Duty: An Open Letter on a Philosophy Forum
I contend that duty is perhaps the single strongest motivator for action I can think of, whether it is duty to the tribe, an ideal, a spouse, etc., and should be nurtured wherever it exists to good ends.
I will define duty as: a feeling of obligation brought about by expectation that is irreducible; it exists only as a meta-construction - as recursive and a sum of its parts - and yet it is a very basic concept understood by pretty much everybody. What the obligation is, how intense the feelings are, and what expectations give rise to those feelings is variable, but there is what I see as a common thread: proximity to worthy causes and charismatic leaders.
Soldiers, office clerks, garbage men, engineers - everyone craves duty, and those who can deliver the correct conditions are the most potent agents. Some say that the people might need to rise up in the United States because we are increasingly having to choose between fascism and neoliberalism - all the while the oligarchs line their pockets.
I say that the right people in the right positions to lead need to stand up and allow us some redemption.
Sure, allow that small window of time for the vacuum to become apparent, to allow everyone to understand just how much we need strong direction. But you have a moral obligation by virtue of all the good you could do - and no one gives a damn if playing the game makes you uncomfortable.
The best leaders know that duty begets duty.
I will define duty as: a feeling of obligation brought about by expectation that is irreducible; it exists only as a meta-construction - as recursive and a sum of its parts - and yet it is a very basic concept understood by pretty much everybody. What the obligation is, how intense the feelings are, and what expectations give rise to those feelings is variable, but there is what I see as a common thread: proximity to worthy causes and charismatic leaders.
Soldiers, office clerks, garbage men, engineers - everyone craves duty, and those who can deliver the correct conditions are the most potent agents. Some say that the people might need to rise up in the United States because we are increasingly having to choose between fascism and neoliberalism - all the while the oligarchs line their pockets.
I say that the right people in the right positions to lead need to stand up and allow us some redemption.
Sure, allow that small window of time for the vacuum to become apparent, to allow everyone to understand just how much we need strong direction. But you have a moral obligation by virtue of all the good you could do - and no one gives a damn if playing the game makes you uncomfortable.
The best leaders know that duty begets duty.
Comments (73)
Why do I hear marching music in my head when I read this?
Sorry, but I am just too old and infirm. But thanks for asking. :cool:
This is the problem. There is no general agreement as to who the right people are.
Quoting ToothyMaw
What some might consider good others might not.
Yes, it reads quite macho. You can smell the sigma male aftershave. :cool:
Which is fine when counterbalanced by an example of a mother walking through a store trying to shop with one baby in her arms, and two other children causing various levels of mayhem. This after they have fed from her breasts, and squeezed through a painfully small opening in her body, and demand constant attention. She falls asleep worrying about their future.
Thats above and beyond the call of duty, imho. :heart:
I don't think neo-liberalism is incompatible with fascism. Not enough of a choice there for me.
Quoting ToothyMaw
I can't make much sense out of your definition of duty. The 'intuition that we ought to do a particular thing' perhaps? Of course duty is value free and it can be attached to any kind of person or action.
Quoting ToothyMaw
How can you demonstrate that everyone craves duty? Is duty not just a sublimation for purpose? Everyone, perhaps, craves purpose?
Quoting ToothyMaw
Not sure what that means. Can you provide an example of a leader doing such?
Ok. Whats your evidence for this? Wheres the argument? If were just to accept this to what end? Whats the point?
Maybe I missed something in the OP.
Also, I think it needs to be pointed out that duty and what we ought to do are not at all synonymous.
That's no more than an uninteresting fact about your thinking, showing a lack of imagination on your part. Lust, thirst and hunger come to mind as much greater sources of motivation.
Also, duty is a conceptually odd critter. Your duty is what you ought to do; and what ought you do? Your duty, of course. It doesn't get us anywhere. Indeed, looking at how "duty" is usually used, it's more about what other folk think you ought do than what you think you ought do. "It's your duty" is used to cajole folk into acting against their own better judgement.
Indeed.
:razz: If that's the choice you face, you are properly fucked.
A laughable OP. Only, it's no joke.
The argument is clear, and valid: Doing your duty is you first and highest duty.
Just not all that convincing.
Thurber might be referencing a line from Thomas Grey's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
I'm sorry, but I won't die for a meta-construction, even a recursive one.
Quoting ToothyMaw
I have nothing against duty--I've performed my duties in different contexts many times--but I think there are a number of stronger motivators: fear, anger, hunger lust, greed--your basic 7 deadly sins: pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth--in that order.
All of these are negative (though lust is hard to beat). Love is a powerful motivator too.
We often have conflicting duties. Our employer thinks it our duty to perform faithful service in exchange for paying us a meager share of the wealth we create. Institutions expect loyalty (a duty) from their agents. Whose duty comes first? The duty to render good service in exchange for pay, or the duty to disrupt the business to further the interests of other workers, like one's union comrades?
