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Debating “Intrinsic Evil”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2014

Michael P. Jaycox
Michael P. Jaycox*
Affiliation:
Boston College
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Abstract

Recent US election cycles, debates about the Affordable Care Act, and a variety of so-called culture war issues have placed the term “intrinsic evil” into public discourse. This issue's roundtable affords readers the opportunity to probe deeply various dimensions of the concept, such as the pedagogical effectiveness of the term, its current use in virtue ethics, and the rhetorical effectiveness of competing moral discourses. The authors' explorations range from consideration of classical questions about the substance and circumstances of acts to a taxonomy for “intrinsic evil” to how social processes affect the discourses available to ethicists.

Keywords

intrinsic evilvirtue ethicsproportionalismhuman rightsVeritatis Splendorexceptionless moral normsdouble effect
Type
Theological Roundtable
Information
Horizons , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , June 2014 , pp. 142 - 165
Copyright
Copyright © College Theology Society 2014 

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References

38 According to the prevailing wisdom of Catholic moral manuals, Aquinas held (1) that the three sources of morality were the “object” or behavior in itself, the intention, and the circumstances; (2) that certain types of behavior, contrary in themselves to the natural law, could never be employed as a means even to an otherwise good end; and (3) that the norms prohibiting such behavior held universally and obliged the agent without exception, regardless of her intention, in every applicable case. By contrast, Peter Knauer proposed that, for Aquinas, an act was unjustifiable only if the agent's own reason for acting (the intended end) were not “commensurate” with “the totality of the act,” inclusive of the behavioral means employed, any applicable norms, the relevant circumstances, and even the foreseeable consequence of causing one or more physical evils. His thesis implied that no material norm can oblige an agent without exception, the agent's own prudential judgment of proportionality instead being the decisive factor constituting the act itself precisely as a moral act, not only in difficult cases but also in every case. See Peter Knauer, “The Hermeneutic Function of the Principle of Double Effect,” in Curran and McCormick, Moral Norms and Catholic Tradition, 1–39, at 15; and Hoose, Bernard, Proportionalism: The American Debate and Its European Roots (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1987)Google Scholar, 34.

39 See Fuchs, Josef, “The Absoluteness of Behavioral Moral Norms,” in Personal Responsibility and Christian Morality (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1983), 115–52Google Scholar. His usage of the term “premoral evil” is analogous to Knauer's use of “physical evil.” Both authors locate the origin of the distinction in Aquinas. See Knauer, “The Hermeneutic Function,” 18ff.

40 From Fuchs's point of view, the only exceptionless norms in practice would be tautological norms prohibiting murder, theft, and the like as well as those norms “with precise delineations of action to which we cannot conceive of any kind of exception—e.g., cruel treatment of a child which is of no benefit to the child” (Fuchs, “The Absoluteness of Behavioral Moral Norms,” 141).

41 McCormick, Richard A., Notes on Moral Theology, 1965 through 1980 (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1981)Google Scholar, 533.

42 See Connery, John R., “Morality of Consequences: A Critical Appraisal,” Theological Studies 34, no. 3 (1973): 396–414CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Connery diagnoses Fuchs as a rule utilitarian.

43 See McCormick, Notes on Moral Theology, 542–43.

44 My understanding of this distinction is particularly indebted to the historical analysis found in Hoose, Proportionalism, 101–35.

45 See Bruno Schüller, “Direct Killing/Indirect Killing,” in Curran and McCormick, Moral Norms and Catholic Tradition, 138–57.

46 See Grisez, Germain and Shaw, Russell, Beyond the New Morality: The Responsibilities of Freedom, 3rd ed. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988)Google Scholar, 140ff.

47 I write “presumably” because Grisez and Shaw do not offer an entirely satisfying explanation for their apparent permissiveness toward removing life support in certain circumstances. Depending on how one chooses to construe the agent's intentions in a particular case, the act might violate their own requirement that the basic goods not be subordinated to one another in a means-ends relationship; see Grisez and Shaw, Beyond the New Morality, 150, 130ff.

48 Schüller objected to the neomanualist interpretation of the distinction on the same grounds; see Schüller, “Direct Killing/Indirect Killing,” 150ff.

49 See McCormick, Richard A., Ambiguity in Moral Choice (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 45ff.; and McCormick, Notes on Moral Theology, 352–53.

50 See McCormick, Ambiguity in Moral Choice, 58ff.

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52 See Kalbian, “Where Have All the Proportionalists Gone?”

