Recognizing You - The Relational Nature of Morality
Final Report Abstract
Do moral reasons have their source in the claims and demands of particular individuals? If so, what does this tell us about what we owe to each other? In particular, what does this tell us about how we are to relate to and recognize each other? The project’s aim was to answer these questions and explore the extent to which we can address issues in moral and political philosophy in a fundamentally relational way. The project’s working hypothesis is that the entire interpersonal moral domain of morality is best understood as a relational domain, consisting of directed obligations which correlate with and have their normative source in the valid claims of particular individuals, like you. The interpersonal domain of morality comprises that domain of morality that has to do with the normative standards governing the set of individual actions that have efects on other persons and their interests. Obligations that are correlative with and have their source in the claims of another individual, have a built-in directionality as a result of which they are always owed to some particular individual who stands to be wronged. On the resulting view that has recently found a few prominent advocates (Darwall 2006, Wallace 2019), morality is best understood as a matter of what we owe to each other. Understanding the entire set of interpersonal obligations in these relational terms provides a potential paradigm shift in moral philosophy and ethics more broadly construed, insofar as doing so suggests a normative restructuring of the interpersonal domain. For, most standard accounts of the morality of “what we owe to each other” proceed in the opposite direction, arguing that the entire class of obligations is non-directed and derivative of some abstract set of rules and principles or impartial concern for the overall goodness of states of afairs. The advantage of the proposed novel relational approach is that it brings to the forefront the often-overlooked attitudinal aspect of interpersonal morality and consequently does a better job than standard nonrelational theories of morality in capturing what is at stake in the interpersonal domain of what we owe to each other: that persons have the standing as sources of valid claims to demand certain conduct of each other and that we do not simply do something wrong simpliciter in failing to do what we are obligated to do, but that we wrong others attitudinally by disregarding their valid claims and a subsequent failure to relate to them properly as our moral fellows. In turn, this enables us to more adequately account for and explain a whole host of important moral phenomena and attitudes, including owing, the nature of interpersonal wronging, accountability, and recognition respect. The project took on several challenges to a relational understanding of morality and tried to answer them. This resulted in a number of published papers and manuscripts that are currently under review at leading academic journals in the field. Among them are papers on the relational nature of blame (revise and resubmit), on the practice of apology (Erkenntnis, forthcoming), the very idea of a moral relationship (European Journal of Philosophy, 2023) on the notion of acting on behalf of another (Canadian Journal of Philosophy 2022) and on the wronging nature of moral indiference (Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, 2023).
Publications
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“Deliberation in the Moral Nexus,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Special Issue on the Topic of ‘Relational Ethics’, eds. Rahul Kumar&Jonas Vandieken.
Vandieken, Jonas
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Acting on Behalf of Another. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 52(5), 540-555.
Edlich, Alexander & Vandieken, Jonas
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Moral friends? The idea of the moral relationship. European Journal of Philosophy, 31(4), 1073-1090.
Vandieken, Jonas
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“Moral Indiference,” Workshop in Normative Ethics in Arizona, Invited Talks at Moral Vulnerability Workshop Oslo, and the Mainz Research Colloquium in Practical Philosophy, 2022.
Betzler, Monika & Vandieken, Jonas
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“Relational Morality, Directed Obligations, and Third Parties,” Invited Talks Colloquium in Social and Political Philosophy, LMU Munich, Ethics and Political Philosophy Group, University of Toronto, and Workshop on Moral Responsibility, University of Lund, 2022.
Vandieken, Jonas
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“Relational Requirements with Relational Foundations: Towards a Relationship-Dependent View of Relational Morality’ presentation at 1st LMU Workshop in Relational Ethics. Moral and Other Relationships: Themes from the Work of R. Jay Wallace at LMU Munich June 2022.
Betzler, Monika & Vandieken, Jonas
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Moral Indifference. Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics Volume 13, 55-76. Oxford University PressOxford.
Betzler, Monika & Vandieken, Jonas
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“The Moral Nexus, Accountability, and Deliberation”, Invited Talk at Departmental Colloquium, SUNY Albany, October 2023.
Vandieken, Jonas
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“Love as Practical Openness to Another in the Moral Nexus,” Workshop presentation at 2nd LMU Workshop in Relational Ethics. ‘The Heart and its Attitudes: Themes from the Work of Stephen Darwall’ at LMU Munich July 2024.
Vandieken, Jonas
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Accountability in the Moral Nexus. Erkenntnis.
Vandieken, Jonas
