Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, …
Posted by Eric MacDonald
I want to spend a few moments — though, in the end, as you will see if you keep reading, this post kept getting longer and longer — considering the central Roman Catholic argument against things like contraception, abortion and assisted dying. At one level, we are told, this is an argument from the natural law, that is, the natural moral law which describes the essence of being human, and the normative implications of this essential nature of humanity. This, though seldom mentioned, is the central Roman Catholic moral position; but what they often concentrate upon in public debate are the consequences of breaking these supposedly natural laws.
Roman Catholic morality, however, is not consequentialist, although it often pretends to be. Consequentialism is the moral belief that the consequences of our actions are what make our actions right or wrong. Utilitarians, who hold, in the classic version of utilitarianism, that the aim of moral action is promoting the greatest happiness of the greatest number, are consequentialists. The whole aim and purpose of utilitarianism is to promote that consequence — namely, to promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Now, while Roman Catholic morality is not consequentialist in this sense, it uses consequentialist arguments all the time. The reason for using consequentialist arguments is not to show that certain acts are right, but to show that some acts are utterly wrong, and that we should never do them. The real reason they are wrong is because they contradict the nature of being human, but the reasons they give in public most often are arguments purporting to show that, if we do accept certain acts as morally good or at least not morally bad, the consequences of doing so will be disastrous for human welfare.
For example, in her submission to the Quebec Consultation on “Dying with Dignity” Margaret Somerville says this:
Euthanasia and assisted suicide involve extinguishing human life. Research shows that humans have a basic instinct against killing other humans, which might be a source of the widely shared moral intuition that it’s wrong to do so.
People who oppose euthanasia and assisted-suicide believe these interventions are inherently wrong — they can’t be morally justified, and that even compassionate motives do not make them ethically acceptable — the ends do not justify the means.
…
Legalising euthanasia and assisted suicide causes death to lose its moral context and us to lose our proper emotional response to it, a loss which research shows detrimentally affects our ethical judgment. [8]
She goes on to say that research shows this to be so, but she only cites research about damage to parts of the brain which process emotions, leaving rational judgment centres intact, damage that seems to lead people into making inappropriate moral decisions, which is not the issue at hand. And then she goes on:
Euthanasia delivers a “better off dead” message that treats dying humans as disposable products … [10]
quoting an Australian politician who spoke in terms of a person’s “best before” or “sell by” date. And then she describes assisted suicide in the US state of Oregon in deliberately tendentious ways which suggest that the moral centre is somehow deadened when we think in terms of assisted dying. In fact, as is common with Margaret Somerville, she becomes increasingly shrill, making all sorts of connexions with indicators (or at least what she thinks of as indicators) of moral decline associated with assisted dying, a decline which shows, in her opinion, that people who practice or approve of assisted dying, lose their moral way so badly that moral judgement itself becomes culturally unhinged. But the supposed decline is in her imagination. She provides no evidence whatsoever that the cultural changes that she fears have or will take place.
I suggested in an earlier post — much earlier, in fact, on 4th December 2010, just two days after I started this blog — that what governs those who oppose assisted dying is fear of chaos. We can see this fear at work in Margaret Somerville’s account of assisted dying. As she says (from the quote above):
Legalising euthanasia and assisted suicide causes death to lose its moral context and us to lose our proper emotional response to it.
This is very telling. In terms of the natural law ethics of the Roman Catholic Church the moral order is governed by laws, laws of nature, and once we breach those laws, as the Flood Story in the Bible tells us, mere chaos is unleashed upon the world. The Flood Story is emblematic. It speaks to the danger of breaching natural moral law, and how chaos supervenes upon ourselves and society when this is done. We put ourselves and we put society under such extreme stress by our misdoings that the danger of sheer social and moral chaos is imminent.
