Ross's Prima Facie Duties and Pluralist Deontology

W.D. Ross (1877–1971), an Oxford classicist and translator of Aristotle who later served as provost of Oriel College, set out an influential alternative to both Kantian monism and utilitarian consequentialism in The Right and the Good (1930). Ross rejected the idea, central to Kant's ethics, that all moral obligation can be derived from a single supreme principle such as the categorical imperative, arguing instead that ordinary moral experience reveals a plurality of distinct, underivable duties, none reducible to or grounded in any of the others. He listed seven categories of what he called prima facie duties: fidelity (keeping promises and truthfulness), reparation (making amends for past wrongdoing), gratitude (repaying benefits received), justice (distributing goods in accordance with merit), beneficence (improving the condition of others), self-improvement (developing one's own virtue and intelligence), and non-maleficence (avoiding harm to others).