Hardimon, M. O. - Role Obligations

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Role ObligationsAuthor(s): Michael O. HardimonReviewed work(s):Source: The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 91, No. 7 (Jul., 1994), pp. 333-363Published by: Journal of Philosophy, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2940934 .Accessed: 11/04/2012 12:14

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THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY VOLUME XCI, NO. 7,JULY 1994

ROLE OBLIGATIONS*

he subject of this paper is role obligations, the sort of obliga- if tions we have (or take ourselves to have) as occupants of

social roles: as citizens, family members, teachers, and so forth. Contemporary moral philosophers have, by and large, neglected these obligations, regarding them as marginal at best.' I argue that the view that role obligations are marginal is mistaken, that they are central to morality and should be taken seriously. Role obligations are especially interesting because they illustrate the existence and importance of a dimension of the moral life largely unnoticed by the ethical mainstream: the dimension that is lived through social institutions-the dimension Hegel called Sittlichkeit. This dimension is in fact the real target of this paper. I focus on role obligations as a way of bringing it into plain view. My underlying aim is to enable us to appreciate the importance of the institutional dimension of the moral life.

* I would like to thank Joshua Cohen, Paul Hoffman, Shelly Kagan, Thomas Scanlon, and Amartya Sen for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. I am especially grateful to Daniel Brudney, Mary Devereaux, Steven Engstrom, and Liam Murphy for commenting on a series of drafts. Versions of this paper have been presented at the University of Illinois/Chicago, Tufts University, and the Harvard Program in Ethics and the Professions where I would like to thank my fellow seminar members: Arthur Applbaum, David Estlund, Leslie Griffin, Martha Minow, Christine Mitchell, Timothy Lytton, and Deborah Stone for their comments and encouragement.

' That the topic of role obligations has been neglected is a commonplace among critics of the ethical mainstream. See, for example, Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard, 1985), pp. 7-8; Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (New York: Cambridge, 1982), p. 179; Alas- dair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame: University Press, 1981); Lawrence Blum, Friendship, Altruism, and Morality (New York: Routledge, 1980); and Christina Hoff Sommers, "Filial Morality," this JOURNAL, LXXXIII, 8 (August 1986): 439-55. An especially telling example of the mainstream's tendency to marginalize role obligations is provided by Thomas Nagel, who recognizes "that

0022-362X/94/9107/333-63 ?D 1994 The Journal of Philosophy, Inc.

333

334 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

I. PRELIMINARY REMARKS

Not every status is a role. The statuses of human being or person, for example, are not roles. To speak of the obligations we have as human beings or persons as role obligations is a confusion. Still, the range of things that can properly be called roles is remarkably heter- ogeneous and wide. The social roles I shall focus on are institutional roles, ones that are institutionally defined. More specifically, my focus shall be on political, familial, and occupational roles. Accord- ingly, I shall follow the common practice of using the term 'role' to refer to constellations of institutionally specified rights and duties organized around an institutionally specified social function.2 Purely biological relations, considered merely as such, are not roles in my sense of the term. Thus, we need to distinguish between, for example, the biological relation of sister, which is defined by biology, and the institutional role of sister, which is institutionally defined. Stand- ing in a particular biological relationship may be a necessary and sufficient condition of occupying a given institutional role, but it is the institution-not biology-that specifies who may occupy the role; and it is the institution-not biology-that specifies the rights and duties that individuals have as occupants of that role.3 I focus on institutional roles because they are the kind of roles that illustrate the existence of the institutional dimension of the moral life.4 It is by entering such roles that we enter this dimension and by fulfilling the obligations associated with such roles that we partici- pate in its arrangements.

As I shall understand the term, a 'role obligation' is a moral re- quirement, which attaches to an institutional role, whose content is fixed by the function of the role, and whose normative force flows from the role. To say that a role obligation "attaches to an institutional role" is to say that it applies to an individual in her capacity as

most people would acknowledge a noncontractual obligation to show special concern" for at least some of those to whom they are closely related, but says that he mentions them "only for completeness"; The View from Nowhere (New York: Oxford, 1986), p. 165. One notable exception to this general pattern is to be found in Ronald Dworkin, Law's Empire (Cambridge: Harvard, 1986), p. 196.

2 See, e.g., R.S. Downie, Roles and Values (New York: Methuen, 1971), pp. 127-8.

3 It may also be useful to distinguish between nominal and real occupancy of institutional roles. Thus, two (biological) brothers separated at birth nominally occupy the (institutionally defined) role of brother, but their occupancy of this role is not real since they were not raised within the same family.

' Social roles can be divided into institutional and noninstitutional roles. I do not think that social roles as such form a unified subject matter. I do, however, think that institutional roles form a unified subject matter. Their unity derives from the unity of the institutional dimension of the moral life.

ROLE OBLIGATIONS 335

an occupant of that role: as a sister, as a citizen, or as a bus driver, for example. Obligations deriving from what John Rawls5 calls "the principle of fairness" may buttress role obligations, but are not themselves role obligations. This principle holds that people have an obligation to carry out the tasks associated with their role providing (i) that the institution of which the role is part is just and (ii) that they have either voluntarily accepted the benefits of the institution or made use of the opportunities the institution provides to advance their own interests (ibid., pp. 11 1-4, 342-50). Instead of flowing from roles, the normative force of obligations deriving from the principle of fairness attaches to roles, providing an additional moral reason to act in accordance with their requirements. Thus, for example, if I am a firefighter I may have a role obligation to enter a burning building: such activities are presumably part of the job. I may also have an obligation deriving from the principle of fairness to do the very same things, but that obligation is distinct from my role obligation: the obligation I have as a firefighter. It might also be useful to contrast my account of role obligations with that of Ronald Dworkin. He regards role obligations as a species of "associative obligations," which he defines as "special responsibilities social practice attaches to membership in some biological or social group" (op. cit., p. 196). Whether people actually have morally binding associative obligations is a matter about which I wish to remain agnostic. But, in any case, role obligations, as I understand them, are not usefully thought of as a species of associative obligation. Role obligations are defined in terms of institutions, not groups, and attach to institutionally specified roles rather than membership in groups. Membership in an ethnic group might conceivably confer an associative obligation in Dworkin's sense of the term, but it would not generate a role obligation in mine. Being a member of an ethnic group is not a role.

According to one common philosophical usage, any public system of rules counts as an institution. My use of the term is narrower than this. The state and the family are institutions; so are associations such as firms, schools, trade unions, and professions. Promising, however, on my account, is not an institution but a practice. An institution includes rules that define offices and positions, which can be occupied by different individuals at different times. Hospitals, for example, retain their identity across changes of health-care professionals, patients, and staff. Institutions are ongoing, self- reproducing structures, each with a life of its own, so to speak. Since

5A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard, 1971).


it sounds odd to refer to individual (nuclear) families as institutions, it should be pointed out that familial roles (husband, wife, father, mother, son, daughter, sister, brother, and so forth), being institutionally defined, are genuine institutional roles. For ease of refer- ence we can speak of individual families as institutionally defined groups. Whether they are properly characterized as institutions is not a matter that needs to be settled here.

Friendship, however, is not an institution. Friendships are not self-reproducing structures, nor are the identities of friendships independent of the individuals who constitute them. When two individuals become friends, a new friendship comes into being. Should they cease to be friends, their friendship will cease to exist; it cannot be resumed by anyone other than those particular individuals. The structures of friendships are, furthermore, much less formal, much more elastic than those of genuine institutions. What counts as a friendship is up to the parties involved in a way in which what counts as a state, family, or university is not.6 It might be helpful to think of friendships as relationships.7

I would not want to deny that the term 'friend' can be used to pick out a genuine social role or that the obligations that people have as friends can properly be called role obligations;8 and it is obvious that the role of friend and the obligations people have as friends are of great moral significance. Nor should it come as a surprise that philosophers have regarded friendship as an especially interesting moral phenomenon. Friendships are emblematic of the moral life of relationships. Being personal and noninstitutional, they are free of many of the problematic features associated with role obligations proper. But the very features that make friendship interesting from a moral point of view also make it an especially poor starting place for an inquiry into the institutional dimension of the moral life. Friendship belongs to a different, noninstitutional, sphere of morality.

