ABSTRACT An influential argument against the possibility of obligations to oneself states that the very notion of such obligations is incoherent: If there were such obligations, we could release ourselves from them; yet releasing oneself from an obligation is impossible. I challenge this argument by arguing against the premise that it is impossible to release oneself from an obligation. I point out that this premise assumes that if it were possible to release oneself (...) from an obligation, it would be impossible to violate that obligation. I note that there are two interpretations of this assumption, one conceptual and one psychological. I argue that, on both interpretations, the assumption is false—at least according to independently plausible accounts of obligations to oneself and of what it means to waive an obligation. My arguments paint a picture of obligations to oneself that not only challenges the argument against their coherence, but also illuminates these obligations’ relationship to other parts of the moral domain. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that, in addition to having an obligation to resist the oppression of others, people have an obligation to themselves to resist their own oppression. This obligation to oneself, I argue, is grounded in a Kantian duty of self-respect.

In some cases, you may release someone from some obligation they have to you. For instance, you may release them from a promise they made to you, or an obligation to repay money they have borrowed from you. But most take it as clear that, if you have an obligation to someone else, you cannot in any way release yourself from that obligation. I shall argue the contrary. The issue is important because one standard problem for the idea of having (...) duties to oneself relies on the impossibility of self-release. The argument is that a duty to oneself would be a duty from which one could release oneself, but that this is an absurdity, and so there can be no duties to oneself. This argument is to be rejected because a duty from which one can release oneself is perfectly possible, and such release occurs quite properly from time to time. (shrink)

Philosophers have long argued that duties to oneself are paradoxical, as they seem to entail an incoherent power to release oneself from obligations. I argue that self-release is possible, both as a matter of deontic logic and of metaethics.

In “On duties to oneself,” Marcus G. Singer argued that, contrary to long established philosophical tradition, there are no duties to oneself. Singer observes that to have a duty is to be accountable to someone for that duty’s fulfillment, and while she to whom a duty is owed may release the person who has the duty from being bound to fulfill it, the latter cannot release herself from the duty. For releasing oneself from a duty is no (...) different from simply opting not to fulfill it, which would make the duty no more than a mere option and rob it of its categorical character. Singer thus argues that (a) A has a duty against herself; (b) if A has a duty against herself, then A is accountable to herself for the duty’s performance; (c) if A has a duty against herself, A can release herself from the duty; and (d) because a person is accountable to the individual owed the duty for its fulfillment, no one can release herself from an obligation, form an inconsistent set. (shrink)

Discovering obligations that are ascribed to them by others is potentially an important element in the development of the moral imagination of engineers. Moral imagination cannot reasonably be developed by contemplating oneself and one’s task alone: there must be some element of discovering the expectations of people one could put at risk. In practice it may be impossible to meet ascribed obligations if they are completely general and allow no exceptions — for example if they demand an (...) unlimited duty to avoid harm. But they can still serve to modify engineers’ prior ethics, for example by limiting a purely utilitarian approach to deciding who should bear risk and how much risk they should bear. Ascribed obligations can also give engineers insight into the public reaction to risks that arise from engineered systems, and the consequent expectations that the public have about how much protection is desirable and where the responsibility for this protection lies. This article analyses the case for taking ascribed obligations seriously, and reviews some of the obligations that have been ascribed in the aftermath of recent engineering failures. It also proposes ways in which ascribed obligations could be used in engineers’ moral development. (shrink)

In the Doctrine of Right Kant holds that the classical Ulpian command honeste vive is a juridical duty that has the particular feature of being internal. In this paper I explore the reasons why Kant denies that the duty to be an honorable human being comprises an ethical obligation and conceives it as a juridical duty to oneself. I will argue that, despite the conceptual problems that the systematical incorporation of this type of duty into the doctrine of morals (...) might entail, these reasons are coherent. The fulfillment of the duty honeste vive involves a coercion to the self but at the same time does not necessarily imply the adoption of a moral end. (shrink)

The demand for bodily parts such as organs is increasing, and individuals in certain circumstances are responding by offering parts of their bodies for sale. Is there anything wrong in this? Kant had arguments to suggest that there is, namely that we have duties towards our own bodies, among which is the duty not to sell parts of them. Kant's reasons for holding this view are examined, and found to depend on a notion of what is intrinsically degrading. Rom Harré's (...) recent revision of Kant's argument, in terms of an obligation to preserve the body's organic integrity, is considered. Harré's view does not rule out all acts of selling, but he too ultimately depends on a test of what is intrinsically degrading. Both his view and Kant's are rejected in favour of a view which argues that it does make sense to speak of duties towards our own bodies, grounded in the duty to promote the flourishing of human beings, including ourselves. This provides a reason for opposing the sale of bodily parts, and the current trend towards the market ethic in health care provision. (shrink)

