Progressive Deontology

Morality is about freedom, not promoting value.

What is morality all about? Here I will tell you what I think. But first, the boring background stuff: What are the main normative ethical theories that philosophers talk about?

Utilitarianism and Consequentialism

If you believe the whole point of morality is to promote happiness, then you would be a utilitarian. Utilitarians think that, when you are deciding what to do, it is always better to do what would produce more happiness. That is what morality is all about.

Utilitarianism is a type of consequentialism. Consequentialism is the more general view that the whole point of morality is to promote value, or in other words, to promote good “consequences”. Utilitarians are consequentialists who believe that happiness is the only thing valuable in itself. Of course, others may disagree with the utilitarians. Maybe you think the whole point of morality is to promote justice, in which case you would be a non-utilitarian consequentialist.

The most common question in ethics is whether an action is morally right or wrong. Consequentialists traditionally argue for the classical criterion of rightness: an action is right (and otherwise wrong) if and only if it maximizes value. An action maximizes value when no alternative action by the agent could have produced greater value. “Classical” utilitarians adopt this criterion, believing an action is wrong unless it maximizes total happiness.

Many social reformers were consequentialists. This is no surprise. Consequentialists think that the whole point of morality is to make the world better. That’s just another way of saying that morality is about promoting value. The goals of a sincere social reformer therefore align perfectly with what consequentialists think morality is all about.

Deontology

If consequentialism is the view that morality is about promoting value, then deontology is the view that there is more to morality than promoting value. The rough intuitive idea behind deontology is that you should follow certain rules, even though doing so may not always lead to good consequences. Three features characterize deontology: constraints, options, and special obligations.

Constraints are prohibitions against certain kinds of actions even when these actions might produce good consequences. For example, a constraint against intentionally killing innocent people would make it wrong for a doctor to (without consent) harvest a patient's organs to save five other patients. Constraints can be thought to express rights, such as rights against non-interference or being used as a mere means. In the organ harvesting case, the doctor arguably violates the patient's rights.

Options are permissions to bring about suboptimal outcomes under some circumstances. In traditional deontology, options are essentially permissions to let other people suffer and die so that you can spend time working on your own personal projects. (Never mind the projects of the people dying!) People find options appealing because, without them, you'd have to dedicate your life to promoting the good, which seems too demanding.

Special obligations are obligations we have to people due to our relationships with them. For example, you might be obligated to help your friend over a stranger because they are your friend.

These features all involve obligations or permissions to act in ways that result in suboptimal outcomes considered from an impersonal perspective. However, deontologists don't have to embrace all three. W.D. Ross, for example, accepted special obligations and constraints, but not options. My adviser, Piers Rawling, is sympathetic to special obligations and options, but not constraints.

Moral progress

To see why someone may not like deontology, we can start with a related concept: moral progress. The world, as it currently stands, has lots of bad things going on. Billions of people and animals are born into lives of destitution and slavery. When we eliminate these bad things, the world gets better. That is progress.

Progress seems really important. However, each characteristic feature of deontology restricts progress in its own way. Constraints sometimes make it wrong to improve the world, as in (perhaps) the organ harvesting case. Special obligations sometimes make it obligatory to worsen the world, like when loyalty to friends demands prioritizing their interests. Options permit us to fail to make progress by officially sanctioning self-centered projects and moral torpor.

If you think that moral progress should be a priority in worlds so blighted as ours, then deontology’s anti-progressivism is a red flag. But might consequentialism have the opposite problem?

2861 Consequentialism

Imagine the year is 2861, the millennium anniversary of John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism. The world is in a near-utopian-like state, where all gratuitous suffering has been eliminated. Everyone’s basic needs are met, and everyone has the freedom to pursue the sort of life they envision for themselves. The perennial questions of ethics remain: How should people live? What should they care about? What would it be most worthwhile to do?

The 2861 Consequentialists argue that, even though the world is really good already, it could still be slightly better. So, the most worthwhile thing to do, or what one should care most about, is making the world ever so slightly better. However, the 2861 Deontologists argue that this fixation with promoting the good is outdated, based on a “nightmare view of existence” that no longer holds true. They concede that, back in 2024, a morality focused on anything other than preventing suffering would be missing the forest for the trees. But, they say, the forest is gone now, and we have our lives to live. What matters now is that we treat each other with respect, and avoid regressing to past miseries.

Progressive Deontology

It seems to me like the 2861 Deontologists have the better end of the argument. This suggests two desiderata for our theorizing:

1. When things are good, moral progress is not of central importance.

2. When things are bad, moral progress is of central importance.

The crux of my argument against consequentialism is that consequentialists cannot accommodate (1) without giving up their theory, but deontologists can accommodate (2) by excising the most anti-progressive elements of their theory. Hence, the best explanation of (1) and (2) is a progressive deontology.

To illustrate, a progressive deontologist might hold that options never permit you to ignore the basic needs of others. Options would only exist for most people after moral progress has ensured those needs are met. Moral progress “unlocks” options. Similarly, when basic needs aren't at stake, there could be protections against being used as a mere means (even to promote the good). Moral progress "unlocks" these protections. The slogan of progressive deontology is thus “utilitarianism today, deontology tomorrow” – but to be clear, it is strictly speaking a deontological theory.

The best argument for deontology is not that it matches our initial intuitions about cases (like the organ harvesting case). These intuitions will change over time as we overcome our biases and as we develop more sophisticated philosophical views. Rather, the best argument for deontology is that it best captures what morality is all about. Morality is not about promoting value, as shown by 2861 Consequentialism. Morality is about what we are permitted to do (or not do) in pursuit of our self-interest. This explains our earlier desiderata: When the world is bad, you’re permitted to do less, because more people are in need of aid. 

I like to put the idea in terms of freedom: Morality is about what we are free to do. Moral progress therefore gives us freedom, because moral progress renders us free to do more things. Moral progress is thus important not just because we should help those in need, but also for the freedom it provides. The consequentialist conception of morality can then be thought of as a limiting case: It is the morality according to which we are (ideally) free to do only one thing: maximize value.

Since the concept of respect is widely invoked within the tradition of deontology, I will suggest how to frame my view using that concept: We are free (or permitted) to do anything consistent with respect for others. In my view, respect for others entails helping them when they are in need of aid. So, a progressive deontology emerges from this theory of respect. But, once people have their basic needs or deserts met, respect does not require that you maximize their well-being. It requires not harming them, not unduly interfering with their lives, and so on. In other words, once people have their basic needs met, the requirements of morality can be expressed by constraints against treating people in certain ways. So, what we end up with is a moral theory that joins the libertarianism of deontology with the progressivism of consequentialism.