R. G. Collingwood on ‘Duty’

A peculiar detail about me, that is of an unknown origin to myself, is that I have a seemingly innate disposition to act out of a sense of duty. In some ways, this may come from my family; my parents and extended relatives tend toward a fierce (almost tribal) sense of familial loyalty – even if it is misplaced. My own sense of duty may grow out of that beginning, but I have extended beyond to other people that I am connected to in entirely non-familial ways. There have even been instances in which the people to whom I feel a sense of obligation have told me that they appreciate my fidelity and support but find it unnecessary or even undeserved – though I tend to continue in my ways. I remark upon this because, as far as I can tell, this is not an aspect of our decision making and activity that is well understood; today, the most common, large-scale notion of duty – patriotism – no longer seems to place highly in our self-understandings, and people might even be suspicious of much patriotic fervour (though I think this is for other reasons and not necessarily a rejection of duty as such). I could conjecture about duty deteriorating in an overly atomistic and skeptical (or even suspicious) age, but those are historical details that I am less interested in for the time being. What I am more interested in is the meaning of duty itself – which must be closely allied with a theory of volition and human conduct.

This is, of course, far too great a task for a singular essay of such brevity, so I herein wish to simply review and think through an argument about the meaning of duty from a lesser known figure of the twentieth century: Robin George Collingwood. This English philosopher explicitly used the term ‘duty’ in a manner that is virtually synonymous with ‘truth’ at the level moral activity; duty, for Collingwood, is (whether explicitly known or not) the fulfillment of one’s conduct. This is surely a theory of duty, and it does not consequently align precisely with the manner in which we use the term in common parlance; indeed, even my above discussion about my own sense of ‘duty’ is distinct from what Collingwood means. Nevertheless, there are connections that can be found, and reviewing Collingwood’s ideas provides us with a powerful entry into thinking about duty. I am drawing predominantly from two of his essays, “Goodness, Caprice, and Utility” and “Duty,” along with some excerpts from his major work of political theory, The New Leviathan. Collingwood argues for three ‘explanations’ or ‘understandings’ of conduct: Utility, Right, and Duty – and this order is relevant as this places them from least to most explanatory of human actions, and they can be more easily thought of by being built upon successively.

First, Utility is the sort of justification one employs for achieving any given objective. Thus, perhaps I want to make money; I therefore could find a job, start a company, rob a bank, etc. In such a case, a given action is ‘justified’ or ‘explained’ by reference to what it aims to achieve – hence the explanation is a claim about an action’s usefulness to accomplish the stated end. “Why are you robbing this bank?” “Well, sir, you see, I’d quite like to have some money.” The obvious problem with this is that the end itself is neither being disputed nor justified. The only way in which this can be done is to throw it back against a further objective. Continuing our present example, we would have to ask our imaginary fellow: “Why do you want the money?” Perhaps his answer is that he wants some food or to support his family. This can, then, be once more pushed to a further objective (theoretically) ad infinitum. Moreover, we can recognize that a given person likely has a great many ‘objectives,’ in this sense, and those likely need to be coordinated with one another. Utility therefore fails as an explanation in both of these senses: it offers no real way of grounding a given action since the logic of utility creates a practically incalculable series of objectives that inform the others, and it does not offer in itself a manner of balancing the various objectives that one may be trying to achieve simultaneously.

This then leads into ‘Right,’ Collingwood’s second understanding of how conduct is justified. It can be understood as a way of building upon Utility in that it aims to ameliorate precisely what its explanatory predecessor fails to achieve – though it does not do so entirely. Now, Collingwood (writing largely in the 1930s) designates this as ‘Right’ in the sense that British Liberals of the mid-nineteenth century used the term: he essentially means a procedural condition as opposed to a substantive guarantee of anything (we today tend to use ‘right,’ especially in the context of ‘human rights,’ in both senses of the term – which causes a lot of confusion). I think it is therefore better to use the term ‘rule’ or ‘Ruling’ as opposed to ‘Right,’ for Collingwood’s explanation of Right is essentially presented as a variety of rules. Rules provide an improvement upon explanations of Utility in that they can bind together the many objectives an agent may be pursuing to make them more coordinated and coherent among themselves. For example, a man might set a rule for himself that he must save ten percent of his income; this acts as a procedural condition on his behaviour, and it will condition both what he does and what he is aiming to achieve. The rule provides no explanation of what he is saving for nor how exactly he needs to save – it merely posits that the saving needs to occur. Moreover, there can be rules around rules, and these can begin to scale up to create a more fulsome and integrated understanding of one’s own activity. What this level of explanation lacks, on Collingwood’s view, is a ground for why someone is subscribing to a given rule. Insofar as Utility fails to explain its ends, Right fails to explain its rules; and, further, insofar as a rule appeals to what it might achieve (meaning its ‘ends’ or ‘objectives’), it again fails for the same reasons as does Utility.

‘Duty,’ for Collingwood, is the solution to this problem. With both Utility and Right, he identifies that the key issue is their ultimately ‘abstract’ nature. What neither Utility nor Right can provide is a reason for why its specification is accepted – whether that be a given object or rule. In either case, the objective or the rule is simply posited as being good and therefore justifies whatever actions can be considered as fulfillments of the objective or rule – which may be a real justification but only in a partial sense. What a given agent needs to have is an understanding of his a circumstances from which he is able to ground the claims of a given objective or rule; as opposed to a merely abstract willing of an objective or rule, what Duty supplies is an awareness of the context in which such a claim is made. This requires some unpacking.

