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Offences against Status

Philosophical accounts of status understand it either pejoratively, as social rank, or laudatorily, as the dignity possessed by all in virtue of our shared humanity. Status is considered to be something either we all have or no one should have. This article aims to show that there is a third, neglec...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Letsas, George
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Oxford University Press 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10243936/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37287900
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ojls/gqac033
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author Letsas, George
author_facet Letsas, George
author_sort Letsas, George
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description Philosophical accounts of status understand it either pejoratively, as social rank, or laudatorily, as the dignity possessed by all in virtue of our shared humanity. Status is considered to be something either we all have or no one should have. This article aims to show that there is a third, neglected, sense of status. It refers to the moral rights and duties one holds in virtue of one’s social position or role. Employees, refugees, doctors, teachers and judges all hold social roles in virtue of which they have distinctive obligations, rights, privileges, powers and the like. This article aims to do two things: first, to distinguish the role-based notion of status from ideas of social rank, and to identify the various ways in which it constitutes a distinct category of moral wrongdoing; and second, to show that status, thus understood, is justified on egalitarian grounds even though, unlike dignity, not everyone has it. The moral point of status, I argue, is to regulate asymmetrical relations in which one of the parties suffers from background vulnerabilities and dependencies. Status as a moral idea vests both parties with a complex set of rights and duties, whose aim is to restore moral equality between the parties.
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spelling pubmed-102439362023-06-07 Offences against Status Letsas, George Oxf J Leg Stud Articles Philosophical accounts of status understand it either pejoratively, as social rank, or laudatorily, as the dignity possessed by all in virtue of our shared humanity. Status is considered to be something either we all have or no one should have. This article aims to show that there is a third, neglected, sense of status. It refers to the moral rights and duties one holds in virtue of one’s social position or role. Employees, refugees, doctors, teachers and judges all hold social roles in virtue of which they have distinctive obligations, rights, privileges, powers and the like. This article aims to do two things: first, to distinguish the role-based notion of status from ideas of social rank, and to identify the various ways in which it constitutes a distinct category of moral wrongdoing; and second, to show that status, thus understood, is justified on egalitarian grounds even though, unlike dignity, not everyone has it. The moral point of status, I argue, is to regulate asymmetrical relations in which one of the parties suffers from background vulnerabilities and dependencies. Status as a moral idea vests both parties with a complex set of rights and duties, whose aim is to restore moral equality between the parties. Oxford University Press 2023-02-07 /pmc/articles/PMC10243936/ /pubmed/37287900 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ojls/gqac033 Text en © The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial reproduction and distribution of the work, in any medium, provided the original work is not altered or transformed in any way, and that the work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com
spellingShingle Articles
Letsas, George
Offences against Status
title Offences against Status
title_full Offences against Status
title_fullStr Offences against Status
title_full_unstemmed Offences against Status
title_short Offences against Status
title_sort offences against status
topic Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10243936/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37287900
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ojls/gqac033
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