Considerable attention has been devoted to the peculiar obligating force of interpersonal promises. But paradigmatic promising is not an orphan in the family of our moral concepts, and the focus on interpersonal promises has overshadowed sibling phenomena that any account of promises should also cover. I examine the case of single-party promises and argue, against the prevailing view, that we have good reason to take the phenomenon of making promises to oneself seriously. This supports what I call ‘the breadth (...) criterion’: theoretical accounts of promising should cover the entire breadth of the phenomenon of promising. I then argue that the breadth criterion poses a novel and formidable obstacle for two prominent views of promising, the social practice view and the expectation view. I conclude by suggesting that there is reason to think that the normative power view of promising may fare better. (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)

I argue that democratic citizens have a duty to educate themselves politically. My argument proceeds in two stages. First, I establish a case for the moral importance of individual competence for voting, but also maintain that the substantial content of the required competence must remain open. I do this by way of an assessment of Jason Brennan's provocative defense of epistocracy. I try to show that there is no notion of political competence that can meet with reasonable agreement among citizens (...) and that voter qualification exams are therefore illegitimate. Second, I maintain that the basic premise of Brennan's argument, the right to a competent electorate, is valid and that it corresponds to an individual duty to educate oneself politically. This duty is, in Kant's terminology, a wide and imperfect duty that we owe to our fellow democratic citizens. Yet since the content of competence must be left open, this moral duty cannot be transformed into a legal obligation. (shrink)

I argue that Kant's ethical framework cannot countenance a certain kind of failure to respect oneself that can occur within oppressive social contexts. Kant's assumption that any person, qua rational being, has guaranteed epistemic access to the moral law as the standard of good action and the capacity to act upon this standard makes autonomy an achievement within the individual agent's power, but this is contrary to a feminist understanding of autonomy as a relational achievement that can be thwarted (...) by the systematic attack on autonomy that occurs within oppressive social conditions. Insofar as Kant's negative duty of self-respect is unable to accommodate the ways immersion in oppressive social environments can warp an individual's understanding of what she is owed and capable of as a moral agent, it perpetuates the cruelty of unjust social systems in the guise of respecting individual autonomy. I conclude by considering Carol Hay's argument that those who are oppressed have an obligation to themselves to resist their own oppression, in order to explore how this limitation in how Kant conceives of the duty to respect the self may reach expression in contemporary ethical theory inspired by Kant. (shrink)

People freely disclose vast quantities of personal and personally identifiable information. The central question of this Meador Lecture in Morality is whether they have a moral (or ethical) obligation (or duty) to withhold information about themselves or otherwise to protect information about themselves from disclosure. Moreover, could protecting one’s own information privacy be called for by important moral virtues, as well as obligations or duties? Safeguarding others’ privacy is widely understood to be a responsibility of government, business, and individuals. (...) The “virtue” of fairness and the “duty” or “obligation” of respect for persons arguably ground other-regarding responsibilities of confidentiality and data security. But is anyone ethically required—not just prudentially advised—to protect his or her own privacy? If so, how might a requirement to protect one’s own privacy and to display ethical virtues of reserve, modesty and temperance properly influence everyday choices, public policy, or the law? I test the idea of an ethical mandate to protect one’s own privacy, while identifying the practical and philosophical problems that bear adversely on the case. I consider “conceptual” and “libertarian” objections to the view that each individual indeed has a moral obligation to safeguard his or her own privacy. Government and industry are not off the hook if privacy is a duty of self-care and self-respect: they have responsibilities and are freshly viewed as partners in moral agents’ quest for ethical goodness. (shrink)

