Basic Positive Duties of Justice and Narveson's Libertarian Challenge
Southern Journal of Philosophy 44 (2):193-216 (2006)
Abstract
Are positive duties to help others in need mere informal duties of
virtue or can they also be enforceable duties of justice? In this paper I
defend the claim that some positive duties (which I call basic positive
duties) can be duties of justice against one of the most important prin-
cipled objections to it. This is the libertarian challenge, according to
which only negative duties to avoid harming others can be duties of
justice, whereas positive duties (basic or nonbasic) must be seen, at
best, as informal moral requirements or recommendations. I focus on the
contractarian version of the libertarian challenge as recently presented
by Jan Narveson. I claim that Narveson’s contractarian construal of
libertarianism is not only intuitively weak, but is also subject to
decisive internal problems. I argue, in particular, that it does not pro-
vide a clear rationale for distinguishing between informal duties of
virtue and enforceable duties of justice, that it can neither successfully
justify libertarianism’s protection of negative rights nor its denial of
positive ones, and that it fails to undermine the claim that basic
positive duties are duties of global justice.
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ISBN(s)
0038-4283
PhilPapers/Archive ID
GILBPD
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2009-01-30
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2009-01-30
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2,281 ( #1,796 of 71,409 )
Recent downloads (6 months)
127 ( #5,071 of 71,409 )
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