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What is Deontology?

Deontological (duty-based) ethics is concerned with what people do i.e the nature of an act itself, rather than the consequences of their action AKA “the principle of the thing.”

Deontologists live in a universe of moral rules, such as: It is wrong to kill innocent people, it is wrong to steal, it is wrong to tell lies and it is right to keep promises.

People have a duty to do the right thing, even if it produces a bad result.

So, for example, the philosopher Kant thought that it would to tell a lie in order to save a friend from a murderer.

Deontology vs Consequentialism

Consequentialists are those who consider the consequences/end results of their actions and will regard the action which produces the most desired outcome as the ‘right’ one. Thus the nature of the action itself is disregarded as their focus is on the outcome

On the other hand, Deontologists consider what actions are ‘right’ and proceed from there. So a person is doing something good if they are doing a morally right action.

Advantages of Deontology

- Emphasises the value of every human being

- Tends to focus on giving equal respect to all human beings - this provides a basis for human rights

- Kantian duty-based ethics says that some things should never be done, no matter what good consequences they produce. This seems to reflect the way some human beings think

- Provides ‘certainty,’ unlike consequentialism which relies on predictions of outcomes

- Deals with intentions and motives

Disadvantages of Deontology

- It is absolutist meaning that the moral rules cannot be broken under any circumstances

- Robert Nozick famously pointed out in what is now known as the Paradox of Deontology, that Deontology forbids some acts that maximise welfare overall

- It allows some acts that makes the world a worse place because duty-based ethics is not interested in the results actions can lead to and so allow some actions that may reduce the overall happiness of the world

- Duty-based ethics doesn’t deal well with the cases where duties are in conflict

Kantian Duty-Based Ethics

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) thought that it was possible to develop a consistent moral system by using reason.

Kant taught that every rational human being could work moral laws out for themselves and so did not need to depend on God or their community or anything else to discover what was right and what was wrong, nor did they need to look at the consequences of an act, or who was doing the action.

Although he expressed himself in a philosophical and arguably quite difficult way, Kant believed that he was putting forward something that would help people deal with the moral dilemmas of everyday life and provide all of us with a useful guide to acting rightly.