A remark about the status of role concepts is in order here. Role concepts are, to use Dworkin's term, 'interpretative', which is to say that people can reasonably argue about the proper interpretation or understanding of role terms and concepts (op. cit., pp. 45-86).

6 For this point I am indebted to Daniel Brudney. 7 It must be remembered that individuals can and do form relationships within

institutions, as well. One of the reasons institutions are so important is that they shape many of the kinds of relationships we can have. The relevant notion of relationship here is not the logical notion, of course, but rather the familiar, intuitive notion of a personal relationship.

8 In this respect my specifications of the terms 'role' and 'role obligation' are admittedly somewhat artificial.


Thus, for example, people might have different and competing reasonable interpretations of the role of parent, of what the rights and duties of parents really are. It should also be noted that in order to settle what the requirements of a given role are, it is often necessary to determine how the institution of which it is a part is-or ought to be-structured. Questions about the obligations of family members lead naturally to questions about the family. Questions about the obligations of citizens lead naturally to questions about the state. How the family and the state are to be understood are also interpretive matters. Institutional concepts are no less interpretive than role concepts. Role obligations constitute a subject in which the con- cerns of ethics and political philosophy come together.

In what follows, I shall present my account of role obligations as a challenge to the standard view of role obligations, or, more precisely, to the picture of the subject it conveys. The standard view can be formulated in three propositions:

(1) Role obligations are of two kinds, "contractual" and "noncontractual."

(2) Contractual role obligations are acquired by signing on for the roles from which they derive.

(3) Noncontractual role obligations are extremely problematic, if they exist at all.

My attitude toward the standard view is complex. On the one hand, I believe that there is a clear sense in which it is correct. On the other hand, I believe that it conveys a picture of role obligations (and the moral life) which is misleading and distorted. Moral philosophy needs a new way of thinking about role obligations which can free us from the problems associated with the standard view while preserving its kernel of truth. My aim in this paper is to provide the beginnings of such an account. I start by considering a key source of the mainstream's neglect of role obligations and then take up the standard view, considering its propositions in reverse order. I begin with noncontractual role obligations because they are especially problematic and interesting and because they illustrate the institutional dimension of morality in an especially clear way. I then turn to the more familiar idea of contractual role obligations, and discuss the distinction between contractual and noncontractual role obligations. The paper concludes with a general assessment of the standard view.

II. THE DOCTRINE OF PERFECT ADEQUACY The neglect of role obligations finds one of its primary sources in an extremely influential view, commonly ascribed to Hegel and F. H.


Bradley, and associated with the phrase 'my station and its duties'.9 This view, which can be called the doctrine of perfect adequacy, maintains that social roles provide a perfectly adequate guide to action. Ironically, neither Hegel nor Bradley ever held this view; no important philosopher has. Nonetheless, it is the assumption that taking role obligations seriously requires taking this doctrine seriously that has led to their neglect. A legacy of misreading, the doctrine of perfect adequacy has functioned as a kind of philosophical boogie- man, standing in the way of the serious investigation of role obligations, and haunts moral philosophy to this day. We need to examine it closely in order to free ourselves of its unholy grip.

The doctrine of perfect adequacy can be formulated in two component claims.

(1) The moral guidance social roles provide is "comprehensive." (2) The moral guidance social roles provide is "transparent."

Let us call the first component the comprehensiveness claim, the second, the transparency claim. To say that the moral guidance roles provide is comprehensive is to say that one will fulfill all of one's moral obligations if one fulfills all of one's role obligations.10 There are two versions of the comprehensiveness claim. According to the reductionist version of this claim, an individual's moral duties are fully specified by the duties of her role."1 It says that individuals have no moral duties beyond those imposed by their social roles. All obligations are in effect special obligations, obligations to strangers presumably being a special case. It is called reductionist because it reduces all obligations to role obligations. According to the nonreductionist version, individuals do have duties beyond those specified by their roles (for example, to keep promises), but their social roles are constructed in such a way that in fulfilling the obligations attaching to them, they will fulfill their other, independently specified, general duties as well. Unlike its reductionist counterpart, this version does not reduce all obligations to role obligations. To say that the guidance roles provide is transparent is to say that the requirements of one's role are always clear, that there are no morally hard

9 David Luban plausibly suggests that Bradley, who introduced the phrase 'my station and its duties' into the philosophical tradition, borrowed it from the Angli- can Book of Common Prayer, in Lawyers and Justice: An Ethical Study (Princeton: University Press, 1988), p. 106n.

10 See (for passages which might be read as supporting this view) G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History: Introduction (New York: Cambridge, 1975), p. 80; Bradley, Ethical Studies (New York: Oxford, [1876] 1989), pp. 174, 176.

11 Maclntyre, pp. 114-22.


cases or morally difficult choices.'2 The doctrine of perfect adequacy suggests that all one needs to do to lead a morally decent life is to carry out the duties of one's station. It says, in effect, that 'my station and its duties' provides a moral compass at once perfectly reliable and easy to read.

The doctrine of perfect adequacy is extremely implausible. It belongs to the family of views whose implausibility becomes plain once they are clearly stated. Nonetheless, it will be instructive to consider where precisely the doctrine goes wrong. Let us start by examining the second component of the doctrine, the transparency claim. It must be acknowledged that the claim is not completely implausible. It may well be that social roles and statuses were far more determinate and well-defined in Hegel and Bradley's social world (the social world of nineteenth-century Europe) than they are in ours. Nor is the claim patently unreasonable that people in their world knew for the most part what their station was and what its duties were. But the idea that the requirements of their stations were always clear- that they were never faced with morally hard cases or morally difficult choices-is extremely hard to believe. I myself am strongly inclined to doubt that there has ever been a social world in which the guidance social roles provided was as clear as the transparency claim suggests. The opening of the Iliad, for example, can be read as a dispute concerning the precise content of Achilles's and Agamem- non's role obligations.

A further problem with the doctrine of perfect adequacy is that the word 'station' connotes a degree of social articulation not to be found in most contemporary societies. The suggestion that our social world is divided into fixed and well-defined social groups, each with its own separate and highly determinate set of practices, values, and ways of looking at the world, strains credulity. The idea that our social world ought to be divided into a hierarchy of well-defined social groups is less attractive still. Not only is the form of social life evoked by the rhetoric of 'my station and its duties'-a form of life characterized by hierarchy and rigid social distinctions-it is also one few of us would wish to have restored. So it is crucial to point out that one can recognize the importance of role obligations without being attracted to such a world. There are, of course, prominent conservative defenders of role obligations who are drawn to this form of life, and this fact may give us pause. It does not, however, provide a good reason for ignoring the topic altogether.'3 Role obli-

12 See Hegel, p. 89; Bradley, pp. 176, 198. 13 Cf. Samuel Scheffler, Human Morality (New York: Oxford, 1992), p. 10.


gations are too important to be left to the conservatives. The same can be said of the institutional dimension of the moral life.

Even if we bracket our worries about the rhetoric of 'our station and its duties' and distance ourselves from the social views of the conservative defenders of role obligations, a further point remains. Nowadays, it is often unclear what "our station" is and what "its duties" are. If I am unmarried but living in a "domestic partner- ship," what precisely is my role? Am I a partner? A boyfriend? A significant other? This is not just a problem about titles. There is a real, practical question about what the role is and what its duties are. The basic problem extends beyond the difficulties associated with novel or transitional social positions. Even if we restrict our atten- tion to social roles hallowed by custom and tradition, what stands out is the remarkable indeterminacy of the duties attaching to these roles.'4 What, for example, are the duties of a wife today? What duties does a present-day husband have? What is clear is that the obligations associated with our social roles are not transparent.

