In Kant’s moral theory, we do not have duties to animals, though we have duties with regard to them. I reconstruct Kant’s arguments for several types of duties with regard to animals and show that Kant’s theory imposes far more robust requirements on our treatment of animals than one would expect. Kant’s duties regarding animals are perfect and imperfect; they are primarily but not exclusively duties to oneself; and they condemn not merely cruelty to animals for its own sake, but (...) also, such things as killing them for food when our health does not require it and ingratitude to service animals. Central to understanding these duties is appreciating Kant’s concern for our morally useful emotions, for it is primarily because of the effect that cruelty to animals has on our sympathetic emotions—which greatly help us treat other rational beings appropriately—that we have duties not to be cruel to animals. Yet cruelty and callousness toward animals are not problematic only because they may weaken some of our morally useful emotions. Cruelty and callousness toward animals are problematic also because they oppose our morally useful emotions; these emotions, as part of the perfection of our nature, should be honored, supported, and furthered, unless there are compelling reasons not to do so in particular cases. (shrink)

The concept of prima facie duty is deemed important by ross and the author. The author thinks ross and others have not elucidated the concept and the relation between prima facie and 'absolute' duty. He concludes that "we must explain the obligatoriness of absolute duties in terms of prima facie duties, As being derived from them, And not vice versa, As ross attempted." (staff).

The article examines the concept of duty with reference to Ibsen's play "Ghosts." It offers a brief genealogy of duty while linking the concept of duty to a deconstructive approach.

The principal aim of this book is to develop and defend an analysis of the concept of moral obligation. The analysis is neutral regarding competing substantive theories of obligation, whether consequentialist or deontological in character. What it seeks to do is generate solutions to a range of philosophical problems concerning obligation and its application. Amongst these problems are deontic paradoxes, the supersession of obligation, conditional obligation, prima facie obligation, actualism and possibilism, dilemmas, supererogation, and cooperation. By virtue of its (...) normative neutrality, the analysis provides a theoretical framework within which competing theories of obligation can be developed and assessed. This study is a major contribution to metaethics that will be of particular interest to all philosophers concerned with normative ethical theory. (shrink)

I argue that our traditional conception of the duties imposed by human rights is unable to acknowledge the nature of many contemporary human rights violations. The traditional conception is based on a broadly deontological view according to which human rights impose primarily negative and perfect duties, and these duties are held to be specific prohibitions on certain kinds of actions . I argue that given this conception of the nature of the duties imposed by human rights, not only claims to (...) aid, but in addition, claims against many of the most serious and prevalent contemporary active harms will not count as genuine human rights claims. These harms increasingly result from extremely complex causal chains involving the behaviour of a huge number of agents, few or none of whom can be singled out as responsible for a serious harm to any specific victim. Institutional structures can have just as central a role to play in specifying and allocating responsibility for fulfilling many of the negative duties imposed by human rights as the positive duties. These structures can therefore be equally important in the realisation of both kinds of rights. Before the necessary institutional reforms have taken place, both kinds of rights are equally genuine, and ground the imperative of justice to reform existing social institutions. (shrink)

Why is it that most among the relatively few moral philosophers since Kant who, like J. S. Mill, have discussed the question whether there can be moral duties to oneself, have answered it negatively? One reason is that those philosophers have supposed that all moral action must be, inter alia, social; and they may have thought so because of their commitment to what is here called a 'corporationist' moral view. But such a conception of morality as social is objectionable because (...) it does not square with ordinary opinion and because it introduces an artificial division between types of action which go together in real life. (shrink)

In this follow-up to The Kingdom and the Glory and The Highest Poverty, Agamben investigates the roots of our moral concept of duty in the theory and practice of Christian liturgy. Beginning with the New Testament and working through to late scholasticism and modern papal encyclicals, Agamben traces the Church's attempts to repeat Christ's unrepeatable sacrifice. Crucial here is the paradoxical figure of the priest, who becomes more and more a pure instrument of God's power, so that his (...) own motives and character are entirely indifferent as long as he carries out his priestly duties. In modernity, Agamben argues, the Christian priest has become the model ethical subject. We see this above all in Kantian ethics. Contrasting the Christian and modern ontology of duty with the classical ontology of being, Agamben contends that Western philosophy has unfolded in the tension between the two. This latest installment in the study of Western political structures begun in Homo Sacer is a contribution to the study of liturgy, an extension of Nietzsche's genealogy of morals, and a reworking of Heidegger's history of Being. (shrink)

