An Introduction To Moral Theology, 2nd Edition. William May. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: William May
Издательство: Ingram
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Жанр произведения: Философия
Год издания: 0
isbn: 9781612782324
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to do what is good with facility and readiness. They make the person’s “work” — i.e., his or her actions — good, and in addition make the person himself or herself morally good.19 We must, however, understand properly what all this means. We must not “hypostasize” the virtues, i.e., erect them into agents of some sort. It is rather the person (with God’s never-failing help, I must add immediately) who makes himself or herself, and his or her “work” or action, good by making good moral choices; but virtues are dispositions that the person gives to himself or herself (again, with God’s never-failing help) by consistently making morally good choices, and these dispositions facilitate “doing” the good well.

      Virtuous, morally upright persons know how to shape their choices and actions in accordance with the truth and to take care to form their consciences in an upright way. They know how to choose well among alternatives of choice and to distinguish those that are morally good from those that are morally bad, even if, at times, they might find it difficult to articulate reasoned arguments to support their moral judgments. They nonetheless have an authentic kind of moral knowledge, and, unlike some professional moral philosophers or theologians who might be capable of presenting cogent arguments in support of the judgments these morally upright persons make, they are ready and willing to choose in accordance with their moral judgments and not devise clever rationalizations in order to avoid doing what ought to be done because doing so might have undesirable consequences for themselves.

      The principle used by St. Thomas in distinguishing the naturally acquired virtues is based on the distinction among the different “operative powers” of the human person that are subject to perfection — the intellectual and appetitive powers — and among the appetitive powers the distinction between the sensitive powers of simple emotions of desire for food, drink, sex, etc. (the emotions of what he called the “concupiscible” appetite) and of emotions evoked in the presence of danger or difficulty (the emotions of what he termed the “irascible” appetite) and finally the “intellectual appetite” or the will. The principle used by Grisez to differentiate among the moral virtues is the kind of fundamental moral truth in light of which persons can discriminate among alternatives of choice in order to discern which alternatives are morally good and which are morally bad.

      I will first briefly outline Grisez’s way of distinguishing among virtues, noting that further aspects of his teaching on virtue will be set forth in the following chapter (on natural law) and in the chapter devoted to the specific nature of the Christian moral life. I will then summarize St. Thomas’s way of distinguishing among virtues insofar as it has become classical and, moreover, offers us valuable insights into the nature of our moral life that are surely compatible with and complementary to the light Grisez’s analysis of virtue sheds on the moral life. I will conclude by briefly commenting on the contemporary debate — a misplaced one, I believe — that sees a dichotomy between a “virtue”-based ethics and a “normative”-or “principle”-based ethics.

      To understand what Grisez is saying here, it is necessary to anticipate matter to be taken up in the following chapter on “natural” law. There we will see that the great moral issue is this: in order for us to choose well — i.e., to choose those alternatives of choice that are morally good — we must in some way know, prior to choice, which alternatives are morally good. In other words, we need moral truths to guide our choices. In the following chapter, we will see that the natural moral law — written in our hearts by God — is precisely a set of such truths, beginning with the first principle of morality (religiously expressed in the commandments that we are to love God above all things and our neighbor as ourselves) and its specifications, principles such as the Golden Rule, and that in the light of this first basic moral principle and its specifications we can indeed make true moral judgments and good moral choices.

      His way, then, of identifying the natural or acquired moral virtues is, as will be seen more fully in the following chapter, closely related to his way of identifying and articulating