Recall the victim spirituality that I discussed in a post just the other day. There is a widespread belief in Roman Catholic moral theology that suffering is something that serves a purpose. Of course, in normative Roman Catholic theology, suffering (or evil) as such does not exist. It is a mere absence of something, not a positive thing at all. As Edward Feser helpfully points out, according to Aquinas evil is simply the absence of good. “Hence blindness (for example),” he suggests,
is not a kind of being or positive reality, but rather simply the absence of sight in some creature which by its nature should have it. Its existence, and that of other evils, thus does not conflict with the claim that being is convertible with good. [Aquinas: A Beginner's Guide, Kindle edn., loc. 668]
The problem is that Feser uses the word ‘existence’ to characterise blindness — “Its existence,” as he says, “and that of other evils” – and so ascribes being to it. The privative notion of evil does not get rid of the problem. Blindness exists, even if blindness is convertible with a claim that a person who is blind lacks something, namely, sight, and to be deprived of something is unquestionably an evil; therefore being is not convertible with good. In other words, you can’t say the same kinds of things about being as you can about good.
However, strenuous attempts have been made to remove pain and suffering from the realm of existence into the realm of mere privation. This may be more clearly seen by considering how Christians have traditionally thought about suffering. We normally think of pain and suffering as the result of things that happen to the body, and therefore as the result of genuinely existing harms or injuries to the body. But traditional ways spoke about pain in a way similar to the way that Feser speaks of blindness as merely the absence of something. In her article, “The Animated Pain of the Body” (The American Historical Review, vol. 105, no. 1 (February 2000), 36-68), Esther Cohen points out that:
All major late medieval discourses on pain in theology, medicine, and law view “physical” pain as a function of the soul. [42]
That is, pain, in this view, does not directly pertain to the body at all. In Augustine’s theology, this was so even though the pain seems to have a bodily location. The body was merely the gateway through which pain was experienced by the soul. But its being experienced in and by the soul meant that it had a spiritual function, a view which had, as Cohen suggests, momentous effects:
The placement of sensory pain within the Christian soul, and thus within a theological framework of salvation and damnation, made it transcendentally meaningful in a fashion the Aristotelian tradition never could. [44]
According to Augustine the fact that pain is of the soul explains why martyrs feel no pain (a myth widely believed), and why the Virgin Mary, who was (as Pius IX determined) immaculately conceived, and therefore without sin, experienced childbirth without pain (another myth also widely believed to be true).
Thus pain serves two functions. Christ suffered pain on the cross, just as his mother suffered pain in beholding the suffering of her son, for the sake of others. They were the first victim souls — and the emphasis is placed on soul because this is where suffering occurs. This is why Mary is called co-redemtrix, and is given the Roman goddess Juno’s title, Queen of Heaven. Mary’s suffering, as well as Christ’s, was salvific; it was, like the suffering of victim souls, beneficial, in that it relieves the suffering and sins of others; and it becomes so only – as is assumed about both Mary and Jesus – when suffering is freely accepted — and, therefore, felt within the soul. But pain can have another spiritual function, as warning or as punishment. For just as the damned suffer the pains of hell, so those who are morally imperfect, that is, those who have sinned, suffer bodily pains while alive, and they experience them as bodily. This is important. The souls in hell are reunited with their bodies so that they may suffer bodily torment. Our earthly pains and suffering should be a reminder of our need to repent. Thus those dying in pain still have important moral work to do. That is why it is wrong (according to the Vatican Declaration on Euthanasia, or it at least raises serious moral and theological issues) to use drugs which induce unconsciousness near death. To assist someone to die, then, is morally dangerous, because it interferes with so many important aspects of what should be a “natural” death — something that should be experienced, not as bodily, but as a spiritual transition, that is, as “soul work” – and by doing so, by overturning the natural moral law, assisted dying threatens moral chaos — because you cannot tamper with the natural law without risking disaster (as the warning of the Flood story emphasises).
