Thomistic Morality and Openness to Being

THOMISTIC MORALITY AND OPENNESS TO BEING ~ the root of every philosophy of action or morality lies a conception of the manner in which the agent is related to the action to be performed. Just as there are realist and idealist philosophies of being, so there are " objective " and " subjective " ethics. In the one, the agent is seen as conforming his action with what is, with a reality somehow presented or given; in the other, the agent discovers within himself an ideal or norm or standard to which concrete action must be conformed. It will be a task of this essay to see how the Thomist ethic transcends this dichotomy, or any similar scheme for dividing the varieties of ethical reality and theory. However, the genuine understanding of the profundity of Thomistic thought can be grasped more clearly after an examination of some of the views of other philosophies propounded in Western thought both within and without the framework of scholasticism. It is not our intention to review even cursorily the' principal ethical theories but to select certain ones for examination, in the belief that such analysis will reveal the fundamental deficiencies of any ethics not rooted in the real and metaphysical convertibility of Being and Goodness on which the Thomist ethic is based. The originality of this position, -its standing as a genuine originative thinking of ethics and of moral activity, is perhaps best brought out by contrast with other ethics whose claim for attention is based on their partial grasp of ethical reality and whose partial characteristics as such point to the uniqueness of an ethic of the existential Good given in the grasp of human action revealed in Thomistic thought and its further development. The question here, then, is one of presenting the various partial positions in so revealing a way as to lead to a clearer insight into the ethical reality itself. 67 68 DOM GREGORY STEVENS It may be well, first of all, to see more clearly what an ethical theory is. For our immediate purposes, it may be sufficient to say we are concerned with those philosophical positions which seek to go beyond the merely descriptive and to establish some norm or standard, inner or exterior, according to which man's action is to be guided and governed. In other words, our concern is with selected theories of normative ethics dealing with the manner in which moral judgments are to guide conduct, or moral decisions are to be made, or, more generally, with how man is to act. Immediately there arises, however, the opposing voice of those who deny the very possibility of any sort of normative ethics which could possibly establish a standard, goal or ideal for moral judgments, or who would refuse to commit themselves in any way to such a possibility and who would thus restrict ethics to a purely descriptive, wholly non-evaluative statement of de facto behavior whether personal, social or cultural. Such positions , of course, eliminate not only ethics in the classical sense but also the whole of philosophy, indeed the whole of what has traditionally been called reason. These positions, however, are of interest to the moralist who cannot genuinely avoid the reality of human action and its ineluctable necessity. Man is given as a being who does act, who must act; indeed, action is unavoidable, and not only action but even decisions are inescapable for the direction of my actions is as immediately a necessity as the action itself. Pure spontaneity and total unreflectedness are simply not found in the human condition of action. Furthermore, as M. Blondel pointed out, the very necessity of guidance in our action demands a complete investigation .1 Not only is it dangerous to live the unexamined life, but once the problem of action has been raised, it must be carried to its term. It is therefore necessary to examine those positions which deny the possibility of ethics and thus of the direction of human activity. 1 L'Action (1893), (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1950), xvi-xvii. TIIOMIST MORALITY AND OPENNESS TO BEING 69 In one way or another, these denials of the possibility of ethics reduce to a total immersion...