That we owe duties to others is a commonplace, the subject of countless philosophical treatises and monographs. Morality is interpersonal and other-directed, many claim. But what of what we owe ourselves? In Duty to Self, Paul Schofield flips the paradigm of interpersonal morality by arguing that there are moral duties we owe ourselves, and that in light of this, philosophers need to significantly rethink many of their views about practical reason, moral psychology, politics, and moral emotions. -/- Among these views (...) is the idea that divisions within a person's life enable her to relate to herself second-personally--that is, as though she were relating to a distinct other person--in the way required by morality. Further, there exist political duties owed to the self, which the state may coerce persons to perform. This amounts to a novel argument for paternalistic law, which appeals to considerations of right, justice, and freedom in order to justify coercing a person for their own sake--a liberal justification for an idea typically thought to be deeply at odds with liberalism. -/- Schofield untangles how this view would impact various issues in applied ethics and political philosophy, for example, financial prudence and risk, the pursuit of the good life, and medical ethics. Duty to Self is essential for anyone working in moral and political philosophy or political theory. (shrink)

In this article, I explore the way in which Korsgaard’s approach to obligation as springing from the reflective rejection of that which threatens one’s own identity can account for obligations towards others, without making the latter relative to obligations to oneself. To this end, I begin by stressing the role of reflexivity in ethical relationships, and show how this reflexivity is mediated by reference to law, which applies both to the self and to the other. On this (...) basis, I then argue that Korsgaard’s account of the interplay between practical and moral identity reflects the very structure of practical reason, which requires both a particular and a universal premise in order to issue practical reasons for action– and the corresponding obligations. Within this framework, I argue that Korsgaard’s solution to the problem outlined above lies in having stressed the shareable character of reasons such that it is neither your reason nor my reason that obligates me, but rather reason as such. This solution, however, requires a further argument aimed at clarifying what makes your reasons different from my own. (shrink)

Argues that role obligations are not marginal, "that they are central to morality and should be taken seriously." "A 'role obligation' is a moral requirement, which attaches to an institutional role, whose content is fixed by the function of the role, and whose normative force flows from the role." Rejects what he calls the doctrine of perfect adequacy which holds that role obligations are both comprehensive and transparent. Although this may have been plausible at earlier times, it is (...) clearly implausible now. It is the implausibility of this doctrine which has led theorists to accept the standard view: which holds that role obligations that are noncontractual are extremely problematic. Once we reject the doctrine of perfect adequacy, however, we can see the significance of role obligations more clearly. [The content of role obligations, Hardimon admits, is indeterminate in the sense that it is subject to constructive interpretation. This suggests, however, that the obligations are not the source of their normative power, rather it is their justifying value which explains why some role requirements are obligatory. This is confirmed by the rest of the article.] One thing that should lead us to question the notion that we do not have obligations of this sort by considering what it would be like to have no noncontractual role obligations. [This, however, does not establish that the force of role obligations flows from the obligations themselves.] One objection to NCR obligations is that they may require acting in accordance with an unjust institution. However, the solution here is the same as with contractual obligations: unjust institutions and contracts do not bind. Moves on to identity. "What I am assuming is that most of us do at least tacitly conceive of ourselves as family members and citizens, that these self-understandings are central to our own general self-conception, and that we can, through reflection come to recognize that we do in fact conceive of ourselves in these ways. If this is correct, then abandoning the idea that we have noncontractual role obligations would require radical revision of our self-conception, for we cannot give up the idea of nonctractual role obligation without also ceasing to conceive of ourselves as family members and citizens. What, after all, would it mean to say that we conceive of ourselves as family members but regard oursleves as having no familial obligations whatsoever?...The upshot of the last two paragraphs is that the cost of abandoning our conception of ourselves as family members and citizens would be enormous." [The moral significance of identity is unclear here - is the only normative element loss of identity with rejection of role obligations? What of the case when one's identity is caught up in a role which requires one to act immorally in other ways?] If impressment is our concern, it shouldn't be, for role obligations are not like impressment - one is born into them, not impressed [how does this make a difference?]. Role must be reflectively acceptable to produce genuine obligations. "Determining whether a given social role is reflectively acceptable involves stepping back from that role in thought and asking whether it is a role people ought to occupy and play. Determining that a given social role is reflectively acceptable involves judging that it is meaningful, rational, or good." [Hence, some independent value is going to do all the work for role obligations - the normative force of a role does not flow from the role itself.] Concerning voluntary roles - even if we agree that voluntary acceptance is essential, this omits important elements of role identification. "The key component of the idea of identifying with a role is that of conceiving of oneself as someone for whom the norms, that is, the evaluative standards associated with a role, its rights, duties, virtues, ideals, and supererogations, have reason-giving force. Here is the idea. If you identify with a role, its norms will function for you as reasons. If you are a judge who identifies with the role of judge, the fact that this is something judges do will give you a reason for doing it." [Clearly a non-sequiter - conceiving of oneself as having a reason does not give oneself a reason for doing - there must actually be a reason for doing something. Moreover, the content of the role may be in question - and here we are to engage in constructive interpretation, which is just to say that we are to identify some underlying value and this will serve to justify and determine the content of the role. Refers to usage of "look, its your job" as basis for substantiating claims about the normative force of identity. "But here a basic point of similarity emerges between contractual and noncontractual role obligations. People can and do identify with their noncontractual roles and not just with their contractual roles. And when they do, assuming that the appropriate background moral conditions are in place, the fact taht they occupy these roles will provide them with reasons for carrying out the tasks of their noncontractual roles...The basic form of motivation provided by identification with contractual and noncontractual role obligations is the same.". (shrink)

