Chapter 16: Duty for Duty's Sake

1. Mistaking Means for Ends

We come now to the doctrine that we ought to perform our "duty" simply because it is our "duty" -- the doctrine, in other words, that morality has no other end beyond itself. Before the formulation of utilitarianism, this was the most commonly accepted view, and it still has a tremendous hold on men's minds. In its modern form, however, it was most explicitly formulated by Immanuel Kant, and it is in that form that it is most convenient to examine it.

Let us begin by trying to clear away a central ambiguity. "Duty for duty's sake" may mean that when our duty is clear -- i.e., when once we recognize or acknowledge that a certain course of action is right -- that is the action we ought to take, whether at the moment we like it or not. This is merely another way of saying that a man should always do his duty, that he should always act morally, regardless of his immediate inclinations.

But "duty for duty's sake" may also mean that a man should always act blindly in accordance with some rigid rule, not only without examining what the probable immediate consequences of his action will be in those particular circumstances, but without considering even the long-run consequences (for happiness or misery, good or evil) of acting in accordance with that rule. It would be hard to find a better description of irrational conduct.

Yet Kant himself appears to have been guilty of this as well as of a whole complex of other ambiguities and confusions. He held, among other things, that nothing was truly and unconditionally good except the good will. The only act that really deserved to be called moral, in his opinion, was an act done from a sense of duty, an act done because it was thought right, and for no other reason.

This view has brought down on his head the caustic satire of Bertrand Russell:

Kant was never tired of pouring scorn on the view that the good consists of pleasure, or of anything except virtue. And virtue consists in acting as the moral law enjoins, because that is what the moral law enjoins. A right action done from any other motive cannot count as virtuous. If you are kind to your brother because you are fond of him, you have no merit; but if you can hardly stand him and are nevertheless kind to him because the moral law says you should be, then you are the sort of person that Kant thinks you ought to be. [And Russell concludes that if Kant] believed what he thinks he believes, he would not regard heaven as a place where the good are happy, but as a place where they have never-ending opportunities of doing kindnesses to people whom they dislike. (1)

But if Russell is one of the most caustic critics of the Kantian view, he is not the first. He has been anticipated by scores of moral philosophers. Even Schiller, otherwise an admirer of Kant, travesties this view in lines in which he has a disciple of Kant complain:

Gladly, I serve my friends, but alas I do it with pleasure. Hence I am plagued with the doubt that I am not a virtuous person.

In reply to which he gets the advice:

Sure, your only resource is to try to despise them entirely, And then with aversion to do what your duty enjoins you. (2)

One reason for Kant's error is that he looked with the deepest suspicion on all desire or natural inclination itself, because he assumed that all desire was desire for pleasure, and pleasure in the narrow or carnal sense. But he slid into this error also for a more subtle reason, which it will be instructive to explore. When Kant assumed that an action, no matter how beneficent in result, was not moral if done from natural inclination but only if done against natural inclination, "for duty's sake," his error was the result of a confusion easily explicable on psychological grounds. When we perform a beneficent act out of love or completely spontaneous benevolence we are not conscious of "doing our duty." It is only when we have a disinclination toward an act and nevertheless "force" ourselves to do it, in the conviction that it is our duty, that we are conscious of "doing our duty."

This, I think, explains the psychological genesis of Kant's error. Moral action is action which is conducive to general wellbeing, regardless of whether it is done spontaneously or from conscious (or reluctant) adherence to duty.

The germ of truth in Kant's position is that it is always our duty to do what is right, whether we want to do so or not. But this comes down to the tautology that it is always our duty to do our duty.

Perhaps a slight digression may be necessary at this point. So far in this chapter (and in this book) we have been using the word duty without raising the question of the validity of the concept and without specifically asking: "Why should I do my duty?" We have simply taken the concept of duty for granted. This is because it is, in fact, implicit in all ethics. In origin, duty means what is due, what is owing -- to one's family, friends, associates, employer, and other persons in general. One's duty means: what one has an obligation to do.

