Disputes about the moral legitimacy of the welfare state often turn on the disagreement between those who believe that we have a moral obligation to come to the aid of those in need, and those who reject this, contending that helping those who are in need, while morally good, is not morally obligatory; it’s supererogatory, a matter of charity.
It seems to me that while sometimes one has no moral obligation to help and in doing so goes beyond one’s moral duty, this is not always the case. To take a typical example, if a child is drowning and someone could easily save him, then at face value he has a moral obligation to do so. If he lets the child drown he has not simply failed to do something commendable; he is worthy of condemnation for failing to do his duty.
Thus I think it’s a mistake to try to defend classically liberal–libertarian–constraints on the state by appeal to the general distinction between obligation and supererogation. The case that must be made is against using the police power of the state to force people to do certain things they are morally obligated to do.
We ought not to allow others to be harmed when we can easily help them. Obviously enough, here morality constrains our attempts to do the moral thing. When Marvin is in need, it does not prescribe that we do whatever it takes to provide him with what he needs. For some ways of seeking to bring about the goals morality prescribes are themselves morally forbidden. If Marvin needs a new liver, and the only one that will work for him is one already in someone else, we ought not to sacrifice her to save him. There are moral constraints on doing what’s right. Some ways of trying to do what’s right are morally wrong.
Further, morality makes “second order” demands upon us: we ought sometimes to try to influence others to do what they ought to do, and we ought to try to influence them not to do what they ought not to do. If Mary refuses to give Fred the help she ought to give him, it might be our duty to try to influence him to do what he ought to do. If Mitch ought not to treat Flora a particular way, then it might fall to us to try to influence him not to treat her that way. Here too there are moral constraints on our attempts to get others to behave morally. This is obviously true and almost universally accepted. Many of us think that someone can have a moral right to do things which are morally wrong. (Many of our basic rights. eg., the freedom of speech, become meaningless on the supposition that they apply only when others accept the moral propriety of our exercise of them.) If someone has a right to do wrong, then it may be morally wrong to do what it takes to get him to do what’s morally right. Irrespective of whether we think people have such rights, we all realize that the consequences of doing what it takes to get someone to do what’s morally right might be so bad as to make it morally wrong to get him to do it.
Fred ought not to steal daisies from Barney’s garden, but it would be morally wrong for Barney to try to prevent this by shooting him, even if this is the only effective method for getting him to stop stealing them. Barney might have no moral alternative to letting his flowers be stolen.
What is not universally agreed upon is the exact nature of the moral constraints on our efforts to improve human conduct.
In the political context, the crucial question is the nature of the moral constraints on the use of violence, including the threat of violence, as a means to bring it about that people do what they ought to do. What’s clear is that the mere fact that acts of the kind we want to prevent are morally wrong does not decide the issue.
There seem to be three main approaches:
1) Whether it is morally permissible to employ violence as a way to get people to do what they morally ought to do depends on a political decision procedure. E.g., if a democratic electorate favors doing so, and doing so is in accord with the forms of legality, then it is morally permissible.
2) Whether it is morally permissible to employ violence as a way to get people to do what they morally ought to do depends on the consequences of doing so. E.g., if the consequences of using violent means to get people to do what they morally ought to do are better than not doing so, then it is morally permissible to do so.
3) Whether it is morally permissible to employ violence as a way to get people to do what they morally ought to do depends on whether their wrongdoing involves violence. A principle of reciprocity implies that it is morally wrong to initiate violence and that only the wrongdoer’s initiation of violence morally justifies our deploying violent means in response.
The third approach is congruent with the classically liberal–libertarian–idea of the state. It is, I believe, a more plausible ground for it than the unlikely notion that we are not morally obligated to help one another. The reciprocity principle that figures in this approach might, in turn, be a specification of a more general egalitarian principle of reciprocity in human relations. It might also be construed as a principle calling for a kind of pacifism.
