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Moral Philosophy

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MORAL PHILOSOPHY:

ETHICS, DEONTOLOGY AND NATURAL LAW.

BY
JOSEPH RICKABY, S.J.


Nihil Obstat:
JOSEPHUS KEATING, S.J.
_Censor deputatus_

Imprimi potest:
JOANNES H. WRIGHT, S.J.
_Præp. Prov. Angliæ_

Nihil Obstat:
C. SCHUT, D.D.
_Censor deputatus_

Imprimatur:
EDM. CAN. SURMONT
_Vie. Gen._




PREFACE (1905).


For fifteen years this Manual has enjoyed all the popularity that its
author could desire. With that popularity the author is the last
person to wish to interfere. Therefore, not to throw previous copies
out of use, this edition makes no alteration either in the pagination
or the text already printed. At the same time the author might well be
argued to have lapsed into strange supineness and indifference to
moral science, if in fifteen years he had learnt nothing new, and
found nothing in his work which he wished to improve. Whoever will be
at the expense of purchasing my _Political and Moral Essays_
(Benziger, 1902, 6s.) will find in the first essay on the _Origin and
Extent of Civil Authority_ an advantageous substitute for the chapter
on the State in this work. The essay is a dissertation written for the
degree of B. Sc. in the University of Oxford; and represents, I hope,
tolerably well the best contemporary teaching on the subject.

If the present work had to be rewritten, I should make a triple
division of Moral Philosophy, into Ethics, Deontology (the science of
[Greek: to deon], i.e., of what _ought_ to be done), and Natural Law.
For if "the principal business of Ethics is to determine what moral
obligation is" (p. 2), then the classical work on the subject, the
_Nicomachean Ethics_ of Aristotle, is as the play of Hamlet with the
character of Hamlet left out: for in that work there is no analysis of
moral obligation, no attempt to "fix the comprehension of the idea I
_ought_" (ib.). The system there exposed is a system of Eudaemonism,
not of Deontology. It is not a treatise on Duty, but on Happiness: it
tells us what Happiness, or rational well-being, is, and what conduct
is conducive to rational well-being. It may be found convenient to
follow Aristotle, and avow that the business of Ethics is not Duty,
not Obligation, not Law, not Sanction, but Happiness. That fiery
little word _ought_ goes unexplained in Ethics, except in an
hypothetical sense, that a man _ought_ to do this, and avoid that,
_if_ he means to be a happy man: cf. p. 115. Any man who declares that
he does not care about ethical or rational happiness, stands to Ethics
as that man stands to Music who "hath no ear for concord of sweet
sounds."

All that Ethics or Music can do for such a Philistine is to "send him
away to another city, pouring ointment on his head, and crowning him
with wool," as Plato would dismiss the tragedian (_Republic_ III.
398). The author of the _Magna Moralia_ well says (I. i. 13): "No
science or faculty ever argues the goodness of the end which it
proposes to itself: it belongs to some other faculty to consider that.
Neither the physician says that health is a good thing, nor the
builder that a house is a good thing: but the one announces that he
produces health and how he produces it, and the builder in like manner
a house." The professor of Ethics indeed, from the very nature of his
subject-matter, says in pointing out happiness that it is the rational
sovereign good of man: but to any one unmoved by that demonstration
Ethics can have no more to say. Ethics will not threaten, nor talk of
duty, law, or punishment.

Ethics, thus strictly considered on an Aristotelian basis, are
antecedent to Natural Theology. They belong rather to Natural
Anthropology: they are a study of human nature. But as human nature
points to God, so Ethics are not wholly irrespective of God,
considering Him as the object of human happiness and worship,--the
Supreme Being without whom all the aspirations of humanity are at
fault (pp. 13-26, 191-197). Ethics do not refer to the commandments of
God, for this simple reason, that they have nothing to say to
commandments, or laws, or obligation, or authority. They are simply a
system of moral hygiene, which a man may adopt or not: only, like any
other physician, the professor of Ethics utters a friendly warning
that misery must ensue upon the neglect of what makes for health.

