Friday, February 16, 2007

The Standard of Morality, Part III

III. False Standards

a. Determinism or Necessarianism. - Determinism is the doctrine that every action of man's will is not only influenced but wholly predetermined by antecedent condi­tions internal and external, and is the necessary resultant of physical forces beyond man's control. According to determinism, therefore, man can in no instance actively determine his own choice between two lines of conduct; and the universal conviction (implied in the laws and liter­ature of all nations) that man is possessed of a free will, i.e., capable of human actions as we have defined them, is a universal delusion.

This is a false and pernicious theory. It is opposed not only to the judgment of the common sense of mankind, but to those evident facts of each man's consciousness to which we appealed in proving that man is capable of free deliberate actions. We may present another fact. It is perfectly evident that there is an absolute moral obligation to observe the moral law forbidding blasphemy, trea­son, calumny, murder, theft, etc. The law has been vio­lated. If we deny that man is capable of free choice, we must hold that, in every instance, the violation was the necessary resultant of physical forces beyond the control of the transgressor and that, under the circumstances, he could not but commit the transgression and violate the law.

We must suppose, therefore, that he was under an absolute moral obligation to avoid an action which it was physically impossible for him to avoid - an utterly absurd supposition.

That determinism is not only a false but very pernicious doctrine is evident from the fact that, while wishing to retain the name of freedom, the determinist rejects the reality. He is thus logically forced to identify moral freedom with physical freedom, moral law with physi­cal law, moral good and evil with physical good and evil, moral obligation with physical necessity, moral right with physical might, moral vices with physical defects, morally imputable effects with physically attributable effects.

Determinists have vainly striven to show a difference between their doctrine and that of the fatalist. Deter­minism is fatalism. While proposing various standards of morality, the determinists implicitly deny the very existence of morality, which is a quality of free deliberate conduct. This false and pernicious doctrine is implied in any philo­sophical or scientific system or theory or hypothesis that either explicitly or implicitly denies the existence in man of a simple spiritual substantial soul really distinct frem the material body.

b. Moral Positivism. - Moral Positivism is the doctrine that there is no intrinsic and essential difference between morally good and morally bad actions, morally right and morally wrong human conduct. The positivist denies that any action is intrinsically and essentially good or bad. He holds that the distinction between moral goodness and moral badness, moral right and moral wrong, had its origin in some law, or custom, or prevailing opinion, or experi­ence, not necessarily consequent on man's existence in the universe.

According to this theory, therefore, all that we now hold to be morally good we might have perceived to be morally bad, had our antecedent experience or that of the human race or of our pre-human anthropoidal ancestors been different: and it is not impossible that in some dis­tant future age perjury and treason and murder and lying and hatred of God and of fellow man will be altogether befitting man and good moral conduct.

Moral Positivism, in all its various forms, is a false and absurd doctrine. This is evident from what we have said regarding the moral order, which is based on the intrinsic essential nature of things and is the true objective criterion of morality - really identical with rational human nature adequately taken. That order is as immutable as are the essential natures that constitute the universe of being.

And many of the essential relations that exist between beings, fundamental relations of the moral order, are so evident that even the most depraved savages could not fail to perceive that there are some actions essentially and absolutely opposed to the moral order and therefore ab­solutely and necessarily forbidden by the Supreme Orderer of the universe. We are perfectly conscious that it is the same translucent evidence that motives our judgments re­garding the intrinsic essential moral turpitude of blasphemy and murder and treason and perjury and calumny and ingratitude and innumerable other actions. Here there is no question of blind instinct or mental illusion engendered by past experience.

There is a clear conscious apprehen­sion of the objective truth, of an evident fact. We clearly perceive that no law or lawgiver or custom or convention or development or condition of things could make those actions morally good, befitting a man, conducive to the supreme purpose for which man exists as a part of the existing order.

Moral Positivism is not, therefore, based on positive facts. It owes its origin to a vain endeavor to defend false scientific theories. This is true of the moral positivism of Descartes, Hobbes, Rousseau, Comte, Bentham, J. S. Mill, Spencer, and innumerable modem authors and university professors who have subscribed to a false atheistic evolu­tionism or an equally false and pernicious liberalism.

c. Utilitarianism. - Utilitarianism is the doctrine that a human action is morally good in so far as it is useful as a means to some end. What end? Utilitarians reply that an action is morally good in so far as and precisely because it contributes to the true happiness or welfare or develop­ment of the individual and therefore of the race. This reply provokes a further question. By what standard or criterion are we to be guided in judging whether a human action does or does not make for man's true happiness, true welfare, true development? Utilitarians propose a standard. Indeed, they propose various standards or cri­teria, for they are not at one on this fundamental point. In doing so, they either exclude or entirely prescind from man's immediate relation to God.

