Abstract

The paper is a critical analysis of minimalistic interpretations of the notion of moral obligation. The main grounds and arguments for this interpretation are the liberal understanding of justice and priority of negative rights and obligations over positive ones. To move to a more expansive morality we need to change the balance between negative and positive obligations by reconsidering the status of general and positive obligations. However, raising the status of positive obligations immediately leads to the problem of “moral overburden”. One possible way to overcoming moral minimalism could be based on treating positive obligations as a correlate of a set of rights that cannot be ignored. An important qualification is that the recognition of the right to a resource does not automatically mean placing an obligation on all persons satisfying some eligibility criteria. Instead, it could lead to a moral division of labor when different people take on the responsibility to meet positive moral obligations to those with a legitimate “natural right”. An additional consequence is that this approach helps to cope with the “moral overburden” of a moral agent.