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| Deontological ethics | |
|---|---|
| Name | Deontological ethics |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| Era | Ancient to contemporary |
| Main interests | Normative ethics |
| Notable figures | Immanuel Kant, W. D. Ross, Thomas Aquinas, John Rawls, G. E. M. Anscombe |
Deontological ethics is a normative ethical framework that evaluates actions by adherence to duties, rules, or obligations rather than consequences. It emphasizes moral principles as binding, often independent of outcomes, and has been influential across philosophical, legal, and theological traditions. Deontological thinking informs debates in moral philosophy, jurisprudence, political theory, and bioethics.
Deontological approaches prioritize duties and rules exemplified by thinkers such as Immanuel Kant, Thomas Aquinas, W. D. Ross, G. E. M. Anscombe, and John Rawls while engaging institutions like Oxford University, Cambridge University, Harvard University, Yale University, and Princeton University. The framework contrasts with consequentialist views associated with Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Peter Singer, and Henry Sidgwick and intersects with rights-based accounts defended by figures like Robert Nozick, Ronald Dworkin, James Griffin, and Joseph Raz. Deontological rules appear in canonical texts including Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Summa Theologica, The Right and the Good, Modern Moral Philosophy, and A Theory of Justice and influence institutions such as the International Criminal Court, European Court of Human Rights, United Nations, World Health Organization, and International Committee of the Red Cross.
Ancient antecedents include duties articulated by Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Epicurus, and Zeno of Citium as well as deontic elements in The Torah, The Bible, Qur'an, Bhagavad Gita, and texts associated with Confucius and Mencius. Medieval formulations are evident in the writings of Augustine of Hippo, Boethius, Anselm of Canterbury, Peter Abelard, and Duns Scotus and in scholastic developments at institutions like University of Paris and University of Bologna. Early modern contributors include René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and David Hume (often critical), with systematic deontology emerging in the work of Immanuel Kant in Königsberg and later elaborated by G. W. F. Hegel, Friedrich Schleiermacher, and Søren Kierkegaard. Twentieth-century expansion involved scholars at University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, Princeton University, and Columbia University including W. D. Ross, G. E. M. Anscombe, Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, H. L. A. Hart, John Rawls, Derek Parfit, and Joseph Raz.
Central concepts include duties, obligations, rules, rights, moral law, and categorical imperatives as articulated by Immanuel Kant in Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and expanded by commentators at Kant-Forum conferences and journals such as Mind, The Journal of Philosophy, Philosophical Review, Ethics (journal), and Philosophy & Public Affairs. Key formulations include prima facie duties defended by W. D. Ross in The Right and the Good, categorical imperatives associated with Kant and interpreted by scholars like Onora O'Neill, Christine Korsgaard, Allen Wood, and Hermann Cohen. Deontic constraints and permissions are analyzed in analytic work by Thomas Nagel, Bernard Williams, Philippa Foot, G. E. M. Anscombe, and Derek Parfit and in legal-philosophical settings by H. L. A. Hart, Ronald Dworkin, John Finnis, and Lon L. Fuller. The relation between duties and rights is explored in debates involving Robert Nozick, John Rawls, Amartya Sen, Martha Nussbaum, and Charles Taylor.
Prominent figures include Immanuel Kant (categorical imperative), Thomas Aquinas (natural law), W. D. Ross (prima facie duties), G. E. M. Anscombe and Philippa Foot (virtue-informed critiques of consequentialism), John Rawls (justice as fairness with deontological constraints), Joseph Raz (right-based pluralism), Onora O'Neill (Kantian ethics in public reasoning), Christine Korsgaard (constructivist Kantianism), Richard McKeon, Hermann Cohen, Samuel Clarke, Samuel Pufendorf, and contemporary defenders such as Eleonore Stump, Michael Stocker, Timothy Chappell, James Griffin, Shelly Kagan, T. M. Scanlon, Thomas Nagel, Bernard Williams, Jeffrey Stout, Philip Pettit, Joshua Greene (neuroscience-engaged critiques), Frans de Waal, Peter Singer (contrastive interlocutor), and legal theorists like Ronald Dworkin and Lon L. Fuller.
Critiques arise from utilitarian thinkers such as Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Henry Sidgwick, R. M. Hare, and Peter Singer who argue consequentialist superiority; from existentialists like Jean-Paul Sartre and Friedrich Nietzsche; from analytic critics including Derek Parfit, Bernard Williams, Philippa Foot, and John Harsanyi; and from empirical challenges by psychologists such as Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, Jonathan Haidt, and Joshua Greene. Responses defend deontology through rule-consequential hybrid accounts by Brad Hooker and Samuel Scheffler, threshold deontology articulated by Robert Nozick and Thomas Scanlon, and pluralist duty theories by W. D. Ross and Haroldness? (note: see mainstream commentators). Moral particularism and casuistry debates feature contributions from John W. Creswell? and Albert Jonsen and forensic ethics discussions reference work from Ezekiel Emanuel, Daniel Callahan, Peter Singer (bioethics), and Leon Kass.
Deontological principles inform legal judgments at the International Criminal Court, European Court of Human Rights, Supreme Court of the United States, International Court of Justice, and national courts such as the House of Lords (now Supreme Court of the United Kingdom), and shape policy at United Nations, World Health Organization, World Bank, European Union, and African Union forums. In bioethics they appear in debates involving Hippocratic Oath, Nuremberg Code, Belmont Report, Tuskegee syphilis study critiques, CRISPR-Cas9 regulation, and conferences at Johns Hopkins University, Harvard Medical School, Oxford Centre for Neuroethics, Stanford University, and Yale School of Medicine. Artificial intelligence ethics invokes deontological constraints in work by Stuart Russell, Nick Bostrom, Timnit Gebru, Joy Buolamwini, Kate Crawford, Virginia Eubanks, and Cynthia Dwork while military ethics and international humanitarian law reference Geneva Conventions, Hague Conventions, NATO, United Nations Security Council, International Committee of the Red Cross, and scholarship from Michael Walzer and Lawrence Freedman. Contemporary debates also involve privacy law with actors like European Court of Justice, United States Congress, Federal Trade Commission, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and scholars such as Daniel Solove and Helen Nissenbaum.