/lit/ - Literature

A respected barrister on the cusp of retiring is shot dead in the middle of a trial - a chilling daylight murder that strikes at the heart of the justice system.

The barrister's restless ghost, infuriated at his life cut short just before he got to enjoy the fruits of a life of hard work, pleads with death to be allowed to remain just long enough to ensure his killer receives justice. Death agrees, and the barrister persists as a spirit and is introduced to the world of dark and monstrous creatures that live in the shadows of modern society.

As a ghost he can't interact with the physical world anymore, so he teams up with an antisocial young werewolf to try and find his killer. He uncovers an enormous conspiracy and criminal syndicate that straddles the mundane and fantastical worlds both. Committed to legalism, he works to bring it all into the light and see that justice be done. Meanwhile, he struggles with regret for a life spent working instead of living as he watches his estranged family grieve him.

It's part urban fantasy in the vein of Aaronovitch, part buddy-cop between an upper class old lawyer and a young gang member werewolf, and part treatise/critical analysis of the legal system.

It has a happy ending, and in the end the barrister is given the choice to move on or remain as a revenant/lich. He chooses to remain, and the novel turns into a wildly successful series of schlocky paperbacks for immature adults as he solves crimes and engages in institution-building.

>>10325586
An obligation is something that you have to do. As >>10325589 ably points out a literal obligation doesn't exist because I don't have to do anything. There are consequences if I don't - some impractically severe - but I can always choose to bear them.

So I use the word in the way that it is used colloquially - i.e. that a legal obligation is something that I have to do for legal reasons, and that I have to do it because the consequences are severe if I don't. I also accept that an agreement by which I enter into a relationship making a promise to do some task also confers an expectation bordering on an obligation, so obligations can be acquired via promise even if the consequences for not doing them are mild.

Seeing as the question is being asked in a moral context (and it has to be, otherwise it is asking if we have a literal obligation which I have shown do not exist) then we are asking if I have a moral obligation. This means 'do I have to save the child because the moral consequences for not doing so are too much to bear'. The answer is no. The moral consequences for not saving the child are fucking nothing. You cannot observe a single consequence. It's the old thought experiment - if a child drowns in a pond and nobody but me knows, what are the consequences? There are none other than perhaps my guilt, but my guilt is merely a feeling.

The consequences that you will propose - that people will be disgusted with me and refuse to associate with me and castigate me and so forth - are certainly consequences, but they are social and not moral. They are born from people /feeling/ like there was a moral obligation. Such feelings are mistaken, because as I have shown no such obligation exists through consequence.

But what about obligation through promise? This is social contract theory. Even if a social contract does exist it is just that - a social contract. My obligation in respect to it would be a social obligation. The only way it would become a moral obligation would be to show that morality demands I honour my obligations. And then we're back to the fact that nobody so far has observed any such moral obligation in respect to honouring my obligations.