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Chapter IV. The four chief systems

IN ASCENDING order, we examine here the four chief ethical systems: Empiric Ethics, Kantian Ethics, Stoic Ethics, Fideistic Ethics.

A. Empiric ethics, which limits itself to that good which is experienced as delightful (hedonism), or as useful and profitable (utilitarianism, individual or social).

Hedonism says that enjoyment is the motive and standard of human acts. Man is made to do good and to avoid evil, along the lines of sense-enjoyment. Thus Aristippus among the ancients, Fourier, a socialist, among the moderns. The. latter describes the physical attractions of the passions, as physicists speak of the attractions of the stars. This system tends to cynical egoism, founded on identification of man with God, forgetting that God is, and man is not, the supreme good.

B. Utilitarianism. Individual utilitarianism says that man must renounce pleasure in favor of tranquillity and security. Thus of old the Sophists and Epicurus. The latter demands moderation of passion, between too much and too little. Virtue, he says, is the golden middle way, chosen, not for its own sake, but solely to avoid harmful extremes. In this system morality is rather a corpse than a living power. Among moderns we find Hobbes and Bentham, whose first moral law is temporal peace. Stuart Mill and Spencer look on social utilitarianism as the evolutionary goal of individual utilitarianism. Grotius and Puffendorff formulate the first ethical principle as follows: Man must worship and promote society.

We must live, says Comte, for others. Society, notwithstand- 20 ing its defects, must be loved above all else, as if society were an evolving God. Obligation rests on human legislation. A father’s right to educate his children, for example, is founded, not on nature, but on the same human law which, in ancient Rome, gave to the father the right to kill his son. Thus the Neo-Comtists, Levy-Bruhl and Durkheim.

C. Empiric ethics refuted. Three reflections may suffice.

  1. A virtual refutation lies in the philosophically established proof that, as there is an essential distinction between intellective life and sense life, so likewise between good-initself and good as pleasurable or useful.

Sense life knows only sense-goods, pleasurable and useful. It does not know good-in-itself, which is known only by reason. The evil of empiric ethics lies in its failure to recognize goodin-itself (testimony to truth in the face of death, for example, as shown by Christ: “I am come to give testimony to the truth”). Good-in-itself is the perfection of our rational activity, and is good even if it is not followed by pleasure or utility.?

  1. Empiric ethics cannot explain the testimony of conscience which dictates, as a first and evident principle, that, independently of consequences, good is to be done, evil to be avoided. Empirics even contradict this principle. Denying moral obligation, men will not eschew moral evil (secret theft, for example, or betrayal of country) if they find evil to be useful.

  2. Empiric ethics does not, and cannot, result in the happiness it promises. That it does not was shown also by Spinoza and Kant. The man who lives without a genuine moral ideal is unhappy. His passions (desire, anger, envy) are uncontrolled, often contrary one to the other. He is self-centered in his egoism, a slave to passing events, a slave to other men, who can rob him of the sense-goods wherein he hoped to find happiness.1

Further, this system, even at best, simply cannot give man happiness, because it cannot satisfy his higher faculties, his aspirations toward moral goodness and beauty, toward peace in himself and peace in society, and society is not perfect enough to be loved above all else.

Lastly, the only way to harmonize private with public utility is to love good-in-itself. All men, as St. Augustine says, can simultaneously possess good-in-itself, truth, for example, and virtue, though they cannot so possess sense-goods, a house, for example, or a field. Matter divides, spirit unites.

D. Kantian ethics refuted. Kantian ethics stands higher than empiric ethics, since it admits moral obligations. But the foundation it builds for this obligation, the so-called categorical imperative, is subjective, not objective. Subjective likewise are the three Kantian postulates of practical reason: human liberty, a future life, and the existence of God the Rewarder.