Increased emphasis has been placed on teaching ethics in business schools. A recent meta-analysis of business ethics instruction indicated that instructional programs have a minimal impact on improving ethical behaviors (Waples et al. 2008). One of the newest trends in MBA education is gamification which allows instructors to employ video game concepts to engage students in serious business problems. Educators are attempting to harness a similar sort of power exhibited by games like FarmVille or Call of Duty and translate (...) this power into improved educational outcomes. This trend leads to the question; can gamification improve ethical learning outcomes? Using a single cohort of MBA students, ethics instruction in the MBA program was gamified and then operationalized in the students’ first required class and last required class. Although the sample was limited to a single cohort of students, results were promising, indicating improvement in ethical decision making and warranting further study. (shrink)

Aus dem Inhalt: Views from the North: Hans Petter Graver: Law, Justice and the State: Nordic Perspectives u Jacob Dahl Rendtorff: The Danish Welfare State: Philosophical Ideals and Systemic Reality u Sigri!Dur *orgeirsdottir: Feminist Ethics and Feminist Politics u Kuellike Lengi: The Situation of Human Rights in Estonia u Einar Palsson: Pythagoras and Early Icelandic Law u Law, Discourse and Rationality: Mats Flodin: Internal and External Rationality of Legal Systems u Logi Gunnarsson: A Discourse About Discourse u Hjordi!s Hakonardottir: Legal (...) Language: A Tool of Justice u Ghita Holmstrom-Hintikka: On the Use of Expert Witness in Legal Reasoning and Inquiry u Law, State and Nation: Agust H. Ing*orsson: Democracy, Bureaucracy and Marginalization of the State u Aleksander Peczenik: Law-State, Legal Certainty and Legitimacy of Law u Ove K. Pedersen/Sverre Raffnsoe: Reorganizing Society u Juha Raikka: Mill on National Sentiment u Pall Skulason: Concepts of the State and Classes of Value u Problems of Law and Rights: Britt-Mari Blegvad: How to Cope With Uncertainty: Trust and Law u Jon Wetlesen: Animal Rights or Human Duties?. (shrink)

Focusing on media actions surrounding the initial shootout between the Branch Davidian religious group and agents of the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms outside Waco, Texas, in 1993, this article examines legal and ethical duties of the media. Using the legal concept of negligence and the work of several philosophers, the article concludes first that the media did not violate their legal duties but did violate the ethical duty to minimize harm and second that although law (...) and ethical intertwine and often share vocabulary, they are different. (shrink)

Rather than approaching Kant's moral theory in the normal way through a consideration of The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and The Critique of Practical Reason, I do so from the perspective of an extended analysis of other aspects of his work that bear on his moral philosophy . Consideration of the Doctrine of Right suggests that the universal principle of Right Kant identifies is a restricted version of the CI applied to the limited domain of relations between persons (...) at issue in this context. Given that duties of Right deriving from this principle are also regarded as perfect ethical duties, an analysis of the nature and scope of the universal principle of Right can, I argue, be expected to be informative with respect to our understanding of perfect duties and the contradiction in conception from which these are said to derive. Allowing for the more limited scope of merely external duties of Right, analysis of these duties suggests that ethical duties of Right are obligations concerned with ensuring the capacity of rational agents to govern themselves on the basis of reason . This kind of analysis, I argue, is both confirmed and clarified by Kant's subsequent discussion of perfect and imperfect duties of virtue we owe to ourselves under the rubric of concerns with our moral health and moral prosperity. ;The resulting view is, I claim, a promising one that allows us to integrate the different treatments of duties in these two works and accommodate the various duties Kant discusses. In particular, understood in terms of the notions of moral health and prosperity, the concerns engendered here require careful consideration of the particular nature and psychology of human agency and yield a much more subtle and interesting account of duty and of the moral life than those typically associated with Kant. (shrink)

I argue for a plausible view of the African idea and practice of substantive individual rights. This view indicates that rights are a means of enhancing individual dignity in the context of a communal system of correlativity of duties and rights. This view is exemplified in Menkiti’s idea of the priority of duties. I explicate this idea and indicate how it highlights the inherent social-communal nature of humans that is implicated in African normative conception of “personhood”.

