Help me with morality contradictions?

[fakename]

In this post I want to ask about a number of contradictions about moral practice that I’ve encountered in my life.

1. this first one isn’t a contradiction but it is a question: should we always do good things and if so, how important is rest in moral life? (since we need rest in order to accomplish good things, and rest is a good in itself, but rest can conceivably get in the way of a good thing)
2. Is all reasonableness good or is all good reasonable or both? If all rationality is good and vice versa, then wouldn’t it follow that the most unreasonable thing would be the biggest sin or evil? Also, wouldn’t that impose an obligation on us to know things like geometry and such?
3. The good of anything is to follow its nature, but the nature of a state is to support the virtue of a community. But this may infringe on liberty and liberty is also natural to the state (subsidiarity). So there’s a catch 22 by following its nature it opposes its nature. Also subsidiarity is as natural to a healthy state as solidarity is, yet these seem to be opposites (collectivism is incompatible with individualism). So here the very nature of the state is contradictory and so an impossible thing exists in the world which is contradictory. How does subsidiarity not oppose solidarity -what are their relations?
4. If doing anything good is good and everyone wants to be good, then why don’t people do one good thing and rest satisfied? If good is all a person wants and say, telling the truth is good, and if 1+1=2 is true, then why wouldn’t people consider a guy who just stands around saying “1+1=2” to be as good as any saint?
5. if we consider God to be so important that we would do anything for Him, do we really mean anything (like commit a sin)? I don’t think so, so is it true then that one can love God too much and yet not enough (since God is infinite good and so is impossible to fully love)?
6. If truth isn’t opposed to truth, then good isn’t opposed to good, since truth and good are convertible terms. But if that is so, then evil wouldn’t exist since evil is the opposition of one good with another good. How does evil exist then? Also, If good is not opposed to good then why are some goods more important than others -going to confession over sleeping? Also if one lesser good is opposed by a greater good then the perfect is the enemy of the good, yet somehow all good is one -again how does one resolve this?

 

[sw85]

In this post I want to ask about a number of contradictions about moral practice that I’ve encountered in my life.

1. this first one isn’t a contradiction but it is a question: should we always do good things and if so, how important is rest in moral life? (since we need rest in order to accomplish good things, and rest is a good in itself, but rest can conceivably get in the way of a good thing)

Important enough for an entire day to be set aside for it every week!

1. Is all reasonableness good or is all good reasonable or both? If all rationality is good and vice versa, then wouldn’t it follow that the most unreasonable thing would be the biggest sin or evil? Also, wouldn’t that impose an obligation on us to know things like geometry and such?

The good is often broken up into truth, beauty, and virtue, which form a coherent unity. Therefore that which is good is necessarily true, beautiful, and virtuous.

Yes, sin and unreason are more or less the same things. To act sinfully is to jettison your rational nature and act according to your animalistic one.

I don’t see why this imposes an obligation to know literally everything in the world, though.

1. The good of anything is to follow its nature, but the nature of a state is to support the virtue of a community. But this may infringe on liberty and liberty is also natural to the state (subsidiarity). So there’s a catch 22 by following its nature it opposes its nature. Also subsidiarity is as natural to a healthy state as solidarity is, yet these seem to be opposites (collectivism is incompatible with individualism). So here the very nature of the state is contradictory and so an impossible thing exists in the world which is contradictory. How does subsidiarity not oppose solidarity -what are their relations?

Liberty and subsidiarity are not necessarily the same things. And yes, collectivism *is *incompatible with individualism, because individualism is a rank moral evil that rejects the idea of the individual having duties and obligations to others – whether the family, the Church, the state, or the general community. Once you take out the element of individualism and replace it with personalism (the belief that man is a virtue- and duty-bearing creature who finds the fullest expression of his character by way of his integration into a coherent and functioning community) your objection more or less falls apart.

1. If doing anything good is good and everyone wants to be good, then why don’t people do one good thing and rest satisfied? If good is all a person wants and say, telling the truth is good, and if 1+1=2 is true, then why wouldn’t people consider a guy who just stands around saying “1+1=2” to be as good as any saint?

