If there is a duty of justice to contribute to society, which asks individuals to produce a specific amount of goods and services that can be redistributed, we need a decision-procedure to know when we have done our part. This paper analyses and critically assesses the commonly suggested decision-procedure of relying on market prices to measure the value of one’s contribution. It is usually assumed that a high salary indicates that one’s talents are put to good use, but (...) this presupposes both that market prices of labour are correct reflections of supply and demand, and that market prices are correct reflections of social value. I criticise both assumptions and argue that the social value of a contribution cannot simply be a function of its market value, but is also influenced by the principles of justice that support the duty to contribute. Further, the market solution is incapable of valuing contributions that lack market prices, like non-marketised care labour. The market solution thus fails as a decision-procedure under other than special circumstances. This does not mean, however, that we need to give up the idea of a duty to contribute. (shrink)

Problems in normative ethics paradigmatically concern what it is obligatory or permissible for an individual to do. Yet sometimes, each of us ought to do something individually in virtue of what we ought to do together. Unfortunately, traversing these two different levels at which a moral obligation can arise – individual and collective – is fraught with difficulties that easily lure us into conclusions muddying our understanding of collective obligations. This paper seeks to clearly lay out a systematic problem central (...) to the relation between collective and individual duties in view of alleviating some such confusion and facilitating more concerted attempts at resolving it: Collective duties require individuals to act in order for the collective duty to be fulfilled. Yet typically, a collective duty does not entail any one set of individual duties that would prescribe such contributory actions: The work we need to do in order to fulfil a duty can be allocated differently to the individuals collectively bearing it. Much like in matters of distributive justice, then, deriving individual duties from a collective one requires us to employ a distributive scheme, which raises separate normative concerns that have rarely taken centre stage in the debate so far. (shrink)

This article analyses teaching reflection skills as a means to inculcate students’ capacity to contribute to justice. Arising out of understandings of professionalism, the rule of law, as well as m...

The book is comprised of three components. The first component analyses the creative contribution to the theory of imperatives and norms provided by 20th-century Polish researchers. The second component summarizes their reflections and considerations. The third component is an anthology of the classic writings of Polish authors of the time; it constitutes an illustration of the first part and indicates that their research covered practically the whole scope of this theory. Author Jacek Jadacki (born 1946) is professor at Warsaw University. (...) His scholarly production includes approximately hundred works spanning almost every domain in philosophy: from logic, through ontology, epistemology, aesthetics and ethics, to the history of these disciplines. Among his more than twenty books are Possible Ontologies (with Zdzislaw Augustynek; 1993), From the Viewpoint of the Lvov-Warsaw School (2003), and Polish Analytical Philosophy (2009). His pupils include such well-known figures of modern Polish thought as Anna Brozek, Mariusz Grygianiec, Joanna Odrowaz-Sypniewska, and Mieszko Talasiewicz. (shrink)

Anwander questions "the role that Pogge assigns to benefiting from injustice in the determination of our duties toward the victims of injustice... challenging his claim that there is a negative duty not to benefit from injustice.".

Abstract: In this brief article, I claim that the Contribution Principle invoked by Christian Barry as a key principle for determining who owes what to the global destitute is mistaken as a definitive principle and unjustified as a provisional principle for dealing with global poverty. This principle assumes that merely causing, or contributing to the cause of, a state of affairs may be sufficient to have a special responsibility to bear the costs that this state of affairs entails. I argue (...) that an agent will only have such a special responsibility if he or she has caused a state of affairs (for example, acute destitution) by violating a duty not to do so. Therefore, the Contribution Principle is mistaken. Finally, I tackle two possible responses to my argument. The first claims that states have a duty not to undertake actions that may cause, or contribute to the cause of, acute deprivations. The second claims that although the Contribution Principle may be mistaken as a definitive principle for dealing with global destitution, it is nonetheless correct as a provisional principle. (shrink)

Arguments for a duty to vote face the particularity problem—that is, they must show that voting in particular is the only way for citizens to achieve the relevant moral goal (e.g., promote the common good or avoid complicity in injustice), such that the goal cannot be achieved by activities other than voting. Kevin Elliott attempts to overcome the particularity problem by defending a universal duty to vote on the grounds that universal voter turnout is needed to ensure that (...) democratic institutions function properly. We argue that Elliott’s attempt is unsuccessful. It is unable to explain why citizens may not promote turnout without voting; moreover, it does not establish that democratic institutions are morally special, such that citizens are obligated to contribute to them but not to other valuable institutions. (shrink)

I argue that ascribing duties to the poor better realizes Deveaux’s methodological and normative commitments; address some of the concerns such ascription raises; and indicate how Deveaux’s rich description of collective and individual agency-building can contribute to theorizing moral agency in non-ideal circumstances more generally.

