ABSTRACT
Rush Rhees distrust the phrase responsibility to society because it suggests that society expects certain things of us. It goes together sometimes with a reference to the good of society. He does not know how old the term society in this sense is. He believes the term civilization was never used before the seventeenth century. To say that everyone has a responsibility to society may be taken to mean that everyone ought to show a regard for the interests of society. In the field of international politics, a statesman is said to be looking after the interests of his country. This may have given rise to the conception of what is in the national interest; although he thinks this is a later notion, and it is generally more vague and more slippery. Perhaps the idea of the interests of society is a further derivative still. It is much harder to find any definite or legitimate use for it.
