duties and duties to oneself

Duties and Duties to OneselfAuthor(s): Marcus G. SingerSource: Ethics, Vol. 73, No. 2 (Jan., 1963), pp. 133-142Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2379555 .

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DUTIES AND DUTIES TO ONESELF

MARCUS G. SINGER

SINCE my earlier discussion of the concept of duties to oneself,1 no less than five

further discussions of the topic have ap- peared.2 Since a number of these raise objections that are very acute, I feel it incum- bent on me to attempt some sort of reply, and where I cannot meet the objections that have been made, to confess that I was in error. At least I may be able to clarify some points in my argument that I may not have made perfectly clear.

Briefly stated, my argument was basi- cally that it is actually impossible for there to be any duties to oneself, in any literal sense, for, if taken literally, the idea in- volves a contradiction. What are called "duties to oneself" are either not genuine moral duties at all, or, if they are, they are not duties to oneself. This argument was based essentially on the three following propositions: (1) If A has a duty to B, then B has a right against (or with respect to) A; (2) if B has a right against A, he can give it up and release A from the obligation; and (3) no one can release himself from an obligation. From this it followed, I argued, that if one could have a duty to oneself, then one would have a right against oneself-which would surely be nonsense- and furthermore that this alleged duty to oneself would be a "duty" from which one could release oneself at will, which is self- contradictory. I argued further that expressions in which such "duties" are imputed must be interpreted as metaphorical, and that the same applies to such expressions as "I promised myself to . . ." and "I owe it to myself to. . . ." My conclusion, then, was that to say that someone has a duty to himself to do something is an emphatic way of asserting that he has a right to do it and that it would be foolish or imprudent for him not to.

Now what I propose to do is to consider some of the main objections that have been made to this argument, as well as to some of the subsidiary points I made along the way.

Daniel Kading presents a number of in- genious examples designed to support the claim that it is not the case that if A has a duty to B, then B must be able to release A from this obligation.3 These examples do succeed, I think, in bringing out a vagueness inherent in the concept of a duty being relative to someone. However, I do not agree that they succeed in refuting the premises of my argument.

Kading's first example is the following:

Suppose A promises B to do x after B's death. We should certainly want to say that although B, after his death, cannot possibly release A, A does continue to have an obligation to B [p. 155].

But, in the first place, it is not true that B after his death cannot possibly release A from his obligation-this is a merely con- tingent matter. In the second place, B can certainly release A from his promise before his death. Moreover, after B's death, someone else may have the power to release A from the obligation. This may depend on just what A has promised to do, but Kading gives us no idea of the content of the promise he has in mind. Furthermore, is it so clear that, after B's death, A's obligation, which certainly continues, is to B? A's obligation may now be to another, perhaps to the person, if any, who stands to benefit by the performance of his duty, or perhaps to a trustee, or it may not be to anyone at all. The crucial question, which Kading does not raise, is whether we would say that B, after his death, has a right against A. I

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134 ETHICS

think not. But if B has no right against A, then A has no duty to B, and I do not notice that Kading brings any arguments to bear against this proposition.

Kading's second example is this:

Suppose B, skeptical of his own self-control and of his ability to acquire it, signs his prop- erty over to A, exacting from A the promise to give him a certain sum of money each week and to ignore all demands for a cancellation or modification of the promise. It seems possible to be obligated to someone even though no one has, or ever had, the right to grant a release [p. 155].

This, is, I must admit, a peculiar case, but it has ramifications that Kading has not ex- plored. Suppose A requests B to release him from his promise. B may not wish to do so, and may actually not, but surely he has the power to. Again, suppose B should after a time acquire more confidence in his self- control. Would he not then have the power to release A from the promise or obligation? Assuredly so, since one of the essential conditions of the agreement would have sub- stantially changed. And certainly a court would have the power to abrogate the ar- rangement, whether B has acquired further self-control or not. The proposition that, if B has a right against A, he can give it up and release A from his obligation, does not imply that B must always and in all circumstances retain the capacity or have the op- portunity of releasing A. It only implies that it is not self-contradictory to speak of his doing so. And this is why the fact of B's death would be irrelevant to the situation.

