum uses himself, to say that reasons of partiality are facts about the good of particular persons, and that those facts are enabled to be special reasons for particular people by facts about how people are related. Your reason to give special treatment to a friend arises from the value of your friend’s weal and woe for its own sake, and the situation within which that value comes to generate certain reasons for you is set by the background fact that the person shares with you a certain kind of friendship. The individuals view has the option of saying that that it is a primitive fact, admitting of no further explanation, that the value of an individual generates certain reasons, duties, and permissions for some agents, without generating the same reasons, duties, and permissions for other agents. The main objection to the individuals view is that it seems unable to explain why we have special reasons regarding the particular individuals with whom we share special relationships; it is an option for the individuals view to respond by saying, “We just do.” The puzzle of partiality is the puzzle of saying why we should treat some people differently from others, even when those others are no less inherently valuable; it is an option for the individuals view to respond by saying, “We just should.” These are not very satisfying responses, but they are analogous to the responses given by the most plausible version of the relationships view. The availability of the particularist version of the individuals view shows that the individuals view is in no more trouble than its closest rival, even at its point of greatest weakness.

Toward a Theory The consequentialist, Kantian, and particularist versions of the individuals view each have something to offer. The consequentialist version links the norms governing individual special relationships with considerations of the good of society as a whole, the Kantian version expresses the attractive idea that we do not 15

See Moral Perception and Particularity, chs. 2–­3, especially pp. 18–­23.

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always need to compare the demands made by people with whom we share special relationships with the demands made by other people, and the particularist version shows that the individuals view does not need to be an ultimately impartialist view. None of these three versions of the individuals view, however, is satisfactory as it stands. The consequentialist version and the Kantian version each fail to capture the phenomenology of partiality, as well as facing other problems, and the particularist version gives up on explanation too quickly. In developing the individuals view from here, I shall aim to incorporate the most attractive elements of, while avoiding the main problems with, each of the consequentialist, Kantian, and particularist versions of the individuals view. On the individuals view as I shall develop it, primitivism about the character of reasons of partiality is not eliminated. There are some points at which we must say that certain reasons of partiality simply do exist and simply do have a certain structure and significance. But I want to show that the individuals view does not need to leave it there. There is more to be said about why we should give special treatment to those with whom we share special relationships, even though they are no more valuable than other people. I start with the question of how partiality can be permissible, on the individuals view, and then ask why partiality can be subject to its own special moral requirements and restrictions.

Incommensurability and Incomparability We often take ourselves to be justified in giving special treatment to someone with whom we share a special relationship, even when we would not extend such treatment to other people, and even though our giving such special treatment to one person precludes us from giving even better treatment to other people. If our attention is on the value of the individuals concerned, then how could we explain why such behavior is justified? Of the suggestions canvassed so far, the most enticing is the Kantian claim about the value of persons: as you respond properly to the value of one person, the value of other people becomes

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somehow irrelevant. In the background to the Kantian claim is the idea that persons have a dignity, not a price, interpreted as a claim that persons have a value of a kind that defies comparisons with other things of value. For reasons given earlier, that claim is difficult to believe, and does not fully capture the phenomenology of partiality. A modified version of the claim, however, is more plausible. Sometimes it is easy to compare the value of one thing with the value of another thing, and to do so along a single scale of value. Suppose that you are deciding whether to buy a particular book at one bookstore or another bookstore, and the only relevant difference is in price. The option of buying the book at the cheaper price is better than the option of buying it at the more expensive price. When you take the better of the two options, furthermore, nothing of value is lost. There is nothing to regret about your failure to get the book at a higher cost. In other cases, comparisons of value can be made, but not along a single scale of value. Suppose that you have a beautiful garden, a haven for native animals, in which all the plants are indigenous except for one large, magnificent, nonnative oak. Then the garden begins to fail, because the oak has grown too big; it is blocking the sunlight and taking the nutrients from the soil, leaving the indigenous plants unable to sustain themselves. Your first option is to destroy the oak and allow the native plants and animals to flourish. Your second option is to leave things as they are. It may be clear that the better option is to destroy the oak, because in the circumstances, its value is outweighed by the value of the continued flourishing of your native garden. Yet it may also be clear that in the destruction of the magnificent oak, something will be lost, and will not be replaced or compensated for by the flourishing of the native garden—­even though the flourishing of the native garden is more valuable. There is something to regret about the loss of the oak, even if its sacrifice is the best thing in the circumstances. In each of these two cases, you are faced with choices between comparable values. You can say, perfectly sensibly, that it is better to buy the book at the lower than at the higher price, and better to destroy the oak than to leave your native garden to fail. Only in

