Demandingness and boundaries between persons

Journal article

Demandingness objections to consequentialism often claim that consequentialism underestimates the moral significance of the stranger/special other distinction, mistakenly extending to strangers demands it’s proper for special others to make on us, and concluding that strangers may properly demand anything of us if it increases aggregate goodness. This argument relies on false assumptions about our relations with special others. Boundaries between ourselves and special others are both a common and a good-making feature of our relations with them. Hence, demandingness objections that rely on the argument in question fail. But the same observations about our relations with special others show that there are many demands special others may not properly make, and since we cannot be more guilty of unjustified partiality in insisting on boundaries between ourselves and strangers than on boundaries between ourselves and special others, there are – as demandingness objections maintain - some demands strangers may not properly make on us.

Authors: Harcourt, E

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Routledge
• Journal: International Journal of Philosophical Studies
• Volume: 26
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 437-455
• Publication date: 2018-09-03
• Acceptance date: 2017-10-11
• DOI: 10.1080/09672559.2018.1489647
• EISSN: 1466-4542
• ISSN: 0967-2559
• Language: English
• Keywords: demandingness; separateness of persons; consequentialism; psychotherapy; strangers; special others; partiality; boundaries