With regard to the last sentence of the preceding quotation, "It seems possible to be obligated to someone even though no one has, or ever had, the right to grant a release" ("power," incidentally, would be a better word here than "right"), consider the analogous case of a promise from which one could never be released, either by the person to whom one has made it or by anyone else. Imagine making a promise to do x and also never to ask for or to accept a release from the promise. Since this would entail

an infinite regress of promises, it makes no more sense than a provision in a statute for- ever preventing its repeal.4 Since no statute, and no promise, can have this self-protec- tive formulation, neither can any obligation resting on a promise or a contract.

The third example provided by Kading is this:

Suppose A promises B to do x and that B gives C the right to release A. Why should we not want to say that A is obligated to C? Evi- dently because it is B with whom A entered into agreement. Thus the essential requirement seems unrelated to the possibility of obtaining a release: one can be obligated to a particular person to do x only if one has entered into an agreement with that person to do x [p. 155].

In this case, however, we might very well say that A is obligated to C. It does not seem to matter much. If B gives C the right to release A, does he surrender this right himself, or does he retain it? If the latter, then A is in the peculiar position of being obligated to both B and C, and either B or C, or both of them, would have the power to release him. Moreover, this case is sus- picious. In order for B to assign to C the power to release A, it is necessary for A to be informed of this, and also to consent to it. This then amounts to a total assignment of the right to C. And this then amounts to an (implied) agreement with C.

Along this same line, Kading presents one more example. He raises the question why, "given a context in which A has promised B to educate C, it would be correct to speak of A's duty to B but incorrect to speak of A's duty to C." "Given the context," he continues, "it seems just as natural to say that A has a duty to C (in a quite different sense, of course)." He then quotes my earlier statement that we must not confuse the person to whom one is under an obligation with the person regarding whom one is under the obligation, and goes on to say:

But where the person primarily affected is also the person primarily benefited, we do speak of being obligated to him; and it seems arbitrary, in such a case, to identify "the person to whom one is obligated" with "the per-



DISCUSSION 13 5

son with whom one has entered into the relevant prior agreement" [p. 156].

There is unquestionably a point here. But here "A has a duty to C" can mean only either "A has a duty regarding C," or "A has a duty to educate C." A's duty to educate C is not necessarily a duty to C to educate C. The question is, who has the corresponding right against A? If C has, then he can release A from the duty, and A's duty is to C, in the literal sense. The principle involved here is the same as in the third case.

These various instances of vagueness in the concept of a "duty to someone" do not affect the main point, which is simply that where A is obligated to B, or has a duty to B (in the literal sense I am insisting on), it is not self-contradictory to speak of B's releasing A from the obligation-even though certain circumstances may prevent or prohibit B from exercising this power. It is, however, self-contradictory where A is the same as B, for it is self-contradictory to speak of anyone's releasing himself from an obligation, and this is why it is self-contradictory to speak of a duty to oneself.

II

Warner Wick and I seem very far apart on this matter, so far apart that, much as I admire the cleverness manifested in his discussion, I nevertheless regard his criticisms, where they are not merely confusions, as very wide of the mark. Holding these opin- ions, as I do, it is naturally very difficult to know where to begin. But I am inclined to think it will not much matter if I happen to begin in the middle. As Bradley once said, "If we incur the reproach of starting in the middle, we may at least hope to touch the centre of the subject."5

One of Wick's main contentions is that my argument falls short because it applies only to legal duties and not to specifically moral duties. As he puts it: "Since proposition (2) is false in its specifically moral application, while proposition (1) is true only with qualifications, the force of Sing-

her's argument, depending as it does on the incompatibility of (3) with the conjunction of (1) and (2), is wholly destroyed" (p. 162). He also argues that "in the strict and primary sense of the 'moral' and 'the moral point of view,' there are no specifically moral duties unless we have some to ourselves" (p. 158). Now I do not find that either of these main contentions is in any way es- tablished.

