Chapter 1 - Rank Ordering of Claims

Summary

Perfect duties are deemed to have priority over imperfect duties. We can rank order competing moral duties in a continuum of obligatoriness. Listing them in descending order of obligatoriness and stringency, we have strict legal dues, relational moral obligations, general moral obligations, and supererogation. Most agape-justice conflicts lie along one of three fault lines in this continuum, namely (1) legal debt versus moral debt; (2) particular moral duties versus general moral duties; and (3) legal and moral debt versus supererogatory, self-sacrificial beneficence. Justice requires; it demands. In contrast, agape does not require or demand, but elicits and entices.