Thomas Pogge has argued that we have strong negative duties to assist the global poor because we harm them through our contribution to the global economic order. I argue that Pogge’s concept of harm is indeterminate. The resources of any group will typically be affected by at least two economic schemes. Pogge suggests that the responsibility for any affected group’s shortfall from a minimum standard ought to be shared between the contributing schemes. I argue that shared responsibility can be interpreted (...) in two different ways. Unfortunately, both interpretations are problematic. Lastly, I suggest a strategy for amending this problem. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to shed light on some of the most original elements of Fichte’s conception of morality as expressed in his account of specific obligations. After some remarks on Fichte’s original classification of ethical duties, the paper focuses on the prohibition of lying, the duty to communicate our true knowledge, and the duty to set a good example. Fichte’s account of those duties not only goes beyond the mere justification of universally acknowledged demands, but (...) also deploys different arguments than his contemporaries, most notably Kant. Fichte thereby sketches a conception of morality in which the agent is crucially required to contribute to the morality of others. The chapter explores the contrast between Fichte’s view and Kant’s thought of an end in itself and suggests that Fichte’s view of morality amounts to a form of normative perfectionism that is qualified by the underlying claim of the agent-neutral character of moral demands. (shrink)

Ever since the publication of Singer’s (1972) article on ‘Famine, Affluence, and Morality’ have debates about duties to the distant needy been marked by a high degree of controversy. Most contributors discuss how duties are established or influenced by the fact that those in need of help can be geographically close or distant. In other words, they debate the problem of duty and distance from the perspective of duties. Here, we change tack and put the concept of distance at (...) the centre of the analysis. We ask: what precisely is the definition and role of geographical distance in the different contributions? We argue that a distinction between empirical and moral disagreement over geographical distance clarifies several important aspects of the debate. The analysis also sheds new light on duties in the current European refugee crisis. (shrink)

Although actions of individuals do contribute to climate change, the question whether or not they, too, are morally obligated to reduce the GHG emissions in their responsibility has not yet been addressed sufficiently. First, I discuss prominent objections to such a duty. I argue that whether individuals ought to reduce their emissions depends on whether or not they exceed their fair share of emission rights. In a next step I discuss several proposals for establishing fair shares and also (...) take practical considerations into account. I conclude that individuals should not always be obliged to reduce their emissions to what is their fair share for they may depend on carbon-intensive structures. Instead, they have a Kantian imperfect duty to reduce their emissions ‘as far as can reasonably be demanded of them’. In addition, they should press governments to introduce proper regulation. At the end, I further specify both duties. (shrink)

Is there a moral requirement to assist wild animals suffering due to natural causes? According to the laissez-faire intuition, although we may have special duties to assist wild animals, there are no general requirements to care for them. If this view is right, then our positive duties toward wild animals can be only special, grounded in special circumstances. In this article I present the contribution argument which employs the thought that the receipt of benefits from wild animals is one such (...) kind of special circumstance. If this argument is correct, then the circle of moral agents required to assist some wild animals is significantly widened. (shrink)

