People have a variety of motives for doing service work. Kymlicka (n.d.) outlines two views of why people perform service work, one being that service work is a duty, and the other being that service work is a gift, in other words a noble exercise. The roots of the duty position are with the principles of social justice, mainly that service work is performed because it is one’s duty, especially when one is more fortunate. Justice, in that view, is a matter of outcomes, and it is up to each individual to ensure that outcomes are just for as many members of society as possible.
The other view, that service work is a gift, Kymlicka claims is rooted in virtue, in the sense that one can gain virtue through the performance of this work. The disparity of outcomes in this view is natural, but one with means can nevertheless improve their moral standing through the performance of service work. Kymlicka suggests that this view is rooted in religious views of ethics, wherein Abrahamic religions have a perspective and charity and justice are not linked. This runs in contrast to the social justice view, wherein charity is naturally linked to social justice, and is specifically performed with social...
There is still self-interest in the justice view, however. One’s performance of one’s duty allows for the satisfaction that one is contributing to a greater level of justice than might exist otherwise. The service work may be framed as altruistic, but is not strictly so. In either case, self-interested goals are not problematic if they exist. Taking a utilitarian view, the outcomes of the service work are positive, so the motivations are not relevant.
Mulhall and Swift (n.d.) discuss the connection between service and justice, noting that justice is established as equivalent to fairness, in that if everybody was equal, then society would be designed in an equitable manner, to preserve as close to fairness of outcomes as possible. In an unequal society, service still serves a justice role for many, because it allows them to bring about outcomes that are closer to what this fairness would look like that would otherwise be possible.…