In illustration of this thesis, Wick makes the following statement:

It is indeed my duty to pay my taxes, whether or not it may be prudent in the circumstances. The law is completely satisfied if I perform as required; and a gang of rascals, scrupulous about its obligations to the Director of Internal Revenue, is so far blameless. But the moral point of view is not satisfied with this. Perhaps these miscreants were only evad- ing federal jurisdiction? Without reference to what is moral in a further sense, "moral duties" would be a redundant expression. To whom, in such a case, is this further duty owed? Not to the government or its agents, nor to us law-abiding citizens; performance is all any of us have a right to exact [p. 158]. [Italics added.]

But it completely begs the question to speak of a "further duty," and I do not admit for a moment that there is any further duty here with respect to the paying of taxes that has not been met. What makes this reference to a "further duty" plausible is Wick's choice of language. If these people are really "miscreants" and make up a "gang of rascals," then it is quite obvious that they will have other duties, duties other than the paying of taxes, that they have not met. If they "scrupulously" per- formed all their obligations, they would not be miscreants.

In my earlier discussion I made the point that not all vices-which I defined as undesirable traits or habits-are moral ones, and that considerable confusion could be avoided by distinguishing the interests with respect to which a given trait is undesirable. Wick makes the following comment on this:



136 ETHICS

Singer chooses smoking as a "self-regarding fault" that can never constitute "wickedness" and wins a nice rhetorical victory over the "obfuscations" of those who "have crusaded, on moral grounds, against just such things as smoking." Not all faults are moral ones. Indeed not. But that is not the question, which is whether a self-regarding fault and its correla- tive virtue can ever be "moral" in any proper sense or involve a duty to oneself. Had Singer chosen some more spectacular form of self-indulgence or self-abuse, what then? To call a self-made derelict, having progressed from folly through various stages of degradation to utter depravity, not immoral but only imprudent or misguided is to put an intolerable strain upon our language: it is to maintain a thesis at all costs. To be sure such a person would, in all but Crusoe-like circumstances, have been sure to have injured someone else; but if such depravity is not in itself immoral, the moral thinking that says so is hardly to be found outside the bewitching groves of Academe [p. 159].

It would have been helpful if Wick had provided us with an example of "some more spectacular form of self-indulgence or self- abuse." As it is, the whole point is left up in the air, through the unwitting use of question-begging language. Of course "depravity is . . . in itself immoral." "Deprav- ity" is a morally charged term. But to refer to "such depravity," when no example of depravity has actually been provided, is simply to beg the question. The same applies to the reference to "a self-made derelict, having progressed from folly through various stages of degradation to utter depravity." "Degradation" is another morally charged term. So is "derelict"; after all, one meaning of "derelict" is "a person guilty of neglect of duty." What would be an example of a "self-made derelict" who would meet the description given? I suppose the unfortunate alcoholics of Skid Row would count as derelicts, though whether they are "self-made" I do not know. (I distrust the expression "self-made"; as Morris Cohen once said, "No man is self-made, and those who think they are, are no credit to their makers.") There is no doubt a sense in

which such people have reached various stages of degradation, in the sense of being human wrecks. Perhaps a few are utterly depraved; but this is irrelevant; so are many people in other circumstances. But are such unfortunates immoral-merely because they are alcoholic wrecks? I say "No," and see no strain upon our language. Or consider, as a more spectacular, or perhaps merely more pungent, example of what has traditionally been regarded as "self- indulgence" or "self-abuse"-masturbation. Is this immoral? It is absurd and merely superstitious to say so. Yet tradition and ordinary opinion say so. Tradition and ordinary opinion are wrong. So much for tradition. And, to quote another sentence of Wick's: "So much for ordinary language and opinion" (p. 159).