In his discussion of the duty of benevolence in §27 of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant argues that agents have no obligation to promote their own happiness, for ‘this happens unavoidably’ (MS, AA 6:451). In this paper I argue that Kant should not have said this. I argue that Kant should have conceded that agents do have an obligation to promote their own happiness.

It is natural to think of political philosophy as being concerned with reflection on some of the ways in which groups of human beings come together to confront together the problems that they face together: in other words, as the domain, par excellence, of collective action. From this point of view it might seem surprising that the notion of collective obligation rarely assumes centre-stage within the subject. If there are, or can be, collective obligations, then these must surely constrain (...) the ways in which we can act collectively. Indeed, one might even suspect that considerations about collective obligations ought to play a central role in demarcating the form that any legitimate form of political organization ought to take. -/- Elsewhere I have argued that we have good reasons for accepting the existence of global collective obligations - in other words, collective obligations which fall on the world’s population as a whole.(Wringe 2006, 2010, forthcoming, under review) For example, the existence of such obligations provides a plausible solution to a problem which is sometimes thought to arise if we think that individuals have a right to have their basic needs satisfied. In this paper, I shall argue that in many situations, forward-looking global obligations give rise to an obligation on individuals to work towards bringing into existence and support an institutional system which will enable their obligations to be met. Call such an obligation the ‘Obligation to Promote Satisfactory Global Institutions.’ I shall also examine a significant challenge to this line of argument, which I call the ‘Pluralist Challenge’ One might suppose that the ‘Obligation to Promote Satisfactory Global Institutions’ could be met by providing strategic support to attempts to modify and extend existing international institutions. After all, creating new institutions is a difficult matter: perhaps it would be better, especially where stringent obligations are concerned, to concentrate on those institutions which we already have. On the other hand, existing international institutions are subject to a range of significant moral and ethical criticisms. It would simply be naïve to suppose that their existence of such institutions is based on an international consensus about what justice requires; and it is not clear how we could motivate individuals who have severe ethical reservations about the existence of such institutions, or why we should wish to. This suggests that those who think that there are global collective obligations, and that such obligations should play an important role in shaping how we think of international distributive justice are faced with a significant dilemma: either support a program of extending and strengthening existing institutions in a way which risks entrenching some existing forms of injustice; or commit oneself to a program of attempting to build new institutions which will have to compete with those institutions we have already and which are unlikely to be in a position to meet help us to discharge our collective obligations at any point in the near future. Neither option seems satisfactory. I shall argue that our response should be to look for plausible ethical constraints on how international institutions should be developed, and suggest that these constraints are likely to take a cosmopolitan form. (shrink)

Beginning from an analysis of moral obligation's form that I defend in The Second-Person Standpoint as what we are answerable for as beings with the necessary capacities to enter into relations of mutual accountability, I argue that this analysis has implications for moral obligation's substance. Given what it is to take responsibility for oneself and hold oneself answerable, I argue, it follows that if there are any moral obligations at all, then there must exist a basic pro (...) tanto obligation not to undermine one another's moral autonomy. (shrink)

Four papers are included in this November 2018 special issue Open Section. First is by Bjørn Hofmann and Siri Granum Carson titled _Filosofiens rolle i det offentlige ordskiftet: Hvordan har debatten om sorteringssamfunnet i 2017 påvirket forholdet mellom filosofi og samfunn? En innholdsanalyse_. Second, _Provokativ offentlig filosofi_ by Aksel Braanen Sterri. Third, Steinar Bøyum’s _The Democratic Duty to Educate Oneself._ And fourth, Jonas Jakobsen and Kjersti Fjørtoft’s _In defence of moderate Inclusivism: Revisiting Rawls and Habermas._.

