Section I of Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals is meant to lead us from our everyday conception of morality to the supreme principle of all moral action, officially christened the ‘categorical imperative’ some twenty Academy pages further into the treatise. It is quite striking that in this first section Kant dispenses with the notorious technical language that pervades not just other parts of the Groundwork but also most of the remaining philosophical writings of the critical period. The (...) mere fact that Groundwork I is comparatively accessible does not, of course, make it straightforward or uncontroversial. Kant's readers are faced with, amongst other things, four unconvincing paragraphs on the natural purpose of practical reason (G IV 394–6), a crucial change of topic from good volition to acting from duty (G IV 397), an unstated ‘first proposition’ about moral value that has baffled generations of interpreters (presumably G IV 397–9), and a contentious shift from an allegedly unproblematic principle of practical universalizability to a substantive moral command (G IV 402). (shrink)

Friends as well as foes of Kant have long been uneasy over his emphasis on duty, but lately the view that there is something morally repugnant about acting from duty seems to be gaining in popularity. More and more philosophers indicate their readiness to jettison duty and the moral 'ought' and to conceive of the perfectly moral person as someone who has all the right desires and acts accordingly without any notion that (s)he ought to (...) act in this way. Elsewhere' I have argued that such a picture of the perfectly moral person is flawed. In this paper I examine the claim that acting from duty is morally repugnant. There is some truth to this charge, but, I argue, the repugnance attaches not to acting from duty as such, but only to certain ways of acting from duty. In isolating the objectionable elements of acting from duty, I hope not only to vindicate the skeletal concept but also to offer illumination on the question of just how we should understand morally good conduct. (shrink)

Philosophers who, in the light of these attacks, have attempted to vindicate the motive of duty have done so in a half-hearted way, by stressing the motive of duty’s function as a secondary or limiting motivation, or by denying “that acting from duty primarily concerns isolated actions.” I will defend duty as a primary motive with respect to isolated actions. Critics of acting from duty and philosophers who have attempted to respond (...) to them have done little work spelling out exactly what it is for an agent to act from duty. To act explicitly on moral principle is to act from a type of concern for persons that is no less morally good than concern expressed in direct emotional responses. Concern mediated by moral principles is, in certain ways, morally superior to that expressed in direct emotional responses, even when the object of concern is an intimate such as a friend or loved one. (shrink)

There is a long tradition in moral philosophy which maintains that a necessary condition for moral goodness is that one act from a sense of duty. Kant is perhaps the best known and most discussed representative of this view, but one finds others prior to Kant, such as Butler and Price, and Kant's contemporaries, such as Reid, expressing similar ideas. Price, for example writes, ". . . what I have chiefly insisted on, is, that we characterize as virtuous (...) no actions flowing merely from instinctive desires, or from any principle except a regard to virtue itself.'' In this paper, I shall defend a version of this thesis. (shrink)

Several interpreters argue that Kant believes we have a duty to act “from duty.” If there is such a duty, however, then Kant's moral theory faces a serious problem, namely that of an allegedly vicious infinite regress of duties. No serious attempt has been made to determine how Kant might respond to this problem and insufficient work has been done to determine whether he even believes we have a duty to act from duty. (...) In this paper I argue that not only does Kant not hold that there is a duty to act from duty, but he also explicitly rejects the idea. (shrink)

A central claim in Kantian ethics is that an agent is properly morally motivated just in case she acts from duty alone. Bernard Williams, Michael Stocker, and Justin Oakley claim that certain emotionally infused actions, such as lending a compassionate helping hand, can only be done from compassion and not from duty. I argue that these critics have overlooked a distinction between an action's manner, how an action is done, and its motive, the agent's reason (...) for acting. Through a range of examples I demonstrate how an emotion can determine an action's manner without also serving as the motive. Thus, it is possible for an agent to act compassionately from duty alone. This distinction between the manner and the motive of an action not only restores a central claim in Kantian ethics but it also allows for an expanded role of emotions in moral action. (shrink)

The first section of the Groundwork begins “It is impossible to imagine anything at all in the world, or even beyond it, that can be called good without qualification— except a good will.”1 Kant’s explanation and defense of this claim is followed by an explanation and defense of another related claim, that only actions performed out of duty have moral worth. He explains that actions performed out of duty are those done from respect for the moral law, (...) and then culminates the first section with a formulation of that law, “I ought never to act except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law”. Kant dubs this fundamental principle of morality “the Categorical Imperative”. (shrink)

ABSTRACTA much debated passage in the Metaphysics of Morals often leads commentators to believe that it is not possible to act from juridical duty. On the one hand, Kant says that all lawgiving inc...

