Ross's The Right and the Good: Prima Facie Duties

You have promised to help a friend move on Saturday. Before you leave, someone close to you needs urgent assistance that you can provide only by missing the move. Suppose the situation gives you a sufficiently strong reason to help the person in danger. Something can still be owed to the friend: an explanation, an apology, or an effort to arrange replacement help. Choosing what you ought to do does not require pretending that the promise never mattered.

This is a hypothetical illustration of the problem W. D. Ross addresses in The Right and the Good, published in 1930. Different features of a situation can supply genuine moral claims that point toward incompatible actions. Ross distinguishes these contributory claims from what a person ought to do when the whole situation is considered. His account gives a way to identify the conflict while acknowledging how difficult its resolution can be.

Ross's central discussion begins with a question about the grounds of rightness. When an action is right, which features make it so? A promise might matter because the agent undertook it. Helping a stranger might matter because the stranger needs help. Making amends might matter because the agent has already caused a wrong.

Ross resists reducing all such reasons to the production of the greatest good. In particular, a past undertaking can matter in its own right. The relationship created by a promise is different from the relationship a person has to anyone whose situation they could improve.

Imagine that two actions would produce similar benefits, but only one fulfills an undertaking the agent made. A theory that counts only the benefits needs an explanation of why the promise makes any difference. Ross's proposal makes the past undertaking part of the explanation from the beginning.

This does not show that consequences are irrelevant. His account includes duties to benefit others and avoid harm. The disagreement concerns whether those considerations exhaust what makes an action right. A theory can recognize the moral importance of outcomes without treating every other consideration as a route to improving them.

Ross uses prima facie duty for a characteristic an action has in virtue of belonging to a morally relevant kind. Fulfilling a promise is his standard example. That feature would make the action a duty proper if no competing morally relevant feature intervened.

The terminology is awkward because the Latin expression can suggest something merely apparent. Ross explicitly warns against that interpretation. A prima facie duty is not an illusion that disappears once we understand the situation better. It identifies a real contribution to the moral assessment.

Consider a promise that must give way to an urgent need. The fact that it was a promise still explains a reason for keeping it. What changes is the judgment about which action is required overall. The promise's force and its eventual priority are different questions.

The distinction is sometimes expressed through the idea of a contributory duty. That gloss helps if we remember what contributes: a morally relevant feature of the act or situation, rather than a vote in a numerical calculation. Ross does not provide a universal exchange rate between a promise, a benefit, and a risk of harm.

An actual duty, or duty proper, is what the agent ought to do in the circumstances taken together. Identifying it requires attention to all the relevant claims. Merely naming a prima facie duty does not establish that it governs the case.

For the opening example, suppose the emergency really is urgent, the agent can help, and no one else can provide the needed assistance. These conditions matter. If the person is already receiving adequate help, or if the agent's presence would add little, the reason for abandoning the promise may be weaker.

Likewise, the promise's circumstances matter. Was the friend depending on this particular person to transport essential belongings? Can the move be delayed? Can another helper be found? Describing the conflict as "promise versus emergency" is a beginning, not a completed judgment.

Ross's view is demanding in this respect. An agent must study the situation and form a considered opinion about which claim is most incumbent. The account does not make moral judgment arbitrary, but it denies that certainty about general duties automatically supplies certainty about the particular act required.

Ross groups duties according to the circumstances on which they rest. Some arise from the agent's own previous conduct. Fidelity concerns explicit or implicit undertakings. Reparation concerns a previous wrong. These are distinct: failing to perform a newly accepted promise and failing to repair an injury do not have exactly the same ground.

Suppose you damage a borrowed tool. Buying the owner a replacement can be called beneficial, but that description leaves out why you have a special reason to do it. The owner does not have the same claim on every stranger who could afford the purchase. Your own conduct helps explain the obligation.

Gratitude has a different direction. It concerns benefits received through another person's previous actions. A person who has helped you can have a claim on your response that is not fully described by saying that helping anyone is good.

These grounds can overlap in a single relationship. Someone might have helped you in the past, accepted a promise from you, and suffered a wrong at your hands. The distinctions enable a fuller description of what you owe. They do not imply that one ground always defeats the others or that gratitude requires granting every request made by a benefactor.

Ross's account of justice concerns the distribution of good in relation to merit or desert. This is more specific than a general instruction to make every outcome equal. A reading that translates his category into whichever account of fairness the reader already favors would miss an important feature of his view.

