Duty Governing Human Actions: To Act Because It Is Righteous

Abstract

It can be claimed that humans have at least three basic instincts: the instincts of selfishness, of belongingness and of duty. Selfishness and belongingness are in focus in economic and sociological studies. Duty has been locked into practical philosophy and, more recently, has been used in organizational justice studies. The paper focuses on duty and explores the instinct of duty by defining it, indicating how it works, and examining its function and origin. This is accomplished by extracting knowledge from a literature review, describing its origin in Kantian moral thinking and extracting some implications of duty, and through case studies analysing the actions of three persons. Duty is found when an individual applies his/her Weltanschauung, containing maxims of action. Duty varies according to the individual, the person with whom the individual is dealing (the ‘exchange person’), the situation and the environment.