Can Beneficence Be Morally Required？
Date Issued
2007
Date
2007
Author(s)
Jen, Juin
DOI
zh-TW
Abstract
In our ordinary moral practice, being a moral agent to a large extent lies in how we respond to needs of others. In absence of enforceable institutional norms, a matter of responding needs is an issue of beneficence. In such cases, as a conscientious moral agent, we have to know from the moral point view what needs of others in general mean. Does any genuine need, regardless of the relationship involved, give rise to a moral reason to aid? If so, does this imply that there is a duty of beneficence?
The first chapter of this essay is to identify and justify a moral reason to aid. In seeking out such a reason, through a speculative case, we also find that this reason has a sufficient weight to ground a moral requirement by itself. So if it actually exists, a duty to aid in general may arise. The rest of the chapter is to show how the normative force of this reason or a duty of beneficence in general can be justified in the way that Kant had proposed.
In order to complete our argument for a duty of beneficence in general, in the second chapter we have to engage in the debate about the moral status of beneficiary acts. We have to examine, from theoretical and practical perspectives, whether beneficence, as a general duty of action, necessarily constitutes an unreasonable requirement, so beneficiary acts in general are more properly viewed as beyond the call of duty. However, to the end of this chapter, we will point out that both ways of interpreting failed to capture all the features beneficence must have.
In the final chapter, through Kant’s divisions of duties, we will take the third option to treat beneficence as an imperfect duty, i.e. a duty of end-setting which has latitude as its inherent feature. It will be showed that how an agency-based account of this duty makes its demand not only feasible, but also essential for having a meaningful life. Accordingly, our justification of a duty of beneficence is completed.
Subjects
慈惠
康德
《道德形上學》
不完全義務
無限定的超義務論
「善」「義」連結
beneficence
Immanuel Kant
Metaphysics of Morals
imperfect duty
unqualified supererogationism
good-ought tie-up
Type
thesis