(Abstract: To say that there is a moral right to act in a certain way is to say that there is a presumption that such acts are morally right, which implies that others should not blame, punish or deliberately obstruct. A community’s recognition of such rights is a way of reducing conflict among its members. Natural or human rights are rights that ought to be recognised in every community. Statements of natural rights are not analytic; they may be self evident, (...) at least in the sense that everyone can easily see the usefulness of recognising such rights. The concept of a right has not changed since the middle ages and neither have the kinds of justifications given for recognising rights. Medieval moralists clearly recognised the human freedom presupposed by all ethical and legal systems and valued the liberty that consists in not being excessively constrained by legally and socially enforced duties. In modern times more recognition has been given to the rights of conscience, and this has led to some attempt to formulate duties we have toward conscientious agents whose actions we cannot accept as morally permissible.). (shrink)

Kant claims that the concept of the highest good, the idea of happiness in proportion to virtue, is grounded in the moral law. But this claim has often been challenged. How can Kant justify including happiness in the highest good? Why should only the virtuous be worthy of happiness? This paper argues that when the moral law is interpreted as the criterion for valid application of the concept of the good, the concept of the highest good does (...) indeed follow from the moral law. It also argues that the duty to promote the highest good harmonizes with other duties. (shrink)

Abstract: Human rights developed in response to specific violations of human dignity, and can therefore be conceived as specifications of human dignity, their moral source. This internal relationship explains the moral content and moreover the distinguishing feature of human rights: they are designed for an effective implementation of the core moral values of an egalitarian universalism in terms of coercive law. This essay is an attempt to explain this moral-legal Janus face of human rights through the mediating role of the (...) concept of human dignity. This concept is due to a remarkable generalization of the particularistic meanings of those "dignities" that once were attached to specific honorific functions and memberships. In spite of its abstract meaning, "human dignity" still retains from its particularistic precursor concepts the connotation of depending on the social recognition of a status—in this case, the status of democratic citizenship. Only membership in a constitutional political community can protect, by granting equal rights, the equal human dignity of everybody. (shrink)

There are two general views associated with Kant about the nature of morally good persons and their actions. One view is that one's actions have moral worth only if one is motivated by a sense of duty and not by inclination. The other view is that morally good persons are motivated by reason and not by desire. These two views are not always distinguished. But taken at face value, they do seem distinct. They seem distinct at least in that (...) one might suppose that one of the desires one has is a desire to do one's duty. And so being motivated by a sense of duty would not necessarily imply that one is motivated by something other than one of one's desires. (shrink)

Nyansa nye sika na w'akyekyere asie. One critical factor that has contributed to the spread of the virus COVID-19 and resulting illnesses and deaths is both the conceptual and the ethical confusion between the prioritization of individual rights over social duties. The adherence to the belief in the priority of rights over duties has motivated some individuals to refrain from social distancing and, as a result, has placed themselves and other individuals at serious risk to health and life. My argument (...) is that the ethical enjoinder of social duty possesses priority over the ethical value of individual rights especially in times of global crisis. I demonstrate this point by arguing that the concept of individual right is derivative from the concept of social duty and through the argument that the concept of social duty is more efficacious in addressing global threats to human life than is the concept of individual rights. What is needed is an in-depth revision of the moral ordering of rights and duties and a vision of the human being as inherently other directed with duties toward others. I shall examine two specific ethical systems, that of Confucian and African, Akan moral philosophy that exemplify such a revision of the moral order. (shrink)

