## 1. What is an obligation to oneself?



The traditional examples of obligations to oneself are a hodgepodge,
but they basically come in two kinds: self-care and self-respect
(Allen 2013, 854). Self-care is a matter of promoting our own
interests - pursuing our dreams, minding our health, preserving
our lives. Self-respect, meanwhile, is less about what is good for us,
and more about what is proper or dignified; think of prohibitions on
safe and profitable sex work, or taboos around painless suicide even
in the shadow of an agonizing terminal disease. As these examples
show, self-care and self-respect can be in tension.
"Disrespecting" oneself might be the best way to escape a
miserable death or a life in poverty.



The tension here is so deep that many philosophers claim to only
believe in one of these two kinds of duty, while totally rejecting the
other. At one point in his *Lectures on Ethics* [*LE*],
Kant suggests that we only owe ourselves respect:
"self-regarding duties...have nothing to do with well-being
and our temporal happiness" (*LE*
27:341).[1]
Utilitarians, who think morality is all about well-being, are open at
most to duties of self-care; they do not share the Kantians'
concerns about ending one's life or selling access to
one's body when the result is greater well-being overall (see,
e.g., Meiland 1963).



With such stark disagreement, it is natural to wonder if the debate
here is really focused on a single concept of "obligations to
oneself." In fact, it is often not. The variety in the examples
reflects a more basic variety in concepts. The most crucial
distinction here - essential to everything ever written on
duties to oneself - is between an obligation owed *to*
oneself, and one merely *regarding* oneself.



Suppose you promise your friend to stop wearing tacky hats. As a
result of the promise, you owe it to your friend to dress better; in
this sense, the obligation is "to" your friend, not to
you. But this is still an obligation regarding you, in the sense that
it concerns what you do to yourself. You are the one whose headgear is
at issue. (This sort of example is common in the literature; see,
e.g., Mavrodes 1964, 165-66; Timmermann 2006, 506.)



It is an open question what an obligation to someone consists in, if
it is something over and above mere regard (see Thompson 2004 on
"bipolar normativity," Darwall 2006 on
"second-personal" address, and Schofield 2022 [Other
Internet Resources]). "Interest theories" say that an
obligation to you is somehow linked to what is good for you (see,
e.g., Raz 1986, chap. 5). "Standing theories," which are
more popular in writings on obligations to oneself, say that
obligations to you put you in control. For Gilbert (2018) and Darwall
(2006, 18), the distinctive thing is that you have the standing to
demand what is owed to you. For Schofield (2021, 52), the key is that
you get "a rightful say." For Steiner (2013), you have the
power to waive the obligation via your powers of consent.



Suffice it to say, the exact essence of an obligation to oneself is
still up for debate. By contrast, everyone knows what self-regarding
obligations are, and everyone agrees that we might have them -
duties to maintain one's health so as to take care of
one's family; to wear a mask to avoid spreading contagion; and
so on. Indeed, it is hard to imagine an obligation that
*isn't* somehow self-regarding.



It is far more controversial to say we have bona fide obligations to
ourselves - that is, owed to ourselves, strictly speaking, just
as you might owe it to your friend to keep your promise. The idea of
literally owing something to oneself seems to imply that we have
rights against ourselves, along with the power to release ourselves
from duties (see SS2, below). To avoid this paradox, many
traditional "obligations to oneself" have been recast as,
or replaced with, obligations merely regarding oneself. Aristotle
argues that suicide is not an "injustice towards oneself,"
but only towards the state that one is supposed to serve (1138a
4-1138b 11). Some argue that self-care is not owed to oneself,
or even to others; it is obligatory only in the sense that we have to
do it. (It is an "undirected" rather than a
"directed" obligation.) And the duty to develop
one's talents might be seen as part of a duty to promote the
good of others: think of a lifeguard swimming laps or a surgeon doing
hand exercises.



Another way around the paradox is to say that obligations to oneself
don't imply any quixotic power of self-release. To make this
view work, we need some way of interpreting "obligations to
oneself" so that they aren't quite like the legalistic
obligations we get from promises and contracts. Some say
"obligations" to oneself are in some sense non-legal;
others say one can owe things "to" oneself only in an
attenuated sense; and some even consider shifting the referent of
"oneself" - perhaps we only owe things to our future
selves, or one aspect of our psyche owes it to another.



Much as the Liar Paradox shaped modern theories of truth, the threat
of paradox has profoundly shaped our theories of obligations to
oneself. Let's take a closer look at the paradox before tracing
its influence on contemporary work.


## 2. The Paradox of Self-Release



What's so weird about obligations to oneself?



One thing to note - not quite our topic, but important to clear
up - is that many moral wrongs can be done only to other people.
You cannot steal your own lunch money, deceive yourself with lying
promises, or bop yourself on the head against your own will. Who could
be duped by a promise they know to be false? (See Hill, Jr. 1991,
144.) How can one "steal" what one already owns? (See
Haase 2014, 365.) How can one will things against one's own
will?



This familiar fact - that some wrongs can be done to others but
not to ourselves - is called the *asymmetry of possibilities*
(Munoz and Baron-Schmitt 2022 [Other Internet Resources]).
This asymmetry constrains the scope of self-wronging; some naughty
interactions are impossible in the one-person case. But this does not
rule out *all* possible obligations to oneself. There are still
plenty of problematic things one can do to oneself: bodily harm,
property damage, and so on. Could we wrong ourselves by doing such
things, or is there something fishy about the very idea of an
obligation to oneself?



Now the real paradox. The tension arises from the dual nature of
obligations: they are supposed to be both binding and waivable. Your
obligations "bind" you in the sense that you have to
comply, other things equal, or else you wrong the person to whom you
are obliged. But this person can, if they like, waive the obligation,
releasing you from your duty. This duality is perfectly intelligible
in the two-person case. If you owe your friend $5 for a fancy coffee,
you are bound to pay - you cannot simply opt out, as you might
opt out of a mailing list or a volunteer trip. And if your friend
wants to unbind you, they can do so unmysteriously, simply by saying
"My treat."



What if you owe something to yourself? Then the "binding"
seems to vanish. Since you can willy-nilly waive any obligation owed
to you, you can willy-nilly waive any obligation to yourself. Any such
obligation is therefore purely optional - which sounds
incoherent, like an obligatory hobby or a mercenary passion
project.



The modern version of the paradox is due to Marcus Singer (1959, 203),
who frames it as an argument with three premises:


1. If *A* has a duty to *B*, then *B* has a
right against *A*.
2. If *B* has a right against *A*, he [or she] can give
it up and release *A* from the obligation.
3. No one can release himself [or herself] from an obligation.



Together, these ensure that one cannot have duties to oneself.
("Duties" are just "obligations" with fewer
syllables.) It's a punchy argument. Duties entail rights; rights
entail powers of release; but one cannot release oneself from a duty.
The conclusion, for Singer, is that one cannot have a duty to oneself;
the very idea of such a duty is "self-contradictory"
(1958, 203).



