This view, however, was refuted by Jean-Paul Satre who provided the example of a soldier who was presented with two conflicting duties. The soldier boy had a mother who wanted him to stay at home as her other son had died at war and she didn’t want to lose her last, meaning it was his duty to protect his mother and keep her happy. However, he was also presented with the duty of serving his country and fighting in the war. This expression of conflicting duties serves as a criticism to Kant, due to the fact that we would not know which action would be moral. Another example of conflicting duties would be Plato’s example of the mad axe-man, in which a man borrows an axe from his neighbour, with the duty that he must return that axe. However, the neighbour returns the next day, clearly angry and with a murderous attitude asking for the axe back. The man who borrowed it now has to choose between his duty to return the axe, and his duty to prevent the harm of others.
W.D Ross corrected this issue with the introduction of Prima Facie duties, or ‘first’ duties. These are concrete duties which we can use to determine exactly what we should do; a prima facie duty is one which we must unfailingly abide by, unless it is overridden by another duty. A prima facie duty is used to decide what our actual duty is. Using the example of the Soldier who has to choose between staying and caring for his mother, or fighting for his country, would choose to abide by the Prima Facie duties of both non-injury (the duty not to harm others physically or psychologically: to avoid harming their health, security, intelligence, character, or happiness) and beneficence, (the duty to do good to others: to foster their health, security, wisdom, moral goodness, or happiness) meaning that he would stay home to care for his mother, to ensure her wellbeing, and to prevent her from psychological harm.
However, there are very few philosophers that have taken aboard, or even adapted Kant’s deontological theory, and even fewer that believe a moral action is that which is motivated by duty; most philosophers have developed ideas further than this. An example of an entirely different view to what makes an action moral is that of Utilitarianism.
Utilitarianism was founded by Jeremy Bentham, and supposes the view that a moral action is that which provides the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Another supporter of this view is J.S Mill, who also believes that good is equal to happiness, meaning that a chosen action should provide the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. To decide on what would be the greatest good, utilitarian thinkers use the Felicific Calculus, this essentially measures the amount of happiness provided for the greatest number of people for each potential action, essentially leading to the choice of that which produces the greatest happiness. This view would claim that it most definitely isn’t the motivation provided by a sense of duty which makes an action moral, but in fact it would be that which provides the greatest good for the greatest number. However, utilitarians would also be categorised under the heading of ‘Cognitivists’, as they also believe that their morality is objective and true.
Another philosophical view that disagrees with a truly moral action being motivated by a sense of duty is Hume’s idea of Natural Sympathy. Hume was a non-cognitivist, meaning that he believes moral truths to be subjective and not part of the real world. He believed that our actions were only motivated by our natural sympathy towards people, and that there is nothing else to affect our decisions; our morality is only that which we naturally feel to be what is right.
This is backed up/followed by emotivism, which also states that our moral beliefs are purely our emotional takes on things which have happened. This view was mainly taken by AJ Ayer, who came up with the “boo-hurrah” theory, which was that there could be an action, such as abortion, and one person could say “boo, abortion” whilst the other could say “hurrah, abortion”, which are their separate ideas on whether it is moral or not, but the the only fact that really appears is that there was an abortion.
The view that what makes an action moral is that it is motivated by a sense of duty appears flawed. The fact that duties can be conflicted, and in certain cases can lead us to wrong actions (such as presented in the mad axe man example) makes it seem as though it cannot fully account for morality. It seems more like the views of Hume and Ayer that morality is in fact just an emotional reaction to an event seems more realistic and can account for a lot more.