In this Symposium contribution, I argue that ordinary moral discourse recognizes six categories of morally significant actions: positively obligatory actions ; negatively obligatory actions ; supererogatory actions ; suberogatory actions ; quasi-supererogatory actions ; and amoral or morally neutral actions . As I argue, super-, sub-, and quasi-supererogatory actions paradoxically rely upon the existence of "non-obligatory oughts"--moral injunctions to do what as a moral matter we need not do. The remainder of the article is devoted to developing a theory that (...) makes these non-obligatory oughts coherent. The theory that I advance distinguishes deontic duties from aretaic duties, and derives the oughts of super- and suberogation from our aretaic duties to develop certain dispositions or character traits. As I argue, our aretaic duties require us to perform actions that are deontically supererogatory and to refrain from actions that are deontically suberogatory. Only if we conceive of super- and suberogation as simultaneously governed by deontic permissions and aretaic obligations can we make sense of the dual claims implicit in daily gossip that we are obligated to cultivate such virtues as kindness and generosity, and that kindness and generosity consist in doing what we are not obligated to do. As the title elliptically suggests, the article thus advances the claim that we have duties to go beyond the call of duty. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering is the process of assessing and improving our conceptual repertoire. Some authors have claimed that introducing or revising concepts through conceptual engineering can go as far as expanding the realm of thinkable thoughts and thus enable us to form beliefs, hypotheses, wishes, or desires that we are currently unable to form. If true, this would allow conceptual engineers to contribute to solving stubborn problems – problems that cannot be solved with our current ways of thinking. We call (...) this kind of conceptual engineering heavy-duty conceptual engineering. As exciting as the idea of heavy-duty conceptual engineering sounds, it has never been developed or defended. In this paper, we pursue a two-fold goal. First, to offer a theory of heavy-duty conceptual engineering that distinguishes it from other kinds of conceptual engineering; second, to show that heavy-duty conceptual engineering is possible, both in theory and in practice, and to explain how it can be applied in the service of solving stubborn problems. The central idea is that heavy-duty conceptual engineering can enhance the semantic expressive power of a conceptual system by the use of bootstrapping processes. (shrink)

In “Epistemological Duties,” Richard Feldman uses three main questions to illuminate the topic of epistemological duties. What are our epistemological duties? After suggesting that epistemological duties pertain to the development of appropriate cognitive attitudes, Feldman asks What makes a duty epistemological? and How do epistemological duties interact with other kinds of duties? His pursuit of contributes to his response to in that he uses it to argue that a concept of distinctly epistemological duty must exclude practical and moral (...) duties that pertain to belief, and include only duties that pertain to epistemological success. (shrink)

Does the failure of others to comply with collective duties create duties for us to step in and do their share? Defenders of the so-called duty to take up the slack answer this question in the positive. Against their view, defenders of fair shares argue that we only have a duty to contribute our fair share to discharging the collective duty. This paper offers a partial vindication of Liam Murphy’s account of fair shares. I argue that (...) three common objections to fair shares fail to rebut Murphy’s account. On the reading I propose, fair shares may ground as – or more – extensive duties towards third parties as the duty to take up the slack. In addition, fair shares provides something that defenses of slack-taking tend to omit – an account of the limits of our nonideal duties. The paper highlights previously overlooked aspects of Murphy’s account and paves the way for future discussions about slack-taking in the domain of global politics. (shrink)

Some harms are such that they cannot be prevented by a single individual because she lacks the requisite control. Because of this, no individual has the obligation to do so. It may be, however, that the harm can be prevented when several individuals combine their efforts. I argue that in many such situations each individual has a duty to join forces: to approach others, convince them to contribute, and subsequently make a coordinated effort to prevent the harm. A (...) distinctive feature of this proposal is that, in the first instance, it focuses on mobilizing others rather than on preventing the outcome. As it ultimately concerns a collective harm, the duty to join forces is irreducibly collective. Furthermore, once enough people have been mobilized, they have a collective obligation to prevent the harm that is irreducibly collective also because it applies to the collective as such. (shrink)

This contribution asks how to approach the question of whether the European Union should – replacing or supplementing member states – also be a locus of social justice‐based duties to provide welfare state services. The contribution scrutinizes two important theories of global justice (cosmopolitan and relational theories) and finds that their normative assumptions hinder them from adequately addressing this question. A new theory is proposed, inspired by Immanuel Kant's political philosophy. The core idea is that social justice requires public authorities (...) to protect citizens against private forms of coercion; and that the level (national, European, global) at which such authority needs to be exercised depends on which arrangement best protects citizens' rights to independence. The paper outlines several duties of global justice to give specificity to this general principle, and then applies them to the case of integrating European welfare states. (shrink)