Singer's spin on the paradox is clear and forceful. It also
crucially involves the concept of a right, which is used to link
duties to the power of release. But otherwise, the puzzle merely
echoes several historical sources, which Singer does not cite or
engage with (see Cholbi 2015). For example, here is Immanuel Kant.



> 
> If the I *that imposes obligation* is taken in the same sense
> as the I *that is put under obligation*, a duty to oneself is a
> self-contradictory concept. ... [O]ne imposing obligation
> (*auctor obligationis*) could always release the one put under
> obligation (*subjectum obligationis*) from the obligation
> (*terminus obligationis*), so that (if both are one and the
> same subject) he would not be bound at all to a duty he lays upon
> himself. This involves a contradiction. (*Metaphysics of
> Morals* [*MM*]
>  6:417)[2]
> 



Notice the same emphasis on "self-contradiction." And here
is Thomas Hobbes, discussing legal rather than moral obligations:



> 
> The sovereign of a commonwealth, be it an assembly, or one man, is not
> subject to the civil laws. For having power to make, and repeal laws,
> he may, when he pleaseth, free himself from that subjection by
> repealing those laws that trouble him and making of new; and
> consequently he was free before. For he is free, that can be free when
> he will; nor is it possible for any person to be bound to himself,
> because he that can bind can release; and therefore, he that is bound
> to himself only is not bound. (1651 [1994, 174])
> 



"He is free, that can be free when he will" is just
another way of saying that one cannot release oneself from a genuine
obligation. When self-release is an option, one is never really
 bound.[3]



What's the solution?



We have three options. The first is to follow the argument where it
leads - namely, to Singer's nihilism, on which there is no
such thing as a duty to self. The next option, which is the most
popular among ethicists, is to defend unwaivable duties to oneself.
Finally, some argue that self-release is not as incoherent as it
sounds, and that we really do have waivable duties to, and maybe even
rights against, ourselves.



The choice between these three options is a crossroads in moral
philosophy; in effect, we are choosing the place of the self within
moral theory. Singer says there is no place for the self in morality.
The Kantians - the chief defenders of unwaivable duties to self
- are more likely to place the self at the privileged center.
And those who believe in self-release see the self as just one moral
person among others, denying or downplay the specialness of
one's relation to oneself.



On what grounds have philosophers chosen one road over the others?
Where have their choices led them?


## 3. Denying obligations to oneself



Let's start with Singer's view, which is that, as shown by
the paradox, there can be no obligations to oneself. There may be
self-regarding obligations owed to other people; there may be decisive
reasons to be prudent. But no one ever literally owes anything to
oneself, morally speaking. On the extreme version of this view, no one
even has a moral reason to promote their own interests as such (see,
e.g., Finlay 2007).



Singer gets points for dispensing with the paradox. He doesn't
posit duties to self, and he has a principled reason for not doing so:
given the possibility of self-release, a duty to oneself would not be
binding - which means it would lack the core property of any
duty that deserves the name.



The challenge for Singer's view is that it is revisionary,
obliterating half of the classic distinction between duties to self
and duties to others - a distinction that "seems well
embedded both in traditional moral philosophy and in ordinary moral
thinking" (Singer 1958, 202).



Perhaps it is all right for Singer to dispute traditional wisdom. It
would not be the first time a tradition got something wrong. Besides,
as we have noted, there is an equally distinguished tradition of
*skepticism* about obligations to oneself. Even Kant, the chief
defender of duties to self, has wary moments (see SS2, 4).
Deference to the past isn't decisive here.



What about ordinary thought? If duties to self are really
"embedded" in common sense, that is certainly some reason
to reject Singer's argument, or at least to look for ways
out.



Singer himself suggests that we should not take our ordinary moral
discourse too seriously. When we talk of duties to oneself, our
language "must be metaphorical" (1958, 203). He
explains:



> 
> To say that someone has a duty to (or owes it to) himself to do
> something is an emphatic way of asserting that he has a right to do it
> - that there are no moral considerations against it - and
> that it would be foolish or imprudent for him not to. (1958, 203)
> 



Similarly, Singer thinks, when you "promise yourself" to
do something, you must really be expressing your resolve to do it (see
also Haase 2014, 364; Hills 2003, 131-33).



There are three questions we might ask about Singer's
interpretation of ordinary talk. First, Anita Allen questions why we
shouldn't take people literally in these contexts:



> 
> Figures of speech abound in language. But in the case of statements
> about duties to oneself, why suppose we do not mean exactly what we
> say? A moral theory should explain rather than discount inconvenient
> moral discourse (2013, 859)
> 



Second, and related, we could ask if Singer's position does
justice to the thoughts *behind* the talk. Consider a few basic
questions: is it morally all right to risk dire injuries to oneself
for a cheap thrill? To debase oneself for a few bucks? To accept
humiliation from peers for the sake of fitting in? One might well say
*no*, even if these actions are certain to harm nobody but
oneself. This is more than a linguistic habit that philosophers should
be able to explain. These are considerable - though still
contestable - moral intuitions, and the appeal to metaphors may
not be enough to overturn them.



Finally, Singer's view seems to suggest that we should be happy
to talk, at least metaphorically, of rights against oneself -
which, in fact, we are not. For Singer, "promises to
oneself" are just statements of resolve, and "duties to
oneself" are exaggerated 'oughts'. Presumably,
"rights against oneself" would be understood
metaphorically, as well. And yet, no one is willing to talk of rights
against oneself. Why? The answer cannot just be that these rights are
"surely nonsense" (Singer 1958, 202). For Singer, duties
to oneself by definition *entail* rights against oneself, so
the duties should be *at least* as nonsensical. This is a fact
about ordinary talk that Singer seems unable to account for.



Stepping back from Singer for a moment, there does seem to be
something distinctive about the realm of rights, as opposed to other
parts of morality. Rights are waived by consent and created by
contracts. Rights imply authority. If you rightfully own a bicycle,
then when it comes to who gets to ride it, *you* are the boss.
(This is especially clear on "standing theories." See
SS1 above.)



We now turn to the most popular response to the paradox, which is to
rescue obligations to oneself by airlifting them out of the realm of
rights. We can owe things to ourselves precisely *because*
owing does not imply rights or the authority to waive. Even if
self-release is impossible, there could still be unwaivable
obligations to oneself.


## 4. Unwaivable obligations to oneself



The most popular response to the paradox is to insist that duties to
oneself exist while denying that they imply waivable rights against
oneself. This means rejecting either the first or second premise of
Singer's argument:


1. If *A* has a duty to *B*, then *B* has a
right against *A*.
2. If *B* has a right against *A*, he [or she] can give
it up and release *A* from the obligation.
3. No one can release himself [or herself] from an obligation.



Either duties don't entail rights, or rights don't always
grant the power of release.



