In 2025-26, this seminar will focus on the relation between impartial morality and special relationships (e.g., friendship and family relations). In the first part of the course, we will consider what makes special relationships valuable, as well as the nature of the obligations associated with them. In the second part of the course, we will examine the claim that morality itself is a system of interpersonal relationships: a relation in which we stand to any other human being as such. On this view, moral obligations are simply the normative standards of such a relationship. We will then consider a number of challenges to this view, including from authors we will have read in the first part of the course, who emphasize important contrasts, as well as potential conflicts, between special relationships and the more impartial demands of morality.
- Docente: Dishaw Samuel