Social obligation as reason for action

Abstract

Social obligations are typical external reasons for action. In this paper two notions of reason for action are distinguished: a reason for the agent and the agent’s reason. The focus will be on the latter notion. It deals with the agent’s own understanding of why he acted. An analysis of it is presented, and the results are applied to account for the role of social obligation in practical reasoning as a reason for action. Social obligations arise from social facts like agreements, promises, contracts, joint decisions. These notions necessarily involve collective acceptance. Accordingly, collective acceptance is discussed as a constituent in the social reason relation. Social obligation provides the agent an external reason for action; as such it is a reason for him. I argue that any social obligation is external to the individual in the sense that its obligating force is independent of his wants or desires. In order to become his reason, a social obligation has to be “internalized” in some sense. As a consequence, the agent not only voluntarily undertakes an obligation, he also chooses whether to follow it or not. I argue that these two steps should be kept separate. I distinguish between social norm and social obligation, and I argue that a necessary condition for undertaking a social obligation is that the parties acknowledge the corresponding general social norm. Consequently, the role of social norms as reasons for social obligations is spelled out.