One of Singer's first critics, Daniel Kading (1959), defends
rights without release. Kading says we only have rights against people
with whom we have struck some kind of agreement - like a promise
or contract - and sometimes, these people aren't around to
release us. They might, for example, be dead. There is no hope of
release in such a scenario, and yet the right remains. But even if
this correct, it won't do anything to establish duties to
oneself (as Kading seems to admit). There is something fishy about the
idea of "agreements" with oneself, and, as Munoz
(2020, 694) points out, the deathbed promise has no one-person
analogue. (See Singer 1963, 133-35, for further objections.)



Kading next tries a different maneuver, which has become a classic. He
distinguishes two kinds of "obligations-to." One typically
springs from promises and contracts (the
"agreement-sense"), and the other has to do with affecting
people's interests (the "benefits-sense"). Kading
agrees with Singer that we can't have obligations to ourselves
in the first way, but insists that we can in the second. We are
"morally obligated" to "maximize goodness"
even when that just means making ourselves happy (Kading 1959,
156).



This same move shows up all over, particularly in the work of Kantian
ethicists, who draw not on Kading but on Kant's distinction
between "juridical" and "non-juridical" duties
(see *MM* 6:383, *LE* 29:117, 632). Juridical duties are
*external*, concerning acts rather than motives, and
*enforceable* by coercion and demands. For example, if you
threaten not to pay me the money you contractually owe me, I can
demand that you fork over the cash, and I can sue you if you
don't. But I can't demand that you pay me out of the love
of your heart. I can demand only the external act - the
forking-over. A non-juridical duty, by contrast, requires the right
mindset as well as the right action. Non-juridical duty is, basically,
a matter of caring about important things for the right reasons
- for example, loving and respecting your neighbors because they
matter. Now the key point. For Kant, only *juridical* duties
involve powers of release. If I offer to void the contract, you can
get out of your duty to pay me. But there is no way to get release
from your duty to love your neighbors because they matter - it
is not as if your neighbors can stop mattering at will! (See
*MM* 6:219.)



So here is the Kantian move. We say Singer is right about
*juridical* duties, which really do come with rights and powers
of release. There is no such thing as a juridical duty to oneself. But
we insist there can still be *non-juridical* duties to oneself,
since these do *not* imply rights and powers of release.



This move is extremely popular, though not everyone uses the term
"juridical." Wick (1960, 1961) and Knight (1961)
distinguish legal from non-legal duties (see also Mothersill's
1960 reply to Wick, which emphasizes that Wick doesn't defend
"duties" to self in the ordinary sense). Eisenberg (1968)
discusses "social contractual" duties. Paton (1990,
225-26) defends "non-contractual" duties to oneself.
Hills (2005) rejects the "'juridical' model"
of duties and defends an unwaivable, non-juridical duty to promote
one's own well-being. Kahn, in 2018, argues that Kant himself
*should* have endorsed a duty to promote one's own
happiness, despite his arguments to the contrary. For a bit more
discussion on what Kant thinks we owe to ourselves, see the
supplementary document:



> 
> Kant on What We Owe to Ourselves
> 



The result is a certain humanistic, rather than legalistic, picture of
duties to oneself: they do not have to do with rights and agreements,
but instead with caring and valuing; they are not under voluntary
control, but instead spring from unchangeable features of our
personality, like our capacity to make free choices (in Kant's
case) or our susceptibility to pain (in Hills' and Kahn's)
- basic things about our psychology that make us human. We can
waive our rights at will and go on with our day; we cannot so easily
take a break from our humanity.



On this view, there is something called a "duty to
oneself" that slips through the jaws of Paradox -
definitely a victory. But some object that the victory is hollow: the
Kantians have carved out a space for "non-juridical"
duties to oneself while totally surrendering to Singer when it comes
to the juridical. This objection may have bite if
"duties," as ordinarily conceived, are juridical at heart.
It is worth asking: what kind of "duty" doesn't come
with any rights, waivers, or enforcement? Aren't these the very
things that make a duty distinct from a mere value or virtue? Many
writers - following the legal theorist Wesley Hohfeld (1913,
1917) - would even say that A's duty to B *just is*
the flipside of B's right against A (this sort of right is also
called a claim; see e.g., Gilbert 2018; Johnson 2010; Munoz
2021; Thomson 1990, chap. 1). We might hesitate to go as far as
Hohfeld in equating duties with rights. Still, some might wonder what
is left after we subtract from a duty its rights-related upshots
(Munoz 2020, 693). Are non-juridical duties really duties at
all?



Paul Schofield (2015) defends something closer to an unwaivable
juridical duty to oneself. Schofield argues that you owe it to
yourself not to cause yourself harm in the future - as you might
by smoking heavily in your youth and giving yourself lung cancer. You
also owe it to yourself not to hamstring your future choices, as in
Derek Parfit's (1984, 327-28) example of the Russian
nobleman, who arranges as a young socialist to prevent his future self
from funding conservative causes. Schofield's picture is this.
You owe a certain action to someone when they can legitimately demand
that you do it. But you can also imagine demands made by yourself of
yourself, from different perspectives within your life. When you
smoke, causing yourself to suffer in the future, you can look upon
this either from the perspective of the future sufferer or the present
smoker. The future smoker - that is, you from your future
perspective - could justifiably demand less smoking from you in
the present, generating a duty not to smoke. Moreover, you cannot
presently waive this duty, since you do not now occupy the right
perspective (Schofield 2015, 17; see also Schofield 2019).



This proposal is enormously creative - a leap forward in
philosophical thinking about obligations to oneself. No doubt the link
between duties, demands, and perspectives will play an important role
in future work on the subject. That said, there have been some
objections to this form of Schofield's view. In particular, some
worry that it makes our relation to our future selves too chilly and
antagonistic, like our relation to a non-consenting other (Kanygina
forthcoming; Munoz 2020, 694-95). If we cannot
*now* waive our duties not to harm ourselves in the future, it
seems to follow that we may not impose costs on our future selves,
even for our own greater good. This seems too stringent; there is
nothing wrong with taking a medication that cures a severe ailment
today while causing moderately bad side-effects in the future. Harming
oneself can be justified when it makes one's life better on the
whole. In this respect, self-harm is much like doing harm to a
consenting
 other.[4]


## 5. Waivable obligations to oneself



Our discussion so far has assumed, following Singer, Kant, and Hobbes,
that self-release is fishy - that one cannot wiggle out of
one's ethical duties. That is the basic reason why Singer gives
up on duties to oneself, and it is the basic reason why Kantians
insist on decoupling them from waivable rights.



But what if the assumption is wrong? What if you *can* release
yourself from obligations? This brings us to the third and final
family of theories, those that allow waivable obligations to oneself.
Such theories confront the Paradox of Self-Release head on.
Self-release, after all, certainly *seems* paradoxical. How can
we find a way to resist Hobbes' dictum - "he is
free, that can be free when he will" - and how might we
clear the air of paradox?



The basic problem, as a reminder, is that a waivable duty to oneself
would not be binding, because it would not be possible to violate. One
could simply waive the duty "when one pleaseth" to avoid
transgression, as Hobbes' sovereign might suspend your property
rights when he wants your stuff.



