Teleological suspension of the ethical?

[ThomasToo]

No, that’s not it. I said: considered abstractly, there is an absolute duty to God, beyond what is ethical; BUT that absolute duty has been concretely (historically) bound to the ethical, and this binding is irrevocable, it cannot be dissolved. This means that we have an absolute duty to God, first of all, but God has made it clear that that duty must be concretely realized in the ethical domain, because God has made it clear that His own nature, absolute source of being and goodness (and so, in turn, of our ethical nature - we creatures, endowed with a God-given and God-reflective capacity for reason and love), is Love in Truth (reason). (Sorry Leela, try not to get freaked out by the capital letters. )

Sorry I didn’t respond to this earlier. My honest response is that it seems to be an attempt to not actually answer the question by adopting both answers simultaneously. So God can command the immoral but never does and has basically promised (irrevocably) never to do so? To be frank I think it skirts the question.

 

[Areopagite]

My definition of moral goodness is whatever contributes to wellbeing and reduces suffering of creatures who can experience wellbeing and suffering.

All right … this brings to mind some questions …

How do you define “well-being” of a creature? Is it the same as “not suffering”? Or is the absence of suffering one of the things that is included under well-being? Is there more to well-being than merely not suffering?

“Well-being” seems simply equivalent to the concept “fulfillment” … particularly, in humanity’s case, the fulfillment of human nature … also known as happiness. In order to figure out how something is fulfilled or “well in its being” … we must first figure out what its nature is and whether its actions and qualities (and its other changeable attributes) are such that it is functioning according to what it is. If we really don’t know what the function of a human is … we won’t have any standard by which to judge whether any given human is functioning well as a human.

Now you say that morality is working for human well-being … and this is, I claim, is the equivalent of saying morality is working for human fulfillment/happiness … and so I agree with you. I would also agree that the cessation of suffering is also necessary for ultimate and perfect human happiness.

So, so far, we are in complete agreement … I think.

Now if you believe (and maybe you don’t) that the essence of this happiness is the avoidance of pain, then we must conclude a very problematic ethical principle, as I explained in one of the previous posts. The Epicureans all say that sometimes we have to do painful things to secure future pleasure or future absence from pain. Thus (if avoidance of pain is the ultimate good), then we must betray the ultimate good in order to win the ultimate good. In other words, the ends justify the means. This is the unavoidable conclusion of the Epicurean.

An even more interesting consequence of the Epicurean worldview (that Lucretius at least admitted) was that non-existence becomes the ideal state to be in. If one does not exist, then there is no chance for any pain … and since the absence of pain was defined as happiness … non-existence was a kind of “heaven.” That, coupled with the belief that there is no soul that outlives the body (and hence proceeds to non-existence), resulted in the conclusion that death was the surest path to happiness.

The best thing you could do for others, therefore, would be to kill all living things … if you were an honest Epicurean … but maybe you’re not, Leela. I’m not sure.

Now Aristotle took the view that neither pleasure nor the absence of pain constituted true happiness, though they were components of it. Aristotle’s view of human nature was that humans were rational animals, and thus a fulfilled and well-functioning human would be one whose rationality operated well … and whose animalistic needs were not left unfulfilled. The aim of morality was attaining habits (virtuous habits as he said) that helped to moderate our actions and passions so as to promote rational activity. He also viewed that rational activity’s nature was to find reasons (or causes) to things, and so finding and understanding first causes exemplified the highest and greatest rational activity.

Now … if finding first causes is the aim of rational activity … and engaging in rational activity is part of our happiness … and if, as the naughty theists claim, God is the first cause of everything … then it would follow that God has something to do with our happiness … and hence something to do with our morality.

God is thus good for us. In fact, the essence to the fulfillment of our rational nature is God Himself. Hence, the identification of Goodness and God is very appropriate in this respect. He is the object of our happiness.

Now the fulfillment of our animalistic needs are many things. However, if God is the cause of everything, even the things that fulfill our animal needs, then it follows that God can fulfill us completely in every aspect of our nature.

So what is thing that can fulfill us in every possible way? God. He is thus the ultimate Natural Good for us, and also the object of all human Moral good (i.e. all our actions should be done for the purpose of attaining God).

Once again, plenty more to say on this … but here’s that for now.

I don’t think any identification of Godness with goodness is at all helpful in learning about what well-being is and how to achieve it.

Mere assertion. And you still haven’t responded to all my definitions of goodness (Transcendental, Natural, Moral … and yes Divine). Do you accept them or reject them … or some and not others? You’re giving me next to nothing to work with.

