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Frameworks

Core framework

Deontology (Kantian)

Some acts are forbidden, whatever the outcome.

Guiding principle

Act only on maxims you could will as universal law, and treat rational agents always as ends, never merely as means.

Key thinkers

Immanuel Kant · Christine Korsgaard · Onora O'Neill

Strengths

  • Protects individuals against being sacrificed for the aggregate.
  • Grounds robust duties: don't lie, don't coerce, don't use people.
  • Explains the wrongness of acts that produce good outcomes by illicit means.

Common objections

  • Rigid: seems to forbid lying to the murderer at the door.
  • Conflicting duties leave no principled way to choose.
  • The universalizability test admits clever reformulations.

Mini-example

Even if lying to a client would increase firm profit and harm no identifiable person, deontology forbids it — the maxim 'lie when profitable' cannot be universalized.