ETHICS: FOUNDATION OF

MORAL VALUES

Chapter IV: Deontology

 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter IV: Deontology

• Duty and Agency
• Autonomy
• Universalizability
 CHAPTER OBJECTIVES

After reading this chapter, you

should be able to:
•Discuss the basic principles of
deontology;
•Apply the concepts of agency and
autonomy to your moral
experience; and
•Evaluate actions using the
universalizability test.
 INTRODUCTION
During the flag ceremony of that Monday
morning, January 24, 2017, the mayor of
Baguio City awarded a certificate from the City
Government that commended Reggie Cabututan
for his “extraordinary show of honesty in the
performance of their duties or practice of
profession.
”Reggie is a taxi driver who, just three days
before the awarding, drove his passenger, an
Australian named Trent Shields, to his workplace.
The foreigner, having little sleep and was ill the
previous day, left his suitcase inside the taxi cab
after. The suitcase contained a laptop, Trent’s
passport, and an expensive pair of headphones,
which Trent claimed amounted to around
₱260,000.
• Consider closely the moment when Reggie
found that Trent had left a suitcase in his taxi
cab: If he were to return the suitcase, there
was no promise of an award from the City
Government of Baguio and no promise of a
reward from the owner.
•What if he took the suitcase and
sold its contents? Yet, Reggie
returned the suitcase without the
promise of a reward. Why?
Perhaps Reggie believed that it was the right
thing to do. Even if he felt that he could have
benefited from the sale of the valuable items
in the suitcase, he must have believed the
principle that it is right to do the right thing.
Reggie could be holding on to this moral
conviction as a principle of action.
• To hold a moral conviction means believing
that it is one’s duty to do the right thing.
What is duty? Why does one choose to
follow his/her duty even if doing otherwise
may bring his/her more benefits?
•Deontology comes from the Greek
word deon, which means “being
necessary.” Hence, deontology
refers to the study of duty and
obligation.
 DEONTOLOGY

•The moral theory that

evaluates actions that
are done because of
duty.
•Deontological or duty – based
ethics, are concerned with what
people do, not with the
consequences of their actions.
Morality is a matter of duty
•Do the right thing
•Do it because it’s the right
thing to do
•Don’t do wrong things
•Avoid them because they are
wrong.
•Actions are wrong or right un
themselves, regardless of
consequences.
•Deontologist abide by universal
moral rules.
•The main proponent
of deontology and
known as the
founding father is
Immanuel Kant
(1724–1804).
•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.
To act freely is to act
autonomously. To
act autonomously is
to act according to
the law I give
myself.
•Rationality consists of the mental
faculty to construct ideas and thoughts
that are beyond our immediate
surroundings. This is the capacity for
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.
 WHAT WORKS?

•Kant's theories pay attention to

motives and intentions
•Provides certainty of action
•Emphasize value on every human
being
•Everyone is equal in their ability to come
up with the right moral action
•Doesn’t allow for special rules
•Non-consequentialist, do your duty and
disregard the outcomes
•Does not allow for people to use one
another.
STEALING TO SAVE A
LIFE
QUESTIONS/DISCUSSION
 DUTY AND AGENCY

•Let us go back to Reggie. The

moment he discovered that Trent had
left his suitcase in the taxi cab, Reggie
reacted according to his rational will
—to return the suitcase.
•He determined that it was his
duty to return it in as much as
his rational will had conceived
such a duty.
•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.
 DUTY VS INCLINATION
(MORALITY)

•Only the motive of duty , acting

accordingly to the law I give myself
confers moral worth to an action. Any
other motive, while possibly
commendable, cannot give an action
moral worth.
 AUTONOMY

•Kant claims that the

property of the rational will
is autonomy, which is the
opposite of heteronomy.
•These3 Greek word are
instructive:
oAutos - “self”
oHeteros - “other” and
oNomos - “law”
•Autos + •Heteros +
nomos = nomos =
autonomy/se heteronomy/
lf-law/self- other law
legislating
•When you were a
child, did you like to
brush your teeth???
•As far as we can tell, children
do not like to brush their teeth,
but parents know that children
should, to maintain oral
hygiene.
•So, parents try to find ways
to get their small children to
brush their teeth before
going to bed, using a variety
of incentives or threats of
undesirable consequences.
•“Hey, Ryan,” a mother tells her
boy, “go and brush your teeth now
or else your teeth will rot!” “Come
one now, Liza,” a father tells his
daughter, “If you brush your teeth
in five minutes , I will let you play
your computer game tonight .”
•Is Ryan and Liza
autonomous?
•Certainly not, as their parents
are the ones that legislate the
principle that children should
brush their teeth before they go
to bed and impose such a
principle by using threats or
incentives.
•At a certain point, perhaps
when they were growing
up as teenagers, they both
reflected on the whole
business of brushing one’s
teeth. Both concluded that
they
(1) agree with the principle
behind it (oral hygiene) and
thus, (2) every night they
impose it upon themselves to
brush their teeth before
going to bed.
•Number 1 refers to the act of
legislating a principle, while
number 2 refers to the enacting
of the principle. Thus, it is also
refers to the willing of the
adopted principle into reality.
 •Are they
autonomous?
•Yes, certainly. Kant describes this as
follows:
•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. (Ak 4:431)
 HETERONOMY
•Heteronomy is the simple
legislation and imposition of a law
by an external authority (a person
must brush her teeth before going
to bed).
•Their parents are the
authority figures, and the
law is imposed externally
by rewards and
punishments.
AUTONOMY VS HETERONOMY
(FREEDOM)

•I am only free when my will

is determined autonomously,
governed by the law I give
myself.
•Being part of nature, I am not
exempt from its laws and I’m
inclined or compelled to act
according to those laws (act
heteronomously).
•My capacity for reason opens
another possibility, that of acting
accordingly to laws other than the
laws of the nature: the laws I give
myself.
•This the reason, “pure
practical reason”, legislates
a priori – regardless of all
empirical end.
 UNIVERSALIZABILITY

•Kant endorses this formal

kind of moral theory. The
Grundlegung zur
Metaphysik der Sitten,
which he wrote in 1785.
•This 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. (Ak 4:421)
•There are four key elements in
this formulation of the
categorical imperative: 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.”
•What does it mean to have a will
and a maxim that can become a
universal law?
•It means that the maxim must
be universalizable, which is
what it means to “will that it
become a universal law.”
•We reveal the rational
permissibility of actions
insofar as they cannot be
rejected as universalizable
maxims.
•In contrast, those universalized
maxims that are rejected are
shown to be impermissible, that
is, they are irrational and thus,
in Kant’s mind, immoral.
 REMEMBER
•An act is good when the object, the
intention, and the circumstances are all
good. A good act is vitiated by an evil
intention like praying in order to be
seen as good.
•Some acts are evil in
themselves as formication and
are always wrong to choose.
•Therefore, the persons intention and
the circumstances, such as pressure
or duress, cannot change a morally
evil act, such as murder, blasphemy,
or adultery, into a morally good act.
•We cannot do
evil so good
will come
from it.