Siblinghood

ABSTRACT Should siblings be morally obligated to each other in a special way? Surprisingly enough, this question has hardly been discussed by philosophers. There has been some writing on fraternity as a civic virtue, but not on fraternity in its original sense: of our proper relationship towards our actual brothers and sisters, who usually grow up with us in the same household. In this article I make a start at filling this lacuna. I claim that siblinghood is not only a sub‐category of familial relationships. Our siblings are the people with whom we develop. We shape our identities vis‐à‐vis theirs. With them and through them we form our character traits. This is why we have special obligations towards them qua siblings. I claim that siblings serve as a ‘second memory’ to us, and on certain occasions, even a first memory. Using some of the philosophical theories that have dealt with friendship, I explain how a sibling, even more than a friend, might be connected to the idea of an Aristotelian ‘second self’.