Clinicians have good moral and professional reasons to contribute to pragmatic clinical trials (PCTs). We argue that clinicians have a defeasible duty to participate in this research that takes place in usual care settings and does not involve substantive deviation from their ordinary care practices. However, a variety of countervailing reasons may excuse clinicians from this duty in particular cases. Yet because there is a moral default in favor of participating, clinicians who wish to opt out of (...) this research must justify their refusal. Reasons to refuse include that the trial is badly designed in some way, that the trial activities will violate the clinician’s conscience, or that the trial will impose excessive burdens on the clinician. (shrink)

Many political theorists argue that immigration restrictions are unjust and defend broadly open borders. In this paper, I examine the implications of this view for individual conduct. In particular, I argue that the citizens of states that enforce unjust immigration restrictions have duties to disobey certain immigration laws. States conscript their citizens to help enforce immigration law by imposing legal duties on these citizens to monitor, report, and refrain from interacting with unauthorized migrants. If an ideal of open borders is (...) true, these laws are unjust. Furthermore, if citizens comply with their legal duties, they contribute to violating the rights of migrants. We are obligated to refrain from contributing to rights-violations. So, citizens are obligated to disobey immigration laws. I defend the moral requirement to disobey immigration laws against the objection that disobedience to the law is excessively risky and the objection that citizens have political obligations to obey the law. (shrink)

This article focuses on the moral assumptions underpinning the notion of social responsibility implied in the above slogan. It critically examines arguments which derive obligations to meet needs from shared moral agency and from social relations of reciprocity. Obligations to contribute according to ability are established by a series of arguments which justify regarding undeserved natural abilities and socially produced abilities as common assets, and which demonstrate that under certain conditions the maxim ‘ought implies can’ is reversible as ‘can (...) implies ought’. The problem of motivation and voluntary action is tackled by arguing that there are intrinsic and extrinsic incentives to contribute unconnected with special rewards and that moral incentives replace material incentives to produce.The notion of responsibility is an essential concept for social life, but since its justification and adoption depends on an inclusive moral community with overlapping ends and purposes, it is not surprising that the duty to contribute is absent from liberal theory, and had no positive connotations in liberal society. Politicians of every hue are increasingly appealing to the responsibilities citizens are expected to fulfil; yet they fail to account for the conditions for their development and exercise. For this reason, the assumptions expressed in the socialist slogan are an important corrective to liberal perspectives. (shrink)

In this paper I apply a suitably developed version of Joseph Raz’s service conception of authority to the debate over the legitimacy of state action aiming to fulfill cosmopolitan moral obligations. I aim to advance two interrelated theses. First, viewed from the perspective of Raz’s service conception of authority, citizens’ moral duties to non-compatriots are an appropriate ground for authoritative intervention by agents of the state. Second, international law based on these duties can also enjoy moral authority over government decision (...) makers. An important source of the moral force of international law is derived from the power of international law to improve officials’ ability to recognize and conform to the totality of their reasons, which contributes to their states’ legitimacy. (shrink)

This paper is the introduction to a collection I guest-edited called Positive Duties to Wild Animals. The collection contains single-authored contributions from Catia Faria, Josh Milburn, Eze Paez, and Jeff Sebo; and co-authored contributions from Mara-Daria Cojocaru and Alasdair Cochrane, and Oscar Horta and Dayrón Terán. It was published as a special issue of Ethics, Policy and Environment.

The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was designed to increase health insurance coverage in the United States. Its most controversial feature is the requirement that US residents purchase health insurance. Opponents of the mandate argue that requiring people to contribute to the collective good is inconsistent with respect for individual liberty. Rather than appeal to the collective good, this Viewpoint argues for a duty to buy health insurance based on the moral duty individuals have to (...) reduce certain burdens they pose on others. When some people have a duty to rescue, others may have a duty to take rescue precautions, in this case, to purchase health insurance to cover acute and emergency care needs. Requiring that individuals meet this obligation is consistent with respect of individual liberty. (shrink)

