Deontology, Virtue Ethics, and Moral Duty in Literature
This paper examines deontological ethics and virtue ethics as lenses for analyzing moral dilemmas in Ambrose Bierce's short story "A Horseman in the Sky" and Plato's Euthyphro. Drawing on Kant, Frankena, and Ross, it explores whether duty alone can justify extreme actions such as a son killing his father in wartime. The paper argues that Plato's dialogue and Bierce's tragic narrative both reveal the insufficiency of rigid deontological thinking, suggesting that virtue ethics — grounded in an objective yet contextually sensitive standard — may offer a more adequate framework for navigating complex moral situations where individual duty and broader consequences must both be weighed.
- Deontology and the Nature of Moral Duty: Defines deontology and its core principles
- Kant, Frankena, and Ross on Defining Right Action: Compares Kant, Frankena, and Ross on moral rightness
- Carter Druse and the Tragedy of Filial Duty: Bierce's story illustrates duty's tragic extremes
- Plato's Euthyphro: Self-Righteousness and Moral Limits: Euthyphro parallels Druse in self-righteous duty
- Virtue Ethics as a Superior Ethical Framework: Virtue ethics better handles moral complexity
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper uses two literary texts — Bierce's short story and Plato's Euthyphro — as concrete case studies that animate otherwise abstract philosophical concepts, making the ethical analysis vivid and grounded.
- It moves fluidly between multiple ethical thinkers (Kant, Frankena, Ross) and applies their positions to specific narrative moments, demonstrating comparative philosophical reasoning.
- The conclusion resists a tidy resolution, allowing the ambiguity of both texts to support a nuanced argument about the limits of deontology and the relative strength of virtue ethics.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates cross-textual philosophical application: it introduces a set of ethical frameworks, then tests those frameworks against two separate literary works to reveal their strengths and shortcomings. This approach — using narrative to stress-test theory — is a hallmark of applied ethics writing in the humanities.
Structure breakdown
The essay opens by defining deontology with reference to Kant, Frankena, and Ross, then pivots to Bierce's story as a dramatic illustration of duty taken to its extreme. It introduces Plato's Euthyphro as a parallel case, compares both narratives, and closes by arguing that virtue ethics better accommodates the moral complexity neither text resolves. The argument builds cumulatively, using literature to expose the gaps in rigid rule-based ethics.
Deontology and the Nature of Moral Duty
Deontology posits that the rightness of an action is based upon its inherent quality — that is, whether it corresponds to one's duty based on one's state in life (p. 242). Kant prescribed absolutes when it came to defining this quality, but others have not. Kant stated that a good will "is good in itself" and that this goodness is not dependent upon performance or effects (p. 245). It is good, in other words, because it is doing what it should be doing.
Kant, Frankena, and Ross on Defining Right Action
In a sense, this is similar to the idea of virtue ethics, because both rely on an idea of universals — good defined in an absolute way. Frankena posits that one may break a promise (p. 262). Ross contends that we must intuit what is right by consulting deep within ourselves (p. 276). This is more or less what Carter Druse's father tells the young man he must do when Carter says he will fight for the Union rather than for the Confederate South.
Druse ends up firing at his father in the course of the war, and the act is shocking — yet he convinces himself that he must do this based upon his own father's admonition that Carter do what he believes his duty to be. But can one's duty ever be to kill one's own father?
Carter Druse and the Tragedy of Filial Duty
The story has echoes of Plato's Euthyphro, which is also a tale of a young man pitting himself against his father. In Euthyphro, the young man is prosecuting his father for killing a servant. Socrates admonishes the young man who thinks he is virtuous and doing what is pleasing to the gods. It becomes evident over the course of the dialogue that Euthyphro cannot actually say what is pleasing to the gods, or why an action is pleasing to the gods; he is more self-righteous than anything, and does not have the least bit of concern that prosecuting his father might actually be offensive to the gods. Socrates seems to ascertain that because of the hierarchical nature of family, a son should never prosecute a father, for it would be like the creature prosecuting the creator. Yet Euthyphro does not want to discuss the matter much and departs before Socrates can leave a definitive impression. Plato's point is that one cannot simply assume that one's actions are right based upon what one perceives one's duty to be.
For Druse, this lesson is driven home with great effect: he kills his father because he is fighting for the Union and his father is not. They are at war with one another, but this is ultimately a tragedy that shreds to pieces any coherent notion of morality. The final utterance in the short story — "Good God!" — is an exclamation that reflects this tragedy. How can one actually justify such violence against one's own father? Yet Carter does, at least initially. The reader is left to assess whether this action is right or not, but the expression "Good God!" at the end suggests that Ambrose Bierce's own thoughts on the matter are more complex and impossible to define than any set of moral philosophy could actually put into words.
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