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8 The Perspective of the Acting Person and the Nature of Practical Reason The “Object of the Human Act” in Thomistic Anthropology of Action The “Object of the Human Act”: In the Perspective of the Acting Subject The passage in Veritatis Splendor no. 78 that clarifies the concept of the “object” of a human act is widely acknowledged as decisive for the central argument of the encyclical, which reaffirms “the universality and immutability of the moral commandments, particularly those which prohibit always and without exception intrinsically evil acts.”1 In accordance with the tradition, but referring explicitly to St. Thomas Aquinas, the encyclical states that “the morality of the human act depends primarily and fundamentally on the “object ” rationally chosen by the deliberate will.” The text adds: “In order to be able to grasp the object of an act which specifies [an] act morally, it is therefore necessary to place oneself in the perspective of the acting person.” By the term “object,” the encyclical does not designate “a process or an event of the merely physical order, to be assessed on the basis of its ability to bring about 195 1. John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth, 1993), no. 115. a given state of affairs in the outside world.” According to VS, “objects” of human acts are not mere “givens,” that is, “things,” realities, or physical, biological , technical, or juridical structures; nor are they bodily movements and the effects caused by such movements; nor is the object of a human act a simple “physical good” or “non-moral good,” as is, for example, a human life or a possession. Rather, the “object” of a human act is always the object of an act of the will and, as such, the encyclical affirms, a “freely chosen behavior”: it is a type of action, as, for example, “to kill an innocent person” or “to steal.” For this reason, a few lines later the text of the encyclical adds: “[The] object is the proximate end of a deliberate decision which determines the act of willing on the part of the acting person.” The object of an act must therefore be understood as the end of an act of the will, and thus as a practical good, presented by reason to the will. Consequently, in the moral context, no opposition exists between the notions of “object” and “end.”2 The object is, precisely , a particular type of end, that is, that toward which, primarily and fundamentally , the act of the will from which an action originates tends: the act of choice or electio of an act or of a concrete behavior. This means that it is impossible to describe the object of a moral act without considering it as object and content of an act of choice of the will, full of moral significance, or rather as a good toward which the elective act of the will tends. Thus, the object is necessarily already formulated by reason. As the object of an interior act of the will, it is, in the words of St. Thomas, a “good understood and ordered by reason”3 or, put differently, “the intelligible content that morally specifies a deliberate choice.”4 As a “good understood and ordered by reason,” the object also includes in itself an intentional structure, given that it is characteristic of reason to be ordered to an end. Understood in this way, the object of a human act is, precisely, its primary and fundamental intentional content: the object indicates what one does when one does something, and for this reason it also indicates, in a basic and fundamental way, why one does what one does, given that a human act cannot be understood as a specific kind of act 2. This has been clearly shown by S. Pinckaers in his classic essay “Le rôle de la fin dans l’action morale selon Saint Thomas,” in Pinckaers, Le renouveau de la morale (Tournai: Casterman , 1964), 114–43 (originally in Revue des Sciences philosophiques et théologiques 45 [1961]: 393– 421). I am personally very grateful to have found this article, despite the presence of some weaknesses and ambiguities, of which I will later speak. 3. ST I-II, q.20 a.1 ad1: “bonum apprehensum et ordinatum per rationem.” 4. E. Colom and A. Rodríguez Luño, Scelti in Cristo per essere santi. Elementi di Teologia morale fondamentale (Rome: Apollinare Studi, 1999), 127. 196 the “object of the human act” [3.133...

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