To meet this challenge, we need some way to show that such duties,
despite appearances, could actually be binding.



The trailblazer here is G.A. Cohen. He imagines himself in the
sovereign's predicament, passing a law that he might later want
to waive away:



> 
> Suppose...that the law is indeed universal, or that it includes
> me within its scope by virtue of some other semantic or pragmatic
> feature of it. Then, if I had the authority to legislate it, it indeed
> binds me, as long as I do not repeal it. (1996, 170)
> 



In other words, even if you *can* be free at will, that
doesn't mean you are *free already*. You are free when,
and only when, you go through the motions to free yourself. Until then
you are bound - in this case, by virtue of your power to make
laws that apply to you.



Cohen's remarks on the subject, though valuable, are brief.
Munoz (2020, 2021) develops the idea into a bigger picture of
duties, rights, and waivers. The starting point is a view known as the
Self-Other Symmetry: you have the same basic rights against yourself
as you have against anybody else. But it is uniquely difficult to
violate your own rights, Munoz says, because the very choice to
do what they forbid doubles as an authorization to do it. By choosing
to bop yourself on the head, for example, you make yourself into a
willing party to the bopping, and thereby waive your right, a bit like
if you had consenting to being bopped by someone else. The result is
that rights against oneself are real but "finkish" -
waived by the very things that normally lead to violations. (The
analogy is with finkish dispositions, which are real but hidden by the
very things that normally cause them to manifest; imagine a fragile
glass that turns to stone whenever something is about to strike it
(see Lewis 1997; Martin 1994).)



But if a right is finkish, it is hard to see why it should matter. For
all intents and purposes, it is as good as absent. This challenge is
pressed forcefully by Schofield:



> 
> Traditionally understood, a duty binds a person, irrespective of what
> she herself decides. The powerlessness to escape it through a mere act
> of will is, in fact, part of what it is to be duty-bound. So insofar
> as a person has the power to release herself, the purported duty lacks
> its characteristic ability to place her in the very condition that we
> associate with duty. (2021, 47)
> 



And while some might say finkish rights and duties are merely
"feeble," rather than impossible, Schofield (2021, 48)
replies that he can see "no reason why we cannot simply deny
altogether that they are duties." Finkish duties
"bind" only in the sense that they count as duties; they
do not constrain our actions. (But see SS6.2 below on rights
against oneself as prerogatives.)



Could a waivable duty to oneself have any normative bite, anything to
constrain how we may act? For there to be a constraint here, waivers
would have to be less than automatic, so that the mere choice to bop
myself on the head might not waive my duty not to bop myself.



Schaab (2021) argues that a decision might fail to waive a duty to
oneself if the duty and motive come from different perspectives within
the agent - as when someone *qua* philosopher decides to
skip the gym to work on a paper even though, *qua* athlete,
they could legitimately demand more exercise. Kanygina (forthcoming)
argues that self-release must be *autonomous*. If my decisions
are "akratic, negligent, or confused," they will not
validly waive my duties to myself, and while sometimes my state of
mind will double as an excuse, at other times I may be genuinely
culpable. Kanygina illustrates with a case:



> 
> Linda, a diabetic craving a cake, might tell herself 'What harm
> is there in my eating a piece or two?' Linda is aware of the
> risks. Being both weak-willed and negligent of her health, she acts
> frivolously. When she later feels guilty, her guilt seems appropriate.
> (forthcoming, SS3.1)
> 



Indeed, any version of the Self-Other Symmetry will be committed to a
version of Kanygina's view. It is a truism that interpersonal
consent can waive rights only when it is informed, voluntary, and
competent. A breezy "yes" might not cut it. Given
Symmetry, the same should hold in the one-person case. To authorize
oneself to act in high-stakes cases - sharing private
information, donating a spare kidney, devoting one's efforts to
a cause - the decision must be made carefully in light of the
available facts. Even if self-release is possible, that doesn't
mean it's easy.


## 6. Applications



In modern moral philosophy, duties to oneself are often treated as an
isolated, antiquated topic. Paul Schofield (2021, 6) remarks that
"self-directed duties find themselves largely absent from the
contemporary philosophical scene," as attested by the fact that
- as of the time of his writing - there was "no
standalone entry for duties to self" in the *Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy*.



As readers of this entry will note, such lacunas in the literature are
filling up fast. More and more links are being uncovered between
duties to self and far-flung moral questions - how we should use
our smartphones (Aylsworth and Castro 2021); whether to let companies
mine our data (Allen 2013); whether we should "suck it up"
in the face of injustice or instead go out and protest (Boxill 1976;
Hill, Jr 1991d; Straumanis 1984).



Here we will survey some particularly interesting issues that
intersect with obligations to oneself.


### 6.1 Suicide



The topic of suicide - as studied by moral and political
philosophers - is complex and multifaceted. (See the entry on
 suicide.)
 People have many different things to live for, as well as
tribulations to escape from. In dark moments it may well seem
reasonable to wish for a release from suffering; other times, the
attempt to end one's own life may strike others - and
oneself, if one survives - as rash and tragic. One extreme case
would be martyrs, praised for giving their lives to a higher cause. At
the other end might be those who, at least on some views, have a very
clear duty to stay alive. Even in such cases, however, it may be inapt
or counterproductive to castigate someone for actions taken out of
distraught desperation, abandoned by their sense of self-worth; to
defend a duty of self-care here is not simply to advocate blaming and
shaming.



There are also many people to whom one might owe the duty not to kill
oneself, as Kant observes:



> 
> [Suicide] can...be regarded as a violation of one's duty to
> other people (the duty of spouses to each other, of parents to their
> children, of a subject to his superior or to his fellow citizens, and
> finally even a violation of duty to God, as his abandoning the post
> assigned him in the world without having been called away from it).
> (*MM* 6:422)
> 



Our question, however, must be separated out from that of duties to
others, from blame, and from the rationality of choosing death. The
question is whether we *owe it* *to ourselves* not to
prematurely end our lives. To get a clear look, it helps to focus on
the effects of suicide on the individual, not their spouse and dog and
so on; and it may be helpful to consider both the case where one has a
bright future and the case of foreseen grimness.



Since ancient Greece, philosophers have been skeptical of a duty to
oneself not to commit suicide, however bright one's future.
Aristotle (1138a 4-1138b 11) argues that suicide cannot in
principle be an injustice against oneself - where
"injustice" roughly means a violation of rights -
because the suicidal person "suffers voluntarily," and
"nobody suffers injustice voluntarily." This last claim,
clearly, is too strong. People might freely choose to suffer injustice
when prevention is costly, as when someone declines to invest in an
elaborate home security system. Other times the alternative involves
even graver injustice; voting for "the lesser of two
evils" is still voluntary even if one wishes for a better slate
of candidates. Still, there is something to Aristotle's point.
He is foreshadowing the Paradox of Self-Release. If the suicidal
person *willingly* opts to die, how could their choice possibly
infringe their own duties? Wouldn't those duties count as fully
waived?



