DEONTOLOGICAL ETHICS / DUTY ETHICS

INTRODUCTION
The word deontology is derived from the Greek words for duty (deon) and
science or study (logos). In contemporary moral philosophy, deontology is one of
those kinds of normative theories regarding which choices are morally required,
forbidden, or permitted. It places special emphasis on the relationship between
duty and the morality of human actions. The theory of deontology states that the
morality of an action should be based on whether that action itself is right or wrong
under a series of rules, rather than based on the consequences. Unlike
utilitarianism, which judges actions by their results, deontology doesn’t require
weighing the costs and benefits of a situation. This avoids subjectivity and
uncertainty because you only must follow set rules.
The first great philosopher to define deontological principles was Immanuel
Kant. Kant held that nothing is good without qualification except a good will, and a
good will is one that wills to act in accord with the moral law and out of respect for
that law rather than out of natural inclinations. Unlike Bentham and Mill, Immanuel
Kant was not concerned with consequences of one’s actions or the harm caused to
one’s individual interests. Instead, he focused on motives and the willingness of
individuals to act for the good of others, even though that action might result in
personal loss. Doing something for the right reason was much more important to
Kant than any particular outcome.
In this section, we will be dealing with the different formulations of
deontological ethics, as well as their advantages and weaknesses.

DEONTOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHIES
1. Kantianism
Immanuel Kant's theory of ethics is considered deontological for several
different reasons. First, Kant argues that in order to act in the morally right way,
people must act from duty. Second, Kant argued that it was not the consequences
of actions that make them right or wrong, but the motives of the person who
carries out the action.
Kant's first argument begins with the premise that the highest good must be
both good in itself and good without qualification. Something is "good in itself"
when it is intrinsically good; and is "good without qualification" when the addition
of that thing never makes a situation ethically worse. Kant then argues that those
things that are usually thought to be good, such as intelligence, perseverance, and
pleasure, fail to be either intrinsically good or good without qualification. Pleasure,
for example, appears not to be good without qualification, because when people
take pleasure in watching someone suffer, this seems to make the situation
ethically worse. He concludes that there is only one thing that is truly good:
Nothing in the world—indeed nothing even beyond the world—can possibly be
conceived which could be called good without qualification except a good will.
Kant then argues that the consequences of an act of willing cannot be used
to determine that the person has a good will; good consequences could arise by
accident from an action that was motivated by a desire to cause harm to an
innocent person, and bad consequences could arise from an action that was well-
motivated. Instead, he claims, a person has a good will when he "acts out of respect
for the moral law." People "act out of respect for the moral law" when they act in
some way because they have a duty to do so. Thus, the only thing that is truly good
in itself is a good will, and a good will is only good when the willer chooses to do
something because it is that person's duty, i.e., out of respect for the law. He
defines respect as "the concept of a worth which thwarts my self-love."
Kant's three significant formulations of the categorical imperative are:
1. Act only according to that maxim by which you can also will that it would
become a universal law;
2. Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own
person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at
the same time as an end; and
3. Every rational being must so act as if he were through his maxim always a
legislating member in a universal kingdom of ends.
 Kant argued that the only absolutely good thing is a good will, and so the single
determining factor of whether an action is morally right is the will, or motive of the
person doing it. If they are acting on a bad maxim, e.g. 'I will lie', then their action
is wrong, even if some good consequences come of it.
Kant expressed the categorical imperative in a few different ways. The most
important of these is the formula of humanity: “Act in such a way that you treat
humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the
same time as an end and never simply as a means.” For example, if I steal a book
from a friend, I am treating him as a means only (to obtain a book). If I ask to have
his book, I am respecting his right to say no and am thereby treating him as an end
in himself, not as a means to an end. If I only ask for the book in order to appear
nice and hope that my friend is likely to do more things for me in the future, then I
am still treating him as a means only. It is true that everyone uses people as a means
to an end. Bus/taxi-drivers get us where we want to go; factory workers are the
means to producing objects and ultimately profit for their employer. But using
people only to get what we want and consistently disrespecting their human worth
is against moral law. An example of this would be a factory owner providing unsafe
working conditions, such as factories in countries that impose inhumane working
conditions and pay less than minimum wage.

