ABSTRACT
Conflicting obligations and moral dilemmas are common experiences of everyday life, and many people manage them most of the time by muddling through, because they are not burdened by the philosopher's urge for consistency. The problem of limited altruism is familiar to many moral philosophers in terms of the distinction between agent-neutral and agent-relative duties. Onora O'Neill has argued that the numerous disagreements between cosmopolitans and communitarians are not best seen as pitting universalism against particularism in ethics. If Miller's account of human nature provides weaker support for nationalism than he thinks it does, it undermines universalism more than he thinks it does. For his defence of nationality rests on a Human meta-ethic of natural sentiments and limited altruism. Miller criticized the universalist argument for nationality from the ethical division of labour. There is a strong universalist case for ethical particularism.
