Skip to main content
Log in

Open Duties

  • Published:
Ethical Theory and Moral Practice Aims and scope Submit manuscript

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. A distinction historically connected to the Enlightenment Natural Law tradition. According to Andrew Blom’s comments on an earlier version of this paper, this distinction goes back at least as far as Grotius’ notion of “imperfect rights.”

  2. Some philosophers admit only perfect duties as real duties and consider imperfect duties supererogatory; I do not consider this very plausible, but the point is tangential to the discussion here.

  3. To be sure, this distinction can be a bit wobbly: imperfect duties can be completely obligatory in particular instances, and it appears that few today think that perfect duties are completely exceptionless, so it may be unclear what exactly the distinction amounts to. Perhaps we should say that while perfect duties enjoin rules, imperfect duties enjoin ends.

  4. In fact, she appears to suggest that this quality is fundamental to imperfect duties, but this cannot be right, if even one’s duties to one’s children and oneself can be imperfect (consider the duty to educate one’s children). The fundamental feature of an imperfect duty, I think, is the importance of some set of ends, the need to weigh each of these against each other, and the variety of means by which someone might promote them: it is these features that give imperfect duties their peculiar cast.

  5. I have simplified this here. Note that the weakness in the “some” could also appear with regard to the action to be performed if there are several actions that would achieve the end, so the stricter rendering would be: Some are to perform one of actions or sequences of actions A 1 , A 2 ,…A n to promote end E. This would mean that it was imperative only that some one of those actions be performed. I will restrict my analysis to the limit case in which only one action can achieve the end because the issue raised by the underdetermination of means by an end is a problem of practical reason that arises for many closed duties as well.

  6. The original example of the tragedy of the commons included an open pasture shared by a number of shepherds. There is just enough grass for all the shepherds to graze all of their present sheep. If more sheep are added, then the grass will eventually become exhausted. The problem is that for any given shepherd the cost of lesser grass from adding a sheep is very small, and spread amongst all the other shepherds, whereas the added revenue from wool, etc., is large, and retained only by himself. If the shepherds equally and unintentionally put themselves in a state where there are too many sheep for the pasture to support, then an open duty, some are not to pasture their sheep here (or, some sheep are not to be pastured here), will be laid upon them. (I say “equally and unintentionally” because otherwise it the duty to remove sheep falls upon whichever shepherds increased the number of sheep beyond the maximal number, not on the shepherds as a group). The solution to such a problem is typically institutional: either collective action—forcing the shepherds to use the commons responsibly—or privatization—preventing the shepherds from socializing the costs of over-grazing. Open duties, as I will explain below, frequently require institutional solutions.

  7. As mentioned in footnote 7 above, 2 is a simplification, but this does not affect anything of substance.

  8. It also illustrates another issue: the members of a closure class may vary over time. At different times, different individuals may be in a position to perform the duty, and may drift in and out of the closure class, or from wider to narrower subsets of the class, as their circumstances very. Thus, with respect to possession, open duties are synchronically closed, and diachronically open; with respect to fulfillment, they are simply open.

  9. Cf. Robert Nozick’s (Nozick 1974) discussion in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (137–142) concerning the puzzle about the right that all possess in the state of nature to punish. The differences between the right to punish and the right to extract compensation might be explained by considering the right of punishment to be an open duty. Just as the most effective way to solve the difficulties that arise from open punishment is through institutions of justice, so too (I will argue below) the most effective way to see to the performance of many open duties is through the formation of institutions designed to carry out those duties.

  10. I do not wish to use the phrase “closed open duty” because this seems confusing, and because it suggests we ought to use the unwieldy phrase “open open duties” to refer to the opposite class.

  11. If the closing agent’s prospect of success is not sufficiently good—to be determined, I think, through some weighing involving both the importance of the end and the probability of success—then the remaining members of the closure class ought to stand by to see if the duty is in fact discharged.

  12. The prospect of success is an important ingredient in this; the moment of closure does not come at the same moment when a lifeguard begins swims out to save someone as when an amateur swimmer does so.

  13. A question raised in correspondence by Michael DePaul.

References

  • Geach P (1982) Whatever happened to deontic logic? Philosophia 11:1–12

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goodin RE (1986) Responsibilities. Philos Q 36:50–56

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hempel CG (1965) The logic of functional analysis. In: Aspects of scientific explanation. Free Press, New York, pp 271–307

  • Nozick R (1974) Anarchy, state, and utopia. Basic Books, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • O’Neill O (1989) Children’s rights and children’s lives. In: Constructions of reason. Cambridge University Press, New York, pp 187–205

Download references

Acknowledgements

The final form and content of this paper has benefited from the comments of many readers and listeners, but especially from those offered by Karl Ameriks, Robert Audi, Andrew Blom, Michael DePaul, Jon Garthoff, Roger Knights, and two anonymous referees at Ethical Theory and Moral Practice.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alexander Jech.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Jech, A. Open Duties. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 14, 503–516 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-010-9257-4

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-010-9257-4

Keywords

Navigation