Dilemma

Does environmental harm in another country bind me morally?

Carbon emissions in your country contribute to flooding in another. A factory's effluent across the border kills ecosystems you'll never see. Whether you bear moral weight for what happens far away turns on whether distance dilutes obligation.

Context

Climate ethics, the moral standing of trade policy, the geographically diffuse harms of fast fashion and palm oil and lithium mining — modern life is structurally entangled with distant harm. Two intuitions pull opposite ways. The common-sense view that I'm responsible for what is in front of me and not for what is geographically remote competes with the equally common-sense view that distance is morally arbitrary — that a child suffering in another country has the same standing as one suffering next door. The dispute isn't only about how to weigh near and far; it sits on whether the universe is structured so that distant things can bind us in the strong sense at all.

Why it matters

How a tradition reads locality determines whether moral obligation has a distance-falloff (so that proximity is morally weighted) or whether it doesn't (so that everyone everywhere is on equal moral footing with everyone here). The political downstream — climate-treaty obligations, international development ethics, the moral status of consumer choices — is shaped at the prior level.

The coordinates that split the schools

Observer · Number Whether selves are genuinely distinct, or aspects of one Observer · Metaphysical Agency What kinds of agency beyond natural causation the school recognises Space · Locality Whether distant things can be intrinsically connected

The stances

Distance doesn't dilute obligation; communion of saints / divine relation spans the cosmos.

54 schools

On this view, obligation extends across distance because the metaphysical relation that grounds it extends across distance. Communion of saints, the global ekklesia, the umma as a single body, the covenantal people of Israel, the Sikh sangat, the Baha'i one human family — all read obligation as mediated by a personal divine relation that does not drop off with geographic distance. Distant harm binds because the one harmed and the one harming are bound by the same source of obligation.

Why these schools land herePersonal-agency Plural schools share the structural commitment that obligation is mediated by a personal divine relation. The cluster combines Catholic-Thomistic (universal love of neighbour across distance), Reformed-Calvinist (covenantal obligation), Lutheranism (vocational obligation to the global neighbour), Eastern Orthodox (supratemporal communion), LDS, Islamic Philosophy (umma), Jewish Philosophy (klal Yisrael), Bahá'í (one human family), Sikhism (sangat as the universal congregation), Dvaita, Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism, Kabbalah, Hermeticism, Dualism, Occasionalism. The previous framing of this partition split these schools by space_locality, putting Western Latin Christians in local-plural alongside naturalist localists — coordinate-true but doctrinally backwards. The framework now reads the question agency-first.

Anglican Broad-Church Anglicanism Anti-Trinitarianism Arminianism Augustinianism Baha'i Faith Biblicism Cartesianism Catholic/Thomistic Catholicism Christian Existentialism Christian Personalism Christian Platonism Christianity (Generic) Classical Greek Thought Dualism Dvaita Vedanta Eastern Orthodox Christianity Evangelical Protestantism Hermeticism Hinduism (Generic) Islam (Generic) Islamic Philosophy / Falsafa Jewish Philosophy (Maimonidean) Kabbalah (Lurianic) LDS / Latter-day Saint Theology Liberal Theology Liberation Theology Lutheranism Manichaeism Methodism Mohism Natural Law Natural Theology Neo-Orthodoxy Newtonianism Occasionalism Pacifism Philosophy of Religion Pietism Process Theology Protestant Reformation (Magisterial) Pure Land Buddhism Rabbinic Judaism Radical Reformation / Anabaptism Reformed / Calvinist Theology Scholasticism Sikhism Southern Baptist / Baptist Tradition Thomism Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism Transcendental Thomism Virtue Ethics Zoroastrianism

