"Only when the voice of duty is silent, or when it has already spoken, may we allowably think of the consequences of a particular action"
About this Quote
A certain kind of Victorian moral confidence hums beneath Augustus Hare's sentence: duty is not just a consideration, it's the gatekeeper of thought. The line is built like a procedural rule for the conscience. First, listen for duty. Only after it has either said nothing or delivered a verdict do you get to consult consequences. Hare isn’t merely praising principle; he’s trying to quarantine moral reasoning from the messier arithmetic of outcomes.
The subtext is a defensive maneuver against an era’s anxieties. Late-19th-century Britain was awash in competing moral frameworks: evangelical seriousness, inherited aristocratic codes, and the rising prestige of utilitarian “greatest happiness” logic. Hare, a writer steeped in the culture of character and propriety, draws a hard boundary that elevates inner obligation over social calculus. It’s an argument for integrity as a form of spiritual hygiene: consequences tempt us into rationalization, and rationalization is how people with good self-images end up doing bad things.
The rhetoric works by staging the mind as a courtroom. “Allowably” implies there’s a moral law governing even what we permit ourselves to weigh. “The voice of duty” personifies conscience as something external and authoritative, not a preference. That phrasing also flatters the reader: if you can hear this voice, you belong to the morally serious class.
What makes it enduring is also what makes it dangerous. The line offers clarity in moments of ethical fog, but it quietly licenses a familiar moral failure: the purity of intention used to dodge responsibility for harm. Duty speaks first; consequences, conveniently, can arrive too late.
The subtext is a defensive maneuver against an era’s anxieties. Late-19th-century Britain was awash in competing moral frameworks: evangelical seriousness, inherited aristocratic codes, and the rising prestige of utilitarian “greatest happiness” logic. Hare, a writer steeped in the culture of character and propriety, draws a hard boundary that elevates inner obligation over social calculus. It’s an argument for integrity as a form of spiritual hygiene: consequences tempt us into rationalization, and rationalization is how people with good self-images end up doing bad things.
The rhetoric works by staging the mind as a courtroom. “Allowably” implies there’s a moral law governing even what we permit ourselves to weigh. “The voice of duty” personifies conscience as something external and authoritative, not a preference. That phrasing also flatters the reader: if you can hear this voice, you belong to the morally serious class.
What makes it enduring is also what makes it dangerous. The line offers clarity in moments of ethical fog, but it quietly licenses a familiar moral failure: the purity of intention used to dodge responsibility for harm. Duty speaks first; consequences, conveniently, can arrive too late.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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