As to the questions raised by Wick in the passage quoted, they are easily answered. The answer to the question "whether a self- regarding fault . . . can ever be moral in any proper sense" is quite obviously "Yes." It depends on the circumstances in which it occurs. As to the question whether it can ever involve a duty to oneself, my answer is still "No."

But all this is merely preliminary. Let us turn to the main contentions of Wick's argument. He maintains that the "mistake" in my argument is that my "model throughout is a legal contract" (p. 161). This I deny, and I am disposed to think that the trouble may be that we use the word "legal" in different senses.

Wick grants proposition (1)-if A has a duty to B, then B has a right against A- "as true for legal obligations, understood as those involving overt performances which it would make sense to enforce by sanctions. If you bind yourself to deliver something to me, I have a right to make you pay; and provided you deliver, it is no concern of mine or of the law, whether you comply grudgingly to avoid trouble, happily because you feel like it, or as a point of honor" (p. 161). Wick continues;



DISCUSSION 137

When we shift to the moral point of view . . . we are no longer satisfied with performances according to the "letter of the law" but are concerned with the spirit in which something is to be done. An analogue of proposition (1) will still hold: If A has a moral duty to B . . . then B has a moral right against A. But this is not a right to compel; to exact penalties in order to enforce the spirit in which a man acts is nonsense. Neither is A accountable to B. If he is accountable to anyone it is to "his conscience" or to himself as a moral agent [p. 161].

Now I never said or implied that to have a moral right against anyone is to have a right to compel him to do anything. Wick agrees that if A has a moral duty to B, then B has a moral right against A-which is what I was originally maintaining, although I failed to include the qualifying word "moral," merely because I thought it unnecessary-yet he fails to see that this implies that if one had a moral duty to himself then he would have a moral right against himself. I still maintain that this would be nonsense. It would entail that someone could violate his own rights. More- over, in such a case A is accountable to B. If A shirks his duty to B, which entails that he violates B's right against him, I cannot understand why it should be main- tained that A is not accountable to B for this violation. Surely B is entitled to com- plain of this treatment, and is entitled to some explanation and, if possible, redress. And I am speaking in the moral sense throughout. For in the legal sense A may not be accountable to B, but rather to a court of law.

I have just been dealing with Wick's criticism of the first premise of my argument, that if A has a moral duty to B, then B has a moral right against A, and I must conclude that he has said nothing having the slightest tendency to refute it. Indeed, he actually admits the truth of it, and is thrown astray, I think, by the language of a "right to compel," which is a simple ir- relevancy. With respect to the second premise, that if B has a right against A, he

can give it up and release A from the obligation, his criticism is much more direct. He denies that it holds at all in moral contexts:

Proposition (2) is simply false in moral contexts because, as Singer anticipated, moral duties are not the sort from which one can be released. They are, as it is sometimes said, unconditional [p. 162].

I certainly never anticipated anything of the sort, but that is not very important. What is important is that Wick provides no evidence for this contention whatsoever. With him, it is true by definition. By definition, a duty from which one can be released is not a moral duty. But no good reason-no reason whatever-is given for accepting this definition, and it is hardly one that conforms to the ordinary meaning of the term. In his later contribution, Wick explains that "one can be released from any 'external' or legal duty" (p. 216). It follows, I suppose, that any duty from which one can be released must be a legal duty. This use of "law" and "legal duty" is justi- fied by no fact in the world. It is not the ordinary meaning of "legal," but Kant's a priori meaning. It is true that there are moral duties from which one cannot be released, and I agree with Wick that one example of this is the duty to treat persons as ends in themselves-as possessors of rights-and not merely as means to ends in which they cannot share. But it does not follow that there are no moral duties from which one can be released. As to the claim that all moral duties are "unconditional," I find this altogether false. Some are, and some are not. Moral duties determined by moral principles may be unconditional, but those determined by moral rules are not. Any time circumstances are relevant, a duty is conditional.

What leads Wick to this extraordinary position? Two things, I think, are mainly responsible. One is a too slavish adherence to the confused Kantian pronouncement that "Duty is the necessity of acting from respect for the law." The other is a con-



138 ETHICS

fused and question-begging concept of "binding oneself," which he also takes from Kant. I shall deal with this second matter first.

