Deontological And Teleological Theories Essay

Deontological and teleological theories are two extremities of normative ethics that represent a spectrum of judging morality based on intent, action, and consequence. While the two may seem like a dichotomy at first a juxtaposition of the two will reveal the commonalities as well as differences. To better understand these viewpoints an examination of both deontological and teleological views will be necessary, and examples will be given for clarification. Deontological theory is the notion that the morality of an action is determined by adherence to a set of rules or a sense of duty, or simply put an action is morally right if the reason you acted that way was based on what is morally right. There are many branches of deontological theory. The main points of contention come from determining what the rules decide what is right, and if the morality is determined by the act alone. To understand this we will examine at three branches of deontology.
First is moral absolutism. This is the most definite version of deontology. This is the idea that the morality of …show more content…
If the person lies under an ultraistic view believing that this will save the one hundred people but then the one hundred people end up dying then by teleological standards the act of lying was morally wrong. When you take into account the string of consequence that is possible what may seem like the morally right thing to do, may later prove to be the wrong thing to do. For instance in this same example the person lies to save one hundred people, but then those one hundred people end up costing the lives of two thousand other people then the morally right thing to do would have been to let them die. Because the consequences of actions are often convoluted making judgments based on a teleological point of view is challenging and in this point of view the intent does not matter only the ultimate