The scope of our natural duties

Journal of Social Philosophy

Volumn 29, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 87-96

  Tunick, Mark ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84887957914     PISSN: 00472786     EISSN: 14679833     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9833.1998.tb00109.x     Document Type: Review

References (12)

1. Jeremy Waldron, 'Special Ties and Natural Duties', Philosophy and Public Affairs 22:1 (Winter 1993), p. 3.
2. Ibid., p. 5 note 10; citing Ronald Dworkin, Law's Empire (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni- versity Press, 1986), p. 193.
3. This is one of the objections A. J. Simmons makes of John Rawls's earlier version of the natural duty position; see Moral Principles and Political Obligations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), 143-56. 'Waldron, p. 10; cf. p. 17.
4. "Is morally bound" is ambiguous. It might mean either "morally ought to" or "has a moral obligation to." Obligation implies a particular binding relationship-one of the roots of "obligation" is ligare, "to bind." See Richard Brandt, "The Concepts of Obligation and Duty," Mind 73:374-93 (1964), p. 386
5. Brandt, however, notes that there are correct uses of 'obligation' where the idea of such a bond is not present (p. 387). Waldron is casual about the use of 'obligation', 'dut/, and 'must'. For discussion of how the concepts these words point to are distinct from each other and from the moral ought, see, in addition to Brandt, Richard Dagger, "What is Political Obligation," American Political Science Review 71:1 (1977), 86-87
6. Carole Pateman, The Problem of Political Obligation: A Critique of Liberal Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985, orig. 1979), 28;
7. Richard Flathman, Political Obligation (New York: Atheneum, 1972), 34-39;
8. James Mish'alani, "'Dut/, 'Obligation' and 'Oughf," Analysis 30:2 (Dec. 1969), 39
9. and A.J. Simmons, Moral Principles and Political Obligation (Princeton, NJ: P.U.P., 1979), 7-9
10. New York Times, "Documents Expose French-Nazi Complicity," April 7,1993, p. A1.
11. One striking statement of how the adjective 'natural' mystifies is given by Jeremy Bentham in his Anarchical Fallacies, "A Critical Examination of the Declaration of Rights," Art. II, where he refers to 'natural rights' as "terrorist language."
12. This ambiguity, that the theory can be construed to demand obedience only of just laws, but also of particular unjust laws that are part of a just state, can be read into Rawls's earlier formulation of the natural duty theory in A Theory of Justice. Rawls says (a) we have a duty to support and comply with just institutions; but also (b) if the basic structure of society is just, then we have a duty to support the existing scheme (p. 115).