What Is Kant's Duty Of Welfare

Kant on Welfare
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher who has played a vital role in the development of modern philosophy. In his writing he discusses the duty of rational beings and what these duties entail.
In his system, Kant differentiates between two duties: duties of right or juridical duties and duties of virtue or ethical duties. A duty of right is a duty that can be firmly enforced by law and by the state. A duty in which a moral agent must be constrained only inwardly by one’s own reason is a duty of virtue. Kant believes that we have no direct duties of right when it comes to non-rational nature because of the fact that only finite rational beings have enforceable rights (MS 6:241). Any duties of right that may be required of us that involve the treatment of non-rational nature must be consequent to the rights of human beings and laws made by the general will of the state. Kant touches on this by exemplifying laws promoting

the common good or fulfilling its collective moral duties (MS 6:325-328). A prime example of this is charity toward the poor.
The fact that non-rational beings have no rights does not entail that the general will of a state may not legislate restrictions on how they may be used or treated according to Kant’s theory
The most basic, yet essential, division among ethical duties is between duties toward ourselves and duties toward others.

Kant fails to ever provide us with an explicit account of what it truly means for a duty to be a duty to or toward someone. But it is not hard to construct such an account. It is apparent that Kant regards only rational beings as persons and these persons are to be treated as ends. He refers to all other beings as things. Even his statement of the Formula of Humanity as End in Itself – “So act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means” (G 4:429) – involves the idea that humanity or rational nature has a moral claim on us only in the person of a being who actually possesses it. To paint a picture, think of it this way: Duty X is a duty toward Y if and only if Y is a rational being, and the moral requirement to obey X is grounded on the moral requirement to respect the humanity that exists withing the person of

Y.
Duties to ourselves are duties mandated by the respect that we owe to our own humanity within us. Kant believes that the end of all duties to ourselves is our own natural or moral perfection. His reason for believing this is derived from the respect for humanity that we exemplify by attempting to perfect our rational nature (MS 6:385-387). If duties to ourselves require us to perform or disregard certain actions in order to evade moral blame they are referred to as strict duties. If they mandate no specific action but the actions that fulfill these duties are worthy of praise in terms of merit, then they are referred to as wide duties (MS 6:390-394).