We share special relationships with our parents, our children, and our siblings, with our friends and our colleagues, and with our compatriots. This course will examine the significance of such relationships for various issues in ethics and political philosophy, asking the questions like the following. Do we have special obligations to our compatriots? Is patriotism a virtue? Should we be cosmopolitans, and if so, what kind of cosmopolitanism is the most attractive? What is friendship, and what moral and epistemic obligations does it involve? What do we owe to our parents? And what can special relationships tell us about debates between higher-level moral and political theories?