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the first case, however, are you faced with a choice between (as I shall put it) “commensurable” values. You can take the book at the lower over the higher price without loss, but you cannot take the native garden over the oak—­or the oak over the native garden—­ without losing something of value. The value of the garden may be greater than the value of the oak, but the garden’s value cannot cancel out or replace or fully compensate for the oak’s value. The values are comparable, but incommensurable.16

The Incommensurable Value of Persons When we compare significant goods for one person with significant goods for other people, the goods we compare are often incommensurable. Think again of your choice between paying for your child’s asthma treatment and paying for several children overseas to be treated for blindness. Leaving aside the question of how the two options are to be compared, the values at stake in the respective options are, in one respect, like the values of the native garden and the oak. It is important that your child receive asthma treatment, and there is something to regret about his failing to receive it, even when the alternative is to secure treatment for blindness for several children. The converse holds too; no matter what else happens, if the several children do not get the medical treatment they need, then that is a loss—­several losses—­that cannot be nullified or fully compensated for by the provision of goods to your child. The value of any person is incommensurable with the value of other persons, in one important sense. A failure to meet the demands made by a person’s value may always involve a loss, regardless of how much is done to meet the demands made by the value of other persons. But that is not to say that persons have incomparable value. Even where two values are incommensurable, the demands made by one may be more important than the demands 16 This is just one of the ways in which the terms “commensurability” and “incommensurability” may be used. For further discussion, see the papers collected in Chang, Incommensurability, Incomparability, and Practical Reason.

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made by the other. The value of treating several children for blindness may be incommensurable with, but also greater than, the value of treating your child for asthma. To this extent, a person is like a beautiful native garden or a magnificent oak. Like a garden or an oak, a person can have a value incommensurable with other values.

Points of View and Permissible Partiality Like a garden or a tree, the value of a person can be incommensurable with other values. There is a respect, however, in which a person is different from things like gardens and trees, and this difference, I want to suggest, is of significance for our response to the value of persons, and for understanding permissions of partiality. The difference is that a person, but not a garden or a tree, has a point of view. A person’s value, but not the value of a garden or a tree, is tied to a particular, distinct perspective on the world. The claim that persons have a point of view, in a way in which things like gardens and trees do not, is both obviously true and difficult to elucidate. Part of the plausibility of the suggestion comes from the fact that persons, unlike gardens and trees, have mental states, and those mental states are unified; there is a persisting subject—­you—­that has all your feelings, all your emotions, all your beliefs and desires, and so on. That is part of what it is to have a point of view. The suggestion also takes some plausibility from the fact that persons are able to generate evaluative standards, in a way in which things like gardens and trees cannot. By caring about something, or by taking something as a goal, or by making a commitment to something, a person can make it the case that there are certain respects in which her own life, and the world as seen from her point of view, can go better or worse relative to her. A person can generate for herself some of the standards by which her life, and the world as seen from her point of view, should be assessed.17 I explore the idea of a person’s generating the standards by which she should be assessed in the second half of my “Welfare as Success.” 17

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Because a person has a point of view, it makes sense to think of yourself as seeing things from another person’s point of view, and as evaluating things from her point of view. To do so is to hold imaginatively the particular subjective viewpoint with which the value of the person is intimately associated: a viewpoint that really exists, and that is in fact occupied by the person herself. In addition, because a person has a point of view, it is possible to perform an act for a person, or on behalf of a person, or for the sake of a person, in a sense in which it is not possible to act for a garden, or on behalf of a garden, or for the sake of a garden. When you act for the sake of a person, you can think of yourself as doing something that is valuable from her point of view. When you act for the sake of a garden, you can think of yourself as doing something that is good for the garden, but not as doing something whose value can register with the garden, or can be felt or appreciated by the garden. (Note that seeing things from the point of view of a person’s value is not necessarily the same as seeing the world as the person herself sees it. The person herself may not care about her own value, or may care more about other things. And, your appreciation of a person’s value may be different from, even better than, the appreciation of the person herself.) The closer the attention you pay to a person’s value, the closer you come to seeing the world as if from her point of view. You come to see her value as special—­as a value that makes demands in its own right, in isolation from those made by other values—­ and you come to occupy imaginatively the perspective from which her value, as compared to other values, has special salience. When you are moved to prioritize your child’s asthma treatment over the needs of several children elsewhere, for example, you will be acting for your child, paying special attention to what matters for her. You may acknowledge that it is more important, overall, that the several other children are treated for blindness, but that fact is not what matters from the perspective you hold. From that perspective, what matters is that their being treated for blindness would be no compensation for the loss to your child. If that is a fair description of an experience of finding yourself to have reasons of partiality, and if I am right in what I have said

