Abstract
We have no general duty to help others do their duty. But arguably we do, for a combination of agency-based and outcome-based reasons, have a general duty to let others do their duty. Our duty is derived from the other’s duty, but it is none the worse for being so. It is best seen as a duty, rather than as the upshot of some right or power of the other that would preclude us from insisting that the others do their duty. Finally, our duty to let others do their duty is owed primarily to those toward to whom the others’ duty is owed, rather than to those whom we should allow to do their duty.
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Notes
Maybe because the state of affairs brought about by their being done is (ordinarily) a good state of affairs. Or maybe because you doing your duty is good, over and above the goodness (if any) of state of affairs thereby produced. Or maybe, as I shall suggest, because of the combination of those two considerations.
Throughout, my focus is firmly on moral duties. When I discuss legal duties, I do so purely for the light that that may shed on our moral duties.
I report this commonplace, without blanket endorsement, merely to situate the present discussion. Conceptually, the distinction between helping and not-hindering is fraught (Bennett 1983). But no matter since, as I shall go on to argue, moral significance attaches not to the distinction itself but merely to further features that are only contingently (albeit quite commonly) associated with it.
The Restatement (Second) of the Law of Torts similarly defines tortious interference in terms of 'preventing… or causing his performance to be more expensive or burdensome' (Prosser and Wade 1979, p. 766B). I leave open what should count as 'significantly more' or 'significantly less' in the formulations in the text; just note, however, that those formulations are open to being read (by anyone so inclined) as 'any more' or 'any less'.
The same two arguments might similarly ground a duty to let others perform supererogatory actions, above and beyond the call of their duties. If so, the ‘duty to let others do their duty’ discussed below could be read (except where otherwise indicated) as ‘the duty to let others do their duty and beyond’. And everything I say below about the performance of supererogatory actions can also be said, mutatis mutandis, about the performance of imperfect duties.
‘Ordinarily’, in both cases, because (as explained below) those are pro tanto reasons that might be outweighed by other countervailing reasons, all things considered.
Even if exercising her agency in that negative way does not impinge on anyone else's agency. Maybe it is not ‘moral agency’ at all if she exercises the agency in intentionally negative, immoral ways. But we may also interfere with her genuinely moral agency if she is unwittingly producing bad outcomes or performing acts that are, unbeknownst to her, immoral.
That also explains why, all the more, we ought not interfere with her to the extent as to make it impossible for her to do her duty. Given that ‘ought implies can’, her duty would then disappear. Even if thereafter we are no longer interfering with her doing her duty, our preventing her from doing her duty has blocked a desirable outcome that would otherwise have been obtainable.
That might be because there are some more morally important things we should do that are inconsistent with refraining in this way. Or it may be because there are some more morally important things that she should do that are inconsistent with her discharging that particular duty. The need for such balancing in reaching a correct all-things-considered conclusion is highlighted in a much-discussed section of the Restatement (Second) of the Law of Torts that ‘states the important factors to be weighted against each other and balanced in arriving at a judgment of whether an interference is improper’ (Prosser and Wade 1979, p. 767, Comment; cf. Connor 2014).
Maybe ‘duties to do bad’ are not really moral duties at all. (That is how the law handles contractual promises to commit crimes: hence the ‘scare quotes’ around ‘contract’ in the previous sentence [Prosser and Wade 1979, p. 774].) Alternatively, even if they are genuine moral duties that provide pro tanto reasons for discharging them, those pro tanto reasons are outweighed by much stronger countervailing moral reasons for not doing so; hence, you do not have an all-things-considered moral duty to do the bad thing, in which case I cannot have any moral duty that derives from your moral duty to let you discharge it.
The same is not straightforwardly true of the analogous ‘duty to let others perform supererogatory actions, above and beyond the call of their duties’. But that duty is at least grounded in the same considerations as ground duties: it applies to actions that are extraordinarily meritorious, in the same dimension of merit that makes other actions of a more ordinary sort the fitting subject of duties.
Anyway, that is the sort of duty here under discussion. In other sorts of cases, both our duty and theirs might derive from one and the same further source. Maybe, for example, everyone has a duty to bring about good states of affairs however they can; and the others can bring about a good state of affairs directly through what they do, and we can bring it about only indirectly, by letting them do that. But then our duty to let the others do their duty is not grounded in their duty; rather, something else grounds both our duties and theirs at one and the same time. That is simply not the sort of structure here under discussion.
Nozick (1974) has this sort of view, for example.
I hasten to add that these are my own extrapolations from Hohfeld (1923), who did not himself analyze third-party deontic relations of the sort here under discussion.