 

[tonyrey]

I don’t think this makes sense. Love is just as much an abstraction as goodness. “God is love” is no more/no less informative than “God is good” - unless I’m missing something?

I’m afraid you are. “God is love” is far more informative. Love is a verb as well as a noun whereas goodness is not. Love is goodness ** in action**. Love is an activity as well as a state of mind in which we identify ourselves with others and promote their welfare and happiness. Love is dynamic and creative - as we would expect where the Creator is concerned. Remember St Paul’s wonderful words…

Love your neighbor as yourself. But don’t love yourself (self-love is egoism). Therefore don’t love your neighbor.

Love your neighbor as yourself. Therefore love yourself but **not only ** yourself. Love **confined to oneself **is nothing but undiluted egoism…

 

[tonyrey]

tony,

With respect, I just don’t see how it can be reconciled with my understanding of intrinsically evil acts or with Veritatis splendor.

For instance VS 80:
and an example given is

VC

VC,

I think it is necessary to deal with the points I have made in order to see the question in its full context. We are concerned with a hypothetical case which is highly improbable.

 

[Verbum_Caro]

VC,

I think it is necessary to deal with the points I have made in order to see the question in its full context. We are concerned with a hypothetical case which is highly improbable.

Maybe I didn’t fully grasp the nature of your hypothetical case, but it seemed to me that the idea was to directly and intentionally kill a person in order to save the lives of a number of persons. Unless there is something else that I missed (just war, authority of the state, allowing a death as an unintended effect) then I feel confident in my original assessment that I ought to disagree with that proposition, as a Catholic.

VC

 

[Leela]

All right … this brings to mind some questions …

How do you define “well-being” of a creature? Is it the same as “not suffering”? Or is the absence of suffering one of the things that is included under well-being? Is there more to well-being than merely not suffering?

“Well-being” seems simply equivalent to the concept “fulfillment” … particularly, in humanity’s case, the fulfillment of human nature … also known as happiness. In order to figure out how something is fulfilled or “well in its being” … we must first figure out what its nature is and whether its actions and qualities (and its other changeable attributes) are such that it is functioning according to what it is. If we really don’t know what the function of a human is … we won’t have any standard by which to judge whether any given human is functioning well as a human.

Now you say that morality is working for human well-being … and this is, I claim, is the equivalent of saying morality is working for human fulfillment/happiness … and so I agree with you. I would also agree that the cessation of suffering is also necessary for ultimate and perfect human happiness.

So, so far, we are in complete agreement … I think.

We will mostly agree about what is and is not moral. Where we disagree in the above is in thinking that there is something called Human Nature that we need to conform to. In the past this notion has always been a tool of oppression, but Darwin showed us that there is no such thing. We are constrained only by the limits of our moral imaginations rather than by our Natures. We have benefited from moral geniuses of the past like Jesus, Gandhi, and MLK who have helped us to imagine new and better forms of community. I see the genius of such people as lying in the fact that they were able to free us from our illusions of past supposed constraints due to our so-called “intrinsic natures.” They denied the sort of claims that were made to insist that the way things are now is “only natural” and therefore cannot be made better. The fact is that morally we are more than what we once were, and there is no reason I can see that we can’t strive to be still better. I suppose that the future can be unimaginably better than the present and won’t be a matter of conforming to two thousand year old moral moral visions of what our Nature is. Instead of trying to discover our True Nature, I see that project as merely trying to lend the past the prestige of the eternal. Instead I look to the future for the posibility of expansion of our circles of moral concern and to better take into account the needs of more and more beings capable of experiencing happiness and suffering as we come to better uderstand what those needs are.

Best,
Leela

 

[Betterave]

Sorry I didn’t respond to this earlier. My honest response is that it seems to be an attempt to not actually answer the question by adopting both answers simultaneously. So God can command the immoral but never does and has basically promised (irrevocably) never to do so? To be frank I think it skirts the question.

The original questions? I’m pretty sure I answered the original questions you asked. You really don’t think so?

Anyway, it’s not so much that God can command the immoral, but that God commands obedience. But not in the sense that he issues the command: “obey me, no matter what”; but in the sense that the very nature of the man-God relationship demands man’s obedience to God.

