By Satyaraja Dasa
For some, duty is a dirty word—we want to do what we want to do. Period. To hell with duty. But let’s consider this more seriously: What is duty, and should I be concerned about it? Clearly, duty means different things to different people. And yet it’s not uncommon to wonder: What am I meant to do? Is there a reason I was put on this earth? Duty is a term loosely applied to any action or course of action regarded as morally necessary, apart from personal likes and dislikes. From the theistic viewpoint, the ultimate duty is to God and our fellow man. . Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) was among the West's many philosophers who wrote about duty. He called his system of thought "deontology," which literally means "the study of duty." One of the most important implications of deontology is that a person's behavior can be wrong even if it results in a positive outcome, and an act can be virtuous even if it results in a negative outcome. In contrast to consequentialism, a philosophy claiming “the ends justify the means,” deontology insists that how people achieve their goals is generally just as important as what those goals are.