Wick quotes Kant (p. 162) as saying:

Nevertheless, there are duties which a man has to himself. For suppose there were no such duties. Then there would not be any duties at all, not even external . . . ones. For I cannot . . . be bound to others except in so far as I bind myself.

This strikes me as a blatant non sequitur. We can best see why by considering Wick's comment on this passage:

That last sentence is the crux of it. The concept of binding oneself is implied in that of any duty.... In a legal duty to others I am, to be sure, accountable and in that sense bound to them. But only because I bind myself to the jurisdiction of the law, or to the terms of the contract, under which I am accountable. In a moral duty to others, I am not accountable to them, since such a duty is not discharged by the external performance for which I may be accountable to them but only by acting in a spirit for which I am "accountable" only to myself, or "to my conscience" as we say. In both cases, then, the essential thing is that I bind myself; for to be obligated wholly by another's act is nonsense [pp. 162-63].

There is nonsense here, but not necessarily where it has been alleged to be. Some explanation of the meaning of "binding oneself" is surely called for, yet none is provided. Yet what can "binding oneself" mean, apart from recognizing that one has an obligation, or voluntarily incurring one? In none of these two possible senses, notice, is it true that "I cannot be bound to others except in so far as I bind myself." For I can have a duty, either legal or moral, without recognizing that I do, and I can have a duty, either legal or moral, without voluntarily incurring it.

But this is not all. Let us grant, for the sake of argument, that "I cannot be bound to others except in so far as I bind myself." It would not follow for a moment that I therefore have duties to myself, nor would it follow that these alleged duties to myself

are the condition of my having duties to others, or any duties at all. In other words, supposing that it is necessary that I bind myself in order to be bound, it does not follow that I bind myself to myself, nor does it follow that I therefore have duties to myself.

The other conception that I have men- tioned is expressed by Wick in a number of places and in a number of ways. For example, he says: "the moral point of view has to do with action in its internal aspects, or in its 'spirit' "(p. 162), and makes this same or a similar claim a number of times. Again, he says:

Concerning contracts . . . my moral duty is not simply to perform them but to "honor" them-that is, to carry them out as a man of integrity would, out of respect for his word. Out of self-respect indeed. I hope it is begin- ning to be clear why all duties, morally considered, are self-regarding, so that to deny self- regarding moral duties is to deny what is characteristic of morality [pp. 161-62].

I am afraid that nothing could be less clear. Perhaps what is meant is that all duties are duties of a "self," but this is irrelevant to the issue. In the case of a contract, if I do what I contracted to do, as I contracted to do it, and when I contracted to do it, then I have done all that I can be morally required to do, and there is no further duty in the case at all.

What is perhaps a clearer, or at least more definite, statement of the point involved here comes out in Wick's second paper, where the statement is made that "it is an ethical obligation to act out of respect for the law" (p. 214), and further:

Formally considered, there is one ethical obligation, which comprehends all virtues; and it consists simply in meeting all one's obligations in the spirit of the law [p. 214].

This seems to me a peculiar confusion of the concepts of doing one's duty and doing it because it is one's duty. In other words, it obliterates the distinction, on which Kant was usually, though unfortunately not always, quite clear, between an action being



DISCUSSION 139

one's duty or morally right and its having moral worth. This then leads to the absurd idea that if one does not do his duty simply because it is his duty, then he had not done his duty and what he has done is morally wrong.

I said before that what led Wick to this position was a too slavish adherence to the confused Kantian pronouncement that "Duty is the necessity of acting out of respect for the law." This calls for some comment, and, in my judgment, Paton's comment on this matter is definitive:

A third proposition is alleged to follow from the first two. It is this: Duty is the necessity to act out of reverence for the law.