Let us turn to the comprehensiveness claim. Its reductionist version is open to the objection of reverse anachronism, of projecting features of past societies on to the present. It may be true that certain "heroic" or "traditional" societies failed to recognize the existence of any general duties-that is, duties that apply to and are owed to persons generally. Perhaps it is also true, as Alasdair MacIntyre claims, that the Homeric Greeks recognized no duties or obligations of this sort (op. cit., pp. 115-22). But this is certainly not true of modern individuals. We correctly regard ourselves as having duties-including the duty not to murder, lie, or coerce-that are independent of our roles and statues: duties that apply to people generally. It might also be added that there is nothing specifically modern about the idea that we have such duties. The traditional "thou shalt nots" are duties of this kind. So it is doubtful that the moral duties of individuals were ever fully specified by their roles.

Inasmuch as the nonreductionist version of the comprehensiveness claim provides room for general duties, it represents a clear improvement over its reductionist counterpart. But the proposition that our social roles are structured in such a way as to guarantee the fulfillment of our general obligations seems false. Not all of our personal interactions are structured by roles. Even when they are, questions may still arise concerning how we are to treat one another as persons. Furthermore, at least on the face of things, conflicts

14 See Amy Gutmann, "Communitarian Critics of Liberalism," Philosophy and Public Affairs, xiv, 3 (Summer 1985): 308-22; here pp. 315-6.


between the obligations of our roles and our general duties are bound to arise. Now, it may turn out that there is no fundamental (theoretically irresolvable) conflict between the two. But since the theory that would show this is not written into the everyday experience of our roles, it is evident that the day-to-day guidance our roles actually provide is far from comprehensive.

Given the extreme implausibility of the doctrine of perfect adequacy, the fact that it has led to the neglect of role obligations should come as no surprise. If taking it seriously were a precondi- tion of taking them seriously, refusing to take them seriously would be the only reasonable course of action. A moment's thought, however, makes it clear that this is not the case. It is perfectly possible to take role obligations seriously without giving credence to the doctrine of perfect adequacy. The point I have been urging throughout this section is that the doctrine of perfect adequacy is something we should leave behind.

It is, however, worth emphasizing that far from revealing the triv- iality of role obligations, reflection on the doctrine of perfect adequacy brings out their importance. Such reflection makes clear that we need guidance with respect to our social roles. Doubts and con- troversies about role obligations are a prominent feature of contemporary moral life and a basic source of contemporary moral perplexity. And, as we have seen, disputes of this sort reflect contro- versies about the structure and significance of the institutions within which role obligations arise.

Our current situation vis-a-vis our social roles and institutions is pluralistic and interpretive. We are faced with a variety of competing conceptions of the structure and significance of our central social institutions. Each of us has the task, at once moral and political, of determining, explicitly or implicitly, which of these conceptions we shall accept. One practical reason for turning to the theory of role obligations is to find assistance in carrying out this task. I should note that the theory of role obligations need not provide a complete specification of our role obligations in order to help us with this task. Nor need it provide a general procedure for determining what these obligations are. The kind of guidance concerning social roles we need today is orientation. We need help in answering the question: How shall we relate to our social roles? And this is a form of assistance that philosophical theory can provide.

I should also like to urge that despite the fact that the social world has long since ceased to be organized around well-defined "stations" (assuming that it ever was), it remains true that our lives- personal no less than social-are lived through institutions, and that


social roles lie at the center, not the periphery of our moral experience. Our moral lives are characterized not only by how we relate to other people, but also by how we relate to our social roles and institutions. Role obligations are an absolutely pervasive feature of ordinary moral life. This is the main truth contained in the idea of 'my station and its duties', and this truth provides a basic reason, at once practical and theoretical, for taking the topic of role obligations seriously.

III. NONCONTRACTUAL ROLE OBLIGATIONS The standard view of noncontractual role obligations-that such obligations are problematic, if they exist at all-is often presented as a clear deliverance of common sense. Given the many doubts we are bound to have about the existence of such obligations, this suggestion has intuitive appeal. And yet, if we think for a moment about particular cases, we may find that our reaction is quite different. For example, it seems natural to say that we have obligations toward our parents.'5 It is clear that some of these obligations are role obligations. They are obligations we have because we are our parents' children, obligations we have in our capacity as sons and daughters. It is equally clear that these roles are noncontractual. We do not choose our parents; the roles of son and daughter are roles into which we are born. The precise content of these obligations may, however, be unclear. Are we obliged to care for our parents when they get old? If so, how stringent is this demand? How are our obligations toward our parents to be weighed against our obligations toward our children? But, whatever doubts or uncertainties we may have about the content or weight of noncontractual role obligations, most of us are strongly inclined to accept that we have some obligations of this sort. The force of this intuition becomes clearer still if we consider what it would be like to say that we have no noncontractual role obligations, period. Few of us, I suspect, would be willing, on reflection, to say such a thing. The idea that we have noncontractual familial obligations is one of the most salient moral beliefs we have. It is a frequently overlooked, but deeply rooted, constituent of our own ordinary moral sensibility. This is a point proponents of the standard view commonly overlook.'6

15 For discussion of the idea of filial obligations, see Sommers; and Norman Daniels, Am I My Parents' Keeper (New York: Oxford, 1988), pp. 21-39.

16 My claim in this paragraph is not that we do in fact have noncontractual role obligations, but simply that we think of ourselves as having them. This claim needs to be argued because it is something that the proponents of the standard view typically deny. It needs to be emphasized because contemporary philosophical discussions often convey the (false) impression that the idea of morally binding noncontractual role obligations is a foreign ethical notion, accessible only


None of this, however, is to say that the idea of noncontractual role obligation is an unproblematic constituent of our moral sensibility. In claiming that noncontractual role obligations are problematic, the proponents of the standard view speak the truth. Even if (as I think) the fact that the content of our noncontractual role obligations is often unclear does not entail that they do not exist, there is still something odd about the discrepancy between the strength of our conviction that we have noncontractual obligations and the degree of difficulty we have in specifying their content. If we are so sure that we have filial obligations, why is it so difficult to say what precisely they are? An even more important point, however, is this: the notion of morally binding noncontractual role obligations stands in stark opposition to the familiar idea that the only way in which we can acquire role obligations-or in any case, role obligations with genuine moral force-is by signing on for the roles to which they are attached. This idea, which might be called the volunteer principle, is one most of us find compelling. It, too, is a constituent of our ordinary moral sensibility.

This means that we are faced with a conflict in our moral beliefs. We are inclined, on the one hand, to acknowledge that we have morally binding noncontractual role obligations, such as those to our parents. We are inclined, on the other hand, to endorse a principle that denies the possibility of role obligations for which we have not "volunteered." Our circumstance is thus one of reflective dis- equilibrium.'7 This circumstance provides a basic theoretical reason for taking noncontractual role obligations seriously. If we want our moral beliefs to hang together, something needs to be done to resolve this conflict. We must revise our views concerning noncontractual role obligations one way or the other.

The assumption that noncontractual role obligations pose a special problem for moral theory might, of course, be questioned. After all, the idea of noncontractual obligation per se is not problematic. The duty not to do harm and the duty to help others (nonmalefi- cence and beneficence), for example, raise no special difficulties for moral theory-despite the fact that we do not sign on for them. No one finds these duties threatening. This is not to say that the stand-

through the exercise of anthropological imagination, e.g., thinking about the Ho- meric Greeks (see, e.g., MacIntyre, pp. 114-36). The fact of the matter is that the idea of noncontractual role obligation is extremely familiar.

17 See Rawls, pp. 20f., 48-51, 120f.; "The Independence of Moral Theory," in The Proceedings of the American Philosophical Association, XLIX (1974), pp. 7-8; and Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia, 1993), pp. 8, 28, 45, 95 if.


ing of such duties cannot be questioned. But such doubts would amount to skepticism about morality as such, rather than skepticism about a particular region of morality. The same cannot be said of noncontractual role obligations. One can be skeptical about them without being skeptical about morality. Noncontractual role obligations do therefore pose a special problem for moral theory. The question we need to ask is: What is it that makes voluntariness an issue for these obligations?

One possible answer is that, because the institutions from which they arise could be unjust, one might be required to act in accordance with an unjust institution simply as the result of being born into a particular role. The problem of role obligations deriving from institutions that are unjust is not, however, specific to noncontractual role obligations. The same problem arises with respect to contractual role obligations. The solution is in each case the same: unless the institution from which a putative role obligation derives is just, the obligation does not bind. It is not a genuine obligation. It cannot, therefore, be the worry about unjust institutions that ac- counts for the problematic character of noncontractual role obligations.

