Somewhat orthogonal to the distinction between agent-centered versus patient-centered deontological theories are contractualist deontological theories. Morally wrong acts are, on such accounts, those acts that would be forbidden by principles that people in a suitably described social contract would accept (e.g., Rawls 1971; Gauthier 1986), or that would be forbidden only by principles that such people could not “reasonably reject” (Scanlon 2003). In deontology, as elsewhere in ethics, it is not entirely clear whether a contractualist account is really normative as opposed to metaethical. If such account is a first order normative account, it is probably best construed as a patient-centered deontology; for the central obligation would be to do onto others only that to which they have consented. But so construed, modern contractualist accounts would share the problems that have long bedeviled historical social contract theories: how plausible is it that the “moral magic” of consent is the first principle of morality? And how much of what is commonly regarded as permissible to do to people can (in any realistic sense of the word) be said to be actually consented to by them, expressly or even implicitly? In fact modern contractualisms look meta-ethical, and not normative. Thomas Scanlon’s contractualism, for example, which posits at its core those norms of action that we can justify to each other, is best construed as an ontological and epistemological account of moral notions. The same may be said of David Gauthier’s contractualism. Yet so construed, metaethical contractualism as a method for deriving moral norms does not necessarily lead to deontology as a first order ethics. John Harsanyi, for example, argues that parties to the social contract would choose utilitarianism over the principles John Rawls argues would be chosen (Harsanyi 1973). Nor is it clear that meta-ethical contractualism, when it does generate a deontological ethic, favors either an agent centered or a patient centered version of such an ethic.

According to agent-centered theories, we each have both permissions and obligations that give us agent-relative reasons for action. An agent-relative reason is an objective reason, just as are agent neutral reasons; neither is to be confused with either the relativistic reasons of a relativist meta-ethics, nor with the subjective reasons that form the nerve of psychological explanations of human action

A second group of deontological moral theories can be classified as patient-centered, not agent-centered. These theories are rights-based rather than duty-based; and some versions purport to be quite agent-neutral in the reasons they give moral agents. All patient-centered deontological theories are properly characterized as theories premised on people’s rights. An influential version posits, as its core right (often described by “the Means Principle”), the right against being used only as means for producing good consequences without one’s consent. Such a core right is not to be confused with more discrete rights, such as the right against being killed, or being killed intentionally. It is a right against being used by another for the user’s or others’ benefit. More specifically, this version of patient-centered deontological theories proscribes the using of another’s body, labor, and talent without the latter’s consent. One finds this notion expressed, albeit in different ways, in the work of the so-called Right Libertarians (e.g., Nozick 1974, Mack 2000), but also in the works of the Left-Libertarians as well (e.g., Steiner 1994; Vallentyne and Steiner 2000; Vallentyne, Steiner, and Otsuka 2005). On this view, the scope of strong moral duties—those that are the correlatives of others’ rights—is jurisdictionally limited and does not extend to resources for producing the Good that would not exist in the absence of those intruded upon—that is, their bodies, labors, and talents. In addition to the Libertarians, others whose views include this prohibition on using others include Quinn, Kamm, Alexander, Ferzan, Gauthier, and Walen (Quinn 1989; Kamm 1996; Alexander 2016; Alexander and Ferzan 2009, 2012; Gauthier 1986; Walen 2014, 2016).