On Duty
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Description
This chapter suggests an alternative way of understanding duty. Usually ‘duty’ is applied to some specific action strongly prescribed for an agent in some set of circumstances. In the alternative understanding proposed here, ‘duty’ is applied in the first instance to a relation between a person, P, and a situation, S. One talks of P’s duty when it is the responsibility of P to be alert to and, if need be, to do something about various possibilities inherent in S. One says: ‘S is P’s responsibility’ or—in the best-known phrasing—‘P has a duty of care in regard to S.’ The chapter explores this situational understanding to see what it tells us about the sort of thing a duty is: how it is structured, what counts as its determinate specification, and how it is related to cognate moral and legal ideas such as reason, ought, obligation, liability, and responsibility.
Source Publication
Conversations in Philosophy, Law and Politics
Source Editors/Authors
Ruth Chang, Amia Srinivasan
Publication Date
2024
Recommended Citation
Waldron, Jeremy, "On Duty" (2024). Faculty Chapters. 2057.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/2057
