Kant's theory of duty and conflict of rights

In this dissertation, first, I suggest that many debates among rights theorists, including Nozick, Thomson, Dworkin, Rawls, Nagel, and Susan Wolf on the topic of conflicts of rights and consequences and issues of social justice hinge on two important questions: How to define humans’ true needs; How to find a proper balance between one’s true needs and others’. Thus, the study on duties to oneself and duties to others in Kant’s ethic theory of duty is much needed. I then analyze Kant’s concepts of four categories of duties, compare them pairwise, and determine the indications from the comparisons. The imperfect duty to others commands that one shall try to treat others’ ends as one’s own, which seems demanding. But one also has the perfect duty to oneself to not be a mere means to others’ ends. Therefore, we shall never give up our basic good living and our own life goals in order to help others. And when our time and resources are limited, we can choose freely which following imperfect duties to perform: whether to develop our physical and intellectual powers or to help others. Hence, I conclude that Kant prioritizes an individual’s own true needs over one’s duties to others, and his moral principles do not demand too much from individuals, unlike many ethic theorists claim. Based on this, his theory can give us good persuasion power against overwhelming demands from the community, and against manipulative totalitarian leaders who urge their citizens to be moral saints and alienate their individual rights. His theory can also offer good guidance to democratic governments when they decide how to prioritize their budget spending. It indicates that basic education, basic housing, and basic health care should take priority over higher education and foreign aid.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical referencesby Bo Pen