(Please note: This post contains my personal reflections on my own experiences within my current neighborhood, and as such I believe it is important to acknowledge my positionality. I am writing this post as a white, middle-class cis woman who lives in a primarily residential working-class neighborhood in St. Paul, MN. I cannot and do not claim that my observations here apply to everyone. Different locations, types of housing, social and economic circumstances, etc. surely give rise to different types of neighbor-to-neighbor relationships. This blog post is the result of personal reflection and should not be taken as making universal claims.)
I took a lot of walks around my neighborhood during the 2020 COVID-19 shutdown. I had a standard route: I would walk four blocks east, one block south, four blocks west, and one block north before returning to my house. These walks were an important mental break from the pandemic, taking me past newly planted gardens, yards adorned with cheerful flowers, and several local businesses. Most days, weather allowing, I would walk this loop at least half a dozen times.
I got to know my neighbors more during those few months than I had over the previous five years. Before I started going on these walks, although I occasionally had a short, friendly conversation with my next-door neighbors, I basically didn’t interact with the other members of my neighborhood at all. In contrast, after the shutdown, I knew the names of and at least something about most of my neighbors (and their dogs, of course). By the time Halloween came around and my block put on a distanced, outdoor trick-or-treat experience, I could comfortably converse with my neighbors about their lives, and not just the weather.
This change in my familiarity with my close neighbors got me thinking: am I a better neighbor now? Was I a bad neighbor before? What makes someone a bad or a good neighbor? What, if anything, do we owe our neighbors that we don’t owe others?
Philosophers have long accepted a distinction between general (or natural) obligations and “special” obligations to particular others, such as friends and family members. All else being equal, for instance, I seem to have reasons to care for a sick relative that I don’t have to care for an ill stranger. This idea can be extended to the groups that we’re a part of, such as a university, a state, or a country. Obligations of this sort seem to go beyond the moral duties we have to all humans (or agents, or sentient beings, etc.), such as the duty to refrain from unnecessary harm. But how do neighbors, or neighborhoods, fit into this picture?
It’s a common intuition, I think, that we do have special obligations to our neighbors. After all, it seems like we should (all else being equal) lend our neighbor a cup of sugar, whereas it’s less clear that we need to give a complete stranger sugar if they request it. (Plus, as a friend of mine pointed out, a stranger asking for sugar is pretty creepy—if they’re at my house, why have they knocked on a stranger’s door for sugar? If we’re somewhere else, why would they think I might have sugar? And moreover, what are they going to use that sugar for?) When I think about what I owe my neighbors, I think of things like giving them a lift, lending them a tool, or snow-blowing their sidewalk if they’re sick. These seem like “neighborly” things to do, after all, that I probably wouldn’t do for someone who lives farther away.
But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I wonder if my reasons for helping my neighbors have anything to do with special obligations at all. In many cases, it seems like our general obligations, combined with the non-moral features of the situations, may explain the relevant moral reasons. For instance, proximity and familiarity can explain a lot. I think I have a moral reason to snow-blow my neighbor’s sidewalk when they’re sick because I know that they are sick, and because their sidewalk is right next to mine. If I didn’t have this information, or if the burden of helping was much higher (for instance if I had to transport my snow blower several miles in my rather small vehicle to do this), I likely wouldn’t feel the same pull. Similarly, I think that I have an obligation to call the fire department if I see flames or smoke coming out of the windows, but this doesn’t seem to be because they are my neighbor—it’s because I’m witnessing the fire; I’m just more likely to witness it because we’re neighbors. After all, if I witnessed the same thing while in a different neighborhood I would also feel the pull to call the fire department.
Maybe, though, there is something about being neighbors that gives us special obligations, or at least increases the strength of our general moral reasons. What, then, would ground these obligations?
As I mentioned above, it’s widely (although not universally) accepted that we have special obligations to our friends and family members. Perhaps, if we have special obligations to neighbors, it’s because our relationships with them resemble those that we have to friends. Granted, it seems like a stretch to say that these relationships are relevantly similar to close friendships, at least in most cases. According to a variety of theories on (close) friendship, being in a friendship requires that we care about our friend for their own sake. This seems to involve acting for the good of our friends, being moved by things that happen to them, and accepting them (at least to a large extent) as they are. Mutual concern between the friends regarding the state of each other’s projects, well-being, and commitments is required. Friendship is often therefore associated with philia, a type of love that is reciprocal and responsive to the particular qualities of the loved one. This type of mutual caring, however, frequently isn’t present in relationships between neighbors (at least in my experience). If there is love between neighbors, my intuition is that it’s closer to agape, or the love for all humankind. But this wouldn’t seem to ground any special obligations.
