Ebook: Duty to Self: Moral, Political, and Legal Self-Relation

Duty to self has not been taken seriously by contemporary moral and political philosophers, with many even denying the coherence of the notion. Morality and politics concern treatment of others, according to common understanding, and so the very idea of a duty to oneself is thought to be mistaken. Against this, this book aims to vindicate the idea of duties owed by a person to herself, within both the moral and the political domains. Temporal divisions within a life, as well as between practical identities, enable an individual to relate to herself second-personally as she would to another, and thus to owe herself obligations. This book argues that such duties have implications for ethics, practical reasoning, and moral psychology. It also advances a new justification for paternalistic laws, which appeals to the notion of political self-duty.