In retrospect, I sometimes chose the wrong set of duties, in situations where my choice of duty led to inferior results for everyone concerned. At the time it seemed like a good idea. Generally, though, when people start talking about "duty" I detect the acrid odor of social control.
Duty is just as loyal a servant to evil as it is to good, that's something you'd do well to remember.
Duty is the strongest motivator, you claim? It seems you're defining duty as something that one has, even if they themselves don't think so.
Quoting ToothyMaw
By your own account, there is a need for action:
Quoting ToothyMaw
If duty is such a strong motivator, and one such duty is to do good, why are the current circumstances so in dire need of "rising up"? Has that duty of good-doing been inactive until now? Was it impotent?
I think you only wish that duty was the strongest motivator. "If it was, and this OP was unnecessary, how nice that would be".
This is certainly not true of me. Motivation comes from inside. It comes from love, empathy, fear, hunger, hate, shame, guilt, friendship, fellow feeling, affection... Loyalty, responsibility, kindness grow out of love, friendship, affection. A desire to do good for people we care about. Duty, morality, judgment grow out of fear, guilt, shame. A desire to avoid the judgment of others.
How can you say: Quoting T Clark
Then say:
Quoting T Clark
Isn't that contradictory?
Quoting BC
Definitely can appear that way. Like when the duty of loyalty results in bad things for the loyal one. But this kind of duty can be directed towards non-social things, particularly ideas that alienate the dutiful one from the social and/or human. And this begs that our understanding of duty should be able to account for things that lack the acrid odor of social control.
The sense of duty that one feels is purely psychological. It is an internal state state directed at service to an objective, whether social or otherwise. However, it is not the relation of the dutiful one toward his objective that matters, rather it is his commitment to his duty that is important. I suppose, from this perspective, I can understand the op definition.
Quoting ToothyMaw
It is the obligation that is irreducible because in the mind of the dutiful, he is making the greatest commitment one can make. And given the few things man has control over in his life, commitment to his duty, in victory or failure, is one of those things one can completely self-determine. The objective or expectation can alter and shift, or become unattainable, or even be a matter of unintelligible faith, but the commitment to the sense of duty always remains under the individual's control.
The sense of duty, in this case, was impotent. Too small and weak to command any serious commitment from the dutiful types.
The latter seems to be more likely. But he may be going deeper to the absolute nature of dutifulness (which he has articulated rather vurgarly as to be confusing: viz. "duty"), and not to a moral imperative, if you get my meaning. [Add.: Not everyone is capable of dutifulness] And in that sense, there IS naery a thing that we can point to as a greater motis operandi.
I think you guys misunderstand - and this is not a call to militarism or nationalism. I'm saying that the leaders who can make a difference in the fight between two or more bad options, in a situation in which people are sick of choosing the lesser of two evils, those leaders who recognize their duty to the people they can benefit can inspire others to also do their duty - which I believe is to shrug off the mantle of US hegemony, a disregard for the working people, general befuddlement caused by the oligarchs' emphasis on the distraction that is the culture war, and the blocking of efforts to preserve the planet.
I'm calling out the leaders, not the people. And yes, I do maintain that duty is the most powerful motivator, as it can override just about any other consideration if the human is manipulated correctly. Remember the Third Wave experiment? In that instance it was used to harm, but such manipulations can be used for good. Many, if not most, of us have grown complacent, and good leaders with the peoples' best interests at heart need to intervene - before a nasty, fascistic one does.
Quoting BC
I'm not suggesting anyone sacrifice themselves. I suggest that we organize strikes and consolidate our efforts around some good prospects and vote them in to effect change. No dying required.
Quoting Banno
I see you stopped by to offer absolutely nothing, as usual.
Quoting Judaka
The people are distracted, disillusioned, and misled in a system that presents false dilemmas and destroys any attempts the common people make to better their lives. We live under the yoke of the corporation and the billionaire, both of which have disproportionate impacts on policy such that getting anything off the ground is a tremendous effort - and just when we think we might win our prospects get shot in the back of the head by corporatist, career politicians. So, I say that duty has been here all along, it has mostly just lain dormant - but it flares up sporadically, giving us insight into what could be if the right man or woman came along.
I literally define how I use the term, and you redefine it and complain that I'm trying to advocate for cajoling people into acting against their own better judgement? Nowhere do I say that duty is what one "ought" to do, but rather is a subjective motivator that can be manipulated by good leaders to good ends - which is what I'm actually advocating for here. I do, however, say that some leaders have a more specific obligation - which is the result of the tremendous amount of good they could do if they tried. If they want to ignore that, then so be it; I'm not telling anyone what to do.
As others have indicated,, , this is really incorrect. I would characterize the motivator for action as "ambition", or even "spirit", but that's just my personal preference of words. The important point is that the motivator has personal a base, not a relation to something external like "duty".