Doing one's duty is not necessarily coextensive with morality. It is something different from doing the right thing, in the sense of the best or wisest thing, or the thing that would promote the greatest good of the greatest number. Your duty, in this restricted sense, would be a special obligation or responsibility that fell specifically upon you because of your vocation or special relation. Thus it could be said of a lifeguard who saved a drowning woman's life that "He was only doing his duty" -- and by implication deserved no special credit. In this sense, one's duty is merely that which would be wrong if you did not do it. If another swimmer who was not a lifeguard had saved the woman, however, perhaps at considerable risk to himself, then he would properly be praised for doing more than his duty, as soldiers are sometimes honored for "conduct beyond the call of duty." It can be said in favor of this more restricted concept of duty that it refrains from laying limitless obligations upon people. Thus Kurt Baier maintains that: "No one ever has a duty to do something simply because it would be beneficial to someone if he did it." And again: "We are morally required to do good only to those who are actually in need of our assistance. The view that we always ought to do the optimific act ... would have the absurd result that we are doing wrong whenever we are relaxing, since on those occasions there will always be opportunities to produce greater good than we can by relaxing." (3)

But the concept of one's duties implies that there are certain obligations we are bound to respect, and certain rules of action we are bound to follow, at all times. Most of these rules of action have been determined in advance by human experience, thought, and tradition. They act as guides, as touchstones, relieving us from the necessity of making elaborate calculations of the probable consequences of this decision or that in every new situation that confronts us. They cannot, as Kant supposed, always give simple and certain answers. But their existence saves us from having to solve every moral problem ab initio. (A very instructive contribution is the concept of "prima facie duties" elaborated by Sir David Ross.) (4)

To return after this digression to what we have found to be the germ of truth in Kant's position: It is always our duty to do what is right, whether we like it or not. But that it is sometimes necessary to remind ourselves of our duty and force ourselves to do it against our inclination does not mean, as he went on to imply, that these occasions are the only ones in which we are acting morally. In fact, one of the paradoxical consequences to which Kant's doctrine leads is this. A man who spontaneously radiates good will toward other men, or who has in early life formed the habit of always acting morally, will more and more tend to act that way habitually and spontaneously, rather than from a conscious sense of duty. Therefore he will, according to Kant, be less and less frequently acting "morally" -- or he will at least be accorded less moral merit than he would doing the right thing reluctantly from a sense of duty.

It is clear that Kant mistakes means for ends, a confusion into which moral philosophers are particularly liable to slip. As Bertrand Russell has put it: "The moralist ... being primarily concerned with conduct, tends to become absorbed with means, to value the actions men ought to perform more than the ends which such actions serve." (5) So Kant came to think that we could judge the rightness or wrongness of acts without considering the consequences to which they led in the way of happiness or satisfaction, good or evil, to ourselves or anybody else.

But if actions or rules of action are not to be judged by their probable consequences, how are we to know what actions are right or wrong? Here Kant's position is peculiar. He does not seem to hold that we know our duty in each case a priori or from direct intuition, but he does hold that we can determine our duty from certain a priori principles, and he proceeds to try to find and to formulate these principles.

2. The Test of Universalizability

He puts forward first of all his famous notion of a Categorical Imperative. Duty is a categorical imperative, because when we see a thing to be right, we feel commanded to do it categorically, and absolutely, as a means to no end beyond itself. It is "objectively necessary." This is to be distinguished from a mere hypothetical imperative, which represents "the practical necessity of a possible action as means to something else that is willed," (6) such as keeping healthy, being happy, or going to Heaven. Now a hypothetical imperative depends on what our particular end happens to be, but "the mere conception of a categorical imperative" supplies us also with the formula for it. "There is therefore but one categorical imperative, namely, this: Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law." (7)

