ABSTRACT
This chapter explores whether people's obligations to needy strangers depend on their physical distance from them. It makes seven major points. If people are to use hypothetical cases to help answer the question, they must use properly equalized cases and not deduce negative results from just one negative case. People must distinguish the possible moral importance of proximity. Before considering whether people can justify any intuitions about proximity, they must see whether these are indeed intuitions about proximity or rather about salience. People should distinguish the role of proximity in relation to aid owed in accidents from aid for basic justice. All previous discussions of this proximity issue have misconceived the problem. People may find it helpful to contrast negative rights which are not affected by proximity with positive aid. A duty to take care of what is near and not what is far does not necessarily imply that people have a duty to take care of what is near.