In “Genetic Privacy, Disease Prevention, and the Principle of Rescue,” Madison Kilbride argues that patients have a duty to warn biological family members about clinically actionable adverse genetic findings. The duty does not stem from the special obligations that we may have to family members, she argues, but rather follows from the principle of rescue, which she understands as the idea that one ought to prevent, reduce, or mitigate the risk of harm to another person when the expected harm (...) is serious and the cost or risk to oneself is sufficiently moderate. We doubt, however, whether the principle of rescue can ground a duty to warn in the cases Kilbride envisages, and we suggest that Kilbride may have underappreciated the role that special obligations could play in generating a duty to warn family members. (shrink)

Some sacrifices—like giving a kidney or heroically dashing into a burning building—are supererogatory: they are good deeds beyond the call of duty. But if such deeds are really so good, philosophers ask, why shouldn’t morality just require them? The standard answer is that morality recognizes a special role for the pursuit of self-interest, so that everyone may treat themselves as if they were uniquely important. This idea, however, cannot be reconciled with the compelling picture of morality as impartial—the view that (...) we are each anyone’s equal. I propose an alternative Self-Other Symmetric account of our moral freedom: the limits on what morality may demand of us are set by the duties we owe to ourselves. I begin with a defense of the Self-Other Symmetry: the idea that we owe the same duties to ourselves—and have the same rights against ourselves—as any relevantly similar other. Because we are consenting parties to our own actions, I argue, our rights against ourselves do not function like the rights of unwilling others. Instead, they play a permissive function, allowing us to block the demand to give up what is ours. I conclude by uniting, aggravating, and trying to solve some paradoxes of supererogatory permissions, guided by the idea that morality cannot be reduced to a ranking of options from best-to-worst. Rights against oneself are an irreducible second dimension, one that we need if we are to unify rights and supererogation into an impartial moral vision. (shrink)

Under a widespread understanding of the nature of moral obligation, one cannot be under an obligation to perform or omit an act and have a moral power to release oneself from one’s obligation. According to this view, being under an obligation necessarily entails relinquishing one’s sovereignty over the obligatory matter, that is, one’s capacity to control one’s own obligational world. This essay argues against such a view. I shall argue that by making what I will call a commitment, a (...) person assumes an obligation towards another on a given matter whilst preserving the power to release herself from her obligation. Commitments constitute morally obligatory acts over which’s obligatoriness those obliged always retain control. They constitute obligations over which obligors preserve moral sovereignty. I show that the notion of commitment sheds light on the structure of important moral phenomena such as some of our loyalty obligations, and, furthermore, that it reveals something central about the justification and scope of the law of contracts. (shrink)

In defending Levinas’s ethical theory against Ricoeur’s objections in Oneself as Another, I make a two-fold argument in regard to heroic action and the ordinary ethical relation. First, I suggest a definition of the hero as she who does what is right—that is, what is ethically necessary or obligatory—even when it requires extreme sacrifice. Second, I argue that the development of virtuous character, out of which such heroic action comes, is dependent upon the asymmetrical relation between an alterior Other (...) and a self who is willing to sacrifice to do what is right. Re-orienting oneself toward the ethical relation is, itself, a sacrifice, requiring that one adopt a non-reciprocal, asymmetrical devotion to the Other. Thus, ethics, including both heroic and ordinary ethical behavior, ought not be founded on notions of friendship, symmetry, or mutuality, but rather on absolute difference, asymmetry, and self-sacrifice. (shrink)

The attention economy — the market where consumers’ attention is exchanged for goods and services — poses a variety of threats to individuals’ autonomy, which, at minimum, involves the ability to set and pursue ends for oneself. It has been argued that the threat wireless mobile devices pose to autonomy gives rise to a duty to oneself to be a digital minimalist, one whose interactions with digital technologies are intentional such that they do not conflict with their ends. (...) In this paper, we argue that there is a corresponding duty to others to be an attention ecologist, one who promotes digital minimalism in others. Although the moral reasons for being an attention ecologist are similar to those that motivate the duty to oneself, the arguments diverge in important ways. We explore the application of this duty in various domains where we have special obligations to promote autonomy in virtue of the different roles we play in the lives of others, such as parents and teachers. We also discuss the consequences of our arguments for employers, software developers, and policy makers. (shrink)

