Chapter 4

Deontology
Prepared By:

BENJIE T. ANDRADA, LPT

Social Science Instructor
Introduction
Baguio cab driver Reggie Cabututan has received an unexpected
reward for returning luggage to an Australian businessman.

Cabututan brought back the bag containing about P1million,

gadgets, and important documents left by his passenger, according
to an ABS-CBN report.

The driver dropped off Trent Shields for a meeting with Ace Estrada
II, the president of BPO training company Vivixx Academy. When the
businessman realized he left his bag in the taxi, he and his business
partner prepared to file a police report, but even before they were
ready to leave Cabututan returned with the bag, Estrada narrated in
his Facebook post which went viral.

For the cabbie’s efforts and honesty, Estrada’s company and

Australia-based coding training center Coder Factory awarded him a
6-month Coding Boot Camp scholarship worth P220k. The study
grant guarantees an internship with an Australian company with
prospects of a salary up to P1.7 million.
Duty and Agency

The moral theory that evaluates actions that are done

because of duty is called deontology. Deontology comes
from the word deon, which means “being necessary.”

Hence, deontology refers to the study of duty and

obligation. The main proponent of deontology is Immanuel
Kant (1724 – 1804). He was a German Enlightenment
philosopher who wrote one of the most important works
on moral philosophy, Groundwork towards a Metaphysics of
morals (1785).

In this work, Kant brings our attention to the fact that we,
human beings, have the faculty called rational will, which is
the capacity to act according to principles that we
determine for ourselves.
Duty and Agency

– To consider the rational will is to point out the differences between animals
and persons. On one hand, animals are sentient organisms. Sentience, meaning
an organism has the ability to perceive and navigate its external environment.

– On the other hand, people are also rational. Rationality consists of the mental
faculty to construct ideas and thoughts that are beyond our immediate
surroundings. This is the capacity of mental abstraction, which arises from the
operations of the faculty of reason. Thus, we have the ability to stop and think
about what we are doing.
Duty and Agency

– Thus, we do not only have the capacity to imagine and construct mental
images, but we also have the ability to act on—to enact and make real—those
mental images. This ability to enact our thoughts is the basis for the rational
will. The rational will refers to the faculty to intervene in the world, to act in a
manner that is consistent with our reason.
Duty and Agency

– In fact, we may say that animals do not “act.” They only “react” to their
external surroundings and internal impulses. In contrast, we humans have
reason, which intervenes between impulse and act. We have the ability to stop
and think about what we are doing to evaluate our actions according to
principles.

– In philosophical discussions about human freedom, this capacity is called

agency, which is the ability of a person to act based on their intentions and
mental states.
Duty and Agency

– Hence, to act according to a duty is a specifically human experience. Animals, if

it is true that they do not possess the faculty of rational will, cannot conceive
of having duties. This is the starting point of deontology. We may claim that as
long as we have rationality, there will always be the tension between our base
impulses and our rational will.
Autonomy and
Heteronomy
Autonomy and Heteronomy

– Kant claims that the property of the rational will is autonomy, which is the
opposite of heteronomy. These three Greek words are instructive: autos,
heteros, and nomos, which mean “self,” “other,” and “law,” respectively.
– autonomy = self-law (self-legislating)
– heteronomy = other law
Autonomy and Heteronomy

– The will is thus not only subject to the law, but it is also subject to the law in
such a way that it gives the law to itself (self-legislating), and primarily just in
this way that the will can be considered the author of the law under which it is
subject.
Autonomy and Heteronomy

– This description of autonomy is unusual. When we think of someone being

“subject to the law,” we usually think of an imposing authority figure that uses
his power to control the subject into complying with his will.

– Incidentally, “subject” comes from the Latin words sub (under) and jacere (to
throw). When combined, the two words, refer to that which is thrown or
brought under something. The will must comply with the law, which is the
authority figure.
Autonomy and Heteronomy

– Surprisingly though, the will must give the law to itself. Therefore, the will is,
at the same time, the authority figure giving the law to itself.

– This apparent contradiction is entirely possible to exist, but only for self-
reflexive human beings that have rational will.

– On one hand, heteronomy is the simple legislation and imposition of a law by

an external authority .
Autonomy and Heteronomy

– The distinguishing point here is the locus of the authorship of the law. In any
given scenario where a person complies with the law, we ask where the author
is, whether it is external or internal. If the author of the law is external, the will
is subjected to an external authority, thus heteronomous will. In contrast, if
the author was the will itself, imposing the law unto itself, then we describe
the will as autonomous.
Autonomy and Heteronomy

– Real moral issues often involve actions like stealing, lying, and murder, in that
they have a certain gravity, insofar as those actions directly harm or benefit the
well-being of persons.
Autonomy and Heteronomy

– Kant claims that there is a difference between rational will and animal
impulse.