 

[Betterave]

I’m afraid you are. “God is love” is far more informative. Love is a verb as well as a noun whereas goodness is not. Love is goodness ** in action**. Love is an activity as well as a state of mind in which we identify ourselves with others and promote their welfare and happiness. Love is dynamic and creative - as we would expect where the Creator is concerned. Remember St Paul’s wonderful words…

St. Paul’s wonderful words? Love is action, but goodness is not? Why would you say that? Goodness implies inactivity? Please explain.

Love your neighbor as yourself. Therefore love yourself but **not only ** yourself. Love **confined to oneself **is nothing but undiluted egoism…

So let’s pretend God is unitarian and alone, with no possible object of love, other than Himself: you seriously propose that God cannot love himself? Why not?

 

[Betterave]

Now if you believe (and maybe you don’t) that the essence of this happiness is the avoidance of pain, then we must conclude a very problematic ethical principle, as I explained in one of the previous posts. The Epicureans all say that sometimes we have to do painful things to secure future pleasure or future absence from pain. Thus (if avoidance of pain is the ultimate good), then we must betray the ultimate good in order to win the ultimate good. In other words, the ends justify the means. This is the unavoidable conclusion of the Epicurean.

Huh? I think this is a caricature of Epicureanism. References? Citations? Argument?

An even more interesting consequence of the Epicurean worldview (that Lucretius at least admitted) was that non-existence becomes the ideal state to be in. If one does not exist, then there is no chance for any pain … and since the absence of pain was defined as happiness … non-existence was a kind of “heaven.” That, coupled with the belief that there is no soul that outlives the body (and hence proceeds to non-existence), resulted in the conclusion that death was the surest path to happiness.

The best thing you could do for others, therefore, would be to kill all living things … if you were an honest Epicurean … but maybe you’re not, Leela. I’m not sure.

References? I’m pretty sure death is nothing to be feared on the Epicurean view, it is not the surest path to happiness.

 

[Betterave]

We will mostly agree about what is and is not moral. Where we disagree in the above is in thinking that there is something called Human Nature that we need to conform to. In the past this notion has always been a tool of oppression, but Darwin showed us that there is no such thing. We are constrained only by the limits of our moral imaginations rather than by our Natures. We have benefited from moral geniuses of the past like Jesus, Gandhi, and MLK who have helped us to imagine new and better forms of community. I see the genius of such people as lying in the fact that they were able to free us from our illusions of past supposed constraints due to our so-called “intrinsic natures.” They denied the sort of claims that were made to insist that the way things are now is “only natural” and therefore cannot be made better. The fact is that morally we are more than what we once were, and there is no reason I can see that we can’t strive to be still better. I suppose that the future can be unimaginably better than the present and won’t be a matter of conforming to two thousand year old moral moral visions of what our Nature is. Instead of trying to discover our True Nature, I see that project as merely trying to lend the past the prestige of the eternal. Instead I look to the future for the posibility of expansion of our circles of moral concern and to better take into account the needs of more and more beings capable of experiencing happiness and suffering as we come to better uderstand what those needs are.

Best,
Leela

Catholics do not have a radically static view of human nature and you do not have a radically existentialist/voluntaristic view of human nature. Agree? (It’s easy to attack extreme positions, but not very interesting or constructive.)

 

[tonyrey]

Maybe I didn’t fully grasp the nature of your hypothetical case, but it seemed to me that the idea was to directly and intentionally kill a person in order to save the lives of a number of persons. Unless there is something else that I missed (just war, authority of the state, allowing a death as an unintended effect) then I feel confident in my original assessment that I ought to disagree with that proposition, as a Catholic.

VC

You are fully justified in your decision because you believe it is always wrong to kill a person directly and intentionally. Yet you also believe it is not wrong to do so in a just war even though the victim may not be attacking you. This demonstrates that **it is not a universal principle **. The only difference between our views is that I believe we are justified if it is a lesser evil for one person to be killed than several. We may feel our conscience is clear by refusing to kill but the fact remains that we would be indirectly responsible for their deaths. Most of the suffering in the world is caused not by what we do but by what we omit to do.

It would certainly take a lot of courage to kill a person in cold blood and probably most of us would be incapable of doing it - including myself - except in a case of urgent necessity. In wartime such decisions have to be made. If you knew an innocent train driver had been ordered to take a load of explosives to a place where, unknown to him, it would be detonated killing hundreds of people and the only way to stop him would be to shoot him from a distance what would you do? Unfortunately doing the right thing is sometimes extremely difficult. It is easier for us as Christians, and as many atheists, to sacrifice ourselves rather others - as Jesus did. Yet, as I pointed out, He foresaw His followers would be killed for being His followers and He was prepared to let them be killed. Why? Because we should not fear those who kill the body but those who kill the soul. Ultimately our life on this earth is far less important than love…

 

[Leela]

Catholics do not have a radically static view of human nature and you do not have a radically existentialist/voluntaristic view of human nature. Agree? (It’s easy to attack extreme positions, but not very interesting or constructive.)