Kant begins by denying to speculative reason the power of demonstrating either God’s existence, or free will, or moral obligation as an internal fact, not merely of experience, but of reason. Every sincere man finds in his own conscience an imperative, not conditional but absolute, which binds him to act morally. Kant formulates this categorical imperative as follows: “Act so that your own moral attitude can be the principle of universal legislation, act, that is, as you will all men to act.”

Now this formula is not objective, based on the nature of good, but is subjective. It is, Kant says, a synthetic-a-priori judgment. We cannot, Kant explains, find the foundation of moral obligation in God as Lawgiver and Final Goal. And if obligation were imposed on us by God, our life would either be slavery, or, since it would be drawn by the hope of happiness, it would be mercenary, not, properly speaking, moral, since it would be founded on pleasure or utility. Kant, it is clear, does not see the sublimity of good-in-itself, which, though it is also delightful, is desired primarily for its own sake. Kant thinks that the human will, in order to be truly rational, moral, and free, must be its own law, otherwise it falls into slavery. Thus the human will is autonomous, independent of any higher and extrinsic law.

Individual man, then, is to judge whether his own activity is or is not the standard of universal legislation. Individual reason is the supreme arbiter of good and evil. Individual will, as first moral cause, imposes obligation on itself.

  1. Kantianism lacks foundation. Kant’s judgment, synthetic but a priori, has no objective motive, because, as he says, it is not evident, either a priori or a posteriori. But, if so, it is a blind judgment. Now, since the object of the intellect is reality, and the object of the will is good, obligation must be rooted in objective reality, and ultimately in the supreme good. Kantian ethics, then, deprived of a true, primary, and objective standard, is like a landscape without the sun.

  2. Absolute autonomy of the human will, unsubordinated to the eternal law, imposing on itself its own moral obligation, is impossible in any creature, since all creatures depend on God the supreme good. Kantianism leads to the errors of subjectivism and individualism.

3- The promise of blessedness is not an ill-founded invitation to a good life. The benefits God bestows are dispositions which lead us to love God for His own sake. The supreme good is indeed a delectable good, but only because it is goodin-itsel f.?

Hedonism, we have seen, aims at happiness, but excludes obligation. Kantianism, vice versa, excludes happiness as moral motive, and considers only subjective obligation. Each is an extreme. The traditional and true doctrine rises on high between these two extremes. It sees no incompatibility between happiness and obligation, but finds them both in the supreme good, which commands supreme love and rewards supreme love with supreme joy.

  1. Man’s reason as supreme motive is a kind of self-worship.2

Where God is not loved above all else, there can be no love of good-in-itself, but only a proud preference for our own subjective superiority. But if we love and seek the good-initself, then, a fortiori, we will seek and love that supreme good which is the source of all goodness. Happiness cannot be found in any created good, but only in the uncreated Good.

But a question arises: Do not Kant’s three postulates of practical reason (free will, immortality of the soul, and God’s existence) show him favorable to traditional and Christian ethics? Does he not say that free will is implied in moral obligation; that the perfection demanded by the categorical imperative cannot be attained in this life: that in the next life God alone can bind virtue and happiness into a stable unity?

The answer runs thus: Kant does indeed admit these postulates, as rationally credible in the merely natural order. But he admits them, not as foundations, but only as completions, of his ethical system. Obligation rests, not on objective goodin-itself, but on man’s independent and autonomous will; not on right reason as proximate norm of our will: not on the eternal law as ultimate norm. Kantian ethics, therefore, remains an arbitrary and subjective structure, an arctic region, sad and cold. It lacks the strength of common sense and Christian thought.

E. Stoic ethics refuted. Greek Stoics say that the highest good lies in virtue, i.e., in our own rational activity, not in things which are external and independent of ourselves. Even under adverse fortune, they say, the wise man, in control of his passions, finds joy in his own rational activity. A similar system of rational eudaemonism appears in Spinoza, who looks on divine good as immanent in ourselves, Pantheistic and determinist, Spinoza denies free will and genuine moral obligation. The moral law is not imperative, but optative. It can be expressed as follows: “Would that men would live rationally! But many men do not, and cannot, attain clear and distinct ideas on what is good.” Here are three reflections on this system.