In this paper I would like to make a contribution to the debate on rights-talk and duties-talk relationship and priority by addressing the problem from a peculiar angle: that of moral conflicts and dilemma. My working hypothesis is that it should be possible to identify some basic and relevant normative features of rights-talk and duties-talk by observing how they modify the description of moral conflicts. I will try to show that both rights and duties posses original and irreducible normative features, (...) and that these latter can be employed in a general assessment of their pro and con. I will first show the conceptual relationship between rights and duties, analyzing in the process a deflationary argument for rights. Second, I will define the general features of moral conflict and dilemma. I will then analyze the different readings that can be given, taking rights or duties as standpoints, of two kinds of moral conflicts: «asymmetric» and «symmetric» conflicts. (shrink)

It has become increasingly common to point out that African morality is under-represented in ethical theorizing. However, it is less common to find arguments that this under-representation is unjustified. This latter claim tends to be simply assumed. In this paper I draw together arguments for this claim. In doing so, I make the case that the relative lack of attention paid to African moral ideas conflicts with epistemic and ethical values. In order to correct these shortcomings, moral theorists, broadly construed (...) as including descriptive and normative disciplines, have a duty to engage with and actively explore African moral ideas. I claim that Moral Foundations Theory is well suited to a descriptive exploratory project, and could provide a significant contribution to normative, African-derived moral theories that could be epistemically and ethically superior to their Western counterparts. (shrink)

The Mīmāṃsā school of Indian philosophy has for its main purpose the interpretation of injunctions that are found in a set of sacred texts, the Vedas. In their works, Mīmāṃsā authors provide some of the most detailed and systematic examinations available anywhere of statements with a deontic force; however, their considerations have generally not been registered outside of Indological scholarship. In the present article we analyze the Mīmāṃsā theory of Vedic injunctions from a logical and philosophical point of view. The (...) theory at issue can be regarded as a system of reasoning based on certain fundamental principles, such as the distinction between strong and weak duties, and on a taxonomy of ritual actions. We start by reconstructing the conceptual framework of the theory and then move to a formalization of its core aspects. Our contribution represents a new perspective to study Mīmāṃsā and outlines its relevance, in general, for deontic reasoning. (shrink)

The relationship between memory and history, which has preoccupied historiography and the philosophy of history since the middle of the nineteenth century, took a particular course in France at the end of the millennium. The forms this relationship took in this particular context have been the subject of heated debate around whether the reconstruction of the past should bear the sign of a moral imperative or, on the contrary, it should be kept away from any moral conditioning. To address this (...) question and underline its particular relevance to the present, I will revisit a significant debate, based around Paul Ricoeur’s interpretation of the duty of memory developed in his book Memory, History, Forgetting. I will do this by means of a three-step approach. First, a short introduction will provide several guidelines for understanding the issues at stake in the debate in which Ricoeur was caught and explanations regarding the significance of the main notions around which the discussions took place, i.e., the duty and work of memory. Second, I will identify how historical debates, political decisions and civic concerns about the past gradually coagulated into two different “camps” in France during the 1980s and 1990s, i.e., the advocates of memory against those of history, foreshadowing the emergence of a historiographical crisis, the stakes of which I will analyse in detail. Finally, I will show how Ricoeur’s solution to this debate, i.e., an incomplete dialectic between the duty and the work of memory, developed on the horizon of justice, continues to have relevance for the present, being an innovative form of “defatalizing” the past. (shrink)

The notion of patients’ duties has received periodic scholarly attention but remains overwhelmed by attention to the duties of healthcare professionals. In a previous paper the author argued that patients in publicly funded healthcare systems have a duty to participate in clinical research, arising from their debt to previous patients. Here the author proposes a greatly extended range of patients’ duties grounding their moral force distinctively in the interests of contemporary and future patients, since medical treatment offered to one (...) patient is always liable to be an opportunity cost in terms of medical treatment needed by other patients. This generates both negative and positive duties. Ten duties—enjoining obligations ranging from participation in healthcare schemes to promoting one’s own earliest recovery from illness—are proposed. The characteristics of these duties, including their basis, moral force, extent and enforceability, are considered. They are tested against a range of objections—principled, societal, epistemological and practical—and found to survive. Finally, the paper suggests that these duties could be thought to reinforce a regrettably adversarial characteristic, shared with rights-based approaches, and that a preferable alternative might be sought through the notion of a “virtuous patient” contributing to a problem-solving partnership with the clinician. However, in defining and giving content to that partnership, there is a clear role for most, if not all, of the proposed duties; their value thus extends beyond the adversarial context in which they might first be thought to arise. (shrink)

