COLEGIO DE STA. LOURDES OF LEYTE FOUNDATION, INC.

TABONTABON, LEYTE

COLLEGE OF NURSING
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
ETHICS (Soc. Sci. 12)
Placement: 1st Year, 1st Semester
Course Credits: 3 Units

MODULE 4

DEONTOLOGY
Learning Objectives:
After reading this chapter, you should be able to:
1. Discuss basic principles of deontology
2. Apply the concepts of agency and autonomy to one’s moral experience; and
3. Evaluate actions using the universalizability test.

Learning Contents:
Motivation: Is it possible to live a normal life and never tell a lie? Should you
become a fully-fledged nurse if you always say the truth and nothing but the truth?

DUTY AND AGENCY

The moral theory that evaluates actions are done because of duty is called deontology.
Deontology comes from the Greek word deon, which means being necessary.” Hence,
deontology refers to the study of duty and obligation. The main proponent of deontology is
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). He was a German Enlightenment philosopher who wrote one of
the most important works on moral philosophy, Groundwork towards a Metaphysics of Morals
(1785). In this work, Kant brings our attention to the fact that we, human beings, have the
faculty called rational will, which is the capacity to act according to principles that we
determine for ourselves.
To consider the rational will is to point out the difference between animals and persons. On
one hand, animals are sentient organisms. Sentience, meaning an organism has the ability to
perceive and navigate its external environment. Insofar, as dogs and carabaos are sentient
organisms, we do not see them bumping into trees and walls unless their senses are weak.
Animals constantly interact with their surroundings. This is also true to us humans; we are
also sentient. Thus, both animals and persons interact in and with the world, reacting to
external stimuli and internal impulses to survive and thrive.
On the other hand, people are also rational. Rationally consist of the materials faculty to
construct ideas and thoughts that are beyond our immediate surroundings. This is the
capacity for mental abstraction, which arises from the operations of the faculty of reason.
Thus, we have the ability to stop and think about what we are doing. We can remove
ourselves mentally from the immediacy of our surroundings and reflect on our actions and
how such actions affect the world. We can imagine a different and better world and create
mental images and how we interact with other people in that world. In the same way, an
architect “first” constructs her blueprint of a house in her mind. When the draft of that
construction is drawn, she can then give instructions to the masons and carpenters on how to
build the actual house, which becomes the second construction this happen often in our lives
such as when a young girl puts on her nice dress and make up, when a painter makes initial
sketches on a canvass. The first construction consists In how we imagine things can be, then
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TABONTABON, LEYTE

COLLEGE OF NURSING
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
we implement that the second construction through the capacity for the imagination and
reflection, we conceive of how we could affect, possibly even change, the world we live in.
Thus, we do not only have the capacity to imagine and construct mental images. This ability
to enact our thoughts is the basis for the rational will. The rational will refers to the faculty to
intervene in the world, to act according to impulses, based on their natural instincts. Thus,
animals “act” with immediately with nothing that intervenes between the impulse. They do
not and cannot deliberate on their actions. In fact, we may say that animals do not act. They
only react to their external surroundings and internal impulses. In contrasts, we human have
reason, which intervenes between impulse and act. We have the ability to stop and think
about what we are doing to evaluate our actions according to principles. Simply stated, we
are not only reacting to our surroundings and internal impulses but are also conceiving of
ways to act according to certain rational principles.
Right now, for example you may feel lethargic. Your head feels heavy and your eyes are
droopy. The corresponding impulse is to close your eyes and then fall asleep. However, your
rational will demand something else. Perhaps, you have to finish reading this chapter for a
quiz tomorrow. That quiz is part of the big picture, that is, your formation as a student to earn
degree and do productive work. So, you struggle to stay awake; you stand up briefly to
stretch your legs. You may have already taken some coffee. Right now, as you struggle to
stay awake and understand the words on this page, your rational will is victorious over your
bodily impulses as long as you stay awake. This demonstrate the triumph clarifies the
meaning of rational will over your base impulse to just go to sleep. This triumph clarifies the
meaning of rational will, the capacity of a person to be the cause of her actions based on the
reasons and not merely to mindlessly react to the environment and base impulses. In
philosophical discussion about human freedom, this capacity is called agency, which is the
ability of a person to act based on her intentions and mental states.
Let us go back to Reggie. The moment he discovered that Trent had left his suitcase in the
taxi cab, Reggie reacted according to his rational will- to return the suitcase he determined
that it was his duty to return it in as much as his rational will had conceived such a duty.
Hence, to act according to a duty is specifically human experience. Animals, if it is true that
they do not possess the faculty of rational will, cannot conceive of having duties. This is the
starting point of deontology. We may claim that as long as we rationality there will always be
the tension between our base impulses and our rational will.