  1. It rests on pantheism. But God, far from being identified with man, is man’s cause, efficient and final.*

  2. Human virtue is not the supreme good. Virtue inheres in the soul, of which it is not the substance, but an accident. Hence virtue is participated good that has a beginning. Hence, however noble, it is a particular and limited good, not the supreme good.‘

  3. Stoicism denies the twofold testimony of conscience:

a) the moral obligation, based on the first principle of practical reason, i.e., do good, avoid evil;

b) human freedom, based on the distinction between universal good (where man is not free), and limited good (where man must freely choose).§

Question: Does not moral obligation have a sufficient foundation in rational good, as the object of man’s free will? The answer is: Yes, if you are looking at obligation’s proximate source, but not if you are looking for its ultimate foundation.’

F. Fideism refuted. Fideism is not, properly speaking, a system based on nature. It is rather a pseudo-supernatural system proposed by the nominalists of the fifteenth century. This system might be entitled theological positivism, since it founds obligation only on God’s free will, on the divine positive law, made known by faith and therefore unknowable by reason. Hence the name, fideism. On the surface fideism exalts faith, but in truth it depreciates, not only reason, but also the reasonableness of faith. Confounding the spheres of reason and faith, conceiving reason as confined to mere sense life, it becomes a pseudo-supernatural system.

In Occam’s radical nominalism, reason cannot transcend sense-experience, cannot prove God’s existence or the spiritual nature of the soul; hence it cannot be a foundation for moral obligation. Teaching that all these truths come only by faith, Occam prepared the way for Luther. The Jansenists retain345 elements of this fideism, as do likewise the nineteenth-century traditionalists. But they are not as radical as is Occam himself, who holds that the great precept of loving God above all else is not only inaccessible to reason, but is in itself accidental and contingent, so that God could if He willed command us even to hate Him.

Similar is the view of Descartes, who says that the truth of the principle of contradiction depends on God’s free will. If so, then on God’s free will rests likewise the distinction between good and evil.

Now listen to St. Thomas. “Will is guided by reason, in man and in God. Hence the first source of all justice is the wisdom of the divine mind, which gives to all His creatures the right proportion to one another and to Himself, Hence to say that justice depends simply on the divine will is equivalent to saying that the divine will does not act according to divine wisdom—a blasphemous assertion.” 7 In other words, God, if He so willed, could be the supreme evil of the Manichaeans.

Thus fideism arrives at absolute contingency, wherein there remains nothing necessary and stable, not even divine nature, the first reality.

One element of this system remains in Scotus,’ who holds indeed that the command to love God is immutable, but that the commands concerning men are not. Thus homicide, theft, fornication are not prohibited because they are evil, but are evil only because they are prohibited. This view is opposed to that of St. Thomas,® who holds that God never issued orders against the fifth, sixth, and seventh Commandments. Abraham’s readiness to sacrifice his son, for example, came not from his own choice, but from his role as instrument of God, who is Lord of life and death. Similarly, the executioner, who is the instrument of social authority, does not commit murder.

7 De veritate, q-23, a.6. Cf. Ia-IIae, q-91-94. 8 Opera, V, 19, 21, 24. ? Ia-IIae, q.94, a.4-6.

G. General conclusion. The doctrine of St. Thomas, its sublimity and universality, is the best answer to the catechism question: Why was man made? Man was made, not merely for his own pleasure and delight (hedonism); not merely for his own interests, individual or social (utilitarianism); not merely to cultivate his own personal dignity (Kantianism); nor for the sake of his own rational activity (the Stoics and Spinoza). Man was made, first to love good for its own sake, even if such love were not followed by delight or utility; and, secondly, to have supreme love for the supreme good, namely, God, who is man’s ultimate goal, natural and supernatural.

