Continuity and Breach Sample Clauses

Continuity and Breach. The problem with this response to Xxxxxxxx’x argument is that it does not take into account that violating a duty does not tend to let one off the moral hook. On the contrary, the violation of a duty tends to create duties to undo or mitigate the violation. These remedial duties also tend to be more stringent than the original duties. To see this, consider the following case: Burning House: Xxxxxx’s house catches fire and is about to burn down, causing him to lose all his possessions. At time t1, Xxxxx can easily prevent this by turn- ing on his sprinklers. She refuses, and Xxxxxx’s house xxxxx down. Later, at t2, Xxxxx can help Xxxxxx offset the harm he suffered.20 Assuming that Xxxxx is required to help at t1, the fact that she chose not to seems very significant for what is required of her at t2. Intuitively, her reasons to help offset the harm differ from those that someone who happens to walk by has. For instance, if only one of them is needed to help offset the harm, Xxxxx should do it. Moreover, Xxxxx’s duty to help now seems more stringent than her initial duty to help and, likewise, more stringent than the duty that a stranger has to 20 Xxxxxx (2020b, p. 190) discusses a similar case. help now. That is, we can require more substantial sacrifices of her for the sake of Xxxxxx’s well-being now than we could have initially. What is sometimes called the Continuity Thesis helps account for some of this intuition. According to the thesis, the moral reasons which ground primary duties (say, to aid someone or not to harm them) do not simply vanish if we fail to comply with them. Instead, they – or at least very similar reasons – continue to exist post-violation and ground secondary, or “next- best”, duties to compensate or otherwise make up for the initial wrongdoing.21 This can help explain why Xxxxx’s duty to help offset the harm seems different from the duty to help which other strangers have. Her duty is remedial and the result of her violating a primary duty owed to Xxxxxx. That is why it is more appropriate that she rather than a stranger help him now. As Xxxxxx (2020b) explains, however, the Continuity Thesis as described cannot ex- plain the intuition that secondary duties are more stringent that primary ones. The thesis only holds that the same (or very similar) reasons that ground the primary duty continue to exist and ground a secondary duty post-breach. If those reasons initially only grounded a duty of a par- ticular stringency, how could the...