Is voting a duty of democratic citizenship? This article advances a new argument for the existence of a duty to vote. It argues that every normative account of electoral representation requires universal turnout to function in line with its own internal normative logic. This generates a special obligation for citizens to vote in electoral representative contexts as a function of the role morality of democratic citizenship. Because voting uniquely authorizes office holding in representative democracies, and because universal turnout (...) contributes powerfully to representation being fair, to be a good citizen of such democracies requires one to vote. Whereas previous arguments for a duty to vote have invoked basic moral principles like fairness or a Samaritan duty of rescue, this account is based on citizens occupying a vital functional role within electoral representative institutions. This institutional duty solves the “specificity problem” of justifying a duty to vote better than competing accounts and also immunizes the duty to objections that there is no duty to vote when there are only bad choices and that there is a no duty to vote but rather duty to vote well. By emphasizing the tight connection between institutions and individual conduct, the role morality approach used here supplies a less abstract and more realistic framework than much previous research on the ethics of democratic citizenship and brings the debate closer to constitutive features of democratic politics. (shrink)

Structural injustice is injustice produced by largescale social structures and processes that create systemic disadvantages for large groups of people. Individuals have duties to counteract structural injustice. These duties are more demanding for people privileged by unjust social structures than for non-privileged individuals, even when the latter have equal ability to contribute. What explains this? I review and reject two common explanations, i.e., the Reparation Account and the Restitution Account. I offer a third view, the Domination Account; it holds (...) that the privileged have more demanding duties because they pose a constant threat of domination to non-privileged individuals by virtue of their structural positions. (shrink)

Here I pursue two main aims: (1) to articulate and defend a Kantian conception of duties to self, and (2) to explore the ramifications of such duties for the moral justification of paternalism. I conclude that there is a distinctive reason to resent paternalistic intercessions aimed at assisting others in fulfilling their duties to self (or the self-regarding virtues necessary thereunto), based on the fact that the goods realized via their fulfillment are historical, i.e., their value depends on an individual's (...) casual contribution to their fulfillment. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on the question of who has duties regarding poverty and what those duties demand, from within the perspective of contemporary analytic normative philosophy. The chapter is structured in three sections. Section 1 considers the duties of those living in poverty, which might be either self-regarding or other-regarding duties, and which must be tempered by concerns of overdemandingness. Section 2 considers the duties of affluent individuals. These are imperfect duties grounded in affluent individuals’ relations to the structures that (...) produce poverty: relations of contribution, benefit, and ability to change. Section 3 considers duties of collective agents – including states, for-profits, charities, and civil society groups. The poverty-related duties of these collective agents are sometimes perfect and sometimes imperfect, and include both primary and secondary duties, and both positive and negative duties. (shrink)

The societal benefits derived from competitive markets certainly depend upon participants conforming to generally accepted notions of moral duty. These notions include negative duties such as those against fraud, deception, and coercion and also positive duties such as those that favor beneficence but with limits. This investigation examines the extent that product, capital, and internal-labor markets are capable of imposing conformance to society’s expectations of duty through both formally and informally organized boycotts. A categorization of classic and recent (...) boycotts into those motivated by (i) establishing new norms, or (ii) enforcing existing generally accepted norms is provided. This categorization helps to explain why some boycotts are successful, and others not. Through this exploration, a contribution to the resolution of the so called “Adam Smith problem” concerning the morality-enforcing capability of the invisible hand is offered. (shrink)

It is widely accepted by the scientific community and beyond that human beings are primarily responsible for climate change and that climate change has brought with it a number of real problems. These problems include, but are not limited to, greater threats to coastal communities, greater risk of famine, and greater risk that tropical diseases may spread to new territory. In keeping with J. S. Mill's 'Harm Principle', green political theorists often respond that if we are contributing a harm to (...) others in contributing to climate change and its negative effects, we then have a negative duty to assist those we have harmed and to reduce our carbon emissions. In this paper, I will take seriously negative duties stemming from a contribution to climate change and demonstrate that our negative duties do not demand that we necessarily end our contribution to climate change if we were able to compensate those who may be affected by climate change. Thus, the conclusion of many green political theorists - that we must reduce our carbon emissions - does not necessarily follow from the view that humans are primarily responsible for climate change and its attended ill effects. (shrink)

