Moral Action as Human Action: End and Object in Aquinas in Comparison with Abelard, Lombard, Albert, and Duns Scotus

The Thomist 67 (2003): 73-94 MORAL ACTION AS HUMAN ACTION: END AND OBJECT IN AQUINAS IN COMPARISON WITH ABELARD, LOMBARD, ALBERT, AND DUNS SCOTUS TOBIAS HOFFMANN The Catholic University ofAmerica Washington, D.C. HENTHESAME human action is considered from different perspectives, one can describe it and assess its value in quite different ways. The actions of giving food to a person in need or taking the wallet of a stranger can be described in their ontological dimension as having a certain being, to be characterized as motion, belonging to the categories of quality, quantity, and location. The actions can also be described in their natural and biological dimension as moving one's hands and fingers in a certain way, caused by the contraction of the muscles which in turn proceeds from stimuli in the nervous system. Finally, they can be considered in their moral dimension: What is the person doing? Why is he or she doing it? Is the action good or bad? Is the agent responsible for this act? Moral philosophers are interested in considering actions from this last perspective. Thus, they ask two main questions. First, what constitutes the specifically moral character of actions? Second, how can one assess the moral value of an action? In medieval thought, deeds have a moral quality insofar as they are performed deliberately and freely. In other words, morally relevant acts arise from reason and wHL1 But actions are not judged on the basis of the agent's disposition alone, that is, his 1 See for example Albert, H Sent., d. 39, a. 1, sol.; De bono, tract. I, q. 2, a. 7, Editio Coloniensis 28 (Munster: Aschendorff, 1951); Aquinas, STh I-II, q. 1, a. 1. 73 74 TOBIAS HOFFMANN reason and will, but also on the basis of the action itself and of what it accomplishes. In other words, the agent, the action, and the effects are taken into account. The difficulty, however, consists in conceiving these subjective and objective factors as a unity and to assess their specifically moral character. In this paper I will study different medieval explanations of moral goodness in relation to the principles from which the moral quality arises. Special attention will be given to the importance that each author attributes to the end of the agent (i.e., to the reason why he acts). The end is either superior or subordinate to the object of the action (i.e., what the person is doing), and the various authors studied here hold differentviews about which one of the two is more significant for moral action. When a moral theory focuses mainly on the object of the act, the moral value of actions is assessed primarily from the perspective of the action itself. By contrast, when the end of the action occupies the central role, moral goodness is considered principally from the viewpoint of the agent. A single moral theory may consider both perspectives , but which perspective predominates has crucial consequences. The purpose of this paper is to show how Aquinas develops an ethic that puts the agent at the center of morality, by considering the end as the chief factor in moral actions. Consequently, at its very foundation, Aquinas's moral theory understands moral action as human action. By contrast, if ethics focuses primarily on the object and considers the end an accidental feature of the act, it threatens to limit itself to the question of what is allowed and what is not. Yet each person desires to know primarily why to do things rather than what to do. When I know why to do something, I then become interested in what is the most fitting action to accomplish the end. In addition to looking at Aquinas, I will consider Abelard, Lombard, Albert, and Duns Scotus-partly in order to put Aquinas's account into its historical context and partly in order to contrast the differences between them and Aquinas. END AND OBJECT IN AQUINAS 75 I will discuss the authors in historical sequence and study the position of each by, first, asking how each one accounts for the moral dimension of actions as opposed to their natural dimensions , and, second, analyzing their explanation...