A Primer on Human Action and the Moral Object (original) (raw)
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Notes on Moral Theology: Fundamental Moral Theology at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century
Theological Studies, 2006
The author's survey of the writings of moral theologians over the past five years shows a deep concern about both the nature of moral theology and the role of moral theologians. A certain urgency animates much contemporary reflection calling the moralist to be challenged by the vocation to serve the Church and to explore better the ways Westerners can learn from other cultures. In this regard, virtue ethics continues to serve as a helpful medium for such intercultural dialogue. DEATH M ORAL THEOLOGIANS in France and the United States suffered the untimely loss of revered colleagues. On August 14, 2004, Xavier Thévenot died at the age of 65. His works spanning nearly four decades treated topics such as sexuality (among the young, the old, the celibate, the homosexual); morality and spirituality; an ethics of risk; and ethical discernment. 1 On August 3, 2005, William C. Spohn died at the age of 61. A frequent contributor to these pages, he set the agenda for discussions on Scripture and ethics, virtue ethics, spirituality and morality, and HIV/ AIDS. 2 The beloved Bill matched depth with style. JAMES F. KEENAN, S.J., received the S.T.L. and S.T.D. degrees from the Gregorian University and is now professor of theological ethics at Boston College. His primary research interests include fundamental moral theology and its history, Aquinas's moral theology, virtue ethics, and issues related to church leadership, HIV/AIDS, and genetics. His most recent monographs are Moral Wisdom: Lessons and Texts from the Catholic Tradition (2004) and The Works of Mercy: The Heart of Catholicism (2004) both from Rowman & Littlefield. A new book, Paul and Virtue Ethics, with Daniel Harrington, S.J., is forthcoming, also from Rowman & Littlefield. Father Keenan wishes to thank Seongjin James Ahn for his intrepid bibliographical assistance on this article.
Three conceptions of action in moral theory
Nous, 2001
Philosophers have long been interested in the relation between the world and the mind which strives to know it. In this paper I argue that there is also a deep question about the relation between the world and the agent who strives to act in it. The question is not primarily about the ...
Moral Theology: The Present State of the Discipline
Theological Studies, 1973
In the light of the enormous changes that have occurred in Catholic moral theology in the last decade, this study will attempt to describe the present self-identity of the discipline. The methodological approach will involve a dialogue with, and response to, the understanding of Catholic moral theology proposed by Roger Mehl in his recent Catholic Ethics and Protestant Ethics. 1 Mehl indicates both the recent convergences and continuing divergences between Roman Catholic and Protestant ethics. The divergences, according to Mehl, are the following: nature and supernature-the anthropological problem; natural law and natural morality; the meaning of secularization; soul and body. 2 What Mehl calls persistent divergences and what others commonly describe as the distinctive characteristics of Catholic moral theology can be reduced to three generic headings: natural law, authoritarianism, and theological presuppositions. 3 A consideration of these three fundamental questions will indicate the present state of the discipline of Catholic moral theology. NATURAL LAW The category of natural law will include the philosophical questions of methodology, the meaning of nature, the place of law in ethics, and the role of norms or principles in the solution of practical questions. This consideration prescinds from the more theological questions connected with natural law such as the relationship of nature and grace, the role of sin, the connection between the order of creation and the order of 1 Roger Mehl, Ethique catholique et éthique protestante (Neuchâtel, 1970). Future references will be to the English translation, Catholic Ethics and Protestant Ethics, tr. James H. Farley (Philadelphia, 1971). As will become evident in the article, I believe that Catholic moral theology has changed more drastically than Mehl realizes. His book developed from a series of lectures originally given at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1968, so that the author is really reflecting his understanding at that time. However, even at that time and earlier, other theologians were aware of the incipient changes in Roman Catholic ethics even in those areas of divergences developed by Mehl. See, e.g., Franz Böckle, Law and Conscience (New York, 1966), which grew out of a series of lectures delivered in 1963. From the Protestant and American perspective, see James M. Gustafson, "New Directions in Moral Theology," Commonweal 87 (Feb. 23, 1968) 617-23. 2 Mehl, p. 65.
I study different medieval explanations of moral goodness in relation to its main principles, i.e., the end of the agent and the object of the action. Special focus lies on Thomas Aquinas who considers the end (that which is willed) to be not only the 'origin' of moral goodness, but also its main 'criterion'. Peter Abelard, whose ethics I argue not to be subjectivist, had developed a similar theory, though the vocabulary he uses is not yet very refined. By contrast, for Albert and Duns Scotus the end is accidental to the moral act.
THE CONCEPT AND THE FORM OF THE MORAL ACTION
In the experience of the moral action we can find such obviousness, which could give us a way to find the ethics. Moral actions are the conscious or reasonable actions caused by moral considerations or by idea of the moral due. Examples of moral actions are the friendly action, the forgiveness, the loyalty and the justice. Description of friendly act contains important difficulty: a friendly act can't take place or for the sake of some external purposes or in order to seem friendly. And the is not so much that it is not defined in any state of things (rational or social definition), but the fact that it generally difficult to describe as a reasonable, sequential action: the presence of intention makes a friendly act as such makes it impossible. Therefore, to understand as possible friendly act as a conscious or sequential action, we have to assume such motives, or a position that would not be reduced to the status quo, or to an value morality as such. Similarly, can be described the experience of forgiveness. As well as a friendly act, forgiveness contains rational contradiction: "forgiveness can only be unforgivable". Indeed, if in the act of forgiveness we dealt with what should (or allowed) to forgive, it would have abolished the very need of forgiveness as some special act, special actions. Forgiveness (as well as a friendly act) is inexplicable in terms of "reality" - the real situation and the actual social relations. It is explicable only if it involves an uncertain future, or if it admits that future surpasses any opportunities to present themselves or to present the relationship with the abuser. Thus, the analysis of the experience of acts done for moral reasons, shows us that the ethical experience is essentially an experience of openness to the future or to the possibility of being. Description of the real ethical experience it requires the identification of rational contradictions: moral actions violate current order relations, they have no reason in the order of things, but also have no reason in the independent value of morality as such. We recognize as moral such act as gives an opportunity to make the future or being realized.
Moral Theology Out of Western Europe
Theological Studies, 1998
The authors offer a panoramic view of contemporary moral theology from West European countries organized around five themes: reception of recent papal magisterial documents, "autonomous" ethics in the context of faith, natural law, conscience and moral reasoning, and issues in bioethics. Europeans are seen as emphasizing the agent as a relational subject intimately linked to the rest of humanity, to the natural order, and to God, and as almost always writing from a historicist rather than a classicist viewpoint] L AST YEAR at a meeting of regular contributors to the "Notes in Current Moral Theology" a discussion developed about the need for these notes to have a more international scope, and we were delegated to make a first foray into that arena by focusing on moral theology published in Western Europe (basically Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain) over the past five years. After reviewing more than two hundred books and essays, we recognize that we have hardly done justice to the depth of those works. We are surprised, however, by an emerging consensus: the moral theology coming out of Western Europe is basically continuing on the original agenda established by those who promoted an autonomous ethics in the context of faith, but with one important modification. Writers today understand autonomy in two different ways. As opposed to theonomy or heteronomy, contemporary writers insist on the basic insight of an autonomous ethics in the context of faith, that is, of a responsible human self-determination. As a basic telos, however, autonomy is an inadequate expression for the end of the human subject. Almost every major contributor insists on the need to talk of the realization of a subject as relational. A profound interest in the person whose subjec