There is a long tradition in moral philosophy which maintains that a necessary condition for moral goodness is that one act from a sense of duty. Kant is perhaps the best known and most discussed representative of this view, but one finds others prior to Kant, such as Butler and Price, and Kant's contemporaries, such as Reid, expressing similar ideas. Price, for example, writes, "... what I have chiefly insisted on, is, that we characterize as virtuous no actions flowing merely from instinctive desires, or from any principle except a regard to virtue itself. ''~
In this paper, I shall defend a version of this thesis. I have divided the paper into two main sections. In the first section, I have two main aims. First, I wish to make a few brief comments about the concepts of moral goodness and esteem. Secondly, I wish to consider two ways in which the sense of duty can operate as a motive. I hope that the discussion in the first section will clarify the sense in which I take acting from duty to be a necessary condition for moral goodness. In the second section, I consider three sorts of objections to the view described in the first section. The first of these objections is suggested by certain remarks by Barbara Herman and the second objection in some comments by Bernard Williams and Susan Wolf.
Many of those who hold that acting from duty is a necessary condition for moral goodness also hold that there is a connection between moral goodness and esteem. Price, for example, says, "The moral worth or MERIT of an agent, then, is "his virtue considered as implying the fitness that good should be communicated to him preferably to others; and as