I am indebted to Andrew Volmert for extensive research assistance and discussion of this essay; to William Galston for suggestions of important resources; to David Lefkowitz, and to Philip Selznik, David Archard, and Lawrence Blum for comments on a previous draft; and to Mark E. Gammon for editorial suggestions.

1. A similar point was made by Adam Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, although Smith refers to the difference between a man's reaction to his own problems and a disaster far away (Smith, , The Essential Adam Smith, ed. Heilbroner, Robert L. [New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1986], p. 106).Google Scholar

2. I would have preferred the term “moral claims” to obligations because obligations, like duties, imply imposition from the outside, while using “moral claims” may help to remind that reference is made to claims whose innate merit we recognize. They are, at least in part, internally motivated.

3. Bentham, Jeremy, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1935), p. 8.Google Scholar

4. John Stuart Mill writes, “But neither one person, nor any number of persons, is warranted in saying to another human creature…that he shall not do with his life for his benefit what he chooses to do with it” (Mill, , On Liberty, ed. Spitz, David [New York: W. W. Norton, 1975], p. 71).Google Scholar In developing a principle for dealing with “compulsion and control,” Mill explicitly says this applies “whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion” (ibid.). For Mill, neither community nor state ought to tell people how to live their lives. For a discussion of the difference between social pressure and censorship, see Elshtain, Jean Bethke, “On Moral Outrage, Boycotts, and Real Censorship,” The Responsive Community 2 (1992): 9–13.Google Scholar

5. Gutmann, Amy, “Communitarian Critics of Liberalism,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 14 (1985): 319.Google Scholar

6. See Friedman, Marilyn, “The Practice of Partiality,” Ethics 101(1991): 818–35;CrossRefGoogle ScholarGert, Bernard, “Moral Impartiality,” in Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Volume XX: Moral Concepts, ed. French, Peter A., Uehling, Theodore E. Jr., and Wettstein, Howard K. (Notre Dame, IN.: University of Notre Dame Press., 1996);Google ScholarCottingham, John, “Ethics and Impartiality,” Philosophical Studies 43 (1983): 83–99;CrossRefGoogle ScholarNagel, Thomas, Equality and Partiality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).Google Scholar

7. Blum, Lawrence A., “Vocation, Friendship, and Community: Limitations of the Personal-Impersonal Framework,” in Identity, Character, and Morality: Essays in Moral Psychology, ed. Flanagan, Owen and Rorty, Amélie Oksenberg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990), p. 173Google Scholar

8. Baron, Marcia W., “Impartiality and Friendship,” Ethics 101 (1991): 836–857.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. See, for instance, Nussbaum, Martha C. with Respondents, For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism, ed. Cohen, Joshua (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996);Google ScholarBenhabib, Seyla, “Dismantling the Leviathan: Citizen and State in a Global World,” The Responsive Community 11 (2001): 14–27;Google Scholar Michael Walzer, “In Response: Support for Modesty and the Nation-State,” ibid., pp. 28–31; Shue, Henry, “Mediating Duties,” Ethics 98 (1988): 687–704.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10. I am indebted to David Archard for this point.

11. Hartocollis, Anemona, “Chancellor to Keep Teacher in Her Job in Parents′ Victory”, New York Times, 26 09 1997,Google Scholar A1. See mention of Queens school in Ratnesar, Romesh, “Class-Size Warfare,” Time, 6 10 1997.Google Scholar

12. Hartocollis, “Chancellor to Keep Teacher in Her Job in Parents′ Victory.”

13. For example: “The practice of PTAs and other parent groups hiring supplemental teaching staff has been banned in Washington's suburbs and other parts of the country because of concerns that it could lead to inequalities among schools and create a have/have not educational environment. Opponents say allowing PTAs to pay for extra teachers challenges the concept that a strong public education should be available to all students—not just those who live in affluent communities” (Blum, Justin, “PTAs Give Some D.C. Schools an Edge; Affluent Parents Providing Extras that Poorer Neighbors Can't,” Washington Post, 17 04 2000, BlGoogle Scholar).