There are gradations of good. Speaking a truth of minor importance that everyone intuitively knows is not the same thing as spreading a truth of major importance which only a fraction of people know. If you content yourself with the former you have squandered your life and your gifts.

1. if we consider God to be so important that we would do anything for Him, do we really mean anything (like commit a sin)? I don’t think so, so is it true then that one can love God too much and yet not enough (since God is infinite good and so is impossible to fully love)?

I think you can rest assured you will never have to sin for God.

1. If truth isn’t opposed to truth, then good isn’t opposed to good, since truth and good are convertible terms. But if that is so, then evil wouldn’t exist since evil is the opposition of one good with another good. How does evil exist then? Also, If good is not opposed to good then why are some goods more important than others -going to confession over sleeping? Also if one lesser good is opposed by a greater good then the perfect is the enemy of the good, yet somehow all good is one -again how does one resolve this?

Truth and the good are not distinguishable; truth is an aspect of the good.

Evil is not “the opposition of one good with another good” but the corruption of some good. Thus the natural, healthy human drive to reproduce and create a family is easily corrupted into the extreme of lust (sexual desire for its own sake); natural and healthy self-love is easily corrupted into an extreme of pride, or its opposite extreme of self-loathing; the natural and healthy appetite for food is easily corrupted into gluttony or the opposite extreme of delicacy.

Gradations of goodness occur naturally; there is no sense asking “why” they exist any more than there is in asking why nature exists.

 

[ahs]

1. if we consider God to be so important that we would do anything for Him, do we really mean anything (like commit a sin)? I don’t think so, so is it true then that one can love God too much and yet not enough (since God is infinite good and so is impossible to fully love)?

If you commit a sin, you are not doing it for God. Sin is against God, not for Him.

 

[promethius]

1. this first one isn’t a contradiction but it is a question: should we always do good things and if so, how important is rest in moral life? (since we need rest in order to accomplish good things, and rest is a good in itself, but rest can conceivably get in the way of a good thing)

No, we should not ALWAYS do good things. We are called to avoid doing evil, and to do good, but we are allowed to do morally neutral things (say, for example, I’m allowed to take an advil for a headache).

Rest is important insofar as it maintains our bodies, but rest itself is a moral neutral (the rest associated with salvation means something altogether different than sleep, btw). Rest becomes bad when it kills our** zeal** and produces** sloth**.

1. Is all reasonableness good or is all good reasonable or both? If all rationality is good and vice versa, then wouldn’t it follow that the most unreasonable thing would be the biggest sin or evil? Also, wouldn’t that impose an obligation on us to know things like geometry and such?

All things good are reasonable (since God, from Whom all good things flow, is reasonable). That does not mean everything that makes logical sense is good. Drugging someone so that they can’t go out and commit some sin sounds like it could be logical from a certain perspective, but that does not make it good.

The fact that the order is “goodness is rational” and not vice versa negates the second part of your question.

1. The good of anything is to follow its nature, but the nature of a state…{/quote]

The nature of a human state is created by man, and so this rule does not apply. The state does not have a mortal soul which can be saved or damned.

1. If doing anything good is good and everyone wants to be good, then why don’t people do one good thing and rest satisfied? If good is all a person wants and say, telling the truth is good, and if 1+1=2 is true, then why wouldn’t people consider a guy who just stands around saying “1+1=2” to be as good as any saint?

If there were only objectively good and objectively disordered, this would be the case. However, stating something which is a fact is not necessarily objectively good. Stating a simple arithmatic syllogism (such as your example) is merely “objectively neutral”… neither good nor bad.

1. if we consider God to be so important that we would do anything for Him, do we really mean anything (like commit a sin)? I don’t think so, so is it true then that one can love God too much and yet not enough (since God is infinite good and so is impossible to fully love)?

God is not subject to the moral law He created. If God commands something, He is not wrong to do so.

1. If truth isn’t opposed to truth, then good isn’t opposed to good, -]since truth and good are convertible terms/-]. But if that is so, then evil wouldn’t exist since evil is the opposition of one good with another good. How does evil exist then? Also, If good is not opposed to good then why are some goods more important than others -going to confession over sleeping? Also if one lesser good is opposed by a greater good then the perfect is the enemy of the good, yet somehow all good is one -again how does one resolve this?

