Putting Fairness in Its Place: Why There Is a Duty to Take Up the Slack

Journal of Philosophy 111 (11):593-607 (2014)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

The view that agents are not obliged to do more than their initial fair shares when their fellow duty bearers fail to comply has prominent defenders, including Liam Murphy and David Miller. While Murphy thinks that asking agents to take up other agents’ slack would be unfair, Miller claims that slack-taking cannot be required because primary responsibility does not migrate from noncompliers to compliers. This paper argues, by contrast, that there are a number of circumstances in which there is a duty to take up the slack even though it is unfair and even though responsibility stays where it is. The central claim is that what agents owe to third parties is a separate issue from how they relate to fellow duty bearers. This proposal also runs counter to familiar defenses of slack-taking that weigh its unfairness against the moral importance of the interests at stake for third parties

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 97,060

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

The limits of nonideal duties: a partial vindication of fair shares.Naima Chahboun - forthcoming - Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.
Doing more than one’s fair share.Zofia Stemplowska - 2016 - Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 19 (5):591-608.
Slack Taking and Burden Dumping.Aaron Finley - 2023 - Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 23 (3).
Bridging The Emissions Gap: A Plea For Taking Up The Slack.Anne Schwenkenbecher - 2013 - Philosophy and Public Issues - Filosofia E Questioni Pubbliche 3 (1):273-301.
The weight of fairness.Sameer Bajaj - 2019 - Politics, Philosophy and Economics 18 (4):386-402.
The Nature and Limits of the Duty of Rescue.David Miller - 2019 - Journal of Moral Philosophy:1-22.
Fairness and Fair Shares.Keith Horton - 2011 - Utilitas 23 (1):88-93.

Analytics

Added to PP
2015-06-02

Downloads
323 (#73,890)

6 months
14 (#357,316)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Anja Karnein
State University of New York at Binghamton

Citations of this work

Collective responsibility for climate change.Säde Hormio - 2023 - WIREs Climate Change 14 (4).
Structural Injustice and Massively Shared Obligations.Anne Schwenkenbecher - 2021 - Journal of Applied Philosophy 38 (1):1-16.
Collective Responsibility Gaps.Stephanie Collins - 2019 - Journal of Business Ethics 154 (4):943-954.
The problem of insignificant hands.Frank Hindriks - 2022 - Philosophical Studies 179 (3):1-26.

View all 22 citations / Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references