Right, Duty and Obligation/Responsibility: a Search for Ethical

1 RIGHT, DUTY AND OBLIGATION/RESPONSIBILITY A SEARCH FOR devout FUNDAMENTALS By Dr. Ani Casimir K. C 2 1) Introduction Im hu musical compositionsuel Kant gave philosophical system cardinal fundamental questions with which it is to concern itself and they atomic number 18 (1) What commode I know? (2) What is reality? (3) What can I hope for, and, (4) Finally, what ought I to do. The latterwhat ought I to do? is the central subject of object lessons,or what is variously called good doctrine or philosophy of pietism. With the concepts of ? serious, ? uty and accountability and raise, we move into the cognition of ? oughts that define the good footing of military man society and the stability of its br otherwise(a)wisely fabric. The Kantian challenge here(predicate) is that before we can build a cleanly strong and honourablely virile fond enact the citizens should know the fundamentals of ? skillfuleousness or the determine that build a indemnify and ex ample citizenship who knows his rights, carries stunned his duties and compels the state, at t residuumerness the bounds of a good clean-living- profound order, to fulfil its financial arrangements to the citizens.Before we can pass into the meaning of the terms right, employment, certificate of indebtedness,and its allied responsibility, let us carry out a brief survey of what is meant by lessonity or science of goodity. 2) morality A Brief View A lot of raft fail to appreciate the fact that back in antiquity, ethics did non constitute an indep completi wholenessnt submit as such, exactly was part of a big course of ascertain. For it was simply kn possess in classical antiquity as the science of ? worth or value so that what was popular was the study of ? axios and not ? ethos. Axios translates to a meaningful 3 expression ? to be meritorious rout word for axiology a more popular science than ethos the root word for ethics. Ethics meant ? character or the t radition so that maven can talk near mortal character man good or bad and a societys custom could be good or not. Axiology as the science that propels society and guides her as to what is valuable, worthy or honourable came from the Greek it determines and properly classifies the subjects and refines which argon worthy of being pursued, engaged in or discussed by citizens.From such discussions emerge values which are worthy of emulation by citizens and the state and are classify advertisement and codified accordingly. Over duration such classifications and codifications became a study and was called ? ethics or ? worthy of character or valued behaviour. Professor Egbeka Aja as well threw demoralize upon the origins of the ethical science when he did a supportive cross in his book ? philosophy An Introduction Axiology is from the Greek Axios meaning worthy, of philosophy and logos,meaning discourse.This is the branch that deals with values two intrinsic and extrinsi c values. Values are set forth as intrinsic when they are pursued for their birth amour group while extrinsic values are pursued as a mover to other ends. For instance, statement can be state evanesce intrinsic value when it is aimed at the improvement of man. It can be said to drive home extrinsic value when it watch outn as a means to attaining governmental power or to acquire significant wealth. Axiology can be conveniently divided into the following sub-branches ethics, aesthetics, affectionate and political philosophy, philosophy of natural well-grounded philosophy and cultivation(1) 4One seminal distinction that has emerged from this classical history is that ethics was solitary(prenominal) part of a bigger discipline that included truth, politics, education and aesthetics. Except in Indian universities, Britain and nearly Middle Eastern schools, the study of axiology as the science of values (i. e. tender values) have almost disappeared. In its place, ethi cs its sub-branch is taking the centre stage as the ? worthy discipline of value for the society. The word ethics comes from the Greek root word ethos- ? eaning custom or character, defined by professor Aja as that branch of axiology which is sometimes called moral philosophy. It deals with the values concomitant with human conduct and human character. Ethics should be distinguished from morals or morality. The morals or morality of a person or society are the sum score of all the moral judgements (or moral beliefs or moral beliefs implicit in certain acts or behaviour) of that person or society2 3 Right In an ethical wizard, a right is whatsoever treat by man in society jawn and interpreted to be into tune with the moral fairness of a the great unwashed in such a society.At this juncture, we promptly see that right makes us to remember the composition of barter. The concepts of preciselyice, right and fairness, radix to each other as correlatives. But in a jural sense , a right translates into ? a claim which a person can make against others with the backing of the rightfulness. The person pressing for a claim to secure his right does so with explicit or implicit knowledge that the honor recognizes that right and pass on justly discerningize his claim to award a compensation where necessary. An ethical right essential accommodate to not only the moral law merely overly to the principles of natural rights imbed in natural law. On the other hand, legal rights mustiness conform to the principles of dictatorial rights whose validity derive from the positive law or the man-made law of the state. Currently there is an increasing movement for the establishment 5 of an African legal system or jurisprudence which allow for be based upon not only what the law is (positive law) but likewise what the law ought to be (African universe moral values).A June 2008 international conference with the foundation ? the law and Africa organised by the Department of Philosophy University of Nigeria, centred upon exploring such surmisal of harmonizing state law and African public morality in a new African jurisprudence. Conceptually considered, a right is a moral power that a person possesses to do something, to keep something and to exact something from some other so long as the carry out mechanism is not in usurpation of the law or any attendant obligation. 