Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Ethical theory concerned with duties and rights.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The science of duty; ethics.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The science which relates to duty or moral obligation.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun ethics The ethical study of duties, obligations, and rights, with an approach focusing on the rightness or wrongness of actions themselves and not on the goodness or badness of the consequences of those actions.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Greek deon, deont-, obligation, necessity (from neuter present participle of dein, to need, lack; see deu- in Indo-European roots) + –logy.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Ancient Greek δέον (deon, "that which is binding, needful, right, proper") + λόγος (logos, "argument").

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Examples

  • The term deontology is derived from the Greek deon which means binding duty.

    THE MORAL DIMENSION Amitai Etzioni 1988

  • The term deontology is derived from the Greek deon which means binding duty.

    THE MORAL DIMENSION Amitai Etzioni 1988

  • The word deontology derives from the Greek words for duty

    Deontological Ethics Alexander, Larry 2007

  • Yet in some of his writings, Greene suggests that this weighs against deontological ethics, indicating that deontology is just a kind of rationalization of unreconstructed emotional prejudices, seeking (as Nietzsche said of Kant) “to prove, in a way that would dumbfound the common man, that the common man was right.”

    The Starry Heavens Above and the Moral Law Within (the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex) 2006

  • Yet in some of his writings, Greene suggests that this weighs against deontological ethics, indicating that deontology is just a kind of rationalization of unreconstructed emotional prejudices, seeking (as Nietzsche said of Kant) “to prove, in a way that would dumbfound the common man, that the common man was right.”

    The Starry Heavens Above and the Moral Law Within (the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex) 2006

  • What is the basis for the "ought" in deontology or the valuation of consequences in consequential ethics?

    A Telic View of the Universe 2006

  • This solution to the paradox of deontology, which is consistent with the spirit of the patient-centered version, may seem attractive, but it comes at a high cost.

    Deontological Ethics Alexander, Larry 2007

  • There is another school of thought withing ethics called deontology, which, says that virtue should be judged by intentions.

    carinosa34 Diary Entry carinosa34 2003

  • One Waterboarding is a Tragedy; a Million is a Statistic | Julian Sanchez Civilian life affords us the luxury of a good deal of deontology — better to let ten guilty men go free, and so on.

    One Waterboarding Is a Tragedy; A Million Is a Statistic 2009

  • Civilian life affords us the luxury of a good deal of deontology — better to let ten guilty men go free, and so on.

    One Waterboarding Is a Tragedy; A Million Is a Statistic 2009

Comments

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  • JM reckons of all the ontologies that deontology is the one up against it!

    March 24, 2011

  • "I have no idea what is happening in the world beyond my bedroom, but I can write a really good essay on deontology and natural moral law." -Twitter, April 16, 2016

    April 17, 2016