Making Sense of Wilson, pt. 5: Duty

I concluded my last post of reflections on James Q. Wilson's book The Moral Sense by noting a desire of mine, namely, to be confident that other people, specifically my friends and family but others also, are dependable. I do not think that I am alone in this.

That post was on self-control. We value self-control as morally virtuous to a significant degree not for its own sake but because it tells us something about the character of the person who possesses it. People with that sort of character are valuable to us both practically (because we are social beings who rely upon and must cooperate with others in our shared lives) and emotionally (because we generally need stability in key areas in order to fare well in our lives). Self-control is virtuous, in other words, because it is necessary to advance praiseworthy human goals in life. Something similar is at work when we turn our attention from self-control to duty.

“Duty” according to Prof. Wilson, “is the disposition to honor obligations even without hope of reward or fear of punishment.  One reveals himself to be a moral person not merely by honoring obligations but by being disposed to honor them even when it is not in his interest to do so” (100). Execution and disposition are components of the morality of duty: both honoring obligations and being disposed to honor them. With disposition, we are speaking of character, or more precisely of conscience.

The popular conception of duty can have a tendency to view it as asocial, that is, as something that you do independently when no one is around and therefore for its own sake. But this conception, if maintained so narrowly, is mistaken.

Of course, a dutiful person will do what is judged to be right in the absence of others, not expecting reward, and despite punishment. Prof. Wilson himself observes that "[d]uty exists to the extent that people are willing to honor obligations in the absence of social rewards for doing so” (101). The key component, however, seems to me to be that of "obligations."

To what are we obligated such that fulfillment of the responsibility demonstrates duty? In answering this, we soon find that "to what" we are obligated is more properly understood as "to whom" we are obligated. Duty is the faithful execution of what is incumbent upon us in community, that is, with respect to others. We generally and in the final analysis display duty out of a sense of obligation less to a principle than to a person.

This relationship between duty and sociability makes sense. We learn duty in the family first. Children learn to be dutiful to their parents. Parents protect and nurture their children by being dutiful to them. Part of this is a desire to be liked and/or to establish solid relational bonds that lead to mutualism and harmony.

Sociability in this sense is a fundamental presupposition of duty as something that explains it. Even military personnel, whom we often think of as stereotypically dutiful in view of the service branches' codes of conduct and the giving and following of orders, follow those codes of conduct and orders ultimately because doing so establishes a connection to their fellows. These things constitute "a viable set of rules and regulations to live by," as Prof. Wilson explains when discussing the behavior of American prisoners of war during the Vietnam War (112). 

Duty in this extreme case meant honoring an obligation to behave under duress in a way that signified how much the prisoners valued their comrades and how little they valued their captors. The key rule was unity over self. Fidelity arose out of a social connection and could be defined and preserved only by keeping that connection alive, however tenuously and indirectly and however trivial or even nonexistent were the actual social rewards for fidelity. (113)

At times duty may prompt a person to act in a way in which the immediate social connection that it presupposes is not obvious. We might disagree with someone whose particular action stems from a sense of duty, and that person may know that she won't ingratiate herself to us by so acting. This form of duty may nevertheless garner our respect, which itself is a form of social connection. What is more, “people who are faithful to their obligations in ways we disapprove of show us that they have a conscience, and we value people who are so inner directed that we can rely on their behaving in certain ways even when the external incentives available to them might incline them in a different direction” (101).

We have returned to reliability, character, conscience, and community.  This nexus of ideas, which we observed also in the post on self-control, resonates with me:  certain behaviors point to inner strength and reliability, which reflect moral rectitude in communal life.  We want to know that people are trustworthy and reliable.  We intuit small signs in this connection, and we interpret them as moral:  confidence in promises, honesty, restraint, justice.  We signal to others the nature and strength of our conscience through our displays of duty; our conscience reflects our character; and our character forms the basis of our social reputation.

Fidelity, that high and noble purpose for the attainment of which we are joined in our communal bonds, is at the heart of duty.  Not only does duty reflect our conscience and our character; the practice of it also helps us to cultivate it.  It helps us to habituate ourselves to duty, to be disposed to honor our obligations to others, and to see the obligations as such because of the social fabric of which they are a part.