There is a graphic illustration of this in a little book by a Roman Catholic priest, Cahal B. Daly, who was made a cardinal in 1991, although the book itself was published in 1966. I need to quote in some detail so that you get the complete picture, so I hope you will be patient. It’s worth the journey. He begins with sex and ends tellingly with death:
Sex has never been found in history without associations with religion and morality. Sexual love is one of the great revealers of man’s need for absolutes and for values. It is one of the most moving and disturbing of human experiences, showing man to himself in his loneliness and incompleteness, in his unworthiness and need. It is the source of propagation of human life, satisfying the deep human desire for paternity, touching human existence in its central mystery and wonder and self-interrogation. Small wonder that men could explain sex only by religion, accept sex only as from God, and should demand that sex union be consecrated by divine blessing through religious rites. Religion is not superimposed by history upon sex; men from the beginning experienced sex as sacred; they could not understand it except in a religious setting. The integrating of sex with man’s total experience, and therefore also his moral and religious experience, is profound and enduring and, indeed, irrevocable. It is proved to-day by the fact that scientific humanists can hope to change men’s sexual mores only by abolishing their religion and altering their whole philosophy of man. Sexual behaviour is not an isolable part of human conduct; to change it is not to leave the rest of man’s personality and behaviour untouched. A sexual revolution involves a new philosophy of man and the world, of time and of human destiny, of sickness and health, of life and death. The Family Planning experts in India and Puerto Rico, for example, are finding that they can make no appreciable ‘progress’ because the whole philosophy of life in these societies is opposed to neo-Malthusianism: the experts must begin by effecting a total “change in those attitudes which determine the … culture pattern.” The works of the scientific humanists are there to prove that man’s attitude to contraception determines whether he will think it wrong or right for a mother to kill her defective child, or for a doctor “gently and humanely to extinguish his patient’s life.” [Morals, Law and Life, 44-45; final italics mine]
We will ignore the obvious gender bias of this long, morally dubious piece of “reasoning”. But notice how Daly moves from the breaching of one absolute to the breaching of another until, at the end, euthanasia follows with the same inevitability as night follows day. Breaching one absolute, having to do with sexuality, leads remorselessly to what Daly considers to be a total disrespect for human life itself. If you study any Roman Catholic or religious claim that euthanasia in the Netherlands, Beligium, Luxemburg, Oregon, etc. is out of control and subject to massive abuse, you will find the same kind of reasoning at work: the natural law has been breached, and there is no way to stop the abuse except by outlawing the practice of assisted dying altogether.
This is the very same argument that Margaret Somerville is using when she remarks that assisted dying would place death in a different moral context (compare Daly’s “culture pattern”), a context which would inevitably devalue human life, and turn life into a disposable product. Daly holds the same to be true of contraception. Once we place artificial limits on reproduction, we have at the very same time devalued human life and put the lives of vulnerable people at risk. This is the constant refrain of Roman Catholic critics of assisted dying, a refrain which has reached beyond the Roman Catholic Church to be accepted in principle by Anglicans and many other Christians as well.
The Archbishop of Canterbury expressed this very clearly in his letter to me. Speaking of the votes of those who opposed Lord Joffe’s Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill, he said:
Those who vote have to balance the possibilities of acute suffering against what many see as a perfectly real and concrete risk to the vulnerable. I don’t think it helps to suppose that this is either an unreal choice or one that is settled just by unthinking dogmatism. To have a conviction about the risks of legalised assisted dying is a matter of conscience.
In Yeats’ words, mere anarchy is loosed upon the world — that’s why he speaks of it as ”a matter of conscience.” As I pointed out in my response to this letter, by biased use of rhetoric the archbishop turns the absolutely certain suffering of some of those who are dying into a mere possibility, while, at the same time, thus minimising the suffering of the dying, he magnifies the risk to the so-called “vulnerable”, by speaking of the “perfectly real and concrete risk” to those who, for purposes of argument, are considered to be vulnerable. And he refers specifically elsewhere in the letter to a member of the House of Lords (Baroness Jane Campbell) who says that her life would be jeopardised by the legalisation of assisted dying — a person who, throughout her life, has been so insistent on the value of her life that there is simply no way in which her life could possibly be put at risk.