This proposition cannot be derived from the first two unless we can read into them a good deal more than has been explicitly stated: both "reverence" and "the law" appear to be terms which we have not met in the premises. Fur- thermore the proposition itself is not altogether clear. Perhaps it would be better to say that to act on the maxim of doing one's duty for its own sake is to act out of reverence for the law.6

Paton also suggests, quite rightly I think, that the proposition To act for the sake of duty is to act out of reverence for the law be substituted "for Kant's unsatisfactory third proposition . . . Duty is the necessity of acting out of reverence for the law."7

If this interpretation be correct, as I think it is, then it follows that the action of one who acts for the sake of duty, or out of respect or reverence for the law, is morally good or has moral worth, whereas the action of one who acts in accordance with duty, but for some other reason, though it is morally right, has no moral worth. This, however, says nothing about the content of the duty itself. When it is a question of determining whether an action is right or wrong, in accordance with duty or contrary to it, consideration of the agent's motives in doing the action is irrelevant.

There is one other major contention made by Wick that seems to me to call for some comment, and this is his claim that ''we have a peculiarly moral obligation to

care for our characters . . . our moral duty is to make certain traits of character the basis of our actions" (p. 160). How this, even if true, is supposed to establish the proposition that we have genuine moral duties to ourselves is to me a mystery, but I cannot even see that it is true. How can we make certain traits of character the basis of our actions, and on what grounds is it determined that this is our moral duty? This is left unexplained. Moreover, the "obligation" to care for or develop or improve our characters seems to me a very peculiar one. For what is there here over and above doing what is morally right and refraining from doing what is morally wrong? The "obligation" referred to seems like an obligation to perform our obligations, which is an unnecessary appendage. So far as it is an "obligation" to perform our obligations for their own sake, or simply because they are obligations, and not for other ulterior motives, the point has already been dealt with.

According to Wick, it is Kant's view that "the improvement of a man's character . . can be nobody's business but his own" (p. 159). Whether this is an accurate report of Kant's view is unimportant. What is important is that the statement is false. As long as we live in society, and can be affected for better or for worse by the actions and the characters of others, the improvement of people's characters is everybody's business. Interpreting the word "man" very widely-and there is no reason not to-the development of character is peculiarly the business of parents and teachers. If it were not, moral education would be impossible. It is, admittedly, difficult, but it is not impossible. For similar reasons I should deny the assertion (Wick 2, p. 215) that "Every- one is responsible for his own character because nobody else can be." Everyone who is a responsible agent is responsible for his own character-this much can be granted. But it is false that nobody else can be responsible for the character of another. The argument rests on the false assumption that



140 ETHICS

responsibility is indivisible, which probably derives from ancient and exploded views about sovereignty. Again, Wick's argument that "We have . . . a duty to perfect ourselves as moral agents because 'the only thing, in the world or out of it, that is good without qualification is a good will'" (p. 215), seems to me just another non sequitur. It rests on the unestablished proposition that we have a duty to produce or bring about what is good.

III

Miss Mothersill's criticisms seem aimed more directly at Wick's argument than at mine. Along the way, however, she makes a number of statements that seem to me to call for some comment. Thus, she says:

Wick is clearly right in holding that Singer's case depends on the assumption that one can be released from a moral duty in much the same way that one can be released from a legal duty. And he is also right in observing that, from the moral point of view, sheer performance is not enough. Someone who does what he ought for no better reason than that he feels so inclined or finds it expedient to do so has not discharged his moral duty. The demands of conscience are more stringent than the requirements of law [p. 205].

In the first place, it is false that my case depends on the assumption that one can be released from a moral duty in much the same way that one can be released from a legal duty. Release from a legal duty fre- quently depends on the intervention of a court, and almost always on the drawing up of official papers. Release from a moral duty never depends on the intervention of a court, except where the release from the moral duty is a consequence of the release from a legal duty. Second, it is false that from the moral point of view, sheer performance is not enough. I have already dealt with this point; it results from a confusion of discharging one's moral duty with one's action having moral value. Third, the reference to "the demands of conscience" is peculiar. Whose conscience is being referred

to? The consciences of some people are far less stringent than the requirements of law. There seems some assumption here that the conscience of one person can judge the actions or motives of another, an assumption that is not just false, but absurd. One's moral duties cannot be determined by the demands of his conscience, and certainly not by the demands of someone else's conscience. (It is also false, incidentally, that "legal duties . . . are essentially contractual," as Miss Mothersill also asserts on this same page.)