Another, familiar, answer is that noncontractual role obligations are special obligations, obligations to definite individuals rather than to persons generally. Perhaps it is the idea of a duty to a definite individual for which one has not signed on that is especially obscure. Role obligations, however, are not always owed to definite individuals. I may, for example, have an obligation as a family member to maintain and support my family which is an obligation to the group, rather than to any particular member of the group. I may also have an analogous obligation to the state. The reason why these noncontractual role obligations are problematic cannot, therefore, be that they are owed to definite individuals. Nor do I think that the main problem with the more familiar sort of noncontractual role obligations is that they are owed to definite individuals. The real source of the problem with noncontractual role obligations-noncontractual role obligations generally-has to do with the fact that they are institutional. It is the obscure and threatening idea of an unchosen institutional obligation which makes noncontractual role obligations so problematic.'8

This returns us to the conflict between the idea of noncontractual role obligations and the volunteer principle. Given the obscurity of

18 The last three paragraphs were prompted by critical discussion by Shelly Kagan.


the idea of an unchosen institutional obligation and the threaten- ingness characteristic of this notion, perhaps the most obvious solution would be to abandon the belief (which we now recognize we have) that there are morally binding noncontractual role obligations. This is, in effect, what philosophers who deny the existence of such obligations would have us do. What are we to make of this proposal?

Communitarians, such as Michael Sandel (op. cit., pp. 62, 150, 179), would presumably try to block this proposal by saying that the idea of morally binding noncontractual role obligations is one we cannot abandon. They sometimes suggest that our attachments to family and country are so central to our identity that we could not relinquish, perhaps could not ever consider relinquishing, the idea that we have noncontractual obligations connecting us to these groups. I myself, however, am disposed to follow Hegel"9 in thinking that there is no attachment, no end, no matter how deeply rooted it may be, which we cannot in principle renounce. This is one key respect in which we human beings are free. Contrary to what the communitarians maintain, abandoning the idea that we have noncontractual role obligations is a real option. So the communitarian defense of noncontractual role obligations fails.

But to say that an option is real is one thing, to say that it is attractive, another. The idea that we have morally binding noncontractual role obligations is deeply rooted in our self-conception. It is rooted, more specifically, in our conception of ourselves as citizens and our conception of ourselves as sons or daughters, brothers and sisters, and so forth. Since the communitarians often suggest that these roles lie at the forefront of our consciousness, it is important to stress that I am not making this assumption. We may or may not be initially inclined to identify ourselves explicitly in these ways. Some of us will, on the contrary, be inclined to view ourselves "atomistically," to think of ourselves as individuals rather than social members and to regard our social roles as "external" to who we are and in no way "constitutive" of our identity; and many of us feel alienated from our social roles. What I am assuming is that most of us do at least tacitly conceive of ourselves as family members and citizens, that these (possibly implicit) self-understandings are central to our own general self-conception, and that we can, through reflec-

'" Hegel: Elements of the Philosophy of Right, H. B. Nisbet, trans., Allen Wood, ed. (New York: Cambridge, [1821] 1991), ?5. I discuss this point in Hegel's Social Philosophy: The Project of Reconciliation (New York: Cambridge, 1994), pp. 163 if.


tion, come to recognize that we do in fact conceive of ourselves in these ways.20

If this is correct, then abandoning the idea that we have noncontractual role obligations would require a radical revision of our self- conception, for we cannot give up the idea of noncontractual role obligation without also ceasing to conceive of ourselves as family members and citizens. What, after all, would it mean to say that we conceive of ourselves as family members but regard ourselves as having no familial obligations whatsoever? The suggestion that we could do this is incoherent. The same is true mutatis mutandis for conceiving of ourselves as citizens. This is not to say that the "thought of duty" is or ought to be the dominant form of motivation within the family and state (an excessively moralistic suggestion, indeed), but only that the idea of noncontractual role obligation is an essential element of conceiving of oneself as a family member and citizen. Although noncontractual role obligations are by no means the whole of family or civic life, they are an integral part of them.2' Abandoning the idea that we have noncontractual role obligations would also require a radical transformation in the way in which we live our lives, for relating to family members and citizens as family members and citizens, something that is central to our lives, essentially involves acting in accordance with a conception of ourselves as occupants of these roles.

The upshot of the last two paragraphs is that the cost of abandoning our conception of ourselves as family members and citizens would be enormous. The roles of family member and citizen are basic elements of our lives, and the institutions of which they are a part (the family and the state) are central constituents of the basic framework within which we live our lives. Nor would these costs be

20 In claiming that most of us at least tacitly conceive of ourselves as citizens, I do not mean to suggest that most of us tacitly approve of the policies of our government or that most of us are at root patriotic. The sense of 'conceiving of oneself as a citizen' I have in mind is well captured by the following remark of Nagel, speaking of his experience as an American citizen during the Vietnam war: "Citizenship is a surprisingly strong bond, even for those of us whose patriotic feelings are weak. We read the newspaper every day with rage and horror, and it was different from reading about the crimes of another country"; Mortal Ques- tions (New York: Cambridge, 1979), p. xii.

21 Within healthy families, family members are properly and characteristically motivated by emotional ties of attachment. Family members help one another because they care for each other. And since caring about the members of one's family is one of the central virtues of a family member, the life of a healthy family will look more like the life of virtue than the life of duty. Nonetheless, it remains true that family members ought to help one another even when they do not feel like it. Family members are also tied by bonds of obligation.


exclusively practical and psychological. For those of us who are committed to the forms of ethical life lived within the family and the state, giving up our conception of ourselves as family members and citizens would also carry a tremendous normative price. So I am inclined to think that few of us would be willing, on reflection, to renounce the idea of noncontractual role obligation. We need to hold on to the notion in order to hold on to our conception of ourselves as family members and citizens.

Let us return to the volunteer principle. The first thing to note is that it is not epistemically privileged: it, too, can be given up. Princi- ples are no more immune to revision than any other constituent of our moral sensibility. And so we need to consider the possibility that the best way to resolve the conflict between the volunteer principle and the idea of noncontractual role obligations would be simply to abandon the volunteer principle. That of course sounds threatening. It may sound even more threatening if we look closely at a basic source of its appeal: our horror at the thought of being impressed like the seamen of old-into social roles and burdened with their attendant obligations against our will. To say that this prospect is unattractive would be an understatement.

The idea of abandoning the volunteer principle will, however, seem less threatening once we recognize that the metaphor of impressment is particularly ill-suited to the roles associated with the noncontractual role obligations we are inclined to take seriously. It would simply be wrong to say that we are impressed into the roles of sons or daughters, wrong to say that we are impressed into the roles of brothers and sisters, and wrong to say that we are impressed into the role of citizen. We do not, it is true, choose these roles, but we are not impressed into them either. They are roles into which we are born.22 And since we, unlike the seamen of old, are not impressed into these roles, it would be inappropriate to extend to these roles the intuitions we have about the circumstance of impressment. Yet this is precisely what we do when we say that they cannot be the source of morally binding obligations since we do not enter them by choice.

Much of the force of the volunteer principle depends upon the assumption that the alternatives of choice and impressment are ex- haustive. What we have just seen, however, is that they are not. The fact that one has not signed on for a social role does not entail that one has acquired it against one's will. Signing on is not the only

22 It is perhaps worth stating explicitly that I am assuming here that the roles of family member and citizen exhaust the class of noncontractual social roles.


alternative to being impressed. The other alternative is birth. Once we recognize that there are-or could be-unchosen social roles that are not imposed against our will, we may be less inclined to insist that the only way in which morally binding role obligations can be acquired is by signing on for the roles to which they are attached. There may be social roles, which, although unchosen, are reflectively acceptable.

