Duty
One question reveals all six philosophies below: imagine saying:
“I really don’t want to do this. Why should I nevertheless do my duty?”
Answers historically organized:
(The Bhagavad Gita, 400 BCE – 200 CE, India)
Because it is your dharma. Do what is yours to do and let go of the result.
(The Analects, 5th – 3rd centuries BCE, China)
Because you exist within relationships that carry responsibilities. Honor those relationships and cultivate yourself.
(Nicomachean Ethics, c. 350 BCE, Greece)
If you are consistently fighting yourself, something in your character still needs cultivation. Become the kind of person who recognizes and desires the good.
(The Aeneid, 29 – 19 BCE, Rome)
Because some obligations—to family, community, gods and future—are greater than personal desire. Carry the burden and continue your mission.
(Meditations, c.170 CE, Rome)
Because you are part of a larger whole. Perform your role virtuously and accept what follows.
Kant:
(Kantian Ethics, 1724 – 1804, Enlightenment, Germany)
Because reason tells you it is morally required. Do what is right because it is right.
And that gives us six remarkably different foundations for duty:
Arjuna — Duty as Dharma
Confucius — Duty as Relationship
Aristotle — Duty as Virtue
Aeneas — Duty as Pietas and Destiny
Marcus Aurelius — Duty as Rational Service to the Whole
Kant — Duty as Universal Moral Law
…more detailed
Arjuna – Duty without attachment
Arjuna’s great crisis in the Bhagavad Gita is fundamentally a crisis of duty. He is a warrior who is supposed to fight, but the people on the opposing side include relatives, teachers and people he loves. He asks, in effect: How can killing people I love possibly be the right thing to do?
Krishna’s answer is that Arjuna cannot simply abandon his dharma because performing it is painful. He must act, but he must act without attachment to personal reward or even to the outcome.
This produces a striking idea:
Your responsibility is to act rightly; you cannot control the fruits of your actions.
Duty therefore requires a kind of inner detachment. You act because the action is yours to perform, rather than because you expect success, pleasure, status or reward.
Confucius – Duty grows out of relationships
Confucius approaches the problem very differently. He does not begin with a universal abstract rule. He begins with relationships.
You are someone’s child, parent, sibling, friend, teacher, citizen or ruler. Each relationship creates responsibilities. Filial respect, loyalty, benevolence (ren), righteousness (yi) and appropriate conduct (li) form the basis of a good society.
So for Confucius:
Duty means becoming the kind of person who behaves properly toward the people with whom life has placed you in relationship.
This makes Confucian duty more relational than Kantian duty. You may have different obligations toward your father, your friend, a stranger and your ruler.
And unlike a simple rulebook, Confucius emphasizes character formation. Through repeated good conduct, education and ritual, you gradually become a junzi—an exemplary or noble person.
Aristotle – Duty becomes character
Aristotle is interesting because “duty” isn’t really the center of his ethics at all.
His central question is less:
“What am I obligated to do?”
and more:
“What kind of person should I become in order to live a good human life?”
The answer is a person of virtue: courageous, just, temperate, generous, truthful, and—crucially—possessing phronesis, practical wisdom. The goal is eudaimonia: flourishing or living well.
This distinguishes Aristotle sharply from Kant. Aristotle wants moral education to shape your emotions and desires so that doing the right thing increasingly becomes what you naturally want to do.
For example, the truly courageous person doesn’t merely say:
“I am terrified, but morality commands me to do this.”
Ideally, courage has become part of his character. He sees the situation correctly and responds appropriately.
Aeneas – Duty requires sacrifice
Aeneas is perhaps the most dramatic literary embodiment of duty in your group.
His defining quality in the Aeneid is pietas—a Roman concept broader than our word “piety.” It means devotion to one’s obligations toward the gods, one’s family, one’s people and one’s destiny.
The great example is Dido.
Aeneas loves Dido and could remain with her in Carthage. But his destiny is to continue to Italy, where his descendants will ultimately give rise to Rome.
So he leaves.
Virgil therefore gives us one of literature’s most painful versions of duty:
Sometimes what you owe the future, your community or your mission is more important than your personal happiness.
Aeneas is consequently close to Arjuna. Both confront the terrible possibility that the thing you must do may also cause enormous personal suffering.
Marcus Aurelius – Do your part and accept the rest
Marcus Aurelius’s Stoicism brings Arjuna surprisingly close to Western philosophy.
For Marcus, human beings are rational and social creatures who belong to a larger whole. Our task is to perform our role within that whole virtuously and rationally. Stoicism connects virtue with living in accordance with human reason and the larger order of nature.
His basic attitude is:
Do what is yours to do. Accept what is not yours to control.
Someone insults you? Their behavior is theirs.
You lose status? External.
Your plans fail? External.
But whether you behave justly, courageously and rationally?
That is yours.
This is very close to Arjuna’s detachment from the fruits of action.
Arjuna: Act without attachment to the result.
Marcus: Act virtuously and accept the result.
That is one of the most fascinating connections among these traditions.
Kant – Duty because it is right
Kant makes duty itself the foundation of morality.
For him, morality cannot ultimately depend upon what society expects, what makes us happy, what our particular social role happens to be, or even what we personally feel.
Reason must ask:
Could I rationally will the principle behind my action to become a universal law for everyone?
And human beings must never be treated merely as tools for our purposes, but as ends in themselves.
The morally impressive person therefore does the right thing because it is right, not merely because they happen to enjoy doing it. Kant consequently places moral principle prior to virtue in a way Aristotle does not