AUTONOMY
Kant claims that the property of the rational will is autonomy (Ak 4:440), which is the opposite
of heteronomy. These three Greek words are instructive: autos, heteros, and nomos, which
means “self” “other” and “law”, respectively. Hence, when we combine autos and nomos, we
get autonomy; heteros and nomos to heteronomy. Crudely stated, autonomy means self-law
(or legislating) and heteronomy means other law.
Consider the trivial example of brushing one’s teeth, which is not yet a moral dilemma but is
sufficient to explain the difference between autonomy and heteronomy and heteronomy.
When you were a child, did you like to brush your teeth? As far as we can tell, children do not
like to brush their teeth, but parents know that children should, to maintain oral hygiene. So,
parents try to find ways to get their small children to brush their teeth before going to bed,
using a variety of incentives or threats of undesirable consequences. “hey, Ryan”, a mother
tells her boy, go and brush your teeth now or else your teeth will rot!” “come on now, Liza” a

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 COLEGIO DE STA. LOURDES OF LEYTE FOUNDATION, INC.
TABONTABON, LEYTE

COLLEGE OF NURSING
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
father tells his daughter, “if you brush your teeth in five minutes, I will let you play your
computer game tonight. “In case of Ryan and Liza, are they autonomous? Certainly not, as
their parents are the ones that legislate the principle that children should brush their teeth
before they go to bed and impose such a principle by using threats or incentives.
Now think about Ryan and Liza twenty years later when they are in their mid-twenties.
Suppose they brush their teeth every night before they go to bed, and they do so without the
prodding of their parents. At a certain point, perhaps when they were growing up as
teenagers, they both reflected on the whole business of brushing one’s teeth. Both concluded
that they (1) agree with the principle behind it (oral hygiene) and thus, (2) every night they
impose it upon themselves to brush their teeth before going to bed. Number 1 refers to the
act of legislating a principle, while number 2 refers to the enacting of the principle. Thus, it
also refers to the willing of the adopted principle into reality. Are they autonomous? Yes,
certainly. Kant describes this as follows:
The will thus not only subject to the law, but it is also subject to the law in such a
way that it gives the law to itself (itself-legislating), and primarily just in this way
that the will can be considered the author of the law under which it is subject. (Ak
4:431)
This description of autonomy is unusual. When we think of someone being “subject to the
law”, we usually think of an imposing authority figure that uses his power to control the
subject into complying with his will.
Imagine a policeman who apprehends a suspected criminal by forcing him on the ground and
putting handcuffs on his wrists. Incidentally, “subject” comes from the Latin words sub
(under) and jacere (to throw). When combined, the two words refer to that which is thrown or
brought under something. The will must comply with the law, which is the authority figure.
Surprisingly though, the will must give the law to itself. Therefore, the will is, at the same
time, the authority figure giving the law to itself. How can the rational will be subordinate to
that which is simultaneously its own authority figure? Isn’t that contradictory to be subject to
the law and yet also be the authority figure for itself? Thus, Kant describes autonomy as the
will that is subject to a principle or law.
This apparent contradiction is entirely possible to exists, but only for self-reflexive human
beings that have rational will. Remember Ryan and Liza, and the principle of brushing their
teeth. On the hand, heteronomy is the simple legislation and imposition of a law by an
external authority (a person must brush her teeth before going to bed). Their parents are the
authority figures, and the law is imposed externally by rewards or punishments. On the other
hand, autonomy belongs to the grown-up and already rational Ryan and Liza, who have
adopted such a law about brushing their teeth. They regularly impose such a law on
themselves out of the enactment of the will to follow the law.
The distinguishing point here is the locus of the authorship of the law. In any given scenario
where a person complies with the law, we ask where the author is, whether it is external or
internal. If the author of the law is external, the will is subjected to an external authority, thus
heteronomous will. In contrast, if the author was the will itself, imposing the law unto itself,
then we describe the will as autonomous. For the 25-year-old versions of Ryan and Liza who
brush their teeth before going to bed without any prompting from their parents, their adoption
of the childhood law about toothbrushing makes the locus of the authorship internal. Thus,
they are autonomous.
However, trivial actions such as brushing one’s teeth can hardly be considered moral. Real
moral issues often involve actions like stealing, lying, and murder, in that they have a certain
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TABONTABON, LEYTE