Besides, it is not a matter of conscience. It is a matter of fact, and the archbishop, by making it a matter of conscience has put it beyond all possible reason. He is suggesting that this is a matter of moral conviction, not of empirical fact. But whether the so-called “vulnerable” would be put at risk can be determined empirically, by studying what has happened in places where assisted dying is legally available. Switzerland, for example, has had assisted suicide legislation in place for seventy years, and there is absolutely no sign that vulnerable people are being placed at serious risk in Switzerland. Of course, vulnerable people may be considered to be always at risk. That’s why they are thought to be vulnerable. But showing that they are at risk from assisted dying legislation is something that has to be shown, not assumed as a matter of conscience. Yet the archbishop in an attempt to put his position beyond rational criticism has made it into a matter of conscience. This is unconscionable play-acting, and if the archbishop cannot see this, he should try to learn how to think more clearly.
The category of the “vulnerable” is working here as a place-holder for the chaos that Christians like the Archbishop of Canterbury, Baroness Campbell, the pope, and others, think will ensue upon the legalisation of assisted dying. The suggestion is ludicrous. It is not based upon any research at all. There is no sign of this chaos in jurisdictions where assisted dying has been legalised, and it is simply a presupposition of the natural moral law theory that underlies the suggestion that chaos and mere anarchy will follow any legalisation of assisted dying. While I will not comment on this at length here — it deserves much more detailed treatment — the plain truth is that, while it is possible to make it seem as though there are all sorts of abuses of the euthanasia provisions of Swiss law, or the law in Oregon, there is no substantive evidence that these abuses are either widespread or destructive. Where there are genuine abuses, of course, the law should be applied, and those responsible held responsible under the law.
No law is going to be proof against all and any abuse. One Member of Parliament in Canada, in the debate on Francine Lalonde’s assisted dying bill, said that if there were a danger that one person would die because of assisted dying legislation, he would not be willing to vote in favour of such a law. But this is ludicrous. I am sure the member has already voted in favour of laws which led to the inevitable killing of the innocent. For example, if he voted in favour of Canadian intervention in Afghanistan, knowing that collateral civilian casualties are a near certainty in war, he has already approved legislation (or at least parliamentary decision) that has led to the deaths of more than one innocent person. It is simply fatuous to suggest that laws will never to abused. But is there no abuse now? Are people not now being ushered out of life in Canadian hospitals or nursing homes to relieve suffering, despite the fact that the persons involved did not ask to be helped to die, and may never even have thought of the possibility, simply because a doctor or a caring loved one was merciful? It is simply absurd to make this kind of argument, when there are a number, perhaps only a small number of people who want help to die when their situation is hopeless and they are suffering intolerably. Can we leave it up to the lottery of whether or not a doctor may feel secure enough to offer such assistance despite the fact that they put their careers in jeopardy by doing so?
The threat of moral chaos which people like Margaret Somerville and Cardinal Daly hold over our heads is an empty one. It is doing duty for their conviction that there are absolute moral laws built into nature which, should we breach them, would threaten moral chaos and disaster. The threat, as I say, is an empty one. There are no such moral laws built into the nature of things in the way suggested. This is merely a chimaera devised by the religious to threaten the rest of us. It is, in a sense, the temporal aspect of the threat of hellfire and damnation. It’s time we put this particular genie back into the bottle, and began to look at the world, not in overly-imaginative religious terms, but in terms of the realities of human good and harm that really confront us; and in those terms, assisted dying can be a positive human good, the denial of which is actually a denial of freedom, and a form of tyranny and enslavement. For, as Ronald Dworkin has so eloquently and truly said:
Making someone die in a way that others approve, but he believes a horrifying contradiction of his life, is a devastating, odious form of tyranny. [Life's Dominion, 217]
Posted on 22 September 2011, in Abortion, Archbishop of Canterbury, Assisted Dying, Assisted Suicide, Christianity, Death cult, Euthanasia, Holy suffering, Human Rights, Legalisation, Legislation, Natural Law, Pope, Religious Lunacy, Roman Catholic Church, Sanctity of Life, Switzerland, Theology. Bookmark the permalink. 26 Comments.
I never ceases to amaze me at how overtly and blatantly masochistic Roman Catholicism is.