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about points of view and the value of persons, then the view you take in having that experience is, in an important respect, correct. There is a particular point of view connected with the value of another person, and that value does generate a set of demands and an index of gains and losses that have force independently of considerations raised by other entities. You are then responding to reasons that are really there, in a manner that fits their character. This gets us far enough to see how the individuals view can offer some justification, in principle, for prioritizing some people over other people, even when we know that all people are equally valuable, and even when we know that what we do for the one person is less important than what we could do for others. The demands created by the value of individuals are such that it can make sense—­can be understandable and appropriate—­to respond to those demands by prioritizing one person over others. That is why partiality can be permissible, at least in principle.

The Morality of Partiality As I have stressed throughout the book, it is one thing to say why partiality can be permissible, in principle, and another to say how partiality could be the subject of its own distinctive moral requirements and restrictions. It is one thing to show that it can make sense to favor one person over others, but another to explain why we should favor certain particular people, why our favoritism should take one form rather than another, why it is not permissible to extend certain kinds of favoritism to certain people, and why all forms of favoritism must be kept within certain bounds. Is there something the individuals view can say about why special relationships give rise to special duties and other moral standards? Can the individuals view say something more than “They just do?” On the individuals view as I have expressed it, individual persons are valuable, the value of each person generates demands, and the demands generated by the value of a person have a kind of importance that is often incommensurable with the importance

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of demands generated by other values. In one sense, then, reasons for giving special treatment to any particular individual are always there. For any person, it is possible in principle to see things from that person’s point of view, to pay special attention to the importance of the demands made by that person’s value, to see that the importance of those demands is incommensurable with the importance of competing demands, and hence sensibly to focus on the good of that person over the good of other persons. From the perspective of the individuals view, questions about the special moral standards associated with partiality can then be construed as follows. A duty of partiality is a duty to respond in particular ways to the demands generated by the special value of a particular person, in preference to the reasons generated by the special value of other persons. Moral restrictions on partiality are restrictions on whose special value we may respond to, and on what kinds of responses to that value, within what limits, are permissible. Given that each person’s value generates reasons that can in principle justify special treatment of that person, why are we required to give a special response to the value of some persons but not others, and why are we restricted in how we may respond to the value of particular persons, and to whose value we may respond?

The Fragility of the Morality of Partiality To begin to answer these questions, we need to look more closely at the nature of the morality of partiality. On the one hand, moral standards associated with partiality are very profound and are taken very seriously. A parent who does not meet her duties to her child is an object of harsh moral disapproval; many people will tolerate all sorts of insults but will draw the line at being called a bad friend. On the other hand, however, the moral standards associated with partiality, as compared with other moral standards, are fragile. The morality of partiality is unusually dependent upon contingent background conditions. A parent has special duties toward her child. She fails in her duty if she treats her child as she would treat any other child. Sup-

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pose, however, that the social background were very different from the one we find around here. Suppose that the parent lives in a society in which children are raised communally, or are raised by their grandparents, or are adopted out at birth; suppose that it is unusual and unexpected for a child in this society to be raised by his biological parents. There may be complaints to be made about such a society. Perhaps it is worse for children to be raised communally, more strenuous for people to take on parenting responsibilities when they are grandparents, or worse for social cohesion to have adoption be the norm. (Conversely, the child-­ rearing arrangement in this society, however it is imagined, may be better in many respects than one under which a child is entrusted to its biological parents.) But, however those things stand, a parent in such a society would not have special duties to her biological child: not, at least, of anything like the kind we take so seriously in our society. It is not that a parent in such a society would have an excuse for failing to meet her duties to her biological children. She would not have the duties at all. Part of the reason why parents have certain special duties of partiality toward their own children in our society is that that is the way we do things around here. Suppose, more fantastically, that human nature were not as it is, and that humans did not characteristically feel any special connection to their own biological offspring or their own biological parents. Imagine that a normal human were one with a special concern not for her biological children or parents, but instead for her grandchildren and grandparents, or for people who share her birthday, or for people born in the place in which she was born, or for children she meets on the day she turns twenty-­one. Such creatures would not be subject to the same norms of partiality to which real humans are subject. Among the questions that would arise regarding such creatures is the question of what special norms would exist for them as a result of their relationships, and how those special norms would differ from those we find between humans as they actually are. The facts about human nature make a difference. If we were very different, in one of the respects mentioned, then we would not have special duties to our biological children—­not, anyway, of the kind we actually possess.