Agreed. My point is that Areopagite’s talk about human nature and God’s nature as a way for understanding morality in terms of four or more classifications of types of goodness are not going to resonate with me. In fact, I don’t think such reasoning to deduce a moral system tends to resonate with many people. (Kant didn’t convince anyone not to steal or murder who didn’t already know not to steal or murder.) What influences us is stories that are able to take us out of our usual perspective and get us to see the world and one another in new ways. (One of the most important in our society is the story of Jesus regardless of whether or not you think it is historical.)

And again, we will still agree nevertheless on most moral considerations, so I don’t want to inflate the importance of let alone attack any extreme positions on human nature. I just think human nature is beside the point and that moral imagination is what is important. To relate the issue to the thread on obedience, people don’t become moral when they learn to obey but when they learn to imagine what it would be like to be in another’s position and see others as also themselves. The question of whether or not it is natural to do that is irrelevent to the question of whether we ought to do that.

It is interesting that I am sort of disagreeing with Sam Harris (one of my heroes) whose upcoming book has the thesis that science will some day tell us what we ought to want–that a description of how things are can tell us how things ought to be. I have trouble imagining how that could work. To my modern ears, such is-ought leaps sound like non sequitors. It is the sort of reasoning that we’ve rejected as part of Enlightenment liberalism–that the aristocracy, for example, ought to rule because they have ruled us in the past. We don’t have to feel so constrained by the past. Regardless of what we learn about human nature (through Harris’s science of the mind or through theological musings), we can still try to be better.

Best,
Leela

 

[tonyrey]

“God is love” is far more informative. Love is a verb as well as a noun whereas goodness is not. Love is goodness in action. Love is an activity as well as a state of mind in which we identify ourselves with others and promote their welfare and happiness. Love is dynamic and creative - as we would expect where the Creator is concerned. Remember St Paul’s wonderful words…

We regard good-ness, happi-ness, drunken-ness and lazi-ness as states rather than activities. Love is also regarded as a state, like “being in love”, but it also has a connotation of activity, like “love never fails”. You cannot usually fail unless you are doing something!

Love your neighbor as yourself. Therefore love yourself but not only yourself. Love confined to oneself is nothing but undiluted egoism…

So let’s pretend God is unitarian and alone, with no possible object of love, other than Himself: you seriously propose that God cannot love himself? Why not?

God could love Himself but it would obviously be an**introverted **love. I’m sure you’ll agree that the model of the Blessed Trinity is undoubtedly richer, more inspiring and more original than a solitary Person.

 

[Verbum_Caro]

You are fully justified in your decision because you believe it is always wrong to kill a person directly and intentionally. Yet you also believe it is not wrong to do so in a just war even though the victim may not be attacking you. This demonstrates that **it is not a universal principle **.

Sorry, Tony, but I cannot agree. I am speaking of homicide, not killing. And so, yes, the prohibition against homicide is a universal principle. No matter what the situation.

I’m speaking of direct and intentional homicide where my object is to murder. And I am speaking of of myself as a private individual, not a soldier, peace-office, or state sanctioned executioner.

So, again, as a Catholic I disagree with you that one can murder because the alternative is that other will die – if that is indeed what you are saying.

tonyrey:

If you knew an innocent train driver had been ordered to take a load of explosives to a place where, unknown to him, it would be detonated killing hundreds of people and the only way to stop him would be to shoot him from a distance what would you do?

As a private individual, not a soldier? I may shoot him (although I’ve never been in that situation), but I know that I wouldn’t shoot with the intent to kill.

VC

 

[tonyrey]

Sorry, Tony, but I cannot agree. I am speaking of homicide, not killing. And so, yes, the prohibition against homicide is a universal principle. No matter what the situation.

Homicide in certain circumstances is justified, both morally and legally.

I’m speaking of direct and intentional homicide where my object is to murder. And I am speaking of myself as a private individual, not a soldier, peace-office, or state sanctioned executioner.

So, again, as a Catholic I disagree with you that one can murder because the alternative is that other will die – if that is indeed what you are saying.

As a private individual, not a soldier? I may shoot him (although I’ve never been in that situation), but I know that I wouldn’t shoot with the intent to kill.