Still, perhaps relationships between neighbors are like casual or professional friendships. After all, some of the common practices between neighbors are similar to those between casual friends—acknowledging them if you see them on the street, making small talk, performing small favors, and so on. However, even in cases of casual friendships, the comparison seems too strong. Friendships are often chosen (even if who you happen to meet is not chosen), whereas neighbors may or may not be. Even if I am able to take my neighbors’ characters into account when deciding where to live, new neighbors might move in.
Given that we often do not choose our neighbors, perhaps we ought to look to accounts of associative duties as potentially grounding special obligations to them. According to these theories, the social relationships we find ourselves in give rise to special duties. These accounts differ regarding whether a person X’s associative duties to person Y are grounded in X’s identity (and their ground projects—see Williams 1981), Y’s intrinsic value (Keller 2013), or the intrinsic value of the relationship between X and Y. However, the general claim seems to be that the relationship itself is the source of the special obligations, and so it seems to follow that we can have obligations to others that we find ourselves in particular relationships with, regardless of whether these relationships were entered into voluntarily. Indeed, this is particularly clear in discussions of political obligation in social and political philosophy. According to some associative accounts of political obligation, our (often unchosen) social roles, relationships, and/or local practices ground obligations to act as good citizens and obey the law (see Simmons 2008 for a brief discussion of associative accounts of political obligations and some of their problems).
While an appeal to associative duties may be a promising way to explain special obligations to neighbors, these views face a variety of criticisms. To begin, if a person’s associative duties are grounded in their identity, then it seems to be the case that a person will not have associative duties regarding those relationships with which they do not identify. Thus, if being a neighbor is not part of my practical identity, I presumably don’t have associative obligations to my neighbors. Moreover, we may find ourselves in bad or immoral relationships with others—do these ground associative obligations? What if the relationship is manipulative or abusive? Is the mere existence of a relationship enough, or does that relationship itself need to be morally good (or at least morally permissible) to ground obligations?
Still, perhaps there is something to be said for the idea that relationships, or communities, produce special obligations. Humans are, after all, social creatures. We need interactions with others to thrive. Neighborhoods can, and in many cases have been, sources of community. Indeed, it was much more common in the past for people to befriend their neighbors, host barbecues, have block parties, and so forth. And with the current mental health crisis in the U.S., in part due to increased feelings of isolation, these types of connections might be exactly what we need. So perhaps the social goods produced by community can ground special obligations between neighbors.
While I find this idea appealing, I’m not sure that it grounds shared obligations between neighbors who aren’t already part of an established neighborhood community. That is, if no one in my neighborhood makes a point of getting to know one another, there are no shared events, etc., do I personally have obligations to develop relationships with my neighbors? What if they want to be left alone? Would my attempts, particularly if they are not reciprocated, really be contributing to a social good?
Perhaps this is where I should turn back to the question of what makes someone a good neighbor. Even if we don’t have specific moral obligations to our neighbors, it does seem like we can be better or worse neighbors, where what this means is at least somewhat dependent on the neighborhood (or apartment building, dormitory, etc.) in question. I wonder, though, if in most if not all contexts, being a good neighbor includes fostering community. In my neighborhood, for instance, we have one great neighbor. She makes a point of knowing everyone on the block, asking about their lives (in a way that seems genuinely curious but not nosy), shares the vegetables from her garden, and occasionally organizes events for the block. Although this has never been tested, I’m confident that she would do all of those neighborly things I mentioned above, like lending out her tools or calling the fire department. She makes relationships with her neighbors, both one-on-one and as a community, a priority. If she’s not a good neighbor, I’m not sure who is.
So do we have special obligations to our neighbors? Maybe. Perhaps, if nothing else, the importance of cultivating social relationships provides us with a moral reason to develop local communities, and getting to know our neighbors may be one way to do this. But maybe, even if we don’t have these obligations, we should strive to be good neighbors. Even if we aren’t morally required to lend our neighbors a cup of sugar, we might have important moral reasons to learn our neighbors’ names, facilitate local events, or support community spaces. We all need community—why not start with our neighbors?
