Does obligation diminish with distance?

Abstract

Many people believe in what can be described as a ‘concentric circles model of responsibilities to others’ in which responsibilities are generally stronger to those physically or affectively closer to us—those who, on this model, occupy circles nearer to us. In particular, it is believed that we have special ties to compatriots and, moreover, that these ties entail stronger obligations than the obligations we have to non-compatriots.

While I concede that our strongest obligations may generally be to those family and friends with whom we have close personal relationships, those often thought to occupy the inner core, what I want to challenge is the idea that our obligations diminish in strength when we move beyond the boundary of the circles occupied by compatriots and proceed to those more geographically or culturally distant from us. The weight that is typically placed on the boundary between compatriots and non-compatriots in determining the strength of our obligations to others cannot withstand critical scrutiny. In this paper I show that arguments that are supposed to work to justify stronger obligations to compatriots than non-compatriots do not succeed in the ways imagined. I also present the framework of a contractarian-style model which aims to give us a more systematic way to think about our obligations to ‘non-core’ others, both distant and near. While we can certainly have different kinds of obligations, my analysis shows that our basic obligations to others do not diminish with distance. In addition, my account aims to flesh out what our basic obligations to others are.

Notes

 The concentric circles model has often been used to argue that our allegiances and relationships start at the centre and, as we mature, our ability to feel affection for others grows from that centre. See, for instance, Michael McConnell, ‘Don’t neglect the little platoons’ in Joshua Cohen (ed.), For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism (Boston, MA, Beacon Press, 1996), pp. 78–84; Sissela Bok, ‘From part to whole’ in For Love of Country, pp. 38–44; Michael Walzer, ‘Spheres of affection’ in For Love of Country, pp. 125–127; and, of course, Martha Nussbaum, ‘Patriotism and cosmopolitanism’ in For Love of Country, pp. 3–17. The concentric circles model can be used to give an account of how we should or do come to learn responsibility to others. While it can be used in this way (and others), it can be and also has been used to capture this other feature that I want to focus on—a belief that the strength of our feelings towards others and so our obligations to them varies depending on which circle they occupy. See, for instance, Nussbaum's own summary of her critics in ‘Reply’ in For Love of Country, p. 142. See also Baird Callicott's view in ‘The conceptual foundations of the land ethic’ in Louis Pojman (ed.) Environmental Ethics (Boston, MA, Jones and Bartlett, 1994), pp. 92–102.

 For a good example of this position see Richard Miller, ‘Cosmopolitan respect and patriotic concern’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 27 (1998), pp. 202–224. Others who talk about the position but mostly to show that it is indefensible include Henry Shue, Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence, and US Foreign Policy (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1980) and Charles Jones, Global Justice: Defending Cosmopolitanism (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999).

 This is Richard Miller's account as offered in ‘Cosmopolitan respect and patriotic concern’, p. 205.

 For this kind of seamless discussion see, for instance, ibid., p. 211.

 For more on the fuller account of what a nation is see, for instance, Yael Tamir, Liberal Nationalism (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1993) and David Miller, Citizenship and National Identity (Cambridge, Polity, 2000).

 This idea of a politically organized unit which either is self-governing or should be is, anyhow, at the heart of claims that defenders of nationalism standardly make so my usage should at least intersect with the thicker usage.

 Jonathan Glover, ‘Nations, identity, and conflict’ in Robert McKim and Jeff McMahan (eds), The Morality of Nationalism (New York, Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 11–30.

 Jeff McMahan, ‘The limits of national partiality’ in Robert McKim and Jeff McMahan (eds), The Morality of Nationalism, pp. 107–138, especially p. 134.

 Kai Nielsen, ‘Cosmopolitan nationalism’, Monist, 82 (1999), pp. 446–468.

 See, for instance, Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: a Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1995), chapter 5.

 McMahan, ‘The limits of national partiality’, p. 130.

 Ibid. See also Richard Dagger, ‘Rights, boundaries, and the bonds of community: a qualified defense of moral parochialism’, American Political Science Quarterly, 79 (1985), pp. 436–447.

 McMahan, ‘The limits of national partiality’, p. 129.

 Ibid., p. 130.

 Ibid., pp. 139–157.

 Tamir is a strong advocate for this argument. See Liberal Nationalism, pp. 95–116 and pp. 133–138.

 See Tamir, pp. 95–116.