"Duty" is better described as a director of action rather than a motivator of action. A person with no sense of duty might still be highly motivated to act. So if you want to talk about "duty", you ought to be able to make this distinction, between being motivated to act, ambitious, and being directed in your actions by some sort of sense of duty. Then we could discuss how ambitions are directed. Accordingly, the following paragraph doesn't make much sense:
Quoting ToothyMaw
What do you think "everyone craves duty" actually means? People crave things, and this may or may not influence their ambition. It "may not" influence their ambition in cases of people who are lazy, or something like that, and so they still do not act on their cravings. But how would you say that "duty" relates to what people crave? Not only do I see no necessary relation here, but I see no relationship at all, due to the subjective nature of individuals and cravings. It's just like as if you are saying 'everyone craves chocolate ice cream'. It's really wrong on multiple levels.
Quoting ToothyMaw
If the "Third Wave experiment" supports what you say, then maybe you need to describe it.
When I claim that duty is the single strongest motivator, I do not mean that it cancels out every other motivator, or even that it generally prevails over other motivators. Furthermore, according to the way I define "duty" it is personal, as it involves both expectations and how one internalizes those expectations. I contend that what makes duty powerful is that duty leads people to put themselves in all kinds of horrible or uncomfortable positions and situations more than anything else. For instance, a man might get inundated with motivational messages about how positive masculinity can be and how he needs to be able to personally protect his family, which he might view largely as pushback against whatever modern feminist arguments might be cited. This could lead to a man adopting any number of life-changing, traditionally masculine activities, like martial arts or lifting. And if you think that getting up early in the morning and getting strangled over and over again in myriad, potentially painful ways doesn't require the suppression of some basic human instincts, then you haven't hit the mats.
I suppose it could also be viewed as a modifier for more basic motivations. For instance, one might love their child and feel they have a duty to do right by that child, but I would also say that those two things - the parent's duty towards the child and the parent's love - are inextricable, as the parent has certain expectations for themselves, such as that they must provide for the child and be emotionally present for them, that are derived from love. These expectations don't have to be external and still give rise to intense feelings of duty.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That some people are highly motivated without feeling duty says nothing about the power of duty, just as the claim that, say, there are more roses in a garden than any other type of flower is not affected by the claim that there are other types of flowers in a garden. That this "garden" could hypothetically have a different composition I grant, but all of the flowers need not be roses for most of them to be.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
But if everyone really did crave chocolate ice cream whether they knew it or not, would it be wrong to say so?
Third Wave
Quoting ToothyMaw
So duty is a kind of noble lie, then?
It, whatever the concept may be, is as we make it, or as we see it, and there is nothing that can not be trashed. However, trashing something such as the notion of duty does not make that something a lie. It just means the person who does not enjoy a sense of duty does not have that experience. Same as one person can enjoy a setting sun while another person may be a sourpuss and have no sense of pleasure in watching the sunset.
A leader's duty is to convey the concept of duty and explain how to put it into action so that the sense of duty is experienced and felt. This is true of all virtues. They must be named before we can be conscious of them and then we must act on the virtue to experience its fuller meaning.
Personally, I love having a sense of duty and I would make knowledge of duty and virtues part of education. There is no god that makes it as it is. We make it as it is. The concepts are as real as we make them. Or we can make everything really bad but why would anyone intentionally do that?
Not necessarily. If peoples' existing sense of duty is cynically exploited in the way Banno seems to think it is, then yes. If one is genuinely trying to instill a sense of duty for a good, substantial reason, then no. Also, what said. These concepts can be real to one person and not another and it doesn't diminish the importance of duty to those who are attuned to it.
As a woman who was a daughter, mother, and grandmother, I strongly believe we need the concept of family duties. I dearly wish the people who deliver my mail had the sense of duty that they had in days of old. I strongly wish our journalist would return to understanding their duty, to tell the truth so we can make good decisions.
When people understand their duties, we are defending our democracy and that is something the military can not do.
I think that's pretty much what a noble lie amounts to: it's technically a lie, but it's for a good, substantial reason of drawing the people towards what's good. Since your account asks leaders to instill goodness in others through manipulation it seemed to fit.
A cynical exploitation would not be a noble lie, but just a lie.
Quoting ToothyMaw
I'm going to try and do a little philosophy with this sentence, if you don't mind.
Something that's confusing to me here is "concepts can be real" -- not the relativism, but just that sentence alone. My guess is you're saying duty is not a noble lie because duty is real, in some sense. So duty is real for some people, and not real for others. Is that correct?
Quoting ToothyMaw
Interesting, but I dont see why a persons sense of duty needs to be controlled, redeemed, or influenced by some kind of ideal leader. the right people in the right position to lead, as you write.
And who are these right people? Any examples? Are they true patriots?
Are you referring to the USA and its upcoming elections, or any country?
Some further description might help.
Are there some people out there somewhere beyond the grasp of greed?
The whole system seems to be built on greed, as far as one can tell.
Are the corporations going to work with this leader?
Is he a total revolutionary or will he make minor adjustments to the current system?
