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In philosophy, moral responsibility is the status of morally deserving praise, blame, reward, or punishment for an act or omission in accordance with one's moral obligations. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] Deciding what (if anything) counts as "morally obligatory" is a principal concern of ethics .
An obligation is a course of action which someone is required to take, be it a legal obligation or a moral obligation. Obligations are constraints; they limit freedom. People who are under obligations may choose to freely act under obligations. Obligation exists when there is a choice to do what is morally good and what is morally unacceptable. [1]
In moral philosophy, deontological ethics or deontology (from Greek: δέον, 'obligation, duty' + λόγος, 'study') is the normative ethical theory that the morality of an action should be based on whether that action itself is right or wrong under a series of rules and principles, rather than based on the consequences of the action. [1]
These obligations may be of either a legal or moral character. The notion of positive and negative rights may also be applied to liberty rights . To take an example involving two parties in a court of law : Adrian has a negative right to x against Clay, if and only if Clay is prohibited to act upon Adrian in some way regarding x .
Furthermore, a promise to perform a moral obligation—the classic example is of a promise to support a person injured while coming to the rescue of the promisor—is enforceable provided the promissee was harmed in conferring a benefit on the promisor and the promise is not disproportionate to the benefit.
Various philosophers define the doctrine in various ways, but all definitions generally revolve around a moral obligation to benefit others or the pronouncement of moral value in serving others rather than oneself. Philosopher C. D. Broad defines altruism as "the doctrine that each of us has a special obligation to benefit others."
In that truth, one can see the thought behind John Adams’s statement that such power requires a strong sense of moral responsibility and self-control on the part of those who hold it, which in a ...
In his paper "The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories", philosopher Michael Stocker challenges Kantian ethics (and all modern ethical theories) by arguing that actions from duty lack certain moral value. He gives the example of Smith, who visits his friend in hospital out of duty, rather than because of the friendship; he argues that this ...