Works: The Bhagavad Gita Timaeus (Late) Confessions (Early) Summa Theologiae On the Bondage of the Will Institutes of the Christian Religion (Late) Meditations on First Philosophy Pensées Critique of Pure Reason Fear and Trembling (Early) Mere Christianity The Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) The New Testament The Quran An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica City of God (Late) The Consolation of Philosophy Proslogion The Guide of the Perplexed Process and Reality (Late) Letters and Papers from Prison (Late) The Kingdom of God Is Within You (Late) The Varieties of Religious Experience Metaphysics of The Book of Healing (Late) An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (Late) A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (Early) Monadology (Late) Fides et Ratio (Late) On the Trinity (Late) Summa Contra Gentiles (Early) The Mystical Theology Revelations of Divine Love The Imitation of Christ Faṣl al-Maqāl (The Decisive Treatise) (Late) The Incoherence of the Philosophers The Zohar Two Treatises of Government (Late) Critique of Practical Reason (Late) Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals Critique of Judgment (Late) The Sickness Unto Death (Late) Either/Or (Early) A Vindication of the Rights of Woman Democracy in America Totality and Infinity (Early) The Human Condition Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems Novum Organum Concluding Unscientific Postscript On Free Choice of the Will (Early) The Courage to Be After Virtue The Abolition of Man Commentary on Romans (Early) The Brothers Karamazov (Late) Opticks (Late) Laws (Latest) A Letter Concerning Toleration (Late) Apologia Pro Vita Sua (Late) The Cost of Discipleship (Early) Pragmatism (Late) Cur Deus Homo (Late) The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Early-to-late (he revised it throughout his life)) The Revival of the Religious Sciences (Late (post-crisis)) Gettysburg Address (Mature (Civil War)) Second Inaugural Address (Late (six weeks before assassination)) Whose Justice? Which Rationality? 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(Mid (Douglass at the height of his oratorical powers)) Ninety-Five Theses (Early (the founding act of the Reformation)) On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (Early (1520, foundational year)) Convivio (Mid (early years of exile, preceding the Comedy)) A Time for Choosing (Early (launched Reagan's political career)) Tear Down This Wall (Late (Reagan presidency at its rhetorical peak)) A Vindication of the Rights of Men (Early (preceding the more famous 1792 Vindication of the Rights of Woman)) Faust, Part I (Mid (composed across Goethe's career; Part I the major mid-career work)) The Power of the Powerless (Mid (Havel as principal Charter 77 dissident)) First Inaugural Address (Mid (the inauguration after twelve years of Republican presidency)) Provincial Letters (Late) Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous (Early) Some Thoughts Concerning Education (Late) Symphonia harmoniae caelestium revelationum (Mid-late) Beloved (Mid (the Pulitzer-winning major novel)) The Reasonableness of Christianity (Late) Creation and Fall (Early-mid) The Lion and the Jewel (Early) Myth, Literature and the African World (Mid) Answer to Job (Late) Peace with God (Early-mid) Greek New Testament (Novum Instrumentum) (Mid) Principles of Nature and Grace (Late) Man's Search for Meaning (Mid-late) Systematic Theology (Mid) Mystics and Zen Masters (Late) The Prophetic Faith (Late) Eclipse of God (Late) Commentary on the Mishnah (Early-mid) The Symbolism of Evil (Early) Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary (Early) Time and Narrative (Late) Oneself as Another (Late) Memory, History, Forgetting (Late) Theses on the Philosophy of History (Late) Truth and Method (Mid) The Philosophy of Loyalty (Late) Modes of Thought (Late) A Theology of Liberation (Early (Gutiérrez's breakthrough work; the founding text of the school)) Guru Granth Sahib The Avesta The Book of Mormon The Kephalaia Church Dogmatics (Mid) Foundations of Christian Faith (Late) The Glory of the 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(Late) Mabādiʾ Ārāʾ Ahl al-Madīna al-Fāḍila (Principles of the Opinions of the Inhabitants of the Virtuous City) (Mid) Fī l-Falsafa al-Ūlā (On First Philosophy) (Early) Muqaddimah (Late) Itinerarium Mentis in Deum (The Mind's Road to God) (Mid) Ordinatio (Late) Summa Logicae (Late) The Life of Moses (De Vita Moysis) (Late) A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Late) Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes (Late) Christ in a Pluralistic Age (Mid) Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (Late) Ethics (Ethik) (Late) On First Principles (Peri Archōn / De Principiis) (Early) On the Incarnation (De Incarnatione Verbi Dei) (Early) On the Holy Spirit (De Spiritu Sancto) (Late) Theological Orations (Orations 27-31) (Mid) Ambigua to John (Ambigua ad Iohannem) (Late) Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith (De Fide Orthodoxa) (Late) Hymns of Divine Love (Hymnoi tōn Theiōn Erōtōn) (Late) Triads (Triads in Defense of the Holy Hesychasts) (Late) The Pillar and Ground of the Truth (Mid) The Bride of the Lamb (Late) Sic et Non (Yes and No) (Early) Didascalicon (On the Study of Reading) (Early) The Dark Night (La Noche Oscura) (Late) The Interior Castle (Castillo Interior) (Late) Ars Magna (Ars Generalis Ultima) (Late) Oration on the Dignity of Man (Oratio de hominis dignitate) (Mid) Historical and Critical Dictionary (Dictionnaire Historique et Critique) (Late) Utopia (De Optimo Reipublicae Statu deque Nova Insula Utopia) (Mid) The Passions of the Soul (Les Passions de l'âme) (Late) Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence (Late) Time and Free Will (Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience) (Early) Matter and Memory (Matière et Mémoire) (Mid) Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt) (Early) The Christian Faith (Der christliche Glaube) (Late) Biographia Literaria (Mid) Preface to Lyrical Ballads (Early) A Confession (Ispoved') (Late) Warranted Christian Belief (Late) Philosophy as Metanoetics (Zangedō to shite no tetsugaku) (Late) Cultural Universals and Particulars: An African Perspective (Late) Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza (Mid) The Justification of the Good (Opravdanie dobra) (Late) The Destiny of Man (O naznachenii cheloveka) (Mid) Athens and Jerusalem (Athènes et Jérusalem) (Late) The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Essai sur la théologie mystique de l'Église d'Orient) (Mid) The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (Late) Freedom of the Will (Late) An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (Mid) Orthodoxy (Mid) Mere Christianity (Mid) The World and the Individual (Mid) Twenty Years at Hull-House (Late) A Theology for the Social Gospel (Late) The Long Loneliness (Late) Rerum Novarum (Late) Gaudium et Spes (Late) Laudato Si' (Late) The Voice of the Voiceless (Late) Church: Charism and Power (Igreja: carisma e poder) (Mid) Christ the Liberator: A View from the Victims (Late) Paradise Lost (Late) The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue (Mid) Autobiography of a Yogi (Late) God in Search of Man (Late) Halakhic Man (Ish ha-Halakhah) (Mid) Long Walk to Freedom (Late) The Autobiography of Malcolm X (Late) The Gulag Archipelago (Late) Second Treatise of Government (Late) Confessions (Late) Iggeret Teiman (Epistle to Yemen, c. 1172) and the responsa (Middle (between the Commentary on the Mishnah, 1168, and the Mishneh Torah, completed 1178)) Modern Moral Philosophy (Mature (the journal paper that reshaped Anglophone moral philosophy)) Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (Early (Wollstonecraft's first published book, written from her experience as a governess and a school proprietress)) Miracles: A Preliminary Study (Mature (after Mere Christianity and Screwtape; the most philosophical of Lewis's apologetic works)) Disputed Questions on Truth (Early-mature (Aquinas's first major work after the Sentences commentary)) On Evil (Late (Aquinas's mature treatment of evil and the passions, parallel to the Summa)) Compendium of Theology (Late (begun during the Roman regency, unfinished at Aquinas's death)) Colloquia (Mature (the work that grew through Erasmus's most productive decades and was repeatedly enlarged)) De Libero Arbitrio (Late (the treatise that publicly broke the Erasmus-Luther alliance, written after seven years of pressure for Erasmus to declare his position)) Greek New Testament (Novum Instrumentum) (Mature (the work that established Erasmus's international reputation and reshaped biblical scholarship)) The Vision of God (Mature (one of Cusa's most condensed and beautiful late works)) Anti-Pelagian writings (Late (Augustine's last great theological controversy, occupying the final two decades of his life)) The Dialogue of Divine Providence (Late (composed in Catherine's last two years, in the midst of her efforts to reform the Church and end the Avignon papacy)) Against Marcion (Mature (Tertullian's longest and most systematic work)) Against Praxeas (Late (composed in Tertullian's Montanist period but with orthodox Trinitarian content)) On the Resurrection of the Flesh (Mature (one of Tertullian's longest and most carefully argued treatises)) Kyōgyōshinshō (Mature) Tannishō (Posthumous (the principal popular source for Shinran's teaching)) Al-Hikmat al-Muta'aliya fi'l-Asfar al-'Aqliyya al-Arba'a (Late (the synthesis of his entire mature philosophy)) al-Kashf ʿan Manāhij al-Adilla (Mature) Letters to the Son of the Wolf (Last (less than a year before his 1892 death)) Jōdo Wasan (Late) My Bondage and My Freedom (Mature (Douglass's second autobiography, written after his break with Garrison and the founding of his own newspaper)) Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (Late (Douglass's third autobiography, covering his post-1855 political career)) Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (Mature (composed at the height of the developing controversy with Rome)) Race Matters (Mature (the book that established West as a major public intellectual)) The American Evasion of Philosophy (Mature (West's major work of intellectual history, written before the Race Matters celebrity)) Democracy Matters (Late-mature (the post-9/11 sequel to the 1993 Race