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