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The point carries over to the morality of partiality generally. People in a society that imagined friendship, collegiality, and sibling bonds very differently from how our society imagines them would be subject to very different moral standards regarding their friends, colleagues, and siblings. If we by nature formed very different kinds of relationships with other people, then the moral standards to which our acts of partiality are subject would be very different and might even fail to exist at all. It is in this sense that the moral standards associated with partiality are fragile. They are very sensitive to social and natural conditions. Compare the moral standards associated with partiality with other moral standards of similar seriousness. One of our moral duties is the duty not to cause severe unnecessary suffering. There is no imaginable society in which people would not have this duty. A society in which people customarily cause each other severe unnecessary suffering is in that respect a morally deplorable society, not a society in which the reasons not to cause severe unnecessary suffering are absent or different. If we by nature lacked any aversion to inflicting severe unnecessary suffering, then that might count as an excuse for some of our behavior but it would not change the basic moral fact. Without that aversion, we would not cease to be answerable to the requirement that we avoid the infliction of severe unnecessary suffering but would instead be, by nature, morally worse creatures. No change in social arrangements or human nature could make it morally acceptable for humans to inflict severe unnecessary suffering on others. And this reflects, again, a general truth about moral standards. The fragility of the moral standards associated with partiality distinguishes them from other moral standards of similar weight. It follows that any account of what the moral standards of partiality are, and of how they are derived, must somehow include reference to human nature and a social context. If we offer an account on which the duties of parents, or the moral restrictions on friendship, or the moral standards associated with partiality generally stand across all possible societies and are independent of human nature—­if we purport to show that such standards are written into the fabric of the universe, so to speak—­then our account will prove too much.

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This is the truth captured by the consequentialist version of the individuals view. When we ask why we are subject to a distinctive set of moral standards within our special relationships, part of the answer must be that those standards work for us, or make our individual or collective lives better, or can be defended over other possible moral standards, in this society and in light of the facts of human nature. That is not to say that the impartialist consequentialist view is correct; I argued earlier that it is not. But still, the lesson to be drawn from the consequentialist approach is that if we are to understand better the moral standards to which we are subject within our particular special relationships, then we need to see how those standards work for us, in our time and place.

The Place of Partiality, Here and for Us The individuals view, as I have expressed it, says that individuals are valuable, and that their value is such as to make demands. To see what value is held by an individual is to see that there are things that it would be good to do for that individual. A reason of partiality, on the individuals view, is a reason to meet a demand made by a particular individual’s value. If there are moral duties of partiality, then some of the demands made by an individual’s value must be very morally important, and must also pick out some person in particular, so that there is someone on whom there falls the responsibility for ensuring that the demands are met. If there are moral restrictions on partiality, then it must sometimes be the case that particular people are not permitted to meet the demands made by another person’s value, and it must be the case that there is only so much that may be done by way of meeting the demands to which some particular person’s value gives rise. Let us see how the individuals view might go about explaining some of those moral standards in light of the insight that any such explanation must pay attention to facts about human nature and social context. A parent has special duties to her child. To explain how such duties arise, we can start by saying that the child matters. There are certain things that the child merits, or that it would be good for him to have; these are the things demanded by the child’s

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value. Some of the demands made by the child’s value are for goods that are very important. It matters a great deal that a child is given food, medical treatment, emotional care, and a safe and stimulating environment in which to grow up, among other things. Many of the goods that a child should receive are best provided by particular individuals as part of an ongoing loving relationship; it is in the child’s interests for there to be particular people who love the child and have a special responsibility and concern for the child’s health and well-­being. Given the close emotional ties that naturally exist between human children and their parents, and given the practices that govern the raising of children in societies like ours, it is a reasonable expectation that the child’s biological parents should have the first duty for providing the relevant goods to the child. The parents should provide the goods themselves or, perhaps, should ensure that they are provided by others. The story, anyway, must be something along these lines. When we ask why we accept and impose certain particular parenting responsibilities in our society, we need an answer that shows our practice to be better for us, as we are, than other possible practices. When a parent asks why she has special duties to her biological child, we can go some way toward answering by pointing to the value of the child, the importance of his needs, and the fact that for humans, around here, it makes most sense to give responsibility for meeting those needs to the child’s biological parents. Sometimes, when there are things that ought to be done for a child, you are not permitted to be the one who does them. You might come to have a special concern for the child of your neighbor, of the kind you would normally have toward your own child. You might pay a great deal of attention to the neighbor’s child, becoming intensely aware of her special value and of all of the things her value demands. You might be moved to buy her clothes and books; you might take an interest in her education; you might want to speak with her about her friends and interests and to try to ensure that she is happy and has high self-­esteem. In such a case, you need not be misperceiving anything about the child and her value. The things you want to give to her may be things it really would be good for her to have. Under normal circumstances,