The concept of rights is among the more thoroughly examined in political philosophy. Nonetheless, it remains ontologically elusive and morally problematical. In the form of an allegedly natural endowment bequeathed by the Stoic philosophers, it was famously dismissed by Bentham as ‘nonsense on stilts’. Chiefly by way of natural law theory and versions of Kantian moral philosophy rights arise at once from the presupposed autonomy of rational beings and from certain duties others have to beings of such a kind. (...) Within this tradition it is argued that morality itself is grounded in the autonomy of rational beings and that whatever overrides this autonomy converts such beings to instrumental means. Accordingly, there is a basic right to be regarded as a moral being and it is this right that generates or is foundational for the rest. Debate continues, of course, on such questions as to whether autonomy per se either logically or morally requires dutiful respect and whether rationality per se is either a necessary or a sufficient condition for autonomy itself. (shrink)

In this follow-up to _The Kingdom and the Glory_ and _The Highest Poverty_, Agamben investigates the roots of our moral concept of duty in the theory and practice of Christian liturgy. Beginning with the New Testament and working through to late scholasticism and modern papal encyclicals, Agamben traces the Church's attempts to repeat Christ's unrepeatable sacrifice. Crucial here is the paradoxical figure of the priest, who becomes more and more a pure instrument of God's power, so that his (...) own motives and character are entirely indifferent as long as he carries out his priestly duties. In modernity, Agamben argues, the Christian priest has become the model ethical subject. We see this above all in Kantian ethics. Contrasting the Christian and modern ontology of duty with the classical ontology of being, Agamben contends that Western philosophy has unfolded in the tension between the two. This latest installment in the study of Western political structures begun in _Homo Sacer_ is a contribution to the study of liturgy, an extension of Nietzsche's genealogy of morals, and a reworking of Heidegger's history of Being. (shrink)

This essay contributes to our understanding of the relation between the philosophies of Hegel and Sellars. While most treatments of this relation have focused on metaphysics or epistemology, I focus on ethics, and in particular on the formulation of moral agency. I argue that Hegel and Sellars arrive at a similar metaphilosophical rejection of individual moral agency in favor of conceptions of moral agency as the outcome of social mediation. To demonstrate this, I trace how Hegel and Sellars offer parallel (...) resolutions of the ‘Kantian paradox’: the apparent problem that, in Kantian ethics, moral agents must both freely self-legislate the moral law unto themselves and stand in a dutiful relation to the moral law as a necessary function of practical reason. Drawing Hegel and Sellars together in this way casts new light on Sellars’s understudied ethical theory and further evidences the contemporary relevance of Hegel’s moral philosophy. (shrink)

The way people make career choices is often influenced by their idea of work. Alongside this concept, there is the idea of decent work, which takes the form of the opportunity, for men and women, to have productive, equal, safe, and rights-based work. We have conducted a study on these two concepts with a group of Italian adolescents, using both quantitative and qualitative methods. We found that most of the participants consider work as a means to obtain economic benefits (...) and satisfy certain values, and decent work as characterized by the respect for rights and duties and economic benefits; a part of the participants fails in giving a definition of decent work or gives a negative definition of it. We deepened the study through quantitative analyses that revealed that those who have a more complex view of work and decent work also have higher levels of self-efficacy and career adaptability. These findings are discussed in the light of previous research and from a perspective that intends to give a contribution to career counseling practices. (shrink)

This article aims to understand the concept of work in the teachings of Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Hacohen Kook. As the person who had the maximum impact on the religious Zionist sector, with its guiding principle of Torah va’avodah, meaning Torah and work, it is necessary to clarify his attitude towards work. Did he perceive work as a necessity, a part of one’s duty to support the members of the household, or perhaps also as an ideological value, part of (...) a worldview that combines religious values with extra-religious values, or then again maybe he perceived work as a religious value? This article shows that R. Kook’s positive attitude towards work differs from traditional perspectives on work because of a pantheistic influence. Pantheism made him redefine the boundaries of Torah and include work and materiality. (shrink)

I argue in this paper that negating and counterbalancing should be recognised as two fundamental categories of corrective action. First, I show that recognising the distinction helps to avoid confusion when asking normative questions about the justification of imposing corrective duties. Second, I argue that we have moral reasons to care about the difference between negating and counterbalancing detrimental states, and this has implications for permissible action. I then outline some ways in which the discussion helps us explain and justify (...) specific legal remedies in private law, and I conclude by noting some exceptions to the normative priority of negating over counterbalancing. (shrink)

