Foundations of a Non-Individualist Morality

The purpose of this chapter is to outline an alternative to Individualism and to show that moral rights can be taken seriously while acknowledging the role of organized societies in determining the actual distribution of moral rights and duties. In some cases, the rules accepted by such societies give content to what was indeterminate at the pre-contractual level. In others, they redistribute moral rights and duties among members of society. In both these ways, rights behave in a less rigid manner than that entailed by Individualism. To understand how social rules can determine rights, it is particularly helpful to look at the way social roles provide their holders with a permission to diverge from what would be required from them pre-contractually. In decent societies, holders of public roles typically have a right to fulfil their professional duty without deliberating on the merits of the case; namely, without being guided by first-order reasons that pertain to the cases with which they deal. This applies to combatants as well. In most cases, they have a right to disregard the first-order reasons pertaining to the justness of the war they are sent to fight. The responsibility for launching an unjust war lies on the shoulders of the politicians and not on those of combatants, just as the responsibility for sending an innocent person to jail rests with the court and not with the prison guards.