INTRODUCTION

- During the flag ceremony of that Monday morning January 24 2017 the mayor of Baguio
awarded a certificate from the city Government that commended Reggie Cabatutan for his
“extraordinary show of honesty" in performance of their duties or practice of profession.

- If he returns the suitcase there are no promise of an award from the City Government of
Baguio and no promise of reward from the owner.

- Yet Reggie returned the suitcase without the promise of a reward.

- A reward in the first place, is not an entitlement. It is a freely given as an unrequited gift for
one's service or effort.

- To hold a moral conviction means believing that is one's duty to do the right thing.

DUTY AND AGENCY

Deontology

- the moral theory that evaluates actions that are done because of duty.

- comes from the greek word "deon" which means "being necessary"

- refers to the study of duty and obligation

Immanuel Kant

- was a German enlightenment philosopher who wrote one of the most important
works on Moral philosophy.

Moral philosophy-
- developed revolutionary insights concerning the human mind and the conditions for
the possibility of knowledge.

Groundwork toward a Metaphysics of Morals

- primary text of Kant

- he intends to develop "supreme principle of morality"

- brings attention to the fact that we, human beings have the faculty called rational will.

Rational will

- capacity to act according to principles that we determine for ourselves.

- points out the difference between animals and persons.

- animals are sentient organism

Sentience

- organism has the ability to perceive and navigate its external environment.

Rationality

- consist of mental faculty to construct ideas and thoughts that are beyond our
immediate surroundings.

- people are also rational

- capacity for mental abstraction which arises from the operations of faculty of reason.

- ability to stop and think about what we are doing.

- we imagine different and better world and create mental images of how interact with
other people in that world we live in

- we do not only have the capacity to imagine and construct mental images but we also
have the ability to act on to enacts mental images.

- ability to enact our thoughts is the basis for national will.

- first construction consist in how we imagine things can be then implement that in
second construction.

- through imagination and reflection we conceive of how we could affect possibly even
change we live in.

Rational

- refers to the faculty go intervene in the world, to act in a manner that is consistently with
our reason.

- animals only act according to impulses base on their natural instinct.

- animals "act" with immediacy = Latin ( " i + medius" ) no middle

- they only react to external and internal pulses.

Human

- have reasons which intervenes between impulse and act.

- we have ability to stop and think about what we are doing

- conceiving of ways to act according to certain rational principles

Agency

- ability of a person to act based on their inventions and mental states.

 AUTONOMY

– Kant claims that the property of rational will is autonomy which opposite of heteronomy
– Greek words that instructive: AUTOS, HETEROS, NOMOS,

 AUTOS – “Self”
 HETEROS – “others”
 NOMOS – “law”
 AUTOS + NOMOS = AUTONOMY means “Self-law/self- legislating”
 HETEROS + NOMOS = HETERONOMY means “ other law”

– When we think of someone being “subject to the law” we usually think of an imposing
authority figure that uses his power to control the subject complying with his will.

 “Subject “ comes from the Latin word SUB(UNDER) and JACERE (TO
THROW)
When we combine the two words we brought or thrown under something
– The will must give the law to itself
– Kant describes autonomy as the will that subject to a principle or law
– Autonomy is rational and internal authority
– Heteronomy self implication or external authority

Example of how autonomy works: at a young age you need other people to command within
yourself which are your parent you must have the reward or punishment to do a task given by
your parent, while if you are teenager you have your self –law to do a task that given to yourself.
Specifically in brushing your teeth.

Free choice

-is a choice or action that can be determined by pure reason

Human choice

- is a choice that may indeed be affected but not determined by sensible impulses

Autonomy

-is a property of the will in those instances when pure reason is the cause of the action

Heteronomy

-the will occurs when any foreign impulse, whether it is external or sensible is what compels a
person to act

UNIVERSALIZABILITY
Substantive moral theory- promulgates the specific actions that comprise that theory.

Formal moral theory- does not supply the rules or commands straight away .
-provides as the form or framework of moral theory.
Categorical imperative - which provides a procedural way of identifying the rightness and
wrongness of an action.

-In the formulation of the categorical imperative, Kant call our attention to the kind of maxim that
we live by.

-in groundwork towards a metaphysics of morals, Kant takes up the issue of making false
promises.

-Kant distinguishes between being “consistent with itself “ and “contradicting itself “.

SUMMARY

-Kant’s categorical imperative is a formal, not substantive, moral philosophy. It can be also be
distinguished whether such as an action is permissible. Instead of being given a list of
substantive moral commands, we now have a sort of tool, like measuring instrument, that tells
us whether an action is morally permissible or not.

-Reggie can test his own moral permissibly of the formulated maxim. He can now assess his
maxim by imagining it as everyone’s obligation. The universalized maxim of Reggie becomes
contradictory, for the meaning of ownership is contradicted.

-In summary, this procedure is properly used when one wishes to determine the moral
permissibly of an action. The categorical imperative is precisely for the rational will that
autonomous. The test for universalizability makes possible that self-legislation, for the result of
categorical imperative, is nothing other than the capacity to distinguish between permissible and
impermissible moral acts.

-Enlightenment morality- this kind of morality is opposed to paternalism, which evokes the
metaphor of father.

-Deontology is a place in the spirit of enlightenment morality.

-Based on the light of one’s own reason when maturity and rational capacity take hold of
persons decision making.

-Reason is depicted as having its own light in contrast to our long experience of paternalism in
human history, in which we find dictatorship and authority figure that claim to benevolent, but
have proven to be oppressive and exploitative of those who do not have political power.
CHAPTER 4

DEONTOLOGY

Khayzelle Gonzaga
Ariane Marie Baldos
Rica Barcelona
Mary Chris Mangahas
Steffanie Sonio
Clarisse Bigcas
Jane Sheryll Tacbianan

BSED 2 ENGLISH