Introduction: The Nexus of Imperfect Duty and the Ethical Norm

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Richard M. Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Imperfect Duty ◽  
Ethical Norm

Imperfect Duty: Lawyers’ Obligation to Foster Access to Justice

2008 ◽  
pp. 107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice Woolley
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Policy Response ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Legal Services ◽  
Imperfect Duty ◽  
Special Obligation ◽  
Legal Market ◽  
Integral Component

Access to justice is an integral component of the legal system. However, the question of upon whose shoulders the obligation of ensuring this access should fall has been widely debated. In particular, do lawyers, as part ofthe legalprofession, have a special obligation to foster access to justice? In this article, the author explores the legitimacy of various arguments with respect to whether lawyers should carry this obligation to a greater extent than other members of society. The author begins by critiquing the traditional arguments related to imposing such an obligation on lawyers — for instance, the refined monopoly arguments. She then goes on to critically consider an alternative argument: that imperfections in the marketfor legal services justify the existence of a special obligation for lawyers. An examination of the limitations of this justification follows. Overall, the author concludes that while the arguments arising from imperfections in the legal market offer the best justification for seeing lawyers have a special obligation to ensure access tojustice, the claims from the argument are modest ones, and any policy response in furtherance of such an obligation should be similarly modest.

Noncompliers’ Duties

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anja Karnein
Keyword(s):  
Climate Justice ◽  
Imperfect Duty ◽  
Moral Agents

This chapter examines in what sorts of situation noncompliers, of which there are many in the climate justice context, can be thought to have duties—apart from the duty to comply—and how these duties ought best be described. It problematizes the unclear status of a duty that tells an agent what to do in cases where she is not doing what she ought to and reviews four possible ways to circumvent this “status problem” when explaining the presence of duties for noncompliers. Only one of these positions can show that noncompliers have duties because they failed to comply and not simply because they are moral agents. This position considers all duties to be accompanied by the imperfect duty of beneficence. When the former are not complied with, the latter remains but changes in significance. It is this position, or so this chapter maintains, that most plausibly captures our intuitions.

Humanitarian Intervention as a Duty

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kok-Chor Tan
Keyword(s):  
Humanitarian Intervention ◽  
The Other ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Imperfect Duty ◽  
Humanitarian Emergencies ◽  
Personal Cost

Assuming an international commitment to intervene in severe and urgent humanitarian emergencies, as expressed by the doctrine ‘The Responsibility to Protect’, I discuss two objections that the duty to intervene is nonetheless a duty that is easily limited by other moral considerations. One objection is that this duty will exceed the reasonable limits of any obligation given the high personal cost of intervention. The other objection is that any duty to intervene will be an imperfect duty, and therefore not a duty that is ascribed to and demandable of any specific actor. I will argue that these objections do not undermine the principle of the responsibility to protect.

KANT ON IMPERFECT DUTY AND SUPEREROGATION

Kant-Studien ◽  
1971 ◽  
Vol 62 (1-4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas E. Jr. Hill
Keyword(s):  
Imperfect Duty

An Ethos of Deconstruction in Multi-Cultural and Multi-Religious Contexts

2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 368-385
Author(s):  
Johann-Albrecht Meylahn
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Values ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Local Context ◽  
Traditional Practices ◽  
Ethical Norm ◽  
Ethical Conflicts ◽  
Textual Space ◽  
Alternative Practices ◽  
Dominant Narratives

The essay will focus on the role of Derrida’s différance in opening a space for an alternative ethos in religious or cultural plural contexts. In postcolonial contexts individual human rights, as the universal norm, is challenged by religious and cultural traditional practices. Some of the traditional practices are incompatible with individual rights and this is aggravated in a postmodern context as there is no universal meta-narrative to arbitrate between the conflicting practices. The result of this conflict is often a stalemate between the universal rights of individuals, often marginal individuals (children, homosexuals and women), over against religious and cultural values and traditions of the particular local context or religious or cultural group. The question this article focuses on is how deconstruction can help to move beyond such ethical conflicts. The article proposes that deconstruction can offer a way of reading, interpreting and understanding these cultural practices within their contexts, by taking the various practices (texts) within their contexts seriously as there is no beyond the text. This reading creates an inter-textual space between the various dominant narratives for the emergence of an alternative ethos. This emerging ethos is not presented as the ethical norm, but rather as an open, expectant attitude towards all the texts involved. This attitude can maybe open the space for alternative practices beyond the stalemate in multi-religious and multi-cultural contexts.

scholarly journals The paradox of imperfect duty in Kant's moral philosophy: A problem in 'applying' ethics'

2015 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 540-564
Author(s):  
Phillip Richter
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Applied Ethics ◽  
Discourse Ethics ◽  
Kantian Ethics ◽  
Imperfect Duty ◽  
Helping Others ◽  
Metaphysics Of Morals

The Applied Ethics debate has not yet sufficiently clarified what application of ethics exactly is. The issue of application is considered to be especially problematic in Kantian ethics or in discourse ethics. This article describes the concept of applying ethics in Kant. In discussing the duty of helping others and the theory of its application in Metaphysics of Morals it is shown that a strict separation of justification and application in ethical theory results in the paradox of imperfect duty. The paradox says that the duty to help others would be fulfilled without ever being fulfilled in action. To overcome the paradox it is necessary to form submaximes of helping, which are not arbitrarily but instructed by a theory of casuistry. This casuistry, if it is considered as a doctrine of application in Kantian ethics, can overcome the paradox of imperfect duty. However, the casuistry can overcome this paradox only if it is understood as a philosophy of prudence, which can be found in Aristotle or Descartes.

The (Not So) Imperfect Duty of Beneficence

1996 ◽  
pp. 105-122
Author(s):  
David Cummiskey
Keyword(s):  
Imperfect Duty

Due Care

2021 ◽  
pp. 50-70
Author(s):  
Barbara Herman
Keyword(s):  
Moral Agency ◽  
Imperfect Duty ◽  
Moral Value ◽  
Moral Motive

This chapter explores the imperfect duty of non-negligence or due care. It is a complex secondary duty that regulates the performance of primary duties. Its norms of attention and execution are responsive to a primary duty’s interpreted value. Due care often requires motivational capacities that track moral value across complex circumstances of action—a claim inconsistent with a dictum that duties cannot impose requirements that depend on motive. Middle Work 3 argues that the dictum depends on a rejectable view of motive, one modeled on a modular account of simple desires. The idea of a system motive is introduced as an affective organization that make an agent responsive to a region of value. This makes a moral motive an agential response to moral value and moral agency a motive-involved competence. We can then have a motive-involved duty without having a duty to have a motive.

Intentionality Attributions About Perfect and Imperfect Duty Violations

2010 ◽  
Vol 150 (2) ◽  
pp. 198-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamie S. Hughes ◽  
David Trafimow
Keyword(s):  
Imperfect Duty
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