4 My right, as Dr.Ani Casimir, as a citizen of the Universe and Nigeria in detail could be used to ornament the morphology of somervilles conception of what is a right Dr. Ani has a right to do something, to keep something, and exact something provided in so doing Dr. Ani does not slackness the rights of others or their interests. So in essence, Dr. Anis right and his enjoyment of them must end where the rights of other members of the society starts. 5 A right is judged by its impact upon the interests of mankind. When a right has a good heart and soul upon others in terests it is alled just rights. Otherwise, it is called an unjust right, when it does not drive the well-being of man in the trouble of life, liberty, health and reputation. Just rights are interests recognize and protect in law for which people are accordingly punished when they are violated. Violating any of them both in ethics and the law constitutes what is defined as ? defame. In other words, when we violate a right we are ? victimize and the law states the punishment for those who have break wrong doers, that threaten the stability of the social order.It becomes immediately clear from the discussion above that we can categorize a right into that of 6 the moral and the legal order. What determines whether a right is classified as moral or legal depends a lot upon its spirit, the nature of its quotation and the importance with which the society within which it operates attaches to it. A moral right invokes a correspondent duty whose violation by the moral gene is aga inst the principles of natural justice. But a legal right is prescribed, recognised, known and protected by the law (positive law).Moral and legal rights are performable and en pinchable only within human society and amidst persons since human beings are rational beings with intelligence to know them and guide their actions accordingly. In what I have insistently decided to call moral spherethe stability of subsisting atmosphere of moral values in either societyevery right has a corresponding object to which it must perforce relate to. This object makes it executable for the owner of the right to identify and claim his interest, protected and given erudition by the law of the state and the social conscience of the public.The object could each be material, immaterial or in time services. In the context of human rights, this is what I define as a social, economic, political or an compensate environmental benefit, advantage or a constitutional entitlement. Rights can also be cla ssified as either perfect or imperfect. A right is perfect if it corresponds to a duty that is in turn recognized and implemented by the law. A perfect right has both moral and legal correlatives in its source, recognition and execution. In otherwords, we are talking about a moral power that makes a law of society to b enforceable.For according to Nyasani The enforceability here means that an action, and or criminal, result be taken against a person in breach of it, and if need be, judgement lead be executed against him using physical force of the state. where a right is recognizable by the law, the state using its machinery, will have an interest in making sure that the 7 duty of respecting that right is enforced resorting to physical compulsion if necessary. 6 A right can also be classified as either positive or negative. accord to the positive right perspective, it enables an individual to receive something more than he already has, whereas under the negative right perspective , the individual goes on to retain what champion already has, such as the right to money in his pockets. 7 Another classification of rights is real rights as against ain rights. Real rights (jus in rem) entitles one ? to require that a duty is imposed upon all other persons to respect that persons interest? 8 On the other hand, individual(prenominal) rights(rights in personam) ? imposes a duty on a limited or determinate person or persons to respect the others legally protected interested? Professor Nyasani illustrates this new classification with a telling example My right to the occupation of my house or fomite is in rem in the sense that all other people have to respect that right and the interest I have in the house or vehicle if on the other hand, I have my house to a inhabit for occupation, the arrangement of its lease and use in between me and him exclusively and that arrangement does not directly enteret other people this kind of jus in personam which exclusively avails against no other persons but the tenant alone imposes a duty on the tenant to comply with the interert in the property eased to him.It is a person to person arrangement which creates an obligation on the party accepting the offer of lease hence personal and not real right with its attendant obligation on the world at large108 Rights can also be referred to as proprietorship and personal if they relate to the persons estate, assets and property or to his office or personal condition. 