Friday, December 10, 2010

399 Intentions and Obligations

Once again, there is help in the etymology of these fundamental terms. The frictional problem uses "intention" as the starting gun. I "intend" is represented by the W, "wanted to." In English, intend is based on the Latin verb tendere = to reach or to stretch toward. The person is here and the object there; the person stretches toward the object.

By contrast, the normative problem features obligations: the obligations of someone to me or to us or my (our) obligations to him, her, it, them. The well worn "ought not be trash on the Park Blocks" imagines an obligation toward "others" or toward "the university" or "one's fellow students" and so on. The Latin source here is ligare = to bind. It is our moral obligations that bind us together, in this view. When we say, casually, that we are "bound to respect each others' opinions" we have spoken much more literally that we realize.

It is the relationship, here, not the person, that is central. I am bound to respect or you are bound to obey some conception of what is considered right, decent, virtuous, etc.

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