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In The Right and the Good, Ross lists seven prima facie duties, without claiming his list to be all-inclusive: fidelity; reparation; gratitude; justice; beneficence; non-maleficence; and self-improvement. In any given situation, any number of these prima facie duties may apply. In the case of ethical dilemmas, they may even contradict one another.
[3]: 28 Ross makes use of the distinction between prima facie duties and absolute duty to solve this problem. [3]: 28 The duties listed above are prima facie duties; they are general principles whose validity is self-evident to morally mature persons. They are factors that do not take all considerations into account.
W. D. Ross objects to Kant's monistic deontology, which bases ethics in only one foundational principle, the categorical imperative. He contends that there is a plurality (7, although this number is seen to vary to interpretation) of prima facie duties determining what is right. [19] [20]: xii These duties are identified by W. D. Ross:
A prima facie right is a right that can be outweighed by other considerations. It stands in contrast with absolute rights , which cannot be outweighed by anything. Some authors consider an absolute right as a prima facie right, but one that cannot be outweighed in any possible situation. [ 1 ]
Prima facie (/ ˌ p r aɪ m ə ˈ f eɪ ʃ i,-ʃ ə,-ʃ i iː /; from Latin prīmā faciē) is a Latin expression meaning "at first sight", [1] or "based on first impression". [2] The literal translation would be "at first face" or "at first appearance", from the feminine forms of primus ("first") and facies ("face"), both in the ablative case.
The duties are analytically treated by Kant, who distinguishes duties towards ourselves from duties towards others. The duties are further classified as perfect duties and imperfect duties. Kant thinks imperfect duties allow a latitudo, i.e., the possibility of choosing maxims. The perfect duties instead do not allow any latitudo.
[2]: 8 In spite of their neglect of the period of British moral philosophy between Sidgwick and the Second World War, Prichard's "Mistake" was among the few works of that period (alongside Moore's Principia Ethica and the chapter of Ross's The Right and the Good on prima facie duties) which continued to be read. [2]: 2
Right-libertarian conceptions of self-ownership extend the concept to include control of private property as part of the self. According to Gerald Cohen , "the libertarian principle of self-ownership says that each person enjoys, over herself and her powers, full and exclusive rights of control and use, and therefore owes no service or product ...