“Mind Your Own Business!” Relationships and Standing to Give Reasons

Abstract The rebuke “mind your own business!” often serves to deflect what would otherwise be an acceptable intervention. It charges that the addressee lacks standing to intercede as they have. Theorists have argued that blame, which can function as a form of influence via the provision of (moral) reasons, is inappropriate if the matter is not the blamer's business. Others have argued that even addressing reasons in the form of advice‐giving, requesting, and the like, is also subject to the so‐called business condition. On this view, to address certain kinds of reasons one must have a stake in the matter or stand in the right kind of relationship to the addressee. However, what constitutes such a stake and how relationships make it one's business to intercede in various ways, is less than clear. In this paper I offer a novel articulation of the business condition that illuminates how interpersonal relationships both ground a stake in influencing others and affect the appropriateness of influencing them in certain ways.