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Go a little further

Everything worth your time on the question: What do I reasonably owe, and what am I refusing?

READ · ESSAY

Bernard Williams

Read after Singer. The disagreement is real and it matters for how you actually live.

The reply: a morality that treats your own family as one claim among millions asks you to abandon the projects that make you a person at all.

One view

Special obligations. Partiality towards those close to you is not a failure of reasoning.

Another view

Impartial obligation. Distance is morally irrelevant. Famine, Affluence, and Morality

Murray Bowen

Bowen's idea of differentiation, staying connected to your family without being governed by it, is the useful frame for most adult family questions.

Janet Finch and Jennifer Mason

British sociology on how family obligation is negotiated in practice rather than fixed by role. It shows how quietly duties get allocated.

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