Good and Evil Actions: A Journey through Saint Thomas Aquinas

4. Love of Others

132 4 | Love of Others We have seen that the material or subject acted upon is central to the moral species of human actions. Why does it play this central role? We can get a good idea by considering those cases when another human being is the subject acted upon. The act of murder, for instance, has another human being as its subject or material. The victim does not appear to be a fitting subject for this act of killing . Why? Because we should not bring about his evil but rather his good. In short, we should seek his good; we should love him, in some broad sense of the word love. We should love other human beings by seeking their good, so that when we act upon them we should not harm them but benefit them, or at least leave them undamaged . The divide between the craniotomy and hysterectomy might be worked out in these terms. In the craniotomy case, the doctor aims to bring about some change in the baby—a harmful change—in order to achieve her goals. As such, she does not seek the good of the child but his evil. In the hysterectomy case the doctor does not act upon the baby, so that she does not seek to change him for her purposes. She does not aim to bring about his evil in order to achieve her goals. Two prominent questions face this line of thought. First, if love is at issue, then how does the doctor in the hysterectomy case love the baby? Perhaps she does not seek his evil, but she certainly does not seek his good. It seems, then, that the hysterectomy case is no Love of Others 133 different from the craniotomy case. In neither does the doctor love the baby. Second, are we not sometimes justified in harming some individuals in order to benefit many more? Should we not love the good of a greater number rather than forsake the good of the many simply to avoid damaging one person? Typically, the second question swallows the first, for some argue, in consequentialist fashion, that it does not really matter how one harms an individual, either in one’s very action or merely as a consequence of one’s action. In either event, the harm is done. What matters is whether the harm is worth it, that is, whether the harm brings about some greater good. If the child crossing the bridge dies so that many others might live, then it should not matter whether she dies because the soldier has acted upon her, intending to bring about the damage within her, or because the soldier acted upon the bridge, with the child dying as a consequence. The total overall benefit is all that really matters. This chapter, therefore, will try to resolve the tension between two intuitions: first, that we should love others, so that we should not aim to harm them; second, that we should love the greater good, so that sometimes one person must suffer so that many more will benefit. Abelardianism will defend the first intuition, while Proportionalism will advocate the second. We will begin with Aquinas’s distinction between two kinds of love: a love of friendship and a useful love (section 4.1). We will aim to see that human beings are not to be used but to be loved for their own sake. We will then investigate the idea that a lesser good must sometimes be sacrificed for a greater good (section 4.2), suggesting by way of Proportionalism that the life of a baby might sometimes be sacrificed in order to save the life of the mother. This suggestion will draw our attention to the common good and the manner in which the individual relates to the common good (section 4.3). Finally, we will investigate how punishment , especially capital punishment, corresponds with the requirement to love others with a love of friendship (section 4.4). 134 Love of Others Section 4.1. Merely a Means The material of an action gives species insofar as it is able or unable to bear the form introduced by reason. Abelardianism argues that human beings are not fit material for certain activities, particularly activities of harming. When we harm others we seek to use them as a means to achieve some further end; we do not love them as subjects of their own...