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Deontological Ethics Defined
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This lecture notes discusses the meaning and key concepts in deontological ethics.
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Deontological Ethics DefinedDeontological ethics is closely associated with Immanuel Kant’s model of ethical theory.
It argues that the morality, that is, the rightness or wrongness, of a human act depends
on whether such act fulfills a duty or not, rather than on its consequence. Hence,
deontological ethics is duty-based. As a matter of fact, deontology comes from the
Greek word deon, which means duty.
One of the basic ideas in deontological ethics is that some actions are right or wrong in
themselves, regardless of their consequences. For example, people have the obligation
to tell the truth even if doing so might produce some unfavorable results. In other
words, as Kant would have us believe, telling the truth is always “right” in itself even if,
again, doing so might produce some unfavorable results. Hence, telling a lie, on the
contrary, is always wrong for deontological ethics.
For instance, a physician has just discovered that her patient is having a stage 4 breast
cancer. However, the physician cannot divulge the truth to her patient right away
because the latter is having a cardiac condition as well.
If we are to consider the consequences of the act of telling the truth to the patient, the
latter may have a sudden cardiac arrest and eventually dies. From the consequentialist’s
point of view, therefore, it is better to tell a lie to the patient and instead divulge the
truth to the significant others to avoid sudden death on the part of the patient. But from
the point of view of deontological ethics, telling the patient about her real condition is
the right thing to do even if doing so might result in a cardiac arrest.
In deontological ethics, therefore, before we make moral decisions, we have to consider
first which actions are right and wrong and proceed from there. If an action is right in
itself, then we have the duty or the moral obligation to act on it. If an action is wrong in
itself, then we are under a moral obligation to act accordingly.
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