Friends and Fellow Citizens

Diane Jeske

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-54484-7_49

A person is a patriot, in the theoretical sense, if she regards herself as having special obligations to her fellow citizens, special obligations that justify her possessing, in particular, the trait of character constituted by the disposition to demonstrate special concern for her fellow citizens. Further, the patriot will understand herself as so justified in virtue of the fact that those are her fellow citizens. Thus, if patriotism is to be justified, it must be shown that this theoretical commitment to special obligations to fellow citizens is justified. But what are the grounds, if any, of such special obligations? One possible answer to this question is that special obligations to our fellow citizens are grounded directly on the special relationship in which we stand to them. While it is plausible to suppose that special obligations to friends are grounded in the nature of the friendship relation itself, it is not plausible to suppose that the relationship between fellow citizens directly grounds special obligations between them. The types of features that make it plausible to ground special obligations to friends directly on the special relationship between the friends are not present in the case of the relationship between fellow citizens. Nonetheless, it is probably still rational for many of us to have the dispositions characteristic of the patriot, because, in addition to special obligations, we also have reasons grounded in our attitudes and in the intrinsic or instrumental value of the existence of such concern or the existence of our relationships to our fellow citizens. Thus, even if the type of non-derivative special obligation present in the context of friendship is not present in the context of fellow citizens, many of us still have reasons to have and to act on special concern for our fellow citizens.

Friends and Fellow Citizens

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