Margaret Gilbert and the right to make demands

“It’s not just that you had to do it. It’s that you owed it to me.” A huge part of our moral and social life hinges on this small difference. There are things we are bound to do because they are right, appropriate, prudent or rational. And there are things we owe to someone. Not simply obligations, then, but direct, relational obligations – obligations that have a specific recipient. It is within this conceptual framework that Margaret Gilbert situates the core of her reflection in Joint Commitment. How We Make the Social World (Oxford University Press, 2014), a book comprising eighteen essays written over many years and united by a common underlying idea: that of joint commitment as the ‘structure of the social atom’, the fundamental mechanism through which we produce obligations, rights, claims, reproaches, promises, authority and affiliations.

Let us imagine two colleagues who have agreed to write a report together. They have not signed a contract. There is no provision for a penalty. There is no court ready to intervene. However, they have agreed that one would complete the data analysis and the other would draft the introduction and conclusions. If the first, without warning, fails to deliver anything, the second will not simply say: ‘Your behaviour is inefficient’. Nor will he merely observe: ‘You have breached a general moral norm’. Rather, he will say: ‘I was counting on you’. The phrasing may seem emphatic, but it precisely captures what Gilbert is seeking to explain, namely, how a mutual right to harbour certain expectations can arise.

The central idea of the book is that many social practices cannot be understood if we reduce them to individual preferences, incentives, expectations or promises. Gilbert states this right from the introduction: “The idea in question is what I have called ‘joint commitment’” (p. 1). Joint commitment, however, is not simply the sum of personal decisions.     It is not enough for me to commit individually and for you to do the same. It is not enough for our commitments to coincide. Nor is it enough for each of us to be aware of the other’s commitment. In the truly joint case, the commitment belongs to ‘us’ – not to each of us taken separately, but to our ‘we-ness’. This distinction is subtle but crucial. If I personally decide to submit the text of this article on Saturday but then fail to do so, I may reproach myself, I may judge myself to be unreliable, I may lament my ingrained tendency to procrastinate. In any case, I will have breached a commitment made by my individual will. Gilbert refers, in such cases, to “personal commitment”. But when the commitment is joint, however, things change. That bond cannot be terminated unilaterally because it was not entered into unilaterally. Once it has come into effect, neither party can revoke it on their own as if it were a private matter. Technically, three aspects need to be emphasised. Firstly, the joint commitment arises from expressions of willingness, of readiness to be committed together in a certain way. Secondly, such expressions must be sufficiently public, “out in the open” – as Gilbert writes – open and mutually recognisable. Finally, the outcome of this process is not merely psychological, but normative. It is not simply a matter of two people possessing certain mental states. It is a matter of the fact that, from that moment on, each is placed in a new position in relation to the other. Gilbert formulates the issue by stating that, in any joint commitment, the parties are committed “to phi as a body”, where “phi” may mean “to believe”, “to decide”, ‘intend’, ‘accept’ or ‘pursue an end’. The expression ‘as a body’ should not be understood in a mystical sense. There is no collective organism standing above the individuals. Rather, it denotes a bond that requires each person to play their part so that the parties, through their actions, behave as a single subject with regard to that content.

Let us consider the editorial team of a newspaper that adopts a certain editorial line. Some members may have doubts, others might prefer a different approach, whilst still others accept it out of internal discipline. However, once that line has been adopted as a common position, everyone is expected to act in a manner consistent with it, at least for as long as that commitment remains valid. If a member speaks publicly as though the common line did not exist, the others may call them to account. Not because they have privately held a differing opinion, but because they have acted in a manner incompatible with a position adopted collectively.  

This is where perhaps the most important concept comes into play: “answerability”. Gilbert presents it as an intrinsic feature of the joint commitment: “Each party is answerable to all parties for any violation of the joint commitment” (p. 40). Being answerable means being open to questioning by others. Why didn’t you deliver? Why did you act contrary to what we had agreed? Why did you speak on our behalf without authorisation? Why did you withdraw without consulting us? Not every question of this sort is legitimate in tone or degree, but the very possibility of asking it stems from the fact that the commitment was “joint”, shared. This allows Gilbert to clarify another subtle but important distinction. It is one thing to have a reason to do something. It is quite another to be obliged towards someone to do it. If I see a person in distress, I may have very strong moral reasons to help them. But that does not automatically mean that that person has a specific right vis-à-vis me. In the case of a joint commitment, however, this is precisely what happens: one party’s obligation is linked to the rights of the others. Gilbert writes that every joint commitment “obliges the parties to one another”, thereby generating the right to demand compliance and to reproach non-compliance (p. 8).  If A has a right vis-à-vis B that B should do X, then B has an obligation towards A to do X. And that right – Gilbert argues – manifests itself in the ordinary possibility of asking, demanding and reproaching. Not every imperative is an authoritative demand. I can shout at a stranger: ‘You must stop that!’. I may even be morally justified in doing so. But this does not automatically imply that I possess, strictly speaking, the right to demand that action as something owed to me. This is why reproach is philosophically interesting. It is not merely an emotion. It is a normative act. When I say ‘you shouldn’t have done that’, I may mean many different things. I may be expressing moral disapproval. I may be showing irritation. I may be reminding someone of a rule. But I may also be exercising a right: you had an obligation towards me, and I am entitled to call you to account.