So, you have to suffer pain at the end because your soul needs it to … what, exactly?
Why a just and merciful god would require such a thing is beyond me. But then, that god apparently required pain of itself as a propitiation to itself for the “sins” of mankind (original or otherwise). It’s not just logic stood on its head — it’s horribly bad logic converted to even worse outcomes in terms of reducing human suffering.
The people who advocate this sort of position have to be monsters under the skin. Pure monsters. No rational feeling, compassionate human being can possibly think this way and not go insane.
Yes, Kevin, I agree. I keep working at this argument, and every time I do I wonder whether I can possibly have got it right. But everything about Roman Catholic moral theology points in this direction. It’s totally mad! It’s like stepping into a madhouse, and yet this is what religious believers, who think that their god is good, must hold, otherwise pain and suffering make no sense at all.
Blindness may be an absence of sight, but hardly all physical injuries can be construed in this way. Or would Fesser really claim that bullets are not a “being or positive reality,” but only the absence unwounded bodily tissue?
I think there’s another reason religious leaders might oppose these laws. The facts do not bear out the dire warnings they use to maintain control. If after a dozen or so years of experience in Oregon for example, the numbers of individuals accessing the law’s provisions stays relatively constant, the only slippery slope that need be feared is that, as a people, we come to realize that we can make rational moral choices without the prohibitions imposed by religion. That might be the real chaos they fear.
You’re either equivocating on terms or just don’t understand Catholic teaching. Consequentialism is regarded as a heresy in the Catholic church.
I feel the RCC shows double standards here (surprise!). They are against upsetting the ‘natural order’ because each life has a soul which must be respected. So, no contraception, no IVF, no abortion, no euthanasia etc. All very consistent.
Yet when someone (like for instance a Pope) is shot or seriously ill, there seems to be little outcry about medical intervention upsetting the ‘natural order’ by extending life. No-one questions the use of anaesthetic (unless it is for a woman giving birth) which deprives the soul of the natural benefits of suffering.
The RCC may have a logical argument for natural law, based on their assumptions, but they don’t seem to be willing to carry it through to the bitter end.
Tap (#5) what part of the following do you not understand?
Tap, perhaps what I wrote was misleading. I have amended it as follows. Hopefully, this makes the point more clearly:
This is one of the most disturbing things I’ve read in a long time. It puts so much context to the atrocities promulgated by the Catholic Church currently and in the past. Suffering – a good thing – something necessary for the soul. Outrageous!
I’m sure we can now excuse Hitler, Stalin, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, the CIA, ad infinatum. They are actually helping all their victims come to terms with their souls – it is after all necessary work. Lets all go out and start flagellating ourselves.
I grew up Catholic and dumped the tradition when I was able to escape the small town tradition by going off to higher education in the wider world. Philosophy is not my area of expertise. But there is something fundamentally disingenuous about religion that has caused me to flee from it and find refuge in reason and atheism. I wonder how many Catholics and others in religious traditions really know what it is they are a part of?
Natural Law? What a crock.
I could go on and on. But it makes me to crazy!!
As usual you hit the nail squarely on the head; what’s left to say?. All I can do is point out a minor typo — Yeat’s for Yeats — and recommend the last verse of the poem you cite in your title, which — whatever Yeats meant by it — speaks to me of the inevitable triumph of rationalism:
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
The cult of suffering was certainly embraced by Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu (aka Mother Teresa) if we are to believe Christopher Hitchens.
I don’t know where the Catholic church gets its ethics, whether from natural law or the Bible (that it historically created), and perhaps Tap can provide some sources so I can ‘understand’. And it remains for me to understand how that ethics is linked to religion, as Eric rightly separates the two. I think this separation could be a successful and powerful weapon against the Church.
Eric said (#2):
It’s totally mad! It’s like stepping into a madhouse ….
