MODULE 7

DEONTOLOGY

Learning Outcomes

At the end of this module, you should be able to:

1. Discuss the basic principles of deontology.

2. Apply pure sense of duty to one’s obligations and actions.
3. Evaluate actions using the universality test.

Introduction

This Module explores the moral worth of an action based on a pure sense of duty
as taught by the famous German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Good will in relation to
the performance of one’s duty is explained through its characteristics. As moral agents,
we have the power to determine which law is to be lived by. The right nature of an
action is known through reason using the universality method.

Lesson

Deontological Ethics or Deontology

The term deontology is from the Greek word deon, meaning “duty” or
“obligation.” 1In deontological ethics, the morality of an act is focused on the act
itself regardless of the consequences. It believes that there are actions which are
good in themselves no matter what may follow. Actions that by nature are good
are to be the object of one’s duty. Love of parents for example is a duty because
such an act is in itself good. In this case, the love of parents is qualified as morally
good, not for other things outside it. Within such an act of loving one’s parents, the act
is already understood as good.

The Good Will

“Kant uses the term ‘will’ to refer to intention or motive.” 2 In morality, the
intention is very important because good action becomes evil if the intention is
not good. Praying in itself is good; but, it will become evil if one prays for the
misfortune of others. Kant characterizes the good will as good no matter what the
results are. In his own words, he explained:

A good will is not good because of what it effects or accomplishes, because of its
fitness to attain some proposed end, but only because of its volition, that is, it
1
Lawhead, William F. 1996. The Voyage of Discovery: A History of Western Philosophy.
California: Wadstworth Publishing Company, 592.
2
Evangelista, Francis Julius N. & Mabaquiao Jr., Napoleon M. 2020. Ethics: Theories and
Applications. Mandaluyong City: Anvil Publishing, Inc., 73.
is good in itself and, regarded for itself, is to be valued incomparably higher than
all that could merely be brought about by it in favor of some inclination and
indeed, if you will, of the sum of all inclinations.3

For Kant, the only thing that is good in itself is what he calls a good will . A
person has a good will if he/she does something right or good in itself, example is
helping the needy. It is done only for the motive of helping. The doer does not intend
other things, for example, is his/her advantages. His or her only motive is to help or
perform his/her duty to help because helping in itself is good. As a student, you are
going to school, not for any other thing but because it is your duty. In other words, we
do our duty for the sake of duty.

Pure Sense of Duty

For Kant, one must perform a moral duty for its own sake. Why do I have to
go to school? I do so because it is my duty. I do not go to school because today is a
sunny and beautiful day. I do not go to school because my classmates are waiting for
me with the promise of a get together after class. What if it is a gloomy day? I won’t be
going to school anymore, isn’t it? I should go to school because it is my duty. There
should be no other reason. That is why Kant calls it a pure sense of duty. It is duty
alone, there is nothing else. If doing something depends on other things? What would
happen? For example, as a teacher, I will go to school only because I feel good,
because the weather is fine. What will happen is that there will be times that I won’t be
going to school because I am not in a good mood? I won’t teach today because there is
no salary increase yet. In this case, doing good will be reduced to a mere option. For
Kant, doing good should be constant. We can constantly do something if it is done
under a pure sense of duty. That is doing our duty whether we like it or not.
Consequently, an action gains moral worth when it is done under a pure sense of
duty.

The Command to Do One’s Duty

In Kant’s terms, the command to do one’s duty is otherwise known as the

“categorical imperative”4. It is categorical because it doesn’t admit the conditions or
qualifications. For example, if the visitors all arrive, the program will start. This is not
categorical but a hypothetical statement because the consequence, the program will
start, depends upon the condition or the antecedent which is if the visitors all arrive. In
a categorical sense, the program will start even if not all of the visitors have arrived.
For as Pojman explains: “All mention of duties (or obligations) can be translated into
the language of imperatives, or commands”. 5 Where does the command come from? It
3

