Quince Pan

Special obligations are directed duties to perform acts of partiality to relata in special relationships. Preferential treatment is owed to kith, kin, companions and compatriots over “outsiders” and “others”, and this is presumably a moral requirement, not merely a societal expectation. But why do special obligations exist at all? Why do the bonds of special relationships come bundled with the binds of special obligations? I argue against the non-reductionist thesis that special obligations are sui generis obligations uniquely grounded in special relationships. This is because special obligations obtain in all special relationships but some special relationships generate no normative reasons (and, a fortiori, no obligations) to perform acts of partiality. Thus, nothing inherent in special relationships grounds special obligations. Special obligations are grounded in factors outside special relationships and are reducible to the general class of obligations grounded in those external factors. I suggest that satisficing rule consequentialism gives the best answer to the basis of the binds of bonds: special obligations exist most plausibly because their presence, as a rule, produces better outcomes than their absence.

Why is destroying heritage pro tanto wrong? Why does heritage destruction require justification, unlike the destruction of rubbish? The property rights view answers: heritage belongs to people, communities and cultures. The reverence view answers: we are obliged to respect things with non-instrumental value. The moral rights view answers: our predecessors, contemporaries and successors have rights to have their cherishings respected and cultural and epistemic goods protected. The moral harm view answers: destroying heritage causes morally significant harm. I argue that these views all fail to account for the basic obligation to not destroy heritage. I propose that heritage essentially gives us experiences of connections to historically significant things, and these experiences are aesthetically valuable and irreplaceable. Destroying heritage is pro tanto wrong because it leads to the premature and irreversible extinction of these precious and vulnerable experiences. My account makes sense of genuineness as an aesthetic property, vindicates the idea of purely aesthetic obligations, and entails that heritage can be of the present and future, not only the past.