Duty requires prudence and balance.  Undiscerning dutifulness might be vicious rather than virtuous.  Classic examples are the participants in Stanley Milgram's social experiments or the members in the armed forces of the Third Reich.  And although dutifulness presupposes sociability in a basic respect, overzealous dutifulness may be antisocial:  "excessively dutiful people -- those who are bluntly candid, narrowly rule-abiding, or relentlessly reformist -- are often regarded as unattractive.  In the extreme case we depict them as obsessional personalities" (101).

For some of us duty as a moral sense comes more naturally than for others.  That differentiation is to be expected.  But what should we expect when individualism replaces obligation to others in our culture and communities?  What happens when the fabric of the family, where we first learn duty, unravels or changes?  What if in our contemporary addiction to incessant connection, as Sherry Turkle says, "from social networks to social robots, we're designing technologies that will give us the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship?"  And what about when the notion that we bear important responsibilities to members of our neighborhoods, locales, and nations becomes a novelty rather than the norm?  What, then, becomes of duty in an age characterized by these trends in relational spheres?

Put differently, has the ascendancy of the individual in modern life diminished the value placed on the group?  If my sense of responsibility to others besides myself is reduced, then that reduction will likely detract from duty as a moral sense.

And so what does society look like when duty as a moral sense is in decline?

What may appear under the guise of duty is likely to be an emphasis on individual rights; however, such an emphasis on rights, which is really just a focus on what is fair or just, is not the same as an emphasis on responsibilities.  Fairness and duty are both moral senses, but they are not identical or synonymous.

It is difficult to honor obligations to others if one does not believe that he has many.  It is difficult to make good on these responsibilities without reference to social rewards or punishments if my prevailing concern is obtaining what I believe is owed to me rather than what I owe to others.

The moral sense of duty implies an orientation to life that looks to others ahead of oneself.  It entails a moral vision not just of obedience but also of sacrifice.  Necessary to its successful execution is prudence, knowing what I ought to do in a given situation.

It is not going too far to say that much of what we find attractive in displays of heroism is really duty in motion.  In these instances, self-interest is sidelined as a well-formed human conscience compels action. This is action that may in fact harm the actor, who thinks not of a future reward but only at the moment of doing what needs getting done.

Which brings to mind a powerful scene from a suspense novel by Lee Child.  In Die Trying, uncertainty exists in the mind of an FBI investigator (Paul McGrath) about the allegiance of a character (Jack Reacher) who is curiously caught up in the kidnapping of another FBI agent on McGrath's team.  Reacher's former commanding officer (General Garber) is summoned to advise the FBI team sent to rescue its own.

     He [Garber] turned and saw McGrath looking at him. Nodded him out of the trailer.  The two men walked together into the silence of the night.

     "I can't prove it to you," Garber said.  "But Reacher is on our side.  I'll absolutely guarantee that, personally."

     "Doesn't look that way," McGrath said.  "He's the classic type.  Fits our standard profile perfectly.  Unemployed ex-military, malcontent, dislocated childhood, probably full of all kinds of grievances."

     Garber shook his head.

     "He's none of those things," he said.  "Except unemployed ex-military.  He was a fine officer.  Best I ever had.  You're making a big mistake."

     McGrath saw the look on Garber's face.

     "So you'd trust him?" he asked.  "Personally?"

     Garber nodded grimly.

     "With my life," he said.  "I don't know why he's there, but I promise you he's clean, and he's going to do what needs doing, or he's going to die trying." (290)

Does one need an illustration of duty?  Here you go.  Garber is resolutely confident of Reacher's character; he has implicit trust in his former officer, someone bound by a dutiful conscience that honors obligations to others.  Garber knows what Reacher will do because he knows Reacher the person.  And this person is committed to preserving the proper social order.  Other people may benefit even if he does not.

This may be as vivid and adrenaline-releasing a depiction of duty as I know:  "He's going to do what needs doing, or he's going to die trying."  Whoa.