According to Wringe 2006 we have good reasons for accepting the existence of Global Collective Obligations - in other words, collective obligations which fall on the world’s population as a whole. One such reason is that the existence of such obligations provides a plausible solution a problem which is sometimes thought to arise if we think that individuals have a right to have their basic needs satisfied. However, obligations of this sort would be of little interest (...) – either theoretical or practical – if they did not give rise, either directly or indirectly, to any kinds of reasons for individuals to behave in certain ways. -/- In this paper, I shall argue that in many situations, forward-looking global obligations give rise to an obligation on individuals to work towards bringing into existence and support an institutional system which will enable their obligations to be met. My argument for this conclusion involves two steps. In the first step, I address a general question about how collective obligations can give rise to individual obligations without being reducible to them, and which obligations they give rise to. Here I give a Kant-inspired argument, based on the principles that ‘ought implies can’ and that the content of the moral law is given by reflecting on how agents should legislate in a kingdom of ends, which is designed to show that collective obligations can give rise to individual obligations. In the second step I apply this principle to the case of global forward-looking obligations. (shrink)

Duties to oneself are allegedly incoherent: if we had duties to ourselves, we would be able to opt out of them. I argue that there is a constraint on one’s ability to release oneself from duties to oneself. The release must be autonomous in order to be normatively transformative. First, I show that the view that combines the division of the self with the second-personal characterization of morality is problematic. Second, I advance a fundamental solution to the (...) problem of the incoherence of duties to oneself, one that does not rely on any division of the self, temporal or otherwise. I build upon the prevalent idea that, in releasing others from duties, we exercise the power of consent. The transformative force of consent partly derives from our autonomy. Invoking a plausible characterization of autonomy, I argue that release from duties requires the right kind of mental state. (shrink)

Background Regarding controversial medical services, many have argued that if physicians cannot in good conscience provide a legal medical intervention for which a patient is a candidate, they should refer the requesting patient to an accommodating provider. This study examines what US physicians think a doctor is obligated to do when the doctor thinks it would be immoral to provide a referral. Method The authors conducted a cross-sectional survey of a random sample of 2000 US physicians from all specialties. The (...) primary criterion variable was agreement that physicians have a professional obligation to refer patients for all legal medical services for which the patients are candidates, even if the physician believes that such a referral is immoral. Results Of 1895 eligible physicians, 1032 (55%) responded. 57% of physicians agreed that doctors must refer patients regardless of whether or not the doctor believes the referral itself is immoral. Holding this opinion was independently associated with being more theologically pluralistic, describing oneself as sociopolitically liberal, and indicating that respect for patient autonomy is the most important bioethical principle in one's practice (multivariable ORs, 1.6–2.4). Conclusions Physicians are divided about a professional obligation to refer when the physician believes that referral itself is immoral. These data suggest there is no uncontroversial way to resolve conflicts posed when patients request interventions that their physicians cannot in good conscience provide. (shrink)

In this paper, we take up the question of whether there comes a point at which one is no longer morally obliged to do further good, even at very low cost to oneself. More specifically, they ask: under precisely what conditions is it plausible to say that that “point” has been reached? A crude account might focus only on, say, the amount of good the agent has already done, but a moment’s reflection shows that this is indeed too crude. (...) We develop and defend a nuanced account according to which considerations of three types are all relevant to whether one has satisfied one’s duties to assist: “inputs” (types and quantities of sacrifice made), “characteristics” (the beliefs and intentions that informed the donor’s decisions), and “success” (the extent to which the donations in question succeeded in generating value). (shrink)

In Essai sur le don (Essay on Gifts), a work that the author himself noted was only indicative and incomplete, Marcel Mauss recommended in his conclusions on general sociology and morality that the analysis should be taken further and future research should focus on certain cultural areas that he had not been able to take into account: Micronesia, Indochina, Tibet, Burma, and North Africa, among others. And he stressed the existence, among the Berbers, of “remarkable practices of taoussa,” the study (...) of which, he said, had been the business of Doutté and Maunier (Mauss 1968b: 274, n. 1). (shrink)

