Identity and Social Bonds

Abstract

The chapter first argues that there is no problem about how to justify partialities (though there is a difficulty in justifying impartialities). Then it considers the role of consent in justifying rights and duties, using voluntary associations as a case in which consent has an important but limited role in doing so, a role determined and circumscribed by evaluative considerations. The values explain why consent can bind, and bind one to act as one does not wish to do and even as one judges to be ill-advised. That opens the way to an explanation of how value considerations relate to non-voluntary membership in socially constituted groups, generating rights and duties that to a considerable extent are independent of the individual’s aims and preferences.