Defending Deontology What matters most is the result. The greatest good, for the greatest number, that is what is best would best be defended by using deontology. According to Williams and Bruce (2012), deontology looks at ethics by considering what the person’s duty is in a situation. In the eyes of a deontologist, a person is acting morally if they do the right thing no matter the consequences. This essay will look at whether severing the greater good is ethical when examined by deontology. Deontology was first developed by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), who was arguably one of the greatest philosophers of all time. Kant developed deontology to have a consistent moral system by using reason. Kant believed that there were some moral laws that all rational beings had to obey simply because they were rational beings. Additionally, Kant believed that humans can control their own behaviors and therefore did not have to rely on God or their community to know what was right from wrong (duty-based ethics, nd). Deontologists believe it is wrong to kill innocent people, wrong to steal, and wrong to tell lies. Deontology requires a person to do the right thing, even when the result is bad. A good example of …show more content…
When interrogators resorted to water-boarded techniques it only took about 90 seconds for Mohammed to begin talking and the technique never had to be used again (Murdock, 2007). During his interrogations, Mohammed helped prevent at least six major terrorist attacks including one planned in 2003 which involved derailing a train near Washington, D.C. and using torches to sever the Brooklyn Bridge's cables causing it to plunge it into the East River. Another plot involved the assassination of the Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, the placing and detonating of explosives at U.S. gas stations, and poisoning American water reservoirs (Murdock,