Healthcare systems around the world are struggling to maintain a sufficient workforce to provide adequate care during the COVID-19 pandemic. Staffing problems have been exacerbated by healthcare workers (HCWs) refusing to work out of concern for their families. I sketch a deontological framework for assessing when it is morally permissible for HCWs to abstain from work to protect their families from infection and when it is a dereliction of duty to patients. I argue that it is morally permissible for (...) HCWs to abstain from work when their duty to treat is outweighed by the combined risks and burdens of that work. For HCWs who live with their families, the obligation to protect one’s family from infection contributes significantly to those burdens. There are, however, a range of complicating factors including the strength of duty to treat which varies according to the HCW’s role, the vulnerability of family members to the disease, the willingness of family members to risk infection and the resources available to the HCW to protect their family. In many cases, HCWs in ‘frontline’ roles with a weak duty to treat and families at home will be morally permitted to abstain from work given the risks posed by COVID-19; therefore, society should provide additional incentives to maintain sufficient staff in these roles. (shrink)

Justice is often viewed in terms of seeing to it that right-holders are provided with the goods that they are entitled to. Less attention is given to the other dimension of justice, namely, that of duty-holders. If persons are assigned more duties, or more burdensome duties, than fairness requires, then they are victims of injustice just as much as persons whose rights are left unfulfilled. In this essay, I will argue for certain limits to the duty to assist (...) people in need. My argument does not intend to show that we have no positive duties, but rather that these duties, whether they are of an interpersonal or a global, institutional kind, should be guided by an idea of fairness that pertains to the relations between duty-holders as well as between them and right-holders. I will discuss structural differences between negative and positive duties, as well as formulate a Principle of Contributive Fairness. (shrink)

Jews and Arabs in Israel often agree that there is a reciprocal relation between rights and duties, though they derive opposing conclusions from it. Jews infer that Arabs are not entitled to the same rights and privileges as Jews are, since they do not shoulder an equal share of the duties. Arabs, by contrast, argue that they are under no duty to share the burdens, particularly military or national service, since their rights are not fully respected. The Paper assesses (...) these opposing claims and ends up rejecting both. It argues that the rights to which citizens are entitled do not depend on citizens carrying out all their social or legal duties, while the citizens’ duty to contribute to the welfare of their countries by national service or other means is generally not contingent on the countries’ fulfillment of its duties towards them. The Paper focuses on national service by Israeli Arabs and suggests that that there is nothing wrong in making such service mandatory though there are practical considerations against doing so and that making such service optional is an excellent alternative, one that should be encouraged as much as possible. (shrink)

Individuals who demonstrate organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) contribute to their organization’s ability to create wealth, but they also owe their organizations a complex set of ethical duties. Although, the academic literature has begun to address the ethical duties owed by organizational leaders to organizational citizens, very little has been written about the duties owed by those who practice OCB to their organizations. In this article, we identify an array of ethical duties owed by those who engage in extra-role behavior (...) and describe those duties in context with personality theory. We suggest that employees who understand the complex nature of OCB and the associated duties they owe to others are more likely to reach their potential and make greater contributions within their organizations. (shrink)

If you can vote, you are morally obligated to do so. As political theorist Julia Maskivker argues, voting in order to improve our fellow citizens' lot is a duty of justice. It does not matter that individual votes may rarely tilt elections: the act of voting is a valuable contribution to a collective activity whose outcome is good governance, and we must do it in order to protect the rights and interests of our fellow citizens.

This article engages with Jaffey's recent contribution on the nature of no-prior-duty remedial obligations. Jaffey's use of a right-liability relation and his challenge to Hohfeld's analytical scheme are rejected as unsound. An alternative model distinguishing three pathways to account for remedial obligations and other legal consequences is proposed. This draws on the Hohfeldian scheme but extends it to permit the full expression of reflexive liabilities, mutually correlative liabilities, and the operation of nonhuman conditions. The proposed approach also recognizes a (...) weaker form of a Hohfeldian power, which is required in considering the way that the law deals with the allocation and realization of risk. (shrink)