3
Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor, 1997.
Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 3.
4
Kant, xi
5
Pojman, Louis P. 2005. How Should We Live? An Introduction to Ethics. Belmont, CA:
Cengage Learning Academic Resource, 145.
comes from oneself. As an attribute of our rational nature, we can see that there are
things in life that we have to do and not do out of on our initiative under the light of our
own reason. We do not anymore depend on others’ commands unlike during the
times when we were still young. This is what Kant calls autonomy of the will who
explains by asserting that, “autonomy of the will is the property of the will by which it is a
law to itself (independently of any property of the objects of volition)” 6. In this quotation,
Kant is telling us that we are the ones who give the command to ourselves when
doing something. The command does not come from the authorities nor any other
person. It only comes from our very own selves. When I do my duty, I must have it my
mind and heart that it begins from me alone. In this sense, an act is morally
worthwhile when it is done for the sake of duty or when anything that we do is
done under the spirit of duty.

Imagine that while you and your friend are walking along the street, you pass by
a young girl asking for money to buy food. She is dressed in a rag, looks weak with
dried tears on her cheek. Your friend is deeply moved and gave the beggar some
money and tells you that she felt compassion and mercy with the poor girl and so she
cannot ignore her.
For Kant, the action of your friend is morally worthless! Why? It is so because
what was moving your friend is his mercy and compassion. Of course, it is obvious that
your friend’s act is praiseworthy, but it does not qualify into a moral action.

To make this point clearer, Kant asks us to consider someone who has no
compassion and mercy for the suffering of others, yet despite this:

“. . . he nevertheless tears himself out of this deadly insensibility and does the
action without any inclination, simply from duty; then the action first has its
genuine moral worth”.7
What is the difference between the two? The first one, that is your friend, is
acting because of his compassion and mercy. On the other hand, the second one is
acting for the sake of duty, that is why his action gains moral worth. Let there be no
confusion here. The main point is, what moved them to act? The first one was moved
by emotion and desires while the second one acted for the sake of duty. Interestingly,
is Kant against emotions or desires? Surely no! Emotions and desires are natural to us
as humans. What he does not favor is for the emotions and desires to be the
primary movers of what we do. Rather, the fundamental motivation for what we do
should be our pure sense of duty. When emotions arise as a result of doing our duty, it
is just accidental and secondary.

How do We Evaluate Our Motivations for Action?

6
Kant, 47.
7
Ibid., 12.
As we are the ones who make the laws for our own selves, the question that
arises is, how do we know that we are doing is in the right way? Given our weaknesses
and limitations, is there a way for us to create a law that can be morally justified? Here,
Kant offers us his formula or moral criterion known as the categorical imperative
which is formulated as follows: “ . . . to act on no other maxim than that which can
also have as object itself as a universal law” 8. For better understanding, modern
interpretations of this law have resulted in the clearer formulation which runs this way:
“Act only according to that maxim9 by which you can at the same time will that it
would become a universal law.”10 In this statement, Kant will be glad to affirm our
acts only if we are acting on a maxim which after having passed a test, we can now will
such maxim to be a universal law.

There are two ways when your maxim won’t be able to pass the universality
qualification because “sometimes when you attempt to will your maxim to be a universal
law, you fail the contradiction in conception test”10. Suikkanen illustrates this through an
example:
Whenever I am in need, I make a false promise in order to get some cash.
We can then formulate this maxim into the following universal law: Whenever
anyone is in need, they will make a false promise in order to get some cash.
The problem here is that it is impossible to imagine circumstances in which
this is a universal law. If the false promises maxim were accepted by
everyone, the whole practice of making promises would collapse. In those
circumstances you would not be able to get money by making a false promise.
No one would believe you. So you can’t actually imagine a scenario where
everyone makes false promises to get what they want. For this reason, the
false promises maxim can’t be consistently willed to be a universal law – it
fails the contradiction in conception test. This is why the Categorical
Imperative rules out acting in this way.11
This example clarifies that when a personal maxim cannot pass the contradiction
in conception test, one should not take it as a standard of action. The second test is
known as the “contradiction in will test”. 12Again, Suikkanen illustrates this by requesting
us to consider the following maxim:
5