Richard Henson attempts to take the sting out of this view of Kant on moral worth by arguing (i) that attending to the phenomenon of the overdetermination of actions leads one to see that Kant might have had two distinct views of moral worth, only one of which requires the absence of cooperating inclinations, and (ii) that when Kant insists that there is moral worth only when an action is done from the motive of duty alone, he need (...) not also hold that such a state of affairs is morally better, all things considered, than one where supporting inclination is present. Henson's proposals seem to me both serious and plausible. I do not think that either of his models, in the end, can take on the role Kant assigns to moral worth in the argument of the Groundwork. But seeing the ways Henson's account diverges from Kant's makes clearer what Kant intended in his discussion of those actions he credits with moral worth. [...] An action has moral worth if it is required by duty and has as its primary motive the motive of duty. The motive of duty need not reflect the only interest the agent has in the action (or its effect); it must, however, be the interest that determines the agent's acting as he did. (shrink)

Aristotle believes that an agent lacks virtue unless she enjoys the performance of virtuous actions, while Kant claims that the person who does her duty despite contrary inclinations exhibits a moral worth that the person who acts from inclination lacks. Despite these differences, this chapter argues that Aristotle and Kant share a distinctive view of the object of human choice and locus of moral value: that what we choose, and what has moral value, are not mere acts, but (...) actions: acts done for the sake of ends. Morally good actions embody a kind of intrinsic value that inspires us to do them from duty (in Kant) or for the sake of the noble (in Aristotle). The chapter traces the difference in their attitudes about doing one's duty with pleasure to a difference in their attitudes towards pleasure itself: Aristotle sees it as a perception of the good, while Kant thinks of it as mere feeling. (shrink)

This paper defends a position held by W, D, Ross that it is no part of one’s duty to have a certain motive since one cannot by choice have it here and now.

In this essay I rethink a view that I developed in my Kantian Ethics Almost Without Apology , concerning how ethical theory should handle the phenomena that are standardly classified as supererogatory acts. The view I elaborated rejects the standard contemporary picture, according to which ethics needs to draw a line separating duty from what is "beyond duty"--the supererogatory. On the Kantian picture, beneficent acts are not beyond duty, for we are required to help others, but (...) we are not required to help whenever possible, and so it is not the case that each individual beneficent act is required by duty. Helping is required; helping here and now is not. After contrasting this view with the standard picture and explaining that much of what contemporary philosophers wanted to capture with the notion of the supererogatory can be captured with the Kantian notion of imperfect duties together with attention to the agent's character, I raise some problems for my view and try to address them. First, what about heroic actions that are not in character? Don't we need the notion of supererogatory acts to recognize their greatness? Second, isn't virtue doing all the conceptual work? Is there even any need to appeal to the notion of imperfect duties? Third, although I claimed in my book that it is an advantage of the Kantian view that moral excellence comes in many varieties, arguably it is too pluralistic. In dem Beitrag überdenke ich eine Auffassung, die ich in meinem Buch Kantian Ethics Almost Without Apology entwickelt habe. Sie betrifft die Frage, wie ethische Theorien das Phänomen behandeln sollen, das üblicherweise als "Supererogation" bezeichnet wird. Die von mir ausgearbeitete Auffassung verwirft das heute gängige Bild, nach dem Ethik abgrenzen muß zwischen dem, was Pflicht ist, und dem, was "jenseits der Pflicht" steht -- dem Supererogatorischen. Nach Kants Vorstellung sind wohltätige Handlungen nicht jenseits der Pflicht, da wir verpflichtet sind, anderen zu helfen. Wir müssen jedoch nicht in jeder möglichen Situation helfen, und daher ist es nicht der Fall, daß jede einzelne wohltätige Handlung Pflicht ist. Hilfe zu leisten , ist geboten; Hilfe hier und jetzt zu leisten, nicht. In einer Gegenüberstellung dieser Auffassung mit der gängigen Vorstellung zeige ich, daß vieles von dem, was moderne Philosophen mit dem Begriff des Supererogatorischen erklären wollen, auch mit Kants Begriff der unvollkommenen Pflichten, verbunden mit einem Blick auf den Charakter des Handelnden, erklärt werden kann. Danach werfe ich einige Probleme auf, die sich meiner Auffassung stellen, und versuche, Antworten zu geben. Erstens: Wie steht es mit heldenhaften Handlungen, die nicht dem Charakter des Handelnden entsprechen? Brauchen wir nicht den Begriff des supererogatorischen Handelns, um ihre Größe zu erkennen? Zweitens: Genügt nicht der Begriff der Tugend? Besteht irgendeine Notwendigkeit, auf den Begriff der unvollkommenen Pflicht zurückzugreifen? Drittens: Obwohl ich in meinem Buch behaupte, es sei ein Vorteil der Kantischen Sicht, daß moralische Vortrefflichkeit viele Gesichter hat, ist Kants Auffassung doch vielleicht zu pluralistisch. (shrink)