This system harmonizes moral obligation and perfect blessedness, by basing both on one and the same foundation, that supreme good, namely, which beatifies man by insisting on man’s duty to love God above all else. God’s right to such love is the source of all obligation.

The time we have spent on the foregoing ethical systems will bear fruit in subsequent chapters wherein we shall develop the Thomistic synthesis, and particularly in the chapters which show the connection between the treatise on man’s ultimate goal and the treatise on law, eternal law, which is the source of natural] law.

H. One last question. What are the sources of traditional ethics? Can we find its essentials, in particular its view on the foundation of moral obligation, in Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle? Or is it based exclusively on religious tradition, particularly on the Old Testament and the New?

Many historians of philosophy maintain that Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle teach a mere rational eudaemonism, which involves no moral obligation, obligation being a religious concept rather than a moral one. Kant’s admission of the moral obligation, they add, is inherited from Christianity.

The answer rests on a distinction. These three Greeks knew the proximate foundation of moral obligation, namely, right reason as commanding good-in-itself. But only implicitly did they speak of obligation’s ultimate source in a supreme Lawgiver.

Socrates we know only through Plato, But we cannot deny that Plato himself defended the objective foundation of morality. The criminal who escapes punishment, says Plato, is worse off than the criminal who undergoes punishment. Why? Because by paying the penalty, he restores the order of good which crime violated, and thus re-enters into the region of good which ends in felicity. Thus Plato admits an objective obligation, based on good-in-itself, which is the standard of man’s rational activity. Further, the supreme good which Plato admits is an implicit admission of a supreme standard, even though he does not speak explicitly of a supreme Lawgiver and an eternal law.

Aristotle, too, though he speaks only implicitly and indistinctly of the supreme Lawgiver, maintains the proximate foundations of moral obligation. Good-in-itself, he often says, is the goal aimed at by virtue. This good is not only potentially lovable, but must be actually loved, since potency exists only for the sake of act. Good-in-itself (e.g., telling the truth) is to be done for its own sake, not merely for the joy that follows doing. Joy is the ornament of deed, as beauty is the ornament of youth. Joy is a consequence of the good act, but does not constitute the goodness of the act.

St. Thomas says: The first and self-evident principle of practical reason is the universal desirability of good. In other words, good-in-itself, rational good, is an obligation laid on man’s will by the Author of nature. This statement only makes explicit what the Greeks left implicit.

Thus the explicit view of morality, founded on the eternal law, is, in point of fact, speaking historically, religious rather than philosophic, is based on the Testaments, the Old and the New. The Sermon on the Mount, at the beginning of Christ’s public life, promises men blessedness as the reward of rightcousness. But the supreme precept is that of loving God with

heart, soul, mind, and strength. This precept harmonizes obligation and blessedness, each based on the supreme good, which is the goal commanded by the eternal Lawgiver.

Our long Introduction ended, we now turn to examine the questions dealing with man’s ultimate goal.

FIRST PART THE ULTIMATE GOAL (I-II, q. 1-5)

The first question treats of the ultimate goal in general, considered abstractly. The following questions discuss the matter concretely: the term “‘blessedness,” the beatifying object, the beatifying operation, the characteristics of that operation, its attainment, its inamissibility.

Footnotes

  1. Good is an analogous notion: primarily, it means “good-in-itself” (bonum honestum), secondarily, it means “the pleasurable” (bonum delectabile), lastly, it means “the useful” (bonum utile). Ia, q.5, a.6. ↩

  2. Ia-Ilae, q.27, a.3. Cf. Conc. Trid., sess. 6, can. 31, Denzinger, no. 84. ↩

  3. Ia, q-2, a.3. ↩

  4. Ia-Ilae, q.2, a.7. ↩

  5. Ia-Ilae, q.g4, a.2. Cf. Ia-IIae, q.10, a.2. 6 Cf, Ia-ITae, q.19, a.4. ↩

Chapter 4 of 29