Quinn White (Harvard University): 'Paying it Forward'
Imagine a graduate receives extraordinarily generous advising far beyond what she was due; now a professor, she faces a distinctive normative pressure to "pay it forward". I argue that this pressure bears many marks of directed duties (excluding certain kinds of consideration not to pay it forward, failure warrants guilt, etc.); however, possible recipients of paying it forward cannot *demand* of us that we pay it forward—nor can anyone else. Typical deontic relations see the normativity involved as flowing two directions: I owe you iff you can demand of me; I am warranted in feeling guilt towards you iff you are in resenting me. But (I argue) cases of paying it forward run in one direction only: I (seem to) owe what you cannot demand; I would be warranted in feeling guilt though your resentment would be inapt. I argue against non-revisionary accounts to capture this phenomenon and defend a novel picture that turns on two ideas. First, that the bipolar relationships at play in cases of paying it forward are essentially multi-generational: part of what it is to be an advisee looks forward to the possibility of one day being a teacher in turn; and so what it is to do well as a teacher turns in part on standards established by what came before. Second, that the teacher is not quite obliged to pay it forward (hence the lack of demandability); instead, she has reason to change her relationships with her students into one in which she is so obliged. Put another way, prior generations set an ideal for present generations' relationships without yet bringing those standards fully to bear. I argue this "proleptic duty," though not yet in place, exerts a kind of anticipatory force on the normative landscape that captures the phenomenon of paying it forward.