COLLEGE OF NURSING
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
gravity, insofar as those actions directly harm or benefit the well- being of persons. Reggie’s
case, seen in this light, is clearly a moral issue.
Let us remember that alternative scenario that we imagined earlier: what if Reggie did not
return the suitcase, destroyed the lock, then took and sold its valuable contents? Is this not an
act of rational will? Can we not claim that reggae’s rational will determines for itself how it
enacts its duty in this alternative scenario? Is Reggie not, after all, acting as an autonomous
agent? Reggie could have easily come upon the odious principle that he should benefit from
Trent’s loss because people who lose their things are careless, and thus do not deserve to
keep those things. Therefore, Reggie may have concluded, I am entitled to benefit from this
lost suitcase. I am the author of this principle. I am acting autonomously’’. He may conclude
this since no external authority is legislating laws for him by using rewards or punishments.
However, this kind of reasoning is mistaken from a Kantian understanding as we will show
below.
What do you think of Reggie’s principle that he should benefit from other people’s loss
because they are careless, and thus do not deserve to keep those things? Is it still
autonomous agency when a person enacts any apparently self-legislated principle? We may
argue that locus of the authorship of the law was certainly internal, when he tells the
difference between autonomy and heteronomy-self and other. Is that what autonomy properly
means? Certainly not.
Kant claims that difference between rational will an animal impulse. Take a close look at how
he describes the distinctions in this passage:

The choice that can be determined by pure reason is called free choice. That which
determinable only by inclination (sensible impulse, stimulus) would be animal choice
(arbitrium brutum). Human choice, in contrast, is a choice that may indeed be affected but
not determined by impulse, and is therefore in itself (without an acquired skill or reason) not
pure, but can nevertheless be determined to do actions from pure will (Ak 6:213).

Thus, there is a difference between what determines a choice or decisions, whether it is

caused by sensible impulse or by pure reason. On one hand, sensible impulses are usually
bodily and emotional. Bodily instincts and desires. Such as the urge to eat, drink, sleep or
have sexual intercourse, comprise the set of human compulsions for survival and the
propagation of the species. Emotions and sentiments also make up what can consider
sensible impulses. Practical examples are the jealousy from seeing your girlfriend or boyfriend
make eyes at someone, and the rage from being pushed foully by your opponent from a
basketball game. As we previously claimed, when we discussed the difference between
animals and humans, there is immediacy to sensible impulses. There is hardly anything that
comes between the stimulus and the reaction. Kant calls this set of actions that are caused by
sensible impulse animal choice or arbitrium brutum.