Regrettably more than just a little justification for such arguments. For example, I referenced Dawkins’ The God Delusion over on Jerry Coyne’s site wherein he quoted Aquinas:
That the saints may enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God more abundantly they are permitted to see the punishment of the damned in hell. [Aquinas’ Summa Theologica; The God Delusion; pg 360]
Which was responded to by Ye Olde Statistician who argued – with a very small amount of justification – that that was a misquote and a misinterpretation of Aquinas according to the link provided. However, on looking into that source once might reasonably argue that the picture is even more damning:
I answer that, Nothing should be denied the blessed that belongs to the perfection of their beatitude. Now everything is known the more for being compared with its contrary, because when contraries are placed beside one another they become more conspicuous. Wherefore in order that the happiness of the saints may be more delightful to them and that they may render more copious thanks to God for it, they are allowed to see perfectly the sufferings of the damned. [Dawkins’ statement being a reasonably close approximation]
I answer that, A thing may be a matter of rejoicing in two ways. First directly, when one rejoices in a thing as such: and thus the saints will not rejoice in the punishment of the wicked. Secondly, indirectly, by reason namely of something annexed to it: and in this way the saints will rejoice in the punishment of the wicked, by considering therein the order of Divine justice and their own deliverance, which will fill them with joy. And thus the Divine justice and their own deliverance will be the direct cause of the joy of the blessed: while the punishment of the damned will cause it indirectly.
One awesome triumph of rationalization. And what a monstrous concept: that enjoyment of eternal “beatitude” should necessitate the eternal torment of others. What – God couldn’t figure out a way of taking some movies and letting the damned off the hook, even after a thousand years? [Three shows daily] “No time off for good behaviour, on demonstration of remorse?, Nope, sorry, you’re just going to have to fry forever”. The quality of mercy is, supposedly, not strained here on earth, although it is apparently in notably short supply in Heaven. This is what motivates Catholics? They should slink away in shame.
Though I’m sure – at least hopeful – that there are many Catholics who don’t buy into that literal clap-trap. But, as evidenced by the recent discussions on Adam and Eve and evolutionary biology as to which makes more sense, it appears there is an unfortunately large percentage who do buy it. That whole smear, that dog’s breakfast, of original sin and heaven and hell and eternal torment. Crazier than shit-house rats (excuse my French). Psychologists should be able to have a field-day with it.
Which reminds me of a quote of Nietzsche in Michel Onfray’s In Defense of Atheism (not an entirely tenable position, I think, but far more so that Judaic-Christian theism):
The concept of “God” invented as a counter-example of life – everything harmful, poisonous, slanderous, the whole hostility unto death against life synthesized in this concept in a gruesome unity! The concept of the “beyond”, the “true world” invented in order to devaluate the only world there is – in order to retain no goal, no reason, no task for our earthly reality! The concept of the “soul”, the “spirit”, finally even “immortal soul”, invented in order to despise the body, to make it sick …. In place of health, the “salvation of the soul” – that is a folie circulaire [manic-depressive insanity] between penitential convulsions and hysteria about redemption! [Ecce Homo]
Eric,
I did my best, but after some thought I believe this is the most aggressively gender-biased passage I’ve ever read in my life. It takes some doing to write for such a stretch without even mentioning those-other-people. A Martian reading this would think we only come in one gender (so to speak). And it’s a passage about sex.
I’m beginning to wonder if Catholics can get any little thing right. I don’t think they ever really try to, is the thing.
Tap,
What a surprise. As far as I can tell consequentialism amounts to “take responsibility for the consequences of your decisions,” which makes complete sense to folks with a moral age of at least eight or so. What place could such a not-ridiculous idea have in the RCC?
Janney,
“As far as I can tell consequentialism amounts to “take responsibility for the consequences of your decisions”
Try again
Tap,
Pass.
Ai, I mean, I’ll see your Ed Feser and raise you an Anthony Grayling, Among the Dead Cities.
While I’m at it, I should probably go ahead and mention that I find Peter Singer to be very accessible and persuasive.
Tap
Most of the people who read the posts and comment on this site understand Catholic teaching all too well. As for, “Consequentialism is regarded as a heresy in the Catholic church.” Many things are/were regarded as heresy by the Catholic church; then, then some pope changes his mind. Catholic teaching is not, like the metaphorical Ten Commandments, written in stone. The RCC is constantly preparing a face to meet the opposition that it meets. For example, the RCC changed its teaching on capital punishment to align it with its stance on abortion.