Mr. Knight recommends that, instead of speaking of moral obligations to persons, either oneself or others, we speak and "think of moral obligation 'to' ideals" (p. 212). It is perfectly true that we have an obligation to conform to ideals and norms of an objective and impersonal character, but it does not follow that this or any other obligation is an obligation to an ideal or a norm. An obligation to conform to a norm is not the same as an obligation to the norm. As to Knight's claim that "The sharp distinction between legal and moral duties is surely a spurious one; legal duties are moral duties, and conversely" (p. 209), I am convinced that this is a serious confusion. There is a general moral duty to speak the truth, but no corresponding legal duty. One living under a despicable tyranny has the legal duty of obedience to the dictator's commands, but no such moral duty. Of course, there is no sharp distinction, but that is irrelevant. Few distinctions are sharp. It is only in an ideal society that there would be this absolute coincidence between legal and moral duties, and such a society exists nowhere on earth.

IV

In conclusion, there are a couple of other points relating to my thesis about duties to oneself that I think it would be useful to bring up.

One objection that might be made to the thesis I have presented is that a person may have present duties to his future self.



DISCUSSION 141

If this were so, then there would be duties to oneself from which one (or one's present self) could not release himself, and my argument would break down. I can only regard this as a form of obscurantism, an attempt to preserve a thesis no matter what. If elaborated, this point of view would lead to a multiplication of "selves" without end, so that one might as well speak of one's obligations to one's several present selves. This would be moral schizophrenia. As though one could never be lonely!

Another possible objection is more serious. In my earlier paper I considered the objection that:

In not every case can one be released from an obligation or duty. This may hold only where the duty arises out of a contractual re- lationship or some other voluntary undertaking. But not all duties arise out of contracts or promises or voluntary undertakings. Hence it may be that self-regarding duties are not duties of the sort from which one can be released [p. 204].

My answer to this objection was, in part, that:

the relation I am presupposing as holding between rights and duties . . . is only asserted as holding for those duties or obligations that one can be said to have to someone. Consequently, if one could sensibly be said to have a duty to oneself, one could have a right against oneself that one could give up, thereby releasing oneself from the duty, which would . . . be . . . self-contradictory.

So far, so good. However, there would seem to be some examples of duties, which are duties to someone, which this answer does not cover, such as a parent's duty to his children and a child's duty to his parents. Everyone has special duties to his parents, such as to obey them when he is a child, to help provide for their support in their old age, and so on, which do not arise out of any voluntary undertaking on his part. Are these duties from which he can be released? Note that there is no question of these being legal duties. As a matter of common law (and aside from isolated stat-

utes), no one in our legal system has any legal obligation to contribute to the support of his aged or decrepit parents. But there is unquestionably a moral obligation here. Yet I think that, odd as it may sound, a person can be released from these duties. When a child reaches a certain age or de- gree of maturity, he no longer has any obligation to obey his parents, though some parents may still tyrannically wish to as- sert this. Before he reaches that age, he can be released, only he ought not to be, unless the parent's character is such that he has no right to obedience (in which case a court may have to intervene for the protection of the child). Similar considerations apply to the duty of supporting one's aged parents. One's parents can release one from this duty, if they so choose. They may not be physically able to, or it may not be financially advisable for them to do so, but that is not the point. The point is that it would not be self-contradictory to speak of such an occurrence. If it were, then I should say that what we have here is not a duty to one's parents but a duty regarding them.

