| Summary: | According to contractualism, very roughly, an action x of type X is wrong, at least in one unified and distinct way, iff and because any principle permitting actions of type X could be reasonably rejected. According to what I will call the “Thesis,” contractualism gives an account of relational morality, specifying when A owes it to some B not to x. This paper articulates how exactly contractualism gives an account of relational morality. This articulation in turn has several notable implications. Among these implications are that contractualism generates moral requirements that are owed to no one and that, because of this, contractualism may have a harder time giving an account of relational morality than might otherwise have been thought. The overarching point is that, while it might seem a matter of definition that contractualism is an account of what we owe to each other, there is a real question whether it can be.
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