Contractualism and the question of direction

Bibliographic Data

ID21603243
AuthorsAaron Salomon (0000-0002-6654-6503, Department of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh Pennsylvania USA, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume30
Issue4
Pages1298-1316
Publication date2022-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEuropean Journal of Philosophy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0966-8373 • E-ISSN: 1468-0378
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/ejop.12733
OpenAlexW3208566150
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited27

Directed duties are those duties whose violation would wrong someone in particular. Under what conditions, and in virtue of what, is a duty directed to someone? This is the Question of Direction. In this article, I explore the possibility of providing a Contractualist answer to the Question of Direction—one where the directedness of a directed duty is explained by the way in which that duty is derived in Contractualist moral reasoning. After presenting and rejecting three attempts at such an answer, I arrive at a satisfactory one: An agent has a duty to an individual to perform some action just in case and because, were the agent not to perform that action, the agent would make the individual occupy the standpoint relative to which any principle that permits the agent not to perform that action is unacceptable

Contractualism · Duty · Epistemology · Physics · Political science · Virtue · Free Will and Agency · Law · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy · War, Ethics, and Justification

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