Whenever I see someone in urgent need of help, I will not help them in order
to avoid sacrificing my own happiness. If we universalize this maxim into a
universal law, we get: Whenever anyone sees another person in urgent need
8
Kant, 52.
9
By “maxim,” Kant means the general rule in accordance with which the agent intends to act.
See Pojman, Louis P. 2005. How Should We Live? An Introduction to Ethics. Belmont, CA: Cengage
Learning Academic Resource, 146. In this case, it is me who makes my maxim which I will act upon. For
example, I might make it my maxim to pray before going to bed.
10
Suikkanen, Jussi. 2015. This Is Ethics: An Introduction, West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons,
Inc., 92.
11
Suikkanen, 93.
12
Ibid., 92.
of help, they will not help the needy in order to avoid sacrificing their own
happiness. Kant thought that you still couldn’t consistently will this maxim to
be a universal law. In the world in which no one helps others, you would still
have some goals. As a rational person you must want to take the steps
required to secure those goals. And some of those goals will require the help
of others. If everyone is acting selfishly constantly, then you won’t be able to
achieve these aims. This means that, because you want things that will
require other people’s help to secure, you can’t consistently will the selfish
maxim to be a universal law. This is why this maxim fails the contradiction in
will test and why the Categorical Imperative does not allow you to ignore the
suffering of others.13
Just as the two given maxims do not pass the universality test, to make it
universalizable should instead take the following formulation. The first is, we should
always keep our promises. The second is, we should help people in need when it is not
unreasonably inconvenient to do so.

Summary

Deontology or Kantian ethics is based on the view that human beings are
rational.20 it is this rationality that enables a person to independently create a moral
law to oneself going beyond the grips of emotions and desires which establishes
one’s autonomy and freedom. In this sense, freedom is moving beyond the influence
of desires and impulses. That is why when an act is done under a pure sense of duty, it
means that I am doing it even if I don’t like it. Doing good along this line becomes
constant because every person is commanded by his/her duty avoiding moral actions to
be optional. Emotion-based morality becomes voluntary. It is not obligatory because it
is dependent on the transitory and unstable nature of emotions and desires.

Creating one’s moral law to which her/his course of action to pursue goals gains
a wider if not a universal recognition and acceptance. It is candidly obvious that every
person favors self-determination and self-governance. In this sense, morality is moved
away from the hands of the authorities to the rational powers of the individual. Immanuel
Kant is confident that the universality criterion of what a person wants to do is easy to
13
Ibid., 93.
20
By rational, we mean that they are able to understand the world around them and use
reason to guide their lives, especially to achieve a good moral character. Even those who do not act
rationally, those who are weak-willed and act only from desire, are intrinsically valuable, because
they could act rationally. See Evangelista, Francis Julius N. & Mabaquiao Jr., Napoleon M. 2020.
Ethics: Theories and Applications. Mandaluyong City: Anvil Publishing, Inc., 77.
21
Bondoc, Benj. 2014, September 6. [News@6] Ang tungkulin at sakripisyo ng Filipino
peacekeepers [09|06|14] at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBpZKaGpBS8
understand and apply. Understandably, the universality requirement is a hint that
Kantian ethics sets a method for the formation of a moral criterion that everybody has
the competence to create and capability to live a life under it.

References

Calano, Mark Joseph, Oscar G. Bulaong Jr., Albert M. Lagliva, Michael Ner E. Mariano
and Jesus Deogracias Z. Principe. 2018. Ethics: Foundations of Moral
Valuation, 1st ed. Manila: Rex Bookstore.

Evangelista, Francis Julius N. and Napoleon M. Mabaquiao, Jr., 2020. Ethics: Theories
and Applications, Mandaluyong: Anvil Publishing, Inc.

Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor, 1997.
Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

Lawhead, William F. 1996. The Voyage of Discovery: A History of Western

Philosophy. California: Wadstworth Publishing Company.
Suikkanen, Jussi. 2015. This Is Ethics: An Introduction, West Sussex, UK: John Wiley
& Sons, Inc.

Online News

Benj, Bondoc. 2014, September 6. [News@6] Ang tungkulin at sakripisyo ng Filipino

peacekeepers [09|06|14] at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBpZKaGpBS8