ACTING OUT OF A SENSE OF ONE’S DUTY CAN BE WRONG 3 Acting Out of a Sense of One’s Duty Can Be Wrong

An example to illustrate how one can be acting out of duty and they end up causing more harm than if they had not done anything is in assisting accident victims. When an accident occurs, people will rush and they will attempt to assist the injured persons, however, there are situations where the good samaritan assisting the injured could cause more harm than if they had left the victims and waited for paramedics or firefighters. If an accident victim is pulled or moved from the car without proper care being taken, it could result in the victim suffering more and increasing their injuries. Although the act of kindness being shown by assisting the victim is out of duty the victim could become paralyzed, suffer severe bleeding, or aggravate spinal injuries.

Looking at Kant’s moral philosophy, assisting the accident victim would be done out of duty and not gain anything in return. Therefore, the person assisting the accident victim would be doing what they consider to be morally right (Köllen, 2016). However,...

The individual helping an injured person is doing this from duty. This is because they are not inclined to do so and they do not gain any pleasure from assisting the victim. However, if the individual is assisting the individual so that they can be considered to be a hero then they are doing it in accordance with duty. This should not be confused with one gaining fame or publicity after they have assisted the victim. According to Kant (2017), it is the motive that determines the worth of an action. Therefore, the consequences of the action should not be used to assess the moral worth of the action. It is only the motive that can be used to assess the moral worth of the action (Korsgaard, 2014). If the good samaritan gains publicity after they have done their duty, then they cannot be accused of having done the action with the motive of gaining publicity.
When a person is assisting another…