Deontology, not Ethics, expounds and vindicates the idea, _I ought_.
It is the science of Duty. It carries the mild suasions of Ethics into
laws, and out of moral prudence it creates conscience. And whereas
Ethics do not deal with sin, except under the aspect of what is called
"philosophical sin" (p. 119, § 6), Deontology defines sin in its
proper theological sense, as "an offence against God, or any thought,
word, or deed against the law of God." Deontology therefore
presupposes and is consequent upon Natural Theology. At the same time,
while Ethics indicate a valuable proof of the existence of God as the
requisite Object of Happiness, Deontology affords a proof of Him as
the requisite Lawgiver. Without God, man's rational desire is
frustrate, and man's conscience a misrepresentation of fact. [Footnote
1]

[Footnote 1: This is Cardinal Newman's proof of the existence of God
from Conscience: see pp. 124, 125, and _Grammar of Assent_, pp.
104-111, ed. 1895. With Newman's, "Conscience has both a critical and
a judicial office," compare Plato, _Politicus_, 260 B, [Greek:
sumpasaes taes gnostikaes to men epitaktikon meros, to de kritikon].
The "critical" office belongs to Ethics: the "judicial," or
"preceptive" office [Greek: to epitaktikon] to Deontology; and this
latter points to a Person who commands and judges, that is, to God.]

In this volume, pp. 1-108 make up the treatise on Ethics: pp. 109-176
that on Deontology.

Aristotle writes: "He that acts by intelligence and cultivates
understanding, is likely to be best disposed and dearest to God. For
if, as is thought, there is any care of human things on the part of
the heavenly powers, we may reasonably expect them to delight in that
which is best and most akin to themselves, that is, in intelligence,
and to make a return of good to such as supremely love and honour
intelligence, as cultivating the thing dearest to Heaven, and so
behaving rightly and well. Such, plainly, is the behaviour of the
wise. The wise man therefore is the dearest to God" (Nic. Eth. X. ix.
13). But Aristotle does not work out the connexion between God and His
law on the one hand and human conscience and duty on the other. In
that direction the Stoics, and after them the Roman Jurists, went
further than Aristotle. By reason of this deficiency, Aristotle,
peerless as he is in Ethics, remains an imperfect Moral Philosopher.



PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION (1918)

1. I have altered the opening pages in accordance with the Preface to
the edition of 1905.

2. I have added a paragraph on Syndicalism (pp. 291-2).

3. Also a new Table of _Addenda et Corrigenda_, and a new Index.

The quotations from St. Thomas may be read in English, nearly all of
them, in the Author's _Aquinas Ethicus_, 2 vols.; 12s. (Burns and
Oates.)



CONTENTS.

PART I.--ETHICS.

CHAPTER I.--OF THE OBJECT-MATTER AND PARTITION OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY.

CHAPTER II.--OF HAPPINESS.
Section I.--Of Ends.
Section II.--Definition of Happiness.
Section III.--Happiness open to Man.
Section IV.--Of the Object of Perfect Happiness.
Section V.--Of the use of the present life.

CHAPTER III.--OF HUMAN ACTS.
Section I.--What makes a human act less voluntary.
Section II.--Of the determinants of Morality in any given action.

CHAPTER IV.--OF PASSIONS.
Section I.--Of Passions in general.
Section II.--Of Desire.
Section III.--Of Delight.
Section IV.--Of Anger.

CHAPTER V.--OF HABITS AND VIRTUES.
Section I.--Of Habit.
Section II.--Of Virtues in general.
Section III.--Of the difference between Virtues, Intellectual
and Moral.
Section IV.--Of the Mean in Moral Virtue.
Section V.--Of Cardinal Virtues.
Section VI.--Of Prudence.
Section VII.--Of Temperance.
Section VIII.--Of Fortitude.
Section IX.--Of Justice.

PART II.--DEONTOLOGY.

CHAPTER I. (VI.)--OF THE ORIGIN OF MORAL OBLIGATION.
Section I.--Of the natural difference between Good and Evil.
Section II.--How Good becomes bounden Duty, and Evil is advanced to sin.

CHAPTER II. (VII.)--OF THE ETERNAL LAW.

CHAPTER III. (VIII.)--OF THE NATURAL LAW OF CONSCIENCE.
Section I.--Of the Origin of Primary Moral Judgments.
Section II.--Of the invariability of Primary Moral Judgments.
Section III.--Of the immutability of the Natural Law.
Section IV.--Of Probabilism.

CHAPTER IV. (IX.)--OF THE SANCTION OF THE NATURAL LAW.
Section I.--Of a Twofold Sanction, Natural and Divine.
Section II.--Of the Finality of the aforesaid Sanction.
Section III.--Of Punishment, Retrospective and Retributive.

CHAPTER V. (X.)--OF UTILITARIANISM.


PART III.--NATURAL LAW.

CHAPTER I.--OF DUTIES TO GOD.
Section I.--Of the Worship of God.
Section II.--Of Superstitious Practices.
Section III.--Of the duty of knowing God.

CHAPTER II.--OF THE DUTY OF PRESERVING LIFE.
Section I.--Of Killing, Direct and Indirect.
Section II.--Of Killing done Indirectly in Self-defence.
Section III.--Of Suicide.
Section IV.--Of Duelling.

CHAPTER III.--OF SPEAKING THE TRUTH.
Section I.--Of the definition of a Lie.
Section II.--Of the Evil of Lying.
Section III.--Of the keeping of Secrets without Lying.

CHAPTER IV.--OF CHARITY.

CHAPTER V.--OF RIGHTS.
Section I.--Of the definition and division of Rights.
Section II.--Of the so-called Rights of Animals.
Section III.--Of the right to Honour and Reputation.
Section IV.--Of Contracts.
Section V.--Of Usury.

CHAPTER VI.--OF MARRIAGE.
Section I.--Of the Institution of Marriage.
Section II.--Of the Unity of Marriage.
Section III.--Of the Indissolubility of Marriage.

CHAPTER VII.--OF PROPERTY.
Section I.--Of Private Property.
Section II.--Of Private Capital.
Section III.--Of Landed Property.

CHAPTER VIII.--OF THE STATE.
Section I.--Of the Monstrosities called Leviathan and Social Contract.
Section II.--Of the theory that Civil Power is an aggregate
formed by subscription of the powers of individuals.
Section III.--Of the true state of Nature, which is the
state of civil society, and consequently of the Divine origin of Power.
Section IV.--Of the variety of Polities.
Section V.--Of the Divine Right of Kings and the Inalienable
Sovereignty of the People.
Section VI.--Of the Elementary and Original Polity.
Section VII.--Of Resistance to Civil Power.
Section VIII.--Of the Right of the Sword.
Section IX.--Of War.
Section X.--Of the Scope and Aim of Civil Government.
Section XI.--Of Law and Liberty.
Section XII.--Of Liberty of Opinion.



ADDENDA ET CORRIGENDA

p. 31. Aristotle calls the end [Greek: _to telos_]; the means, [Greek:
ta pros to telos] (St. Thomas, _ea quae sunt ad finem_); the
circumstances, [Greek: ta ein ois hae praxis].

Observe, both end and means are willed _directly_, but the
circumstances _indirectly_.

The end is _intended_, [Greek: boulaeton]; the means are _chosen_,
[Greek: proaireton]; the circumstances are simply _permitted_, [Greek:
anekton], rightly or wrongly. The _intention_ of the end is called by
English philosophers the _motive_; while the choice of means they call
the _intention_, an unfortunate terminology.

p. 42, §. 3. "As the wax takes all shapes, and yet is wax still at the
bottom; the [Greek: spokeimenon] still is wax; so the soul transported
in so many several passions of joy, fear, hope, sorrow, anger, and the
rest, has for its general groundwork of all this, Love." (Henry More,
quoted in Carey's Dante, _Purgatorio_, c. xviii.) Hence, says Carey,
Love does not figure in Collins's _Ode on the Passions_.

p. 43. For _daring_ read _recklessness_.

p. 44. Plato is a thorough Stoic when he says (_Phaedo_ 83) that every
pleasure and pain comes with a nail to pin down the soul to the body
and make it corporeal. His Stoicism appears in his denunciation of the
drama (_Republic_, x. 604).

p. 47, §. 8. The first chapter of Mill's _Autobiography_, pp. 48-53,
133-149, supplies an instance.

p. 49, §. I, 1. 2, for _physical_ read _psychical_.

P. 52. §. 5. This _serving_, in [Greek: douleuein], St. Ignatius calls
"inordinate attachment," the modern form of idolatry. Cf. Romans vi.
16-22.

p. 79. For _spoiled_ read _spoilt_.

p. 84, foot. For _ways_ read _way_.

p. 85, 1. 6 from foot. Substitute: ([Greek: b]) _to restrain the said
appetite in its irascible part from shrinking from danger_.

p. 94, middle. For _others_ read _other_.

p. 95. For _Daring_ read _Recklessness_.

p. 103, middle. Substitute, _"neither evening star nor morning star is
so wonderful."_

p. 106, §. 6. Aristotle speaks of "corrective," not of "commutative"
justice. On the Aristotelian division of justice see Political and
Moral Essays (P. M. E.), pp. 285-6.

p. 111, §. 4. The _static_ equivalent of the _dynamic_ idea, of
orderly development is that the eternal harmonies and fitnesses of
things, by observance or neglect whereof a man comes to be in or out
of harmony with himself, with his fellows, with God.

p. 133. To the _Readings_ add Plato _Laws_, ix, 875, A, B, C, D.

p. 151. Rewrite the Note thus: _The author has seen reason somewhat to
modify this view, as appears by the Appendix. See P.M.E._ pp. 185-9:
_Fowler's Progressive Morality, or Fowler and Wilson's Principles of
Morals_, pp. 227-248.

p. 181, 1. ii from top. Add, _This is "the law of our nature, that
function is primary, and pleasure only attendant" (Stewart, Notes on
Nicomathean Ethics,_ II. 418).

p. 218, lines 13-16 from top, cancel the sentence, _To this query_,
etc., and substitute: _The reply is, that God is never willing that
man should do an inordinate act; but suicide is an inordinate act, as
has been shown; capital punishment is not _(c. viii. s. viii. n. 7, p.
349).

p. 237. For _The Month for March,_ 1883, read _P.M.E._, pp. 215-233.

p. 251. To the _Reading_ add P.M.E., pp. 267-283.

p. 297, l.6 from foot. After _simply evil_ add: _Hobbes allows that
human reason lays down certain good rules, "laws of nature" which
however it cannot get kept_. For Hobbes and Rousseau see further
_P.M.E_., pp. 81-90.

p. 319, middle. Cancel the words: _but the sum total of civil power is
a constant quantity, the same for all States_.

pp. 322-3. Cancel §. 7 for reasons alleged in _P.M.E_., pp. 50-72.
Substitute: _States are living organizations and grow, and their
powers vary with the stage of their development_.

p. 323, § 8. For _This seems at variance with_, read _This brings us
to consider_.

p. 338. To the _Readings_ add _P.M.E_., pp. 102-113.

p. 347, middle. Cancel from _one of these prerogatives_ to the end of
the sentence. Substitute: _of every polity even in the most infantine
condition._


* * * * *


MORAL PHILOSOPHY.

PART I. ETHICS.

CHAPTER I.

OF THE OBJECT-MATTER AND PARTITION OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY.


1. Moral Philosophy is the science of human acts in their bearing on
human happiness and human duty.

2. Those acts alone are properly called _human_, which a man is master
of to do or not to do. A _human act_, then, is an act voluntary and
free. A man is what his human acts make him.

3. A _voluntary_ act is an act that proceeds from the will with a
knowledge of the end to which the act tends.

4. A free act is an act which so proceeds from the will that under the
same antecedent conditions it might have not proceeded.