One of the principal aims of Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals, especially of the Doctrine of Virtue, is to present a taxonomy of our duties as human beings. The basic division of duties is between juridical duties and ethical duties, which determines the division of the Metaphysics of Morals into the Doctrine of Right and the Doctrine of Virtue. Juridical duties are duties that may be coercively enforced from outside the agent, as by the civil or criminal laws, or other social (...) pressures. Ethical duties must not be externally enforced (to do so violates the right of the person coerced). Instead, the subject herself, through her own reason and the feelings and motives arising a priori from her rational capacities -- the feelings of respect, conscience, moral feeling and love of other human beings, must constrain herself to follow them (MS 6:399-404).1 Among ethical duties, the fundamental division is between duties to oneself and duties to others. Within each of these two main divisions of ethical duty, there is a further division between duties that are strictly owed, requiring specific actions or omissions, and whose violation incurs moral blame, and duties that are wide or meritorious, the specific actions not strictly owed, but deserving of moral credit or merit. Kant treats these latter as ‘duties’ (eschewing any category such as ‘supererogation’) because the actions in question are conceived as fit objects of self-constraint – things we can make ourselves do through the exercise of reason and the moral feelings arising from the application of practical reason to our faculty of desire. Regarding duties to oneself, this division is between ‘perfect’ and ‘imperfect’ duty; regarding duties to others, the strict or narrow... (shrink)

The current prevailing view is that participation in biomedical research is above and beyond the call of duty. While some commentators have offered reasons against this, we propose a novel public goods argument for an obligation to participate in biomedical research. Biomedical knowledge is a public good, available to any individual even if that individual does not contribute to it. Participation in research is a critical way to support an important public good. Consequently, all have a duty to participate. The (...) current social norm is that individuals participate only if they have a good reason to do so. The public goods argument implies that individuals should participate unless they have a good reason not to. Such a shift would be of great aid to the progress of biomedical research, eventually making society significantly healthier and longer lived. (shrink)

Charles Taylor's well-known essay, “Atomism”, criticizes libertarian theories of rights like Nozick's that make individual rights independent of any duties to belong to, support, or obey the law in the society in which those rights are to be enjoyed. Taylor argues that if one grounds rights to important liberties on the human capacity for autonomy, this commits one to the view that the development of autonomy in oneself and others is morally obligatory. Further, Taylor argues that most people cannot (...) develop autonomy in the absence of a certain sort of social and political environment. Hence, if it is morally obligatory to try to develop autonomy in oneself and others, it is also obligatory to belong to, support, and give obedience to those institutions which create the environment in which autonomy can be developed. (shrink)

Christine M. Korsgaard presents a compelling new view of our moral relationships to the other animals. She offers challenging answers to such questions as: Are people superior to animals, and does it matter morally if we are? Is it all right for us to eat animals, experiment on them, make them work for us, and keep them as pets?

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Artificial Virtues and the Equally Sensible Non-Knaves: A Response to Gauthier Annette C. Baier Gauthier's splendidly dialectical paper1 first sets out Hume's official Treatise account ofhow each personhas a self-interested motive to curb her natural but socially troublesome self-interest, by agreeing to the adoption ofthe artifices ofprivate property rights, transfer by consent, and promise (provided others are also agreeing to adopt them), andhow the sympathy-dependent moral sentiment approves of (...) such a redirection of"the interested passion." Enlightened self-interest gives us the natural obligation tojustice; the fact that it is morally approved turns it into a moral obligation. Self-hatred for any breaches of the moral obligation may come in to bolster the self-interested motivation, and this will be helped along by the extra artifices employed by educators and politicians. So far so good. But now enters the sensible knave, who queries the initial assumption that each will in fact gain more by strict conformity to the rules of the Humean social artifices than by occasional carefully calculated and undetected breaches of them. If the knave is right, then the Treatise story ofhow reasonable self-interested people can get themselves to conscientiously respect property rights (including rights ofbarter), and to keep promises, is in trouble. Only by an erroneous calculation of their interest could they end with the motivation which Hume attributes to them, and finds to be morally approvable.Gauthier argues that there are indications even in the Treatise that Hume is aware ofthe flawed nature ofhis official account, since he attributes "sophistry" to some attempted justifications of honest behaviour, and attributes "feigned acts" of impossible willing to some conscientious promise-keepers. Gauthier finds Hume to have, in the Treatise, a second, less official story ofwhat it takes to be motivated to be just—that it takes error, and letting oneself be taken in by feignings and sophistry. In the Enquiry Concerning the Principles ofMorals this submerged account surfaces in the sensible knave's challenge and Hume's admission that his own answer will not be satisfactory to the knave. The charms of official Humeanjustice, Gauthierconcludes, are spurious, sincethe "anatomy" of the account of the rational motivation to be just is known to be unsound. "The sensible knave's message is thathuman society... lacks any moral foundation." Volume XVIII Number 2 429 ANNETTE C. BAIER This is a sombre tale. One of its unwelcome implications is that Hume himself, really believing that the knave is right, but unwilling tobe seen tohave the bad grace to "dehver a theory, however true which... leads to a practice dangerous and pernicious," is simply trying to "sink" the knave's truth in oblivion by creating a smoke-screen of insincere rhetoric about the greater delights of consciousness of integrity over the knave's satisfaction in his ill-gotten gains. So there really are two sombre tales—one, attributed to Hume, about justice, and one about Hume's dupUcity (or is it mere cynical frivolity?): Gauthier crafts both stories beautifully, directing our attention to bits ofHume's text injust the right order for his dramatic purposes. But is he giving us truth or fiction? I completely agree with Gauthier's version of Hume's official Treatise story, that the moral obligation to justice supervenes on the "natural obligation" for which Hume believes the natural motivation to be collectively redirected self- (or family) interest.2 1 agree that there are one or two passages, especially in the Treatise section, "Of the obUgation of promises," that seem to jar with this account, and which much somehow be explained. I agree that Hume believes that his reply to the knave is, from the knave's point ofview, unsatisfactory. Now for some disagreements. First, about Hume's reply to the knave.3From the viewpointofthevirtuous dues-payingmemberof"the party of humankind," Hume's is a perfectly satisfactory reply. It will be plain truth, for a person with the other Humean virtues (including equity, which is listed as a natural virtue),4 that justice will bring as great or greater good than would judicious injustice. Even if it would be "simply preposterous" to believe that the social order is dangerously threatened by any... (shrink)

