ABSTRACT
We have seen how an ethics of empathic care can deal with issues of helping others, and it is time now to see whether and how it can handle deontology. I am going to assume that my readers know what deontology is, but let me just briefly remind you that the idea of deontological restrictions is typically regarded as involving the assumption that certain sorts of positive acts or commissions – such as killing, injuring, stealing, lying, and breaking promises – are inherently (at least prima facie) wrong. One way of conceiving this wrongness (that it makes sense to focus on here) is to think of the positive actions as morally worse than corresponding negative acts, or omissions, that have similar consequences: for example, killing the innocent as worse than letting innocent people die. And act-consequentialism and act-utilitarianism precisely refuse to make such a distinction, thus rejecting, at least at ground-floor level, the whole of deontology. In doing so, the utilitarian regards all of morality as involving issues of helping people (or sentient beings), and since this helping is supposed to be understood as impartial between or among all individuals, utilitarianism is naturally seen as treating all of morality as a matter of beneficence.