And are they willing to serve the greater good? (whatever that is).
Or they just another politician?
I still don't see how that is a lie. They aren't brainwashed; they are convinced that there is a good cause and that they should take it up. I would say manipulation is not always via unsavory means, although it has that connotation.
Quoting Moliere
It could be a noble lie if one subscribes to the definition of duty as merely what one "ought" to do, exploiting whatever pre-existing sense of duty there is in a person or people, even if it is to good ends. That, I think, is the wrong way to go about it. One should lead by example, demonstrating that a cause is worthy even without such an appeal.
Quoting Moliere
Yeah, that was directed at other people. My bad. It doesn't relate to what I was saying to you, and I wasn't going to say something ridiculous such as that duty is such a real concept for some that it exists in a way such that it cannot be a lie. However, go ahead and say what you want about it. I kind of want to know what you were going to say.
Well, are you prepared to be the president of the United States? Do you think I am? Would you trust, for instance, a bigot to do a good job? Or a career criminal? Some people are objectively more prepared than others.
And yes, I think the right leader can help us make things the way they should have been a long time ago; if the people could do it on their own it would have happened by now.
Quoting 0 thru 9
I think that if you are asking those questions you already have some ideas of your own. I'm not going to name anyone, but yes, I would like a genuine patriot to be in office - even if they have some less than excellent ideas.
Quoting 0 thru 9
Definitely not. They cannot be another politician.
That's at least pretty close to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_lie ? Or not?
It's not brainwashing. It's myth making.
Quoting ToothyMaw
My first thought is that if duty is real for some and not real for others then there are some people who are not attuned to duty. So who are the dutiful, such that we know they are attuned to duty, and who are those who are not attuned to duty? Or is it not a kind of knowledge at all?
Quoting ToothyMaw
Seems like it would apply to Donald Trump and to Joe Biden, for instance. At least we can see that there are people who follow either leader, and so believe those leaders to be demonstrating their cause to be worthy. But you're blaming the leaders -- so it's not them.
In fact I think it's no one, if I'm reading you correctly.
So how am I to know this duty when I see it?
A couple of cliches come to mind:
Preaching to the choir - meaning it's not difficult to convince those who are already committed.
You can't coach heart - meaning you can't convince someone to have passion.
This is to say that the easiest leadership role one can be put in is one where one's followers all operate out of a sense of duty. One whose motivation is that of righteousness isn't someone in need of leadership. He's going to do as he's going to do and he's going to tell you to fuck off if you violate his sense of righteousness..
It's also to say that you can't instill a sense of duty in someone who doesn't have it. You'd be wasting your time. His driver is something else and you'll need to identify it in order to gain motivation. If you keep telling someone they ought to work harder because it's for the good of the community at large but he's just looking for a bigger paycheck, he's not going to change his mind just because you said it.
No. I don't see it as contradictory at all.
I think I do understand, but I disagree with what you wrote. As I noted, I don't think duty is the strongest motivator or even a particularly important one for many people. As for the rest of your formulation, sure, strong, loyal leaders are necessary, but I'm not as cynical about our system as you are.
I agree with this.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I think the distinction you make between duty as a director rather than a motivator is a good one.
Two dictionary definitions:
Your definition is " a feeling of obligation brought about by expectation that is irreducible".
There is considerable difference between duty as "legally obligatory" and duty as "a feeling of obligation". Both kinds of duty operate among people, but the former has a much sharper edge than the latter.
Legal and moral obligations are learned, and their strength depends on intrinsic and extrinsic rewards, and other emotional components, like love, fear, loyalty, selfishness, and others. So it's possible that in a given individual or group "duty"may or may not be the single strongest motivator for action.
Quoting ToothyMaw
On many occasions "the right people in the right positions" have led. The American Revolution and both sides of the Civil War were brought about by the right people in the right positions. Another group of the right people in the right positions brought about the first Gilded Age of excess in the late 19th century and again in the late 20th. We're very much in this period of excess. In reaction, to the Gilded Age excesses, another group of the right people in the right positions brought about a historic, widely beneficial rearrangement of wealth, particularly during the Great Depression, WWII, and the Post-WWII period, running roughly from 1930 to 1975. Around the 1970s, another group of the right people in the right positions undid the labor/capital/government coalition that had resulted in a major redistribution of wealth from the richest people to the working class.
Everyone involved in all this was doing "their duty" to the group to whom they owed the most fealty. So, the duties of the right people in the right positions cut both ways. Unfortunately for us, the oligarchs make up most of the right people in the right positions.
"the right people in the right positions" are generally not the rank and file of the people: they are the elite. The American economy was structured to serve the interests of the elite, as opposed to the rank and file. That's capitalism for you. What "duty" means to a capitalist is not going to be the same thing that it means to a socialist. What "duty" means to a member of the 1% or the top 1/10 of the 1% is going to be considerably different than what it means to a member of the impoverished working class.
