
Deontology
Tamar Gendler, professor of Philosophy and the Science of Human Nature at Yale, closes out her critique of utilitarianism before turning to Kant. The lecture opens with Bernard Williams's objection: a good person should sometimes feel reluctant to perform the act that maximizes happiness, even while recognizing it as the right thing to do, a tension utilitarian calculus cannot capture. Around the 21 minute mark Gendler shifts to deontology, laying out Kant's claim that the moral worth of an action rests on the will and intention of the agent rather than on consequences. She sketches the basic structure of Kant's theory, setting up its fuller treatment in the following lecture. Recorded in Spring 2011 as part of Yale's Open Courses series, this is a clear, lecture-hall walkthrough of the shift from consequentialist to deontological ethics.