Right Reason in Contemporary Ethics

RIGHT REASON IN CONTEMPORARY ETIDCS 0 NE OF THE MOST important themes in the practical thinking of Thomas Aquinas is rectaratio. It seems to me to bemuch more central in Thomistic ethics than the concept of naturallaw.1 Following a brief outline of what right reason meant to Aquinas, I propose to examine three typically contemporary approaches to ethical reasoning m order to suggest their relations to Thomistic right reason. Aquinas on Right Reason One of the best works to read, so as to get some appreciation of what St. Thomas was really doing in his ethics, is his Disputed Questions on the Virtues in General.2 What we find there is a self-perfectionist theory of the good life for man. The first five articles analyze man in terms of a highly developed moral psychology. Four operative powers (not faculties) in man are regarded as capable of moral perfection: the possible intellect (roughly, the understanding in Lockean terms), will (that is, intellectual appetite) , irascible sensory appetite, and concupiscible sensory appetite. Each of these four psychic powers is considered to be a passive operative potency-as distinguished from an active operative potency (such as the agent intellect or the cognitive sense powers). Active potencies are not improved by use; they are initially as perfect as they ever will be; such active potencies are faculties. However, passive operative powers are metaphysically imperfect in their original state and their use brings an added ability (habitus, habilitas) to their 1 See my History of Ethics (New York: Doubleday, 1968), pp. 97-99; also my forthcoming article: "Is Aquinas a Natural-Law Ethicist?" in The Monist (1974). 2 De virtutibus in communi (in Quaestiones Disputatae, vol. II, Turin: Marietti, 1953). The Virtues ( in General), trans. with introduction and notes by John Patrick Reid, 0. P. (Providence: Providence College Press, 1951). 106 RIGHT REASON IN CONTEMPORARY ETHICS 107 original power. Hence their initial state of potency is open to development into the condition known as virtus, that is, the state of a fully perfected operative power of man.3 Emphasis must be placed on Thomas's view that the process of moral self-perfecting is not exclusively a volitional event but is a fourfold personal development. With all due respect for the unity of human consciousness, and for the fact that man and not his powers is the real moral agent, Aquinas insists that there are four different powers directly involved in the growth of moral character. Virtue is not simply a matter of training the will. The possible intellect is perfected by the virtue of prudence; intellectual appetite (will) is perfected by justice (and in the supernatural order by charity); irascible appetite is perfected by fortitude; and concupiscible appetite is perfected by temperance. Will, of course, is involved in all moral actions -but so is intellect, as used in the process of practical reasoning and in the making of practical judgments.4 Each of the four moral potencies is born in a state of imperfection , with an inborn inclination toward some specific perfection . Through his intellect man desires true knowledge (both speculative and practical), through his will he desires the good-in-general as presented by intellectual cognition, through irascible appetite he desires the sensory good of security from dangers, and through concupiscible appetite he desires sensory pleasures. These innate human inclinations may be perfected either in the direction of virtue or of vice. Virtue is both a metaphysical and a moral perfectant; vice is only a metaphysical perfectant. What distinguishes the virtuous habit, for St. Thomas, is its agreement with reason. Man is marked by rationality as his specific difference: to become a morally perfected human being is to develop all four moral powers in accord with right reason. This is how he explains the moral function of right reason: 8 Cf. G. P. Klubertanz, Habits and Virtues (New York: Appleton-CenturyCrofts , 1965); and my essay: "Habitus in the Thomistic Metaphysics of Potency and Act," in Essays in Thomism, ed. R. E. Brennan, 0. P. (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1942), pp. 101-109. 'De virtutibus in communi, a. 5, c. 108 VERNON J. :SOURKE The good for anything whatever consists in the...