For Collingwood, Duty requires (what he refers to as) an awareness of one’s “historical consciousness.” By this, he does not mean the consciousness of a historian, nor does he mean someone that has an encyclopedic knowledge of what has gone on in the world before himself. Instead, he uses this term to denote the state of being supremely aware of one’s contingent circumstances and operating within them. This may require a modicum of historical knowledge in the sense that I just tried to eschew above, but they are not synonymous; rather, historical consciousness is the awareness of the place one holds in his particular time and place. Duty is thus derivable within this context because a man, in his historical self-knowledge, has an understanding of the objectives he ought to achieve and rules he ought to observe. In this sense, historical consciousness provides any given agent with the necessary material to help explain why he should aim at any given objective or observe any given rule.

Let me use an example. One historical circumstance in which a man may find himself is that of being a ‘father.’ In being a dad, this man will begin to recognize that there are certain actions that he owes (literally a synonym of ‘due,’ hence duty) because of this circumstance; thus, he may prescribe certain rules for himself around eating, drinking, and exercising in order to remain healthy and present to his children, or he might have an objective such as making a salary of a certain caliber in order to provide a certain quality of life for his family. Quickly, then, we see how both Right and Utility are quickly taken up within Collingwood’s notion of Duty. Now, from another perspective, fatherhood could also be considered as itself a kind of ‘rule’ that aligns it with ‘Right.’ Nevertheless, we will acknowledge that a given man’s choice of actions as a father will be coloured by the various other roles and realities that he finds himself within in his given historical circumstances. He will occupy any other number of identities (a citizen of Canada, a son, a teacher, a friend, a client, etc.) that coalesce in himself – and this totality of himself being understood and acted out is what Collingwood understands as the fulfillment of Duty. Duty is what a man had to do, it was the correct action given what he owes to his historical circumstances. In this way, duty becomes the ultimate explanation of action, far transcending both Right and Utility. (I should also briefly mention that this provides Collingwood with a more ancient understanding of ‘freedom’; to be free is to know what one must do and do it, and it is entirely opposed to capriciousness – precisely the inverse of contemporary notions of freedom, though that is a topic for another day.)

I should clarify here that what Collingwood is explaining is not a mere ‘historicism,’ in the sense that his theory is not that duty is necessarily reducible to a given time and place (such as might be accused of ‘Cambridge School’ readings of historical personages). To know all that made ancient Athens what it was is not necessarily to give us a sufficient idea of whether Solon the Lawgiver fulfilled his duty; one might also have to identify transhistorical realities such as a commitment to God that are required for living out one’s duty. There is no contradiction in this because such ‘transhistorical’ claims would implicitly be relevant in all historical contexts, though they must be lived out within the contingencies of a given historical context. This detail of Collingwood’s view is complex and perhaps not always clear, though criticisms that have been leveled against his theory (like that of Leo Strauss) often miss that Collingwood is largely arguing for a fulsome understanding of ‘historical consciousness’ that can include transcendental obligations as opposed to devolving into some form of ‘presentism.’

Nevertheless, this does not suggest that Collingwood’s theory is without any problems: though this may be a good description of an ideal, does this form of moral explanation and awareness ever actually exist? Is it possible for a given person in his contingent circumstances to ever achieve the profound historical awareness that Collingwood suggests is necessary to live out one’s Duty? Moreover, it seems difficult to know precisely how an awareness of one’s historical context makes a decision clearer; for example, it is not self-evident to me what this implies for a person living under a deeply unstable political regime – what does it mean to live as a proper citizen in such a context? Perhaps Collingwood’s answer would be that a theory only provides an informative perspective on such matters and that such specific questions would require particular, prudential judgements from within a given contingent moment (a claim with which I am sympathetic), but this cuts across a dominant theme of Collingwood’s writing which is that all thought is for the sake of action (a claim with which I do not agree). This criticism does not claim to utterly undermine Collingwood’s argument and the insights it might provide (especially into the weaknesses of moral justification or explanation by ‘Right’ or ‘Utility’), but it simply suggests that this explanation is hardly identical with a given man’s self-understanding in whatever conditions he finds himself.

Evidently, I deeply appreciate and admire Collingwood’s effort to ground the meaning of Duty and explain how it overcomes the inadequacy of other forms of moral justification and explanation. Nevertheless, it also seems to require that we human beings have a perspective that overcomes our contingent condition: given that we are always unfinished histories, it is difficult to discern how one could be sure about his own ‘history.’ My purpose, therefore, in rehearsing Collingwood’s theory is simply to introduce him to an audience that may not have yet encountered him; moreover, he provides excellent insights with his theory about a subject that many of us (today, at least) are unlikely to have spent much time dwelling upon. For myself, I take Collingwood’s clarity about the centrality of contingency embedded in his concept of Duty to be a good reminder that I will not find myself nor what I ought to do by theorizing about the nature of being human or some other abstract notion; rather, I must embrace my particular realities and learn to love and maintain them with an adept grace – but knowing how and what to do in particular will never be a consequence of Collingwood’s theory as such. This does not, of course, exhaust this topic of duty despite it being an forceful entry-point. I hope in the future to return to this subject with considerations from other theorists or, if I am feeling bold, my own thought.