53 See McCormick, Richard A., The Critical Calling: Reflections on Moral Dilemmas since Vatican II (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1989), 58–59.Google Scholar

54 See Grisez, Germain, The Way of the Lord Jesus, vol. 1, Christian Moral Principles (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1983), 141–71.Google Scholar

55 McCormick, Notes on Moral Theology, 353 (emphasis in the original).

56 Jean Porter, “The Moral Act in Veritatis Splendor and in Aquinas's Summa Theologiae: A Comparative Analysis,” in Allsopp and O'Keefe, “Veritatis Splendor,” 278–95, at 285–86.

57 Ibid., 289.

58 Ibid., 285, 281.

59 Sociological researchers generally seek to describe the function of social norms as a regulatory force in relation to human behavior, i.e., a social fact. They do not observe moral norms as such because to do so would imply studying aspects of human intentionality, which are not measurable, strictly speaking. This being the case, I generally treat sociological insights concerning the factual aspect of social norms as relevant to but not determinative of the value content of normative ethics.

60 Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich, “The German Ideology, Part I,” in The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Tucker, Robert C., 2nd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978), 146–200Google Scholar, at 172. Marx's argument that normative moral concepts are unilaterally produced by economic forces and ultimately function to advance the interests of the ruling class is now widely regarded as a simplistic explanation of a much more complex social process, although his arguably more fundamental insight that social location affects moral perception has stood up to critical scrutiny. For example, Karl Mannheim retained critical Marxist insights concerning perspective and social location but also sought to overcome the “dogmatic type of Marxism” by proposing that concepts are produced through several forms of group association including but not limited to economic class relationships; see Mannheim, Karl, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1940), 239–56Google Scholar. A detailed summary of the criticisms of Marxist reductionism is offered in Merton, Robert K., Social Theory and Social Structure, 2nd ed. (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1957)Google Scholar, 462ff.

61 Durkheim claimed that the ritual practices of religion itself are a community-binding phenomenon, the function of which is to facilitate the process by which language-concepts and other forms of knowledge are creatively and cooperatively produced. Being constructed and therefore “artificial,” social norms are nevertheless morally obliging because society's members have internalized the norms as being constitutive of their group identities. Although social norms are subjectively internalized, they remain objectively authoritative in themselves precisely because they are verifiable by collective experience and coherent in respect to one another. In other words, the fact that morality is a product of human institutions and cultures renders it more, not less, “true” in the eyes of society's members, according to Durkheim. See Durkheim, Émile, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, trans. Swain, Joseph Ward (New York: The Free Press, 1965), 22–32Google Scholar, 482–93. For further clarification on these points, see Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure, 472–73.

62 Berger, Peter L. and Luckmann, Thomas, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (New York: Doubleday, 1966), 34–46.Google Scholar

63 See Berger and Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality, 72–79, 132–33.

64 Etzioni, Amitai, “Social Norms: The Rubicon of Social Science,” in The Monochrome Society (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 163–85Google Scholar, at 181.

65 Ibid., 185.

66 Dedek, John F., “Moral Absolutes in the Predecessors of St. Thomas,” Theological Studies 38, no. 4 (1977): 654–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 679.

67 Dedek, John F., “Intrinsically Evil Acts: An Historical Study of the Mind of St. Thomas,” Thomist 43, no. 3 (1979): 385–413CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 405ff.

68 Dedek, John F., “Intrinsically Evil Acts: The Emergence of a Doctrine,” Recherches de Théologie Ancienne et Médiévale 50 (1983): 191–226Google Scholar, at 221ff.

69 See Jonsen, Albert R. and Toulmin, Stephen, The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 269–71.Google Scholar

70 See Keenan, James F., A History of Catholic Moral Theology in the Twentieth Century: From Confessing Sins to Liberating Consciences (New York: Continuum, 2010), 44–45.Google Scholar

71 Gaudium et Spes 27 does not contain the term “intrinsic evil,” though its authors do seem to assume that certain types of empirically observable behavior can be described as wrong in themselves, construing them as offenses against human dignity and the common good. The document condemns, for example, mutilation, a behavior that would obviously have a very different moral meaning depending on the circumstances and the intention of the agent in a particular case. The great majority of the types of actions listed are wrong by definition because of the agent's intention and/or contain some implied reference to cultural and institutional meaning; see Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes) 27, in Vatican Council II: The Basic Sixteen Documents, ed. Flannery, Austin (Northport, NY: Costello Publishing, 1996), 163–282Google Scholar, at 193.

