ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the challenge of thinking of obligation as distinct and independent of the liberal, modern articulation of individual capacity and entitlement: as 'primary obligation' and not simply the opposite side of another person's rights. It considers the field of English equity as a possible, albeit mediated, expression of primary obligation. The chapter also considers theoretical approaches, notably within Heideggerian and post-Heideggerian thinking, which see conscience as an important expression of our relationship with our Being and the responsibilities we therefore assume therein. Equity is at essence a mature jurisprudence of obligation in which a persistent appeal to conscience has in various ways worked to resist the sanctity of formal rights and individual entitlement in the fields of property and contract. The idea that such a mode of normativity displays a distinctly ontological structure has already been observed frequently in existing literature.
