The Ethical Questions of Duty - Essay Example

? Christopher Harrell 06/12/12 English 2332 The Ethical Questions of Duty The Oxford Dictionary defines duty as, “a moral or legal obligation; a responsibility.”(Oxford) This is such a short reference for a concept that can entirely define the lives of many all over the world, throughout time. Most often we associate duty with strict organizations like the military, where duty is part of the structure of obedience and order. However, we all possess a certain amount of duty in all our lives. We have a duty to uphold laws, an obligation to do what is right, and a responsibility to the important people in our lives. There is no greater moral duty than to those we call family. So when our duty to the law, to our beliefs, is contrary to the duty to family we can be caught in be brought to an emotional and ethical conundrum that is at the core of many great stories. Antigone, Abraham, and Medea are exceptional examples of when the question of duty is resting at a crossroads between family and the rest of the world we live in. Antigone was a noble woman living in Greek society. Her, uncle, Creon has assumed power. When both of her brothers are killed in battle she is righteously offended when Creon orders that one of her brothers will not receive a proper burial, in fact, he will receive no burial at all. Creon insists that he be left on the battlefield to rot as a traitor. Antigone cannot abide this, in disregard of the new king’s law; she chooses to give her brother the appropriate funeral rights. When this crime is discovered Creon is angered. Antigone knew the laws and knew very well the price of breaking them. As a woman of Greek society her place was one of submissiveness, bowing to the rule of men in totality, and of course, to royal laws. Defiance in Greek culture was, primarily, a masculine crime. (Dogget) Antigone’s choice was to break those laws to give her brother what she believed to be proper treatment in death, despite well known repercussions. It was testament to her loyalty and duty to family that led her to do what was in direct opposition to what was expected of her duty as a Greek woman. She chose responsibility to family before any other duties or obligations that may have applied. (Lawall and Maynard 658-692) The story of Abraham is a bit more controversial. With all due respect for the biblical reference from which it comes, many objective readers might find Abraham’s sense of duty questionable and misplaced. When God orders that Abraham, by his own hand, must sacrifice his son Isaac he hardly hesitates. He was no doubt sorrowful, but that would not keep him from doing as he was told. He takes his son to the place appointed and seconds from committing the deed, the divine order is rescinded. Isaac will be spared. But it was not his father’s duty to his son that saved his life. Abraham’s sense of duty was to his God, not directly to his earthly family. The last of the stories to be discussed is, by far, the most scandalous. One that is horrific in the face of morality, ethics and duty as we generally define them. Medea was a foreigner, who murdered members of her own family in order to aid Jason’s escape. This, immediately, shows us that the taking of lives is not an entirely difficult choice for her to make. This said, we can already question that Medea’s duty to family is not very high. This applies to, both, her own cultural traditions and family and the new one that she creates with Jason. She appears willing to sacrifice anything to achieve her goals. Her desire to marry Jason was fulfilled and she gave him two sons. Medea, in simplest terms, was a woman scorned by her husband. In an act of vengeance she poisons her husband’s new wife and murders her owns sons. There are few justifications, in any societies, that would look kindly upon a mother who kills her own children. In the case of Medea her sense of duty could not seem further from her family, in fact, she seems to have little sense of duty to anything at all save for vengeance. (Lawall and Maynard ) It is very easy to judge others beliefs and ideals from the safe confines of our own cultures and views, both, past and present. But not truly understanding those differences can be the difficulty of understanding the individuals within them. One of the harshest lessons any individual must learn is when they realize that their own culture does not hold the monopoly on right and wrong, moral or immoral, or good and evil. It is all relative and that can be hard for people to swallow, quite often. These characters actions are all well defined within the confines of their respective written stories, but the reasons behind their acts may be colored differently when perceiving them and their dedication to family duties from the perspective of their cultures and the time periods in which they lived. Therefore it is necessary to review these characters under these different contexts. Of the three characters in question, Antigone would appear to be the only one who clearly chose duty to family above any other obligation to law and tradition. Therefore, her story seems to require little vindication. However, her motivations may have been, in part, not entirely as pure and prompted by her loyalty to her family as they may, at first, appear. Antigone was king Oedipus’s daughter. Oedipus who was also biologically her brother. This was a huge point of contention and taboo in the story of Oedipus Rex. Antigone’s motivations may have been promoted by several other desired goals. She may have resented her uncle’s rise to power. The choices to break the law to grant her brother proper funeral rites may be perceived as a convenient show of her disrespect for the position that her uncle now held. If it were not this law that she broke she may have just found another. Her committing suicide in the cavern deprived Creon from fulfilling another decree, also it ended the potential marriage between her and Creon’ son; this matching was part of the traditions concerning the passing of power. (Dogget )This does not entirely negate her actions, but it could change her act form being entirely selfless. Just as with Antigone, there are underlying elements to the story of Abraham, although, perhaps, not vindicating, may shed different and new light on how it is perceived. It is true that Abraham did not question God’s orders and was prepared to follow through with the task he was appointed. God had asked him to sacrifice his only son, but Abraham had two sons, and elder son called Ishmael, whom he had banished. Abraham has in context disowned Ishmael and does not even acknowledge his existence. That in and of itself identifies Abraham as less than dutiful father.(Delaney) However, Abraham was a man who, at least for the sake of the biblical story and for true believers, spoke to God. That comes with, one would imagine, a great deal of pressure and, most likely, fear. Living in a time and place where God is the patriarch of all things, including life, death, and the whole of the universe, it would be hard to find any who might question a request from an omnipotent being like that. Regardless of his feelings for his son, had he refused God’s orders, what then might have happened? This is not a story of a subject who defied his king or the story of a soldier who disobeyed his general; this is the story of a faithful believer who would be questioning his God. What might have happened if he failed in this test of faith? Would God have expressed his anger if he had refused to make this great sacrifice? Would God have taken his beloved son anyway or, perhaps, his whole family? Perhaps he would have smote all those who followed Abraham? Abraham may have seen the potential for God’s wrath, and in hopes of protecting others from what could happen is what propelled him to do as he was asked. Some biblical scholars will state that Abraham’s act was one of love, both to God and his son. However, many modern researchers argue that the test given to Abraham was one that he, in fact, failed; both, because he did not refuse God’s order in order to protect Isaac, but, also, because he did not speak up for the firstborn son, Ishmael, that he banished and disowned. (Delaney) This is the reason that God, ultimately, stayed his hand before Isaac could be killed. Children should be cherished, protected, never sacrificed, especially by their parents. Now it is not easy to argue that there are no possible vindications, justifications, or moral and ethical forgiveness for Medea’s heinous crime against her children.. She was not following the edicts of a divine power; her acts would seem cold, hollow, and entirely self-serving act of revenge. However, from a historical perspective some argue her act, although entirely harsh and shocking, may qualify as something other than just base vengeance against the man that wronged her. Again, Medea was a foreigner. Her marriage to Jason was not acknowledged under Greek law. She had no rights outside of her association with her illegitimate husband. In the same vein, their children were, also, considered foreign and would have no rights and could never hope to own property or gain any status. They could never even be named citizens. They would have no place in Greek society. (Raber 306-310) When Jason agrees to marry another woman and abandons his family, he left Medea far more than just angry and bitter, but, also, helpless. Without her husband she would be forever an outsider, as would her children. In a harsh and unbelievably callous way she saw her own actions as a very real duty to them. That she was, in fact, sparing them from a far more miserable end that may have awaited them. She is still a murderer on several counts, both, before and after, the killing of her children, and this, by no means, excuses her actions. However, in the case of her offspring, it does move her a bit away from simple vengeance and more to a cruel reaction to strict societal ideals that guaranteed an unpleasant life for her children. It is difficult to look back into history and not question the ideals, ethics, principals, and moralities of the ages of antiquity. These cultures were far different from those that, most of us, live in today. But it may be too harsh to quickly condemn them without deeper investigation. Most of us have never been asked to anything directly by their deity. Most of us do not live in an environment where we have no rights and will have to watch our children struggle against constant rejection and prejudices. All the same, sadly, Medea did still fail to do her optimum duty as a mother. Abraham followed the commands of his God, which is for many is the highest of all duties that can exist, however, he may have failed in, on several counts, his duties as a father. In modern society we have little tolerance for any woman who would do such harm to her own children. Current American culture has little acceptance, reverence, or place any validity to any man that claims to hear voices, let alone the voice of God, in order to justify their actions. How many stories have we heard of violent crimes committed and the perpetrators of the crimes state that they did so because the “voices told them too,” or the “devil made me do it.” We automatically either assume that they are mentally unstable and require psychiatric care or we decide that they are faking their mental instability to soften the prison sentence that they will most likely receive. Although, we can question the differences in eras, cultures, and beliefs of these characters to determine their essence of duty and the moralities that guide them. However, in modern vision our eyes would only look upon Antigone as her family’s heroine, because her crimes, perhaps, not as dutiful to family as they seem, were hardly murderous in nature. Still, in her defiance she, ultimately, sacrificed no one but herself. She is the only one of these characters who showed a standard sense of duty to her family above all else. Works Cited Delaney, Carol. "Was Abraham Ethical? Should We Admire His Willingness to Sacrifice His Son?." Markkula Ethics Center Lecture Series. Santa Clara University, Santa Clara. 18 April 2002. Lecture. http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/submitted/delaney/delaneypaper.html Dogget, Beth. "Antigone and Civil Disobedience." VCCS Litonline. (2005): n. page. Web. 5 Jun. 2012. http://vccslitonline.cc.va.us/antigone/antigone_and_civil_disobedience.htm Lawall, Sarah, and Mack Maynard. The Norton Anthology of World Literature. 2nd. A, B, C. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2002. ( ) Print. Oxford Dictionaries. Oxford University Press, 2012. Web. 5 Jun 2012. http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/duty Raber, Karen L. Murderous Mothers and the Family/State in Classical and Renaissance Drama. University of Mississippi, 306-310. Web. http://boydwick.org/articles/britlit/macbeth/37.3raber.pdf Read More