Abstract

The chapter examines the social ontology of roles and seeks to explain why certain roles are role-statuses (i.e. generate a set of moral rights and duties). It argues against the popular view that all roles are created by social or legal norms. To do so, it revisits a neglected idea in moral philosophy, that of role obligations. The idea has somewhat of a bad name in moral philosophy, being associated with Hegel’s communitarianism. Against the Hegelian tradition, the chapter argues that role-statuses, as a subset of roles, precede institutional practices and collective intentionality. This account of role-statuses explains the common intuition that certain roles can be used as a justification for one’s actions, without any further argument. It explains how certain roles, such as being a doctor or a judge, emerged as ‘proto-roles’ with a view to capturing asymmetrical social interactions. These roles are inherently moralised in that they function as a shorthand for the rights and duties that are triggered because of the underlying asymmetry.