Consider two people receiving recognition for work that only one performed. Even if the recognition gives both pleasure, there remains a question about whether its distribution is appropriate. Ross's category identifies a moral concern about how good is assigned, rather than only its total amount.

The example does not establish a complete principle of distribution. Merit itself can be disputed, and different goods may raise different questions. A claim about allocating recognition cannot simply be transferred to allocating food, medical care, or political rights without further argument.

That limitation helps explain what a philosophical inventory can and cannot do. Naming justice directs attention to a feature that an account must consider. It does not settle every disagreement about what people deserve. To evaluate Ross's position, a reader should ask whether his particular connection between distribution and desert is defensible, rather than replacing it silently with another principle.

Beneficence concerns improving the condition of others. Ross discusses improvement in virtue, intelligence or knowledge, and pleasure. The category therefore has a broader object than satisfying a momentary preference. His account of good is not limited to a single kind of pleasant experience.

Self-improvement concerns the agent's own virtue and intellectual capacities. Its presence in the inventory is significant: deliberation about duty need not consider the agent only as a resource for improving other people's lives. There can also be a claim to develop one's own character or understanding.

These concerns can compete for time. Suppose an evening could be spent fulfilling a commitment to teach someone or working on your own education. Both activities can have value, but their value alone does not determine the verdict. An existing undertaking may supply a further reason to teach; the urgency of the educational opportunity may matter as well.

The example is an application of the distinctions, not a result Ross derives for every such choice. It illustrates why the inventory should lead to more attentive description. Saying "self-improvement" does not convert any personally attractive project into a duty, just as saying "beneficence" does not excuse ignoring what another person is actually owed.

Ross separates non-maleficence, the duty against injuring others, from beneficence. Avoiding an injury and conferring a benefit have different places in moral assessment. He also regards the duty not to harm as generally more stringent than the duty to benefit.

The qualification matters. "Generally more stringent" does not mean that every possible harm must be avoided whatever the circumstances. It identifies a moral priority that still needs judgment in application. Treating non-maleficence as an exceptionless prohibition would erase the distinction between prima facie duty and duty proper.

Consider whether to impose a serious, unconsented cost on one person to provide a small convenience for another. A description that mentions only the convenience omits the claim of the person bearing the cost. Ross's separation gives that claim an explicit place.

This is a conceptual illustration. It does not establish a policy for an actual clinical or legal case. Such a policy would require facts about the available options, the people affected, and the nature of the harms and benefits. Ross's framework identifies kinds of moral relevance; it does not supply missing empirical evidence or eliminate uncertainty about what will happen.

The inventory is commonly presented under seven headings: fidelity, reparation, gratitude, justice, beneficence, self-improvement, and non-maleficence. Ross does not offer a proof that this is an exhaustive list of every possible moral consideration. His discussion proceeds through reflection on the different grounds of claims.

Keeping the grounds separate helps avoid several mistakes. Repaying a loan may fulfill an undertaking as well as benefit the lender; its obligation should not simply be classified as gratitude. Giving something pleasant is not necessarily just. Taking a frightening risk is not necessarily beneficial.

Nor does the inventory establish a fixed ranking. Ross's judgment that avoiding harm is generally more stringent than conferring benefit does not produce a complete order for every combination of claims. The significance of a promise depends in part on what was promised and on the situation in which performance is required.

A useful deliberation therefore needs two stages of attention. First identify which features supply claims. Then examine how those claims bear on the actual choice. This division organizes inquiry, but it does not permit the second stage to be replaced by counting how many duty labels appear on each side.

Ross holds that general principles of prima facie duty can be self-evident. He explicitly distinguishes this from being obvious from birth or immediately recognized on first hearing. Understanding can require sufficient maturity and attention to the proposition.

The comparison is with a truth that, once properly understood, does not require proof from something more basic. Ross thinks that reflection on the keeping of a promise can disclose its prima facie rightness. The claim concerns the ground supplied by that feature, not a guarantee that every promise must be fulfilled regardless of circumstances.

This position should not be softened into the thought that general moral principles are merely convenient guesses. Ross attributes knowledge to them. His much stronger reservation concerns particular duties. Whether this act should be done, in this whole situation, requires judgment that can fall short of certainty.

