In the previous chapter I discussed an individual's prospective responsibility for and to another individual, grounded in the relevant formal role (e.g. doctor, parent) that defined their relationship. In this chapter I want to examine the responsibility one might have for a stranger. By “stranger” I mean someone to whom I have no formal duties, other than the general liberal duty to refrain from harming or hindering him without justification. Now, of course, when a patient visits a GP in her surgery for the first time, he is a stranger to her. But the fact that the GP is on duty, and has advertised her presence during her consultation hours in a publicly accessible building, gives people the right to visit her with questions about their health. In so far as she has offered her services like this, then I am saying that the stranger becomes a patient and enters a relationship with the GP upon entering the building. He may of course be turned away, but he first has to be heard as a patient.

So the stranger is literally the person I bump into on the street, such that even if I occupy a role elsewhere in my life, I do not bring the role to that encounter, and if I do have any responsibility for that stranger, then it will not be in virtue of that role.