ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates the usefulness of the distinction between impersonal role concepts and personal concepts by applying it to some problems of social morality. It examines the problem of blending the personal and the impersonal elements in the relationship which exists between a social worker and his client. Moral behaviour from the point of view of social ethics can be seen as a matter of persons acting in roles in this sense. In personal relationships people react in different ways according to temperament and to situation. For instance, in situations of danger normal people react with some sort of fear-response, a response which obviously will vary a great deal according to the nature of the danger and the people concerned. ‘Role’ is sometimes used in a very wide sense as a class concept. In other words, it is used simply as a way of labelling a group of individuals in virtue of certain properties they have in common.
