Accountability and the impartial other............

 Those principles have been taken as defining the field of "natural law," for the reason that their validity depends only on the idea of negotiation itself and not on the circumstances of the one who embarks on it.

      Something like this was surely at the back of Adam Smith's mind when, in his The Theory of Moral Sentiments, he argued for the "impartial spectator" as the true judge of our moral duties.  When asking myself what should I do, I entertain the thought of what another would think of my action when observing it with a disinterested eye.  If, as I suggest, morality is rooted in the practice of accountability between self-conscious agents, this is exactly what we should expect.  The impartial other sets the standard that we all must meet.

-Roger Scruton, On Human Nature