There is a prima facie attractiveness about this maxim, but Kant's effort to deduce a code of morals from it seems to me a complete failure. A code of morals can be deduced only by consideration of the actual or probable consequences of acts or of rules of actions, and the desirability or undesirability of those consequences. Kant tries to prove that non-observance of his maxim would involve a logical contradiction; but the examples he gives fail to do this. Thus his argument against lying is that if everybody lied nobody would be believed, so that lying would be futile and self-defeating. This does not prove, however, that there is anything logically contradictory about universal lying; it merely points out that one of the consequences would be bad. Kant's argument here is, in fact, an appeal to practical consequences, and not to the worst ones, which are the harm that the lying would do the victims as long as they believed it, and the breakdown of almost all social cooperation once people knew that they could not trust each other's words or promises.

Kant's test of universalizability, properly interpreted, might express a necessary but not a sufficient condition of moral rules. It would apply for example, against Aristotle's magnanimous or great-soured man, who "is fond of conferring benefits, but ashamed to receive them." (8)

We can hardly imagine two of Aristotle's great-soured men getting on very well together. Each would be pressing favors on the other, which the other would spurn as insulting. Kant's maxim would also apply as against Nietzsche's superman. It is impossible for everyone to practice a master morality; to act as a master one needs at least one slave. In order to make Nietzsche's master morality workable for even half the population, the other half must accept a slave or antiNietzschean morality.

On the other hand, there are courses of conduct which are certainly moral, even though they cannot be universalized, and even though the person who adopts them would not wish them to be universalized. A man may decide to become a minister or a lawyer; but everybody cannot decide to become a minister or a lawyer, because we would all starve. A man may decide to learn the violin without wishing that everybody should learn to play the violin. In fact, if he expected to make his living at it, he would wish, to increase his own scarcity value and income, that as few other people as possible would become competent violinists.

It may be replied that this is mere quibbling; that Kant obviously did not intend his maxim of universalizability to apply to the adoption of a specific trade or vocation; that the universal maxim to fit such a case might be: "In the interests of division of labor, everyone should adopt some trade or vocation," or: "Everyone should adopt the trade or profession to which he is best suited (or in which he can be most useful)." But what, then, are the permissible rules for generality or specificity in framing a "universal" law? "Everybody else can lie, but only when caught in the particular kind of jam that I find myself in now?" Kant himself was a bachelor and a celibate. Could he have willed that everyone should be celibate? What was the wording of the universal law that permitted him to be so?

What value, finally, has the Kantian maxim? We can conclude, I think, that it does have a certain negative value. It points out that our moral rules must not be inconsistent with each other. We are not entitled to exempt our own conduct from the moral rules that we would wish to see followed by others. We are not entitled to adopt for ourselves maxims which we would be horrified to find others acting on. We are not entitled to justify our own conduct by an excuse that we would not accept from anybody else. Moral rules, in short, like legal rules, should be drafted with as much generality as possible, and should be applied to ourselves, our friends, and our enemies, impartially, without discrimination or favoritism. They should be no respecter of persons. They should also meet the condition of reversibility, i.e., they must be acceptable to a person whether he is at the giving or receiving end of an action. (9)

But none of this helps us in any substantive way to determine precisely what our moral rules should be. It might be universally possible, or nearly so, for everybody to smoke cigarettes or to drink whisky; but this is hardly sufficient ground to regard either as a duty.

There is no way, in fact, to adopt or frame moral rules except by considering the consequences of acting on those rules and the desirability or undesirability of those consequences. Kant's categorical imperative does, in fact, rest on an unacknowledged consideration of consequences. What he is saying, in effect, is: "Lying is wrong, because if everybody lied the consequences would be so-and-so." But he does not show that there is any logical contradiction in everybody's lying. All that he shows (and it is enough) is that the consequences would be such that we would not like them.