This brings us to the ideal of a reflectively acceptable social role -an ideal which, I believe, must figure centrally in the theory of role obligations. Let me provide a sketch of the basic idea. To say that a social role is reflectively acceptable is to say that one would accept it upon reflection. Determining whether a given social role is reflectively acceptable involves stepping back from that role in thought and asking whether it is a role people ought to occupy and play. Determining that a given social role is reflectively acceptable involves judging that it is (in some sense) meaningful, rational, or good. A social role can be reflectively acceptable despite the fact that it has not been reflected upon. To say that a role is reflectively acceptable is to say that one would find it acceptable were one to reflect upon it in suitably specified circumstances. In contrast to the volunteer principle, which calls for a form of choice that is actual, the ideal of reflective acceptability calls for a form of acceptance that is hypothetical.

Since the notion of reflective acceptability is subjective in various respects, it is crucial to point out the process of reflection must be reasonable. The mere fact that one does not feel like carrying out an obligation associated with a given role does not render the role reflectively unacceptable. It would be unreasonable to expect that the requirements of a role never conflicted with one's wishes. On the other hand, the fact that a role required the systematic suppres- sion of all personal feeling, thought, and conscience would provide a good reason for rejecting it.23 It is reasonable to expect that one's roles not require a sacrifice of this sort. A role that imposed such a demand would be reflectively unacceptable.

It should also be noted that the mere fact that one's roles fit with one's desires, preferences, and aims does not entail that these roles

23 The role of butler as understood by Stevens in Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day (New York: Vintage, 1989) provides an especially clear fictional example of such a role. Christine Mitchell, in her "Integrity in Interprofessional Rela- tionships," in Responsibility in Health Care, George J. Agich, ed. (Boston: Riedel, 1982), pp. 163-84, provides an argument suggesting that, as conventionally understood, the role of nurse is not reflectively acceptable because it functions sys- tematically to destroy the integrity of its occupants.


will be reflectively acceptable. A woman raised along traditional gender lines might reasonably conclude that her female roles (daughter, wife, mother) were not reflectively acceptable, even though they fit harmoniously with her existing desires, preferences, and aims, because the process through which she acquired them was unacceptably constrained. A given social role is reflectively acceptable only if the conditions of "will formation"24 associated with that role are reflectively acceptable as well.

The appeal of social roles that meet the condition of reflective acceptability is, I trust, plain. So too, I hope, is the appeal of a social world containing roles we can reflectively accept. The attractiveness of these ideas can be further motivated by consideration of the undesirability of social roles that fail to meet this condition. To occupy a social role that is not reflectively acceptable is to occupy a role that is foreign or "external." This is the circumstance which, owing to Hegel, Feuerbach, and Marx has come to be known as alienation.25 A social world in which the central social roles were reflectively unacceptable would be a world of alienation. It is also worth noting that noncontractual role obligations attaching to reflectively unacceptable roles could be said to be heteronomous since the roles to which they attach are in an important sense alien to the agent's will.

This last point brings us to what is perhaps the most basic underlying concern about noncontractual role obligations: the thought that such obligations, being unchosen, are inherently heteronomous. This is a real concern. Were it the case that noncontractual role obligations turned out to be inherently heteronomous, we would have a compelling reason for rejecting them. But the idea of reflective acceptability provides a reason for thinking that this is not the case, for it is far from clear that noncontractual role obligations attaching to reflectively acceptable noncontractual roles are heteronomous.

Perhaps the real source of heteronomy is not unchosenness but reflective unacceptability. If so, the worry about heteronomy can be addressed without rejecting the idea of noncontractual role obligations. The threat of heteronomy might be met by introducing the following principle:

24 The term 'will formation' (Willensbildung) belongs to Jurgen Habermas; see his Legitimation Crisis, Thomas McCarthy, trans. (Boston: Beacon, 1975), p. 108. See also Raymond Geuss, The Idea of a Critical Theory (New York: Cambridge, 1981), pp. 48-50.

25 I provide an analysis of Hegel's conception of alienation in my op. cit., pp. 119-23.


The principle of reflective acceptability: noncontractual role obligations are not morally binding unless the roles to which they attach are reflectively acceptable.

Some comments about this principle are in order. In assessing the reflective acceptability of a given role, the first question that needs to be settled is whether the role, considered as an abstract structure, is reflectively acceptable.26 Answering this question will involve clarifying the structure of the institution of which that role is a part and asking whether it is reflectively acceptable. Answering this question will also involve assessing the framework of institutions-the social world-of which that institution is a part.27 If the answer at this first stage of reflection is no, the role in question is reflectively unacceptable, and the requirements flowing from it are not morally binding. If the answer at this first stage is yes, if the role, considered as an abstract structure, is reflectively acceptable, it may still turn out that the particular instantiation of that structure-the concrete role one actually occupies-is not reflectively acceptable. It may be that the particular institution or institutional group of which it is a part fails adequately to realize its own (reflectively acceptable) abstract structure. If the particular instantiation of a (reflectively acceptable) institution or institutional group is seriously defective, the force of the requirements flowing from its roles may be diminished if not elimi- nated. To consider an extreme case: child-abuse survivors may have no filial obligations to their parents, whatsoever.28

The principle of reflective acceptability is, I think, attractive. One feature that makes it attractive is that it allows us to deny moral standing to the "bad" noncontractual role obligations (those deriving from reflectively unacceptable roles) without rejecting noncontractual role obligations deriving from the "good" ones (reflectively acceptable roles). Of course, we are assuming that role obligations deriving from unjust institutions are void ab initio. Let me note

26 For the distinction between an institution considered as an abstract structure and an institution considered as a (concrete) realization, see Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 55. Rawls himself uses the expression 'abstract object' rather than 'abstract structure'.

27 In my view, the philosophical investigation of role obligations must begin with ideal theory and proceed holistically.

28 There is, of course, nothing special about this result. I stress this point because it is often suggested that the theory of noncontractual role obligation cannot accommodate the obvious fact that child-abuse survivors may have no filial obligations. Were it true that the theory could not accommodate this truth, that would be a reason for rejecting the idea of noncontractual role obligations. But the theory of noncontractual role obligations can accommodate this basic fact. In showing this, we remove one more obstacle to the acceptance of the idea of noncontractual role obligation.


parenthetically that it is crucial to distinguish between the idea that one might be under a moral obligation simply because one occupies a particular role given that certain moral background conditions are in place (for example, that the institution is just and that the role is reflectively acceptable) and the idea that a moral role could generate moral obligations regardless of the moral background conditions. It is the former idea, not the latter, that I am proposing we take seriously. The failure to make this distinction has been an important source of the ethical mainstream's reluctance to take noncontractual role obligations seriously.29

I should point out that the introduction of the principle of reflective acceptability does not make noncontractual roles contractual. Noncontractual roles-including those which are reflectively acceptable-are roles into which we are born. They are roles we did not choose-and could not have chosen-to enter.30 My determining that a noncontractual role is reflectively acceptable does not alter the fact that it is a role into which I was born. Nor does reflection transform the basic character of noncontractual role obligations (that is, make them contractual), for they still derive from (and flow through) noncontractual roles. In determining that a noncontractual role is reflectively acceptable, I come to accept a set of role obligations that I already had. Were the role not reflectively acceptable, the obligations would not bind. But since, by hypothesis, the role is reflectively acceptable, its obligations bind me whether I reflect or not. Reflection will presumably change my relation to this role and its obligations, but it does not change the basic character of the role or its obligations. Noncontractual role obligations remain noncontractual even after they are reflectively accepted.3'

Given the overall attractiveness of the principle of reflective acceptability, the grip of the idea that we have noncontractual role obligations, and the difficulties connected with the volunteer principle, it might well seem that the best way to resolve the conflict we have been considering would be simply to replace the volunteer

29 Cf. Williams, pp. 7-8. 30 One can, of course, choose to become a naturalized citizen (and so there is a

form of citizenship that is contractual), but one cannot choose the role of citizen into which one is born.

