Deontology article

Which actions does morality require of us? What does it forbid and what does it permit? In trying to find some general answers to these questions, moral theorists typically start from commonsense morality, from what ordinary people think about moral issues. In deciding how to act, people often think about the consequences of their actions: they try to find the action that leads to the best overall outcome. One moral theory, act-consequentialism, claims that this is the only consideration that is relevant to moral choice. The right action – the one we are required to do – is the one that produces the most good; it is wrong to do less good than we could.

Act-consequentialism seems, however, to conflict with commonsense morality. Although we should be concerned to make things go as well as possible for everyone, most people do not think that this exhausts morality, or even identifies some of its most crucial elements. Are we not, for instance, sometimes required to aid our loved ones, even if we do not thereby produce the best overall? And are there no limits on what we may do to produce good, or limits on what we must do to produce it? Deontology contrasts with consequentialism in its answers to these questions, and is, in one of its versions, the theory we favour.