Author(s):
Stroh, Ralf
[German Version] The ethics of duty or deontological ethics (Deontology) offers a systematic presentation of the internal logic of rational action and the regular interdependencies between actions and differs in this way from a teleological ethics oriented toward the result of the action (Ethics of goods). The reference point of systematization, in this regard, is either (a) a purely formal reason, conceived a-historically – as transcending the boundaries of all systems of ethics oriented by inclinations and interests -, so that the ethics of duty develops the conditions for the possibility of an inherently non-contradictory, historically indifferent sphere of free rational actions (I. Kant, Categorical imperative) and, to this degree, is able to demand the assent of every rational being; or (b) an ultimate reason subject to a historical process of formation, so that the ethics of duty states, descriptively and not prescriptively, its presentation only from the perspective of a standpoint that has become historical and – only in this sense! – contingent, but which, under certain circumstances, can recognize that in it the perfection of human reason is present. Agreement with this kind of ethics of duty can, then, however, be no longer expected through appeal to its formal logicality, but can appear to be only contingent on the foundation of an inaccessible certainty of the truth of the finite concept of reason defined in terms of content. In general ethical discourse, a Kantian ethics of duty predominates, although, in place of an emphatic concept of reason, …