This book develops an original version of act-consequentialism. It argues that act-consequentialists should adopt a subjective criterion of rightness. The book develops new arguments which strongly suggest that, according to the best version of act-consequentialism, the rightness of actions depends on expected rather than actual value. Its findings go beyond the debate about consequentialism and touch on important debates in normative ethics and metaethics. The distinction between criterion of rightness and decision procedures addresses how, why, and in which sense moral (...) theories must be implemented by ordinary persons. The discussion of the rationales of "ought" implies "can" leads to the discovery of a hitherto overlooked moral principle, "ought" implies "evidence", which can be used to show that most prominent moral theories are false. Finally, in the context of discussing cases that are supposed to reveal intuitions that favour either objective or subjective consequentialism, the book argues that which cases are relevant for the discussion of objectivism and subjectivism depends on the type of moral theory we are concerned with (consequentialism, Kantianism, virtue ethics, etc.). From Value to Rightness will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in normative ethics and metaethics. (shrink)

Individuals sometimes pass their duties on to collectives, which is one way in which collectives can come to have duties. The collective discharges its duties by acting through its members, which involves distributing duties back out to individuals. Individuals put duties in and get (transformed) duties out. In this paper we consider whether (and if so, to what extent) this general account can make sense of states' duties. Do some of the duties we typically take states to have come (...) from individuals having passed on certain individual duties? There are complications: states can discharge their duties by contracting fulfilment out to non-members; states seem able to dissolve the duties of non-members; and some of states' duties are not derived in this way. We demonstrate that these complicate, but do not undermine, the general account and its application to states. And the application has an interesting upshot: by asking which individuals robustly participate in this process of duty transfer-and-transformation with a given state, we can begin to get a grip on who counts as a member of that state. (shrink)

One of the key ethical debates in Russian religious thought, initiated by Leo Tolstoy, concerned the question of nonresistance to evil by force. The purpose of this article is to assess the influence of Kant’s ethics and philosophy of religion on the course of this debate and to determine the place and significance of the arguments and considerations expressed on this issue by Semyon Frank in the early and late periods (1908 and 1940s) of his work. To this end I (...) reconstruct the general course of the debate, notably the positions and arguments of Leo Tolstoy, Vladimir Solovyov, Ivan Ilyin and Nikolai Berdyaev. Beginning with Tolstoy, Russ­ian thinkers introduced the original ethical content of the idea of nonresistance derived from the Gospel into the ethics of duty borrowed from Kant. The Tolstoy version of this idea was challenged mainly from two directions: from the Kantian grounding of the legitimacy of coercion and attempts to bring in styles of moral thinking other than the ethic of duty. Ilyin’s apolo­gia for the use of force in the struggle against evil prompted Russian émigré thinkers to take a closer look at Tolstoy’s ethical concept and pay attention to its positive content. On this basis Berdyaev and especially Frank create their version of the Christ-centered ethic of salvation which, in the perspective of “protecting the world against evil” includes the ethic of duty and links it with the possibility of using force, always a wrongful act, but one justified “in a situation of extreme need”. (shrink)

It is commonly believed that the history of behavior that has contributed to the threat of climate change bears in a significant way on the obligations of current people. In particular, a number of philosophers have defended the Beneficiary Pays Principle, according to which those who have benefited from unjust emitting activity have a special obligation to bear costs of mitigation and adaptation. I claim that versions of the BPP that have been defended by others share a common problematic (...) feature. Specifically, they seem to limit the benefits that ground obligations under the principle to those that derive from unjust acts, and thereby implicitly deny that other ways in which individuals might benefit from injustice can ground similar duties. I argue that there is no plausible theoretical basis for this distinction. I conclude that we should take seriously a different type of principle that can be plausibly called a Beneficiary Pays Principle, according to which those who benefit from injustice, all things considered, are obligated to give up the unjust benefits that they enjoy. (shrink)

Many have argued that that it is morally wrong to benefit from an agent's culpable wronging of a third party. This thought has formed the basis of some arguments that agents can have duties to make up for wrongful acts by others that they could not have stopped, or that occurred before they were born. For example, it has been argued that those who benefited from slavery, colonialism and other shameful events in their nation's history should surrender those (...) benefits, their equivalent value, or provide other forms of redress. Some have also argued that it is morally wrong to benefit from unjust situations caused by third parties even where there is no culpable element. These ideas have potential to be a principle of redress for harms that are caused by the working of very complex systems, such as the global climate system. Geoengineering, the intentional manipulation of the global climate, is a new development in climate science and policy — and one which raises many normative challenges. This article focuses on one specific challenge. The global climate is very complex and there is a real possibility that the best available science will not be able to account for all the consequences of deploying a geoengineering technique. Therefore, any governance regime that allows deployment will have to consider how to organise compensation or redress for any adverse impacts that could not have been predicted at the time of deployment. This article proposes that, with some modification, the principle that agents should surrender benefits that have accrued to them from using geoengineering techniques, can be a good basis for such a scheme. (shrink)