This is the basic error of utilitarianism. Followed out to its logical consequences, it would lead to the explicit denial of God and of man's eternal destiny. It is, therefore, a most pernicious ethical theory. A theory of human conduct that does not take into account the evident fact that man is primarily and directly and immediately ordained for God's external glory, implicitly ignores man's true position in the universe and the supreme purpose for which man exists. An action makes for the perfect man and therefore for the perfect race, for the true happiness and welfare and development of man, and is a morally good action, just in so far as through it and in it is being realized the supreme end or good, the supreme pur­pose, the Creator had in view in endowing man with the power of doing the action. That purpose is realized in the human action only in so far as the action is in due accord with the essential order established by God, i.e., with the essential relations that arise out of man's nature and his ac­tual position in the created universe.

An action opposed to that order is morally bad and therefore opposed to man's true happiness and development, no matter what the tem­poral advantage which may possibly accrue through it to the individual or the race. Such advantage is gained at the sacrifice of God's design, and therefore of God's glory and man's true well-being. Hence, as we have already demonstrated, the essential order established by God and made evident to man is the standard or criterion by which we can judge unerringly whether an action is or is not morally good and consequently whether it does or does not make for man's true happiness, true welfare, true develop­ment.

Finally, the essential order is a standard or criterion of morality precisely and only because it enables us to judge unerringly of the relation of the human action to the supreme purpose God had in view in granting the power to do the action. The moral goodness of the action consists in the fulfilling of that purpose. Only as such is the action the finite participation, the external manifes­tation, of divine perfection intended by God through and in that particular exercise of man's free will. The action is perfective of man as man, morally good, precisely be­cause through it and in it is realized the perfection God willed to effect -through man's free activity. By such ex­ercise of his free will man becomes more like to the infinite prototype and source of all beauty and perfection, his eternal Creator.

A specious argument advanced in favor of utilitarianism is that, as God (if He exists) evidently intends the happi­ness of man, that happiness may be taken, if not as the end and basis of morality, at least as the criterion of moral­ity. There is need of a distinction. God has certainly decreed perfect and eternal happiness as a reward for the observance of the order He has established. It is also certain that the observance of the moral order, morally good conduct, makes for the true advancement and happi­ness of the human race even here on earth. God, therefore, in decreeing the observance, wills the advancement and happiness naturally consequent on that observance.

But it is false to imply that we can distinguish between the true happiness and development of man, to which God wills man to attain here on earth, and that which He does not will, without having recourse to the true standard and criterion of morality which we have established and to which we have referred in the preceding paragraph. As an end or purpose morally good in itself does not justify a means that is morally bad, in other words, as man can­not by deliberate choice advance through morally bad means to a morally good end without soiling himself mor­ally, so it is false to imply that any present or future advantage or happiness of the individual or the State or the entire race of man can ever justify an action that is op­posed to the smallest detail of the order founded on the essences of things and decreed by the infinite Creator.

Moreover, in that order neither man nor man's free action is subordinated to the State or to Humanity as to the su­preme end to be attained through man's activity here on earth. The supreme good to be effected by man through and in each deliberate action here on earth is the observ­ance of the moral order. That observance is God's exter­nal glory, an external manifestation through man's free action of God's infinite goodness. Only with this fact in view can we duly estimate the befittingness or unbefitting­ness of human conduct. A criterion, therefore, that pre­scinds from this fact is not a criterion of the morality of human conduct.

d. Kantianism. - Kant's ethical theory, the "autonomy of reason," is based on a false interpretation of the dic­tates of reason, i.e., of the practical judgments of the hu­man intellect or reason in which the individual applies the universal principles of the moral law to his own conduct in particular cases. Through reason man perceives the ob­jective law, an imperative decree of his legitimate superior, and the relation of this or that particular action to the law, i.e., whether it does or does not come under the law
or the just command of his legitimate superior.

Thus through reason the law is promulgated and our obligation made manifest. The practical judgment is a judgment of right reason, just in so far as it is a judgment based on objective truth, i.e., on objective evidence of the existence and meaning and application of the law. It is correctly called a dictate or imperative command of reason, just in so far as it is the expression of what we are certain is the imperative will of one invested with due authority to im­pose a moral obligation upon us, i.e., of our superior.