 See, for instance, David Miller, Citizenship and National Identity (Cambridge, Polity Press, 2000), chapter 5; Charles Taylor, ‘Why democracy needs patriotism’ in For Love of Country, pp. 119–121; Kai Nielsen, ‘Cosmopolitan nationalism’; and Will Kymlicka, Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism, and Citizenship (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 212.

 This is Richard Miller's line in ‘Cosmopolitan respect and patriotic concern’, p. 210.

 Ibid.

 Waldron, ‘Minority rights and the cosmopolitan alternative’ in Will Kymlicka (ed.), The Rights of Minority Cultures (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 93–119.

 James Hill, Becoming a Cosmopolitan: What it Means to be a Human Being in the New Millennium (Lanham, MD, Rowman and Littlefield, 2000) and Nussbaum, ‘Patriotism and cosmopolitanism’.

 McMahan, ‘The limits of national partiality’, p. 130.

 This is especially so if we add that the goal is to live in a sustainable way that does not jeopardize the needs of future generations.

 Another feature of this argument is that it draws attention only to benefits. If some of the benefits are possible because of costs to others this provides a further basis for arguing that we have special responsibilities to others.

 Tamir, Liberal Nationalism, p. 136.

 As I also argue elsewhere, the argument moves too quickly, and the reference to co-nationals is co-extensive with other acts and relationships that matter morally anyway. See Gillian Brock, ‘The new nationalisms’, Monist, 82 (1999), pp. 367–386.

 Gillian Brock, ‘World citizenship: David Miller and the new cosmopolitans’, International Journal of Politics and Ethics, 2 (2002), pp. 211–224.

 Indeed, some argue cosmopolitan democracy is in fact a more authentic form of democracy, which better positions us to tackle global problems, but also makes possible more genuine local democracy. See, for instance, David Held, Democracy and the Global Order: from the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance (Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 1995).

 Many people raise questions of the following kinds when talk of social contracts is introduced: Is the contract supposed to be actual or hypothetical? If only hypothetical then why does a purely hypothetical contract have any binding force anyway? And if it has no binding force, then why adhere to it? I see talking in terms of social contracts as a way to specify what expectations various parties to the contract may reasonably have of each other: it is simply a way of fleshing out what those reasonable expectations might be. So, in answer to the questions listed: no, the contract developed assuming the ideal world presupposition is neither an actual contract nor a purely hypothetical one. It is a way to sift through what (actual) parties might reasonably expect of one another, by imagining a certain (hypothetical) choosing situation. Talking about social contracts is a way to talk about, and so uncover, the reasonable expectations people might have of one another in ongoing co-operation.

 They will also have information about those who dissent from these common views.

 Delegates will be given detailed information about the resources available to finance provisions for currently existing generations. They will also be provided with our current state of knowledge concerning the rate at which resources may be used to ensure sustainability.

 Perhaps someone may wonder whether there is only one important principle at issue here, the principle concerning protection from real opportunities for serious harms, since the freedoms highlighted are important because being deprived of them can lead to serious harm. I prefer my formulation because it brings into better view two key features that would be selected in the normative thought experiment.

 Would this idea really need further justification? Perhaps someone might press for one, especially someone concerned with the idea that those not from liberal democracies might not see this emphasis on freedom as so important or even reasonable. So let me say more about why I think the level of attention I give to freedom can be expected to be universal. If you do not know anything about what sort of position you will occupy under the new arrangements, why would you allow some people to have more freedom of a very basic kind than others? Unless you agree that everyone should have equal basic freedom, you might end up (say) giving some people more basic freedom than you have: you might deny yourself the freedom to go about your business free from assault, though others enjoy this liberty. Given their lack of knowledge about their particular interests, contractors would be most rational in agreeing to equal basic liberties. Similarly, it would not be rational to agree to adopt racist or sexist practices, since one may find oneself at the receiving end of such practices once the conference concludes. It would be more rational not to place constraints on one's liberties and opportunities, since it would be rational to have more rather than less freedom to pursue whatever your goals turn out to be.

 Indeed, what could be a more fundamental harm than being deprived of one's ability to eke out a livelihood for oneself and one's dependants?