The distinction also prevents intuitionism from becoming a slogan about following a feeling. An immediate impulse may overlook relevant facts or mistake the nature of an undertaking. Ross's appeal to considered understanding places demands on reflection. Whether those demands successfully distinguish insight from prejudice is a further question for his account.

Knowing that promises have moral force does not reveal everything about a particular promise. The agent might misunderstand its terms, fail to see another person's reliance, or overestimate the benefit of an alternative. More information can change the judgment without making fidelity disappear from the theory.

Ross treats judgments of particular duty as matters of considered opinion. This does not imply that all answers are equally good. A judgment that ignores a major harm or invents a convenient excuse can be criticized for those failures. Fallibility is compatible with reasons for preferring one assessment over another.

Imagine discovering that the supposed emergency in the opening example was a misunderstanding. The ground for missing the move may then disappear. Alternatively, discovering that the friend has several other helpers could reduce the cost of absence. These are changes in what the situation gives the agent reason to do.

Careful moral judgment consequently includes a factual discipline. Before deciding which claim outweighs another, identify what each actually rests on. An account of plural duties does not relieve an agent of this work. It makes omissions visible by asking whether the situation has been reduced too quickly to one favorable description.

Ross connects an overridden prima facie duty with a continuing moral significance. In discussing justified failures to fulfill promises, he recognizes the appropriateness of compunction and making amends. The rejected consideration was a genuine claim even though another action was required overall.

This should not be expressed as a simple contradiction: "I did my actual duty, therefore I also acted wrongly overall." The account distinguishes a right-making feature from the complete verdict. Regret about a disappointed claim need not show that the complete verdict was mistaken.

Return to the move. If helping in the emergency was required, apologizing to the friend need not retract that judgment. It can acknowledge the reliance created by the promise. Offering practical assistance later can respond to the inconvenience without pretending that the emergency should have been ignored.

This possibility is one attraction of the distinction. Deliberation does not end with declaring a winner among duties. There can remain a question about the relationships affected by the decision. The appropriate response depends on what actually happened; an apology or compensation should not be prescribed without considering whether anyone has suffered a loss or has a claim to it.

The title names a distinction that runs through the argument. Judging an outcome good and judging an act right are connected questions, but Ross denies that the first can always settle the second. A person's prior promise or responsibility for a wrong can make a difference beyond the value produced.

Suppose two recipients would benefit equally from assistance, but one is owed compensation for a wrong the agent committed. Equal benefit does not exhaust the moral description. The reparation claim identifies a relationship that a comparison of the resulting advantages could miss.

This is not a demonstration that every consequentialist theory must ignore relationships in practice. A consequentialist can explain why promise-keeping and compensation often produce valuable results. Ross's challenge concerns their ultimate ground: does the undertaking or wrong itself supply a claim, or does its force always depend on maximizing good?

That question also explains why moral pluralism and pluralism about good should be distinguished. Recognizing several valuable things does not itself establish several independent duties. Ross argues both that goodness has more than one object and that rightness cannot be reduced to producing the most good. The second claim needs its own defense.

One challenge concerns justification. A critic can ask why a particular general duty should count as self-evident, especially when sincere people disagree. Ross's appeal to considered understanding must be examined for its ability to distinguish a justified judgment from an inherited prejudice.

Another challenge concerns guidance. The framework identifies relevant considerations while refusing a formula that resolves every conflict. A reader may regard that as honesty about moral judgment, or find that it leaves too much unresolved. Either response should acknowledge what the theory actually offers: a structure of distinct claims and an account of the limits of particular certainty.

To try that structure, state a decision precisely. Identify the people affected and the past actions that created obligations. Consider the benefits and harms of each available option. Then explain why one claim should govern this case and what, if anything, remains owed to someone whose claim gives way.

This exercise does not produce a verdict merely by invoking Ross's name. Its value is that each proposed reason has to be made explicit. A promise matters as a promise, a wrong as a ground for reparation, and another person's need as a reason for help. The difficult task is to judge their relation without denying any of them prematurely.

• W. D. Ross, The Right and the Good, chapter II, "What Makes Right Acts Right?" (1930). The chapter develops the distinction between prima facie duty and duty proper, the inventory of duties, and the contrast between general knowledge and particular judgment.
• Read its discussion of promising alongside its discussion of beneficence. The comparison makes Ross's disagreement with reducing rightness to the production of good especially clear.