Lawrence C. Becker

Props for being one of the few in-depth, monographic-length treatments of reciprocity. That said, this is often a bewildering text. His philosophic discussion is frequently interrupted by fictional snippets whose relationship to the point at hand is difficult (indeed, impossible for me at least) to discern). They're well written, mind you, but I'm not sure why they are included.

The nub of Becker's position is this: "The concept of reciprocity that I shall defend may be summarized in the following maxims: that we should return good for good, in proportion to what we receive; that we should resist evil, but not do evil in return; that we should make reparation for the harm we do; and that we should be disposed to do those things as a matter of moral obligation. Reciprocity is a 'deontic' virtue." He actually gets quite a bit of mileage from these simple points. My primary objection to his project is his characterization of reciprocity as a fundamental virtue, unable to be decomposed into anything more fundamental. I suspect that, upon reflection, reciprocity is but a special case of fairness. He would reverse that priority, although he spends only a few sentences in the analysis.… (mehr)