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however, it would be a mistake to think it appropriate for you to be the one who provides such goods. Given the nature of the bonds that naturally form between human parents and children, and given the way in which our society is arranged, it makes more sense for us to say, as a society, that it is from the child’s parents, not her neighbors, that the goods ought to be received. Our society could, conceivably, be one in which a child’s neighbors were permitted, even expected, to take a full-­fledged parental interest in the child. To justify the restrictions we actually put upon the provision of the goods of parenting, we need to explain why our way is better for us, or more accessible to us, than that alternative. I have given only the barest outline of a story about how the value of children, plus facts about human nature and a social context, can explain some of the norms governing the parent-­child relationship. The outline gives an indication, however, of the kind of story about the moral standards of partiality that will be told on the individuals view. Once the demands made by an individual’s value are appreciated, once we pay attention to truths about human nature, and once we look at the social context within which the relevant demands are made, we can say something about why those demands underlie duties for some people but not others, and about why it is appropriate for the demands to be met by some people but not others.

Primitivism and the End of Explanation As well as being only the barest outline of an explanation, the story just told cannot serve as a deduction of the truth about parental morality from impartial moral truths plus some facts about human nature and our circumstances. It is not as though we can start from “Society has a duty to care for every child,” add in some empirical facts, and then demonstrate that biological parents have duties to their children of a certain exact and recognizable type. As I have stressed repeatedly, it is unlikely that such a deduction would be possible; there does not appear to be any plausible impartial principle from which the moral standards of partiality, as we actually find them, can be derived. And, such a deduction

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would not necessarily be desirable; for reasons discussed earlier, it is incompatible with the experience of finding reasons of partiality to say that all norms of partiality can be fully appreciated from the impartial point of view. It is doubtful that a fully impartialist explanation of the moral standards of partiality, no matter how sophisticated, could ultimately be satisfactory. Imagine a person who takes a resolutely impartial view of the value of persons and the moral standards they raise for him. Imagine a father who says, “I can see that my daughter needs treatment for asthma, and I can see that it makes sense, for us humans living in this society, that I rather than others should be regarded as having the responsibility for providing that treatment. But still, there are children elsewhere who are just as important as my daughter, whose needs are greater than my daughter’s, and whose needs can be met if I redirect the effort and money I would otherwise spend on my daughter’s asthma treatment. Whatever the facts of human nature and the arrangement of our society, I can do more good for those children than I can for own child. So I should direct my money toward the needs of other children, even if that means transgressing against some justifiable social guidelines, and even if it means that my daughter does not get her asthma treatment.” It seems to me that the father is wrong about his moral responsibilities. This is a situation in which he should put his daughter’s interests first. But the reason he is wrong is not that he has got his nonmoral facts wrong or that he has failed to apply his impartial ethical principle properly. The reason he is wrong is that this is his daughter, and he simply does have a responsibility to prioritize her needs. And the only method by which he could come to see that he is wrong is by concentrating more intently on the value held by his daughter: the value she holds in her own right, not as she compares with others. To that extent, the story about the morality of partiality must be a primitivist story. At some point, we need to say that certain moral standards of partiality simply do exist, and simply do have a certain structure and content, and that the only way to see them is to look more closely. The particularist and the impartialist stories about the morality of partiality are in tension, but a plausible version of the individuals view needs to employ elements of each. A story told from the

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objective point of view—­a story that refers to the importance of all persons, the facts of human nature, and the facts about our social context—­is needed to explain why we should be responsive to the demands made by the value of particular people, in particular ways and within particular limits. But once we pay attention to the value of a particular person, that value takes on its own life, so to speak. It gives normative guidance in its own right, and not always in a way that serves impartialist goals.