This line of thought directly leads to a libertarian view of suicide:
your life, your choice - at least, when it comes to what you owe
yourself. (See, e.g., Szasz 2002.) This is the sort of view that
Singer and other skeptics hold across the board.



A well-known challenge to such laissez-faire views comes from David
Velleman, who argues in a Kantian spirit that those who defend the
"right to die" are missing something important: "the
sense of a value in us that makes a claim on us - a value that
we must *live up to*" (1999, 612). Velleman here is
referring to our value as persons, a value that should be cherished as
an end in itself rather than exploited as a mere means to a good time.
Frances Kamm (1997) would reply that, when people have good reasons
for choosing death - as when their life is consumed by
"unbearable pain" - they should be free to
"decline the honor of being a person."



More recently, Schofield (2021, 137-38) argues that Velleman
does not go far enough in recognizing obligations *to* oneself.
One's own value is not something "that just happens to
reside within a person," but instead, one stands in a
"special relationship" to any affront to that value. To
put it another way, Velleman defends a self-*regarding*
obligation not to commit suicide, but no such obligation *to*
oneself. Hill similarly doesn't go so far as to call suicide a
violation of duty, much less of rights, though he thinks it may in
some cases express a lack of proper value for one's own humanity
(Hill, Jr 1991b). (By contrast, Munoz (2020, 695) thinks we owe
it to everyone not to pointlessly, tragically kill them - self
included - and that this obligation is "too
important" to waive for trivial reasons; for a similar claim see
Schofield 2021, 68n7.)



How should we think about the possibility of an obligation to oneself
not to commit suicide? On Schofield's framework, the key
question is that of what we can legitimately demand of ourselves from
different possible perspectives. From the perspective of yourself in
the future, when you will be feeling the brunt of your decisions in
the present, you may find yourself with good reasons for resenting
your past choices - frittered savings, thoughtless smoking, and
so on. From that perspective you could legitimately demand of
yourself, in your present perspective, that you take care better care
of your future interests. If so, Schofield thinks, you owe that care
to yourself.



It is not altogether obvious, however, how this is supposed to work
when the harm involves death. If you end your life, your future
perspective never exists. There will be no actual perspective from
which you can imagine issuing a legitimate demand. (You can conjure up
the perspective in your imagination, but that is not the same thing.)
For this reason, it may be misleading to say, as Cibik (2020,
196) does, that "the victim" of a suicide is one's
"future self." The future self is not adversely
*affected;* they are never even *effected*. (For a
highly original and illuminating discussion, see Kanygina forthcoming,
SS2.)



So much for the case of missing out on a valuable future. What if your
future looks bleak, and there's no way to fix it - only to
avoid it? Schofield considers such cases in an open-minded way.



> 
> Imagine a person who knows she will soon lose control of her rational
> capacities, her ability to reason, her ability to understand things as
> they are, and so on. Imagine that this is because her capacities
> degrade, or because her pain will be so overwhelming that reason is
> impossible. In such a case, we might wonder whether the rational
> standpoint demands at all that one refrain from self-termination. And
> if it does, one might wonder why one would not be able to waive the
> demand. (2021, 138)
> 



Here Schofield's emphasis is on the individual's interests
and standing, not the raw moral value of her rationality. The image is
not that of a guardian assigned to a post, but of a person with some
authority to make decisions about her own life.


### 6.2 Supererogation



A supererogatory action is a "good deed beyond the call of
duty" (see the entry on
 supererogation).
 More precisely, it is a permissible action that is better than a
permissible alternative. Think of friendly favors, saintly sacrifices,
and heroic rescues.



Nowadays, there is not much work on the link between supererogation
and duties to self. The standard view since the late 1970s is that
supererogation emerges from a clash between the greater good of others
and raw self-interest - where self-interest is seen as a
reasonable thing to pursue, but not as a moral obligation to oneself
(Archer 2016a; Hurka and Shubert 2012; Parfit 1978; Scheffler 1994;
Slote
 1984).[5]



But in earlier work, many writers see obligations to self as
fundamental to understanding supererogation - especially
self-sacrifice. Jack Meiland argues that one doesn't have to
heroically dive into the choppy waters to save others from drowning,
thanks to a duty to oneself not to do harm; he later remarks that this
paradox - a *duty* not to be a *hero?* -
calls for a "thorough reexamination" of our views of
supererogation (Meiland 1964, 171). In response to Pybus (1982, 199),
who argues for a moral requirement to "be heroic,"
McGoldrick objects that



> 
> such a requirement would come into conflict with our obvious duty to
> recognize our own intrinsic worth, and judge our own aspirations,
> goals, and interests as no less endowed with value than the
> aspirations and interests of others. (1984, 527)
> 



"The heart of the matter," as she puts it, "is the
Kantian argument that we have duties to ourselves as well as
others" (McGoldrick 1984, 527). Kant himself says "our
esteem" for daring acts - like trying to "rescue
people from a shipwreck" - will be "greatly weakened
by the concept of *duty to himself*" (*CPrR*
5:158). The problem for Kant's view, as well as Meiland's,
is that it seems to underrate self-sacrifice. If we owe it to
ourselves not to be the hero, won't heroism be morally
*wrong?* This is an instance of the "Wrongness
Problem" for theories of supererogation - the problem of
showing why deeds that seem "beyond the call" aren't
wrong. This is the shadowy twin of the familiar "Obligation
Problem," which is to explain why they aren't obligatory.
(For early versions of the Wrongness Problem, see Mavrodes 1964 and
Narveson 1964; see also Postow 2005).



In light of the Wrongness Problem - and with Singer's
paradox still looming overhead - it is no surprise that some
philosophers began searching for something new, beyond obligations to
oneself, to be the source of the limits on moral obligations. Others
would give up the hunt altogether, as does Bernard Williams, a famous
skeptic about "the morality system" in general. Williams
calls duties to self "fraudulent items," conjured up by
philosophers suckered in by the belief that "only an obligation
can beat an obligation" (Williams 1985, 182).



Not everyone has been deterred. Some heterodox writers, working
outside of the Kantian tradition, continue searching for a way to
ground supererogation in obligations to oneself. A notable example is
Shelly Kagan (1989, 206-16) and his pioneering
"Self-Constraint Argument." Suppose - a big
"suppose" - that you have the same waivable
obligations to yourself as you do to others. Let's consider one
such right; the right against yourself not to do yourself harm. From
this, we try to show that harming yourself for the greater good of
others - for example, by giving a spare kidney - will be
purely optional. It is permissible to make the sacrifice because you
can just waive your obligation; the act would then be like performing
a kidney transplant on a willing donor. It is permissible *not*
to self-sacrifice because you can just refuse to waive your
obligation, which makes it wrong to self-harm; the act would then be
like *stealing* a kidney from an unwilling "donor."
The result is that giving your spare kidney is optional even if
it's for the greater good: you can give yourself consent to do
it, or refuse consent and rightfully keep the kidney. Kagan ultimately
rejects this argument for a panoply of reasons. The other key proposal
is due to Paul Hurley (1995), who derives the optionality of self-harm
from "patient-protecting reasons," which are like
unwaivable obligations - in this case, obligations to oneself.
These reasons open a "protected sphere" of actions.
Munoz (2021) objects that Hurley's and Kagan's
arguments both struggle with the Wrongness Problem. For Hurley, the
problem is that a patient-protecting reason *not to harm
yourself* would make it wrong to give your kidney. For Kagan, the
same appears to follow if you decline to
"self-consent."