My having a moral duty to let you do your moral duty is even consistent with me doing certain things to induce you to do your moral duty—just so long as the means by which I induce you to do your duty works, at least in significant measure, through your own will. (If not, then it would arguably not be a case of you doing your duty—and my inducing ‘you to do your duty’ would then be nothing of the sort.) ‘Inducing’ might involve behind-the-back psychological ‘nudges’, whereas ‘insisting’ involves in-your-face exhortations. Neither need be remotely ‘compelling’, however.
Maybe they could be tweaked in such a way as to avoid that result. If the dereliction of moral duty were really severe, perhaps we might say that the privilege or immunity is forfeited or overriden, and others insisting is therefore permissible. Whether that can plausibly account for all the cases in which we think insisting ought to be permissible is an open question. Certainly it will be harder to justify saying a ‘privilege or immunity is overriden’ (or indeed forfeit) than it would be to justify saying merely that ‘circumstances permit insisting’ when there is no reason not to insist. The latter is of course the case with the ‘duty to let others do their duty’ formulation.
May (2015).
And in cases that they are performing some supererogatory acts, perhaps we have even more reason yet again not to interfere—grounded there not in the sheer fact that they were under a duty (in cases of supererogation they are not) but in the fact that considerations of the sort that ground ascriptions of duty make those acts even more meritorious along the same dimensions as is discharging one's duties.
Recall my 'busy body' point, in relation to the $100 debt, which might point to one of them.
In other cases the positive assistance might preempt his own exercise of moral agency. I am not here claiming that positive assistance always necessarily facilitates the exercise of his moral agency—merely that it can.
Were 'costs' to include opportunity costs, then 'not interfering' might be quite costly—i.e., the difference between the non-interferer's payoff from interfering in the most lucrative way and not interfering at all might be substantial. But in discussions of the role of demandingness in delimiting moral duties, the focus is almost invariably merely on out-of-pocket costs rather than opportunity costs. No one thinks that the fact that there is a million dollars in the bank you might rob makes your duty not to rob it unreasonably demanding.
As I have said, we may want to give them such permission only if the stakes are non-trivial. At the other extreme, however, if the stakes are enormous and the cost of insisting is not too great, we may then want to impose a duty on them to insist, as discussed below.
'One who intentionally and improperly interferes with the performance of a contract… between another and a third person by inducing or otherwise causing the third person not to perform the contract, is subject to liability to the other for the pecuniary loss resulting to the other from the failure of the third person to perform the contract' (Prosser and Wade 1979, p. 766). The doctrine originated with the English case of Lumley v. Gye [1853] EWHC QB J73; for historical background see Anon (1980). Within my framework, interference would be 'improper' if the countervailing reasons for interfering are insufficient to outweigh the pro tanto reasons for not doing so.
Blackstone (1765), bk. 4, ch 10, sec. 3, p. 129. Nowadays most jurisdictions also have similar statutes against interfering with public safety workers (firefighters or emergency workers) in the discharge of their official duties. See, e.g., New York Penal Code, S 195.05 (obstructing governmental administration in the second degree), S 195.15 (obstructing firefighting operations) and S 195.16 (obstructing emergency medical services).
Similarly, those with standing to complain about interference that prevents someone from performing supererogatory acts are those who would have benefited from those acts being performed.
I am here assuming that the ‘moral community at large’ is an entity that can itself be wronged—the moral analogy to the entity (the ‘State’ or the ‘Crown’) wronged by the criminal offender. Who has moral standing to bring complaints about wrongs done to it I here leave as an open question. But perhaps any member of the moral community should be entitled to complain about interferences with these general moral duties being performed.
Just help, mind: not do it for them, or even assist them in any way that would circumvent their agency.
References
Anon, 1980. Note: tortious interference with contractual relations in the nineteenth century: transformations of property, contract and tort. Harvard Law Review 93: 1510–1539.
Bennett, Jonathan. 1983. Positive and negative relevance. American Philosophical Quarterly 20: 185–194.
Blackstone, William. 1765. Commentaries on the Laws of England. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Connor, Ryan M. 2014. Revisiting the Restatement’s tortious interference provisions. ABA Business Torts and Unfair Competition, 3 June 2014. https://www.americanbar.org/groups/litigation/committees/business-torts-unfair-competition/articles/.
Fine, Benjamin I. 1983. An analysis of the formation of property rights underlying tortious interference with contracts and other economic relations. University of Chicago Law Review 50: 1116–1145.
Hohfeld, Wesley N. 1923. Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning. New Haven: Yale University Press.
May, Simon Cabeula. 2015. Directed duties. Philosophy Compass 10: 523–532.
Nozick, Robert. 1974. Anarchy, State and Utopia. Oxford: Blackwell.
Prosser, William, and J.W. Wade. 1979. Restatement (Second) of the Law of Torts, 4th ed. St. Paul: West, for the American Law Institute.
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Goodin, R.E. The Duty to Let Others Do Their Duty. J Ethics 24, 1–10 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-019-09318-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-019-09318-x