Adjective

deontic (comparative more deontic, superlative most deontic)

Positive deontic

Comparative more deontic

Superlative most deontic

1. (ethics, linguistics) Pertaining to necessity, duty or obligation, or expressions conveying this.

Deontological ethics or deontology is an approach to ethics that determines goodness or rightness from examining acts, rather than the consequences of the act as in (consequentialism), or the intentions of the person doing the act as in virtue ethics. Deontologists look at rules and duties. For example, the act may be considered the right thing to do even if it produces a bad consequence, if it follows the rule that “one should do unto others as they would have done unto them”, and even if the person who does the act lacks virtue and had a bad intention in doing the act. We have a duty to act in a way that does those things that are inherently good as acts ("truth-telling" for example), or follow an objectively obligatory rule (as in rule utilitarianism). For deontologists, the ends or consequences of our actions are not important in and of themselves, and our intentions are not important in and of themselves. Only the act itself is considered important. However, the act might ontologically relate to intentions and consequences, as in some theories of neuroethics.

It is sometimes described as "duty" or "obligation" or "rule" based ethics, because rules "bind you to your duty" The term 'deontological' was first used in this way in 1930, in C. D. Broad's book, Five Types of Ethical Theory.. Alternative theories hold, vice versa, that duties create rules, such as in Christian Theology one has a primary duty to God, from which follow rules such as the Ten Commandments.

Deontological ethics is commonly contrasted with consequentialist or teleological ethical theories, according to which the rightness of an action is determined by its consequences. However, there is a difference between deontological ethics and moral absolutism. Deontologists who are also moral absolutists believe that some actions are wrong no matter what consequences follow from them. Immanuel Kant, for example, famously argued that it is always wrong to lie – even if a murderer is asking for the location of a potential victim. Non-absolutist deontologists, such as W. D. Ross, hold that the consequences of an action such as lying may sometimes make lying the right thing to do. Kant's and Ross's theories are discussed in more detail below. Furthermore Jonathan Baron and Mark Spranca use the term Protected Values when referring to values governed by deontological rules.