According to Kant's theory of the "autonomy of reason," the supreme standard and law of morality is an absolute universal command, a "categoric imperative," issuing from and imposed on q1an by his own reason. Precisely as such is it to be obeyed, and not because the imperative dictate of reason expresses a command of another person distinct from ourself, i.e., not because it is the command of God or of a superior who has authority from God to restrict the use of our physical liberty.

The law and the obliga­tion are from within, not from without. Practical human reason, with which Kant identifies the rational will in man, is the source of all moral obligation and moral goodness. The absolute dictate of one's own reason has within itself, considered apart from all external authority and from any end other than itself, the sufficient reason for its being a supreme law. That law is to be obeyed simply because it is the law, for its own sake, and not because it is a means to an end, not because in the observance of the law we are realizing the supreme purpose or good for which God created us. Only then is man's conduct morally good, when man complies with the dictate of human reason pre­cisely because it is a dictate of human reason.

We said that this is a false interpretation of the dictates of reason. Thus to place the supreme motive of human conduct within man or man's practical reason or his rational will is to imply that man is identified with God or that God does not exist. The pernicious trend of Kant's philosophy is evident in the pantheistic and atheistic hy­potheses excogitated by those who have come under the influence of his teaching. Hence, too, that false rational­ism which conceives the human understanding to be the sole source and final test of all truth, to the exclusion of all faith founded on divine supernatural revelation.

From the proofs we advanced of the existence of God and the immortality of the human soul, and from what we have said regarding the Moral Order and the True Standard of Morality, it is clear that the common sense of mankind has not erred in its interpretation of the dic­tates of right reason. They are founded on the objectively evident order established by God, through which order are clearly indicated God's intention and will in our re­gard, His divine natural law and the restrictions it imposes on the use of our free will.

In observing the law we are glorifying God and meriting the supreme happiness God has proposed as a reward for a life well spent here on earth. God has created man for God's external glory and man's eternal happiness, and He has implanted in man's nature an innate desire for happiness. He proposes eternal glory and happiness as a reward for the due observance of His law and has decreed punishment for its violation. It is absurd, therefore, to maintain that man's action is not morally good if his motive for doing it is to glorify God or to merit eternal happiness or to avoid the punishment decreed by God as a deterring motive.

e. Moral Evolutionism. - In our proof of the existence of God we demonstrated that the primal source of all finite beings is an absolutely immutable Being. That demonstra­tion is sufficient proof of the inherent absurdity of the pantheistical theories of Spinoza and Fichte, of Hegel and Schelling, of Green and Royce and Bergson, of the innu­merable modern exponents of what is called the "transcendental evolution of the Absolute." They postulate a changeable something, real or ideal, or change itself as the primal source of all phenomena in the universe.

In demonstrating that the principle of life in man is a spiritual, substantial, immortal principle endowed with free will, we have proved the absurdity of any biological or psychological theory of evolution which supposes man to have been gradually developed out of some form of an­thropoid beast. From the same proofs it is clear that any evolutionary theory (biological or psychological or tran­scendental) that implies the negation of free will, is false and opposed to evident facts.*

The various ethical theories based on these false evolu­tionary hypotheses are as absurd as the assumptions from which they are deduced. Their advocates have striven in vain to give an adequate explanation of our concepts of moral good and evil, moral right and duty, moral obligation and responsibility, moral law. According to the explana­tions proposed all our moral concepts implying freedom of the will are illusions into which we have been evolved. Such an explanation is subversive of all morality. Herbert Spencer is a leading advocate of the common evolutionist doctrine that the long-continued experience of our brute ancestors of the pleasure attaching to certain actions is the ultimate reason and scientific explanation of our clearly perceiving those actions as absolutely obligatory, as a duty to be done at all costs, even though it should entail the greatest pain and the loss of life itself and all earthly happiness. No account is taken of the evident fact that man is endowed with a mind capable of perceiving the order established by God, his own position in that order, his relation to God.

Without questioning their earnestness or sincerity, we may call attention to the fact that keen exponents of moral evolutionism are capable of expressing vague meaningless formulae in terse dignified language, of skillfully introducing into the exposition of their false theories elo­quent expressions of true principles, and, by attaching new meanings to common ethical terms, of rendering the full import of their false theory far less obvious.

* From the Bible (the Old Testament and the New) we may glean true and certain knowledge of man's origin, his primal state, his first sin and its consequences, the descent of the human race from one pair (Adam and Eve), the degeneration caused by man's gross and continued violation of the order established by God.

As the individual, so the race of man is capable of moral growth and of moral decay. Only by having recourse to the true stand­ard of morality, the evident order established by God, can we distinguish the one from the other.


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Adapted from Moral Philosophy
by Rev Charles Coppen, S.J.
(© 1924)



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