In this paper, I defend the view that it is wrong for us to consume only, or overwhelmingly, media that broadly aligns with our own political viewpoints: that is, it is wrong to be politically “partisan” in our decisions about what media to consume. We are obligated to consume media that aligns with political viewpoints other than our own – to “diversify our sources”. This is so even if our own views are, as a matter of fact, substantively correct.

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)

It is uncontroversial that our engagement with artworks is constrained by obligations; most commonly, these consist in obligations to other persons, such as artists, audiences, and owners of artworks. A more controversial claim is that we have genuine obligations to artworks themselves. I defend a qualified version of this claim. However, I argue that such obligations do not derive from the supposed moral rights of artworks – for no such rights exist. Rather, I argue that these (...) obligations are instances of duties of love: obligations that one incurs in virtue of loving some object, be it a person or, in this case, an artwork. (shrink)

Our knowledge of the human brain and the influence of pharmacological substances on human mental functioning is expanding. This creates new possibilities to enhance personality and character traits. Psychopharmacological enhancers, as well as other enhancement technologies, raise moral questions concerning the boundary between clinical therapy and enhancement, risks and safety, coercion and justice. Other moral questions include the meaning and value of identity and authenticity, the role of happiness for a good life, or the perceived threats to humanity. Identity and (...) authenticity are central in the debate on psychopharmacological enhancers. In this paper, I first describe the concerns at issue here as extensively propounded by Carl Elliott. Next, I address David DeGrazia’s theory, which holds that there are no fundamental identity-related and authenticity-related arguments against enhancement technologies. I argue, however, that DeGrazia’s line of reasoning does not succeed in settling these concerns. His conception of identity does not seem able to account for the importance we attach to personal identity in␣cases where personal identity is changed through enhancement technology. Moreover, his conception of authenticity does not explain the reason why we find inauthentic values objectionable. A broader approach to authenticity can make sense of concerns about changes in personal identity by means of enhancement technologies. (shrink)

In this paper, I respond to questions Sticker and Saunders raise about integrating third-personal interactions within my phenomenological first-personal account of moral obligatedness. Sticker argues that third-personal interactions are more central for grounding moral obligatedness than I admit. Saunders turns things around and suggests we might not even be able to access third-personal interactions with others at the level one would need to in order to secure proper moral interactions with them. I argue in response that both these challenges misunderstand (...) something about my phenomenological first-personal account of the grounding of moral obligation. Sticker assumes that I make absolutely no room for third-personal interactions as important for morality, but that is not the case. And Saunders assumes that first-, second- and third-personal interactions demand phenomenological access to oneself and others as transcendentally free, but I deny that claim. I will consider each of these challenges in turn. (shrink)