Tap (#14). You seem, along with Edward Feser, to misunderstand consequentialism. Consequentialism is not the idea that consequences themselves justify actions, but that consequences justify actions that are performed according to standards of action (often called virtues).
In other words, while winning in war is important, dropping the atomic bomb and ending the war would not have justified, without qualification, the action of dropping the bomb. Other considerations would have to come into play. Usually, consequences brought about by virtuous means are the measure of the morality of an action. Consequences alone are not sufficient, since the means needed to achieve any consequences are so various. (This is why trolleyology isn’t really helpful as a thought experiment.)
Take the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Edward Feser takes these as emblematic of consequentialism, but in this he is simply wrong. The dropping of the bombs was weighed seriously against other consequences, and turned out to be the least costly in human lives. The American experience island hopping across the Pacific from Guadalcanal was that the Japanese soldier was prepared to fight to the death to hold useless real estate, even when he knew it was pointless. By the time the Americans had reached Okinawa, where they suffered 60,000 casualties (12,000 dead), and the Japanese far more, they realised that invading the home islands of Japan would be even more costly, so Truman had a choice, and he chose to drop the bombs and the war came to an end. Was he right to do so? The argument still rages, but from his point of view, this was a way to end the war with a minimum of casualties, both American and Japanese, terrible as it was.
Consequentialism is the moral belief that consequences matter, not that they define the meaning of moral value, though strict utilitarianism may have believed this. But classical utilitarianism had a surfeit of problems. But this doesn’t mean an abandonment of consequentialism, just a recognition that consequences alone are not the sole measure of what makes an act good or bad.
The problem with Roman Catholic absolutism is that it cannot consider consequences, or else it pushes the relevant consequences off into the after life. The result of this is unnecessary cruelty, well illustrated in JPII’s Evangelium Vitae, as well as in the overcrowding of the world, the abandonment of women to pregnancy even when that endangers the woman’s life, the treatment of women as breeding machines, and various other unattractive features of Roman Catholic morality. I’ll take a morality that includes consequences as at least one measure of moral value over the blind morality of absolutes anyday.
jonermey said (#10):
… the last verse of the poem you cite in your title, which — whatever Yeats meant by it — speaks to me of the inevitable triumph of rationalism
Definitely an interesting and powerful, though convoluted, poem open to many interpretations – maybe like a Rorschach inkblot. But I’m curious how connect “rough beast” to rationalism. Seems to me that the balance of the poem suggests some decidedly problematic aspects and consequences to its birth – a gaze as “blank and pitiless as the sun” would not seem to bode well, not likely to be harbinger of much that is good and humane.
More plausible, in my view, is that it is the apotheosis of the collective, the “spiritus mundi”, the beast “Man” deriving or devolving from an unthinking allegiance to any ideology – the elevating of any abstraction to an absolute, a notable and apropos example being the Catholic Church itself. And in that process denying and abrogating any and all rights and freedoms to the individual – hell on wheels.
Veronica,
Your whole paragraph is proof positive, that you are not as familiar with Catholic teaching as you claim to be.
Eric.
Consequentialism is not “the moral belief that consequences matter”, It means essentially the ends justify the means, no matter what the means are. I’m surprised that you didn’t read the article that Feser linked on his own blog posthttp://www.iep.utm.edu/conseque/
You said: “Truman had a choice, and he chose to drop the bombs and the war came to an end. Was he right to do so? The argument still rages, but from his point of view, this was a way to end the war with a minimum of casualties, both American and Japanese, terrible as it was.”
This is consequentialism at its finest or worst (reader take your pick)
You also said this: “Consequences alone are not sufficient, since the means needed to achieve any consequences are so various”
But that is precisely what consequentialism logically reduces to i.e. that consequences or desired consequences alone are sufficient.
