Abstract
This paper is about how duties to self impact upon our interpersonal duties. It has two parts. In the first part, I discuss a recent proposal by Melissa Fahmy according to which, when we have a duty to self not to perform some action, then it is not possible for us to consent to another person doing that thing to us. My complaint against Fahmy is that she moves too quickly from a claim that consent would be wrongful to the conclusion that consent is therefore normatively inert. I argue instead that we have the power to release others from the duties they are under even when we owe it to ourselves not to. In the second part, I argue that we might still wrong those who violate their duties to self even when they have given valid consent to the interaction. This is because it makes a difference how, and in what circumstances, consent was obtained. For example, it matters whether consent is solicited or unsolicited, and whether one's participation in the violation of another's duty to self amounts to complicity with that violation. In Kantian terms, we might fail in our duties of respect to others even when our interactions with them are consensual.
Luke Davies is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Oxford. His current project looks at the ways in which duties to self impact upon interpersonal moral obligations in Kant's moral and political philosophy. Click here for personal website.
Paper available upon request.