Despite these challenges, philosophers are still searching for links
between duties to self and supererogation. Munoz (2021), for
example, tries to revive Kagan's argument, arguing that a
waivable duty to oneself is a prerogative: it can be cited in defense
of one's actions, but since it can be waived at will, it
isn't a "binding" reason to comply. On this view,
duties to self help to unify the two main concepts in deontological
ethics: restrictions, which make it wrong to harm non-consenting
others even for the greater good, and prerogatives, which permit us
not to self-harm. Restrictions come from what we owe to others, and
prerogatives come from what we owe to ourselves.


### 6.3 Self-promises



Suppose it's New Year's Day, and you - sick of your
own bad habits - decide to make a change. You say to yourself:
"I promise to cut down on screen time this year." Do you
now owe it to yourself to follow through? Does your resolution even
count as a bona fide promise?



The possibility of self-promises - and their possible import
- has drawn the attention a number of philosophers. Some are
skeptical (e.g., Downie 1985); others, less so (Fruh 2014; Habib 2009;
Hill, Jr 1991a; Raz 1972, 97; Rosati 2011).



On the one hand, promises to oneself can seem not just possible but
downright useful. When we struggle to commit our wills in the ordinary
ways - focusing on attractive aspects, "psyching ourselves
up" - we often reach for other devices of commitment
(Schelling 1985). A promise to oneself may be just such a device. By
saying things like "I *promise* to cut down on screen
time," we are not saying, "Boy, I'd *better*
cut down," or "Gee, *wouldn't it be nice* if
I cut down?" We are moralizing. We are staking our self-respect
on a decision in order to get ourselves to carry it out (see Hill, Jr
1991a), or as Rosati (2011, 143-44) puts it, we try to
"maintain our self-governance...by putting our authority on
the line" - that is, our authority over ourselves, our
authority to "effectively determine what we shall do, and to
command respect in virtue of that very authority." It is like
vowing "on my honor." It is a distinctive means of
self-motivation.



On the other hand, promises to oneself do have a funny smell. If you
promise me something, I have the power to release you. If you promise
*yourself*, then it seems you can release *yourself* at
will, which sounds paradoxical - and familiar. In Singer's
view, this is just a special instance of the Paradox of Self-Release,
which afflicts any kind of duty to oneself. He asks:



> 
> Can one promise oneself to do something? Such language is frequently
> used. People say "I have promised myself to..." But a
> promise to oneself would be a promise from which one could release
> oneself at will, and thus not a genuine promise at all. (1958, 203)
> 



Others have raised similar worries. Atiyah writes:



> 
> It is very odd to regard a secret vow to oneself as creating an
> obligation of any kind. If it does, [it] is one without a
> corresponding right ... [and] which can be violated without risk
> of legal, moral or social censure. (1981, 54)
> 



Here Atiyah echoes Singer's skepticism about duties without
rights, as well as raising other worries.



A "promise to oneself," Singer concludes, can only be a
resolution in disguise. A genuine promise generates a duty, owed by
the promisor to the promisee. A self-promise, however, just expresses
a "settled determination" to act. It is a figurative use
of moral language, or else it is nonsense.



But as we have seen, there are replies to the Paradox of Self-Release,
and so it should come as no surprise that there are arguments in favor
of genuine self-promises - which may not be as funny as they
seemed at first whiff.



To start, self-promising is not some strange contortion only performed
by characters in thought experiments. As Rosati (2011, 124-25)
observes, we at least seem to make self-promises about a "broad
array" of things - self-care, self-respect, moral
rectitude, choice of lifestyle - and in a wide variety of ways,
from silent vows to showy announcements. Self-promising is, in a word,
*normal*. But this by itself is not a decisive point, as Rosati
herself would agree, since Singer could reinterpret our ordinary talk
of self-promises as merely figurative, a way of steeling one's
will rather than conjuring a moral obligation.



Second, we might return to Allen's reply to Singer: we
shouldn't be so quick to dismiss ordinary talk. Why think that
self-promises *must* be figures of speech?



Third, we could try to find special cases where Singer's
skepticism is harder to believe. Allen Habib (2009) gives the example
of a contest in which a sales manager promises her team - self
included - that she will give $100 to next week's top
seller; another of his examples is a drinker who backslides on a
self-promise to go sober. Hill (1991a, 147) explores cases where a
promise to oneself must be reconsidered "in the light of
unanticipated new information" that tells in favor of annulment
- on Hill's view, this kind of release is not problematic,
because it is not done willy-nilly. Janis Schaab presents a similar
case:



> 
> Suppose that I want to buy a new laptop, and so I promise myself to
> save some money. A few days later, I am informed that my salary will
> be raised. I can now afford to buy the new laptop rightaway
> [*sic*]. It seems that now, if not before, I can release myself
> from my promise to save money. It is not obvious that the mere
> *possibility* of self-release nullifies my obligation to save
> money. (2021, 177)
> 



Finally, we might defend the coherence of willy-nilly waivers.
Certainly this is a bit easier if we already believe in the
possibility of releasing oneself from other duties to self, like the
duty not to harm (see SS5, above). The trick is the same either
way: we say that the person is bound *until* the moment of
release. The pioneer of this move in the promising literature is
Connie Rosati, who writes:



We would not be tempted to say that because the promisee can release
the promisor at will, the promisor is not really obligated. So long as
the promisee has not released the promisor, she is indeed bound. But
then we should say the same thing about self-promises: although an
agent, as promisee, can release herself, as promisor, at will, *so
long as she does not release herself, she is indeed bound*. (2011,
134-35; see also Munoz 2020, 697)



This view raises its own puzzle, analogous to Schofield's
challenge to Munoz (see again SS5). If a self-promise can
be waived at will, so that there is no real danger of violating it,
why should it matter?



One possible answer is the one we started with: self-promising is a
way of staking our respect to add some moral *oomph* to an
intention. This still leaves us wondering where the *oomph*
comes from, if not the threat of a broken promise. Here the friends of
self-promising need to find some way that release might be non-trivial
even if it is possible - just as Kanygina (forthcoming) argues
that self-release requires us to make decisions autonomously, and
Schaab (2021) argues that the power of self-release does not fully
protect us against the possibility of violation. Fruh (2014, 170) goes
some way towards an answer; he argues that, just because one
*can* dissolve an obligation easily, that doesn't make
the act morally *meaningless*; the dissolution might express
something undesirable, such as a deficiency of "moral
fiber." A lack of fiber probably won't strike fear into
evildoers' hearts. But it is a defect nonetheless.


