Obligation by religation. A complementary reading of Adela Cortina's cordial ethics and Xavier Zubiri's analysis of social reality

In her Ethics of Cordial Reason, Adela Cortina proposes a “cordial bond” as the foundation of moral obligation: a bond between people, deeply felt and intuitively known, which leads to cordial recognition and demands active respect for human dignity. It is, therefore, a bond that obliges. However, Cortina does not develop an explanation of the nature of this bond; * Catholic University of Valencia “San Vicente Mártir”, Valencia. E-mail: bosco.corrales@ucv.es WHO • No 11 (2020): 7-25 7 BOSCO CORRALES points this out, briefly describes it and goes on to explain its moral implications. In this article I show an interesting connection between Cortina's "cordial bond" and Xavier Zubiri's analysis of "religation." According to Zubiri, there is a bond that "re-binds" us to reality and to each other. In this sense, the ideas of these two philosophers complement each other. On the one hand, Zubiri's analysis contributes to presenting a more solid and in-depth explanation of the bond (ligation) between people and, on the other hand, Cortina's cordial ethics extracts some of the moral implications (ob-ligations) of this bond.