My aim in this part of the book is to explore the normative basis for requiring an actor to think about the well-being of others in a way that advances social cohesion – that is, to think about others in a way that leads to a balance of rights and obligations that is efficient, fair, and stable. This obligates me both to defend social cohesion (in the way that I have defined it) as an appropriate goal of the law and to defend a theory of morality that allows us to determine when actors have thought appropriately about the well-being of others. Under the theory that I advance, the two tasks are interrelated. Social cohesion serves as an appropriate goal of the law because it rests on a theory of human interaction and value formation that itself responds to those decisions of individuals that can be said to be moral.

AN OUTLINE OF THE MAIN ARGUMENT

At the level of community, social cohesion requires a mechanism to ensure that the clashing projects and preferences of individuals are adjusted in accordance with values that are endorsed by the community (and that therefore support social cohesion) and have been formed by decisions that might themselves be called moral. As we have seen, the law serves to mediate between conflicting claims to resources in accordance with socially derived and morally mediated values that coordinate and transcend individual projects and preferences.