Andrew I. Cohen

The dynamic qualities of friendship sometimes require friends to assess their relationship in light of reasons of reciprocity or moral considerations. Friends sustain their relationship partly by assessing the terms of reciprocity. Sometimes friends must also consider how moral reasons bear on their friendship; friends need to resolve occasional clashes between the demands of friendship and rival moral considerations, and friends must sometimes serve as a moral stewards for each other. I discuss how friends may monitor their relationship without undermining the trust and mutual regard appropriate to friends.

Critics often note that our choices may support wrongdoing such as by fostering climate change, perpetuating oppression in the developing world, or benefiting from the avoidable suffering of nonhuman animals. It is unclear what sort of reasons these remote consequences present, especially in conditions of uncertainty. Ethicists commonly warn that ignorance does not necessarily exculpate or release from compensatory burdens for wrongdoing. Moreover at least sometimes, the demandingness of justice might not cancel or defeat the reasons it provides. Sorting out how to forbear or repair injustice (and even how to begin to do these) may be daunting. After discussing how ignorance of moral or empirical considerations bears on blame or praise, I explore whether and how performing or being disposed to provide moral repair might address the demands of justice in light of uncertain remote causes and consequences. I reject the claim that morally conscientious persons must always seek to prevent injustice.

Besides commanding coercive power, a political authority is supposed to offer directives which ought to exclude private judgment. Any defense of inalienable rights or limited rights of resistance suggests some legitimate residual private judgment. Such retained rights threaten to undermine the binding force of authoritative directives. ;The case of Hobbesian sovereignty typifies this problem. Hobbes claims agents must establish permanent and absolute political authorities, and they can do so only by completely submitting themselves to a sovereign power whose public will stand for their own. Hobbesian political obligation consists in being bound not to act on one's own judgment, but even Hobbes allows for limited rights of resistance. ;Building on the work of Joseph Raz, I show how political authority binds our conduct by providing special reasons not to act on our private judgment. I explain how there can be scope and jurisdictional limitations on political authority, indeed, Hobbesian political authority. Any given subject might not completely authorize political power, but such power can still be absolute. Since private judgment endures in a civil society, subjects are in some position to evaluate the legitimacy of authoritative directives. To the extent authority binds and neither merely advises nor merely coerces, subjects must have reasons why they should not act on their private judgments