deontological ethics

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

moral theories that ground ethical evaluation in the intrinsic rightness or wrongness of actions rather than their consequences, holding that certain actions are obligatory or forbidden regardless of the outcomes they produce; Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative — act only according to maxims you could will to be universal laws — is the paradigmatic deontological theory, grounding moral duty in rational consistency rather than empirical outcomes; deontological ethics forbids treating people merely as means to ends, grounds absolute prohibitions on torture, murder, and deception, and provides the philosophical foundation for human rights theories; its central challenge is the problem of moral conflicts — situations where duties clash — and the intuition that consequences cannot be entirely irrelevant to moral judgment