What is the Deontologism of Immanuel Kant?

He Deontologism of Immanuel Kant, From Greek Deon (Obligation) and Logos (Science), is a doctrine of ethics that points out that morality is a matter of duties and obligations.

According to deontologism, human beings have a moral duty to act following a set of principles that establish the difference between good and evil.

Kant's phrases Immanuel Kant

For deontologists, the consequences of actions do not matter, but the actions themselves. This means that, if a morally wrong action concludes in a morally correct act, the action is still wrong.

On the contrary, if a morally correct action degenerates into a morally wrong conclusion, then the initial action ceases to be good.

In this sense, deontologism opposes other philosophical currents, such as teleological theory and the doctrine of utilitarianism, which respectively propose that (1) if the result is morally good, then the generating action is moral and (2) if the result guarantees the happiness , Then the generating action is good.

Most of the works around the doctrine of deontologism come from Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), European philosopher and scientist, and his work framed in rationalism; Among his works on this subject are:"Bases for the metaphysics of morality"(1785),"Critique of practical reasoning"(1788) and"Metaphysics of morality"(1798).

Through deontologism, Kant tried to establish the source of morality, concluding that the origin of morality lies in the capacity of the human being to reason.

Immanuel Kant and Rationalism

Immanuel Kant proposed a fundamental question for rationalism and deontologism, namely: what is the source of morality? In other words:

What do the actions of the people do that make them susceptible to be interpreted as right or wrong?

To answer this question, Kant established three cases in which actions can not be classified as right or wrong:

  1. The actions carried out by plants and inanimate objects.
  2. Actions done by animals that follow their instinct.
  3. Actions performed by humans involuntarily.

Taking into account these three statements, Kant concluded that the source of morality is our ability to make rational decisions and our freedom of action (understood as free will).

From this it follows that morality applies to all rational series and does not come from pleasure, desire or emotions.

Kant and the morally good

Immanuel Kant pointed out that morality has no relation to desires, nor with the emotions . Therefore, actions that are based on desires and pleasure are not morally right despite the fact that they can generate good actions.

Thus, Kant established the difference between the morally good and the good in general. While the morally good depends on the good will of the people, the good in general depends on the needs and desires.

For example, a good umbrella is one that protects you from the rain; This does not mean that the umbrella is moral, since only rational beings can be moral.

Likewise, Kant states that an act has no moral value if it is not done for the sake of morality. Take the following example to illustrate this concept:

There are two merchants: one who sells the merchandise at a fair price because it is the right thing and another who sells the merchandise at a fair price because he fears that if he does not, the authorities will close his business.

In these two cases, only the first merchant is moral because he acts in the name of morality.

Actions and intentions

Deontologists point out that there are actions that are correct and actions that are incorrect. But how can we distinguish between right and wrong?

For example, suppose a homicide was committed. According to deontologism, we can not say immediately whether it is a moral or immoral action, since not all homicides are morally equal.

If the person intended to commit homicide, then the action would be immoral; But if the person committed involuntary manslaughter, then it can not be said that it was morally right or wrong.

Actions are the result of our choices, therefore, actions must be understood in terms of choices.

This means that elections are held for a reason and with a purpose in mind. In this sense, deontologism indicates that you can not know what type of action is involved until you know the intention.

Kant and the maxims

Immanuel Kant considered that every time human beings take action or make a decision, they do so by following a maxim. Hence, in Kant's terminology, the maxims are equivalent to intention.

The maxims are the personal principles that guide us. For example: I will marry only for love, I will have fun no matter what, I will borrow money even though I know I can not pay, I will do all my duties as fast as possible, among others.

For Kant, the key point of morality lies in what kind of maxims are used when moral decisions are made and what kind of maxims should be avoided.

According to the philosopher, the maxims that we must follow must have the capacity to be applicable in any rational being, without being subordinated to a particular interest.

Deontologism and other philosophical doctrines

Deontologism is opposed to teleological theory, according to which a moral act is one that generates a morally correct conclusion. In deontologism, the consequences do not matter, what matters is that the first action is moral.

In turn, the doctrine of deontologism differs from utilitarianism, a theory that states that the object of everything is happiness and justifies any action that is carried out to achieve happiness. That is, utilitarianism proposes to follow personal desires and not reason.

References

1. Deontological Ethics. Retrieved on June 20, 2017 from plato.stanford.edu.

2. Deontology. Retrieved on June 20, 2017, from philosophybasics.com.

3. A Short Overview on Kantian / Deontological Ethical Theory. Retrieved on June 20, 2017, from romnetmanassa.wordpress.com.

4. Misselbrook, D. (2013). Duty, Kant, and Deontology. Retrieved on June 20, 2017, from ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.

5. Duty-based ethics. Retrieved on June 20, 2017 from bbc.co.uk.

6. Kantian Deontology. Retrieved on June 20, 2017, from people.umass.edu.

7. Deontological ethics. Retrieved on June 20, 2017, from britannica.com.

8. Deontology. Retrieved on June 20, 2017, from sevenpillarsinstitute.org.

9. Kant's deontological ethics. Retrieved on June 20, 2017, from documents.routledge-interactive.s3.amazonaws.com.


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