The requirement that moral theories be usable for making decisions runs afoul of the fact that decision makers often lack sufficient information about their options to derive any accurate prescriptions from the standard theories. Many theorists attempt to solve this problem by adopting subjective moral theories—ones that ground obligations on the agent’s beliefs about the features of her options, rather than on the options’ actual features. I argue that subjective deontological theories suffer a fatal flaw, since they cannot appropriately (...) require agents to gather information before acting. (shrink)

Recent discussions on corporate citizenship highlight the new political role of corporations in society by arguing that corporations increasingly act as quasi-governmental actors and take on what hitherto had originally been governmental tasks. By examining political and sociological citizenship theories, the authors show that such a corporate engagement can be explained by a changing conception of corporate citizens from corporate bourgeois to corporate citoyen. As an intermediate actor in society, the corporate citoyen assumes co-responsibilities for social and civic affairs (...) and actively collaborates with fellow citizens beyond governmental regulation. This change raises the question of how such corporate civic engagement can be aligned with public policy regulations and how corporate activities can be integrated into the democratic regime. To clarify the mode of CC contributions to society, the authors will apply the tenet of subsidiarity as a governing principle which allows for specifying corporations’ tasks as intermediate actors in society. By referring to the renewed European Union strategy for Corporate Social Responsibility, the authors show how such a subsidiary corporate-governmental task-sharing can be organized. (shrink)

In this chapter, I examine the grounds of the right of children to be free from extreme poverty, the content of this right, and who the duty-bearers are. In particular, I argue that the socioeconomic right of children to freedom from severe poverty: is grounded in the specific perfect moral duty of right to protect children from extreme poverty ; consists of the right to claim the omission of any act that restricts children’s freedom (...) class='Hi'>from extreme poverty ; as well as the right to claim the performing of acts that guarantee children’s freedom from extreme poverty ; and is based on a duty which is not of all others, but of specific others, e.g. the relatives or/and the friends of the child, the local authorities, states, and organizations. In addition, I respond to three possible objections against the proposed philosophical foundation. Within this context, I first point out the moral priority of duties over rights; second, I explain why the socioeconomic right of children to be free from extreme poverty is not a human right; and, third, I explain the reasons why Kant is not a moral constructivist. (shrink)

Genetic testing has familial implications. Counsellors find themselves in (moral) conflict between medical confidentiality (towards the patient) and a potential right or even duty to warn at-risk relatives. Legal regulations vary between countries. English literature about German law is scarce. We reviewed the literature of relevant legal cases, focussing on German law, according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines. This article aims to familiarise counsellors with their responsibilities, compare the situation between countries and point (...) out legally unresolved areas.According to the German Genetic Diagnostics Act (Gendiagnostikgesetz) in case of an ‘avoidable or treatable’ genetic disorder, geneticists ought to confine themselves to the obligated advice to the patient. Whether a breach of the duty of confidentiality can be justified in exceptional cases by ‘necessity as justification’ for actively informing relatives at risk remains legally unclear. In case of a ‘neither avoidable nor treatable’ genetic disease, geneticists should also refrain from actively informing relatives as the justifiable state of emergency does not permit to break the duty of confidentiality. (shrink)

This paper presents a real‐life case, taken from political history and related by Vaclav Havel, President of the Czech Republic. It tells of the way in which three times in that country’s history its leaders opted for a ‘more realistic’ strategy (i.e. giving way when faced with a serious problem: invasion or insurrection) rather than a ‘more ethical’ strategy (i.e. resisting, knowing the high cost in human lives that this would entail). The case enables the relationship between heroism (the (...) adoption of a ‘more ethical’ solution), management and leadership to be analysed. Particular emphasis is placed on the study of the morality of the ‘more ethical’ decision, on the evaluation of the obligation (or otherwise) of putting it into practice, and on the relationship between such ‘more ethical’ conduct and leadership in the firm. (shrink)

_Kant, Duty and Moral Worth _is a fascinating and original examination of Kant's account of moral worth. The complex debate at the heart of Kant's philosophy is over whether Kant said moral actions have worth only if they are carried out from duty, or whether actions carried out from mixed motives can be good. Philip Stratton-Lake offers a unique account of acting from duty, which utilizes the distinction between primary and secondary motives. He (...) maintains that the moral law should not be understood as a normative moral reason but as playing a transcendental role. Thus a Kantian account of moral worth is one where the virtuous agent may be responsive to concrete particular considerations, whilst preserving an essential role for universal moral principles. _Kant, Duty and Moral Worth _is a lucid examination of Kant's moral thought that will appeal to Kant scholars and anyone interested in moral theory. (shrink)

