Assess the view that what makes an action moral is that it is motivated by a sense of duty.

With moral matters affecting our every day lives, philosophers are naturally inclined to question
what exactly it is that makes an action a morally sound one. Various people, most notably Immanuel
Kant and WD Ross have argued that whether an action is morally good or not depends on whether
or not it has been made out of a sense of duty. Other philosophers such as the utilitarians, Bentham
and Mill, as well as the emotivists Hume and Ayer would reject the implication that morality is
based on a sense of duty.

Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher and the key proponent of the deontological approach to
ethics. He suggested that in order for an action to be moral it needed to fall in line with our duties as
an individual which we are able to work out through reason. Kant believed that we must form a
categorical imperative into a maxim in the following way: Firstly, it must not have an 'if' or any
possible kind of self interested or sympathetic motivation, secondly, it must be universalisable, that
is, we must will it to be taken as a universal law among people, thirdly, that we must never treat
humanity solely as a means, but always as an end. The final point derives from the necessity of
making our duties universalisable, for it would be inconsistent of us to value some people highly
and others not and this would also allow our emotions to come into play when making moral
decisions which is not something Kant believes is acceptable.

Kant believes that if our actions are to have any kind of moral worth then they must be done for the
sake of duty itself. Our motives must be wanting to be good through duty, we must not allow our
emotions or sentiments to play a role in our decisions but act entirely through reason. Our actions
are not to be judged on the consequences but rather on the intentions. If we have kept to our
principles and there has been some unfortunate outcome then we have still been morally good and
acting from this good will our actions cannot be criticised, at least not morally. The reason Kant
suggests that we ought not involve our emotions in the decision making process is that they can
restrict our judgements and are contingent. For example, if someone's best friend came to them after
having lost all of their money, they would be likely to give this individual shelter and food.
However, if a stranger came to the same individual in the same situation they would be far less
likely to do so, and so we can see that our sympathies are somewhat narrow in their direction and
they do not allow for the kind of egalitarian approach that Kant is suggesting through his
universalisable maxims.

This way of thinking runs into one inevitable problem, however, as suggested by Jean-Paul Sartre.
Sartre suggested that a moral system based around duty cannot provide us with reason to act one
way over another in the case of conflicting duties. He gives the example of a soldier who has lost
his three brothers in a war and whose mother has nobody to take care of her. He has a duty to go
and fight for his country, however, he also has a duty to stay and take care of his mother. In this
example then, the soldier has two duties and, according to Kant, no way whatsoever in which to
distinguish between staying with his mother or going to war. This suggests a strong criticism of the
idea that what makes an action moral is that it is motivated by a sense of duty because here the
soldiers sense of duty is not directing him one particular way. If the soldier were to make a decision
at this point to the effect that his duty to his mother was greater, for example, then he would either
be making this arbitrarily or from an emotive standpoint. Neither of these are moral actions based
on a sense of duty which, if it were the case that a moral action is one decided purely based on a
sense of duty, would mean that the soldier's choice would either be immoral or amoral. This really
does not seem to be the case. The position is also exemplified well by taking Plato's example of a
mad axe man in order to counter Kant's duty that we must always keep promises. If we make a
promise to an individual to borrow their axe on the condition that we return it at any moment they
should need it then Kant would suggest that, having engaged in this promise, we absolutely must
return this axe to the man upon his request. However, if the man comes to you subtly expressing his
 wish to brutally murder Timmy [my addition, not part of Plato's original idea :-) ] through mutters
and a generally angry face asking you to return the axe, is this really the right thing to do? For the
sake of poor Timmy it certainly seems like would be a more morally sound decision to not return
the axe to this individual, thus breaking the promise.

A solution to this problem is given by a 20th century philosopher, WD Ross. Ross suggested that
through time and experience we have come to the realisation of seven first sight or 'Prima Facie'
duties such as reparation, benevolence, promise keeping and so on. In a situation such as that of
Plato's mad axeman or Sartre's young soldier, Ross would claim that we can generally see which
duty is more important. Where two Prima Facie duties contradict each other we must only act upon
one of them. In the case of the mad axeman it seems clear that our duty to protect the life of poor
Timmy overrules the duty to keep our promise to the owner of the axe and so we ought to lie or at
least not return the axe to him. Although this may appear as though the individual is acting then out
of choice or out of an emotive state, it should be observed that the individual here is still acting out
of a sense of duty, they are merely calculating which duty is more demanding to them.

