Romy Eskens (Utrecht University), “Expressive Duties Are Demandable and Enforceable”
Forthcoming, Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics (2024)
By Romy Eskens
Suppose that someone does you a favor. Perhaps they help you out of a difficult situation, or volunteer to do a burdensome task that was actually yours to do. The next time you’re with this person, you’re on a walk together and pass a flower shop. Your benefactor stops in front of it, points to a bouquet of fresh flowers, and says, ‘You owe me a thank-you gift, so buy me this!’. Or worse, they simply take some coins from your purse and proceed to buy the bouquet.
You’re probably taken aback by this, consider it some kind of mistake, or even feel offended or angry. You’re likely to have similar responses to certain acts of demanding or enforcing other types of expressive duty, such as the duty to express remorse to one’s victims or the duty to express forgiveness to repentant wrongdoers. (Expressive duties, as I understand them, are simply duties to say or do certain things that show or manifest particular attitudes.) Imagine that a third party threatens to release an embarrassing recording of you unless you show remorse to the person you used to bully. Or that someone who betrayed you in some terrible way says to you, ‘I’m sorry – now forgive me!’. Again, you’re likely to respond to the demand or enforcement with astonishment, confusion, or even offense or anger.
Examples such as these suggest that, unlike other types of duty, expressive duties are not demandable or enforceable: something in their nature or structure makes it impermissible or ineffective to demand or enforce the duty-bearers’ compliance with them. This is indeed what many philosophers claim (or assume) to be the case, and expressive duties are widely seen as categorically undemandable and unenforceable.
In my forthcoming paper, I argue that this common view is mistaken. Expressive duties are sometimes permissibly and effectively demanded or enforced, and thus demandable and enforceable. I offer several considerations in support of my view: some theoretical points about the nature of duties and demands and enforcement, several examples in which an expressive duty seems to be permissibly and effectively demanded or enforced, and replies to possible arguments in favor of the common view I reject. In this short post, I’ll focus on the last of these and outline two of the most popular arguments as well as my replies to them. For the remaining arguments and replies, and the theoretical points and examples that also contribute to my overall case, I direct readers to the paper itself.
The Control Argument. It’s not possible to successfully demand or enforce expressive duties because their bearers can discharge these duties only if they’re in the right emotional state (e.g., gratitude, remorse, forgiveness), and others can’t do anything to force them into this state. After all, emotions can’t be summoned or abandoned at will.
Reply. (i) Even if emotions can’t be summoned or abandoned at will, they can sometimes be produced or discarded in other, indirect ways. For example, by reflecting on the reasons for or against an emotion, or manipulating emotional triggers in the environment. Sometimes, others can force these indirect means upon the bearers of expressive duties as well. (ii) There are many times in ordinary life when we have the required emotion but, for whatever reason, fail to express it. The Control Argument, even if successful, doesn’t rule out demands or enforcement in these cases. (iii) Expressive duties can sometimes be discharged even in the absence of the right emotion. For example, someone can normally discharge their duty to express gratitude for receiving a gift they don’t like by pretending to feel grateful and saying, ‘Thank you so much!’. Such an expression could perhaps succeed even when the other person knows it to be insincere. This is, I suggest in the paper, because some expressive duties are primarily grounded in patient-centered considerations (e.g., making someone feel recognized, respected, or appreciated) and these grounds can be satisfied even when the expression is insincere. (Of course, the duty-bearers in such cases may still be under proper attitudinal duties to feel grateful. The point is that they’re no longer required to act gratefully.)
The Value Argument. It’s not possible to demand or enforce expressive duties without undermining the value of their being fulfilled. This is because this value derives entirely from the duty-bearers’ being internally motivated to fulfil them, and demands and enforcement preclude an internal motivation.
Reply. (i) Demands and enforcement don’t always preclude an internal motivation. People frequently fail to fulfil their expressive duties despite being internally motivated to fulfil them. For example, someone might really want to express remorse to their victim, or forgiveness to a repentant wrongdoer, but be too ashamed, afraid or anxious to follow through. Or they may really want to send a thank-you card to their benefactor, but keep forgetting or failing to prioritize it. In these cases, demands or enforcement seem to merely force duty-bearers to act on their internal motivations, when otherwise they wouldn’t have. (ii) I mentioned above that expressive duties tend to be partially grounded in patient-centered considerations. I now add that the satisfaction of these patient-centered grounds is part of what makes the fulfilment of these duties valuable. This matters because it’s difficult to see why the realization of this value would be entirely forestalled by the fact that someone who is internally motivated to fulfil their expressive duty ultimately doesn’t fulfil it because of that. Indeed, there are plenty of examples from everyday life, and from the criminal justice context, in which people find meaning in expressions that they know to be forced. For example, expressions of remorse that are ordered by the court.
Suppose that my replies and the other arguments from the paper succeed, and that expressive duties aren’t categorically undemandable and unenforceable. What of it? Isn’t it still true that in many cases (such as those from the introducing paragraphs) expressive duties cannot or may not be demanded and enforced?
There are at least three important consequences that follow from my conclusion. First, many people deny that expressive duties have rights as their correlates, because they believe that the duties correlative to rights are demandable and unenforceable, and that expressive duties are not. If I’m right that expressive duties are in fact demandable and enforceable, it’s much less clear that they don’t correspond with rights. Second, and relatedly, expressive duties are sometimes presented as counterexamples to the popular view that there’s strict correlativity between rights and (directed) duties—again because people believe that the duties correlative to rights are demandable and unenforceable, and that expressive duties are not. If my view is correct, expressive duties aren’t counterexamples. Third, some question expressive duties’ status as genuine duties by claiming that genuine duties are demandable and enforceable, and that expressive duties are not. This sort of skepticism collapses if expressive duties turn out to be demandable and enforceable.