Socialists and communists talk about "class consciousness" because what your "duty" can or ought to be depends on how you recognize your real position in society. Except for defined legal duties, there's no such thing as a commonly recognized duty across the different classes of people. People who don't know their class elbow from their ass are liable to accept the altogether inappropriate duty to vote for the leading oligarch candidate.
Ah, OK, so you are not actually talking about duty on your thread of that name, but instead about manipulative leadership, and pretending that we call this "duty".
I'll leave you to it. You have enough problems here already.
OK, so now it's your turn to demonstrate why you believe that this particular flower, the one you call "duty", is more prolific than all the rest. I don't see how the Third Wave experiment demonstrates this.
The article says "As the movement grew outside his class and began to number in the hundreds, the experiment had spiraled out of control. " There are millions, billions of people in the world, "outside his class", "hundreds" does not represent a majority. This is more like Trumpian logic, 'I have thousands of people at my rallies, therefore the majority supports me'. You might say 'I see hundreds of people motivated by duty, therefore duty is the single strongest motivator'. You have not provided the premises required to produce your conclusion.
Quoting ToothyMaw
I don't know how aware of it you are, but you're rattling off many alarmingly convenient oversimplifications. Philosophers often seem to overly rely on interpreting problems through a moral lens. "The immoral billionaires and their evil corporations are manipulating and abusing the innocent, who need a bold, righteous leader to rise. A hero who can lead us, the many, to a new, great future". Yeah, that's not what you said, it's my interpretation as a cynic, but how off is it really?
The devil is in the details, and the issues I imagine you're referring to are far more complicated than you're making them out to be. The public is quite complicit in supporting the system that creates the conditions you're (probably) referring to. I'd emphasise that more specificity is needed. I've no interest in discussions so vague that neither of us has any real idea what the other is saying, so I'll leave it there.
Right, but for Kant duty is not paramount, reason is. It is our duty, according to him, to follow what reason dictates, which is the categorical imperative. Duty does not define itself as this or that. Do we owe duty to our own well; being over society's or to society's over ours?
That said, duty is more usually defined as that which society expects of us, and what I said about duty and what we ought to do not being synonymous was in light of that fact.
Thanks for your reply.
I probably have a different sort of patriot in mind: Bernie Sanders lol.
Yeah, he lost, hes too old, hes not a reeeeal genuwine patriot, etc. (Some may say).
Its probably just a fantasy, but I enjoy picturing a world where social conditions are not twisted to the extreme like taffy, and citizens are not stuck like flies in the sticky morass.
In that kind of world, I imagine many would do their duties freely and happily from the sheer joy of it.
(Not that he or anyone else could make that happen. Except Jesus on a motorcycle :halo: )
It isn't, because at no point is there a requirement that a falsehood or myth be propagated. To say it plainly: the leader shows through duty to a cause that the cause is worthy and the people pick it up if they agree that this is a good cause led by a suitable leader. The causes one might propose could actually compromise social harmony in the short-term, but, if this leader is at all moral, it is unlikely they would spread a myth to gain power, as that could have all kinds of bad effects.
Maybe "manipulate" was the wrong word.
Quoting Moliere
Consistency, authenticity, candor, good intentions, competence, dedication to achieving clear goals that align with your own. The ability to listen. I think it is easy to recognize when someone is showing you the way to what you want, or what you think your nation needs.
Quoting Hanover
Righteousness is intertwined with duty; some of the most driven people feel duty to a righteous ideal. If you can get a man to airdrop into a jungle deep behind enemy lines with nothing but some basic navigational instruments and a rifle out of a sense of patriotic duty, you are playing with something powerful.
Quoting Judaka
I'm aware I'm simplifying things, but I wouldn't say that they are oversimplifications.
Quoting Judaka
Quoting Judaka
I have said in this thread that the people need to be redeemed because we very much are complicit in the current situation we find ourselves in, that we support the systems that keep us down, and that a leader needs to come along and help us start helping ourselves.
Quoting Judaka
If we didn't view it through a moral lens there would be no impetus for change - or any recognition that such a paucity would even matter. You might claim that it is not beneficial to be so intensely judgmental of corporations and billionaires...but I don't know why you would.
Quoting 0 thru 9
That's a good way of putting it. Maybe some day, right?
Quoting 0 thru 9
Yeah, Bernie is great. I would call him a patriot and would vote for him if he ran again.
The point of the experiment was that he quickly formed a fascistic super movement. That it was localized at a school means nothing. It didn't have to grow into the millions for the point to be made: it is easy to manipulate people into acting like Nazis, who largely had an incredible sense of duty to their country, even if they were the epitome of evil.
If we can easily recreate the conditions that gave rise to the militaristic, hyper-nationalist Nazis, doesn't that say something about the power of duty to country and leader?
Also: I wasn't saying that the majority of people need to have a sense of duty for duty to be the most potent motivator. The flower comment was not meant to be taken so literally.
