Deontology

     This was a tricky theory for me to wrap my head around at first. Its not as straightforward as the other ones have been so far. Anyway, deontologists have a sense of duty to do what is right by universal law despite the consequences. They go off of what they ought to do as opposed to what they desire. To determine if something is universal law or not, you have to look into the action you're about to perform, and analyze whether or not you would be okay with others doing this action too. To be universal law you must be okay with others doing the action as well because there are no exceptions to the rules in deontology.
     We used the example in class of lying. Lying is universally considered wrong because if lying were a universal law, society could not function. People would never know if they were being told the truth, and we would assume that everything someone said could be a lie. Instead we usually assume what people say to be true because telling the truth is a universal law that most people follow. Deontologists have a duty to uphold the universal law. In class we used an example of someone whose friend murdered someone, but as a deontologist he was required to give a confession when prompted by police. The person knew his friend would go to jail, but he could not break one of the universal laws. He could not make an exception because that does not exist in a deontologists world. right is right and wrong is wrong.
     I can't say i'm a full on deontologist only because i don't fully understand what universal law is, but i understand that a deontologist's duty to uphold the universal laws is greater than duty to friends or other things. I feel like this theory is slightly vague for me, but maybe a more general theory would work better than something so detailed.