Deontology, a moral philosophy which has emphasis on duties and rules, often is connected to religious beliefs. However, deontology is often practiced by more liberal religious people, and many non-philosophers practice deontology without knowing it. First of all, here is how you know if you have a deontological moral world-view.


1. You follow a set of moral codes outside the government code
2. You tend to follow the rules.
3. You trust authority
4.You have many moral duties which you feel are more important than the overall amount of happiness that may result in a action violating that duty.
5. You feel their are objective, universal, moral laws.

Basically deontology is an ethical system with a strong emphasis on "following the rules", and that their are universal moral wrong like lying which is always wrong. The other two moral systems, consequentalism and virtue ethics, place emphasis on the overall amount of happiness as a result of an action and the character of the person committing an act. I will not try to prove consequentalism or virtue ethics to be a better system then deontology, but I will attempt to show that deontology is not a stable ethical system.

Problem 1. Deontology puts trust in authorities- Deontology puts too much weight in authorities when it comes to following the rules. Authorities could always be wrong, and they have been many times. If we did not have non-deontological thinking then we would live in a world without democracy.

Problem 2. Deontology has moral absolutes- Moral absolutes are statements such as "lying is always wrong". If a person follows deontological ethics, they will think that a number of things are "always wrong". Lying, killing, and adultery is considered always wrong? Is it always wrong? Sometimes, it may be necessary to kill one person for the greater good, and sometimes we must lie in order to make people happy. Moral absolutes demean the ability of the human to make decisions.

Problem 3. Deontology is often based on religion. Although a god/gods could possibly exist, and could possibly want people to follow moral absolutes, it is not very likely that this god would. Their is a chance that this god does not exist, actually a large chance since their are many different religions who have gods that cannot co-exist. If this god does not exist, deontological religious-based ethics fail, as these were codes written by humans who are morally inferior to us since the zeitgeist is moving progressively forwards.

Although I do not accept you to be converted from your deontological perspective, I hope that you re-think your deontological ethics.