Maybe you don't know this, but when we do philosophy sometimes words are used differently. In fact, sometimes we agree to give words new meanings without negating the other meanings those words have in order to discuss philosophy better. Fascinating, isn't it?
Well, I think there is two basic problems with the conclusions you draw from the experiment. First, is that you cannot necessarily say that it was a sense of duty which lead those people into that movement. Different people have different reasons for joining into such a movement. Second, is that even if all those people were moved by a sense of duty, this does not validate your claim that duty is the "single strongest motivator for action", because there is no other motivators offered for comparison.
There is no indication of what percentage of the people exposed to the movement joined the movement, and there is no indication as to what other type of motivators those people were exposed to at the same time for comparison, to show that they chose the experimental movement out of a sense of duty, over something else. So for example, it might have been the case that the people who joined the movement were just extremely bored at the time, with nothing better to do, or even that some other incentives for joining were offered, that are undisclosed to us. (The followers were students, and the conditions were of course set up by the teacher who was carrying out the experiment, so he might have set up conditions of extreme boredom in the classroom, then offered the students 'something to do'.)
Maybe so, but once they joined the movement, they had some idea of the duty they had to the movement and its leader; the expectation was that they would do their part, whatever that might have been, to serve the cause, and they clearly relished it. If that isn't duty, I don't know what is.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Do I really have to go through all the different motivators humans have? My contention, if you have been paying attention, is that duty can override just about anything - not that it is the most prolific motivator.
Do you think the Spartans could have existed without their incredible elevation of duty above all else? It takes something powerful to get a mother, or wife, to tell her husband or son that they should die if they find defeat, and it takes a lot to get a man to fight until he dies merely for the benefit of the state or the tribe.
Love, you might say, is as powerful. It is certainly more pervasive, but I think it is too capricious. Ambition? No one who is motivated by ambition solely would make significant sacrifices for the less fortunate, or give their life, as it doesn't serve to further their own power or rank. So, what does that leave us? Self-righteousness like Hanover mentioned? There is a risk there, that you become so blind to certain other considerations that you lose yourself and your good intentions over time. Duty is always in context, always able to be revoked and applied elsewhere - and it never loses its edge so long as one avoids becoming cynical.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Once again, I think the people joined for myriad reasons, including just feelings of obligation rooted in that the people in the movement expected other people to join, but quickly adapted to the movement and felt intense feelings of duty and a desire to serve once they joined. I mean, they delegated a bunch of different jobs that were carried out with fervor, including assigning the guy who started the experiment bodyguards.
And, once again, the important thing isn't the percentage of people who joined that were exposed to it, it was that anyone at all was able to be converted, let alone hundreds, and that those who joined were so zealous. As for the classroom being boring: any teacher who would do an experiment like this is probably an entertaining teacher.
Would you say that we should take into account boredom when discussing why a nazi became a nazi? Or would you attribute the joining to a mental weakness that is exploitable by charismatic leaders heading up (not so) righteous causes? Maybe we should consider whether or not they joined because their favorite uncle said he would buy them a case of beer if they did?
Perhaps it says something about how comfortable humans find it, to feel like we have a role in our social primate band?
Perhaps duty is a reification humanity came up with for discussing the strong impulse to take care of the family?
Perhaps one's notion of duty might be a simplistic mythical ideal that doesn't correspond very well with the way things happen in human societies?
So I do think deontology is more fitting than consequentialist theories for an ethical foundation. However, I think deontology itself has to be qualified for this to be true.
If you follow a command- even an ethical one, you have to do it for a reason. Well, how do you know if that reason is "good" or not? Generally that more meta-ethical question has to do with issues dealing with universal principles. These universal principles, in turn, have to do with something more though. Simply being universal doesn't confer morality to it. Rather, it's something deeper. It has to do with some sort of shared aspect of being we share. That shared aspect is our being living animals. Hence words like "dignity" is often used as to the content of this aspect of living animals (some might only focus on the humanity rather than animal aspect but works the same). But it's not enough to point out the "what" (dignity) that is common among us, but also there must be some emotional aspect, and that is where "compassion" comes into it. Thus, the meta-ethical root of ethical action and sensibility is the emotional component of compassion. Compassion applied to ethics, is not violating the content (dignity) of others. Violating this dignity would be things like not respecting autonomy of others, not respecting the suffering of others, etc. So that is how I think deontology is rooted. It can't simply be duty for duty's sake.
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Quoting wonderer1
Those are undoubtedly good questions. I'm more concerned about how to go about getting the right people to step up and give the people who want change direction, as I think a dutiful, loyal leader can make the difference.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Probably the best reply yet.
I agree with you. Duty is at best a vehicle for (likely deontological) moral convictions and an outlet for action, as duty for duty's sake is not sufficient to provide a meta-ethical base. Duty, I would still say, is the keystone of putting together a moral world, however, but must be guided by compassion and respect for the dignity of others.