An act may be more or less voluntary, and more or less free.

5. Moral Philosophy is divided into Ethics, Deontology, and Natural
Law. Ethics consider human acts in their bearing on human happiness;
or, what is the same thing, in their agreement or disagreement with
man's rational nature, and their making for or against his last end.
Deontology is the study of moral obligation, or the fixing of what
logicians call the comprehension of the idea _I ought_. Ethics deal
with [Greek: to prepon], "the becoming"; Deontology with [Greek: to
deon], "the obligatory". Deontology is the science of Duty, as such.
Natural Law (antecedent to Positive Law, whether divine or human,
civil or ecclesiastical, national or international) determines duties
in detail,--the _extension_ of the idea _I ought_,--and thus is the
foundation of Casuistry.

6. In the order of sciences, Ethics are antecedent to Natural
Theology; Deontology, consequent upon it.

_Readings_.--St. Thos., _in Eth_., I., lect. 1, init.; _ib_., 1a 2æ,
q. 1, art. 1, in corp.; _ib_., q. 58, art. 1, in corp.



CHAPTER II.

OF HAPPINESS.

SECTION I.--_Of Ends_.


1. Every human act is done for some end or purpose. The end is always
regarded by the agent in the light of something good. If evil be done,
it is done as leading to good, or as bound up with good, or as itself
being good for the doer under the circumstances; no man ever does evil
for sheer evil's sake. Yet evil may be the object of the will, not by
itself, nor primarily, but in a secondary way, as bound up with the
good that is willed in the first place.

2. Many things willed are neither good nor evil in themselves. There
is no motive for doing them except in so far as they lead to some good
beyond themselves, or to deliverance from some evil, which deliverance
counts as a good. A thing is willed, then, either as being good in
itself and an end by itself, or as leading to some good end. Once a
thing not good and desirable by itself has been taken up by the will
as leading to good, it may be taken up again and again without
reference to its tendency. But such a thing was not originally taken
up except in view of good to come of it. We may will one thing as
leading to another, and that to a third, and so on; thus one wills
study for learning, learning for examination purposes, examination for
a commission in the army, and the commission for glory. That end in
which the will rests, willing it for itself without reference to
anything beyond, is called the _last end_.

3. An end is either _objective_ or _subjective_. The _objective end_
is the thing wished for, as it exists distinct from the person who
wishes it. The _subjective end_ is the possession of the objective
end. That possession is a fact of the wisher's own being. Thus _money_
may be an objective end: the corresponding subjective end is _being
wealthy_.

4. Is there one subjective last end to all the human acts of a given
individual? Is there one supreme motive for all that this or that man
deliberately does? At first sight it seems that there is not. The same
individual will act now for glory, now for lucre, now for love. But
all these different ends are reducible to one, _that it may be well
with him and his_. And what is true of one man here, is true of all.
All the human acts of all men are done for the one (subjective) last
end just indicated. This end is called _happiness_.

5. Men place their happiness in most different things; some in eating
and drinking, some in the heaping up of money, some in gambling, some
in political power, some in the gratification of affection, some in
reputation of one sort or another. But each one seeks his own
speciality because he thinks that he shall be happy, that it will be
well with him, when he has attained that. All men, then, do all things
for happiness, though not all place their happiness in the same thing.

6. Just as when one goes on a journey, he need not think of his
destination at every step of his way, and yet all his steps are
directed towards his destination: so men do not think of happiness in
all they do, and yet all they do is referred to happiness. Tell a
traveller that this is the wrong way to his destination, he will avoid
it; convince a man that this act will not be well for him, will not
further his happiness, and, while he keeps that conviction principally
before his eyes, he will not do the act. But as a man who began to
travel on business, may come to make travelling itself a business, and
travel for the sake of going about; so in all cases there is a
tendency to elevate into an end that which was, to start with, only
valued as a means to an end. So the means of happiness, by being
habitually pursued, come to be a part of happiness. Habit is a second
nature, and we indulge a habit as we gratify nature. This tendency
works itself to an evil extreme in cases where men are become the
slaves of habit, and do a thing because they are got into the way of
doing it, though they allow that it is a sad and sorry way, and leads
them wide of true happiness. These instances show perversion of the
normal operation of the will.