Truth and good are not synonymous. That renders the question of evil existing portion non-sensible. Sleeping is morally neutral, so going to confession to get rid of mortal sin is the good vs. the neutral. I would think it would be hard to find a clear example of where there is not a clear moral answer to one of these questions.

 

[fakename]

Important enough for an entire day to be set aside for it every week!

The good is often broken up into truth, beauty, and virtue, which form a coherent unity. Therefore that which is good is necessarily true, beautiful, and virtuous.

Yes, sin and unreason are more or less the same things. To act sinfully is to jettison your rational nature and act according to your animalistic one.

I don’t see why this imposes an obligation to know literally everything in the world, though.
This obligation could exist because if you want good things, and if truth is good, then one must be committed to finding true things, that all triangles have 3 sides is true, so to know this is the same as to be morally good. But to be morally good is an obligation -so geometry is a moral obligation.

Liberty and subsidiarity are not necessarily the same things. And yes, collectivism *is *incompatible with individualism, because individualism is a rank moral evil that rejects the idea of the individual having duties and obligations to others – whether the family, the Church, the state, or the general community. Once you take out the element of individualism and replace it with personalism (the belief that man is a virtue- and duty-bearing creature who finds the fullest expression of his character by way of his integration into a coherent and functioning community) your objection more or less falls apart.

The next question then is, is it allowable for the state to sacrifice its members for the sake of a goal that conflicts with the lesser goals of its parts? I think the answer is yes but does this mean that sometimes the state should sacrifice the family -I suppose the answer is again yes since the family which doesn’t aid the state is not really a family since it doesn’t find the fullest expression of its character by integrating itself into the community, but rather opposes the greater aims of the community. As a corollary only the family that supports the whole state can be considered to be a natural and fully real family -true?

There are gradations of good. Speaking a truth of minor importance that everyone intuitively knows is not the same thing as spreading a truth of major importance which only a fraction of people know. If you content yourself with the former you have squandered your life and your gifts.

Does this mean that people cannot be satisfied with just “being good”(doing small stuff that is still technically good but a waste of potential) but rather they must be satisfied only by “doing the utmost good that is within their powers”?

I think you can rest assured you will never have to sin for God.
But the contradiction is that if you love God enough to do something absurd for Him (like commit a sin) then you love Him too much (beyond what is reasonable). But yet it is absurd to say that we can love God too much since we can never love Him enough.

Truth and the good are not distinguishable; truth is an aspect of the good.

Evil is not “the opposition of one good with another good” but the corruption of some good. Thus the natural, healthy human drive to reproduce and create a family is easily corrupted into the extreme of lust (sexual desire for its own sake); natural and healthy self-love is easily corrupted into an extreme of pride, or its opposite extreme of self-loathing; the natural and healthy appetite for food is easily corrupted into gluttony or the opposite extreme of delicacy.

Gradations of goodness occur naturally; there is no sense asking “why” they exist any more than there is in asking why nature exists.

**Evil is the opposition of one good with another and a privation -the privation of not rendering due honor is the same as giving yourself too much honor. So the honor of one thing is contrary to the honor of another thing. Again, to not reproduce and pursue sex for itself is to choose one good (pleasure) over a better good (reproduction).

But if we must simply accept that gradations of goodness occur (along with the implication that goods are opposed to each other), then we must accept that morality is absurd since as you said, morality is equal to reason and we must accept the unreasonable -that one good is opposed to another even though no truth is opposed to another truth and yet truth is equal to good. So we must accept immorality within the practice of morality which is absurd. So what I’m asking is for a little more clarification on how to avoid this conclusion.

-thanks for the responses.**

 

[Edward_H]

In this post I want to ask about a number of contradictions about moral practice that I’ve encountered in my life.

