Deontology

The family of views on which some acts are wrong even when their outcomes are better.

Kant is the central modern reference: persons are to be treated as ends, and duty does not wait on the sum of happiness. Other deontological views are less systematic and still belong to the family. The pole does not say that consequences are invisible. It says they do not always decide.

Six axes

• Morality

Philosophers

• Immanuel Kant
• John Rawls

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Deontological Ethics”