An introduction to the deontology vs teleology debate in ethics.
How do we judge the morality of an action? Is it in the act itself, or is it in the consequences that the act produces? Are there any acts that are always, without question wrong - or does whether an act is judged morally acceptable or not depend on the circumstances and the outcome?
Take homicide for example, the 'killing of one person by another'. Our first thought is that this is always a morally unacceptable action - it is 'bad', it is 'wrong', it is'terrible'. We may say that it is morally unacceptable in any circumstances - it is intrinsically bad.
But what if you found out the context in which the homicide took place - would this change how you assessed the morality of the action? What if police shot dead a terrorist who was about to massacre hundreds of schoolchildren? What if a victim of domestic abuse stabbed their abuser with a kitchen knife in a desperate act of self defence? What if a soldier killed a soldier from the opposing army in the middle of a war?
This debate about how we assess the morality of an action goes to the very heart of what ethics is all about. There are two principle schools of thought - deontology and teleology.
Deontology is all about the act itself - it is the idea that an act is either intrinsically good or bad. There is to be no consideration of the context or the consequences - there are certain acts which are always, without question wrong. Immanuel Kant was a famous deontologist, and he believed it was your duty to do the morally acceptable thing in every situation - irrespective of the consequences. So even if a gunman was at your door asking whether your mother (who he wanted to kill) was inside, you could not lie and say she wasn't (to save her life) because lying in itself is always a morally unacceptable act. You have to assess the act itself, not the outcomes of it. So there are no exceptions - lying is always wrong, even if you are protecting the greater good. Murder is always wrong, even if you are trying to save more lives by killing the terrorist because he kills the children. In deontology, the consequences, circumstances or context do not matter - morality is intrinsic to the act, and you have a duty to follow the moral law in each and every action.
Teleology, on the other hand, is concerned with the outcomes and the consequences. The word teleology originates from the Greek term 'telos', meaning 'purpose'. Teleology is therefore concerned with the purpose behind the action. So for example, killing one person could be justified if you prove the intention was to protect the lives of ten others. If you had the choice to kill a terrorist before they opened fire and killed a class of schoolchildren, from a teleological ethics point of view you would be morally justified - because of the consequences of your actions. Whether the actual act of murder is intrinsically wrong is irrelevant - teleological ethics assesses the outcomes of your actions instead. A popular theory of ethics based on teleological ethics is Utilitarianism, which says in every moral decision you must assess what will bring about 'the greatest good for the greatest number'. This means that we assess the morality of your actions by judging the extent to which they will bring about certain consequences. It's not a question of 'is this act intrinsically right or wrong' but 'what will the consequences and outcomes of this action be'. This obviously makes morality much more subjective, because it depends on you being trusted to predict the outcomes of your actions. You have the ability to justify your act because of the intended consequences behind it.
So let us return to our example of homicide: is it always (as a deontologist such as Kant would say) an intrinsically immoral act? Or does it entirely depend (as our teleological ethicists such as Jeremy Bentham, the proponent of Act Utilitarianism, would say) on the outcomes and the wider consequences of that action?
It's over to you...
Read more on the teleology vs deontology debate here:
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