31 My determining that a noncontractual role is reflectively acceptable may lead to my self-consciously choosing to go on with the role, and this voluntary act may in turn generate a set of contractual obligations parallel to the noncontractual obligations of the role: a set of contractual obligations to perform the very same tasks as those required by the noncontractual obligations. But these contractual obligations, which are incurred through a voluntary act, would be distinct from the noncontractual obligations of the role, which are not. Noncontractual role obligations come into being independently of any act of choice.


principle with the principle of reflective acceptability. This is not, however, a step I would recommend. In order to see why, we need to consider the volunteer principle in relation to the social world.

The volunteer principle is often presented as having no special affiliation with any particular institutional context. At the same time, it is generally regarded as applying to every institutional sphere, as being properly regulative for the whole of human social life. But the fact of the matter is that the volunteer principle does have a natural institutional "home," or context, namely, civil society.

'Civil society', as I understand the term, refers to the domain of private association distinct from the family and the state.32 It includes, but is by no means limited to, the marketplace. It also com- prises the network of voluntary associations which includes unions, professional associations, private clubs, social movements, and neighborhoods. This sphere is governed by a norm of voluntary association. The way in which people enter roles in civil society is by signing on for them. This is not to say that people are never coerced into entering roles within civil society, only that such coercion is contrary to its central norm. Civil society is the main social sphere in which people realize their separate and particular interests and pur- sue their own private projects. It is the main institutional sphere in which people are able to exercise individual, personal choice in our social world. It is also the primary sphere within which people can form voluntary associations. Whatever doubts we may have about existing forms of civil society-whatever doubts we may have about capitalism-the basic idea of such a sphere is one we are inclined to affirm. Within the institutional context provided by civil society, the volunteer principle seems perfectly appropriate. Nor could we abandon this principle without abandoning the form of life internal to this sphere. Even if a social system could be established that reliably assigned people to jobs that fit their preferences and abili- ties but did not allow them to choose, we would not want it. We want to be able to choose our professions, and we want a social sphere organized around the exercise of individual personal choice. We should not give up the principle of reflective acceptability.

Our commitment to the idea of noncontractual role obligations, however, makes it impossible for us to retain the volunteer principle in its original form. What then are we to do? We should, I think, preserve the principle by confining its application to the sphere of

32 See Hegel: Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ??182-256; and my op. cit., pp. 189-205.


civil society. Thus, we might say that within civil society the only way in which morally binding role obligations can be acquired is by signing on for the roles from which they derive, while also saying that this constraint does not hold for the other spheres of society, the family and the state. The idea would be that, whereas actual choice is required for obligation within civil society, it is not required for obligation within the family and the state. Within these spheres, noncontractual role obligations may be morally binding if they are reflectively acceptable. A scope modification of this sort makes it possible to retain our deeply felt sense of the validity and significance of the volunteer principle while providing room for morally binding noncontractual role obligations in family and political life. It allows us to reconcile the volunteer principle with the idea of noncontractual role obligation.

Someone might suggest that, though reasonable, this proposal amounts to nothing more than an accommodation to brute fact. Since the roles of family member and citizen are roles into which we are born, they are not roles for which we could sign on. The spheres to which the volunteer principle does not apply are precisely those to which it could not apply. It would, in principle, be preferable to have a social world in which all roles were contractual and the volunteer principle applied universally. But, alas, the social world, being what it is, does not allow for this possibility.33 This is not my understanding. Even allowing for our ambivalence and doubts about the family and the state, it remains true that our roles as family members and citizens are the source of some of the deepest and most important bonds we have. The depth of these bonds is in part a reflection of the fact that they are not chosen. The fact that our social life contains such bonds is not something to be regretted, but something to be affirmed. The wish for a social world in which all roles were contractual reflects a failure to appreciate the dimension of human social life that we, following Hegel, could call "substantial": the ethical dimension constituted by deep and enduring, unchosen relationships. A life devoid of such attachments would be flatter, less full, less human than a life with such attachments. It would also be ethically impoverished: a form of life in which an important ethical dimension was lost. Nor is it clear whether such a life is fully imagin- able or whether it is one human beings could live. The wish for a wholly contractual social world reflects a failure to accept our social nature, the fact that an important component of our ethical identity is shaped by the social arrangements into which we are born. It also

33 I owe this suggestion to Liam Murphy.


reflects a failure to appreciate the existence of the substantial dimension of human ethical life. The introduction of the principle of reflective acceptability represents a first step toward opening a space within ethical theory for the recognition of this dimension.

IV. CONTRACTUAL ROLE OBLIGATIONS The standard view's claim that contractual role obligations are acquired by signing on for the roles from which they derive is largely correct. It is true that contractual role obligations are acquired by signing on for the roles from which they derive. But what does "signing on for" amount to? What is it that we sign on for, when we "sign on for" a social role? Proponents of the standard view provide no answer to these questions. This is an important respect in which their approach is defective. Considering some of the familiar ways in which these questions can be answered will enable us to move beyond the problems associated with the standard view while retain- ing its kernel of truth.

According to one popular interpretation, which I shall call the promising account, what "signing on for" amounts to is making a promise. In signing on for a role, we promise to carry out the duties of the role, the tasks that the role requires. Morally speaking, there is nothing more to a role obligation than a promise to perform these tasks. Role obligations are just a special case of promises.

This account has the clear advantage of bringing the voluntary aspect of contractual role obligations into clear focus, explaining it in terms of a familiar and well-accepted moral notion. Many will also be attracted by the account's individualism, for it maintains that the fact that an individual occupies a social role is never in and of itself a morally significant fact. What matters morally is that, in signing on for a role, one has promised to do something. Unfortunately, the promising account has a clear disadvantage, for there is one especially salient fact about contractual role obligations which it overlooks: the fact that what one signs on for in signing on for a contractual social role is a package of duties, fixed by the institution of which the role is a part.34

Roles, contractual and noncontractual alike, are institutionally defined clusters of rights and duties. Even if, as is often the case, the duties attaching to roles are loosely defined,35 it is still true that the

3 The idea that what individuals sign on for in signing on for a social role is a package of duties is taken from Daniels's "Duty to Treat or Right to Refuse," Hasting Center Report (March-April 1991), p. 43.

3 One of the striking transformations in the ethical life that is lived within institutions which has taken place within at least the last hundred years is that social roles have become less determinately structured and more open-ended. Nowadays, the packages of rights and duties associated with social roles contain more options, more room for negotiation than they did in times past.


duties are specified by the institutions from which they derive: what one signs on for is a socially specified cluster of duties. In this respect, the language of contract is misleading, for it wrongly suggests that "contractual" social roles are a species of individually nego- tiated contracts. Superstar lawyers may be able to name their own price, but what it is to be a lawyer is something no lawyer can settle. Social roles are not things that we, as individuals, make up, but enduring, socially defined structures that we, as individuals, enter.

Several caveats are in order. To say that social roles are enduring is not to say that they cannot change, for roles do change along with the social institutions of which they are a part. Human history is, among other things, the story of the transformation of social roles. Nor is there any incompatibility between saying that social roles are enduring and recognizing that they can be changed and that we can change them. To say that roles are socially defined is to say that they are defined by us, that we, as a society, have defined and continue to define them in a particular way. Like the matter of how our social world is to be organized, the question concerning how our social roles are to be defined is ultimately up to us. Recognizing the reality of social structures need not involve a denial of responsibility. It should, on the contrary, expand our sense of responsibility. It raises the question: Are these structures, which we maintain and reproduce through the exercise of our roles, structures we want to affirm?

It is also important to remember that role concepts are interpretive. How the clusters of duties associated with contractual social roles are to be understood is no less a matter of interpretation than how the clusters of duties associated with noncontractual role obligations are to be understood. Different individuals occupying the same contractual role may reasonably disagree about the contents of their roles. They may act in good faith on the basis of their conflict- ing interpretations, exercising the very same roles in very different ways. It is also possible for reasonable individuals to interpret their social roles in unconventional ways. Furthermore, taking on a social role is, at least ideally, largely a matter of finding an interpretation that fits one's own temperament and character. There are different ways of being a flight attendant, oncologist, and police officer. Part of what it is to become a good flight attendant, oncologist, or police officer is to find a way of carrying out the responsibilities of these roles which suits one's particularities.36 All this being said, it remains

36 It is sometimes suggested that worries about alienation can be adequately addressed simply by saying that people should choose roles that fit their tempera- ments. See, for example, Michael Quinlan, "Ethics in the Public Service," in


true that individuals cannot custom tailor the obligations they un- dertake in entering contractual social roles.37 To the extent that a role contains options, those options are fixed by the role. To sign on for a role is to sign on for the whole package, properly understood.

