Onora and Kant

It seems to me that O'Neil's argument centers around using Kant's ideas because she thinks that a set of children's rights based on an obligatory system would be better than a set of fundamental rights. Her argument seems to be that it's better to enforce parental obligations than children's rights, because it's harder for a child to claim their own rights than it would be to enforce the obligations of a parent to care for their children.



I liked her explanation of how an obligation can automatically infer a right for a specified group. Having these obligations can automatically lead to fundamental rights. She's arguing that an obligation is better because if you follow your obligations then fundamental rights are automatically ensured. I think another thing she is getting at is that with an obligation, in the adult/child example, since it is an obligation the child does not need to have rights, which could be waived in certain situations.



Part of the problem with using obligations as guidelines is that different people feel they have fulfilled obligations at different times. For example: You are obligated to feed your children. One person might feel like one slice of toast every day fulfills that obligation. Unless you are specific enough with an obligation (You are obligated to feed your children three healty meals every day) different people could come to different conclusions and see nothing wrong with their actions. But if we judged by obligation than something like this would probably be detected.