Immanuel Kant's Deontology Essay

In late 2006, Volkswagen engineers were under pressure to complete the design and production of an EA 189 diesel engine that would adhere to the strict emissions standards enforced in the United States. The emission constraints imposed by the U.S. government contraindicated the self-imposed constraints to meet consumer demand of high power output and fuel efficiency. Volkswagen had already spent a substantial sum of money on research and development on designing this engine, and they had even more potential profits riding on the engine’s success. When it became clear that the EA 189 could not comply with the emissions testing standards while meeting the design constraints, somebody at Volkswagen (it is still unclear who) made the decision …show more content…
Immanuel Kant was the first person to outline the basic tenets of deontology. To understand Kant’s theory, we must first understand the terms Kant used to describe it. These terms are will, duty, maxim, and categorical imperative. Will is an immaterial concept Kant ascribes to all human beings as the power and ability to make a rational moral decision. As discussed in lecture, duty is a compulsion, or moral obligation to act in a manner we should act as opposed to acting on our inclinations to feel good or receive gains. A maxim, as described in the online material, is a subjective principal that governs action. In order to test whether to institute a maxim as a rule, Kant introduced the concept of a categorical imperative. He defined this concept as “that one which represented an action as objectively necessary for itself, without any reference to another end.” (Kant, 1785) In plainer terms, this denotes an unconditional rule to be followed with no need for justification except the rule itself. Using the categorical imperative as a test, Kant proposed formulating a set of rules that could be considered