Moral Messiness

Some intimate associations simply should not exist—that much is uncontroversial. But once they do exist, the moral ballgame changes. For instance, a person who has no right to form an association might gain a right to remain in it once it exists. This chapter considers intriguing puzzles that arise in the aftermath of morally problematic associative decisions. One is the parasite problem, in which one person illegitimately piggybacks on another person’s undisputed associational rights which require the first person’s participation. Parasites illegitimately occupy the associative roles to which their rights attach. Can they bootstrap themselves into associative legitimacy? Should we worry about the precedent this might set? When are third parties required or forbidden to interfere? As this chapter shows, there are no simple answer to these questions. All ex ante solutions—relying on arguments about defeasibility, conditionality, and group rights—flounder. Only a case-by-case analysis will do justice to these intricacies of sociability.

Associational Freedom

The ethics of sociability shows that many liberal beliefs about associational freedom are untenable. Importantly, our moral permission to associate or dissociate does not always hinge on consent or burdensomeness. Moreover, our permission to dissociate is limited even when the state takes up its responsibility to administer well-functioning social institutions, because social resources are special: they are not only fundamentally important, but also necessarily rest within individual people. Furthermore, although we have a claim-right against interference with many of our poor associational choices, our freedom of association is nonetheless content-sensitive and process-sensitive. This chapter examines several kinds of voluntary and non-voluntary relationships of dubious moral standing that are not protected by freedom of association. The chapter notes that our freedom to dissociate is indeed content-insensitive, but it too can be overridden by the duty to associate.

Dilemmas of Sociability

Associational freedom can conflict with positive social rights. This chapter resolves this conflict by investigating a familiar problem: What if everyone did that? The dilemma is that associative and dissociative choices that can make each of us better off individually can make all of us worse off individually and collectively if everyone makes the same choice. I will be better off if I shun this person or group, but all of us will be worse off if this person or group is wholly isolated. The chapter explores both negative dilemmas that arise when we withdraw our social resources and positive dilemmas that arise when we seek to connect. Interestingly, positive social attitudes such as love do not create each-we dilemmas because love is multiplied, not depleted, when it is expended and received. Through the examination of each-we dilemmas, the chapter identifies a Kantian reason to conclude that we lack a general moral permission to associate as we please.

Segregation

This final chapter explores ways that we segregate people whom we deem to be socially threatening. One powerful but non-obvious way that we segregate is at the level of personal identity through our use of essentialist language such as ‘offender’, ‘perpetrator’, ‘alien’, ‘stranger’, and ‘patient’, which reduces people’s lives to a (perceived) threatening feature. We also segregate in concrete ways through institutions such as prisons, hospitals, and immigrations centres, which tend to undermine people’s social abilities, opportunities, and connections. The status of social rights is particularly precarious within the criminal justice system. Many people in prison lack privacy, struggle to maintain stable connections, endure periods of isolation, receive criminal sentences they can never spend, have their outside social bonds stretched or severed, and lack support to reintegrate, all of which runs counter to social human rights. Some social rights are too fundamental to be forfeitable, and their infringement must not be taken lightly.

Introduction

For social creatures like us, enjoying lasting, stable, and secure relationships is neither a luxury nor a triviality: it is quintessential to leading a minimally good life. Our sociability is both intrinsically valuable and indispensable to the fulfilment of other important interests. This introduction briefly describes the nature of our core social needs and the social human rights to which they give rise. It maintains that human rights should be minimalistic, but such minimalism must prioritize social rights such as the human right against social deprivation. The duties that such rights generate apply to both governments and individuals, making the ethics of sociability a matter of both social justice and personal morality.

Interactional Freedom

Sometimes, solitude is blissful. Other times, we long for company. These truisms reflect two powerful interactional needs. First, we need interactional freedom to control whether and how we interact with strangers. Second, we need to be socially included. Which need should prevail when they conflict? A popular reply is that interactional freedom takes priority. But this view is mistaken. Although interactions are more fleeting than associations, they are nonetheless key sites of social inclusion. When someone makes an interactional bid, she does not merely express herself, but looks for a response. Ignoring her can be not just rude, but an assault on her humanity. A person who badly needs interactions has a right to be aided, and the duty to ensure she is aided (though not necessarily to interact with her ourselves) falls on everyone who can reasonably take note of her need. Hence, we have at most a conditional right to reject people’s bids when their basic interactional needs are met.

Sustaining Others

Our need to belong gives us a need to sustain specific other people. This need is rooted in our narrow self-interest, our interests in the people we care about, and our interest in the group to which we belong. Not everyone who endures being not needed has a claim to be enabled to sustain others. Sometimes, it’s a matter of good fortune or tragedy if we get to be needed or not. Other times, however, we are victims of injustice if we are unable to sustain others. To secure our need to sustain others, we require the core social resources discussed in Chapter 1 (as well as material resources and temporal resources). If we are denied what we need to develop, maintain, and exercise our social resources, or are not taken seriously as social contributors, then we endure social contribution injustice.

Social Deprivation

Debates about human rights tend to neglect our social rights including our fundamental right to have minimally adequate access to decent human contact. This chapter seeks to fill this gap by defending a human right against social deprivation. Social deprivation is a grievous wrong because it undermines our health, our ability to exercise many other rights, and our self-respect, autonomy, and resilience. The chapter distinguishes three types of social deprivation, details the negative and positive sides of the right, and offers five arguments to support it: the three explored in Chapter 1 as well as desert-based arguments and instrumental arguments. Although governments are primary duty-bearers, we individuals also have duties to respect, protect, and fulfil this right. The chapter answers various objections, such as whether social inclusion is a rights issue at all, and, if it is, whether the right imposes undue burdens or is infeasible.

Social Beings

This chapter explains what follows normatively from the fact that we are fundamentally social creatures. The chapter distinguishes our contingent social desires from our non-contingent, morally urgent social needs. The chapter appeals to empirical, phenomenological, and respect-based arguments to show that we have four core social needs for (1) basic social abilities, (2) adequate social opportunities, (3) access to persistent, stable social connections, and (4) the means to contribute directly to other people’s survival and well-being. These needs both to access and to contribute socially are encapsulated in our fundamental need to belong. After addressing worries about the normative standing of our core social needs, the chapter defends the belongingness hypothesis which gives rise to robust social rights.