In the course of attacking the idea that the concept of the duty of care can be dispensed with and replaced by a view of negligence that deals only with fault and causation, critics have revived the notion that there are many duties of care. This article argues that the idea of many duties of care is unworkable, but that there is no need to revive such an idea to avoid falling into the view that the whole concept of (...) the duty of care can be discarded. It argues instead for a unified view of the duty of care as a single duty. It also argues for a new analysis of negligence, facilitated by the one-duty view, which does see fault as central to negligence but which, instead of discarding duty, sees arguments about duty as about whether the defendant should be permitted to act unreasonably. The article defends the one-duty view and the new analysis of negligence against the relational view of negligence and against charges that it is motivated by a desire for unity between English and French law, that it would be incompatible with the conventional economic analysis of tort law (in the course of which it suggests an economic analysis of the duty of care), and that, unlike the no-duty view or the many-duties view, it fails to articulate a coherent view of the relationship between freedom and community. (shrink)

While mitigation and adaptation will help to protect us from climate change, there are harms that are beyond our ability to adapt. Some of these harms, which may have been instigated from historical emissions, plausibly give rise to duties of compensation. This chapter discusses several principles that have been discussed about how to divide climate duties—the polluter pays principle, the beneficiary pays principle, the ability to pay principle, and a new one, the polluter pays, then receives principle. The (...) chapter introduces several challenges to these principles from the literature, before discussing which policies and institutions might be relevant to compensation, whether internationally (e.g. the Green Climate Fund) or intergenerationally (e.g. Broome and Foley’s World Climate Bank). It also describes some recent successful climate cases which require both the Dutch government and a private firm to act in accordance with climate targets to avoid potential rights-violations. Finally, it discusses one of the most important international concepts with respect to compensation: the Loss & Damage pillar of climate policy. (shrink)

While Baatz provides an interesting account of individual climate duties, his account does not give much guidance with regard to particular acts, such as taking a flight. While everyone in the debate agrees that institution-oriented duties are important, the relevant question concerns the relation these have with lifestyle-oriented duties. In this comment, it is argued that the relation between institutions and duties is insufficiently examined and that Baatz therefore cannot deal with the following questions. First, what about the conflict between (...) institution-oriented and lifestyle-oriented duties and what kind of actions do both types include? Second, Baatz includes the criterion ‘no moral weight’ in the answer to what can be reasonable demanded, but what will count as morally weighty? This comment will look at these questions by contrasting Baatz’ account with a more Rawlsian one. (shrink)

this paper advances a novel account of part of what justifies killing in war, grounded in the duties we owe to our loved ones to protect them from the severe harms with which war threatens them. It discusses the foundations of associative duties, then identifies the sorts of relationships, and the specific duties that they ground, which can be relevant to the ethics of war. It explains how those associa- tive duties can justify killing in theory—in particular how they (...) can justify overrid- ing the rights to life of some of those who must be killed to win a war. It then shows how these duties can be operationalised in practice: first, showing how soldiers who fight on behalf of their community can act on reasons that apply to the members of that community; second, showing that the argument from associative duties does not prove too much—in particular, that it does not license the intentional killing of noncombatants in war. (shrink)

This paper presents a real‐life case, taken from political history and related by Vaclav Havel, President of the Czech Republic. It tells of the way in which three times in that country’s history its leaders opted for a ‘more realistic’ strategy rather than a ‘more ethical’ strategy. The case enables the relationship between heroism, management and leadership to be analysed. Particular emphasis is placed on the study of the morality of the ‘more ethical’ decision, on the evaluation of the (...) obligation of putting it into practice, and on the relationship between such ‘more ethical’ conduct and leadership in the firm. (shrink)

Many follow Kant in thinking that morally worthy actions must be carried out solely from the motive of duty. This outlook faces two challenges: (1) The One Feeling Too Few problem (actions that issue from, say, compassion also seem to have moral worth), and (2) The One Thought Too Many problem (some actions have moral worth precisely because they’re not motivated by duty). These challenges haven’t led Kantians to dispense with the motive of duty. Instead, (...) they have proposed to push it into the background. We should not (the thought goes) construe duty as a primary motive, a consideration that motivates the agent to act. Duty is best thought of as a secondary motive, a background concern that constrains her choice. Since it is consistent with acting from duty at the secondary level that one is motivated at the primary level by compassion, this move is thought to overcome both challenges. In this paper, I argue that secondary motive views don’t live up to their stated ambitions. Such proposals either fail to make progress on issues with which primary motive views continue to grapple, or they render the motive of duty ill-suited to underwrite a plausible account of moral worth. (shrink)

What are our responsibilities in the face of injustice? How far should we go to fight it? Many would argue that as long as a state is nearly just, citizens have a moral duty to obey the law. Proponents of civil disobedience generally hold that, given this moral duty, a person needs a solid justification to break the law. But activists from Henry David Thoreau and Mohandas Gandhi to the Movement for Black Lives have long recognized that (...) there are times when, rather than having a duty to obey the law, we have a duty to disobey it. -/- Taking seriously the history of this activism, A Duty to Resist wrestles with the problem of political obligation in real world societies that harbor injustice. Candice Delmas argues that the duty of justice, the principle of fairness, the Samaritan duty, and political association impose responsibility to resist under conditions of injustice. We must expand political obligation to include a duty to resist unjust laws and social conditions even in legitimate states. -/- For Delmas, this duty to resist demands principled disobedience, and such disobedience need not always be civil. At times, covert, violent, evasive, or offensive acts of lawbreaking can be justified, even required. Delmas defends the viability and necessity of illegal assistance to undocumented migrants, leaks of classified information, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, sabotage, armed self-defense, guerrilla art, and other modes of resistance. There are limits: principle alone does not justify law breaking. But uncivil disobedience can sometimes be not only permissible but required in the effort to resist injustice. (shrink)

