Duty

In daily speech duty is often conceptualized as a requirement that a person has to fulfil. It is typical of this everyday conception that duty is supposed to overrule other considerations a person might have concerning the choice of his or her actions, considerations that may, for example, be based on his or her desires or particular inclinations such as self-interest. Failing to acknowledge or live up to a duty means that a person's conduct is morally wrong.

It is, however, characteristic of thinking on duty in Western culture that “right action” is not necessarily equivalent to conduct that fulfills a duty. The concept of “right action” has an ambivalent or double meaning. If we say that a person acted “right,” we can indeed mean to say that his or her conduct fulfilled a duty. In this sense, we can say that if a person helped a little child from drowning, he or she acted right or obligatorily. However, when we say that a person acted “right,” we can also (just) mean to say that he or she did not act contrary to duty. If a pharmaceutical company decides not to hand out all its supplies of AIDS medicines to patients who lack the resources to buy them, we may still say that the company acted right. We commonly do not attribute a duty of beneficence of this intent to pharmaceutical companies; the company, therefore, does not act wrong by holding on to its stock. The ambivalence in the concept of right reveals that Western societies are free societies.

One implication of freedom is that conduct cannot simply be divided into right and wrong. Many actions are permissible. They do not fulfill a duty but also do not violate one. So when a person decides to have tea in the morning instead of coffee that is permissible in this sense. The same goes for the decision to become a carpenter instead of a doctor, the decision to stay childless instead of having a big family, or to buy a small car instead of a big one. Especially, the last example makes it clear that even if a freedom-oriented culture will always try to make the category of permissible action as extensive as possible, it is not true to say that what is morally permissible under specific social and historical circumstances must necessarily be morally permissible under all circumstances. We can think of [Page 634]social and historical circumstances in which the choice between a big car and a small car is not morally neutral. Environmental and economic circumstances may force on us a duty to at least seriously consider the consequences of one's choices in this regard.

The concept of duty is employed in many domains of action. We distinguish, for example, parental duties and professional duties. Still, the two most important contexts in which the concept of duty is employed are the law and morality. The law gives rise to legal duties; morality to moral duties. This explanation will focus on the concept of a moral duty since that is exemplary for our understanding of the concept.

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