Filial duties

Diane Jeske

pp. 365-383

in: Geoffrey Scarre (ed), The Palgrave handbook of the philosophy of aging, Berlin, Springer, 2016

Abstract

I distinguish between deflationary and non-deflationary accounts of filial duties, where the latter but not the former include the fact of parenthood as part of the fundamental grounds of the duties. After showing that non-deflationary accounts are implausible, I canvass the most prominent deflationary accounts: the debt and gratitude accounts and the special goods accounts. I argue that while we may have duties of gratitude to our parents, our most significant obligations to them are grounded by the intimate relationships we have to them (if we have such relationships). Focus on these obligations of intimacy can do more to help us to understand our relationships to our parents and to promote those relationships.