In this chapter, we turn our attention to the effects of the attention economy on our ability to act autonomously as a group. We begin by clarifying which sorts of groups we are concerned with, which are structured groups (groups sufficiently organized that it makes sense to attribute agency to the group itself). Drawing on recent work by Purves and Davis (2022), we describe the essential roles of trust (i.e., depending on groups to fulfill their commitments) and trustworthiness (i.e., the (...) property of a group that makes trusting them fitting) in autonomous group action, with particular emphasis on democratic institutions (which we view as group agents) and democratic legitimacy (which depends on trust and trustworthiness). We then explain how engagement maximization promotes polarization, which is detrimental to trust and trustworthiness and, in turn, democratic legitimacy and democratic institutions. We close by considering what groups might do to protect themselves from the threat posed to them by the attention economy. (shrink)

Starting from the observation that the deterioration of democratic communication is a political problem that requires individual and collective, private and public, actions, I first defend a baseline duty to avoid using expressions that conventionally show a disrespectful attitude toward targeted groups. Then, I develop a set of guidelines that can guide political theorists in distributing additional duties that respect the situated agency of different individuals. I propose two normative constraints (capacity-to-act and influence) that should influence how theorists (...) assign duties. Then, I present three criteria (pointless, antisocial, and lawfulness) to specify the content in a context-sensitive way. (shrink)

Abstract Aim: The COVID-19 infection is transmitted either by human-to-human contact, social-physical contact, and respiratory droplets or by touching items touched by the infected. This has triggered some conflicted behaviors such as stigma, violence, and opposite behavior applause. The aim of this study is to explore several newspaper articles about stigma, violence, or insensitive behavior against healthcare professionals and to analyze the reason for these behaviors during these COVID-19 pandemics. Method: The website of the Turkish Medical Association "Press Releases News" (...) and online newspaper articles have been scanned using keywords and have been classified and analyzed according to the content of articles between the periods of March 11 to April 28, 2020. This is a qualitative study with content analysis. No official ethical permission was obtained as the study was conducted through open access internet news sites. Result: 16 reports were selected from online reports that matched the keywords of the study. 13 of these reports included desensitization, violence, lack of precaution, stigmatization, and applause, and 3 reports included doctors’ statements. After being categorized, content analyses were conducted. Conclusion: This study revealed the necessity of a multi-faceted evaluation of the problems faced by healthcare professionals who are at the forefront of the COVID-19 outbreak. This study has a primary role in the detection, diagnosis, and treatment of the pandemic and reveals that doctors are trying to fulfill their duties in an ethical framework despite stigmatized behavior. Authorities should provide various supports to protect healthcare professionals before, during, and after the epidemic for the success of the COVID-19 outbreak struggle. (shrink)

To be beneficent, that is, to promote according to one's means the happiness of others in need, without hoping for something in return, is every man's duty. Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals Almost everyone agrees that we have a moral duty to pull out a drowning child from a shallow pond even if this means getting our clothes muddy. But what are the limits of the duty of beneficence? In “Famine, Affluence and Morality”, which first (...) appeared in 1972, Peter Singer attempted to specify those limits in terms of the following principle: “if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it.” Singer went on to use this principle to argue that we ought to be doing all we can to prevent Third World hunger. At the same time, he challenged the well-established Western moral viewpoint that makes it an act of charity rather than a duty for a relatively affluent individual to give money to help feed the world's poor. Singer left open the question of whether the traditional distinction between duty and charity should be redrawn or abolished altogether, although he insisted that giving to others who are starving, even at the cost of giving up luxuries such as new clothes or a new car, is not an act of charity, but a duty. (shrink)

A variety of ethical objections have been raised against the military employment of uninhabited aerial vehicles (UAVs, drones). Some of these objections are technological concerns over UAVs abilities’ to function on par with their inhabited counterparts. This paper sets such concerns aside and instead focuses on supposed objections to the use of UAVs in principle. I examine several such objections currently on offer and show them all to be wanting. Indeed, I argue that we have a duty to protect (...) an agent engaged in a justified act from harm to the greatest extent possible, so long as that protection does not interfere with the agent's ability to act justly. UAVs afford precisely such protection. Therefore, we are obligated to employ UAV weapon systems if it can be shown that their use does not significantly reduce a warfighter's operational capability. Of course, if a given military action is unjustified to begin with, then carrying out that act via UAVs is wrong, just as it would be with any weapon. But the point of this paper is to show that there is nothing wrong in principle with using a UAV and that, other things being equal, using such technology is, in fact, obligatory. (shrink)