The example of a parent's duty to his child, a duty to protect and support him, is a somewhat more difficult case. Can the child release his parent from his duty to him by giving up his right? It would seem not, but the reason is that the child lacks the requisite power, because he lacks the requisite capacity. In other words, he is not a full-fledged moral agent. Certainly the point would seem absurd in the case of an infant, who cannot even talk. Here the physical capacity, as well as the moral capacity, is lacking. Yet even in this case it would not be self-contradictory to speak of a child releasing his parents from their duty toward him. When the child reaches a certain age, he can even acquire the practical capacity. So I do not think that the example is as damaging as it might at first have seemed. Moreover, apart from the cases where a child is legally removed from the custody of his parents against their will, it



142 ETHICS

is possible for a parent voluntarily to give up his children to the custody of another. Here we might seem to have a case where one can release himself from an obligation, but that is only what seems. The release must have legal sanction. Finally, there is a real question in my mind whether our talk about a parent's duty to his children is really only a shorthand way of referring to

the parent's duty to support, protect, care for, and educate his children. This would then be a duty regarding his children, but not in the literal sense a duty to them.

I conclude, then, quite unrepentantly, that no good reasons have yet been given for giving up the thesis that there are no genuine moral duties to oneself. UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN

NOTES

1. "On Duties to Oneself," Ethics, LXIX (April, 1959), 202-5.

2. Daniel Kading, "Are There Really 'No Duties to Oneself'?" Ethics, LXX (January, 1960), 155- 57; Warner Wick, "More about Duties to Oneself," Ethics, LXX (January, 1960), 158-63; Mary Mothersill, "Professor Wick on Duties to Oneself," Ethics, LXXI (April, 1961), 205-8; Frank H. Knight, "I, Me, My Self, and My Duties," Ethics, LXXI (April, 1961), 209-12; Warner Wick, "Still More about Duties to Oneself," Ethics, LXXI (April, 1961), 213-17. Since these various papers all have different paginations, there seems no danger of confusion if I cite them by page numbers only, relying on the context to make clear which particular one is being referred to. Where there seems danger of confusion, as say between Wick's first and second papers, I shall use the abbreviations "Wick 1" and "Wick 2."

3. This is the first main part of Kading's argument. The second main part, as I understand it, is based on the "principle" that one is obligated to maximize satisfaction, which has the consequence that, where someone can "maximize satisfaction" by doing something that will primarily benefit himself, he will have the duty to do that act that will primarily benefit himself. Kading con- cludes from this that in such a case we can say that such a person has a duty to himself-in what he calls a "benefits sense"-to do the act in question. I am not clear on the function here of the expression "to himself," or what this adds to the simple allegation of a duty. But I shall not deal with the

matter here, because I have elsewhere argued at length against the acceptance of such a "principle" (Generalization in Ethics [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1961], chap. vii, esp. secs. 1 and 2).

4. Cf. Carleton Kemp Allen, Law in the Making (5th ed.; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951), p. 447: "No statute can make itself absolutely secure against repeal. There is nothing to prevent any Parliament from enacting that a particular statute shall never in any circumstances be altered or abro- gated, and at certain troubled periods of history this seems to have been the intention of the legis- lators. But it is equally clear that there is nothing to prevent any subsequent Parliament from treat- ing such a provision as pro non scripto. In any en- lightened government, an unrepealable statute is a contradiction in terms, striking as it does at the very root of legislative theory."

5. F. H. Bradley, The Principles of Logic (2d ed.; London: Oxford University Press, 1922), I, 1.

6. H. J. Paton, The Moral Law (London: Hutchinson's University Library, 1948), p. 21.

7. The Categorical Imperative (Chicago: Uni- versity of Chicago Press, 1948), pp. 63 note. The proposition in question is from Kant's Grundle- gung, and appears on p. 16 of Abbott's collection. For some alternative interpretations, see Lewis White Beck, A Commentary on Kant's Critique of Practical Reason (Chicago: University of Chi- cago Press, 1960), pp. 225-26; and A. R. C. Dun- can, Practical Reason and Morality (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson & Sons, Ltd., 1957), pp. 66-69.



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