Filial Obligation: Norman Daniels And Christina Hoff Sommers

The term “filial obligation” refers to special family duties that children are responsible for when their parent(s) age and can no longer act independently. There is often a debate regarding this topic, which consists of the question of whether or not filial obligation should be a moral duty. Two philosophers that argue the idea of filial obligations are Norman Daniels and Christina Hoff Sommers. Daniels argues against the idea, claiming that it should not be a moral obligation of a child to tend to their parents, while Hoff Sommers argues the opposite, stating that parents have entitlements and we have obligations.
Starting with Daniels’s view, he believes justice is in place of filial obligations. In his writings, he acknowledges that in many earlier societies, transfers of social goods between age groups were primarily a family matter. In contemporary society, basic income support and health care services is a social task, and not a family. Trying to enforce filial obligations is the equivalent to bringing back traditional values of family responsibility, and unlike the earlier societies, the context of this obligation no longer sustains.
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Daniels argues that traditionalist views of moral obligation should be left in the past, while Hoff Sommers views rely on those traditionalist ideas. Those views started in earlier societies should still be enforced today, as society may have advanced, but there is no advancing past morality. The traditionalist views came before society’s new-found fanatics who obsess over the idea of free will and sovereignty to do whatever they want whenever they want for whatever reasons they want. That sentence expresses how accurately arrogant society is today with obligations, claiming they don’t owe anything to anyone. The problem is, they