Sophisticated proponents of the promising account can, of course, incorporate these points. They can say that what one promises to do in signing on for a social role is to promise to carry out the cluster of duties associated with that role, and they can allow that the contents of these duties are institutionally specified. At the same time, they can insist that the normative force of contractual role obligations consists wholly in the promises people make. This move allows them to retain the intuition that, in and of itself, the fact that a given individual occupies a social role can never be a morally significant fact. Let us call the position that results from making this move the sophisticated promising account. What are we to make of this view?

One obvious attraction is that it recognizes the role played by institutions in the specification of the content of role-related duties. But is it really true that what we do when we sign on for a contractual role is to make a promise to carry out its duties? To whom do we make the promise? Ourselves? The other participants in the relevant institution? The community at large? It seems to me that, although the voluntary acceptance associated with contractual role obligations belongs to the same normative genus as promising, it belongs to a different normative species. It would seem more accurate to say that what we do when we sign on for a social role is to agree to carry out its tasks. Nonetheless, the basic idea-common to both the naive and sophisticated versions of the promising account-seems correct, namely, that choice and voluntary acceptance-actual choice and actual acceptance-are essential factors in contractual role obligation. I shall call the view that interprets signing on as voluntary acceptance, the voluntary acceptance view. This approach seems especially appealing because it connects the idea of contractual role obligation to the basic normative notion of consent: what we do in voluntarily accepting social roles is to consent to under- take them.

Governance, VI, 4 (October): 538-44; here p. 540. But this view overlooks the problem that the social world may fail to offer social roles suitable to the tempera- ments of its members. See, e.g., Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther.

3' The phrase 'individuals cannot custom tailor the obligations' is borrowed from Daniels, "Duty to Treat or Right to Refuse," p. 43.


A few qualifications need to be made. Proponents of the voluntary acceptance account (and, for that matter, proponents of the promising account as well) often suggest that signing on must always take the form of a discrete, punctual act. This, however, is not the case. Signing on may of course take this form. The president-elect becomes president by taking the oath of office. The presidential oath is a public act of voluntary acceptance. Often, however, voluntary acceptance occurs gradually, in a step-by-step way that makes it difficult if not impossible to say when precisely a person has signed on for the role. Becoming a professor (that is, fully assuming the role), for example, is not a discrete act like becoming president. It is not coincident with receiving one's Ph.D., accepting one's first job, or making one's first entrance into a classroom. It is something that occurs over time.

Voluntary acceptance may be tacit. People can come to accept their roles without ever having said or otherwise made explicit that they have done so. The idea of tacit acceptance may be greeted with skepticism. Since what counts as tacit acceptance is contextually defined, there may be no general answer to the question concerning how we are to determine when someone has tacitly accepted a given role. Presumably, there will be cases in which it is objectively unclear whether a given person has or has not accepted a particular role. Nonetheless, it seems plausible to say that once someone has traded her Birkenstocks for Bass Weejuns, her jeans for khakis; once someone has begun to refer to sore throats as 'pharyngitis', treat patients, and use the medical "we"; once someone has completed medical school, made her first reservation in the name of doctor so-and-so, and had the letters 'MD' imprinted on her checks-that person has signed on for the role of doctor.38 She has voluntarily accepted it. There is such a thing as tacit voluntary acceptance of social roles. The phenomenon is both common and familiar.

Replacing the promising account with the voluntary acceptance account and making the necessary qualifications brings us much closer to an adequate understanding of contractual role obligation than we had before. But even if these modifications are made, there is still another absolutely vital factor that this account leaves out, namely, the idea of role identification, the idea of identifying with a role or conceiving of oneself as an occupant of a role.

38 These examples are borrowed from Elisabeth Rosenthal's "How Doctors Learn to Think They're Doctors," The New York Times (November 28, 1993), sect. 4, pp. 1, 4.


For present purposes, I want to say that to identify with a role is

(i) to occupy the role; (ii) to recognize that one occupies the role;

(iii) to conceive of oneself as someone for whom the norms of the role function as reasons.

The point of the first condition is straightforward. One cannot (sanely) conceive of oneself as someone for whom the norms of a role give reasons unless one actually occupies that role. The motivation for the second condition is equally clear. In order to conceive of oneself as someone for whom the norms of a role give reasons, one must recognize that one occupies that role. It is the third condition that does the real work. The key component of the idea of identifying with a role is that of conceiving of oneself as someone for whom the norms, that is, the evaluative standards associated with a role, its rights, duties, virtues, ideals, and supererogations, have reason-giving force.39

Here is the idea. If you identify with a role, its norms will function for you as reasons. If you are a judge who identifies with the role of judge, the fact that this is something judges do (in the normative sense) will give you a reason for doing it. And conversely, if you regard the fact that this is something judges do as giving you a reason to do it, you conceive of yourself as a judge. Were you to say-"I recognize that this is something judges do and I recognize that I am a judge (that I occupy this legally specified position), but why should I do that?"-you would not conceive of yourself as a judge, as someone for whom the norms of the role provide reasons. I do not mean to suggest that people who identify with their roles generally form the thought "I am someone for whom the norms of the role give reasons" in some explicit way. My claim is rather that in regarding the norms of their roles as providing reasons for them, people do at least implicitly conceive of themselves in this way. To regard a given consideration as a reason for acting is to conceive of oneself as the sort of person for whom that consideration is a reason. The process of coming to identify with a social role is at once a process of coming to regard certain considerations as reasons and a process of coming to conceive of oneself as a person of a certain kind.

39 One can recognize that one occupies a social role without conceiving of oneself as someone for whom the norms of the role function as reasons. This will presumably occur in cases in which a person occupies a role whose norms he regards as illegitimate or reflectively unacceptable. A soldier who naively volunteered for the Nazi Wehrmacht and later came to appreciate the horrors of Na- tional Socialism might recognize that he occupied the role of soldier without regarding the norms of that role as having reason-giving force.


It is worth pointing out that, being philosophically "modest" or "thin," this conception of role identification avoids many of the difficulties associated with similar notions. For example, it is possible to identify with a role in my sense of the term without regarding the role as essential to "who one is" or taking the role to be an essential component of one's "true self." In this respect, the idea of role identification is metaphysically unobjectionable. It is also possible to identify with a role and recognize that one is more than the occupant of that particular role and more than the occupant of all the roles one is in.40 One can identify with a role and still regard oneself as a "self" who can step back from and assess that role. Role identification need not result in what Gerald Cohen4' has called "engulfment," the loss of the self within the role. Moreover, it is possible to identify with a role while recognizing that one is free not to identify with the role and that one is responsible for identifying with the role: role identification need not be a form of bad faith.42 And it is also possible to identify with a role without hiding, denying, or suppressing one's humanity-without turning it into a "mask" in John T. Noonan, Jr.'s43 sense of the term. Nor does role identification prevent one from recognizing that one has duties that are independent of one's role, duties that apply to people generally. So the idea of role identification is not morally objectionable.

It is also worth emphasizing that role identification and voluntary acceptance are distinct. This point can be illustrated by the following example. Let us imagine a person with strong anarchist leanings who has successfully completed his medical training. Such a person might voluntarily accept the cluster of duties associated with the role of doctor and yet refuse to identify with this role. He would recognize that he has the knowledge and skills of a doctor and that he has the title of doctor, but adamantly refuse to identify with the role of doctor. Although scrupulous in fulfilling the duties of his role, his reason for performing these tasks would invariably be that he had agreed to perform them. He would never do anything just because he is a doctor. He might acknowledge that he had special responsibilities to others because he possessed certain skills, but he would deny that he had any responsibilities to others qua doctor, qua occupant

40 See Virgina Held, Rights and Goods (Chicago: University Press, 1984). 41 "Beliefs and Roles," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, LXVII (1966-67):

17-34; here p. 34. 42 Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, Hazel E. Barnes, trans. (New York:

Washington Square, [1943] 1966), pp. 101-3. 43 Persons and Masks of the Law (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1976), p.

