Abstract

The subject of this paper is role obligations, the sort of obligations we have (or take ourselves to have) as occupants of social roles: as citizens, family members, teachers, and so forth. Contemporary moral philosophers have, by and large, neglected these obligations, regarding them as marginal at best. I argue that the view that role obligations are marginal is mistaken, that they are central to morality and should be taken seriously. Role obligations are especially interesting because they illustrate the existence and importance of a dimension of the moral life largely unnoticed by the ethical mainstream: the dimension that is lived through social institutions-the dimension Hegel called Sittlichkeit. This dimension is in fact the real target of this paper. I focus on role obligations as a way of bringing it into plain view. My underlying aim is to enable us to appreciate the importance of the institutional dimension of the moral life.