Ethics and Deontological Theories

The part of philosophy that deals with the issues of “good” is called Ethics. It deals with the moral principles that influence our actions. There are many viewpoints and theories on Ethics and one of them are “Deontological Theories”.

Deontological theories are non-consequentalist theories which do not give importance to the result of any ethical decision (Alexander, L., Moore, M., 2012). They rather give importance to moral norms and that our actions should conform to those norms regardless of the consequence. The main idea of not keeping the consequence at the focal point is that is it not always desirable. Even a morally wrong action or decision can produce better results but that does not reflect that we are “good”. For example, we can take a situation when somebody with malicious intentions takes an action to do something bad, which fortunately does something good. According to consequentalist theories, this might be ethically correct because the result is good. However, we know that the person had bad intentions. So, this is pointed out by Deontological theories. Such actions cannot be morally correct because even though the consequence is good, it was not meant to be good.

            There are different types of Deontological theories such as: 
a. Agent-Centered
    It deals with a person (or agent) and that he/she should take ethical decisions based on personal “obligations”, and “permission” to take certain actions. It is basically duty-based (Alexander, L., Moore, M., 2012).
b. Patient-Centered, and 
    It is more of right-based than duty-based. It is about right against being used by others for others’ advantage (Alexander, L., Moore, M., 2012). Or, we can understand it as respecting other people right against being used i.e. not using others for our own benefit. 
c. Contractarian
    The third one is necessarily a mix of two previous types (Alexander, L., Moore, M., 2012). It is the middle path and summarizes the points stated by both previous types of Deontological theories.

Deontological ethics is appealing because it addresses the intention behind our decisions. It seems very logical that it is the ‘will’ behind any action which is ethically more important than the consequence. If at a particular moment, if we decide to do something with good intention, no matter what the outcome might be, it is morally acceptable. So, basically his theory stresses the fact that we need to be a ‘good person’ and I like that part. However, the discouraging fact about it is that only having the good will is not enough. We have to see the situation and consequences too. If we have good will and yet the consequences of our actions are highly likely to be bad, we cannot say that it would be ethically right thing to do.

References:

Alexander, L., Moore, M., (2012), Deontological Ethics, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-deontological/

Velasquez, M., Andre, C., Shanks, T., Meyer, M.J., (Originally 1988), Ethics and Virtue, Santa Clara University, Retrieved from http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/ethicsandvirtue.html