Wednesday 28 October 2009 17.15

Venue: University College Goodhart Seminar Room

Organised by Jurisprudence Discussion Group

Speaker: David Owens (Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield and a Visiting Fellow of All Souls College. )

This paper discusses a class of social obligations which I call obligations of involvement. They include obligations of neighbourliness, friendship, hospitality, acquaintanceship etc. I argue that we can't understand such obligations unless we suppose that human beings have irreducibly normative interests, specifically an interest in being able to control when other people count as having wronged them. I reject the idea that obligations of involvement can be understood as arising from the value of benevolence or as a species of promissory obligation, as obligations of reciprocation or as obligations of due care for other people's expectations. Accounts of friendship offered by Raz, Rawls, Scheffler and Scanlon are criticised and contrasted with my own proposal.