1. this first one isn’t a contradiction but it is a question: should we always do good things and if so, how important is rest in moral life? (since we need rest in order to accomplish good things, and rest is a good in itself, but rest can conceivably get in the way of a good thing)
2. Is all reasonableness good or is all good reasonable or both? If all rationality is good and vice versa, then wouldn’t it follow that the most unreasonable thing would be the biggest sin or evil? Also, wouldn’t that impose an obligation on us to know things like geometry and such?
3. The good of anything is to follow its nature, but the nature of a state is to support the virtue of a community. But this may infringe on liberty and liberty is also natural to the state (subsidiarity). So there’s a catch 22 by following its nature it opposes its nature. Also subsidiarity is as natural to a healthy state as solidarity is, yet these seem to be opposites (collectivism is incompatible with individualism). So here the very nature of the state is contradictory and so an impossible thing exists in the world which is contradictory. How does subsidiarity not oppose solidarity -what are their relations?
4. If doing anything good is good and everyone wants to be good, then why don’t people do one good thing and rest satisfied? If good is all a person wants and say, telling the truth is good, and if 1+1=2 is true, then why wouldn’t people consider a guy who just stands around saying “1+1=2” to be as good as any saint?
5. if we consider God to be so important that we would do anything for Him, do we really mean anything (like commit a sin)? I don’t think so, so is it true then that one can love God too much and yet not enough (since God is infinite good and so is impossible to fully love)?
6. If truth isn’t opposed to truth, then good isn’t opposed to good, since truth and good are convertible terms. But if that is so, then evil wouldn’t exist since evil is the opposition of one good with another good. How does evil exist then? Also, If good is not opposed to good then why are some goods more important than others -going to confession over sleeping? Also if one lesser good is opposed by a greater good then the perfect is the enemy of the good, yet somehow all good is one -again how does one resolve this?

Great questions and topics. Not sure of my thoughts here, but here goes.

1. You are correct about rest. We rest so we can work, not the other way around. So if we’re resting in order to renew then that rest is a good. Rest should never really be pure dissipation. Rest should have a purpose and some structure too. Vacations should be planned and wholesome and done with care and deliberation to aid in the renewing. Books, good activities, learning, addressing the needs of our children. etc.
2. I don’t really understand your question. We should always seek to know the good and do the good. Our intellect and will and passions should serve God. We need to develop the capacities that God gave us and to seek to know His will for us…and that might mean learning geometry. It may help us serve others (as architects, builders) or it may help us develop our overall intellectual capabilities (and in the eventual service of God).
3. I don’t really understand this question either. The good of anything is accomplished when it serves God’s will. Truth can’t contradict truth. Goodness can never contradict the good. I don’t think your example is a contradiction, or it needs to be explained differently.
4. “If doing anything good is good and everyone wants to be good, then why don’t people do one good thing and rest satisfied?”

Not quite. Some people who don’t know the good…and do it anyway aren’t actually doing the good.

We have an intellect to seek to know the good. We have a will to help us do the good. And we have passions which help energize our pursuit of the good. Our passions need to serve the will and the intellect in doing God’s will. Someone saying 1+1=2 would be hard pressed to say he’s serving God and others, simply because he knows a single truth.

1. Again not quite a contradiction. We should do any and all good in order to serve God. And we should strive to never do any bad thing. You can never do evil in pursuit of a good. This is one of the primary tents of Catholic moral theology.
2. I think you are creating apparent contradictions with word usage as opposed to really finding contradictions. Good and truth aren’t quite interchangeable as much as in their perfect forms they converge on God.

Free will allows us to diverge from truth and goodness.

 

[sw85]

This obligation could exist because if you want good things, and if truth is good, then one must be committed to finding true things, that all triangles have 3 sides is true, so to know this is the same as to be morally good. But to be morally good is an obligation -so geometry is a moral obligation.

That doesn’t follow. Truth is goodness. Knowledge of truth is something different entirely.

The next question then is, is it allowable for the state to sacrifice its members for the sake of a goal that conflicts with the lesser goals of its parts? I think the answer is yes but does this mean that sometimes the state should sacrifice the family -I suppose the answer is again yes since the family which doesn’t aid the state is not really a family since it doesn’t find the fullest expression of its character by integrating itself into the community, but rather opposes the greater aims of the community. As a corollary only the family that supports the whole state can be considered to be a natural and fully real family -true?

I don’t know what that means, “sacrificing” things for “lesser goals of its parts.”

The state has no authority to dispose of the family precisely because of the principle of subsidiarity.