_Readings_.--St. Thos., 1a 2æ, q. 1, art. 4, in corp.; _ib_., q. 1,
art. 6, 7; _ib_., q. 5, art. 8; Ar., _Eth_., I., vii., 4, 5.


SECTION II.--_Definition of Happiness_.


1. Though all men do all things, in the last resort, that it may be
well with them and theirs, that is, for happiness vaguely apprehended,
yet when they come to specify what happiness is, answers so various
are given and acted upon, that we might be tempted to conclude that
each man is the measure of his own happiness, and that no standard of
happiness for all can be defined. But it is not so. Man is not the
measure of his own happiness, any more than of his own health. The
diet that he takes to be healthy, may prove his poison; and where he
looks for happiness, he may find the extreme of wretchedness and woe.
For man must live up to his nature, to his bodily constitution, to be
a healthy man; and to his whole nature, but especially to his mental
and moral constitution, if he is to be a happy man. And nature, though
it admits of individual peculiarities, is specifically the same for
all. There will, then, be one definition of happiness for all men,
specifically as such.

2. _Happiness is an act, not a state_. That is to say, the happiness
of man does not lie in his having something done to him, nor in his
being habitually able to do something, but in his actually doing
something. "To be up and doing," that is happiness,--[Greek: en to zaen
kai energein]. (Ar., _Eth._, IX., ix., 5.) This is proved from the
consideration that happiness is the crown and perfection of human
nature; but the perfection of a thing lies in its ultimate act, or
"second act," that is, in its not merely being able to act, but
acting. But action is of two sorts. One proceeds from the agent to
some outward matter, as cutting and burning. This action cannot be
happiness, for it does not perfect the agent, but rather the patient.
There is another sort of act immanent in the agent himself, as
feeling, understanding, and willing: these perfect the agent.
Happiness will be found to be one of these immanent acts. Furthermore,
there is action full of movement and change, and there is an act done
in stillness and rest. The latter, as will presently appear, is
happiness; and partly for this reason, and partly to denote the
exclusion of care and trouble, happiness is often spoken of as _a
rest_. It is also called _a state_, because one of the elements of
happiness is permanence. How the act of happiness can be permanent,
will appear hereafter.

3. _Happiness is an act in discharge of the function proper to man, as
man_. There is a function proper to the eye, to the ear, to the
various organs of the human body: there must be a function proper to
man as such. That can be none of the functions of the vegetative life,
nor of the mere animal life within him. Man is not happy by doing what
a rose-bush can do, digest and assimilate its food: nor by doing what
a horse does, having sensations pleasurable and painful, and muscular
feelings. Man is happy by doing what man alone can do in this world,
that is, acting by reason and understanding. Now the human will acting
by reason may do three things. It may regulate the passions, notably
desire and fear: the outcome will be the moral virtues of temperance
and fortitude. It may direct the understanding, and ultimately the
members of the body, in order to the production of some practical
result in the external world, as a bridge. Lastly, it may direct the
understanding to speculate and think, contemplate and consider, for
mere contemplation's sake. Happiness must take one or other of these
three lanes.

4. First, then, _happiness is not the practice of the moral virtues of
temperance and fortitude_. Temperance makes a man strong against the
temptations to irrationality and swinishness that come of the bodily
appetites. But happiness lies, not in deliverance from what would
degrade man to the level of the brutes, but in something which shall
raise man to the highest level of human nature. Fortitude, again, is
not exercised except in the hour of danger; but happiness lies in an
environment of security, not of danger. And in general, the moral
virtues can be exercised only upon occasions, as they come and go; but
happiness is the light of the soul, that must burn with steady flame
and uninterrupted act, and not be dependent on chance occurrences.

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