Good and Evil Actions: A Journey through Saint Thomas Aquinas

Foreword

ix Foreword It is inescapably true that we should do good and avoid evil, but how are we to know the difference between them? Whenever St. Thomas faces this question, he quotes the Psalmist in the Vulgate (Ps. 4, 6): Quis ostendit nobis bona? The answer is: Signatum est super nos lumen vultus tui, Domine. Who will show us what is good? The light of the countenance is sealed upon us, O Lord. That is, by a participation in the divine wisdom, men have a natural capacity to discern good and evil. One becomes a good person by performing good deeds; a primary task of moral philosophy, accordingly, is getting clear on the nature of the human act. Human acts are acts that humans perform , of course, and it is important to begin with such resounding truisms. But difficulties arise and one learns to appreciate Thomas Aquinas’s distinction between the human act and the act of a man. Not every activity truly ascribed to a man counts as a human act, the mark of the latter being that it is deliberate and voluntary. Inhaling and exhaling, dreaming, and the like thus do not count as human acts. One must know what he is doing and freely do it in order for the act to be human. Thus one is drawn into a consideration of the constituents of the human act, the contributions of reason on the one hand and of will on the other. There is the inner act as well as the external action and moral appraisal of the one or the x foreword other poses different though related questions. The constituents of the complete human act enable us to appraise imperfect actions that do not reach their term and yet form part of our moral history. So it is that students of St. Thomas have long since learned the complexity that awaits them in following initial leads of fundamental certainty. Along the way, a host of problems arise, more or less central, and little schools are formed. Each of the constituents of the human act raises issues of its own. Notably, the notion of the intention of the agent calls for lengthy reflection. In short, an ample menu of difficulties confronts the student who wants both to be guided by St. Thomas and to learn from the efforts of others. This presents a problem of method. Should one simply identify the problem areas, take them up one by one, and then present one’s own interpretation? Comes now Steven Jensen who has chosen a far more promising and difficult method: he will seek to make emerge from the discussion of the difficulties, artfully arranged, the authentic doctrine of Thomas Aquinas. The advantages of this method are manifest, but it puts great demands on the reader as it did on the writer. Familiarity with the chief rival positions is of little moment if one is not at the same time aware of the developing dialectic which gives rise to them. Jensen undertakes both to acquaint us with the best that has been hitherto said, why it has been said, and, often, why it is insufficient. The present book, then, is a remarkable compendium of the status quaestionis of a large number of prickly issues associated with Thomas Aquinas’s theory of human action, a fair look at proposed solutions, and finally Jensen’s own best thought on the matter. In the course of doing this, he confronts positions put forward by friends of his, always, as Aristotle learned vis-à-vis Plato, the severest test. Whether persuaded or not, none of his interlocutors could consider him hasty or unfair. Over the past half century, much has been written about Thomas ’s moral philosophy. This has doubled the scholar’s task, since foreword xi he must both immerse himself in the original texts and give a fair hearing to what his predecessors have made of those texts. I doubt that anyone has done this more thoroughly and impressively than Steven Jensen, and I for one am grateful to him. Ralph McInerny ...