Those who remember years long gone by often like to talk about how younger generations lack the certain level of gentlemanly manners that society possessed during their younger years. Back in their day, they often say, men would open car doors and pull out chairs for women. Despite what they may protest, they would not usually make a serious claim that such acts are a moral obligation. Instead, they are a courtesy, carried out by the gentlemen as a sign of respect. The value of helping others is ingrained upon children from an early age, with its beginnings in teaching small children to share their toys with one another. Once the focus shifts older, however, suddenly there are those who would make the extremities of this courtesy a moral obligation. They say that when we see an individual in trouble, though we have never seen him before, we are required by our morals to offer him assistance. Though it is easy to argue that people have a duty to help each other, this cannot be considered a moral obligation since it is impossible to define a clear code for when one is obligated to help others, and what help one is obligated to give.
No one would question that it is good to help others, but the mere fact that an act is good does not mean there is an obligation to do it. In some cases, this truth is obvious. All situations are not black and white, nor do all situations provide the choice between a good and a bad. In the Confessions, Augustine considers the case of a situation in which a person must choose between two goods. ``I ask them whether it is good to find delight in the reading of the Apostle, and good to find delight in the serenity of a Psalm, and is good to discuss the Gospel. To each of these they admit that it is good'' (143). When faced with such mutually exclusive options, we by necessity must neglect some options that are good. Thus good alone does not make obligation. Taking this further, we must admit that even in clear situations of good and bad, we are not required to make the smart choice. William F. Quillian, Jr., in an article titled ``The Problem of Moral Obligation,'' presented the following hypothetical:
For example, I may know that if I receive a severe wound and do not take action to keep the wound clean and relatively free from infecting germs, the healing power of nature will be thwarted in its work. To fail to fulfill the conditions necessary for the healing forces of nature would be foolish [...] but I do not see how it could be said categorically that I ought to do what I can to prevent the infection of the wound (44-45).For the injured man, having the wound clear is obviously in his best interest. If he values this interest, he will do what he can to assist in his recovery. If, however, he does not care about being healed, he is under no obligation to help himself. ``The 'ought' in this case is dependent upon confirming the conditional clause, 'If I wish to have this wound heal''' (45). Therefore, despite a clear understanding that helping others may be right, that fact alone does not make a person obligated to provide assistance.
Regardless of any given conception of good, obliged assistance is often unsupported because of its negative effects on personal liberty. The more responsibility a person has to help another, the less autonomy he receiving the help has over himself. According to Gerald Elfstrom,
The idea that members of the human race have duties to oversee the welfare of other human beings with whom they have had no personal contact and with whom they have no ties [...] is a troublesome idea because it does not accord with some of the usual notions concerning the ways in which human beings come to acquire moral responsibility for the welfare of others (711).In most other cases, responsibility is a sort of contractual being. One person enters into a relationship with another, and that brings with it some sort of associated responsibility of service. For instance, when a person visits a doctor, they contract that doctor to be responsible for treatment. This contraction also transfers authorization, another element necessary for responsibility. To once again take the case of the doctor, even if a person has been the patient of said doctor at some point in the past, the doctor has no responsibility to perform work at the present without the patient's consent to do so. ``Insofar as it makes sense to say that I am responsible for another, it must be acknowledged that I am authorized to intervene in his affairs to oversee that which I am responsible for'' (Elfstrom 712). By obligating individuals to help, and thereby interfere in the affairs of others, we are forced to also give them autonomy and authority.
If a person were obligated to help others, it would then be required that a definition be established of the situations where such assistance was required. Consider the situation of self-inflicted danger. If a man sets out to engage in action harmful to himself, is another person obligated to interfere in his affairs and prevent the negative act from being performed? According to Elfstrom, the answer is no. ``He ought to have this freedom [to follow his own desires] even in instances in which acting in accordance with his own will may result in his own destruction'' (712). Legislated interference in the autonomous affairs of an individual is known as legal paternalism, and is rejected by most liberals. According to H.M. Malm, they do so because legal paternalism violates the ``'sovereign-right conception' of personal autonomy [... which] entails that persons have a domain or realm over which they are sovereign (much as a country has a realm over which it is sovereign)'' (7). This belief disallows a balancing of autonomy and rights because such sovereignty ``is an all or nothing concept. One is entitled to absolute control over whatever is within one's domain, however trivial it may be'' (Malm 7). Even situations not covered by legal paternalism require strict scrutiny before being considered included in those in which a person would be responsible to provide assistance. Is a person responsible for only cases where the endangered individual is at risk of losing her life, or does obligation start at a lesser degree of trouble? Some individuals claim that letting a person die is equivalent to taking that person's life. Surely this claim can be found to be true in certain situations where the responsibility and authorization for care has been provided, but it falls short when applied generally. To carry this philosophy a step further, if you fail to warn someone of a hole in the sidewalk and they fall and sprain a knee, are you then just as liable as if you had sprained the knee for them? If the conclusion is that you are not, one must then come up with a distinction that explains why moral liability is different when death is the end result. In opposing liability for omissions, Douglas Husak says that ``no one has formulated an acceptable rule specifying precisely which omissions should give rise to liability that precludes a descent down the slippery slope to all sorts of absurd consequences'' (320). Without stringent limitations on when an individual is liable to help, it is far too easy to foresee a world where all are required to assist with every one's ills, and personal freedom would be non-existent.
Parallel to the debate over when help should be provided is the debate over what help one would obligated to give. Clearly obligation must distinguish between situations where an individual would put himself in danger by offering assistance and those where he would not. However, there is nothing that distinguishes what kind of danger this must be before there is an exception. Is obligation removed only in life-threatening situations, or in situations where harm may be merely non-fatal? If I see a man who is in danger of getting hit by a truck, am I required to push him out of the way only if there is no risk of my getting hit in the course of action? Assume that instead of running out into the road and physically carrying him out of the path of the vehicle, I instead yell to the man in the road. Have I then fulfilled my duty to help? Is this the case even if he then gets run over after my warning? The obligation to help again runs a dangerous course away from self-determination. If I am obligated to help in situations where the danger is not life-threatening, am I then also obligated to help in situations where the danger is non-physical? Consider the situation of a man whose car breaks down on the way to work. Already having problems with his boss, the man is sure to get fired is he does not reach work on time. Is the passerby then obligated to stop and give the man a ride to work in order to prevent the financial harm this termination would surely cause? To carry this further, is a man also responsible to help if his action can improve his neighbor's situation even if their present situation has them at risk of no sort of harm? This approach would seem to be welcomed by the utilitarians, would would say that actions which lead to greater total happiness in the world are to be pursued, but the rest of the world would say that clearly in this case the individual would have the autonomy to worry about his own affairs, not those of his neighbor. The two extremes seem black and white - if death can easily be prevented it must be and there is no obligation to assist where there is no risk of danger - but the middle ground is filled with gray.
It is precisely because of this gray that there can be no moral obligation to help others. There are surely cases where it is right to help others, and where it would be good to help others, but there cannot be a moral obligation to do so. Moral theories are overriding, taking precedent over every other matter. Moral obligations must be absolute, providing for no loop holes or provisions, and clearly not containing such enormous levels of uncertainty. There is no clear definition of when and how one is required to help others, so therefore no moral obligation can be claimed.