The Individuals View That concludes my statement and defense of the individuals view. I have done my best to express it in its most natural and compelling form and to show that it is superior to its competitors. I have tried to show how the individuals view can be formulated so as to be true to the phenomenology of partiality and how it can yield a response to the main objection to the view. When built on the right insights about the nature of the value of individuals, the individuals view can explain why it can make sense, and can indeed be morally required, to give a special response to the value of one person over other people, even while acknowledging that those other people are just as valuable and their demands just as important. My version of the individuals view differs from the consequentialist version, the Kantian version, and the particularist version, but it tries to draw in the best elements of each. From the particularist version of the individuals view, I take the lesson that facts about the existence of relationships can be relevant to our reasons of partiality, and can explain why we have reasons of partiality regarding some people rather than others, without themselves standing as reasons; and I take the lesson that primitivism about reasons of partiality is no less available on the individuals view than on the relationships view. From the Kantian version of the individuals view, I take the lesson that the value of a person can be incommensurable with the value of other persons, so that it is possible that, in taking the point of view of a particular person’s value and then prioritizing that person over other people, you can

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be seeing and appreciating the person’s value as it really is. From the consequentialist version of the individuals view, I take the lesson that the moral standards attached to partiality need to be justified, at least to some extent, in terms of their overall contribution to the common good. The view that emerges from all of this is sketchy and incomplete. I wish it were more elegant. My defense is that I have tried as far as possible to follow the argument where it leads and, in particular, to follow the phenomenology where it leads. Also, the view as I have formulated it is quite abstract. I think that it is more plausible and promising than rival abstract accounts of partiality, and I also think that it will look more constructive and fruitful when it is employed as an approach to understanding specific kinds of relationships: relationships of friendship, romantic love, filial love, and so on. That is just a hope, but in closing the book, let me say something about how the individuals view might start to answer some further, less abstract questions about the ethics of special relationships.

Future Directions In what kinds of relationships do special norms exist? Do you have special reasons in your relationships with your second cousin, your hairdresser, or your father’s new girlfriend, of the same kind that you find in your relationships with your friends and members of your family? To answer these questions, following the individuals view, we should not look first at the kinds of relationships involved. Instead, we should look at the individuals within each particular relationship and ask what treatment they each merit, what they are able to do for each other, and what it makes sense to expect them to do for each other, in the social context in which their relationship exists. Regarding your second cousin, for example, you should not ask whether second-­cousin-­ hood is a significant relationship in its own right, but rather what kinds of goods you are able to share with your second cousin, given the kinds of people you are and the context in which you interact.

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With what kinds of individuals can special relationships be shared? Can you have reasons of partiality within your relationship with your country, your alma mater, your football team, or your pet? It depends, for the individuals view, upon what kind of value, if any, the relevant individuals hold for their own sakes, whether that value is commensurable with other values, and what demands that value makes. In my opinion, entities like countries, schools, and football teams do not have value for their own sakes, but rather are valuable only by virtue of the value they have for persons. This, I think, means that we do not have special relationships with such entities of the kind that could give rise to special reasons, and that any account of our responsibilities to our countries, schools, football teams, and similar entities must be very different from the correct account of the reasons arising from our special relationships with other persons.18 And, in my opinion, many nonhuman animals do have value for their own sakes, of the required kind; they have value of much the same kind as persons. So I think that a relationship with a nonhuman animal, like your cat, dog, or horse, can involve reasons like those that exist between friends and family members.19 These are just opinions, but they are opinions about the matters on which the question of whether there are special reasons in the relevant relationships depends. How do we resolve controversies about the nature of our reasons of partiality? When parents and children disagree with each other over what a child owes a parent, or when people of different cultures disagree about what parents ought to do for their children, where can we look for an answer? Such disagreements ought to be understood as disagreements over what various individuals merit by virtue of their self-­standing value, and about what goods they can provide each other by having various kinds of relationships under various circumstances. In what distinctive respects, for example, can a parent and child improve each othSee my papers “Making Nonsense of Loyalty to Country” and “Against Friendship between Countries.” 19 See my The Limits of Loyalty, pp. 177–­180. 18

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er’s lives, without infringing unfairly on the autonomy of either party, and given that they live with particular social customs and institutions?20 Finally, what does the discussion of the reasons of partiality tell us about moral theory more generally? One upshot of the discussion, I think, is that considerations of partiality need not provide a problem for an individualist approach to moral theory: an approach on which morality is all about the good of individuals. The correct account of the ethics of partiality does not posit additional valuable entities beyond individuals. An investigation into the ethics of partiality does not show, for example, that morality needs fundamentally to be about the value of relationships, over and above the value of individuals within them. Some will see another upshot of the discussion, which is that reasons of partiality turn out to be just as disreputable as they had suspected all along. The correct account of reasons of partiality, I have said, does not eliminate primitivism, which is to say that when we defend the existence of reasons of partiality against a skeptic, we need at some points simply to assert that the reasons are there. That might be taken as evidence that our belief in reasons of partiality is no more than a prejudice and hence to lend credence to the insistence that morality is a thoroughly impartial matter after all. Or it might be taken as evidence that we should be skeptical about reasons, or about moral reasons, altogether; if we cannot come up with a complete and elegant explanation of such a central moral phenomenon as partiality, then perhaps we should conclude that morality as a whole is in trouble. Either of these claims could be correct, for all I have said here. Now that we have seen more about what we are committed to in believing in reasons of partiality, are we prepared to accept the existence of those reasons, or is the cost—­perhaps in theoretical elegance or explanatory ambition—­too great? I cannot pretend to have provided an answer, but, still, the discussion has revealed one reason to think that reasons of partiality are worth I explore this issue a little further in The Limits of Loyalty, ch. 6. See also Brighouse and Swift, “Legitimate Parental Partiality.” 20

