Deontology is the doctrine of duty

It is difficult to decide how to act in morally ambiguous situations. Especially for these cases in some universities in the program there is a subject "deontology". It is a science that studies the field of duty and moral correctness of behavior in various situations. Many decisions have already been invented long before us, but it must be remembered that the responsibility is still on us, not on abstract rules.

Dogma beyond religion

The foundations of the research direction were laid by Immanuil Kant. According to his teaching, a person is obliged to follow moral norms regardless of the unusual situation in which he turned out. Moral flexibility, according to Kant, is unacceptable. Even if following ethical canons lead to tragic consequences, one should still adhere to moral rules. Deontology is the opposite of another ethical approach, called sequentialism. The latter means that morality is determined by the result. Which is not always true: this is another name for the principle known as "the end justifies the means".

Areas of special closeness of people

In the deontological system of values , a person's character is evaluated first of all from the position of how he follows his duty. Based on the general theory, rules were developed for some areas of human activity: medicine, social work, legal practice. All these spheres are marked by ethical problematicness, since the specialist in them takes responsibility for the other person for himself. One of the unwritten, but respected rules, for example, medical deontology, is the principle of separation of responsibility - for the adoption of important decisions, a consultation is being held.

Self-righteousness

Within the general discipline there are different currents and different teachings. For example, a current is distinguished, called agent-centered deontology, is an approach that states that a person has the full moral right to place his obligations above other people's problems. For example, the interests of your child are considered more important than the interests of any other person. Opponents of this doctrine accuse the supporters of the agent-centered approach in indulging selfishness.

Careful care

The patient-centered approach concerns not only medicine. This current supports and the deontology of social work. In practice, this means that the person being taken care of can not be used for the benefit of another person.

For example, if you take care of two living pensioners together, you can not spend a part of the money put on one person for another, even if one of them needs more. However, in social work deontology - the direction is still debatable.

Saving illegally

Also responsible decisions have to be made by specialists in the sphere of law. Legal deontology claims that the lawyer, from a moral point of view, has no right to lie against the defendant, even to save the life of this person.

Borders and trade-offs

There is also the so-called "threshold deontology". This is the doctrine that, under certain conditions, moral norms can and must be violated. Of course, this approach causes a lot of heated arguments. For example, is it possible to torture one person to save a large number of people? Or vice versa: Is it possible to execute a murderer, because his life threatens a lot of other people? Critics of the approach argue that posing the question of the threshold of morality depreciates the very direction called "deontology." This forces us to admit that we can not transfer responsibility from ourselves to moral norms. So the decision should always be made by the person acting.