2. Divine Command Theory

Although not all deontologists are religious, some believe in the divine
command theory, which is actually a cluster of related theories that essentially
state that an action is right if God has decreed that it is right. According to English
philosopher Ralph Cudworth, William of Ockham, René Descartes, and 18th-
century Calvinists all accepted various versions of this moral theory, as they all held
that moral obligations arise from God's commands.
The divine command theory is a form of deontology because, according to it,
the rightness of any action depends upon that action being performed because it
is a duty, not because of any good consequences arising from that action. If God
commands people not to work on Sabbath, then people act rightly if they do not
work on Sabbath because God has commanded that they do not do so. If they do
not work on Sabbath because they are lazy, then their action is not, truly speaking,
"right" even though the actual physical action performed is the same. If God
commands not to covet a neighbor’s goods, this theory holds that it would be
immoral to do so, even if coveting provides the beneficial outcome of a drive to
succeed or do well.
One thing that clearly distinguishes Kantian deontology from divine command
deontology is that Kantianism maintains that man, as a rational being, makes the
moral law universal, whereas divine command maintains that God makes the moral
law universal.

3. Ross's Deontological Pluralism

W. D. Ross objects to Kant's monistic deontology, which bases ethics in only one
foundational principle, the categorical imperative. He contends that there is a
plurality of prima facie duties determining what is right. Some duties originate
from our own previous actions, like the duty of fidelity (to keep promises and to
tell the truth), and the duty of reparation (to make amends for wrongful acts). The
duty of gratitude (to return kindnesses received) arises from the actions of others.
Other duties include the duty of non-injury (not to hurt others), the duty of
beneficence (to promote the maximum of aggregate good), the duty of self-
improvement (to improve one's own condition) and the duty of justice (to
distribute benefits and burdens equably).
One problem the deontological pluralist has to face is that cases can arise where
the demands of one duty violate another duty, so-called moral dilemmas. For
example, there are cases where it is necessary to break a promise in order to relieve
someone's distress. Ross makes use of the distinction between prima facie duties
and absolute duty to solve this problem. The duties listed above are prima facie
duties; they are general principles whose validity is self-evident to morally mature
persons. They are factors that do not take all considerations into account. Absolute
duty, on the other hand, is particular to one specific situation, taking everything
into account, and has to be judged on a case-by-case basis. It is absolute duty that
determines which acts are right or wrong.
The Weaknesses of Deontological Theories
One of the biggest criticisms of Kantian ethics is that it discounts outcome or
consequences as a valid factor in evaluating the morality of an action. While it is
not necessarily wise to rely solely on outcome (as in
utilitarianism/consequentialism), it is not a good idea to completely ignore the
consequences altogether. Based on Kant’s formula of humanity, human life is
sacred and inviolable, meaning one cannot enslave a few people even if it would
enable more people to lead better lives. Killing one person to save the lives of
millions is impermissible in Kantian ethics.
At times Kantian moral duty seems to contradict our natural inclinations and
common sense. If we obey the moral law rather than our intuitions, we are acting
morally. Deontologists need their own, non-consequentialist model of rationality,
one that is a viable alternative to the intuitively plausible, “act-to-produce-the-
best-consequences” model of rationality that motivates consequentialist theories.
Until this is done, deontology will always be paradoxical.
There are several distinct hurdles that the deontologist must overcome. One
hurdle is to confront the apparent fact that careful reflection about the degrees of
wrongdoing that are possible under any single moral norm does not make it easy
to see deontological morality as consisting of general, canonically-formulated texts;
rather, such apparently simple texts as, “thou shalt not murder,” look more like
mere epistemic aids summarizing a much more nuanced and detailed moral reality.
A second hurdle is to find an answer to the inevitable question of authority,
assuming that there are such general texts. If it is rational to conform one’s
behavior and one’s choices to certain general texts, as deontology claims, it is
always in point to demand the reasons making such texts authoritative for one’s
decisions. Deferring one’s own best judgment to the judgment enshrined in some
text is always prima facie paradoxical and deontologists like everybody else need
to justify such deference. Hopefully they can do so other than by reference to some
person-like but omniscient Deity as the supposed source of such texts, because
many deontologists cannot accept such theism. Moreover, even for those with
theistic commitments, they may prefer to join Kant’s insistence that ethics proceed
from reason alone, even in a theistic world.
 The third hurdle exists even if the first two are crossed adequately. This
hurdle is to deal with the seeming demand of deontological ethics that on occasion
one’s categorical obligations require one to preserve the purity of one’s own moral
agency at the cost of having one’s actions make the world be in a morally worse
state of affairs—at least, “worse” in the agent-neutral sense of the word used by
consequentialists. Patient-centered versions of deontology cannot easily escape
this problem, as we have shown. Yet even agent-centered versions face this
paradox; having the conceptual resources (of agency and agent-relative reasons) is
not the same as making it plausible just how a secular, objective morality can allow
each person’s agency to be so uniquely crucial to that person.

Source:
Larry Alexander. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. “Deontological
Ethics”. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-deontological/
Wikipedia. “Deontology”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deontology
Ali Shakil. Seven Pillars Institute. “Kantian Duty Based (Deontological)
Ethics”. https://sevenpillarsinstitute.org/ethics-101/kantian-duty-based-
deontological-ethics/