:up: :smile:
Yes, all those reasons are valid possibilities, along with a myriad of others, some more prominent, some less. That you choose one as "the strongest", without any clear justification of your choice, makes it nothing but a subjective opinion.
Of course you do. It's an insidious habit, leading to all sorts of problems - see Wittgenstein. Here, you think that you have explained how important duty is, when all you have done, as I and others have pointed out, is to say that leaders are manipulative.
You think you have done something profound, when you have only done something silly.
As a child who watched B17s fly over the family farm house as WWII wound down, and then as a young man in the 1950s my first thought, now, when reading the introduction, was required military service. Conscription existed into the 1970s in the US, and I never questioned the practice until the years of the Vietnam War, after I had done my stint and resigned my commission as a captain in the USAF. Up to that point I felt the need to fulfill my "duty". Afterwards, not so much.
How many of you served in an armed forces and considered it your "duty"?
Yes indeed.
Look, Banno, it is easy to send these little snippets of sarcasm and ill will at people trying to argue their point of view in good will. If you want to engage in cynical drive-bys, be my guest. But if you actually want to engage, even if you believe it is below you, you would stand to benefit too, I think.
I actually don't think I have done a very good job of arguing for what I'm arguing for, and do not believe I have said anything particularly profound. But I'm trying.
That's more than you can say, isn't it?
Quoting Banno
No, I said the right leaders should use everything available to them to rally people to their cause and instill a sense of duty in them. I might have used the term "manipulate", but that doesn't always mean unscrupulousness - it can just mean controlling something cleverly.
These all sound good to me. I'd even be able to point to some examples of people that fit.
I'm not sure anyone would disagree with this list. They'd disagree on who fits, though. And I bet we'd be more inclined to put dead figures on the list, too. It's easier to honor the dead than the living.
I suppose I'd just point out that we have quite a few leaders. But I don't recognize your list in many of them. And so this is the cause of doubt: it seems that we already have leaders who believe themselves to be all of these good qualities, but we're lamenting that they don't possess them.
But is it just because certain people haven't seen that it's their duty to lead and influence people towards good ends? We have lots of people attempting to lead and influence, it's just not the right people? Is all that's stopping them is that they don't realize what their duty is?
In Banno's defense, to speak about duty and to speak about the manipulation of motivation is to speak about two different things. The idea that, "We need good outcomes. X is a strong motivator, therefore X should be manipulated for the sake of good outcomes," in fact has nothing to do with the nature of X. X can be anything you like so long as it is a strong motivator. The idea is more truly about the manipulation of strong motivations for the sake of good outcomes, and is only about X in an incidental way.
Now using duty as a means to an end is rather ironic given that duty is supposed to be intrinsically contrary to such use. If a leader believes that someone has a duty to do something, and he tries to convince them of this, then he is being honest. If a leader believes that someone has no duty to do something, but he tries to convince them that they do, then he is being dishonest. He is being dishonest even if he is lying to them for a good end (good outcome). The dishonesty arises because he uses the word or concept 'duty' in a false sense, and he wishes them to falsely believe that they have a duty so that he can achieve his end, which he considers to be good.
Thus if duty is being recommended independently of what ought to be done (in a rather intrinsic sense), we are on shaky ground. If one is opposed to lying, then they should not attempt to make people believe that they have duties which they do not have. Couching the whole conversation in terms of good outcomes and utilizing duty as a means really runs the risk of this danger (and this equivocation).
It is not quite as incidental as it seems, because I am making an appeal to the duty of certain people to lead because they would do a lot of good in doing so - and appealing to their pre-existing ideas of duty is the best way. That has less to do with how effective duty is as a motivator and more to do with perceived ethical obligations. It is somewhat incidental, as you note, that a sense of duty would be what the leader tries to foster in those they lead, however.
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Leontiskos
Read my reply to :
Quoting ToothyMaw
In light of this, I would argue for authenticity and candor on the part of a leader, and, even if people are being cleverly controlled, there must be good reasons for doing so and, if the leader can supply these good reasons for one to throw their lot in with them, there will be no myth-making or noble lies.
The thing that is interesting about duty is how powerful it is, not that it is intrinsically moral as an end. One might argue that it is also a useful adaptation, but that kind of thing is far beyond my understanding.
Me too.
Quoting Moliere
Quoting Moliere
When one is actually given a measure of power and is exposed to the kind of game politics is, I think it is easy to become afraid of misusing that power and to play it safe. Furthermore, it is less a problem of vision than many people think, as many people have favorable ideas of what they want for the country, but rather an issue of not being spineless when you finally get to the point at which you could make a difference. People would throw their lot in with the pre-election Obama of 2008 nine times out of ten over a more principled leader merely because he expressed a fantastic vision in addition to magnetic charisma.
Quoting Moliere
I'm not totally sure what it is, but I gave you my best guess. I'm just trying to appeal to their pre-existing feelings of duty because that seems to the most direct route to getting them to step up.
