ABSTRACT
Someone might try to short-circuit duties of charity in this way: To be charitable toward someone entails more than transferring needed goods. There are two respects in which the argument is defective. First, and most obviously, it assumes that duties of charity are necessarily duties to be charitable. Second, and more speculatively, it is questionable whether all 'oughts' do imply 'cans'. The upshot is that one's inability to exercise direct control over one's feelings is no logical bar to the existence of duties of charity. With very few exceptions, modern moral theory has taken as its fundamental project the derivation of rationally acceptable means for the resolution of interpersonal conflicts. Moral inquiry in the ancient world begins with the assumption that each of us has as a core interest the achievement of eudaimonia, a flourishing life. Once the jurisprudential paradigm becomes dominant, it is not surprising that a corresponding shift in the conception of charity follows.