On the other hand, there is a choice or action that is determined by pure reason. Kant calls
this action free choice, and one may argue that human freedom resides in this capacity of
reason to intervene, to “mediate” within arbitrium brutum. Previously, rationality was
described as the mental capacity to construct ideas and thoughts that are beyond one’s
immediate surroundings. This mental capacity is what makes the intervention possible
between stimulus and reaction with the faculty of reason, a person can break the immediacy
of stimulus and reaction by stopping to deliberate and assess possible alternative action. The
above-describe jealous partner and raging basketball player, if they had enough self-

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 COLEGIO DE STA. LOURDES OF LEYTE FOUNDATION, INC.
TABONTABON, LEYTE

COLLEGE OF NURSING
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
possession, called refrain from reacting mindlessly that raging stimuli and instead construct
rational response. For instance, you may open up with your partner to talk about trust setting
boundaries, or you may tell the guarding opponent to take it easy and play the game well. In
both cases, you orient your actions toward an overall aim that you aspire for trust and
sportsmanship, respectively. These aims are mental constructions of the faculty of reason.
This examples do not imply that people are not affected by sensible impulses. The jealous
feelings and anger are present, but they do not immediately and automatically cause the
actions. Based on the quote above (Ak 6:213), Kant describes that human choice can be
affected but is not determined by sensible impulses.

What does it mean for a human to be affected but is not determined by sensible impulse? It
implies that we are indeed basically animals, but we cannot be reduced to mere animality.
This is where the correlative conjunction “not only, but also” is useful. When we claim, “the
human person is not only an animal, but is also rational, we admit two possible causes of our
actions: sensible impulses and the faculty of reason. Human freedom resides in that
distinction.

Let us return once again to Reggie and the alternative scenario when he tells himself, “I am
entitled to benefit from this lost suitcase.” Is Reggie acting autonomously supposing he did
not return the suitcase and instead sold its contents for his own benefit? We asked this at the
beginning of this section: is it always autonomous agency when a person enacts any
apparently self-legislated principle? Certainly not. The difference between human choice and
animal choice is crucial to giving a correct answer here. Autonomy is a properly of the will
only during instances when the action is determined by pure reason. When the action is
determined by sensible impulses, despite the source of those impulses being nevertheless
internal, it is considered heteronomous? Because a sensible impulse is “external” to one’s
self-legislating faculty of reason. Kant confirms this point when he states that the action
caused by sensible impulses result always only in the heteronomy of the will because it is
what he calls “a foreign impulse” (Ak 4:444), insofar as the will does not give itself the law.

Therefore, Reggie is not acting autonomously, supposing he was to take and benefit from the
contents of the suitcase. Why would we consider his will as being heteronomous? Because a
sensible impulse would be the cause of such an action, whether it is greed or the excitement
of obtaining easy money without working for it, or the shame that arises from being unable to
provide for his family. In any of those causes, a sensible impulse is akin to a “foreign impulse”
that has the same immediacy of an external authority figure that imposes its will on Reggie.

We can thus make the conclusion that heteronomy of the will occurs when any foreign
impulse, whether it is external (as in other persons or institutions that impose their will on the
agent) or sensible (as in bodily instincts or base emotions) is what compels a person to act. In
contrast, autonomy is the property of the will in those instances when pure reason is the
cause of the action.

But what consists in an action that is done by an autonomous will insofar as the cause of an
action is pure reason? What does it mean to act according to pure reason?

UNIVERSALIZABILITY
To figure out how the faculty of reason can be the cause of an autonomous action, we need to
learn a method or a specific procedure that will demonstrate autonomy of the will. But before

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COLLEGE OF NURSING
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
explaining this procedure, it will be helpful to first make a distinction about kinds of moral
theories, namely, substantive and formal moral theories.