Yeah, I wouldn't mind hearing from some more soldiers either. There seems to be a paucity of them, oddly enough.
Heh. I suppose I'd say that it's only us chickens that have to step up, and that's the real problem. We're the leaders we have been waiting for -- we're just not as good as we want our leaders to be, so we feel inadequate to the task.
But all the other leaders from before that we honor were in similar shoes at one point.
That's because duty sucks. ;)
Okay, fair enough.
Quoting ToothyMaw
Yes, I did read that exchange, and I think it is on point.
Quoting ToothyMaw
It seems to me that a sense of duty is powerful given the nature of duty, but at the same time a sense of duty is becoming harder and harder to find. Duty is powerful in a practical sense because it concerns precisely what ought to be done, but I find that a lot of people no longer experience a sense of duty, and this is especially true as familial ties continue to weaken.
I think contemporary philosophy is generally averse to duty and normative morality, and I wonder if this explains some of the motivation behind your "open letter." Is it in part an admonishment for philosophers to stop undermining the notion of duty, and to approach the idea more constructively?
Yes, I agree that people don't feel nearly as much of a sense of duty as could be expected or desired, but I don't think that it is all that difficult to instill something resembling it in people. In the OP I said people crave it, and I definitely still believe that - even if they do not know it.
Quoting Leontiskos
It occurred to me that I rarely, if ever on this forum, hear about the kind of duty I define in the OP or see people prescribe strong, traditional moral obligations towards leadership in a plain way. It is usually just so-and-so is evil, too extreme, too centrist, too censorious - and no one provides practical solutions, even if those solutions are just favorable tradeoffs. The principled leaders I have in mind are not perfect, but they are our best chance.
I don't really pay attention to what contemporary philosophers have to say unless I have to engage with what they have written directly. So, even though I would like to say my open letter was also intended to excoriate those philosophers who challenge the necessity of normative morality and duty and encourage the discussion of such concepts in good faith among them, it wasn't.
I did know, however, that the OP would be equivalent to throwing the gauntlet down against people like Banno, who seem to be staunchly opposed to any sort of strong, traditional moral convictions, specifically those convictions rooted in something other than the typical self-righteous, leftist dogma people dunk on all the time.
Quoting Moliere
No one would follow me, I'm afraid. But people will always step up when they think they need to. I just hope it is enough.
Some might not see it this way, but I find duty starting from things like being a parent and being there for your children. Or being there for your parents when you are old. Even being faithful and devoted to your spouse. And then helping people if you come to the sight of an accident, you do help total strangers.
In the OP I think many people perhaps crave for purpose, not duty. Especially in their jobs they want to have a purpose and not just some idiotic thing that they did their entire life to get money to feed themselves and their family. Purpose and duty are different. Something that has really that sense of duty and the duty issue is important is when you take an oath to do it. You usually take an oath to serve in the military. Or an oath to be a citizen (if not born to be one). When serving hamburgers in a fast-food joint you don't take an oath. But for example when becoming a doctor or a priest you might find yourself taking an oath.
One reason just why duty seems to be such an old cliché and nearly controversial is simply because we live in an ultra-individualist consumer society where nearly everything seems to be just an transaction. If not, by God, our individual rights are trampled!!!
Quoting jgill
If compulsory military service counts, then yes.
Conscription was the law in the US in the 1950s, and I recall ROTC the first two years being required for all male students at the university at which I enrolled. I continued beyond this thinking I would have a better time of it being a junior officer than enlisted. In fact, my service opened a door into an attractive civilian career had I wished to pursue it.
But this line of thought is not what this thread is about. Sorry.
For duty, duty must be done;
The rule applies to every one,
And painful though that duty be,
To shirk the task were fiddle-de-dee!
To shirk the task were fiddle-de-dee!
Here's the way Gilbert & Sullivan put it to music -- unless you love G & S, after 1:47 or so, it's the usual nonsensical falderal.
Okay.
Quoting ToothyMaw
Yes, I can see this as well. I suppose the difficulty is that if we are to go beyond "duty for duty's sake" then we are effectively required to proffer a moral argument, and this is difficult in the midst of such strong skepticism.
Yeah. Obviously this forum has a leftist bent, which is understandable, but we need good leaders, not just ethical ones. Not to mention there is no viable alternative to the two parties in power in the US. The divergence in policy from what people want because they must vote democrat or republican can be greater than that which would be the case voting for a third party candidate that they don't agree with totally. And you also have to ask yourself what is really important and necessary, and what can be addressed at a later, more convenient time.
For instance: should we do our best to mitigate the chances of nuclear Armageddon arising from the war in Ukraine? Should we continue pumping billions into what looks a lot like a proxy war and encourage Ukraine to fight to the last man? Should we concern ourselves with the culture war? Is it even useful to rail against wokeness?
Certainly there is room for comedy when it comes to anything, really. I'll just try not to feel like I'm being made fun of by people who lived more than a century ago.