Does this mean that people cannot be satisfied with just “being good”(doing small stuff that is still technically good but a waste of potential) but rather they must be satisfied only by “doing the utmost good that is within their powers”?

I think that’s reasonable. We’re all called to sainthood, after all.

But the contradiction is that if you love God enough to do something absurd for Him (like commit a sin) then you love Him too much (beyond what is reasonable). But yet it is absurd to say that we can love God too much since we can never love Him enough.

That would be a deficiency of love, not an excess of it.

Evil is the opposition of one good with another and a privation -the privation of not rendering due honor is the same as giving yourself too much honor. So the honor of one thing is contrary to the honor of another thing. Again, to not reproduce and pursue sex for itself is to choose one good (pleasure) over a better good (reproduction).

Again, evil is not the “opposition of one good with another” but the corruption of a good. Sexual pleasure is a good only in the context of the end which the sexual faculty serves, which is procreation; to have sex for illicit reasons and/or in illicit circumstances is therefore to misuse the sexual faculty and thus to commit sin.

But if we must simply accept that gradations of goodness occur (along with the implication that goods are opposed to each other), then we must accept that morality is absurd since as you said, morality is equal to reason and we must accept the unreasonable -that one good is opposed to another even though no truth is opposed to another truth and yet truth is equal to good. So we must accept immorality within the practice of morality which is absurd. So what I’m asking is for a little more clarification on how to avoid this conclusion.

You’re warping my words. I said that which is good is necessarily true and that sin is an act of unreason.

Goods cease to be goods when opposed to one another; thus sexual pleasure becomes illicit when severed from the procreative end which the sexual act serves. They are good only when understood in the context of the broader gestalt.

I notice a good deal of what you imagine to be “moral contradictions” really just stem from your confusion of the language we use to talk about these things. Obviously that’s unintentional, but you would do well to rectify your misunderstandings; a good place to start might be Edward Feser’s *Aquinas *or The Last Superstition.

 

[fakename]

That doesn’t follow. Truth is goodness. Knowledge of truth is something different entirely.

** perhaps I misunderstood you earlier but I also think you think that all good is truth as well. So since knowledge is good, then it is also truth and so the two things are not different. But in anycase I don’t think they can be entirely different since at the very least, all knowledge is knowledge of a true thing and one is said to have truth according as you attain to the heighest truth so that in the end, the heighest knowledge must be synonymous with truth so they’re not different. **

I don’t know what that means, “sacrificing” things for “lesser goals of its parts.”

The state has no authority to dispose of the family precisely because of the principle of subsidiarity.

Basically all I’m saying is that if a family wanted to do something natural (feed its members) but the state wanted to do something natural (fight a dire war) then the state could (if the situation dictates it) prevent the family from feeding itself in order to win the conflict -and in this way the family acts more naturally since it protects itself by protecting the state whereas it acts less naturally if it insists on its rights during the war -when in fact it must unify its rights to the state’s if it is to survive.

I think that’s reasonable. We’re all called to sainthood, after all.

That would be a deficiency of love, not an excess of it.
But in what sense is this a deficiency of love, for anyone could argue that loving something such that you’d do anything for it is very high love? Perhaps it is because the love is not reasonable and so it is not considered love? But still, flanking the virtue there are two extremes, granted that this is not love, how do we know that it isn’t the excessive extreme and not the defective one?

Again, evil is not the “opposition of one good with another” but the corruption of a good. Sexual pleasure is a good only in the context of the end which the sexual faculty serves, which is procreation; to have sex for illicit reasons and/or in illicit circumstances is therefore to misuse the sexual faculty and thus to commit sin.

You’re warping my words. I said that which is good is necessarily true and that sin is an act of unreason.

**What do you mean here? I thought that you meant all truth is good and all good is truth. But it must clearly mean something else. **

Goods cease to be goods when opposed to one another; thus sexual pleasure becomes illicit when severed from the procreative end which the sexual act serves. They are good only when understood in the context of the broader gestalt.

I notice a good deal of what you imagine to be “moral contradictions” really just stem from your confusion of the language we use to talk about these things. Obviously that’s unintentional, but you would do well to rectify your misunderstandings; a good place to start might be Edward Feser’s *Aquinas *or The Last Superstition.