But this kind of argument makes the moral case against lying seem weaker than it really is. Lying would not be wrong merely if it were adopted as a universal rule. Nearly every individual lie does some harm. Of course the more widespread lying became, the more harm it would do. But lying no more than murder is to be condemned merely because it cannot be universalized. In fact, either could be universalized; we simply would not like the consequences. Murder could be universalized until only one man was left on earth, and even he would then be perfectly free to commit self-murder. Universal celibacy would also extinguish mankind; but Kant did not therefore regard his own celibacy as a crime.

At the cost of repetition, let us state the preceding argument in another form. Suppose we take Kant's categorical imperative: "Act only on that maxim which thou canst at the same time will to become a universal law," and translate it into current colloquial English. We then get: "Act only on a rule that you wish to see generally followed by everyone." This is merely saying that you have no right to treat yourself as an exception. It is saying that morality consists in a set of rules of conduct that ought to be followed by everyone; that it does harm and destroys morality for each or anyone to treat himself as an exception. But it tells us nothing of what the content of the rule or set of rules should be. It in fact implicitly takes utilitarian criteria for granted. For each of us would want to see universally followed the rules that would tend to maximize happiness and minimize pain and misery -- his own and that of others. Kant did not see that his categorical imperative, as he stated it, rested on a basic desire of the individual. The rule that the individual wills to see universally followed is the rule he wishes to see universally followed, the rule he desires to see universally followed. Kant was a crypto-rule-utilitarian.

3. Kant's Other Maxims

So much, then, for Kant's most famous maxim. But the categorical imperative is supposed to yield two other rules of action, and while we are dealing with Kant we may just as well examine them. The first of them is "So act as to treat humanity, whether in shine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as a means only." (10)

Ewing tells us that:

These words of Kant have had as much influence as perhaps any sentence written by a philosopher; they serve indeed as a slogan of the whole liberal and democratic movement of recent times. They rule out slavery, exploitation, lack of respect for another's dignity and personality, the making of the individual a mere tool of the State, violations of rights. They formulate the greatest moral idea of the day, perhaps one might add the greatest moral (as distinct from "religious") idea of Christianity. (11)

Kant himself tells us that his maxim rules out lying promises to others and attacks on the freedom or property of others.

But two questions obtrude themselves. The first is whether we need this maxim to establish the immorality of lying, stealing, or coercion. Are the rules against lying, stealing, coercion, violations of rights, etc., in other words, mere corollaries of Kant's maxim? Or can they be established independently of this maxim?

The second question is whether Kant's maxim taken in isolation is definite, adequate, or even true. We are constantly using each other merely as means. This is practically the essence of all "business relations." We use the porter to carry our bags from the station; we use the taxicab driver to take us to our hotel; we use the waiter to bring us our food and the chef to prepare it. And the porter, taxicab driver, waiter, and chef, in turn, use us merely as a means of getting the income by which they in turn are enabled to use people to furnish them with what they want. We all use each other as "mere" means to secure our wants. In turn, we all lend ourselves or our resources to the furtherance of other people's purposes as an indirect means of furthering our own. (12) This is the basis of social cooperation.

Of course we do treat our close friends and the members of our immediate family as "ends" as well as means. We may even be said to treat trades people as ends when we inquire about their health or their children. We do owe it to others, even (and especially) when they are in the position of servants or subordinates, to treat them always with civility, politeness, and respect for their human dignity. And, of course, we should always acknowledge and respect each other's rights. The world could have arrived, and did arrive, at these acknowledged duties and rules largely without the benefit of Kant's maxim. But perhaps the maxim does help to clarify and unify them.

Kant's third maxim, or third form of the categorical imperative, "Act as a member of a kingdom of ends," seems to be little more than another form of the second maxim. We should treat ourselves and others as ends; we should regard every human being as having equal rights; we should regard the good of others as equal to our own. This seems to be merely another way of framing the requirements of justice and of equality before the law.

The truth is, to repeat, that the mere capability of a rule's being consistently or universally followed is not in itself a test of the goodness or badness of the rule. That can be determined only by considering the consequences of following it and the desirability or undesirability of those consequences. Morality is primarily a means -- a necessary means to human happiness. If we declare that duty should be done merely for duty's sake, without regard to the ends that are served by doing our duty, we leave ourselves with no way of deciding what our duty, in any particular situation, really is or ought to be.