14. Wilson, James Q., The Moral Sense (New York: Free Press, 1993);Google Scholar see also Etzioni, Amitai, “Basic Human Needs, Alienation and Inauthenticity,” American Sociological Review 33 (1968): 870–84.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

15. Mackie, J. L., Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (Harmondsworth, Middlesex:Penguin Books, 1977), pp. 131–32.Google Scholar For additional discussion of human nature in this context, see Parfit, Derek, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 34;Google ScholarHorton, Keith, “The Limits of Human Nature,” Philosophical Quarterly 49 (1999): 452–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16. The most often discussed example of this is William Godwin's suggestion that a person should not save a loved one before a person of greater societal worth (Godwin, , Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, ed. Preston, Raymond A. [New York: Knopf, 1926]Google Scholar). Godwin is discussed in, among other works, Williams, Bernard, “Persons, Character and Morality,” in Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers 1973–1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Baron, “Impartiality and Friendship”; Maclntyre, Alasdair, “The Magic in the Pronoun ‘My’” (review of Williams′ Moral Luck), Ethics 94 (1983): 113–25;Google Scholar Friedman, “The Practice of Partiality.” For a criticism of Williams′ analysis of the example (and the suggestion that the man in the example has “one thought too many”), see Baron, Marcia W., Kantian Ethics Almost without Apology (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995).Google Scholar

17. Many of the authors who address this oft-discussed case analyze it from a different perspective, suggesting that the person in the case should not think of his wife in the same way he thinks of the stranger (this is Bernard Williams′ point in raising the case in his essay “Persons, Character and Morality,” p. 18).Google Scholar Here, the case is used to illustrate a different point, that the person in the case will not treat his wife in the same way as the stranger (or think of her in the same way) because it is not human nature to do so.

18. J. O. Urmson, in his classic essay “Saints and Heroes,” writes, “There is, indeed, a place for ideals that are practically unworkable in human affairs, as there is a place for the blueprint of a machine that will never go into production; ⃜ there are ample grounds why our code should distinguish between basic rules, summarily set forth in simple rules and binding on all, and the higher flights of morality of which saintliness and heroism are outstanding examples” (“Saints and Heroes,” in Essays in Moral Philosophy, ed. Melden, A.I. [Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1958], p. 211).Google Scholar

19. Ibid., p. 202.

20. For more on supererogation, see Kagan, Shelly, Normative Ethics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997)Google Scholar and Heyd, David, Supererogation: Its Status in Ethical Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).Google Scholar

21. For an important discussion of other grounds to determine what is reasonable to expect of people, specifically their culture, see Blum “Vocation, Friendship, and Community.”

22. I am indebted to Andrew Volmert for this point.

23. Habermas, Jürgen, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990);Google ScholarGutmann, Amy and Thompson, Dennis, Democracy and Disagreement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).Google Scholar

24. There is a considerable literature that is critical of functional explanations that cannot be reviewed here.

25. Philosophers sometimes make similar assumptions about our selfinterested nature (recall Mackie's statement). In establishing claims about our fundamentally self-interested nature, some authors invoke the insights of evolutionary biology (see Griffin, James, Review of The Limits of Morality, by Kagan, Shelly. Mind 99 [1990]: 129–30).Google Scholar

26. Phelps, Edmund S., Altruism, Morality, and Economic Theory (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1975).Google Scholar

27. One may argue that reciprocity is, actually, a universalistic principle: Whoever does Χ for me I will do Χ for them, regardless of who or where they are (as long as they have basically the same attributes). Without going here into ways of challenging this interpretation, it suffices to note that even if it is fully endorsed, it amounts to a universal dictate to honor particularistic obligations. Even if one holds that I owe a ride to anyone who gives me a ride (although people outside my social range hardly can do so), the obligation is always to specific people who accorded me a ride in the past.

28. See Etzioni, Amitai, An Immodest Agenda: Rebuilding America Before the 21st Century (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1983).Google Scholar

29. Parsons, Talcott, The Structure of Social Action (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1937).Google Scholar

30. On gift relations, see International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, s.v. “interaction: social exchange” and “exchange and display.”