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buying. The greatest attraction of the individuals view, in my opinion, is that it honors one of our deepest and most familiar ethical experiences: the experience of finding another person to matter, just for her own sake. It is in that experience, not just a brute intuition, that the belief in reasons of partiality is grounded, and it would take quite some argument to show that the experience rests on an illusion.

References

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Index

agent-­neutral norms, 16 agent-­neutral reasons, 17–­19, 119, 132 agent-­neutral value, 55 agent-­relative norms, 16, 19, 98–­99, 123–­124, 132 agent-­relative reasons, 17–­20, 33, 116–­121, 123, 127, 132–­133, 137 agent-­relative value, 55 Amis, Martin, 52. See also Yellow Dog anti-­realism, 30 autonomy, 5, 15–­16, 101, 103–­106, 111, 113, 129, 155 Blum, Lawrence A., 14–­16, 21, 137–­138 Bugger, 52–­53, 68, 70–­71. See also Amis, Martin; Yellow Dog consequentialism, vii, viii, 6, 15, 80, 83, 125–­129, 132, 138–­139, 148, 152–­153; rule consequentialism, 126; self-­effacing, 82–­83; virtue consequentialism, 126. See also utilitarianism constructivism, 29–­30 common sense, 7, 64, 72–­76 commitments, 11–­12, 15–­16, 31–­34, 40, 75, 78, 116; evaluative, ix; impartialist, vii; self-­constituting, 12, 40; subjective, 41, 44, 117. See also ground projects

cultural relativism, 29, 154 communitarianism, 6, 12 compatriot, 2, 22. See also partiality to country Dancy, Jonathan, 133–­134, 136 deontology, vii, 80; self-­effacing, 82. See also Kantianism desires, 29, 30, 32, 41, 74–­75, 84–­85, 102, 142 Diaz, Cameron, 52 drowning wife example, 42, 63, 71, 81, 85, 114–­115; two-­levelled pier example, 90–­93, 95–­96, 109. See also Williams, Bernard duty, 2, 4, 13, 19, 29, 35–­39, 46, 48–­53, 64–­65, 78, 100, 117, 127, 130, 133, 138, 144–­150. See also moral requirements; obligation enablers, 133–­136 error theory. See moral skepticism evaluative standards, vii, 22, 24, 142 extrinsic value, 46, 49, 54–­58, 60–­61. See also instrumental value favorers, 133–­136 final value, 13, 28, 46, 64, 67–­68, 73. See also intrinsic value flourishing, 54, 56, 60–­61, 71, 76, 101–­ 106, 111, 113, 129, 140

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friendship: duties of, 46; motives of, 81–­82, 85, 92–­93; nature of, 29, 34, 71, 104–­105; norms of, 36, 108, 127; reasons of, 40–­41, 61, 98, 118, 137–­138; undemanding, 51; value of, 13, 26, 54–­55, 58, 66–­67 generic goods, 109–­111 Goodin, Robert E., 15–­16, 20, 125n ground projects, 11–­12, 20, 32–­44, 50, 52, 62, 74–­75, 96, 111, 115–­117, 121 human nature, 146–­152 impartial morality, vii, viii, 5–­7, 9, 15–­ 16, 20–­21, 25, 28, 37–­39, 42–­44, 80–­86, 91, 117, 125–­129, 132, 139, 148, 150–­152, 155 individuals view, viii–­ix, 14–­16, 19–­21, 75, 78–­80, 93–­94, 96–­103, 108, 111–­114, 124–­139, 142–­156 incommensurable value, 21, 139–­145, 152. See also incomparable value incomparable value, ix, 21, 129–­131, 139–­141, 151. See also incommensurable value inherent properties, 5, 16 instrumental value, 46, 65–­67, 73 intrinsic value, 13, 46, 48–­60, 62–­66, 68–­69, 72–­77. See also final value; noninstrumental value; self-­standing value; valuing for its own sake Jeske, Diane, 13, 64, 69, 72 Kantianism, vii–­viii, 5–­6, 15, 28, 103, 105, 125, 129–­132, 138–­139, 152. See also deontology Kolodny, Niko, 13, 28, 46–­48, 64, 67–­ 68, 73 love, 14–­15, 27–­29, 46, 52–­53, 61, 67–­ 68, 73n33, 81, 105–­106, 110, 137, 149

