What question did this study set out to answer?

This research seeks to understand how moral obligations are formed through voluntary actions and wrongdoing.

March 1, 2007

On Benefiting from Injustice

Key Points

This research seeks to understand how moral obligations are formed through voluntary actions and wrongdoing.
Analyzes cases of moral obligations resulting from voluntary promises.
Explores the relationship between wrongdoing and corrective justice.
Demonstrates that moral obligations from promises are straightforward and clear.
Finds that obligations can also arise from past wrongdoing, necessitating corrective justice.

Abstract

How do we acquire moral obligations to others? The most straightforward cases are those where we acquire obligations as the result of particular actions which we voluntarily perform. If I promise you that I will trim your hedge, I face a moral Obligation to uphold my promise, and in the absence of some morally significant countervailing reason, I should indeed cut your hedge. Moral obligations which arise as a result of wrongdoing, as a function of corrective justice, are typically thought to be of a similar nature.

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