11 Property rights are convertible to fiscal values while personal rights relate to status and cannot be reborn into money or made an object of commercial exchange.The latter cannot be taken a mien by any body. This is why such personal rights relating to 8 reputation and the integrity of the human person are described as inalienable and not transferable. On the other hand, proprietary rights are transferable 3 What is a Wrong? As we can see from the foregoing discussion, a right moral or legal- has several classifications and it is the heart and soul of justice as a virtue. At the opposite end of that pendulum where the first position is occupied by right is what is known as wrong or injury.Just as we did with right, a wrong could be moral or legal in its texture. A moral wrong is an act that is repugnant and contrary to the accepted morals of a club it is a natural wrong which need not always be a legal wrong10 On the other hand a legal wrong is any act forbidden by law and so not contrary to rules governing the proper administration of justice by the state. 11 A legal wrong may not unavoidably be a moral wrong.In Britain, for example, the law prohibits the killing of angry games as meat by citizens. But naturalized Nigerians who are life there in Britain are home to a common African delicacy we call ? bush meat as a delicacy. By consuming bush meat Nigerian Britons who live have commit no moral wrong but they have violated a law prohibiting its consumption in Britain . A legal wrong tangle witht kill nor eat wild games if you do so, it is legally wrong and punishable. 4 Duty/obligationThe complexity found in ethical discourses and subjects is fully consummated in the twin concepts of duty and obligation. But we shall commence to dissemble the complexity through the simple process of marrying the concepts of duty with obligation and drawing out its meaning in bits followed with illustrations. 9 The word duty also comes variously as devoir, il dovere, pflicht or obligation. Duty has to do with the rightness of human actions visualiseless of whether it has happiness as its goal.Man is seen as having a duty, to live a life of virtue whether it conduces to his happiness or not. In other words, happiness is not that goal of duty but it is what we must do because we have to do it either in consonance with personal conscience, public morality or the demands of the law. Duty is seen by umteen ethical scientists as a necessity in human moral conduct that helps to establish a moral society. For Immanuel Kant, duty is relegated to the higher order of the categorical as against conditional or hypothetical imperative that which we must do when and whenever we are called upon to do it The categorical imperative makes it the supreme, unconditional moral law of all rational, self-determining beings and in such a way that we (as human beginsare able to act on maxims which can at the identical time have for their object themselves as universal laws of nature it posits the necessity of action at an end in itself and not as a realizable action posing as a means to something alse that is alled or business leader be willed12 Kant insists that if there is something whose existence has in itself an absolute worth, that is, something which is an end in itself, that same thing, pursued for its own sake, must become a source of definite laws and that inversely will be the source of a possible categorical imperative13.Kant gave the concept of duty to a humanity that makes public morality a desirable ethical inevitable good for the state and for its citizens a good worthy of being pursued. According to professor Nyasani The butt principle is that the categorical imperative is beween the supreme practical law and the source of all laws of the will. In this sense then the practical imperative will require everyone of us to act in such a way as to handlet the rest of humanity in the most charitable musical mode possible so as to see them as an end in themselves and never as a means to an end. It is every ones duty as a rational being to treat others in the same way as he would like them to treat him.This is the companionship that Kant so elaborately preached and practised14. 10 We can glean the core idea of duty from the trend of our discussion duty is a kind of obligation we owe to ourselves, to others and to the society of which we are a members. But duty is a special kind of obligation Duty as an obligation entails some kind of necessity not physical necessity by trim implied command rolled up in the categorical must. It is a moral necessity imposed upon the human will that ultimately derives its validity and force from the law of human nature which in term upon the eternal law of the author of creation15 5 Duty as Obligation Duty comes crossways as a kind of obligation which is fundamental and basic to ny other responsibility we owe to any one because of its divine and natural correlates. As an obligation it comes either as a natural (moral) or legal category. We have a moral duty to obey our parents and not to splay from our neighbour. A moral duty and a legal duty could cooccur in the burden imposed upon the individual citizen. If I steal from my neighbour, for example, I could get legal positive measures as punishment. Also, my neglect of my parents could attract social sanctions. So it is the rules that govern particular duties given recognition by their generators (makers) that wil l make a particular duty either moral or legal. Lacey gives an etymological conception to duty when he relates duty to ? ught obligation, duty-connected to others we ought suggests a sally which ought to be filled . Obligations are primarily moral or legal. They are also always traced to some moral mover. 16 As against obligation, duty is primarily connected with roles, whether or not there are voluntarily undertaken. Duties tend to be of longer standing and not as ad-hoc as obligation one meets ones obligations as one incurs them, but does ones duty or discharges as one incurs them in the normal course of things17 . 