 I have suggested that a rough guiding principle we would choose is to have social and political arrangements that allow reasonable opportunities for us to be enabled to meet our basic needs. But would we not want more? Would we find it reasonable to endorse something like a Global Difference Principle, or more substantive equality? Perhaps some reasonable people would and others not. If the debate between even Rawlsian liberals (or at least advocates of Rawls's position as expressed in The Law of Peoples (Harvard, MA, Harvard University Press, 1999)) and more egalitarian liberals (such as Thomas Pogge, Metaphilosophy, 32 (2001), pp. 6–24) is anything to go on, there is some real issue here worthy of debate. Given this important disagreement, I do not believe we can make any sufficiently plausible claim here about whether we would find it reasonable to go for something more demanding. Therefore, I opt for the less demanding threshold being the reasonable one which should govern the basic framework. My main concern here is arguing for the less demanding threshold being at least a reasonable one. This will do nicely for my purposes here. I will not worry here about the possibility that something more demanding might be reasonable too.

 It might, of course, be reasonable to choose political arrangements radically different from the status quo. Here I explore what people would agree to who also have a strong interest in bringing about less rather than more change in the actual world.

 I flesh out the minimum package it would be reasonable to agree to in the ideal world I have identified such that all are positioned to enjoy the prospects of a decent life and these prospects get further elaboration, notably in terms of being well-positioned to meet our basic needs. How does my view differ from someone like Avishai Margalit's view in The Decent Society (Harvard, MA, Harvard University Press, 1996)? Much of the content of how I would cash out the view has important similarities with the way Margalit defines a decent society. Where we differ, it seems, is on the scope of what should constitute the borders of a decent society. He focuses largely on the scope being co-extensive with the state, but I want explicitly to resist such a focus here. The community we should be concerned with in this exercise is primarily the human community.

 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA, Belknap, 1971).

 Charles Beitz, Political Theory and International Justice (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1979); Thomas Pogge, Realizing Rawls (Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1989).

 Rawls, Law of Peoples.

 Beitz, Political Theory and International Justice; Pogge, Realizing Rawls; Andrew Kuper, ‘Rawlsian global justice: beyond the law of peoples to a cosmopolitan law of persons’, Political Theory, 28 (2000), pp. 640–674; Darrel Moellendorf, Cosmopolitan Justice (Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 2002).

 Simon Caney, ‘Cosmopolitan justice and equalizing opportunities’, Metaphilosophy, 32 (2001), pp. 113–134.

 Elsewhere I argue in more detail as to why my focus is more compelling than these alternative Rawlsian accounts. I cannot do justice to all the arguments there presented concisely, but part of the case revolves around some compelling empirical psychology experiments. See, for instance, Gillian Brock, ‘What does cosmopolitan justice demand of us?’, Theoria, 104 (2004), pp. 169–191.

 An objection may be raised at this point, namely, that it is all very well to have some sense of what an ideal world might require of us, but what can we infer from that case to the case of the actual world? In particular, is not the second-best situation one in which we show more concern for compatriots rather than not? Could not compatriot favouritism be justified in a less than ideal world? Notice though this kind of argument is an entirely different kind of argument from the one offered in the first section and is not at all typical of the kinds of arguments used to justify compatriot favouritism. As I argue in the rest of the section, I do not find this line particularly plausible.

 Thomas Pogge, ‘An egalitarian law of peoples’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 23 (1994), pp. 195–224, especially pp. 203–204.

 Since we all have a need for a life-sustaining relation to our environment, actions which make this impossible deserve urgent attention. For instance, the current rate at which we are destroying the ozone layer means that we are not only thwarting future generations’ abilities to enjoy a life-sustaining relation to their environment, but are also thwarting our own. Consider how 1 billion additional skin cancers are expected to develop amongst people alive today because of ozone layer destruction, or consider how ozone hole destruction is predicted to cause a significant lowering of our immune systems, or consider how rising sea levels as a result of global warming will mean that a good portion of the 55% of the world's population who live at sea level will not be able to continue living where they do and will have to relocate to higher ground, placing further pressure on already scarce resources. (For more on this, see Robert Goodland, ‘The case that the world has reached limits’, in Donald VanDeVeer and Christine Pierce (eds), The Environmental Ethics and Policy Book (Belmont, CA, Wadsworth), pp. 602–610.) We can join organizations that are committed to action on urgent problems affecting our liberties and our abilities to meet our needs, hopefully thereby pressuring political decision makers to adopt more appropriate policies.