For those of you who have been keeping up in my series on ethical theories, this one is very different. It is known as Deontology and the great champion of Deontology was a Prussian named Immanuel Kant. Kant has gone down in history as one of the greatest thinkers of all time but it was his work in ethics that was his greatest contribution.

Deontological theories are theories of morality that state that one should act out of duty. This differs from Utilitarianism in that the ends do not need to justify the means. According to those that subscribe to Deontology the motivation behind any particular action is what determines its morality, not the consequences of the action as in Utilitarianism.

This has one major advantage over Utilitarianism. It is possible now to be confident that the act is a morally right one before it is committed. You will recall that under Act Utilitarianism one had to wait to see the consequences of an action before the action could be judged to be right or wrong.

It also just seems to make sense. If you meant well by an action and had no reason to suspect it would cause pain why should you be blamed when it does? The phrase “it’s the thought that counts” is supposing to a Deontological ethic. The down side of this is that we might have to admit that some of histories worst crimes were in a sense right because the perpetrators were true believers in what they were doing, however perverse their thinking might have been. The Holocaust comes to mind. The writings left by Himmler seem to indicate that he truly believed it was his duty to eliminate the Jews.

Kant recognized this problem and made an attempt to solve it by what came to be known as the Categorical Imperative. Though Kant proposed several different forms for the Categorical Imperative it is his first one that seems to sum it up best to me. “Act only According to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” What does that mean? To understand the Categorical Imperative you must understand the word “maxim.”

Webster’s 1828 gives us this definition, “Maxim, n. An established principle or proposition; a principle generally received or admitted as true.”

So maxim is simply another word for principle. With that in mind reread the Categorical Imperative one more time and it should make more sense. Based on the Categorical Imperative when judging the morality of an action one has to decide what principle the action is based on. Then you must decide if that maxim could be applied on a universal scale. If it could then the action is deemed to be good, if it cannot the action is deemed to be morally bad. I’ll give you an example to better illustrate this point. Suppose you want to lie to someone to keep from offending him or her. Your motives are good, so you pass the first test in Deontology. Now you apply the Categorical Imperative, could the lying (the maxim) be applied universally? If all people were habitual liars then would lying work? No, of course not, because lies depend on deception. People would not be deceived if they were expecting to be lied to. So according to Kant and his Categorical Imperative lying is morally wrong.

Some of you may have picked up on the shortcoming of the Categorical Imperative in the above illustration. The person who is likely to be committing the action in question picks the maxim. If you get very specific with the maxim then you can almost always arrive at a positive answer. If you change the maxim from “all people should lie all the time” to “all people in my exact circumstance should lie” the entire equation is changed. It is for this reason that the Categorical Imperative is meant to be applied as broadly as possible, but the ultimate judgement on how broad to go is still left to the individual.