Duty – an action is morally right if it coheres with a set of agreed duties and obligations.
The deontologist is not simple obliged to perform actions which are good in themselves, they must also refrain from performing actions which are known to be wrong. These are known as deontological constraints, or what we more commonly call rules or laws. Obedience to these constrains is totally inflexible. A deontologist will maintain that we are not permitted to violate a rule or constraint even if serious harm will otherwise occur. No-one can be favoured and the preservations of another’s life is less important than the preservation of out own virtue. Hence, for example, a deontologist cannot lie even when the lie would prevent the loss of several innocent lives.
Deontology constraints or laws are always formulated as negatives: ‘do not’ rather than ‘do’. These constraints start to define what is obligatory or what constitutes our duty. Deontology therefore consists of two strands – identifying what is permissible and what is impermissible.
Immanuel Kant's theory of ethics is considered deontological for several different reasons. First, Kant argues that to act in the morally right way, people must act according to 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 argument that to act in the morally right way, one must act from duty, begins with an argument that the highest good must be both good in itself, and good without qualification. Something is 'good in itself' when it is essentially good, and '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 essentially good or good without qualification. Pleasure, for example, appears to not be good without qualification, because when people take pleasure in watching someone suffering, 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 or she '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. So, 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.
The strengths of deontology are that motivation is valued over consequences, which are beyond our control. An immoral motive cannot be justified by unforeseen good consequences, but a good motive is, in itself, worthy of value. It is a humanitarian principle in which all men are considered to be of equal value and worthy of protection.
Also justice is always an absolute, even if the majority of people do not benefit. It recognises the value of moral absolutes that do not change with time or culture. There must surely be some things beyond fad or fashion. Finally, deontology provides objective guidelines for making moral decisions, without the need for lengthy calculation of possible outcomes.
However, the weaknesses of the theory are that moral obligations appear arbitrary or inexplicable except by reference to duty. In reality, our decision- making is influence by many more factors, and it is indeed questionable whether duty is as good a motive as Kant suggested.
Also how far can a good will or motive mitigate a disastrous outcome? Are we really only concerned to know the ‘form’ of moral behaviour (duty, for example) or do we want to know more about its content? Are we satisfied with being told ‘Do your duty’ without understanding why?
Kant argues that what is good to do is what we ought to do and that what is inherently good and essentially right is the way in which we ought to behave for the mutual good of all, irrespective of consequences. In this respect, critics of Kant have accused him of committing the Naturalistic Fallacy – of turning ‘is’ into ‘ought’.
Also while Kant’s approach avoids problems of emotivism (which means that all moral behaviour is the outcome of our personal preferences) it may go too far in the other direction, since he makes no allowance for compassion or sympathy to motivate our actions. As in the case of natural moral law, people are, perhaps rightly, suspicious of a moral theory which allows for no exceptions. How people feel about morality is genuinely important and surely morality should have some connection with what actually happens as well as with what may be formally universally universalised? What actually happens – such as the willingness to recognise the importance of promise-keeping – does not happen simply because it is a commendable principle, but arises out of real experience.
The final weakness is that there are potentially no limits to what can reasonably be universalised. Although it may seem absurd to argue that ‘commit suicide’ should be seen as categorically imperative, to a depressed person it may be perfectly reasonable.
So in conclusion deontology has a lot of good ideas within the theory, but in reality would they really work in this day and age? And I think the answer to that is, no, they wouldn’t, because we all look at the bigger picture and consider the consequences depending on each individual situation.