Many contemporary political movements focus more on changing the values and principles that people act on in their daily lives rather than institutions and legal frameworks. Political-philosophical theories of justice, however, often focus more on the Rawlsian “basic structure” than the “ethos” of a just society, and rarely discuss how individuals may be encouraged to act in accordance with principles of justice. This article attempts to redress this, and draws on moral, social and political philosophy to argue that an ethos (...) exists in a group or society either i) when its members internalize and act from a particular principle, or ii) when its members uphold a decentralized system of informal social sanctions that increases their compliance with a particular principle. (shrink)

Utilitarian and deontological moral theories are often accused of failing to develop a convincing account of an agent's moral psychology, and so failing to provide an adequate theory of moral motivation that sustains their conception of morality as involving generally overriding moral duties. As a result of this apparent conflict between an agent's psychology and the demands of morality, many suggest making dramatic revisions to our conception of morality. I argue here that a more promising response is to examine where (...) it is that morality fits into human psychology, and then build a theory of moral motivation that sustains ordinary conceptions of morality from this foundation. To do this, I start by looking at Hume's account of moral motivation, which is grounded in a rich and full moral psychology. In an attempt to show that his theory provides a promising foundation for a contemporary theory of moral motivation, I explore his account of acting from duty and develop a new interpretation of his theory of moral motivation that fits most consistently with both his criticism of other accounts and his more general claims about the virtue of justice. I argue that Hume offers an account of justice as being always valuable in virtue of being a necessary condition to the enjoyment of one's good character. I go on to suggest that pride in one's character, what we might now call personal integrity, commits each agent to acting with a sense of duty, and enables her to attain a level of social interaction that is necessary for her psychological development, yet not possible without a commitment to justice. After defending this interpretation of Hume, I extend this basic notion of personal integrity and demonstrate how this idea, combined with the workings of empathy and the psychological need for positive social interaction, generates a viable theory of moral motivation that maintains the common conception of morality as involving generally overriding moral duties while avoiding threats of alienation. (shrink)

It is commonly assumed that praiseworthiness should form part of the analysis of supererogation. I will argue that this view should be rejected. I will start by arguing that, at least on some views of the connection between moral value and praiseworthiness, it does not follow from the fact that acts of supererogation go beyond what is required by duty that they will always be praiseworthy to perform. I will then consider and dismiss what I will call the (...) Argument from Stipulation in favour of holding that acts of supererogation are always praiseworthy. Next, I will examine what I will call the Necessary Connection Argument, which posits a necessary connection between supererogation and praiseworthiness. I will argue that the intuitions used to motivate this argument are best explained by a debunking explanation. (shrink)

This paper offers an imminent interpretation of Kant's political teleology in the context of his response to Moses Mendelssohn in Theory and Practice III concerning prospects of humankind's moral progress. The paper assesses the nature of Kant's response against his mature political philosophy in the Doctrine of Right . In `Theory and Practice III' Kant's response to Mendelssohn remains incomplete: whilst insisting that individuals have a duty to contribute towards humankind's moral progress, Kant has no conclusive answer as to (...) how individuals might act on that duty. `Theory and Practice III' lacks a clear conception of the distinctness of political morality from the domain of virtue; Kant's resort to teleological argumentation is indicative of his lack of an account of instituting Right. The latter can be found in the Doctrine of Right —yet Kant's earlier teleological arguments contribute crucially to the development of his mature morality of Right. Key Words: inborn duty • moral progress • political teleology • principles of Right. (shrink)

I develop a ‘duty-plus’ approach to supererogation based on a simple intuition: if I am required to do x or y, doing x and y is a candidate for, though not necessarily, supererogation. This is an appealing view to take, located midway between two extreme positions, supererogationism and rigorism. I give a precise statement of the view through the notion of disjunctive duties, and discuss the commitments a duty-plus theorist should make, independent from the Kantian context in (...) which this position is often discussed. I also advocate the novel claim that we should take supererogation as a property of sets of actions, rather than single actions. The latter view suffers from problems in cases of concurrent acts and accumulative supererogation. (shrink)

Shared views regarding the moral respect which is owed to children in family life are used as a guide in determining the moral permissibility of nontherapeutic clinical research procedures involving children. The comparison suggests that it is not appropriate to seek assent from the preadolescent child. The analogy with interventions used in family life is similarly employed to specify the permissible limit of risk to which children may be exposed in nontherapeutic research procedures. The analysis indicates that recent writers (...) misconceive how certain moral principles, such as respect for personal autonomy, require us to act toward children. The results are also used to assess proposed federal regulations on research with children. (shrink)