Mary, 52–­53, 68, 70, 109–­110. See also Diaz, Cameron; There’s Something About Mary metaethics, 29–­30 moral requirements, 2, 19, 32, 39, 80, 87, 90, 97, 108, 117, 120–­121, 123–­124, 130–­133, 139, 144–­145, 147, 152, 154. See also duty moral restrictions, 117, 120–­121, 123–­124, 130–­133, 139, 144–­145, 147–­148 moral skepticism, 24, 30, 155 motivation, 4, 25–­27, 29, 32, 35, 41–­44, 62–­64, 66, 71, 74–­76, 79–­96, 137 Murdoch, Iris, 14–­16, 28, 137 noncognitivism, 30 noninstrumental value, 13, 46, 47n, 48, 51n, 64–­69, 72–­73, 77, 119–­122, 133–­135. See also intrinsic value norms of partiality, 2–­7, 23–­24, 35, 37, 39, 78–­79, 99, 111, 117, 126–­128, 146, 153. See also agent-­neutral norms; agent-­netural reasons; agent-­relative norms; agent-­relative reasons; evaluative standards; primitivism; reasons obligation, viii, 43, 105, 108. See also duty objectivity, viii, 33, 102, 118, 128, 152. See also realism partiality to country, 2, 154. See also compatriot particularism, viii, 21, 125, 132–­139, 151–­152 patriotism. See partiality to country permissibility, 3–­5, 19, 38, 100, 121, 123–­124, 131, 138–­139, 142 –­145 phenomenology, ix, 30, 41–­43, 62–­64, 79–­80, 86–­87, 94, 96, 128, 130, 139–­140, 152–­153 primitivism, 123–­125, 132–­133, 135–­139, 150–­152, 155

index projects view, 11–­12, 19–­21, 31–­44, 75, 95–­96, 114–­117 puzzle of partiality, 4–­7, 16, 18–­22, 114–­117, 121, 123, 138 raising children communally, 58–­59, 146 Raz, Joseph, 13, 46, 48, 50–­51, 64 realism, 29–­30. See also objectivity reasons: derivative, vii, 8, 13, 72; fundamental, 10, 13, 18–­20, 26, 45, 69, 71, 73, 76, 78, 82; irreducible, 8–­9, 20. See also agent-­neutral reasons; agent-­relative reasons; norms of partiality reductionism, 8–­9, 29, 47n, 55 relationships view, 12–­13, 19–­21, 45–­ 77, 95–­96, 114–­115, 118–­125, 133–­ 136; generic: 46, 49–­64, 68, 70; reasons-­based, 45–­46, 69–­72; value-­based, 45–­48, 64–­71 rights, vii, 5, 36, 105–­106, 132 Scanlon, T. M., 13, 64, 67n23 Scheffler, Samuel, 13, 19n, 46–­48, 50–­ 51, 64–­67, 69, 72, 73n33, 77, 119–­123, 131, 133–­135 self-­effacing theory, 26–­27, 82–­84, 86

163

self-­standing value, 77, 107, 116, 125n, 126, 135, 154. See also intrinsic value special goods, 55, 59, 106–­109, 111 Stiller, Ben, 52 Stocker, Michael, 81, 83–­84 subjective attitudes, 30, 41, 117, 121, 131 subjectivity, 143 Ted, 52–­53, 68, 70, 109–­110. See also Stiller, Ben; There’s Something About Mary There’s Something About Mary, 52, 109 utilitarianism, vii, 5, 19, 80–­81, 102. See also consequentialism valuing for its own sake, 26, 45, 47–­49, 74–­75, 77–­78, 137–­138, 154, 156. See also intrinsic value Velleman, J. David, 15–­16, 21, 28, 105, 130 welfare, 15, 76, 101–­102, 104–­106, 111 Williams, Bernard, 11–­12, 32, 42, 43n, 62–­63, 81, 84, 90, 114 Wolf, Susan, 12, 37 Yellow Dog, 52. See also Amis, Martin