The Relation of Culture and Ignorance to Culpability in Thomas Aquinas

The Thomist 63 (1999): 105-24 THE RELATION OF CULTURE AND IGNORANCE TO CULPABILITY IN THOMAS AQUINAS GREGORY DOOLAN The Catholic University ofAmerica Washington, D.C. IN BOTH THE De Malo and the Summa Theologir.e Thomas Aquinas asks whether ignorance can diminish sin or even excuse from it altogether. Given current discussions of multi-culturalism, his consideration of this question takes on a particularly contemporary relevance. Proponents of multiculturalism argue at times that cultural influences can pose serious impediments to responsible agency. At the root ofthis contention is the belief that culture can cause in individuals an ignorance of the natural law which excuses them from sin. Through Thomas's writings on ignorance, conscience, and the natural law, we can discern a clear response to such arguments, delineating Thomas's sense of the culpability for such acts. I Examples of cultural practices that violate the natural law would be bride burning in India, hari-kari or ritual suicide formerly found inJapan, and polygamy in certainArab countries. Clearly these activities are influenced by cultural norms, but can such norms be said to excuse any moral culpability whatsoever? The question is posed well by Michelle Moody-Adams, who asks, "But what might the link between culture and agency mean for the practice of holding people responsible for action, and for moral and legal conventions of praise and blame?" 105 106 GREGORY DOOLAN A currently influential answer to this question-to be found in much recent philosophical psychology, as well as in the social sciences and in history-is that cultural influences can, and often do, constitute serious impediments to responsible agency, and our attitudes toward praise and-especially-blame should acknowledge the existence of such impediments. Some of these views attempt to establish that, at least sometimes, widespread moral ign.orance can be due principally to the cultural limitations of an entire era, rather than to individual moral defects.1 In the De Malo Thomas acknowledges that "Since it is of the nature of sin that it is voluntary, to whatever extent ignorance excuses sin either wholly or in part, to that extent it takes away the voluntariness."2 Every act of the will, he explains, is preceded by an act of the intellect that presents the will with its object. If the intellect's act is excluded through ignorance, therefore, so too is the act of the will. Hence, Thomas concludes that "there is always involuntariness so far as concerns that which is unknown."3 Nevertheless, he cautions that while ignorance may at times excuse from sin, it does not always excuse from sin altogether.4 To discern, then, whether Thomas would accept the notion that there can be "widespread moral ignorance" due principally to cultural limitations-and whether such ignorance would alleviate or excuse from sin altogether-we must first consider those circumstances under which he says that ignorance fails to excuse from sin altogether. Thomas explains in the Summa Theologite that there are two reasons why ignorance may fail to excuse altogether from sin. One is on the part of the ignorance itself which determines the voluntariness of the act, and the other is on the part of the thing which is not known.5 Regarding the first, he notes that ignorance 1 Michelle M Moody-Adams, "Culture, Responsibility, and Affected Ignorance," Ethics 104 (January 1994): 291-2; emphasis added. 2 De Malo, q. 3, a. 8 (trans. Jean Osterle [Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995]). 3 Ibid. 4 STh 1-11, q. 76, a. 3 (trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province [New York: Christian Classics, 1981]). 5 Ibid. CULTURE, IGNORANCE, AND CULPABILITY 107 may be related to the act of the will in one of three ways: concomitantly, consequently, or antecedently.6 Ignorance is concomitant (concomitanter) to the will's act when there is ignorance of what is done, but in such a way that even if it were known the act would be performed anyway. Thomas gives the example of a hunter who unknowingly kills a foe whom he had wished to kill anyway. The act cannot be said to be involuntary because it did not cause anything contrary to the hunter's...