The liberal theory of moral and legal responsibility has always rested heavily on the distinction between positive and negative duty. But the general doctrine that rests on this distinction has not been carefully treated. If we examine this doctrine carefully and adjust it sligh…
The task before the moderate liberal is to consider what a consistently liberal view of affirmative obligation would have to be in order to accommodate liberal commitments to freedom and justice and also account for long-standing institutions that are central to liberal democrat…
Stephen Darwall discerns two different traditions within which this idea was worked out. On the one hand, an empirical naturalist tradition, comprising Hobbes, Locke, Cumberland, Hutcheson, and Hume, argued that obligation is the practical force that empirical discoveries acquir…
The concept of freedom -- Grounds for coercion -- Hard cases for the harm principle -- Legal rights -- Conflicts of legal rights -- Human rights -- Social justice.