On Immanuel Kant’s concept of duty

Abstract

Central to the philosophical discourse on duty is its ontology, the sanctioning entity, and what legitimises an act to assume the status of duty. Kant conceives of duty to involve the recognition of, and submission to the moral law. The focus of this work is to critically interrogate the Kantian conception of duty normatively and the veracity of its application when the conceptualisation assumes practical posture. This is to understand as to whether acting from duty on the one hand, and the universalizability of a moral law according to which a moral agent ought to act on the other hand, guarantees that one acts without any consideration, but for duty. The import is to offer a pragmatic perspective to understanding Kant’s conception and to realign his metaphysical conceptualisation of duty within human capabilities. We do this with the position that duty must be within the practical capabilities of humans in moral decision-making