A substantive moral theory immediately promulgates the specific actions that comprise that
theory. As such, its identities the particular duties in a straightforward manner that the
adherents of the theory must follow. The set of ten Commandments of the Judeo-Christian
tradition is an unambiguous example of a substantive moral theory. The specific articulated
mostly in the form of a straightforward moral command. “Honor your father and mother”,
“You shall not kill”, and so forth.

In contrasts, a formal moral theory does not supply the rules or commands straightaways. It
does not tell you what you may or may not do. Instead, a formal moral theory provides us the
“forms” or “framework” of the moral theory. To provide the “form” of a moral theory is to
supply a procedure and the criteria for determining, on one’s own, the rules and moral
commands. Metaphorically, we can think of a cookbook as akin to a formal moral theory. In
using a cookbook, we are given instructions on how to cook certain dishes, but we are not
given the actual food themselves, which would be “substantive”. In following a recipe for
sinigang, for example, we may add a slight variation to the to the ingredients and sequence of
steps. But if we want the dish to remain sinigang and not transform it into some other kind of
viand like pochero, we need to follow the steps that are relevant to making sinigang. To be
exact, a formal moral theory will not give us a list of rules or commands.

Kant endorses this formal kind of moral theory. The Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten,
which he wrote in 1785, embodies a formal moral theory in what he calls the categorical
imperative, which provides a proceducal way of identifying the rightness or wrongness of an
action. Kant articulates the categorical imperative this way:

Act only according to such a maxim, by which you can at once will that it become a universal
law. (Ak 4:421)

There are four key elements in this formulation of the categorical imperative, namely, action,
maxim, will, and universal law. Kant states that we must formulate an action as a maxim,
which he defines as a “subjective principle of action” (Ak 4:422). In this context, a maxim
consists of a “rule” that we live by in our day-to-day lives, but it does not have the status of a
law or a moral command that binds us to act in a certain way. Rather, maxims depict the
patterns of our behavior. Thus, maxims are akin to the “standard operating procedures”
(SOPs) in our lives. We act according to a variety of maxims, even if we are not aware of
them. Actually, we become aware of our maxims when we talk about ourselves, when we
reveal our habits and the reasons behind them. For examples, we tell our friends what we
ordinarily do in certain specific situations: When the weekend comes, I usually go to the beach
with my family to relax. When the exam week begins, I go to mass so that I will be blessed
with good luck. Whenever I meet my crush, I wear my hair in a braid so that he will notice me.
These are usually personal “policies” that may or may not be unique to us, but we act
according to these maxims, nonetheless. This is why Kant calls a maxim a subjective principle
of action. We have many maxims in our daily lives, and we live according to them.

In the formulation of the categorical imperative, Kant calls our attention to the kind of
maxims that we live by. He claims that we ought to act according to the maxim “by which you
can at once will that it become a universal law.” What does it means to will a maxim that can
become a universal law? It means that the maxim must be universalizable, which is what it
means to “will that it become a universal law.” This means nothing other than imagining a
world in which the maxim, or personal rule, that I live by were adopted by everyone as their

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TABONTABON, LEYTE

COLLEGE OF NURSING
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
own maxim. In this formulation, Kant is telling us to conceive of the maxim as if it obligated
everyone to comply. This mental act of imagining a universalized maxim does not mean we
picture a world in which everyone actually followed the maxim. Instead, we merely imagine
the maxim as a law that everyone ought to follow. The proper way to imagine the
universalized maxim is not by asking,” what if everyone did that maxim?” here is a clear
example.