Matters)) Dictionnaire philosophique (Late (composed during the Ferney years)) Traité sur la tolérance (Late (the campaign-treatise of the Ferney period)) Éléments de la philosophie de Newton (Mid (the work that established Voltaire as a public intellectual of European reach)) Principles of Cartesian Philosophy (Early (Spinoza's first published work)) Discourse on the Sciences and Arts (Early (the work that launched Rousseau's career)) Julie (Mature (the literary high-point of Rousseau's career, between Social Contract and Émile)) Japji Sahib (Mature (Nānak's foundational devotional composition)) Asa Di Var (Mature) Veritatis Splendor (Mature) Evangelium Vitae (Late-mature) Theology of the Body (Mature (the major catechetical project of John Paul II's early pontificate)) Romans (Mature (Paul's most extensive and systematic letter)) 1 Corinthians (Mature) 2 Corinthians (Mature) Galatians (Mature) Philippians (Late) 1 Thessalonians (Early) Philemon (Late) Brief Outline of Theology as a Field of Study (Mature) The Christian Faith (Mature) Surprised by Joy (Late-mature) The Allegory of Love (Mature) A Pluralistic Universe (Late) Purgatorio (Mature) De Vulgari Eloquentia (Mid-mature) De Monarchia (Late) Cur Deus Homo (Late-mature) On Truth (Mature) On Free Will (Mature) Faust I (Mature) Discourse on Metaphysics (Mature) The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence (Last) Jesus and the Disinherited (Mature) Go Tell It on the Mountain (Early) Jewish Philosophy as a Guide to Life (Late) The Gathering Storm (Late) Their Finest Hour (Late) A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (Late) The Black Unicorn (Mid) Death and the King's Horseman (Mid) Myth, Literature and the African World (Mid) The Iliad, or the Poem of Force (Late) Faṣl al-Maqāl (The Decisive Treatise) (Mature) Declaration of Independence (Early) Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (Early) A Summary View of the Rights of British America (Early) The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth (Late) You Learn by Living (Late) Shabuhragan (Mature) Living Gospel (Evangelium Vivum) (Mature) Treasure of Life (Mature) Book of Mysteries (Mature) Poor Richard's Almanack (Mid) Experiments and Observations on Electricity (Mid) Fīhi mā Fīhi (Discourses) (Late) Maktūbāt (Letters) (Mature) Majālis-i Sabʿa (Seven Sermons) (Mature) Brahma-Sūtra-Bhāṣya (Mature) Mahābhārata-Tātparya-Nirṇaya (Mature) Viṣṇu-Tattva-Nirṇaya (Mature) Tattvodyota (Mature) A Dance of the Forests (Early) Kongi's Harvest (Mid) You Must Set Forth at Dawn (Late) New System (Mature) Correspondence with Arnauld (Mature) Bidāyat al-Mujtahid (Mature) Murder in the Cathedral (Mid) The Idea of a Christian Society (Mid) Approaching Hoofbeats (Mid) Quodlibetal Questions (Mature) Treatise on Predestination, Foreknowledge, and Future Contingents (Mature) Dialogue on the Power of the Pope and the Emperor (Late) Commentary on the Sentences (Early) Atlantis (Mid) Lanquidity (Late) The Magic City (Mid) Sun Ra Discography (Late) Original Stories from Real Life (Early) Evangelii Gaudium (Late) Laudato Si' (Late) Amoris Laetitia (Late) Fratelli Tutti (Late) Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol (Late) Essays on the Gita (Mature) Bal-i Jibril (Gabriel's Wing) (Late) Javid Nama (Book of Eternity) (Late) An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision (Early) De Motu (Mid) Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher (Mid) Siris (Late) Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (Mid) Original Sin (Late) The End for Which God Created the World (Late) The Nature of True Virtue (Late) De Veritate (On Truth) (Mid) De Casu Diaboli (On the Fall of the Devil) (Mid) De Processione Spiritus Sancti (On the Procession of the Holy Spirit) (Late) All About Love (Late) The Crisis of Western Philosophy (Early) Lectures on Divine Humanity (Mid) The Meaning of Love (Late) We Drink from Our Own Wells (Mid) The Power of the Poor in History (Mid) Dasam Granth (Mature) Zafarnama (Mature) Commentary on John (Mature) Commentary on Genesis (Mature) Commentary on Wisdom (Mature) Self-Made Men (Mid-Late) Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President (Mid) Living Faith (Late) Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis (Late) Sources of Strength: Meditations on Scripture for a Living Faith (Late) Doctrine and Covenants (Mid) The Pearl of Great Price (Mid) King Follett Discourse (Late) Articles of Faith (Mid) Commentaries on the Bible (Mature) Geneva Catechism (Mid) Ecclesiastical Ordinances of Geneva (Mature) Brief Instruction Against the Anabaptists (Mid) Kitāb al-Shifāʾ (Book of Healing) (Mature) Kitāb al-Najāt (Book of Salvation) (Mature) Ilāhiyyāt (Metaphysics of the Shifāʾ) (Mature) Principles of Philosophy (Mature) Correspondence with Princess Elisabeth (Late) Stride Toward Freedom (Early) Why We Can't Wait (Mid) Where Do We Go from Here (Late) The Drum Major Instinct (Late) Tablets to the Political Leaders (Mature) Tabernacle of Unity (Late) Words of Paradise (Kalimát-i-Firdawsiyyih) (Late) Edition of Jerome (Mature) Edition of Augustine (Late) Edition of Origen (Late) Edition of Cyprian (Mature) The Reagan Diaries (Late) Evil Empire Speech (Late) RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (Late) Leaders (Late) All the Best (Late) Larger and Smaller Catechisms (Mature) Luther German Bible (Mature) Lectures on Galatians (Mature) Lectures on Genesis (Late) The Hidden God (De Deo Abscondito) (Mid) On the Beryl (De Beryllo) (Mature) On the Not-Other (De Non Aliud) (Late) Yuishinshō Mon'i (Mature) Kōsō Wasan (Mature) Shōzōmatsu Wasan (Late) Mattōshō (Late) Standard Sermons (Mid-to-late) Notes Upon the New Testament (Mid) A Compendium of Natural Philosophy (Late) The Arminian Magazine (Late) Spirit in the World (Early) Hearer of the Word (Early) Theological Investigations (Mid-to-late) On the Theology of Death (Mid) Deep Is the Hunger (Mid) Meditations of the Heart (Mid) The Search for Common Ground (Late) Crying in the Wilderness (Mid) Hope and Suffering (Mid) The Rainbow People of God (Late) God Is Not a Christian (Late) The Search After Truth (Early-to-mid) Treatise on Nature and Grace (Mid) Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion (Mid-to-late) Treatise on Morality (Mid) On the Problem of Empathy (Early) Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities (Early) The Science of the Cross (Late) Essays on Woman (Mid) Parimala (Mid) Tatparya Chandrika (Mid) Nyaya Mukura (Mid) Bhagavata Tatparya commentary (Mid) Zen and the Birds of Appetite (Late) Living in Truth (Mid) Sidh Gosht (Mid) Babar Vani (Mid) Janamsakhi traditions (Post-Nānak transmission) Der Ring des Nibelungen (Middle-to-late (career-spanning)) Parsifal (Late (final completed work)) On the Philosophy of Discovery (Late-career capstone) De Trinitatis Erroribus (Early) Dialogorum de Trinitate (Early) Edition of Ptolemy's Geography (Middle) Christianismi Restitutio (Late (final)) A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God (Early-career) A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion (Early-career) The Scripture-Doctrine of the Trinity (Mid-career) Micrographia (Early-career (career-defining)) An Attempt to Prove the Motion of the Earth from Observations (Mid-career) Lectures de Potentia Restitutiva (Mid-career) The Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke (Posthumous) Disputationes de Controversiis Christianae Fidei (Career-defining) De Potestate Summi Pontificis in Rebus Temporalibus (Late) Letter to Foscarini (Late) De Aeterna Felicitate Sanctorum (Late (devotional)) General Scholium (Late) Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John (Posthumous) Alchemical and Theological Manuscripts (Career-spanning private work) Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (Late) Perpetual Peace (Late) The Metaphysics of Morals (Late) De Institutione Musica (On Music) (Early) De Institutione Arithmetica (On Arithmetic) (Early) Theological Tractates (Opuscula Sacra) (Mid-to-late) On the Prescription of Heretics (Pre-Montanist) On the Flesh of Christ (Mid-to-late (Montanist period)) Parts of Animals (Middle) Gödel's Ontological Argument (Late (private manuscript)) An Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus (Mid-career) Collected Philosophical Papers (Late) The Religion of Man (Late) Gora (Middle) Chitra (Early-to-middle) The Adolescent (Late) A Writer's Diary (Late) Dogmatics in Outline (Late-middle) Evangelical Theology (Late) The Barmen Declaration (Middle) On the Virgin Conception and Original Sin (Late) The Aims of the Philosophers (Middle) The Niche of Lights (Late) The Analyst (Late) Prophesy Deliverance! (Early) Black Prophetic Fire (Late) The Origin of Russian Communism (Late) The Beginning and the End (Late) Self-Knowledge (Posthumous) The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (Middle) The Serenity Prayer (Middle) Gaudete et Exsultate (Late-middle (papacy)) Let Us Dream (Late-middle) Sonnets (Career-spanning) Between Man and Man (Middle-to-late) Two Types of Faith (Late) The Development of Metaphysics in Persia (Early) Bāng-i-Darā (Early-to-middle) The Human Cycle (Middle) The Secret of the Veda (Early-to-middle) Redemptor Hominis (Early (papacy)) Memory and Identity (Final) Journal of Discourses (Career-spanning) Shibun Yōryō (Early) Naobi no Mitama (Middle) Kojiki-den (Late (career-spanning)) Etz Chayim (Posthumous (transmission)) Sha'ar ha-Gilgulim (Posthumous (transmission)) Kitāb al-Mashāʿir (Mature) Al-Shawāhid al-Rubūbiyya (Mid-to-late) Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb (Late) Act and Being (Early) What Is Art? (Late) The Moment (Final (year of death)) Factory Journal (Middle) Letter to a Priest (Final) Three Conversations (Final (year of death)) The Sacred Pipe (Late) The Sixth Grandfather (Posthumous (testamentary materials)) Loaves and Fishes (Middle-to-late) Martin & Malcolm & America (Mid-to-late) Letters (Career-spanning) On the Soul (Mid-to-late (Montanist period)) Decision Points (Late (post-presidency)) Sermons (Career-spanning (Geneva preaching)) On the Creation of the World On the Life of Moses Against Celsus Memorabilia Stromateis (Miscellanies) Against Heresies Hexaemeron (Late) Life of Moses (Late) Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew De Officiis Ministrorum (Late) Vulgate (Latin Bible translation) (Mature) The Consolation of Philosophy Sayings and Legal Rulings Ramayana

