Abstract
The well known concept of prima facie duty was introduced into theoretical ethics in this famous passage from W. D. Ross’s book The Right and the Good (= Ross (1930) in our list of References), chap, ii, p. 19 f.: I suggest ‘prima facie duty’ or ‘conditional duty’ as a brief way of referring to the characteristic (quite distinct from that of being a duty proper) which an act has, in virtue of being of a certain kind (e.g. the keeping of a promise), of being an act which would be a duty proper if it were not at the same time of another kind which is morally significant. Whether an act is a duty proper or actual duty depends on all the morally significant kinds it is ah instance of.
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