"...most of us are inclined to think that there's more to morality than consequences. Most of us are inclined to think that there are cases in which actions can have bad results — rather, actions can have good results and yet, for all that, be morally forbidden. Or actions could have bad results and yet, for all that, still be morally required. That's not to say that consequences don't matter morally; it's to claim, rather, that consequences aren't the only thing that matters morally. Consequences can be outweighed by other morally relevant factors. Well, that's the position that's held by the branch of moral theory known as deontology.
So deontologists say other things matter morally besides consequences. In deciding whether your action is right or wrong, you have to pay attention to the consequences, but you have to pay attention to other things as well. What other things? Well, unsurprisingly, this is an area then in which different deontologists will disagree one to the next in terms of what else they want to add to the list of morally relevant factors. But there's one kind of additional factor that most of us in our deontological moods would want to add to the list, and that's this — so one, at any rate, that's relevant I think, most directly relevant for thinking about suicide. That factor is the factor of not just what was the upshot of your action but how you produced that upshot; not just what the results were, but what was your means of getting those results and more particularly still, did you have to harm anybody to produce the results?"
© Shelly Kagan
Yale Lectures on Philosophy of Death, 2007
So deontologists say other things matter morally besides consequences. In deciding whether your action is right or wrong, you have to pay attention to the consequences, but you have to pay attention to other things as well. What other things? Well, unsurprisingly, this is an area then in which different deontologists will disagree one to the next in terms of what else they want to add to the list of morally relevant factors. But there's one kind of additional factor that most of us in our deontological moods would want to add to the list, and that's this — so one, at any rate, that's relevant I think, most directly relevant for thinking about suicide. That factor is the factor of not just what was the upshot of your action but how you produced that upshot; not just what the results were, but what was your means of getting those results and more particularly still, did you have to harm anybody to produce the results?"
© Shelly Kagan
Yale Lectures on Philosophy of Death, 2007
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