Reasonable partiality towards compatriots

Abstract

Special duties are grounded in social attachments that possess intrinsic value and are not fundamentally premised on injustice. National communities meet these criteria, as national identity serves as a source of intrinsic value and facilitates collective projects such as deliberative democracy and social justice. Because special obligations are integral to the functioning of the nation as an ethical community, a degree of partiality toward compatriots is justified. However, such partiality must be balanced against the requirements of global justice, specifically the protection of human rights and the duty of fair interaction. The general duty to respect human rights encompasses both negative duties to refrain from harm and positive duties to provide assistance. Negative duties mandate strict impartiality; the basic rights of non-nationals cannot be violated even to secure significant benefits for compatriots. In contrast, positive duties to provide resources or protect against third-party violations permit a weighting of interests in favor of members. Positive obligations to assist outsiders when other responsible agents have failed are comparatively weak and are generally secondary to domestic requirements of social justice. In spheres of economic and environmental cooperation, conflicts between domestic justice and global fairness represent genuine ethical dilemmas that lack simple priority rules. A split-level ethical framework remains necessary because a purely cosmopolitan morality lacks the motivational basis provided by national identity and solidarity. – AI-generated abstract.