As far as I know the first people to consider the difficulty of resolving conflicting duties were the Greek poets and dramatists. And Professor Martha Nussbaum, begins her interesting and delightful book “The Fragility of Goodness”, by analysing the problem of conflicting duties as presented by Aeschylus in his play Agamemnon. I may have read the play, in translation of course. It was set to music by Gluck as Iphigenia in Aulis; which I have seen twice. And I have certainly read an analysis of the play before. So I know the story. The two conflicting duties that confront Agamemnon are his duty to the public, to do the act which will allow the gods to give the army a fair wind to Troy, and to family affection, namely not to sacrifice his own daughter. He is faced with the appalling oracle that only by the sacrifice of his daughter will the gods grant the fleet a fair wind for Troy; yet if he does nothing, disaster awaits him because the soldiers are already dying of hunger or disease. Besides he will be defying the gods, who have commissioned him to make war on Troy. Of course he has to put his public duty first, and the Chorus accept this; but the Chorus still blame him for dereliction of family duty, even though it was impossible to fulfil both duties. They were incompatible.
The one thing the Chorus particularly condemned Agamemnon for was sacrificing his daughter with enthusiasm, once he saw that he had to do it. But any man of action would tell you the same, that if the trumpet sounds an uncertain note, no-one will get ready for War. So, despite the Chorus, he had no alternative, as a leader of men, but to sacrifice her with enthusiasm. Lieut. Gen. Montgomery in his message to the troops before Alamein, which was short and to the point, says in para 4 “The sooner we win this battle, which will be the turning point of this war, the sooner we shall all get back to our families”. He did not say it was to be a 1915-1917 style infantry battle, because the ground allowed no alternative; there would be heavy casualties which he estimated at 13,500 men (which was almost exactly right); and that it would be touch and go, as most decisive battles are. He said it would be one of the decisive battles of history, which I think it was. It was shortly before Stalingrad. It destroyed the myth of German invincibility; it may even have inspired Marshall Zhukov to believe he could do the same, and Zhukov took huge risks in encircling the German Army. Of course the Desert was only a side show compared with Russia, and the actual battles of Alamein and Stalingrad were very different in size, and entirely different in concept. The significance of Stalingrad was that a German Army had surrendered! It was like the surrender of a Napoleonic army at Baylen in Spain in 1808. It marked the beginning of the end.
So, in my opinion, the Chorus were unduly hard on Agamemnon, because they did not admit the reality of the situation: that in War morale is the thing. No room for the fainthearted. There are many acts of generosity possible in war; treating prisoners properly, tending the wounded of both sides in field hospitals. But magnanimity must be reserved for victory. Many a campaign has been lost from the failure to exploit success ruthlessly enough. Of course today we should say that the choice which Agamemnon faced in the play was contrived. But the choice between public duty and private duty is anything but contrived; we are all faced with this conflict of duties every day of our lives. The point of the play was that the conflict was presented in its extreme form, so as to make it easier to analyse.
Sophocles carried the analysis a stage further in Antigone, where the two principal characters seek to avoid the horrid choice Agamemnon had to make, by each making one duty their supreme good. Creon, the King, makes the City’s good his supreme virtue; Antigone, his prospective daughter-in-law, makes family loyalty her supreme good. In this way each tries to have a standard by which to live, that avoids conflicting standards. They both find that their respective devices destroy everything that is worthwhile in life.