10 - Duties to and regarding others

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Kant holds the views that

1. (1) we have an ethical obligation to others to adopt the happiness of others as our end, yet

2. (2) normally no particular other person has a claim on our assistance in advancing her happiness.

These two claims are at the heart of Kant's conception of our obligatory end regarding others. Although failing to help a particular person in certain situations can be evidence – perhaps conclusive if the circumstance be dire enough – of my having failed to make the happiness of others my end, in general not helping this or that person is not evidence of this. This is not to say that there is no room for debate over how demanding this obligatory end is. Kant's readers differ over whether, for instance, one may forgo efforts to improve the lives of others only if one is perfecting oneself instead (thus pursuing one's other obligatory end) or fulfilling some strict duty of greater importance. But they appear to agree that making the happiness of others one's end does not imply any particular person has a right to one's help tout court, and that this is because this ethical obligation is a wide and imperfect one.

Unfortunately, this together with a further feature of duties generates a puzzle. As we will see, Kant himself recognized and made much of the fact that the person toward whom one owes a duty is not necessarily the person or thing with regard to which the duty is concerned.