Relying on a sexual encounter that he had once while in graduate school, Soble explores in this essay two important and under-explored ideas in sexual ethics. The first is whether there are sexual duties to others (including, even especially, to strangers), and what the source of such duties might be. He provides good reasons, rooted in both religious and secular thought, for believing that such duties exist. The second is whether there are supererogatory sexual actions—sexual actions that go beyond the (...) demands of duty—and what conditions an act needs to satisfy in order to be supererogatory. Soble uses the sexual encounter that opens the essay to test our intuitions about these two ideas and his own arguments, and to underscore the complications involved in attempting to find secure answers as to whether some sexual acts are dutiful, done from duty, or supererogatory. (This is a revised version of the essay in the 7th edition of The Philosophy of Sex.). (shrink)

The urgency of the problem of climate change calls upon us to investigate the climate duties of agents beyond the state. Individuals are the most salient candidate in this respect. In section I, I argue that the idea that individuals might have duties to reduce their emissions raises difficult issues about individual difference-making. The rest of the chapter, then, focuses on what I take to be the third most-salient duty-bearer: large for-profit corporations. These entities have largely been overlooked in (...) philosophical discussions of climate-related duties. In Section II, I consider two possible reasons for this neglect, and argue that neither are good reasons. In Section III, I give a positive case for weighty and demanding duties for corporations, to cut back their present and planned emissions and to offset their past emissions. In Section IV, I bring the discussion full circle: corporations’ duties always imply duties for corporations’ members, that is, for the individuals who constitute the corporation. Drawing on earlier work, I give an account of who corporations’ members are and how their duties are structured. In heavily-emitting corporations, members prominently include managers, shareholders, and rank-and-file employees. So a range of individuals are on the hook after all, because the corporations that they constitute bear duties. Additionally, even non-members may have duties to act upon corporations, from the outside, with a view to inducing corporate duty-fulfillment. (shrink)

There are countless circumstances under which random individuals COULD act together to prevent something morally bad from happening or to remedy a morally bad situation. But when OUGHT individuals to act together in order to bring about a morally important outcome? Building on Philip Pettit’s and David Schweikard’s account of joint action, I will put forward the notion of joint duties: duties to perform an action together that individuals in so-called random or unstructured groups can jointly hold. I will (...) show how this account of joint duties is preferable to one which defends individual duties to cooperate. I then discuss the limits of joint duties and the ways in which one can fail to comply with them. It will become apparent that the circumstances under which individuals in random collectives acquire such joint duties are rare. (shrink)

Kant argues that morality leads to religion, and that religion consists in regarding our moral duties as divine commands. This paper explores a foundational question for Kantian religion: When you think of your duties as divine commands, what exactly are you thinking, and how is that thought consistent with Kant’s own account of the ways that morality is independent from God? I argue that if we assume the Kantian religious person acts out of obedience to God, then her overall (...) outlook will be inconsistent. I then develop an account of regarding duties as divine commands that does not involve acting out of obedience to God. This account, however, faces an objection—that without obedience, one cannot actually be thinking of duties as divine commands. In the final section, I consider this objection and suggest a response. (shrink)

This book demonstrates the importance of a duty-based approach to morality. The dominance of what has been labeled “rights talk” leads to the neglect of duties without corresponding rights and stimulates the proliferation of questionable human rights. Therefore, this book argues for a duty-based perspective on morality in order to, first, salvage duties of virtue, and, second, counter the trend of rights-proliferation by providing some conceptual clarity concerning rights and duties that will enable us to differentiate between genuine (...) and spurious rights-claims. The argument for this duty-based perspective is made by examining two particularly contentious duties: duties to aid the global poor and civic duties. These two duties serve as case studies and are explored from the perspectives of political theory, jurisprudence and moral philosophy. The argument is made that both these duties can only be adequately defined and allocated if we adopt the perspective of duties, as the predominant perspective of rights either does not recognize them to be duties at all or else leaves their content and allocation indefinite. This renewed focus on duties does not wish to diminish the importance of rights. Rather, the duty-based perspective on morality will strengthen human rights discourse by distinguishing more strictly between genuine and inauthentic rights. Furthermore, a duty-based approach enriches our moral landscape by recognizing both duties of justice and duties of virtue. The latter duties are not less important or supererogatory, but function as indispensable complements to the duties prescribed by justice. In this perceptive and exceptionally lucid book, Eric Boot argues that a duty-focused approach to morality will remedy the shortcomings he finds in the standard accounts of human rights. The study tackles staple philosophical topics such as the contrasts between duties of virtue and duties of justice and imperfect and perfect obligations. But more importantly perhaps, it also confronts the practical question of what our human rights duties are and how we ought to act on them. Boot's book is a splendid example of how philosophy can engage and clarify real world problems. Kok-Chor Tan, Department of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania A lively and enjoyable defence of the importance of our having duties to fellow human beings in severe poverty. At a time when global justice has never been more urgent, this new book sheds much needed light. Thom Brooks, Professor of Law and Government and Head of Durham Law School, Durham University. (shrink)