Acting from Duty, Caring For

In this posting I want to consider acting from duty. My starting point is an example given by Thomas Hurka. He asks us to imagine, 

“that you’re in hospital recovering from a painful operation and a friend comes at considerable inconvenience to visit you. When you say how much you appreciate her visit and concern for you it shows, she says it isn’t that she cares for you; she just knew that as a friend, she had a duty to visit.”(1)

Hurka uses this example to argue that in some situations acting out of duty seems to be an inferior way of acting when compared to caring. Hurka’s argument has personal interest to me. A few years ago when my father was getting old and was not as capable as he once had been I found myself travelling to see him every day and helping him out as best I could. I told my wife I was acting out of duty at the time and a few years on after reflection I still believe for the most part this was true. Should I regret acting mostly from duty? I do not. More generally is acting solely from duty in some way inferior to acting because you care?

Intuitively we seem to accept Hurka’s argument. However everyone, including Hurka’s hospital visitor acts because they care about something. Perhaps the hospital visitor only cares about doing her duty. At this point I want to make a distinction between two ways of caring. To ‘care about’ someone means the carer identifies himself with the person she cares about and becomes vulnerable to losses and susceptible to benefits depending upon whether who she cares about is diminished or enhanced. This definition is based on that of Harry Frankfurt which I use regularly in this blog. To ‘care for’ someone means to understand someone’s needs and to respond to them in an appropriate way. In the light of this distinction I will assume Hurka’s hospital patient wants his visitors to ‘care about’ him but that he wants his nurses to ‘care for’ him. A nurse who cared a ‘great deal’ about his patients but was not very good at ‘caring for’ them would not be a very good nurse. In practice most caring is a combination of ‘caring about’ and ‘caring for’. However it is possible in theory to ‘care for’ someone but not ‘care about’ him. Caring for someone is related to duty and as the example of nurse shows caring for is also important. If Hurka’s hospital visitor is acting out of duty she must ‘care for’ the patient. If for instance she simply went to the hospital and did her SuDoku next to the patient each day during visiting time few people would think she was doing her duty. She must address the concerns of the patient. The hospital visitor acting out of duty must ‘care for’ the patient but it seems what the patient really wants her to do is ‘care about’ him. My original question now becomes this. Is the patient right in believing it would be better if his visitor cared about him rather than for him? Is acting from duty by ‘caring for’ someone in some way inferior to acting because you ‘care about’ him?

If someone acts from duty she must make a real effort to do her duty. Feeble attempts and gestures at doing one’s duty are not doing one’s duty, doing one’s duty is quite demanding. What must the hospital patient’s visitor do when doing her duty? She must ‘care for’ the patient. She must attempt to understand the patient’s needs and to respond in an appropriate way. Clearly she cannot respond to the patient’s medical needs and such needs must be met by the medical staff. She can and should respond to the patient’s practical and emotional needs when she can. One of the emotional needs of the patient is to be ‘cared about’, loved. It follows if the visitor is serious about doing her duty she must make an attempt whenever possible to ‘care about’ the patient. Just bringing him his paper and the fruit he asked for yesterday and then settling down to do her SuDoku for the rest of the visiting time is not doing her duty. It follows doing one’s duty need not be divorced from ‘caring about’.

Let us assume the patient’s friend cannot visit tomorrow and in her place comes his son. His son comes purely out of a sense of duty because he suffers from Aspergers syndrome. People with Aspergers are often extremely conscientious about acting from duty because they have difficultly with empathy or ‘caring about’ as I have defined it above, see Simon Baron-Cohen (2). Acting from duty is central to the lives of some people if they are to act morally. According to Neema Trivedi-Bateman there is a link between moral emotions and offending behaviour in young people, see the conservation . Her research shows that young people are more likely to carry out violent acts if they have weak empathy, shame and guilt. Unfortunately for autistic people empathy, shame and guilt are hard to acquire perhaps because they cannot read other people’s emotions. For higher functioning autistic people acting from duty is of great importance it is essential to acting morally. Parents of such children should try to inculcate a sense of duty in them rather than the moral emotions which they might find impossible to assimilate. Returning to our hospital visitor, he now has had two visitors both visiting from exactly the same sense of duty. If our patient thinks his first visitor is acting in an inferior way does he also think his son is similarly acting in an inferior way? I would guess not. Does then he then come to the view that his first visitor is not acting in an inferior way? Once again I would guess not. What reason might he advance for not changing his mind? He might suggest that whilst his son only has the option of acting out of duty his other visitor can ‘care about’ him.

Is this a reasonable suggestion? I will now argue it is not. The patient believes his visitor has the option to care for him, I believe she may not. I would argue ‘caring about’ or having empathy for someone involves loving her. A mother’s love of her child would be a good example of ‘caring about’. But as Frankfurt points out, love is not a matter of choice (3). One cannot choose to love someone. It might of course be possible to place oneself in a position so that one comes to love someone else. A successful arranged marriage might be an example of so doing. However even in these circumstances love grows and is not chosen. I do believe it is commendable for someone to cultivate the circumstances in which love can flourish. Moreover I do not deny it is good to be loved for the beloved but I do not believe a lover’s love is a matter for praise.

What conclusions can be drawn from the above? Firstly acting from duty is not an inferior way of acting. Indeed for many people, such as higher functioning autistic people, it is perhaps the only way to act morally. Secondly whist caring about is good and should encouraged it isn’t always praiseworthy whilst acting from duty might be.

1. Thomas Hurka, 2011, The Best Things in Life: A Guide to What Really Matters in Life, Oxford, page 127.
2. Simon Baron-Cohen, 2011, Zero Degrees of Empathy, Penguin, page 65.
3. Harry Frankfurt. 1999, Necessity, Volition, and Love, Cambridge University Press, page 135.