In addition to mistaking means for ends, Kant tremendously oversimplified the moral problem. That is why he held, for example, that a lie was never justified, even, say, to avert a murder. He refused to recognize that situations could arise in which two or more ordinarily sound rules or principles could conflict, or in which we might be forced to choose, not absolute good, but the least of two or more evils. But this is our human predicament.

If I may summarize the conclusions of this chapter, I cannot do so better than in the words of F. H. Bradley, taken from his own essay with the same title. Bradley's essay takes off, by his own confession, from Hegel, and like most of what he wrote on ethical theory, it is by turns perverse, unintelligible, and stuffed with paradoxes and self-contradictions. But its final paragraphs emerge into a brilliant sunlight of common sense:

Is duty for duty's sake a valid formula, in the sense that we are to act always on a law and nothing but a law, and that a law can have no exceptions, in the sense of particular cases where it is overruled? No, this takes for granted that life is so simple that we never have to consider more than one duty at a time; whereas we really have to do with conflicting duties, which as a rule escape conflict simply because it is understood which have to give way. It is a mistake to suppose that collision of duties is uncommon ...

To put the question plainly -- It is clear that in a given case I may have several duties, and that I may be able to do only one. I must then break some "categorical" law, and the question the ordinary man puts to himself is, Which duty am I to do? He would say, "All duties have their limits and are subordinated one to another. You can not put them all in the form of your 'categorical imperative' (in the shape of a law absolute and dependent on nothing besides itself) without such exceptions and modifications that, in many cases, you might as well have left it alone altogether ...."

All that [the categorical imperative] comes to is this (and it is, we must remember, a very important truth), that you must never break a law of duty to please yourself, never for the sake of an end not duty, but only for the sake of a superior and overruling duty ....

So we see "duty for duty's sake" says only, "do the right for the sake of the right"; it does not tell us what right is ... (13)

Notes

1. Human Society in Ethics and Politics (Simon and Schuster, 1955), pp. 28-29.

2. From Die Philosophen.

3. The Moral Point of View, p. 228, and pp. 203 204. See also J. Urmson, "Saints and Heroes," in Essays in Moral Philosophy, ed. A. 1. Melden (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1958), pp. 198-216.

4. Cf. his Foundations of Ethics and The Right and the Good.

5. Essay, "The Elements of Ethics," in Readings in Ethical Theory, ed. Wilfrid Sellars and John Hospers (Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1952).

6. Kant's Critique of Practical Reason, and Other Works on the Theory of Ethics, translated by T. K. Abbott (Longmans, Green, 1873, 1948 etc.), p. 31.

7. Ibid., p. 38.

8. Nicomachean Ethics, IV, iii, 24 (Loeb Classical Library), p. 221.

9. This is a qualification to Kant's criterion of universalizability suggested by Kurt Baier. See The Moral Point of View (Cornell University Press, 1958), p. 202.

10. Op. cit., p. 47.

11. A. C. Ewing, Ethics (Macmillan, 1953), p. 62.

12. Cf. Philip H. Wicksteed, "Business and the Economic Nexus," The Common Sense of Political Economy (Macmillan, 1910), Chap. V. And see infra, Chap 30.

13. F. H. Bradley, "Duty for Duty's Sake," Ethical Studies (2nd ea.; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927), Essay IV, pp. 156-159. Kant's Categorical Imperative and his doctrine of duty for duty's sake have been subjected to almost as much criticism (though usually more deferential in tone) as Bentham's brand of Utilitarianism. Instructive discussions, to which this chapter is indebted, can be found in Hastings Rashdall's Theory of Good and Evil, E. F. Carritt's The Theory of Morals, A. C. Ewing's Ethics, and John Hospers' Human Conduct. In addition there are the classic discussions by Hegel and Schopenhauer.

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