31. For criticism of the use of the term “community,” see Bell, Colin and Newby, Howard, The Sociology of Community: A Selection of Readings (London: Frank Cass, 1974), p. xliii;Google ScholarCommunity Studies: An Introduction to the Sociology of the Local Community (New York: Praeger Bell and Newby 1973), p. 15.Google Scholar

32. Putnam, Robert D., “Health and Happiness,” in Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000), pp. 326–35);Google ScholarFukuyama, Francis, The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order (New York: Touchstone, 1999);Google Scholar and Bellah, Robert N., Madsen, Richard, Sullivan, William M., Swidler, Ann, and Tipton, Steven M., Habits of the Heart (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).Google Scholar

33. Putnam, , Bowling Alone, pp. 326, 329.Google Scholar

34. Ibid., pp. 331–33; see also Srole, et al. 1962.Google Scholar

35. Freud, Sigmund, Civilization and Its Discontents, trans, and ed. Strachey, James, with a biographical introduction by Peter Gay (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1989);Google ScholarLasch, Christopher, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1979).Google Scholar

36. Berlin, Isaiah, “Joseph de Maistre and the Origins of Fascism,” in The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas ed. Hardy, Henry (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), p. 100 (emphasis in original).Google Scholar

37. The mirror opposite of this argument is to point to the loss of identity in the mass society, the ill effects of atomization, the resulting alienation (Kornhauser, William, The Politics of Mass Society [Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1959]Google Scholar).

38. Sandel, Michael, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39. Taylor, Charles, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), p. 27.Google Scholar

40. Letter to author, 29 09 2001.Google Scholar

41. .Ibid.

42. Walzer, Michael, Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality (New York: Basic Books, 1983), pp. 312–16;Google Scholar see also Thick and Thin: Moral Arguments at Home and Abroad (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), pp. 7–8Google Scholar

43. Bon, Gustave Le, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1908).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44. See, for instance, the vast body of literature examining the fall of the Weimar Republic and the rise of Nazism, especially Berman, Sheri, “Civil Society and the Collapse of the Weimar Republic,” World Politics 43, no. 3 (1997): 401–429.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45. Wong, David B., “On Flourishing and Finding One's Identity in Community,” in Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Volume XIII, Ethical Theory: Character and Virtue, ed. French, Peter A., Uehling, Theodore E. Jr, and Wettstein, Howard K. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), p. 333.Google Scholar

46. Curtiss, Susan, Genie: A Psycholinguistic Study of a Modern-Day “Wild Child” (New York: Academic Press, 1977);Google ScholarItard, Jean Marc Gaspard, The Wild Boy of Aveyron, trans. George, and Humphrey, Muriel (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1962);Google ScholarLane, Harlan and Pillard, Richard, The Wild Boy of Burundi: A Study of an Outcast Child (New York: Random House, 1978);Google ScholarSingh, J. A. L. and Zingg, R. M., Wolf-Children and Feral Man( London: Harper, 1942);Google ScholarCandland, Douglas, Feral Children and Clever Animals (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

47. I am not arguing that universal commitments′ moral standing is based on their introduction and reenforcement by particularistic relations, but that without these relations people will not acquire or sustain them, whatever their intrinsic merit.

48. Wrong, Dennis, The Problem of Order (New York: Free Press, 1994).Google Scholar

49. Sampson, Robert J., Raudenbush, Stephen W. and Earls, Felton, “Neighborhoods and Violent Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy,” Science, 15 08 1997, 918–24.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

50. On this issue see Selznick, Philip, The Moral Commonwealth (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992)Google Scholar and Archard, David, “Moral Partiality”, in Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Volume XX, Moral Concepts, ed. French, Peter A., Uehling, Theodore E. Jr., and Wettstein, Howard K. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996).Google Scholar

51. Selznick, , Moral Commonwealth, 1992, pp. 196–97.Google Scholar

52. Ibid., p. 197, quoting Eliot.

53. Ibid.

54. Cottingham, John, “Partiality, Favouritism and Morality,” in Philosophical Quarterly 36 (1986): 363.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

55. Ibid., p. 369 (emphasis in original).