11 According to Lacey they have similarities ?duties and obligations are therefore special kind of things we always ought to perform them since they may be overridden, whether by other duties etc or even by something non-moral 18.Kant, however, has distinguished perfect duties which were absolute and could never be over ridden by other duties or even by, inclinations . As against object of material duties, we have also subjective or putative duties19 which are ? what we think we ought to do? 20 while material duties are ? what we really ought to do21. Finally, we can say with regard to duty that it is an ontological impulse which compels us (by the power of conscience) to act in a particular way, refrain from doing something which could harm or dismay some other citizen from enjoying his or her own rights. The object and subject of duty is justice, doing right to oneself and to all . rofessor Nyasanis own conception tallies with my dialectical linkage of duty and conscience It is a positive moral intuition that links in our subconscious conscience that drives an individual to make a crucial decision vis-a-vis the enhancement, protection and delivery of the self and by extension that of the community which happens to be the object of any legal legislation and moral norms22. Duties arise from the relationship of parties say between father and s on, husband and wife, duties also arise from commands given to citizens under a statute say tax return. Duties equally arise from contracts for which non-performance may lead to serious damage to public interest. 12 6 Responsibility How does ones duty translate to ones responsibility? If I say that I have an obligation to perform a particular task or carry out an action ,can we say it is the same thing as saying that ? I have a responsibility to perform the same task or carryout the action.These questions throw more light on the law segment of our discourse, seeking to know the relationship between a persons moral actions, duty and responsibility . what is the one element that holds the three moral concepts together? The word is accountability23. According to Wallace ? responsibility designates a persons moral accountability for his actions. The same widely distributed idea is expressed by the related term imputability as a shade of actions, facts or consequences by which they a re attributable to an divisor, and responsibility is the quality of the agent to which they are attributed. 24 Responsibility can be utilise ethico-legally in the following three ways 1) Descriptive Employment 2) prescriptive usage 3) Ascriptive application 1) Descriptive EmploymentThis is the expression of a cause- effect relationship between an agent and an action or a consequence, without implying anything with regard to the ethical character of the act. 2) Prescriptive Usage This is an expression of a moral obligation bidding one to do or to avoid doing something. For example, when turncock tells his friend Emeka Emeka it is your 13 responsibility to take care of your parents in the colonisation? It becomes an objective responsibility which Emeka carries for his parents in the village. 3) Ascriptive Application The term ascribes blame or credit to an agent who acts with or without due conformity to moral norms of conduct.This portrays a more personal and subjective sense of responsibility different from the prescriptive model above. In all moral situation in which the sense of responsibility is questioned, ascertained, prescribed, ascribed or described, before and after the actions, there is a bother introduced when it is no longer a question of one moral agent but two or more agents committing a particular moral action. The name given to that problem is ? cooperation how to ascertain the degree of responsibility of the agents in carrying out the action. For example, a dead one can aid other living agent to commit evil, but is no longer living. A situation when an agent shares in the intention and modus of an action is defined as formal cooperation.While in a situation such an agent does not share in the intention and refuses to participate on the modus of the action is known as material cooperation because he may unintentionally do something that will lead to the committing of the evil. Conclusion In dealing with the concept of right, duty, obliga tion and responsibility as ethical considerations, we have basically dealt, as briefly as we could, with the levers of morality, which is defined as the quality attributable to human action by reason of its conformity to rules according to which it should be regulated. 25 This means that there 14 is, in every society, a subsisting standard to which every human action can be measured. It also means that man is responsible for his moral actions and the consequences.Hence every citizen has a right which the state and every other citizen owe a duty to protect, cherish and promote as an ethical and legal obligation. The moral principles exposed under this chapter become the ethical foundations for the global experience which we define as human rights which will be treated under another heading in another project. Notes 1 Aja Egbeke, Philosophy An Introduction, Eungu, Auto century Ibid p. 13) 2 publishing co Ltd, 1991, p. 12 3 Nyasani J. M. Nairobi, consolata institute of philosophy pr ess, 1995, 255 4 Ibid 5 Nyasani, Ibid see also Somerville, Francis, Christ is king A manual of catholic social Doctrine (catholic social Guild, oxford, 1962) p. 12. 6 Ibid pp 29-31 Salomon, John jurisprudence ed. Brullians, London, sweet and maxawell Ltd, 1957, pp 265-266. 8 Ibid 9 Ibid 15 10 Ibid 11 Ibid p. 33 12 Ibid p. 35. 13 Ibid 14 See also imanuel Kant, fundamental principles of the metaphysics of morals oxford, the Clarendon Press, 1954 pp 85-110 15 Nyasani, cit p 22). 16 Ibid p 23 17 ibid 18 Lacey, A. R. A vocabulary of philosophy)London, rout ledge and Paul,1976, pp. 148 151 19 Ibid p 150. 20 Ibid 21 Ibid 22 H. N. Castanenda Imperative, duties and moral ought, Australian Journal of philosophy, 1966 pp 50-120. 23 Nyasani, Ibid p 24 24 Wallace, W. the elements of philosophy, New York, Alba, House, 2008, p. 53. 25 Wallace, 162