Sunbathing in the park, normally the most innocent of pleasures, is causing outrage. The police are involved; the parks may be shut.

Lockdown is never easy, but when the weather is good, the urge to be outside, to feel the sun on your face, to lie on the grass, under a tree, is almost irresistible. To close your eyes and pretend just for a little while that life is normal. How can this be wrong?

Extreme libertarians think it is not. They say that freedom is so important that losing it is worse than death (other people’s deaths, at any rate). Most of us don’t agree. We accept the need for social distancing. But even so, the lockdown rules don’t require us to stay in all the time. There are exceptions. Why not just one more, just for me, my family, our suntan cream and picnic basket? If my local park is empty, my family and I can enjoy our picnic in the open air. We refresh ourselves and don’t harm anyone else – they chose to stay at home anyway. What could possibly be wrong with that?

Moral and political philosophers have long struggled with the conflict between individual choice and the common good, between general rules and exceptions, and have come to very different conclusions about the right answer.

It is plainly rational, game theorists say, to make some people better off (me and my family) and no one worse off (everyone else). Some moral philosophers have thought it morally right too. According to utilitarians, rules are made to be broken, when you make people happier by breaking them. Our fundamental moral duty, John Stuart Mill said, is to produce the greatest happiness of the greatest number. In the time of coronavirus, that means staying away from other people.

But if you can do that while making yourself happier – by sunbathing or picnicking, because everyone else has obeyed the lockdown – it is not just permitted but actually morally right to go for it. Of course, seeing my family reclining outdoors may send onlookers into a righteous fury, reducing the total happiness (though righteous fury can be pretty enjoyable too). Also we may inspire others to break the rules themselves, and if everyone thinks this way, the park will be full. That is dangerous for us all and it would be better to stay at home. But all this means is that I ought to be discreet. If I am, no harm, no wrong.

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Can that really be true? Immanuel Kant thought the fundamental moral question was a different one: what if everyone did that? Kant thought it was right to act only in ways that could be a universal law. We know that if everyone picnicked in the park, no one could do so safely. When I do it anyway, I am acting in a way that could not be for everyone. I am relying on everyone else abiding by the rules, exploiting their conformity to benefit myself. I am treating myself as an exception, a special case. This is not a way of treating other people with respect. This is not fair.

If we accept that morality is not only a matter of harm and benefit, but also respect and fairness, we can see what is wrong with picnicking in the park at the present time. But once we start to think in these terms, we need to look at a much broader picture. As political philosophers such as Karl Marx emphasise, our individual decisions are made against a social background that we have not chosen. Lockdown is a very different experience for different people, depending on their personality, their family circumstances and their living conditions. It is easier to stay at home in a large, roomy house with a pleasant garden than in a cramped high-rise flat with no outdoor space.

Lockdown reinforces existing social inequalities. It is even less excusable for the more fortunate to break the rules. Though we should all keep to the guidelines, it doesn’t follow that we should heap blame on those who don’t, not knowing what staying at home is like for them, not knowing their reasons for being out. Of course they should comply, but be kind; most people are doing their best.

It is a mark of the crisis we are in that simply sunbathing in the park raises the deepest questions about what truly matters in our lives: the happiness of all, even if I rely on others obeying the rules, as utilitarians would say. Or respect and fairness, as Kant would reply. The role of individual responsibility within a social context, as Marx would insist.

Finally, we can draw on another value very important to Marx (and Rousseau and Hegel too): the value of solidarity. There are huge disparities between the burdens a few are being asked to bear for the sake of the many. Doctors, nurses and other key workers constantly risk their lives to look after the sick and to keep essential services running. For the rest of us, there is very little that we can do to make a difference in this global crisis. It is easy to feel helpless and overwhelmed. But in fact, sitting at home, we can stand in solidarity with those who are doing more. We are doing our part, and treating fairly everyone else who is doing the same. It is the most, and the least, we can do.

• Alison Hills is a fellow and tutor in philosophy at St John’s College, University of Oxford