Much has been written about the general moral duty to love one’s neighbors. In this article, I explore the specific application of this moral duty in the work setting. I argue from a secular perspective that individuals have the moral duty to love their stakeholders. Loving one’s stakeholders is an affective valuing of the stake-related values these stakeholders pursue and as such is the real recognition of one’s stakeholders as stakeholders and of oneself as a stakeholder of (...) one’s stakeholders. This moral concept of stakeholder love offers promising contributions to stakeholder theory, leadership theories, and ethical theories in general and business ethics theories in particular. (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)

This provocative study presents philological, philosophical, and historical arguments that with the Greek term καθῆκον and its Latin equivalent officium the ancient Stoics invented a new concept that anticipated the modern notion of moral duty, for example, Pflicht in Kant. Scholars began to shift from translating kathēkon as "duty" to translating it as "appropriate or fitting action" in the late 1800s, according to Visnjic. The usage of the verb kathēkein in Greek literature prior to the Stoics suggests to (...) him that it described something prescribed by law, tradition, or decree. Visnjic argues that the Stoics did not conceive of kathekonta as rules of conduct but as prescriptions specific to situations. They held that there are some universal duties, like believing in the gods, believing that the gods are benevolent guardians of humanity, and being a good person, but that such duties offer no concrete, practical guidance for determining how to act. The most innovative contribution of this work is the collection and collation of pieces of practical advice scattered throughout extant sources to devise a four-stage process of deliberation. The two chapters on Kant seem comparatively cursory. On the whole, this book, at times daringly inventive, is occasionally unapologetically speculative. (shrink)

Ethical problems in business include not only genuine moral dilemmas and compliance problems but also problems arising from the distinctive characteristics of imperfect duties. Collective action by business to perfect imperfect duties can yield significant benefits. Sucharrrangements can (1) reduce temptations to moral laxity, (2) achieve greater efficiency by eliminating redundancies and gaps that plague uncoordinated individual efforts, (3) reap economies of scale and achieve success where benefits can be provided only if a certain threshold of resources can be brought (...) to bear on a social problem; (4) solve assurance problems where voluntary compliance by some parties depends upon their perception that competitors are doing their fair share, and (5) produce higher levels of contribution than would occur through independent action in response to imperfect duties, stimulated by the perception that there is a fair distribution of burdens of contribution among all parties involved. (shrink)

This paper contributes to the discussion of the moral demandingness of Kantian ethics by critically discussing an argument that is currently popular among Kantians. The argument from the system of duties holds that (a) in the Kantian system of duties the demandingness of our duty of beneficence is internally moderated by other moral prescriptions, such as the indirect duty to secure happiness, duties to oneself and special obligations. Furthermore, proponents of this argument claim (b) that via these prescriptions (...) Kant’s system of duties incorporates into morality what current debates on (over-)demandingness call happiness and personal projects. These two claims are in conjunction supposed to establish that Kant’s ethics, at least when it comes to beneficence, is not plagued by the problem of excessive moral demands. We show that claims (a) and (b) are mistaken given what Kant says about beneficence, the application of imperfect duties and about emergencies. We finally argue that special obligations towards loved ones, a class of obligations largely overlooked by advocates of the system of duties, are the most promising candidates for internal moderation. These duties are, however, of a narrow scope. (shrink)

ABSTRACTJohn Harris suggests that participation in or support for research, particularly medical research, is a moral duty. One kind of defence of this position rests on an appeal to the past, and produces two arguments. The first of these arguments is that it is unfair to accept the benefits of research without contributing something back in the form of support for, or participation in, research. A second argument is that we have a social duty to maintain those practices (...) and institutions that sustain us, such as those which contribute to medical knowledge. This argument is related to the first, but it does not rely so heavily on fairness. Another kind of defence of the duty to research rests on an appeal to the future benefits of research: research is an effective way to discharge a duty to rescue others from serious illness or death, therefore we have a duty to research. I suggest that all three of Harris' lines fail to provide a compelling duty to research and spell out why. Moreover, not only do the lines of argument fail in their own terms: in combination, they turn out to be antagonistic to the very position that Harris wants to defend. While it is not my intention here to deny that there might be a duty to research, I claim that Harris' argument for the existence of such a duty is not the best way to establish it. (shrink)