1 - The nature of material cooperation and moral complicity

Summary

COOPERATION WITH EVIL

For Christian ethicists, the scholastic notion of “cooperation with evil” (also known as the principle of legitimate material cooperation) is the logical starting point in evaluating our moral responsibility for inadvertently facilitating others' wrongdoing. Our actions that are appropriated and used by others for their misconduct can be described as merely “the occasion (but not the cause) of the sinful deed.” In fact, our actions may yet be morally licit even if we foresee their subsequent misuse by others. Alphonsus Liguori (1696–1787) is credited with formulating this principle in his Theologia Moralis:

That [cooperation] is formal which concurs in the bad will of the other, and it cannot be without sin; that [cooperation] is material which concurs only in the bad action of the other, apart from the cooperator's intention. But the latter [material cooperation] is licit when the action is good or indifferent in itself; and when one has reason for doing it that is both just and proportioned to the gravity of the other's sin and to the closeness of the assistance which is given to the carrying out of that sin.

(Grisez 1997, 873, 876)

This principle has been developed even further, and there is wide agreement among commentators on its key distinctions.

Coordinate agent (co-principal) versus a mere cooperator

A coordinate agent or a co-principal is one who has the same wrongful intent as the principal and who performs part of the wrongful act itself. Thus, a coordinate agent (co-principal) is always guilty.