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HomeUpcoming EventsAnne Schwenkenbecher (Murdoch): Collective Beneficence, Perfect and Imperfect Duties
Anne Schwenkenbecher (Murdoch): Collective beneficence, perfect and imperfect duties

It is often assumed that beneficence is a so-called imperfect duty in the sense that there is certain latitude with regard to how it must be discharged. To many, the idea that duties can have that latitude and still be stringent is somewhat puzzling. Andrew Schroeder proposes a potential solution to the puzzle: he argues that we should understand imperfect duties to be collective duties – not primarily held by individuals but by collectives. He argues that this will help us make sense of the characteristic latitude of imperfect duties such as beneficence. Schroeder suggests that some duties are perfect (and stringent) at the collective level while being imperfect at the individual level. He uses the duty to alleviate global poverty as an example: due to its collective nature, derivative individual duties have certain latitude. While novel and appealing, I think that his analysis ultimately fails in illuminating the nature of imperfect or collective duties. Even though situations requiring collective action may produce latitude with regard to individual burdens, a duty such as beneficence may well be collective and perfect at the individual level under certain circumstances. It is also doubtful that most concrete duties of beneficence, including that of alleviating global poverty, are in fact perfect even at the collective level, as Schroeder seems to suggest. However, I agree that the collective nature of some duties can generate latitude at the individual level. But rather than think of moral duties as strictly separated into imperfect duties with latitude and perfect ones without, I propose to see them as varying in latitude along several different dimensions.

Date & time

  • Mon 23 Nov 2015, 12:30 pm - 2:00 pm

Location

Coombs Seminar Room D

Event Series

MSPT seminars