In Groundwork towards a Metaphysics of Morals, Kant takes up the issue of making

false promises (Ak 4:422). He narrates the predicament of a man who needs money but has
no immediate access to obtain it except by borrowing it from a friend. This man knows that he
will not be able to pay the money back, but if he says cannot return the money, then no
money will be lent to him. Hence, the predicament is simply about him borrowing money,
while knowing that he cannot pay back. This is a specific act under the general category of
acts called false promising. Kant says that the man would like to make such a promise, but he
stops and ask himself if what he is about to do is right or wrong: Is it really wrong to borrow
money without intending to pay it back? If we were to formulate this act as a maxim, it would
go this way: “When I am in need of money, I shall borrow it even when I know I cannot pay it
back.”
Remember that Kant states that we should act according to a maxim by which we can
at once will that it become a universal law. What does it mean to universalize the maxim
about borrowing money without intending to return it? It is simple. Imagine a hypothetical
word in which each person, whenever she is in need of money, is obligated to borrow from
another even when she knows she cannot pay it back. We do not imagine that people actually
borrowed money without intending to return it. Instead, we think of them as obligated to do
so. Now, there are two possibilities in this hypothetical world where people are obligated to
borrow money without intending to pay: the maxim can either make sense or not make sense
as a universal law. By “making sense,” we refer to the logical plausibility of the universalized
maxim. The opposite of logical is self-contradiction or logical impossibility.

Let as assess that hypothetical world. If borrowing money without intending to pay
were everyone’s obligation to comply with, what would happen to the status of the
universalized maxim? The purpose of borrowing money would be defeated because no one
will lend money. In a world where it is obligation to borrow money without paying back, all
lenders would know that they will not be paid, and they will refuse to lend money. The
institution of money-borrowing would lose its meaning if everyone was obligated to borrow
money without intending to pay it back. As a universalized maxim, it would self-destruct
because it becomes impossible. This is how Kant assesses it:

Here I see straightaway that it could be valid as a universal

law of nature and be consistent with itself but must
necessarily contradict itself. For the universality of the law
that each person, when he believes himself to be in need,
could promise whatever he pleases with the intent not to
keep it, would make the promise and the purpose that he
may have impossible, since no one would believe that was
In the passage above, Kant distinguishes between being “consistent with itself” and
“contradict itself”. Look at the maxim again. “When I am in need money, I shall
borrow it even when I know I cannot pay it back. “The meaning of the act” to borrow”
implies taking and using something with the intent to return it. In the maxim, the
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COLLEGE OF NURSING
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
claim is to borrow” even when I know I cannot pay it back,” which contradicts the very
meaning of “to borrow”. The contradiction is evident: to borrow (implies returning) but
the intention is not to return. Of course, in the real world, many people borrow money
without intending to pay, but it is logical plausibility of the universalized maxim that is
at stake. Here, we reveal the contradiction that occurs when we scrutinize the maxim
because, after all, one contradicts oneself when one borrows money (implies intent to
return) without intending to pay it back. It makes no sense. This is why Kant claims
that universalized maxim “could never be valid as a universal law of nature and be
consistent with itself but must necessarily contradict itself.” Thus, we can conclude
that the act of borrowing money without intending to pay is rationally impermissible.
Here, we discover two ways by which Kant rejects maxims. The universalized maxim
becomes either (1) self-contradictory (2) the act and its purpose become impossible.
What the result of all these? We reveal the rational permissibility of actions
insofar as they cannot be rejected as universalizable maxims. In contrast, those
universalized maxims that are rejected are shown to be impermissible, that is, they
are irrational and thus, in Kant’s mind, immoral. But what does rational permissibility
mean? Simply put, it refers to the intrinsic quality of an action that is objectively and
necessarily rational. Using the universalizability test, we can reveal the objective
necessity of an action as rational. Observe, for example, the quality of the
arithmetical claim, “1+1=2. “It is objectively necessary because the quality of the
claim is universally and logically valid, and we understand this to be always true as
rational beings. Observe the difference between the quality of objectively necessary
claims with contingent claims, such as claims about the world like “the sky is blue,”
the truth of which depends on the actual situation in the world. Therefore, we have
demonstrated that borrowing money without intending to pay, as a kind of false
promise, is objectively and necessarily wrong, insofar as it encounters a self-
contradiction and logical impossibility when it is universalized as a maxim.

(See Answer Sheets for Activities)

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