### 6.4 Body modification and self-expression



"Your body is a temple," the saying goes. A temple to
whom? If it's *yours*, then clearly *you* should
get to decide the rules - haircuts, tattoos, piercings, sex
hormones, giving and taking blood. All else equal, no one can tell you
what to do with your body. But if it's a temple to someone
*else* - say, God - then the choice is not really
yours to make. You're the custodian, not the caller of shots,
and you should treat your body with the same kind of gingerly respect
that you would show as a guest in someone else's home. Their
temple, their rules.



Nowadays, few Western ethicists would argue that you should treat your
body in such-and-such a way purely because of divine authority
("God abhors tattoos!") or natural teleology ("Your
blood *belongs* in your own body!"). But the history of
philosophy teems with prim pronouncements on the proper way to treat
one's body, and philosophers continue to debate whether certain
kinds of bodily modification are immoral as a matter of duty to
oneself, as well as whether certain kinds of self-enhancement are
permissible or even obligatory.



"Body modification," in this context, means a change to
one's body that needn't be intrinsically harmful, all
things considered. We are interested in the modifying itself, not just
in the obvious harms it might involve. Decapitation
"modifies" the body, but has little in common, morally
speaking, with nail-clipping, haircuts, pierced ears, and the removal
of teeth.



On Kant's view, however, decapitation and tooth-removal seem to
differ only by a matter of degree. He writes:



> 
> To deprive oneself of an integral part or organ (to maim oneself)
> - for example, to give away or sell a tooth to be transplanted
> into another's mouth, or to have oneself castrated in order to
> get an easier livelihood as a singer, and so forth - are ways of
> partially murdering oneself. (*MM* 6:423)
> 



Clearly, Kant has in mind an unwaivable duty not to take out
one's body parts. Donating or selling a tooth is immoral -
even, apparently, when the transaction is consensual and mutually
beneficial. Kant then qualifies:



> 
> But to have a dead or diseased organ amputated when it endangers
> one's life, or to have something cut off that is a part but not
> an organ of the body, for example, one's hair, cannot be counted
> as a crime against one's own person - although cutting
> one's hair in order to sell it is not altogether free from
> blame. (*MM* 6:423)
> 



For Kant, an appendectomy isn't partial murder, but there is
something wrong with haircuts for paychecks. It is hard to see this as
anything but natural teleology: it is not up to *you* what your
organs are meant to do, and you may not make unnatural changes to your
body except to correct for defects - a version of "your
body is a temple," where the holiness comes from the value of
being a person: "disposing of oneself as a mere means to some
discretionary end is debasing humanity in one's person (*homo
noumenon*), to which the human being (*homo phaenomenon*)
was nevertheless entrusted for preservation" (*MM*
6:423). Here Kant sounds less like an Enlightenment thinker and more
like a natural lawyer (see, e.g., the discussion of self-love and
suicide in St. Thomas Aquinas's *Summa Theologica*, part
II, Q64, A5, as cited in Cholbi 2017, sec. 2.2).



Suffice it to say, Kant's view has problems. First, it
doesn't take bodily autonomy seriously. If you like spa days
more than long hair, why shouldn't you get to sell your hair and
treat yourself to a getaway? Second, the view doesn't generalize
very well. If it's wrong to sell one's body parts,
shouldn't it *also* be wrong to sell one's labor,
since labor involves moving and using one's body, sometimes in
unnatural ways? (Think of the nurse who takes caffeine pills to work
the night shift in a pandemic.) Finally, we might wonder why the
profit motive should be uniquely dubious. It's fine to cut
one's hair because one likes the look - why is this any
nobler than trying to make a buck?



A more promising prohibition can be found in Matej
Cibik's (2020) recent work on tattoos. A tattoo typically
expresses something about the bearer's personality. That's
fine, Cibik thinks, if the tattoo is discreet and the risk of
regret is negligible, as when the tattoo represents an enduring aspect
of the bearer's identity. The problem is that tattoos may
outlive their inspiration, staying frozen even as identities evolve.
Removing tattoos can be painful, expensive, or impossible.



Consider Cibik's example of Amy, an 18-year-old girl who
"desperately falls in love" with a trendy musician named
Justin:



> 
> Amy listens to his music all the time, he is all that she ever reads
> about, and his face is the main decoration of her room. Now she
> decides to go further and get a series of tattoos with his image and
> his name on the most prominent parts of her body including her face,
> shoulders, neck and hands. With these tattoos, she will be instantly
> recognizable as his biggest fan, signaling her deep affection towards
> her idol - something that her (present) identity is build upon
> [*sic*]. (2020, 202)
> 



Cibik thinks Amy acts wrongly. Her tattoos are
"inconsiderate" towards her future self and "a
definition of recklessness," since she is "binding
[herself] forever to publicly exhibit devotion to a fleeting
pop-culture phenomenon" (2020, 204).



This diagnosis dovetails with Schofield on obligations to oneself in
the future. Schofield thinks there is something dangerous about
actions that "jeopardize a person's ability to make use of
her practical powers later in life by harming or altering her body in
the present" (2021, 167), since it one can reasonably demand
from their own future perspective that such harms not be inflicted.
Schofield illustrates with an analogy:



> 
> Just as Beast, through his superior strength, can impose his will on
> Belle by picking her up and locking her in the tower, a person is able
> to impose her present will on herself in the future by affecting her
> own body - only in this latter case, it is the way she is
> temporally situated, and not her superior strength, that explains her
> power and her dominance. (2021, 168)
> 



The thing about tattoos, and body modification in general, is that the
act itself is not particularly harmful; what matters is the
restriction on future freedom. A Justin Bieber face tattoo might not
hurt much, but it makes it a lot harder to work in sales or run for
public office.



We should also note some of the points that could be made in defense
of tattoo art, and self-expression more generally. First, whenever one
"seizes the day" - putting down the books to go to a
party, moving countries to pursue a romance - one is sacrificing
future options for the sake of savoring the present. Such trade-offs
are part of any human life worth living. Second, even if you sometimes
owe it to yourself to keep your options open, it might matter
*how* they are closed. Consider the gay man who refuses to hide
his sexuality to get ahead in the office, or the black woman who wears
her curly natural hair in interviews even though some potential
employers see it as "unprofessional." Here self-respect
seems to tell *in favor* of acting in ways that foreclose
one's options, because the closing is achieved not by
one's choice, but through others' bigoted reactions. This
may be closer to how some people (especially those from cultures with
traditional tattoos, as in Samoan culture) think of being denied a job
on the basis of body art: the problem isn't teenage
recklessness, but arbitrary discrimination.



