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"Duty" by Edmund Blair Leighton

Duty (from "due," that which is owing, O. Fr. deu, did, past participle of devoir; Lat. debere, debitum; cf. "debt") is a term that conveys a sense of moral commitment to someone or something. The moral commitment is the sort that results in action, and it is not a matter of passive feeling or mere recognition. When someone recognizes a duty, they commit themselves to the cause involved without considering the self-interested courses of actions that may have been relevant previously. This is not to suggest that living a life of duty precludes one from the best sort of life, but duty does involve some sacrifice of immediate self-interest.

Cicero is an early philosopher who acknowledged this possibility. He discusses duty in his work “On Duty." He suggests that duties can come from four different sources:

1. It is a result of being human
2. It is a result of one's particular place in life (your family, your country, your job)
3. It is a result of one's personality
4. One's own moral expectations for yourself can generate duties

But it seems that one can be compelled to live up to a duty. That is not always the case. In the case of mandatory child support, a parent is being put in such a position.

From the root idea of obligation to serve or give something in return, involved in the conception of duty, have sprung various derivative uses of the word; thus it is used of the services performed by a minister of a church, by a soldier, or by any employee or servant.

A special application is to a tax, a payment due to the revenue of a state, levied by force of law. Properly a "duty" differs from a "tax" in being levied on specific commodities, transactions, estates, &c., and not on individuals; thus it is right to talk of import-duties, excise-duties, death or succession-duties and etc., but of income tax as being levied on a person in proportion to his income.

Many schools of thought have debated the idea of duty. While many assert mankind's duty on their own terms, some philosophers have absolutely rejected a sense of duty.

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

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Duty

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