– The choice that can be determined by pure reason is called free choice. That
which is determinable only by inclination (sensible impulse, stimulus) would be
animal choice (arbitrium brutum). Human choice, in contrast, is a choice that
may indeed be affected but not determined by impulses, and is therefore in
itself (without an acquired skill or reason) not pure, but can nevertheless be
determined to do actions from pure will.
Autonomy and Heteronomy

– Thus, there is a difference between what determines a choice or decision,

whether it is caused by sensible impulse or by pure reason. On one hand,
sensible impulses are usually bodily and emotional. Bodily instincts and
desires, such as the urge to eat, drink, sleep, or have a sexual intercourse,
comprise the set of human compulsions for survival and the propagation of the
species. Emotions and sentiments also make up what Kant considers sensible
impulses. Practical examples are the jealousy from seeing your girlfriend or
boyfriend make eyes at someone, and the rage from being pushed foully by
your opponent in a basketball game.
Autonomy and Heteronomy

– There is hardly anything that comes between the stimulus and the reaction.
Kant calls this set of actions that are caused by sensible impulse animal choice
or arbitrium brutum.

– On the other hand, there is a choice or action that is determined by pure

reason. Kant calls this kind of action free choice, and one may argue that
human freedom resides in this capacity of reason to intervene, to “mediate”
within arbitrium brutum.
Autonomy and Heteronomy

– Previously, rationality was described as the mental capacity to construct ideas

and thoughts that are beyond one’s immediate surroundings. This mental
capacity is what makes the intervention possible between stimulus and
reaction. With the faculty of reason, a person can break the immediacy of
stimulus and reaction by stopping or deliberate and assess possible alternative
actions.
UNIVERSALIZA
BILITY
UNIVERSALIZABILITY

– A substantive moral theory immediately promulgates the specific actions that

comprised that theory. As such, it identifies the particular duties in a
straightforward manner that the adherents of the theory must follow. The set of
Ten Commandments of the Judeo-Christian tradition is an unambiguous
example of a substantive moral theory. The specific laws are articulated mostly
in the form of a straightforward moral command: “Honor your father and
mother,” “You shall not kill,” and so forth.
UNIVERSALIZABILITY

– In contrast, a formal moral theory does not supply the rules or commands
straightaway. It does not tell you what you or may not do. Instead, a formal
moral theory provides us the “form” or “framework” of the moral theory.

– To provide the “form” of a moral theory is to supply a procedure and the

criteria for determining, on one’s own, the rules and moral commands.
Metaphorically, we can think of a cookbook as akin to a formal moral theory. In
using a cookbook, we are given instructions on how to cook certain dishes, but
we are not given the actual food themselves, which would be “substantive”.
UNIVERSALIZABILITY

– To be exact, a formal moral theory will not give us a list of rules and
commands. Instead, it will give us a set of instructions on how to make a list of
duties or moral commands.

– Kant endorses this formal kind of moral theory. The Grundlegung zur
Metaphysik der Sitten, which he wrote in 1785, embodies a formal moral
theory in what he calls the categorical imperative, which provides a procedural
way of identifying the rightness or wrongness of an action. Kant articulates the
categorical imperative this way: “Act only according to such a maxim, by which
you can at once will that it become a universal law.”
UNIVERSALIZABILITY

– There are four key elements in this formulation of the categorical imperative,
namely action, maxim, will and universal law. Kant states that we must
formulate an action as a maxim, which he defines as a “subjective principle of
action.”. In this context, maxim consists of a “rule” that we live by in our day-to-
day lives, but it does not have the status of a law or a moral command that
binds us to act in a certain way. Rather, maxims depict the patterns of our
behavior. Thus, maxims are akin to the “standard operating procedures”
(SOPs) in our lives.
UNIVERSALIZABILITY

– In this formulation, Kant is telling us to conceive of the maxim as if it obligated

everyone to comply. This mental act of imagining a universalized maxim does
not mean we picture a world in which everyone actually followed the maxim.
Instead, we merely imagine the maxim as a law that everyone ought to follow.
UNIVERSALIZABILITY

– This is a specific act under the general category of acts called false promising.
Kant says that the man would like to make such a promise, but he stops and
asks himself of what he is about to do is right or wrong.

“Is it really wrong to borrow money without intending to pay it back?”

“When I am in need of money, I shall borrow it even when I know I cannot

pay it back”
UNIVERSALIZABILITY

– There are two possibilities in this hypothetical world where people are
obligated to borrow money without intending to pay: the maxim can either
make sense or not make sense as a universal law. By “making sense,” we refer
to the logical plausibility of the universalized maxim. The opposite of logical
plausibility is self-contradiction or logical impossibility.