21.


of that role. Such a person would, I think, be odd, but imagining this possibility makes it possible to distinguish identification from the idea of voluntary acceptance. The fact that we are forced to consider such an extreme case in order to imagine voluntary acceptance and role identification coming apart is testimony to how closely they go together in real life. It also brings out how familiar the phenomenon of role identification really is.

So what does the idea of role identification add to the idea of voluntary acceptance? The first and most obvious thing it adds is the idea of identifying with a role. The fact that people can and do identify with their social roles in the sense I have defined is an important but largely unnoticed feature of the moral life. A second thing it contributes is the idea of self-transformation. In coming to identify with a social role, one's moral self-conception is trans- formed. One comes to conceive of oneself as an occupant of a role, a member of the social world, and a participant in the moral life that is lived through institutions. The third thing that the idea of role identification adds to the idea of voluntary acceptance is an important source of motivation. When people identify with their roles they acquire reasons for carrying out the duties distinct from those deriving from the fact that they have signed on for them. One such reason is that they occupy these roles. If, for example, I identify with the role of teacher, the fact that I am a teacher gives me a reason for grading a set of papers when I am tired and it is late at night. The fact that I signed on for the role of teacher gives me one reason for carrying out its tasks. The fact that I am a teacher gives me another.

The idea that there is a special kind of motivation associated with role identification can be developed by noting that were I to balk at grading the papers, you could appropriately say to me, "but, look, that's your job," and that reproach would be self-standing. It would not need to be supplemented by "and you signed on for that job." Its force would not derive from the fact that one signed on for the role, but instead from the fact that one identifies with it. It must be conceded that the words 'but, look, that's your job' can be used to express other thoughts. We can, for example, use them to say that this particular task, unpleasant though it may be, belongs to a cluster of duties associated with the person's role. Used in this way, the words serve an identificatory function: they pick out the task in question as one of the duties associated with the role. We can also say "but, look, that's your job" as a way of reminding people that they did in fact sign on for the role-that it was not simply thrust upon them. Used in this way the words function as a kind of short- hand; their motivational force derives from the person's past volun-


tary acceptance of the role. But the fact that the words 'but, look, that's your job' can be used in these ways does not entail that they cannot be used to appeal to a form of motivation people have because they identify with their roles. There is no incompatibility between these usages.

To be sure, the appeal to the fact that a person occupies a particular role can fail. It will fail if the person does not identify with her role. In such a case we would be better served by saying "but you signed on for this job." Still, we do say things such as "but, look, that's your job" with the intention of appealing to people's identification with their roles. This shows that this is a form of motivation we often expect people to have." Now, just as it is possible to identify with a role while also recognizing that one is more than the occupant of that role, it is also possible to expect someone to identify with a role while also recognizing the person in the role. So there is nothing inherently objectionable about this expectation.

There are of course circumstances in which people should not identify with their roles, such as when their roles are morally imper- missible, dehumanizing, or degrading. And, correspondingly, there are circumstances in which it is inappropriate to expect people to identify with their roles. We should not, for example, expect an underpaid and exploited department store worker to identify with the role of salesclerk. It goes without saying that we should never regard people solely in terms of their roles. As Bernard Williams45 has put it, we owe each person "an effort at identification." Instead of viewing others as the "surface" to which a "certain label" applies, we should make an effort to see the world, including the label, from their point of view. But there is nothing in the idea of role identification that would prevent us from recognizing this point.

The central defect of the voluntary acceptance view, then, consists in its failure to recognize the phenomenon of role identification. Because it lacks this notion, it conveys a distorted picture of our relation to our roles. It suggests, for example, that the only reason doctors do the things that doctors do is that they have promised or agreed to do those things-that they never do them simply because they are doctors. It also suggests, more generally, that people are indifferent to the norms associated with their roles and that the only thing they care about, morally speaking, is keeping their promises or agreements. This picture is far too individualistic, far too voluntaris-

44I owe this point to Thomas Scanlon. 4S "The Idea of Equality," in Problems of the Self (New York: Cambridge, 1973),

p. 236.


tic to be true. The fact of the matter is that people do identify with their social roles and are motivated by the fact that they identify with their social roles. This is not to say that people do not care about the fact that they have signed on for their roles or that they are uncon- cerned with breaking faith. Nor is it to say that people never view their roles in such a radically individualistic and voluntaristic way. Nor, again, is it to deny that there are many people who are alienated from their roles and the social world. But, as an account of the ordinary understanding of our relation to our roles, the voluntary acceptance account fails. If we want to do justice to the full com- plexity of contractual role obligation and the nature of moral life, we must recognize the phenomenon of role identification. V. THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN CONTRACTUAL AND NONCONTRACTUAL

ROLE OBLIGATIONS

Once we incorporate the idea of role identification into our understanding of contractual role obligation, the distinction between contractual and noncontractual role obligations no longer seems as clear and simple as it once did. The basic contrast associated with the standard view remains in place. Contractual roles are roles we sign on for; noncontractual roles are roles into which we are born. Unless we freely sign on for a contractual role, we are not obliged to carry out its tasks. But here a basic point of similarity emerges between contractual and noncontractual role obligations. People can and do identify with their noncontractual roles and not just with their contractual roles. And when they do, assuming that the appropriate background moral conditions are in place, the fact that they occupy these roles will provide them with reasons for carrying out the tasks of their noncontractual roles. If a man identifies with the role of father, the fact that he is a father provides him with a reason -a moral reason-for caring for his children. If a woman identifies with her role as citizen, this provides her with a reason-a moral reason-for paying her taxes. The basic form of motivation provided by identification with contractual and noncontractual role obligations is the same. In each case, the central fact is that I conceive of myself as an occupant of this role. In each case, the fact that I occupy the role gives me a reason for carrying out its duties.

VI. CONCLUSION

Let me conclude by returning to the standard view and clarifying where we stand now.

(1) The idea of noncontractual role obligations is problematic, but it is by no means alien. Contrary to what the proponents of the standard view maintain, most of us are committed to the idea that we have such obligations. This is a fact for which moral philosophy


needs to account. Abandoning the idea that we have noncontractual role obligations would require a radical revision of our self- understanding and a radical transformation of our relations with others-changes few of us are prepared to make. Moreover, reflection on the idea of noncontractual role obligations leads us to recognize and affirm our commitment to the substantial dimension of ethical life, the form of ethical life lived within the family and the state.

(2) Contractual role obligations are acquired by signing on for the roles from which they derive, but the idea of "signing on for" needs to be specified in terms of voluntary acceptance of clusters of institutionally specified rights and duties. It must also be added that the voluntary acceptance of contractual social roles often takes place tacitly and over time. Furthermore, the idea of voluntary acceptance needs to be supplemented by the idea of role identification. People do not, for the most part, understand their relation to their contractual roles in wholly contractual terms. They also identify with these roles and are motivated by the fact that they do so. Role identification is a central feature of ordinary moral life.

(3) Role obligations can be divided into contractual and noncontractual kinds, but this fact can lead us to overlook the striking similarities between the two kinds of role obligations. Contractual and noncontractual role obligations are both institutionally specified packages of duties. Although contractual and noncontractual role obligations are entered in different ways, the process of fully entering both kinds of roles takes place gradually and in compli- cated ways. Moreover, the phenomenon of role identification is common to both sorts of role. Role identification represents a basic way in which people can conceive of themselves as participants in the dimension of moral life that is lived through institutions. The mainstream's failure to recognize this dimension has gone hand in hand with its failure to appreciate the continuities of contractual and noncontractual role obligations. Emphasizing the continuities between the two kinds of obligations makes it possible to bring the institutional dimension of the moral life into plainer view.

I believe that what moral philosophers need to do now is attend to the institutional dimension of the moral life. I commend the study of role obligations as a reasonable place to begin.

MICHAEL 0. HARDIMON

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Hardimon, M. O. - Role Obligations

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