Ancient Confucianism and Daoism are distinct streams of thought, their differences stark at times. But they emerge from and flow through a shared cultural context and historical time. Certain common assumptions are to be found in each, and distinguish both from Western ways of thinking. This chapter considers the particulars of these two ancient Chinese perspectives, and the ways in which they differ from one another. The three key concepts of Confucianism include: humanity, duty, ritual. The Confucian worldview includes (...) many ideas and principles but these offer a starting point. The chapter recognizes Daoism's playful ambiguity and discusses the three concepts: Way (Dao), integrity (de), and non‐action (wuwei). (shrink)

This article reviews the medieval law background of the parens patriae jurisdiction of the state as it has been exercised over incompetent persons who formerly were competent adults, concluding that the fiduciary standard implied in the statute De Prerogative Regis (1324), which is the basis for modern guardianship status, requires that the court and guardian adopt an attitude of respectful friendship toward the incompetent person, just as though they were to be accountable to the person himself, were he to recover (...) his faculties and become competent once more. This ficuciary responsibility, originating in the device of the "use" or trust employed for the management of the estates of lunatics, contrasts with the self-interested feudal guardianship used for the custody of "natural fools" or "idiots", who were under paternalistic arrangements. The article argues that because the determination of legal incompetence and the consequent transfer of custody of the person and property of an incompetent person to the state would result in a drastic forfeiture of liberty and property interests were it not for the fiduciary obligation owed by the state to the incompetent, the state is under an obligation to exercise its fiduciary duties in good faith and may not impose states policies or advance state interests of its own in the supervision of the affairs of incompetent persons, apart from interests arising legitimately out of the state's institutional interest in providing competent administration for the benefit of the incompetents themselves. Keywords: concept of the person, Cruzan, feudalism, guardianship, incompetent person, parens patriae CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

This doctoral thesis analyzes the systematic role of Kant’s conception of happiness in his moral, legal and political theory. Although many of his conclusions and arguments are directly or indirectly influenced by his conception of human happiness, Kant’s underlying assumptions are rarely overtly discussed or given much detail in his works. Kant also provides different and apparently incompatible definitions of happiness. This research explores the domains of Kant’s practical philosophy in which his conception of happiness plays a systematic role: the (...) relation between the natural need of human beings to pursue happiness and the ends-oriented structure of the human will; Kant’s anti-eudaimonism in ethical theory; Kant’s claim that we have an indirect duty to promote our own happiness and the problem that under certain circumstances, the indeterminacy of happiness makes it not irrational to choose short term satisfaction at the costs of one’s overall, long term happiness, given Kant’s conception of non-moral choice as expectation of pleasure; Kant’s justification of the duty to adopt the happiness of others as our ends and the latitude and eventual demandingness of this duty; finally, since Kant also subsumes subsistence needs and welfare under the concept of happiness of individuals, I also engage with the question of state provision for the poor in the Kantian Rechtsstaat and explore Kant’s conception of equity or fairness as an alternative to the traditional minimalist and the welfare interpretations of the Kantian state. (shrink)

Recognition of the status of family in the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania mandates the state authorities to care and provide for the family, to ensure the family members’ constitutional rights, and to ensure respect for family life. Such duties fall on both, the legislative and executive authorities. However, the enforcement of constitutional imperatives is not straightforward. One reason for this is that the Constitution does not contain any legal definition of ‘family’ or ‘family members’. Nor does the jurisprudence (...) of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Lithuania reveal the content of these notions. This, in turn, allows for various interpretations as to the scope of duties of state authorities and state attitude towards the family in general. In this context, the article aims to present approaches to the legal concept of family in Lithuanian legal doctrine, positive law and court practice. First, the article analyses the constitutional background of the concept of family and presents an overview of the ongoing political debate concerning this concept. Second, we analyse Lithuanian legal doctrine, scanty as it may be on this issue. Third, we examine the legislative specifics and the case law developed by the country’s highest judicial bodies with regard to the legal definition of ‘family’ and ‘family members’ in order to assess their impact on the state family policy in general. (shrink)