Tap said (#20):
Consequentialism is not “the moral belief that consequences matter”, It means essentially the ends justify the means, no matter what the means are.
Pray tell, how is that any different from the philosophy of the Church and that promoted by Feser? He is the one championing the final end of knowing God and to take any steps necessary to reach that goal:
…. since knowing God is our highest end, [says effing who? And which definition?] our moral duties include, first and foremost, religious duties: duties to pursue knowledge of God, to honour Him as our Creator and the giver of the moral law, to teach our children to do the same, and so forth. These duties [aka consequences] are not some optional extra added on to a rationally based system of morality; they are integral to such a system. [The Last Superstition; pgs 152-153]
Seems, to mix metaphors, both sides of the fence are in the same boat. Seems a fundamental necessity to consider consequences, but if they abrogate, contradict or preclude reaching the goal then that would seem unwise – to say the least. Question then seems to be a case of assessing how rational, how credible, how worthy are the goals – particularly in light of the means that have so far been used in furtherance of reaching those ends. And in that case I would say that the Church’s record is not particularly edifying – except maybe to suggest heading in the diametrically opposite direction ….
Steersman,
How someone as smart as you can confuse ‘duties’ with consequences is beyond me. I lol’d at “says effing who” though.
Tap (#20). You said:
I don’t visit Feser’s blog frequently and did not know of the link. However, having said that, let me draw your attention to the opening sentence of IEP entry for consequentialism:
Which is very different from your reading that the ends justify the means — period — no matter what the means are. That would be a silly position, and it is not the consequentialist position, even though you may think so. The right kinds of overall consequences is an important qualification. So not any means, not any ends, and ends do not quite simply justify any means, since means have a way of being consequences as well. Of course, it may help your deontological position to think that this is what consequentialism amounts to, but you are simply wrong. And, in any event, the Roman Catholic position is that some duties are so overriding that it matters not a whit what the consequences are, just so long as the duty is blindly adhered to. This is an inhuman morality, and I think it stinks, quite frankly.
As for confusing duties with consequences (of which you accuse Steersman) — that is just the point that I just made. The acts that we perform out of duty are, in a sense, already consequences, consequences of the recommendation of certain duties, as well as consequences of our decision so to act. And these consequences have effects (or consequences) of their own, some of which may be detrimental.
As for the dropping of the atomic bombs, well, you really didn’t respond, did you? All you did was to offer a choice, best or worst? But that’s not an answer. That’s the question.
And I don’t understand this point:
Again, you see, a consequentialist must take the means into consideration, because the means lead to consequences, so in order to achieve the right balance overall of the desired consequences, only certain means may be used. This is the reason for the distinction between rule and act utilitarianism, for example. Consequentialism is much more complex and finely shaded than you give it credit for.
The acts that we perform out of duty are, in a sense, already consequences, consequences of the recommendation of certain duties, as well as consequences of our decision so to act. And these consequences have effects (or consequences) of their own, some of which may be detrimental.
This is sophistry, a duty is a sort of mean (a potiential one) not an end. An elementary category mistake you’re making by forcing a duty to become a consequence(an end). Anyway my time is up here for now.
I vote that, since the philosophical tradition has left the niche empty, we start a new school of ethics that says we should take responsibility for the consequences of our decisions.
No, Tap, this is nonsense. You said that the ends justify any means. The means are acts. Acts have consequences. Just as acting out of a sense of duty has consequences. Think of people who say things like. I acted because I was ordered so to act. Obeying orders may be considered a duty. But acting in accordance with duty is something that happens in the world. As something that happens in the world it is something that other people can emulate, and so it has consequences. You can’t separate duties into a little corner where they are not, in a consequential sense, simply inert. My acting from duty is something that happens. It is not necessarily something seen as “acting as a duty”; it may just as well look like “acting out of a disregard for consequences”, and, as such an act, may have consequences of its own. Performance of a duty cannot be so comfortably isolated from the other things that we do, and as such, is a consequence, something, out there in the world that itself has consequences. Thus, a consequentialist cannot say that the ends justify any means, because means are consequences and have consequences of their own.