‘My station and its duties’: social-role accounts of obligation in Green and Bradley

Abstract

Different elements in the reception history of German Idealism have had different impacts – such as the Young Hegelians on the philosophy of religion, neo-Kantianism on the philosophy of science, Kojeve on accounts of recognition, Croce on theories of art, and so on. When it comes to the British Idealists, arguably the most obvious candidate for such impact is in the idea of ‘my station and its duties’; for while the British Idealists engaged with many aspects of the thought of both Kant and Hegel (and to a lesser degree also of Fichte and Schelling), it seems that it is their notion of ‘my station and its duties’ that has the greatest resonance today, while their accounts of the Absolute, of relations, of the concrete universal, and other aspects of their idealist metaphysics, epistemology and philosophy of mind have been largely forgotten. In this essay, I want to look again at this idea of ‘my station and its duties’, particularly as it figures in the work of T. H. Green and F. H. Bradley, who pioneered its significance. For, while it is widely used as a slogan to represent both their ethical and political philosophy and that of Idealism more generally, and while it is of continuing influence within certain strands of contemporary ethical and political thinking as an alternative to other approaches, it is rarely given any detailed treatment in historical terms. In particular, I would like to ask precisely what theory of duty or obligation this position is meant to embody: that is, how an appeal to this notion is meant to answer a fundamental question in ethical theory, namely how moral obligation is to be accounted for and best understood. It is most usually assumed, I think, that in tying obligations to social roles, the British Idealists were offering what I will call an identificatory account of obligation: that is, acting in a certain way has an obligatory force because it relates to a role which constitutes your identity.