Card 3.2.2 · Root III — Ethics and Axiology
Duty-Based Approaches
Are some things wrong even when they would do good?
Deontology holds that some acts are right or wrong in themselves, independent of what they produce.
Where it sits
Under 3.2 Normative ethics. Borders 6.4.2 Rights and liberty, 3.1.2, 6.2 Philosophy of law.
The rival answers
| Variant | Claim |
|---|---|
| Kantian deontology | Act only on maxims you could will as universal law |
| Rights-based | Certain rights constrain what may be done, whatever the gain |
| Rossian pluralism | Several prima facie duties, weighed by judgement in each case |
| Threshold deontology | Constraints hold until the stakes become catastrophic |
| Natural law | Duties answer to what human nature requires |
| Agent-centred restrictions | What matters is what you do, not only what happens |
Key figures
| Figure | Dates | Tradition | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Immanuel Kant | 1724–1804 | European modern | The categorical imperative, in three formulations |
| Thomas Aquinas | 1225–1274 | Scholastic | Natural law; the doctrine of double effect |
| W. D. Ross | 1877–1971 | Analytic | Plural duties without a master rule |
| Frances Kamm | b. 1947 | Analytic | Precise anatomy of constraints and permissions |
| Christine Korsgaard | b. 1952 | Analytic | Modern reconstruction of Kantian grounding |
Connections
→ 3.2 · ↔ 3.2.1, 6.4.2, 6.2, 3.3.5 · ◇ Kantian deontology, rights-based ethics, Rossian pluralism, threshold deontology · ○ Scholastic; Early modern; Modern; Table 5
→ narrower questions · ↔ questions it borders · ◇ the positions, mapped in Part III of the book · ○ the eras and comparison tables (Parts IV and V)
The full card is in the book
In The Coordinates of Thought this card goes on to a worked example that sets the answers against one case, and to where the question touches daily life — page 145.
On Coordinates of Thought
Conversations about this question in Moral theories:
- The buyer at the gate offers more than the cooperative: does a promise bind when breaking it pays? 6 replies
- Reading group: Kant’s Groundwork, Section I, the good will and the honest shopkeeper 6 replies
- Reading group: Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice (1982), read forty years on 6 replies
- The crane logs were falsified and reporting them might shut the terminal: what each theory told me 6 replies
- Williams’s integrity objection, not the arithmetic, is the deepest problem for utilitarianism 6 replies