Where this stance leads ⓘ

Moral obligation tracks the relations one is in; distance does matter, structurally.

56 schools

On this view, moral obligation isn't a uniform field surrounding every human; it tracks the relations one is actually in. Family, neighbor, fellow citizen, distant stranger — these gradations aren't arbitrary; they correspond to real differences in the relationships that bind. Distant harm matters but doesn't bind in the same way.

Why these schools land hereThe Local + Plural cluster reads moral relations as transmitted through proximity — physical, social, institutional — rather than as universal moral fields. Confucianism articulates this with the graded love among the Five Cardinal Relations; communitarian and republican secular traditions in similar terms. The cluster does not deny moral concern for the distant; it denies that distant moral concern has the same structure as near moral concern. Personal-agency revelation traditions that used to land here on the space=Local coordinate (Catholic, Reformed, Lutheran) now route to providentially-bound — their actual doctrine reads obligation as extending across distance through the personal divine relation, not as graded by proximity.

Absurdism Analytic Metaphysics / Logical Atomism Analytic Philosophy Atomism Buddhism Classical Political Economy Confucianism Constructivism Continental Philosophy Critical Realism Deism Determinism Dialectical Materialism Effective Altruism Empiricism Epicureanism Eternalism Existentialism Gnosticism Hegelianism Hylomorphism Jainism / Anekantavada Kantian Transcendental Idealism Logical Positivism Marxism Mechanism Modal Realism Naturalism Nominalism Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) Panpsychism Phenomenalism Phenomenology Philosophy of Language Philosophy of Mind Philosophy of Science Platonism (Classical) Postmodernism Pragmatic Realism Pragmatism Presentism Process Philosophy Pyrrhonism Pythagoreanism Quantum Realism Realism Relationalism Relativism Samkhya Simulation Theory Social Contract Theory Social Democracy Stoicism Taoism Theravada Buddhism Virtual Realism

Works: Fragments The Dhammapada Tao Te Ching Zhuangzi — Inner Chapters The Republic Nicomachean Ethics Letter to Menoeceus Meditations Ethics An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Late) Phenomenology of Spirit (Early) On the Origin of Species Thus Spoke Zarathustra Being and Time (Early) The Myth of Sisyphus Being and Nothingness Philosophical Investigations (Late) The Analects Metaphysics Leviathan Capital, Volume I (Late) On Liberty The Second Sex Phaedo Utilitarianism The Communist Manifesto (Early) A Theory of Justice An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Late) Letter on Humanism (Late) Symposium De Anima Apology (Early) Phaedrus (Late) Politics Outlines of Pyrrhonism On the Nature of the Gods (Late) Abhidharmakośa Visuddhimagga Mencius Xunzi De Cive (Early) A Treatise of Human Nature (Early) Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (Late) Theses on Feuerbach (Early) The Problems of Philosophy (Early) The Foundations of Arithmetic Experience and Nature (Late) How to Make Our Ideas Clear What Is Metaphysics? (Early) Phenomenology of Perception The Order of Things On Certainty (Latest) Relativity: The Special and General Theory The Selfish Gene The Structure of Scientific Revolutions The Open Society and Its Enemies On the Genealogy of Morality (Late) Meno (Early) A History of Western Philosophy (Late) Theory of Communicative Action Discipline and Punish (Late) Physics Theological-Political Treatise (Early) Existentialism Is a Humanism Theaetetus (Late) Crito (Early) The Natural History of Religion (Late) On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers (Early) Political Liberalism (Late) Two Dogmas of Empiricism Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (Early) Beyond Good and Evil (Late) The Birth of Tragedy (Early) The Ethics of Ambiguity (Early) The Subjection of Women (Late) The Rebel (Late) The Question Concerning Technology (Late) Categories Principia Mathematica (Early (both authors)) On Interpretation Why I Am Not a Christian (Mid-late) Logical Investigations (Early (the breakthrough work that founds phenomenology)) Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology (Mid (the transcendental turn)) The Gay Science (Middle (between Daybreak and Zarathustra)) The History of Sexuality (Late (his last major project)) Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (Mid-late (after The Human Condition, before The Life of the Mind)) Elements of the Philosophy of Right (Late (the mature systematic philosophy)) Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Mid (the breakthrough book)) Essays: First Series (Mid (Emerson at the peak of his powers)) The Origins of Totalitarianism (Mid (Arendt's breakthrough book)) On Revolution (Late (after Eichmann in Jerusalem)) The Copernican Revolution (Early (Kuhn's first book)) The Sovereignty of Good (Mid (her major philosophical statement, alongside Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals 1992)) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Early (the breakthrough work)) The Origin of German Tragic Drama (Early (the most ambitious early work, before the Arcades Project)) Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (Mid (between the First Discourse and the Social Contract)) The Principles of Psychology (Mid (the major early work; foundational for both psychology and pragmatist philosophy)) Zhuangzi The Great Learning and Doctrine of the Mean The Plague (Mid (between The Stranger and The Rebel)) Brave New World (Mid (Huxley's breakthrough novel)) Ideas and Opinions (Late (the most comprehensive single-volume collection)) The Concept of Nature (Early-mid (preceding Science and the Modern World, 1925)) Hind Swaraj (Early (the founding text of Gandhi's mature political-philosophical vision)) Sister Outsider (Mid (the major prose collection of Lorde's career)) Sadhana: The Realisation of Life (Mid (the major philosophical prose statement)) No Exit (Mid (alongside Being and Nothingness)) Critique of Dialectical Reason (Late (Sartre's major late philosophical work)) Lectures on the Philosophy of History (Late (Berlin lectures of the 1820s, his mature mature)) Lectures on Aesthetics (Late (Berlin lectures)) Madness and Civilization (Early (Foucault's breakthrough work, his doctoral dissertation)) The Birth of the Clinic (Early-mid (between Madness and Civilization and The Order of Things)) The Archaeology of Knowledge (Mid (methodological transition between archaeological and genealogical phases)) Principles of Political Economy (Mid (Mill's major economic work)) A System of Logic (Early (Mill's first major book, the foundation of his philosophical reputation)) Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (Late (Berlin lectures)) De Brevitate Vitae (Mid) De Providentia (Late) Prior and Posterior Analytics On the Heavens On Nature (Fragments) Psychological Types (Mid (the major systematic work after his 1912-13 break with Freud)) Modern Man in Search of a Soul (Mid-late (mature systematic statement)) The Interpretation of Dreams (Early (the founding work of psychoanalysis)) Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (Early-mid (after the Interpretation of Dreams)) Mrs Dalloway (Mid (the first major modernist novel of Woolf's maturity)) To the Lighthouse (Mid (Woolf at the height of her powers)) Tristes Tropiques (Mid (Lévi-Strauss's most widely read book)) The Savage Mind (Mid (the systematic statement of structural anthropology)) Structural Anthropology (Mid (the methodological consolidation)) Reason, Truth and History (Mid (the major mid-career book, the systematic statement of internal realism)) The Waste Land (Mid (the canonical modernist poem)) Tradition and the Individual Talent (Early (Eliot's major early critical statement)) Tahāfut al-Tahāfut (Mid-late (Averroes's major systematic philosophical defence)) On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (Early) Parerga and Paralipomena (Late) An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (Mid-late) Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Mid) Achieving Our Country (Late) Representation and Reality (Mid) Gravitation (Mid-late) Playing in the Dark (Mid-late) The Sea of Fertility (Late (the major late work, completed the day of his 1970 ritual suicide)) Zen and Japanese Culture (Late) De Tranquillitate Animi (Mid-late) De Vita Beata (Mid-late) Eudemian Ethics Parmenides Sophist Island (Late) Anasakti Yoga: The Gita According to Gandhi (Mid-late) Writing and Difference (Early) Word and Object (Mid) Civilization and Its Discontents (Late) The Future of an Illusion (Late) Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Late) Dialectic of Enlightenment (Mid) Negative Dialectics (Late) Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life (Mid) Eclipse of Reason (Mid) One-Dimensional Man (Late) Eros and Civilization (Mid) The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (Late) The Wretched of the Earth (Late) Black Skin, White Masks (Early) Knowledge and Human Interests (Early) Between Facts and Norms (Late) The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (Mid) Gender Trouble (Early) Bodies That Matter (Early) Orientalism (Mid) Culture and Imperialism (Late) Can the Subaltern Speak? (Mid) Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (Early) Democracy and Education (Mid) Art as Experience (Late) The Quest for Certainty (Late) The Fixation of Belief (Early) The Elementary Structures of Kinship (Early (Lévi-Strauss's breakthrough work; the foundation of structural anthropology)) Ecology, Community and Lifestyle (Late (Næss's mature statement; the systematic expansion of his 1973 "shallow vs deep ecology" essay)) The Conscious Mind (Early (Chalmers's breakthrough book, derived from his 1993 Indiana PhD)) Tool-Being (Early (Harman's breakthrough work, derived from his 1999 DePaul PhD)) On the Plurality of Worlds (Late (Lewis's mature systematic statement of the modal-realist programme)) Time and Modality (Early (Prior's first major synthesis of tense logic, derived from his 1955-56 Oxford Locke Lectures)) The Logic of Scientific Discovery (Early) Conjectures and Refutations (Mid) The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes (Late) Against Method (Mid) The Logical Syntax of Language (Mid) Aspects of Scientific Explanation (Mid) The Uses of Argument (Early) Patterns of Discovery (Early) The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (Mid) Essays on Actions and Events (Mid) Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Mid) Naming and Necessity (Mid) Counterfactuals (Early) Mind and World (Late) Making It Explicit (Mid) Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Mid) Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics (Early) Truth and Other Enigmas (Mid) Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Mid) Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Early) Spheres of Justice (Mid) Two Concepts of Liberty (Mid) The Hedgehog and the Fox (Mid) The Concept of the Political (Mid) Mahāyānasaṃgraha (Mid) Shōbōgenzō (Late) Wild Ivy (Itsumadegusa) (Late) Lam rim chen mo (The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment) (Mid) Inquiry on the Great Learning (Daxue Wen) (Late) Zhuzi Yulei (Conversations of Master Zhu, Arranged Topically) (Late) Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam (Bezels of Wisdom) (Late) al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya (The Meccan Revelations) (Late) al-Ḥikma al-Mutaʿāliya fī l-Asfār al-ʿAqliyya al-Arbaʿa (Transcendent Wisdom in the Four Intellectual Journeys) (Late) Ḥikmat al-Ishrāq (The Philosophy of Illumination) (Mid) De Docta Ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance) (Late) The Divine Names (De Divinis Nominibus) (Late) Periphyseon (On the Division of Nature) (Mid) The Feminine Mystique (Late) Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (Mid) Frontiers of Justice (Late) Justice and the Politics of Difference (Mid) Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color (Mid) On Nature and Purifications (Fragments) (Early) On Nature (Fragments) (Early) Discourses (Diatribai) (Mid) Enchiridion (Handbook) (Late) De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) (Mid) Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (Late) Moralia (Ēthika) (Late) Isagoge (Introduction to Aristotle's Categories) (Late) Adversus Mathematicos (Against the Mathematicians / Professors) (Late) The Mirror of Simple Souls (Le Mirouer des Simples Âmes) (Late) The Prince (Il Principe) (Late) Discourses on Livy (Discorsi sopra la prima Deca di Tito Livio) (Late) On the Infinite Universe and Worlds (De l'Infinito Universo e Mondi) (Late) Two New Sciences (Discorsi e Dimostrazioni Matematiche, intorno à Due Nuove Scienze) (Late) The Sceptical Chymist (Mid) New Science (Late) The Spirit of the Laws (De l'esprit des lois) (Late) Candide (Candide, ou l'Optimisme) (Late) Philosophical Letters (Lettres Philosophiques / Lettres Anglaises) (Mid) Creative Evolution (L'évolution créatrice) (Late) Leaves of Grass (Late) Faust, Part Two (Faust: Der Tragödie zweiter Teil) (Late) Consciousness Explained (Mid) The Construction of Social Reality (Late) Speech Acts (Early) The View from Nowhere (Mid) An Essay on Free Will (Mid) Reasons and Persons (Mid) On Bullshit (Late) Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Late) The Philosophy of Philosophy (Late) Difference and Repetition (Différence et Répétition) (Mid) Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, vol. 1 (Late) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, vol. 2 (Late) Écrits (Mid) The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (Late) The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (La condition postmoderne) (Late) Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (Pouvoirs de l'horreur) (Mid) Speculum of the Other Woman (Speculum, de l'autre femme) (Mid) Simulacra and Simulation (Simulacres et simulation) (Late) Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Late) An Inquiry into the Good (Zen no Kenkyū) (Early) Climate and Culture (Fūdo: ningengakuteki kōsatsu) (Mid) African Religions and Philosophy (Mid) Philosophy of Liberation (Filosofía de la Liberación) (Mid) Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality (Siete ensayos de interpretación de la realidad peruana) (Mid) The Idea of Latin America (Late) Toward the African Revolution (Late) After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency (Après la finitude) (Late) We Have Never Been Modern (Nous n'avons jamais été modernes) (Mid) Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory (Late) Silent Spring (Late) A Sand County Almanac (Late) Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (Late) The Dream of the Earth (Late) The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness (Late) Critique of Cynical Reason (Kritik der zynischen Vernunft) (Mid) The End of History and the Last Man (Mid) Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (Mid) Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind (Mid) Ways of Worldmaking (Late) The Claim of Reason (Mid) Natural Goodness (Late) Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (Mid) The Many Faces of Realism (Mid) The Social Construction of What? (Late) Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Mid) Notes on the State of Virginia (Mid) Common Sense (Mid) The Age of Reason (Late) The Souls of Black Folk (Mid) Mind, Self, and Society (Late) The Education of Henry Adams (Late) A Short History of Chinese Philosophy (Mid) Intellectual Intuition and Chinese Philosophy (Zhi de zhijue yu Zhongguo zhexue) (Late) Eastern and Western Cultures and Their Philosophies (Dongxi wenhua ji qi zhexue) (Early) The Importance of Living (Mid) Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind (Late) Religion and Nothingness (Shūkyō to wa nani ka) (Mid) The Hindu View of Life (Mid) The First and Last Freedom (Mid) Confucian Thought: Selfhood as Creative Transformation (Late) Being Peace (Late) Black Elk Speaks (Late) God Is Red: A Native View of Religion (Late) Women, Race & Class (Mid) Black Feminist Thought (Mid) Reality+ (Late (Chalmers's major popular-and-technical synthesis on virtual reality and the simulation hypothesis)) Paradiso (Divine Comedy, Cantica III) (Late) Don Quixote (El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha) (Late) Gulliver's Travels (Late) An Essay on Man (Late) Ficciones (Mid) Waiting for Godot (En attendant Godot) (Mid) Invisible Cities (Le città invisibili) (Mid) One Hundred Years of Solitude (Cien años de soledad) (Mid) A Vision (Late) Begriffsschrift (Early) On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Principia Mathematica and Related Systems (Early) The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages (Mid) Foundations of a General Theory of Manifolds (Grundlagen einer allgemeinen Mannigfaltigkeitslehre) (Mid) The Science of Mechanics (Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwicklung) (Mid) The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory (La Théorie physique: son objet, sa structure) (Late) Science and Hypothesis (La Science et l'hypothèse) (Late) The Philosophy of Space and Time (Philosophie der Raum-Zeit-Lehre) (Mid) Relativity: The Special and General Theory (Mid) The Essential Tension (Late) The Trial (Der Process) (Late) Ulysses (Mid) A Room of One's Own (Late) Swann's Way (Du côté de chez Swann) (Mid) The Magic Mountain (Der Zauberberg) (Late) Middlemarch (Late) The Sound and the Fury (Mid) Collected Poems (Late) 1984 (Nineteen Eighty-Four) (Late) The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality (Late) Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism (Mid) When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times (Late) Raja Yoga: Conquering the Internal Nature (Late) The Language Instinct (Late) Syntactic Structures (Early) Metaphors We Live By (Late) Animal Liberation (Mid) Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (Late) Escape from Freedom (Mid) The Sociological Imagination (Mid) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Mid) The Social Construction of Reality (Mid) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (La Distinction) (Mid) The Culture of Narcissism (Late) Liquid Modernity (Late) Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (Late) The Fall of Public Man (Mid) The Life of the Mind (Late) The Sublime Object of Ideology (Mid) Full Catastrophe Living (Late) Thinking, Fast and Slow (Late) The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (Late) Cosmopolitics (Late) The Black Swan (Late) If This Is a Man (Se questo è un uomo) (Mid) The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí) (Late) Austerlitz (Late) The Doctor and the Soul: From Psychotherapy to Logotherapy (Mid) Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Le Capital au XXIe siècle) (Late) The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (Late) An Essay on the Principle of Population (Late) On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (Late) The Methods of Ethics (Late) Principia Ethica (Early) Language, Truth, and Logic (Early) The Concept of Mind (Mid) How to Do Things with Words (Late) The Blue and Brown Books (Mid) An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (Late) The Division of Labor in Society (Early) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Mid) Economy and Society (Late) The Philosophy of Money (Mid) Development as Freedom (Late) On Sense and Reference (Mid) Intentionality (Mid) The Language of Thought (Mid) The Sources of Normativity (Mid) Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (Late) The Struggle for Recognition (Mid) What Is Life? (Late) Computing Machinery and Intelligence (Late) A Mathematical Theory of Communication (Mid) Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (Late) The Growth of Biological Thought (Late) Wonderful Life (Late) The Double Helix (Mid) Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (Late) Traité élémentaire de chimie (Late) Descartes' Error (Late) On the Aesthetic Education of Man (Mid) A Doll's House (Mid) The Cherry Orchard (Late) Disgrace (Late) History of the Peloponnesian War (Early) The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Late) The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (Late) Prison Notebooks (Late) History and Class Consciousness (Mid) The State and Revolution (Late) Course in General Linguistics (Late) The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (Late) The Road to Serfdom (Mid) Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (Late) The Interpretation of Cultures (Late) The Logic of Practice (Late) The Construction of Reality in the Child (Mid) Thought and Language (Mid) The Mind of Primitive Man (Late) Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Mid) Childhood and Society (Mid) Motivation and Personality (Mid) Attachment and Loss (Late) Envy and Gratitude (Late) Foundations of Geometry (Mid) The Dispossessed (Late) Mother Courage and Her Children (Late) The German Ideology (Early) The Poetics of Space (Late) On Photography (Late) Ways of Seeing (Late) Studies in Iconology (Late) The Story of Art (Mid) The Great Gatsby (Mid) Foundation (Mid) My Brilliant Friend (Late) Gravity's Rainbow (Mid) Canto General (Mid) Hopscotch (Mid) 2666 (Late) Decolonising the Mind (Late) Proof of an External World (Late) Sense and Sensibilia (Late) The Analysis of Mind (Mid) The Analysis of Matter (Mid) The Analysis of Sensations (Mid) Scientific Thought (Mid) A Realist Theory of Science (Mid) The Possibility of Naturalism (Mid) Anti-Duhring (Late) Fathers and Sons (Mid) A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (Late) A New Kind of Science (Mid) Homo Deus (Late) The Singularity Is Near (Late) Realism with a Human Face (Late) The Quadruple Object (Late) The Structure of Objects (Mid) Things and Their Parts (Mid) Writing the Book of the World (Mid) The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement (Mid) Capital (Late) The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (Late (Husserl's last work, written in Freiburg under Nazi proscription)) The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (Late (Bergson's last major book, written after a long convalescence)) The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language (Early-to-middle (Carnap's most polemical statement of the verificationist programme)) Life's Philosophy: Reason and Feeling in a Deeper World (Late (Næss's closing popular statement, written at 86)) Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now (Mature (Lanier's short polemical follow-up to Who Owns the Future?, 2013, and Dawn of the New Everything, 2017)) Translations and commentaries on Aristotle's Categories (Mature (the late translation programme Boethius announced and partly completed before his death)) Duration and Simultaneity (Mature (the disastrous engagement with Einstein that damaged Bergson's standing among physicists)) Laughter (Early-mature (between Matter and Memory and Creative Evolution)) Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (Late (Murdoch's longest and most ambitious philosophical book, published nine years after the Gifford Lectures)) The Bell (Early-mature (Murdoch's fourth novel, the first to establish her mature manner)) The Fragility of Goodness (Mature (the book that established Nussbaum as a major figure)) Upheavals of Thought (Late-mature (Nussbaum's magnum opus, eight years in the writing after the Gifford Lectures)) On Violence (Late (Arendt's most-cited short political essay, written in response to the 1968 student movements)) Men in Dark Times (Late (collected from essays spanning more than a decade)) Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (Mature (Kripke's second major book after Naming and Necessity, 1980)) On What Matters (Late (Parfit's final, three-decade-in-the-making work — his second after Reasons and Persons, 1984)) An Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution (Late (Wollstonecraft's last completed major non-fiction work, three years before her death)) The Undiscovered Self (Late (one of Jung's last short works, written at 82)) De Officiis (Late (Cicero's last completed philosophical work, written in the months before his proscription and execution)) De Re Publica (Mid-mature (Cicero's political philosophical synthesis, composed during the breakdown of the late Republic)) Tusculan Disputations (Late (composed in the year of Cicero's daughter's death, in his most intense period of philosophical writing)) Convention: A Philosophical Study (Early (Lewis's first book, published at 28, the year he began at UCLA)) Physica and Causae et Curae (Mid-mature (Hildegard's middle period, between her three major visionary works)) Sidereus Nuncius (Early-mid (the breakthrough that established Galileo's international reputation)) The Assayer (Mature (composed during the brief honeymoon between Galileo and the new Pope Urban VIII)) Custer Died for Your Sins (Mature (Deloria's breakthrough book, written at 36)) The Metaphysics of Modern Existence (Mature (Deloria's most ambitious philosophical work)) Political Treatise (Late (Spinoza's last work, left incomplete at his death)) Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (Early (Spinoza's first major philosophical project, left incomplete as the Ethics took shape)) Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Late (Seneca's last completed major work, composed in retirement)) De Beneficiis (Mid-mature (composed during Seneca's most influential political-philosophical period)) Naturales Quaestiones (Late) De Otio (Late) De Constantia Sapientis (Mid) Rhetoric (Mature) Poetics (Mature) Topics (Mid-mature) Historia Animalium (Mature) On Generation and Corruption (Mature) The Mandarins (Mature) Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (Mature) Old Age (Late-mature) A Very Easy Death (Late) Orlando (Mature) The Waves (Mature) Three Guineas (Late) Between the Acts (Last) Gyn/Ecology (Mature) Politics and Conscience (Mature (composed during Havel's dissident period before the 1989 Velvet Revolution)) Disturbing the Peace (Late-dissident (composed three years before the Velvet Revolution)) Summer Meditations (Late (the first major post-1989 reflection on the transition from dissidence to governance)) Othello (Mature) Macbeth (Mature) Antony and Cleopatra (Mature) The Tempest (Last (probably Shakespeare's last sole-authored play)) Measure for Measure (Mature) Resistance to Civil Government (Mature) A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (Early-mature) The Maine Woods (Mature-late) A Plea for Captain John Brown (Mature) Slavery in Massachusetts (Mature) The American Scholar (Mature) Divinity School Address (Mature) Essays: Second Series (Mature) Representative Men (Mature) Translation of Plato's dialogues (Mature) The Discarded Image (Last) Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (Early) The Sea, The Sea (Late-mature) The Black Prince (Mature) Essays in Radical Empiricism (Late posthumous) Some Remarks on Logical Form (Transitional) Eyeless in Gaza (Mid-mature) Brave New World Revisited (Late) The Descent of Man (Mature) The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (Late) Journal of Researches (Early) The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms (Last) The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (Mature) Relativity: The Special and the General Theory (Mid-mature) The World as I See It (Mid-mature) Religion and Science (Mid-mature) Out of My Later Years (Late) The Born-Einstein Letters (Mature-late) Letter to Herodotus (Mature) Principal Doctrines (Mature) Parable of the Sower (Mature) Parable of the Talents (Late-mature) Faust II (Last) Theory of Colors (Mature) Italian Journey (Late-mature retrospective) Notes of a Native Son (Mid-mature) Giovanni's Room (Mid-mature) A Madman's Diary (Mid-mature) The True Story of Ah Q (Mature) The Sea of Fertility (Last) Patriotism (Mid-mature) Consequences of Pragmatism (Mid) Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (Mid) Judgment Under Uncertainty (Mid) Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment (Late) Words and Life (Late) Choices, Values, and Frames (Mid) A Journey into Gravity and Spacetime (Late) A Burst of Light (Late) The Bluest Eye (Mid) Primate Visions (Mid) When Species Meet (Late) Laboratory Life (Early) Reflections on the Causes of Liberty and Social Oppression (Early) Tomorrow Is Now (Late) The Open Sore of a Continent (Late) Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (Mid) Sapiens: A Graphic History (Late) Past, Present and Future (Mature) Papers on Time and Tense (Late) Objects of Thought (Late) The Great World-System (Megas Diakosmos) (Mature) On the Mind (Mature) On Forms (Peri Ideōn) (Mature) Maria, or The Wrongs of Woman (Late) Cosmos (Mid) Pale Blue Dot (Late) The Dragons of Eden (Mid) The Demon-Haunted World (Late) On the Postcolony (Mid) Necropolitics (Mature) The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea (Mature) The Blind Watchmaker (Mid) The God Delusion (Late) The Ancestor's Tale (Late) Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (Early) Teaching to Transgress (Mid) The Will to Change (Late) The Mind and its Place in Nature (Mid) Examination of McTaggart's Philosophy (Mature) Five Types of Ethical Theory (Mid) West India Emancipation (Mid) The Audacity of Hope (Mid) A Promised Land (Late) 2004 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address (Early) Rivonia Trial Statement (Mid) Inaugural Address (Late) Letters from Prison (Mid) Academica (Academic Skepticism) (Mature) De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum (Mature) al-Qānūn fī al-Ṭibb (Canon of Medicine) (Mature) Essay on Conic Sections (Early) Rules for the Direction of the Mind (Early) Our Knowledge of the External World (Mid) Mysticism and Logic (Mid) Human, All Too Human (Mid) Daybreak (Mid) Untimely Meditations (Early) Studies on Hysteria (Early) Totem and Taboo (Mid) The Ego and the Id (Late) Moses and Monotheism (Late) A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Mature) Capital, Volume II (Late) Capital, Volume III (Late) Grundrisse (Mature) Pali Canon: Sutta Pitaka (Early) Pali Canon: Vinaya Pitaka (Early) Pali Canon: Abhidhamma Pitaka (Early-Mid) Dhammapada (Early) Bloodchild and Other Stories (Mid) Red Earth, White Lies (Late) Evolution, Creationism, and Other Modern Myths (Late) Interpretation and Preciseness (Mid) Reclaiming Reality (Mid) Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom (Late) Reagan, In His Own Hand (Mid) Thousand Points of Light (Mid) Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again (Late) Elements of Law, Natural and Politic (Early) De Corpore (Late) De Homine (Late) Behemoth (Late) The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time (Early) The Universe in a Nutshell (Mid) Call to Arms (Nahan) (Mid) Old Tales Retold (Gushi Xinbian) (Late) The Poverty of Historicism (Mid-career) Objective Knowledge (Late) Plato's Dialectical Ethics (Early) Philosophical Hermeneutics (Late-middle) The Idea of the Good in Platonic-Aristotelian Philosophy (Late) Reason in the Age of Science (Late) Speech and Phenomena (Early) Margins of Philosophy (Middle (one of three 1972 volumes)) Limited Inc (Middle-late) Specters of Marx (Late) American Power and the New Mandarins (Early (political work)) Reflections on Language (Mid-career (linguistic work)) Manufacturing Consent (Mid-late (political work)) The Minimalist Program (Late (linguistic work)) Philosophy of New Music (Middle) Aesthetic Theory (Final) The Therapy of Desire (Middle) Women and Human Development (Middle-to-late) Not for Profit (Late) Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic (Early) The Nature of Existence (Late) Contact (Late) Mind-Energy (Middle) Paradoxes (fragments) Republic (fragments) (Early) Logical Investigations (fragments) (Mature) On Providence (fragments) (Mature) On the Sacred Disease The Histories Fragments (Reconstructed) On the Natural Faculties Arthashastra

Where this stance leads ⓘ

Distance doesn't dilute obligation; what is real is the connection, not its length.

21 schools

On this view, the obligations one bears extend across distance because the connections do. Carbon emissions, trade flows, the global supply chains we are part of, the ancestral and ecological webs that hold the planet together — these constitute real connections that distance does not weaken. The distant harm is bound to my action by structural ties that are real even when invisible.

Why these schools land hereNon-local + Plural schools without Personal-agency treat moral relations as not dropping off with distance — through ecological webs (Deep Ecology), ancestral webs (the indigenous and Afrofuturist traditions), quantum/cosmological structure (Multiverse Theory, Quantum Realism, Dataism), or cosmic-ordering universalism (Yogācāra). Effective-altruist longtermism is the secular cousin: distance, including temporal distance, doesn't matter. Caveat: Nihilism's coordinates (space=Non-local + Plural) place it here, but its doctrine denies obligation altogether — a coordinate trap the framework names rather than fixes.

Works: Yoga Sutras Mūlamadhyamakakārikā The Heart Sutra I Ching Of Grammatology Physics and Philosophy The Perennial Philosophy (Late (Huxley's mature spiritual-philosophical synthesis)) The Doors of Perception (Late) Essays in Zen Buddhism (Mid (Suzuki's major early period of Western dissemination)) Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism (Early (Suzuki's first major book; preceding the Essays in Zen Buddhism by twenty years)) The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (Late (the mature systematic statement of archetypal psychology)) It from Bit / Information, Physics, Quantum (Late) A Cyborg Manifesto (Mid) Staying with the Trouble (Late) Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist (Late) Psychology and Alchemy (Late) Symbols of Transformation (Early (the 1912 break-from-Freud book; revised in 1952 as the mature statement of analytical psychology's mythopoeic register)) The Odu Ifá Corpus An Example of a New Type of Cosmological Solution to Einstein's Field Equations (Mature (the Princeton period — Gödel's only published paper in general relativity)) The Logic of the Place of Nothingness and the Religious Worldview (Late (Nishida's final completed essay, written months before his death)) Aion (Late (one of Jung's last and most ambitious works, written in his mid-seventies)) The Red Book (Middle (the personal experimental record from which all of Jung's later theoretical work emerged)) On Learned Ignorance (Mature (the founding work of Cusa's philosophical career, composed at age 39)) On Conjectures (Mature (the systematic epistemological development of the docta-ignorantia framework)) Ocean of Reasoning (Mature (Tsongkhapa's major philosophical-Madhyamaka work)) Pure Lust (Late-mature) The Immeasurable Equation (Posthumous)

Where this stance leads ⓘ

Harm anywhere is harm to the One; the boundary that would have insulated you was never real.

13 schools

On non-dual views, the distinction between near and far harm — like the distinction between self and other — is itself perspectival. What harms another harms what is not other than you, in the deepest sense. Distance is conventional; the binding is at the level where boundaries don't hold.

Why these schools land hereAdvaita Vedānta, Sufism, Idealism, Solipsism, Neo-Platonism, Rationalism, Transcendentalism — share obs_number=Singular. The Sufi tradition is particularly clear that harm to the apparent other is harm to the One; many Mahayana-influenced non-dualisms reach similar conclusions through bodhisattva ethics applied universally.

Advaita Vedanta British Idealism Idealism Latin Averroism Neo-Platonism Rationalism Romanticism Solipsism Spinozist Pantheism Structuralism Sufism / Wahdat al-Wujud Transcendentalism Zen Buddhism

Works: The Upanishads Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Early) Cartesian Meditations (Late) The Enneads The World as Will and Representation Brahma Sutra Bhāṣya The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch The German Sermons (Late) Mathnawi (Late) System of Transcendental Idealism (Early) Deliverance from Error (Late) The Concept of Anxiety (Mid (the productive year of 1844 — Concept of Anxiety, Philosophical Fragments, etc.)) Walden (Mid (Thoreau's major prose statement)) Science of Logic (Mid (the central work of the mature Hegelian system)) Émile (Late) The Logical Structure of the World (Early (Carnap's breakthrough work)) The Stranger (Early (the breakthrough novel)) Gravity and Grace (Posthumous (Weil died in 1943 at age 34)) Waiting for God (Posthumous) The Seven Storey Mountain (Early (Merton's breakthrough book; the spiritual autobiography of his conversion)) Seeds of Contemplation (1949) / New Seeds of Contemplation (Mid-late (Merton's mature contemplative theology)) An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth (Late-mid (looking back over the formative years)) Nausea (Early (Sartre's first novel, before Being and Nothingness)) Notes from Underground (Mid (the transition into the great late period)) The Fall (Late (Camus's last completed novel; the Nobel followed in 1957)) Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (Mature (the most comprehensive single-text statement of the system)) Scivias (Early (the first of her three major visionary works)) Philosophical Fragments (Mid (the same productive 1844 as Concept of Anxiety)) Practice in Christianity (Late (the last major pseudonymous work; preceding the attack on the Danish state church)) Repetition (Early-mid (the same explosive 1843 as Either/Or and Fear and Trembling)) Existence and Existents (Early (the first major book, before Time and the Other)) Liber Vitae Meritorum (Mid (the middle volume of the visionary trilogy)) The Imaginary (Early (preceding Being and Nothingness)) Confessions of a Mask (Early (the breakthrough novel that established Mishima's literary reputation)) Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (Early (the first of Douglass's three autobiographies)) The Freedom of a Christian (Early (1520 is Luther's most productive year of foundational treatises)) Four Quartets (Late (Eliot's mature Anglo-Catholic period)) Vita Nuova (Early (Dante's first major work)) Why Not the Best? (Mid (pre-presidential)) The Sorrows of Young Werther (Early (the 25-year-old Goethe's breakthrough work)) Six Crises (Mid (pre-presidential, post-1960 defeat)) Vom Abgeschiedenheit (On Detachment) / Counsels on Discernment (Early) The Hidden Words (Early) Aké: The Years of Childhood (Mid) The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (Mid) Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Late (the major autobiographical work)) Runaway Horses (Late) An American Life (Late) My Life (Late) Promises to Keep (Mid) Trump: The Art of the Deal (Early) No Man Is an Island (Mid) Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (Late) Letters to Olga (Mid (composed during Havel's 1979-83 imprisonment)) The Cancer Journals (Mid) Long Commentary on De Anima (Late) Foundations of the Science of Knowledge (Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre) (Early) On Nature (Peri Physeos) (Early) Opus Tripartitum (Late (Eckhart's most ambitious Latin project, undertaken in the years before the 1326 trial)) Reden der Unterweisung (Early (Eckhart's first major vernacular work, written before the trials of his last decade)) Vom Edlen Menschen (Mature (probably from the Strasbourg years before the trial)) Seven Valleys and Four Valleys (Early (composed before the 1863 proclamation)) Short Treatise on God (Early (Spinoza's first systematic presentation of his metaphysics, predating the Ethics)) Reveries of the Solitary Walker (Last (composed in Rousseau's final two years, after he had retreated from public life)) Essays: First Series (Mature) Soliloquies (Early) The Inward Journey (Late-mature) Slavery and Freedom (Late-mature) The Meaning of the Creative Act (Early-mature) The Threefold Cord: Mind, Body, and World (Late) My Early Life (Mid) Coal (Mid) Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (Late) Song of Solomon (Mid) This Is My Story (Mid) Autobiography (Late) Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion (Early) Dīvān-i Shams-i Tabrīzī (Mature) A Confession (Mid) What I Believe (Mid) The Death of Ivan Ilyich (Late) Resurrection (Late) Freedom in Exile (Mid) My Land and My People (Early) The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (Early) Ash-Wednesday (Mid) Just As I Am (Late) How to Be Born Again (Mid) The Journey: How to Live by Faith in an Uncertain World (Late) On Cheerfulness (Mature) Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (Late) The Synthesis of Yoga (Mature) Asrar-i Khudi (Secrets of the Self) (Mid) Sun and Steel (Late) The Decay of the Angel (Late) Jaap Sahib (Mature) Akal Ustat (Mature) Vom Abgeschiedenheit (On Detachment) (Mature) Dreams from My Father (Early) Conversations with Myself (Late) The Conquest of Happiness (Mid) Ecce Homo (Late) Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Late) Life's Philosophy: Reason and Feeling in a Deeper World (Late) From East to West (Late) Tablet of Ahmad (Mature) Where's the Rest of Me? (Early) In the Arena: A Memoir of Victory, Defeat, and Renewal (Late) Looking Forward (Mid) Promise Me, Dad (Late) Trump: The Art of the Comeback (Mid) De Apice Theoriae (Late) The Voice of the Silence (Late) Wandering (Panghuang) (Mid) Wild Grass (Yecao) (Mid) With Head and Heart (Late) The Sign of Jonas (Mid) The Asian Journal (Late (final)) To the Castle and Back (Late) Quaestiones in Tertium De Anima (Early-to-middle) De Anima Intellectiva (Middle (post-Aquinas-attack)) De Aeternitate Mundi (Middle) Quaestiones super Librum de Causis (Late) On Vision and Colors (Early) On the Will in Nature (Middle) The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics (Late) West-östlicher Divan (Late) Conversations with Eckermann (Late) Bhagavad Gītā Bhāṣya (Career-defining) Upadeśasāhasrī (Mature) Journal (Career-spanning)

Where this stance leads ⓘ

Schools the coordinates don't place

These schools don't satisfy any stance's coordinate pattern strongly enough to be assigned — either because they decline to commit on the question (Confucianism is famously silent on what comes after; Pyrrhonian and pragmatist traditions suspend judgment), or because their attribute signature crosses categories in a way the five buckets don't capture.