Foreseeability as Re-Cognition

Abstract

In these pages, I seek to advance two arguments, a negative and a positive. The negative one is that leading accounts of foreseeability in duty-of-care-analysis fail to make sense of the requirement in question. And affirmatively, I shall argue that the foreseeability requirement reflects a concern for the distinctively social form of interaction between risk-creator and risk-taker, namely, that the former could form a respectful interaction with the latter. This reconstruction of the foreseeability requirement may express the view that its moral center may be a thin form of recognition between members of a liberal society.

Keywords: negligence, duty of care, foreseeability