The Dissolution of the Dualism between Utilitarianism and Deontology Based on the System of Generalized Harm-Avoidance Monism

Since Bentham systematically constructed the ethical system of utilitarianism and Kant established the core framework of deontology, Western ethics has fallen into a two-hundred-year impasse of dualistic opposition between these two paradigms. Existing reconciliation schemes have failed to break away from the dualistic analytical framework, achieving only limited compatibility at the level of formal logic, without touching the underlying motivation of moral behavior, and thus cannot fundamentally resolve the core conflict between the two paradigms. Taking Generalized Harm-Avoidance Monism as the core analytical tool and the core meta-proposition that "generalized harm-avoidance is the sole ultimate motivation of all human conscious behaviors", this paper first gives a normative overview of the core theory, and then proves from the origin of behavior that utilitarianism and deontology are not opposing ethical paradigms; essentially, they are differentiated harm-avoidance strategies at different scales under the same underlying logic of harm-avoidance, thereby completely dissolving the two-hundred-year ethical dualism. Using Generalized Harm-Avoidance Monism as a unified criterion, this paper provides a closed-loop solution to classic ethical dilemmas such as the trolley problem. Meanwhile, it finds that the integration and assimilation of the two paradigms by Generalized Harm-Avoidance Monism is highly consistent with Hare’s double-level moral model in conclusions. The core difference between the two lies in that Hare takes universal prescriptivism of moral language as the analytical path, while this paper takes the deconstruction of the underlying motivation of human behavior as the core path. Finally, with the unitary logic of generalized harm-avoidance, this paper supplements the underlying ontological and motivational support that Hare’s double-level moral model lacks, providing a brand-new, closed-loop unitary analytical paradigm for basic theoretical research in ethics.