But you know you would almost certainly kill the driver if you were at some distance and only his head were visible. The point in all these cases is that your primary intention is to save many lives. It is the lesser of two evils…

It seems we shall have to agree to disagree - given that our conscience is our ultimate authority.

 

[ThomasToo]

Homicide in certain circumstances is justified, both morally and legally.

Killing != homicide.

But you know you would almost certainly kill the driver if you were at some distance and only his head were visible. The point in all these cases is that your primary intention is to save many lives. It is the lesser of two evils…

It seems we shall have to agree to disagree - given that our conscience is our ultimate authority.

But the difference shows in that if you shoot the driver and he doesn’t die but the truck stops we’d be satisfied. If, in your hostage scenario, we must kill them and would be content with nothing else. To be honest, your conscience seems to be fundamentally opposed to the notion of intrinsically evil acts.

I would also forward, to bring this back to the Kierkegaard question, that your response does seem to mesh well with the notion that God could command an act that most of us want to see as inherently unethical.

 

[Verbum_Caro]

tony,

I’m sticking with Thomas (both of them!).

Homicide in certain circumstances is justified, (. . .) morally.

But that is what I mean when I say your position seems to directly contradict Veritatis splendor:

the Church teaches that “there exist acts which “per se” and in themselves, independently of circumstances, are always seriously wrong by reason of their object”. (. . .) such as any kind of homicide

tonyrey:

It seems we shall have to agree to disagree

I really would like to, but I’m afraid I can’t in the sense that I can’t attribute it to differing views or opinions. I think one of us is in error. I do disagree, as a Catholic, and I suppose can just leave it at that.

From the Catholic Encyclopedia on Homicide:

The direct killing of an innocent person is, of course, to be reckoned among the most grievous of sins. It is said to happen directly when the death of the person is viewed either as an end attractive in itself, or at any rate is chosen as a means to an end. The malice discernible in the sin is primarily chargeable to the violation of the supreme ownership of God over the lives of His creatures.

VC

 

[tonyrey]

tony,

I’m sticking with Thomas (both of them!).

But that is what I mean when I say your position seems to directly contradict Veritatis splendor:

I really would like to, but I’m afraid I can’t in the sense that I can’t attribute it to differing views or opinions. I think one of us is in error. I do disagree, as a Catholic, and I suppose can just leave it at that.

From the Catholic Encyclopedia on Homicide:VC

When all is said and done it boils down to the fact that you would allow hundreds, perhaps thousands or even millions, of people to die unnecessarily rather than kill one person. Perhaps if you were in that situation and afterwards confronted with the **reality **of the horrific injuries of men, women and children paralysed, blinded and maimed for life as well all those who are killed and leave widows and orphans to live in poverty you might change your mind about killing one man swiftly and painlessly. Much of the suffering and death in the world is due to moral inflexibility…

 

[ThomasToo]

When all is said and done it boils down to the fact that you would allow hundreds, perhaps thousands or even millions, of people to die unnecessarily rather than kill one person. Perhaps if you were in that situation and afterwards confronted with the **reality **of the horrific injuries of men, women and children paralysed, blinded and maimed for life as well all those who are killed and leave widows and orphans to live in poverty you might change your mind about killing one man swiftly and painlessly. Much of the suffering and death in the world is due to moral inflexibility…

Just to be clear then, you reject moral realism? You’re a relativist?

 

[Verbum_Caro]

Just to be clear then, you reject moral realism? You’re a relativist?

I think proportionalists are a subset of relativists.

This quote from William May seems appropriate here:

The proportionalist methodology has its roots, in contemporary Catholic thought, in the reasoning used by the authors (among them Joseph Fuchs) of the celebrated “Majority” papers of the Papal Commission for the Study of the Problems of the Family, Population, and Birth Rate to justify the practice of contraception by married couples. These documents, written in 1966, were leaked to the press in 1967 and published in the United States in the* National Catholic Reporter*.

In one of their papers the authors of the majority opinion say: "To take another’s life is a sin not because life is under the exclusive dominion of God, but because it is contrary to right reason unless there is a question of a good of a higher order. It is licit to sacrifice a life for the good of the community." According to this “principle” it is morally permissible to destroy human life (or other human goods) if doing so is necessary for the sake of a greater good. I call this the “Caiaphas principle,” although proportionalist theologians now refer to it, as will be seen below in more detail, as the “preference principle” or “principle of proportionate good.”

Note that chilling line: It is licit to sacrifice a life for the good of the community.

VC