Bradley’s “my station and its duties” and its moral (in)significance

I argue that, according to F. H. Bradley’s Ethical Studies, duties of our station (positional duties) are not morally obligatory unless they are required from an ideal point of view. I support my interpretation by showing that Bradley places the ideal point of view higher than the social and requires that what society demands from us is evaluated from that higher point of view. My argument relies on a detailed analysis of “my station and its duties”. The phrase must be understood as a category that (1) refers to different concepts throughout Ethical Studies (i.e. a theory that Bradley rejects, a revised thesis that he accepts, and positional duties), and (2) embraces several theses (descriptive, normative, and ideal), each involving a number of claims, only a few of which Bradley accepts. I argue that Bradley rejects the normative thesis of MSID theory that identifies moral obligation with social requirements because he finds bottom-up idealization (what ought to be must conform to what is) unsatisfactory. Bradley’s inclusion of “my station and its duties” in the moral ideal must be understood as amounting to the claim that a positional duty is morally obligatory only when it is justified by the norms governing pre-institutionalised relationships.