DEONTOLOGIA. – From τὸ ἄξον, “duty”: the science of duties. It is the title of Bentham’s posthumous work, Deontology or the science of morality (London 1834), in which his utilitarian system is expounded, establishing as the norm of morality the sum of the benefits and pleasures obtainable from the human act. The word is now used to designate, either universally or within a particular ethical-social field, the theory of duties. A derivative term is deontologism, which generically signifies a system of morality founded on the notion of duty. In theodicy, the proof of God’s existence derived from the feeling of moral obligation inherent in human consciousness is sometimes called deontological.
BIBL.: A. Lalande, s. V. in Vocab. de la philos., 5th ed., Paris 1947, p. 207. For the deontological argument, F. A. Palumbo, Theodicea, Rome 1942, pp. 232–41 (with bibliography). Ugo Viglino