Whereas Kant was an objectivist, because he believed that morality was not at all based on the
individual, and a cognitivist, because he believed that there are real moral truths which, through
reason and understanding of duty we will all come to an agreement on, there are other philosophers
have suggested that morality is neither objective or cognitive. Philosophers such as Ayer and Hume
suggest that moral actions are subjective and non-cognitive. Hume suggests that 'reason is and
ought to be the slave of the passions' and clearly feels that we cannot work out any moral truths
from reason. He asks us to consider an act typically viewed as vicious and to see if we can, through
a thorough examination of it, find any element of 'that which you call vice.' He further goes on to
note that we do not actually find any corporeal 'vice' in the act, all we are really able to discover are
our sensations and passions towards the particular event. This is the basis of Hume's emotivism.
Hume suggests that our moral actions find their origins in our sentiments not from a sense of duty.
Ayer gives a similar neo-Humean emotivist approach which suggests that our statements such as 'X
is wrong' are really just expressions of our feelings. So, to say that X is wrong is really just to say
'X? BOO!' Similarly to say that X is right is just to say 'X is right is just to say 'X? HOORAH!' Our
moral attitudes and actions then are just expressions of inner feelings. Not only this, but it is also
non-cognitivst as well as Ayer believes that in moral discussions when all of the facts are known, if
the dispute remains then there is really nothing more to say and we are simply not going to progress
in the argument, thus trivialising moral debate somewhat, though this is tangential to the essay.
Effectively then, Hume and Ayer do not believe that it is a sense of duty which makes an action
moral since reason is ruled by emotion, and so it is our emotions or 'natural sympathies' which make
an action moral.

Another pair of Philosophers who would disagree with the idea that a moral action is strictly based
on duty are the famous proponents of utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham and JS Mill. Bentham
originally proposed the idea that good is equivalent to 'the greatest happiness of the greatest
number.' His general maxim then was simply to maximise the pleasure of as many individuals as
possible. In order to do this he gave a calculus to calculate, in an almost mathematical sense, which
action exactly would produce the greatest happiness and in turn which action would be the most
morally good. It is easy to find flaws with utilitarianism, for example, it allows the brutal murder of
an innocent individual in order to satisfy a crowd of a thousand. However, regardless of its quality
as a moral system, it does not seem to rely on any sense of duty in order to produce morally good
actions, does it? Well, if one were to be pedantic then it could be argued that the principle of utility,
the idea of promoting 'the greatest happiness of the greatest number' is not too dissimilar to a duty
itself, if accepted by a utilitarian.

Finally, the idea that an action is moral if it is motivated by a sense of duty seems to presuppose that
 a sense of duty is even capable of motivating an action. As McNaughton suggests, it may well be
the case that we are able to recognise that we have a moral duty and yet not feel any reason to act on
this, he suggests that 'mere awareness of the facts can never be sufficient to provide an agent with
reason to act.' Merely a sense of duty is not sufficient to motivate an individual towards action,
there must also be a will to perform that duty, and so it is a desire which makes the action good
rather than the sense of duty itself. However, an adherent of a duty theory of ethics could easily
claim that it is still the sense of duty, even if necessarily accompanied by a desire, which is the key
factor in deciding whether an action is good or not.

Overall, I do not feel that there is sufficient reason to suggest that an action is only morally sound if
it is performed out of a sense of duty. This is because if we take the example of a utilitarian who
helps an old lady cross the road, wanting to do the good thing, and an adherent of duty ethics
helping an old lady across the road, because he feels he has a duty (and wants to do his duty) there
seems to be very little difference in these acts. In the former case the individual arrived at their
decision through an almost mathematical calculation and in the latter through a rational approach to
a maxim which they feel ought always to be followed. Their motives in each case are to do the right
thing, and the consequences are the same also, so the suggestion that one is not morally sound and
the other is, seems flawed. Of course the deontologist would say that a utilitarian or an emotivist are
not making proper, universalisable decisions and actions and that the emotivist may tomorrow
simply not help the old lady because they are running late or hungry, however, in this particular case
there seems to be very little to distinguish between what is going on other than the process of
reasoning. Given that all it really requires to prove that an action is not only moral if it performed
from a sense of duty then this seems sufficient to suggest that there are actions, many of them,
which can be morally good and yet performed through other reasoning or methods of decision. If
the deontologist were to then say that the desires of a utilitarian and a deontologist were different,
and that the deontologist desires to follow their duty for the sake of duty itself rather than to be
morally sounds itself then this itself does not seem particularly moral as opposed to simply arbitrary
with regards to morality.