Ethical Obligations

One thing that interests me particularly about ethics is the idea of obligation. We are, some would argue, obligated to act ethically, or at least to not act unethically, but what does "obligated" really mean in this context? If we're "obligated" to do something (or to not do something), and we don't do it (or we do it anyway), what happens?

Clearly, obligation does not imply a lack of options. One may have a lack of valid options if one is obligated to do something, but they remain able to choose an invalid option. For example, I may be morally obligated to help someone, but I could still choose not to. People break moral obligations all the time, which begs the question: if obligations don't literally force people to behave a certain way, what do they do?

Obligations like these may impose penalties. Arguably, certain severe infractions of moral obligations warrant some kind of punishment. For example, a person who breaks the moral obligation to not murder people is likely to be punished by long incarceration and/or death.

Yet, there are other moral obligations the breaking of which carry little in temporal punishment. Looking back at my example of not helping someone, I highly doubt that I'd be criminally punished for an infraction of such a minor moral law.

However, even minor infractions carry some penalties, such as restriction from the blessings and privileges we might otherwise have qualified for. In one sense, this is all capital punishment and incarceration are: restrictions from privileges, manly the privilege to live among normal society, or to live at all.

For the most part, I see the justice in this. God and society offer blessings to those who qualify for them by obeying their rules. Yet, I'm not sure that people necessarily give up their "inalienable" rights of life and liberty when they disregard their moral obligations. They certainly don't deserve all the privileges of a law-abiding citizen, but I'm not sure I'd count being allowed to live as a revocable "privilege."

Clearly, I need to do some more thinking on this topic, since I'm not one-hundred percent sure what moral obligations are and what we ethically can and should do to those who break them.