Still, when it comes to thoughtless, permanent changes to one's
own appearance, Cibik and Schofield are definitely on to
something. What remains to be seen is how we might reconcile the value
of spontaneous expression with a chilly concern for future freedom. A
blanket ban on body modification is surely too strict - but that
doesn't mean anything goes.


### 6.5 Self-knowledge



Next is a topic that Kant calls "the first command of all duties
to oneself" - namely, self-knowledge. Kant is concerned
here not with knowing one's personality type, personal history,
or potential talents. His concern is moral purity:



> 
> This command is *know* (scrutinize, fathom) *yourself*,
> not in terms of your natural perfection (your fitness or unfitness for
> all sorts of discretionary or even commanded ends) but rather in terms
> of your moral perfection in relation to your duty. That is, know your
> heart - whether it is good or evil, whether the source of your
> actions is pure or impure, and what can be imputed to you as belonging
> originally to the *substance* of a human being or as derived
> (acquired or developed) and belonging to your moral *condition*
> (*MM* 6:441; see also *LE* 27:42, 348)
> 



Owen Ware detects a puzzle here. How could Kant see self-knowledge as
obligatory given his "opacity thesis," according to which
our own moral perfection is unknowable to us? "I cannot know,
for example, whether my particular actions arise from conformity with
the moral law or from some hidden self-interest" (Ware 2009,
673) (For a more sanguine take on the conditions for self-knowledge,
see Bransen 2015 on self-love.)



Jordan MacKenzie (2018) explores the duty to know oneself outside of
the Kantian framework, decoupling self-knowledge from moral progress,
and singling out two separate reasons for seeking self-knowledge.
Since you owe yourself respect, you need to know yourself - you
can't respect a complete unknown. And since you are a valuable
entity - respectability aside - that by itself makes you
worth getting to know. These points are notably not tailored to the
case of *self*-knowledge; they just take basic facts about
respect and value and turn them inward. (Readers interested in the
duty of self-knowledge may also be interested in the duty not to
self-deceive; see, e.g., MacKenzie forthcoming.)


### 6 Self-respect



The classic treatment of self-respect is Thomas Hill's
"Servility and Self-Respect," first published in 1971.
Hill argues that there is a moral problem with servile people -
by which he means those who are overly deferential, self-loathing, or
self-abnegating. He gives three case studies: the Uncle Tom, a Black
man who "displays the symbols of deference to whites, and of
contempt to blacks;" the Self-Deprecator, whose "sense of
shame and self-contempt make him content to be the instrument of
others;" and the Deferential Wife, who is "utterly devoted
to serving her husband" because of her belief that "the
proper role for a woman is to serve her family" (1991c,
4-5). The problem, Hill thinks, is not that these people are
making anyone miserable. They might be "Wise enough to Love
their Chains," to borrow Mary Astell's description of the
dutiful wife (1996, 29), and those around them might enjoy the
benefits of their eager self-denial. For Hill, the problem is more
intrinsic. The servile agent does not appreciate their own rights,
either because they misunderstand them - like the wife who is
brainwashed into thinking that she isn't *really* allowed
to say "no" - or else they just don't value
their own rights as much as others' whims.



Hill's paper has sparked, or at least foreshadowed, several
interesting discussions. One concerns whether Hill got the cases right
- particularly the Deferential Wife (see, e.g., Baron 1985;
Friedman 1985; Superson 2010). Another debate centers on the duty to
resist one's own oppression; Carol Hay (2011) argues that this
is a duty to oneself, whereas Straumanis (1984) argues that a woman
owes it to other women, not oneself, to enhance herself and resist her
own oppression. Bernard Boxill (1976) asks what should happen
*after* one's rights are violated, when there is no hope
of rectification. Should one protest, as W.E.B. Dubois (1966, 48)
advocates, as an expression of self-respect? Or would it be servile,
as Booker T. Washington (1966, 514) argues, to make pleas for the
"sympathy" of others rather than waiting until one can fix
the problem by oneself? Boxill ultimately sides with Dubois,
insisting, like Hill, on the need to value one's own rights.


### 6.7 Privacy



Finally, Anita Allen (2013) argues that one's digital privacy is
not just a personal good but a duty to oneself. She gives examples
what of this duty might entail: securing information about one's
bank account and genome, not constantly broadcasting one's
location and beliefs, not aiming "sexy pictures" of
oneself "at minors or the general public" (2013, 850).
Allen then draws implications for reform: we should not just judge
companies and governments by how much *they* invade our
privacy, but also by how well they help *us* protect ourselves
from invasive third parties (2013, 851).



On this basis, Allen advocates paternalistic privacy laws in certain
cases, foreshadowing Schofield's case for liberal paternalism
(2018, 2021, chaps. 5 & 6). If Allen and Schofield are right,
obligations to oneself are not just relevant to how we treat
ourselves, but to how we should treat each other (see also Kanygina
2020), and how we ought to live together in civil and political
society.


## 7. Conclusion



The question of what we owe to ourselves has, after decades in the
doldrums, surged back to life. So what's next? We now have a
sense of where the action has been - the spectre of paradox, the
search for unwaivable duties, the clash between self-concern and the
needs of others. What open questions might be the focus of the next
big insight, the next chapter in the story?



One question is whether duties to self are in any sense
"foundational" - either as much as or more so than
duties to other people. The idea is associated with Kant's
ethics (see Reath 2002, sec. II). The basic idea is a moralized
version of RuPaul's "If you can't love yourself /
How in the hell you gonna love somebody else?" The question,
Kantified, is that of how you could owe anything to other people if
you can't owe things to yourself. Margaret Gilbert's
(2018) theory of rights also brings in rights against oneself at the
ground floor. For Gilbert, rights are the product of joint decisions,
and they give each party to the decision a right against each that the
decision be carried through. That includes the right of each against
himself or herself. This view has the amazing consequence that,
whenever I violate your right against me, I also violate a right
against myself - a consequence that Gilbert doesn't
stress, but which she does accept. She even gives a partial defense at
one point, arguing that we can sensibly demand of ourselves that we
carry out our joint decisions with other people (2018,
177-78).



Another issue is that of the "Self-Other Symmetry." If we
do have duties to ourselves, are they essentially similar to duties to
others, or fundamentally different? Most writers who take up the topic
argue against Symmetry (Slote 1984; Stocker 1976), but some are
sympathetic (Munoz 2020, 2021; Schaab 2021).



A final question, shared by many writers, is whether
"obligation" is the only concept that we need here. No
doubt, it's useful. But there is a vast and variegated range of
things that we do with other people that we also turn inwards in an
intriguing way. Consider the virtues of patience, forgiveness,
compassion, kindness, and appreciation. It is not so obvious that the
right theory of "obligations" is going to tell us how
these things work in general, much less in the solo case.



The deeper reason for wanting to understand self-obligation is to make
sense of the seemingly special character of how we relate to
ourselves. To focus only on the bossiest aspects of self-relation
- duties and demands, claims and commands - is to risk
missing out on the full moral richness of our inner lives.