72 See Pope John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Veritatis Splendor 78–83 (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1993), 119–27.

73 Tierney, Brian, The Idea of Natural Rights: Studies on Natural Rights, Natural Law and Church Law, 1150–1625 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997)Google Scholar, 65.

74 Vitoria's appeal to the category of subjective rights in the context of Spanish colonialism exemplifies the early political function of this discourse; see Francisco de Vitoria, On the American Indians (De Indis) and On the Law of War (De Iure Belli), in Francisco de Vitoria: Political Writings, ed. Pagden, Anthony and Lawrance, Jeremy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 231–327Google Scholar.

75 See Curran, Charles E., Catholic Social Teaching, 1891–Present: A Historical, Theological, and Ethical Analysis (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2002), 215–17Google Scholar; and Langan, John, “Human Rights in Roman Catholicism,” in Official Catholic Social Teaching, ed. Curran, Charles E. and McCormick, Richard A., Readings in Moral Theology 5 (New York: Paulist Press, 1986), 110–29Google Scholar, at 117–18.

76 See Maritain, Jacques, The Person and the Common Good, trans. Fitzgerald, John J. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1966), 74–75Google Scholar; Maritain, Man and the State (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1998), 76–107Google Scholar; Murray, John Courtney, We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964), 39–85Google Scholar, 280–317; Pope John XXIII, Encyclical Letter Pacem in Terris, in Catholic Social Thought: The Documentary Heritage, ed. O'Brien, David J. and Shannon, Thomas A. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1992), 131–62Google Scholar; Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes 24–31, 41, in Flannery, Vatican Council II, 189–97, 208–9; Second Vatican Council, Declaration on Religious Liberty (Dignitatis Humanae), ibid., 551–68. A helpful analysis of the gradual transition in official Catholic teaching from hostility to embrace of human rights is offered in Hollenbach, David, Claims in Conflict: Retrieving and Renewing the Catholic Human Rights Tradition (New York: Paulist Press, 1979), 41–106.Google Scholar

77 See Curran, Catholic Social Teaching, 217ff.

78 See Pope Paul VI, Encyclical Letter Populorum Progressio, in O'Brien and Shannon, Catholic Social Thought, 240–62; and Pope John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, ibid., 395–436.

79 See Hollenbach, Claims in Conflict, 84.

80 Both Maritain and Murray sought to demonstrate the formal compatibility of a Thomist natural law framework with a non-Lockean version of natural rights, but for neither author was continuity with the tradition envisioned as the justification for human rights from a Catholic standpoint.

81 Hollenbach, borrowing a phrase from Murray, interprets human rights as “norms of discernment” (Claims in Conflict, 84).

82 Fuchs, “The Absoluteness of Behavioral Moral Norms,” 141.

83 See Hollenbach, Claims in Conflict, 141–85.

84 James Gustafson has noted that this narrow focus on act analysis affected the adequacy of McCormick's proportionalist methodology, as well as that of the neomanualist defenders of the concept of intrinsic evil; see Gustafson, James M., “The Focus and Its Limitations: Reflections on Catholic Moral Theology,” in Moral Theology: Challenges for the Future, ed. Curran, Charles E. (New York: Paulist Press, 1990), 179–90Google Scholar, at 182ff.

85 See Noonan, John T. Jr., “Development in Moral Doctrine,” Theological Studies 54, no. 4 (1993): 662–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Noonan, A Church That Can and Cannot Change (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005).Google Scholar

86 See John Coleman, “Development of Church Social Teaching,” in Curran and McCormick, Official Catholic Social Teaching, 169–87.

87 For a helpful analysis of the role of communal prudence in the articulation of norms, see Daly, Daniel, “The Relationship of Virtues and Norms in the Summa Theologiae,” Heythrop Journal 51, no. 2 (2010): 214–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

88 Maritain, Man and the State, 102.

89 See Murray, We Hold These Truths, 113–25, 303–17.

90 See Hollenbach, David, Justice, Peace, and Human Rights: American Catholic Social Ethics in a Pluralistic World (New York: Crossroad, 1988), 24–25.Google Scholar

91 See Porter, “The Moral Act,” 281.

92 The “trump card” metaphor is borrowed from Dworkin, Ronald M., Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977).Google Scholar

93 Kaveny, Cathleen, Law's Virtues: Fostering Autonomy and Solidarity in American Society (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2012), 232–36.Google Scholar

94 Ibid., 235.