This is what I mean by opposition of evils (from catholic encyclopedia):

The sinner intends here and now to act in some determined matter,** inordinately electing that particular good in defiance of God’s law and the dictates of right reason. **The deformity is not directly intended, nor is it involved in the act so far as this is physical, but in the act as coming from the will which has power over its acts and is capable of **choosing this or that particular good contained within the scope of its adequate object, i.e. universal good **

so yes evil is both privation of correct ordering but an ordering of what? of goods such that one lesser good opposes a higher good. I’m saying that the opposition is part of the privation. In anycase the above is clear from the fact that all sinful things are good, and insofar as sinful things are chosen above non-sinful things, there results an opposition of goods.

And asmuch as I’d like to buy new books, I could get the same thing reading the Catholic Encyclopedia and/or Summa -I just have to read them more carefullly.

 

[kevjminn]

ksdlksjflkdfadfadfadf

 

[fakename]

1. I think you are creating apparent contradictions with word usage as opposed to really finding contradictions. Good and truth aren’t quite interchangeable as much as in their perfect forms they converge on God.

Free will allows us to diverge from truth and goodness.

From Aquinas:

"The true and the good are convertible as to subject, since every true thing is good, and every good thing is true. "

So as far as beings (subjects) go, everything is true and good and the two things equal each other. But as far as aspects go they are different -the true and good can be separately analyzed. So it makes sense to say that free will doesn’t in fact allow us to diverge from truth and goodness since the will has as its object the good in things -which is why a sin is simply a choosing of a good.

 

[Edward_H]

From Aquinas:

"The true and the good are convertible as to subject, since every true thing is good, and every good thing is true. "

So as far as beings (subjects) go, everything is true and good and the two things equal each other. But as far as aspects go they are different -the true and good can be separately analyzed. So it makes sense to say that free will doesn’t in fact allow us to diverge from truth and goodness since the will has as its object the good in things -which is why a sin is simply a choosing of a good.

Yes, correct. the operative words here are “as to subject”. But I don’t think beings and subjects are properly substitutable. And then you slip to using “aspects” and then to “objects”.

You substituted yourself into a little tempest. But will sorting out your own concocted contradiction allow you to love and self-donate more for God?

Is sorting out these little truths getting in the way of the big truth in front of you?

Do we often take small or large pleasures in our verbal combats while walking past the suffering and lonely?

 

[fakename]

Yes, correct. the operative words here are “as to subject”. But I don’t think beings and subjects are properly substitutable. And then you slip to using “aspects” and then to “objects”.

You substituted yourself into a little tempest. But will sorting out your own concocted contradiction allow you to love and self-donate more for God?

Is sorting out these little truths getting in the way of the big truth in front of you?

Do we often take small or large pleasures in our verbal combats while walking past the suffering and lonely?

I suppose you mean that I move between the words “object” and “aspect” incorrectly and if I do so, how is it that it is an incorrect usage? Maybe the word “being” is too broad, is that what you’re getting at too?

As for the latter part of your message, I do stuff for people, but 1) knowing the faith is donation to God, 2) these contradictions have been in me for a while, it was only a matter of time before they came out.

 

[Edward_H]

I suppose you mean that I move between the words “object” and “aspect” incorrectly and if I do so, how is it that it is an incorrect usage? Maybe the word “being” is too broad, is that what you’re getting at too?

As for the latter part of your message, I do stuff for people, but 1) knowing the faith is donation to God, 2) these contradictions have been in me for a while, it was only a matter of time before they came out.

Very well said. We are called to seek and to know the truth.

You’re asking some substantial questions and I am not a philosopher…but perhaps you can keep asking here…and maybe branch out to a university.

There’s a neat center for Thomistic studies. It’s called The Thomas International Center. Perhaps look them up and send the staff a set of questions. Your knowledge is way above me, but I applaud your search for truth.

Also look around and maybe find a priest in your area who continues to study philosophy as a hobby…All priests have to have 4 years in both Philosophy (first) and Theology (second). You might find a Jesuit or a Dominican who would help you sort through your questions.

Good luck…and I am sorry if I derailed your pursuit in the slightest.