material-analisis-acto-moral

Analysis of the moral act. A proposal.

Antonio Pardo.
department de Humanities Biomedicas, University of Navarra.
January 1997.
Published in Persona y bioética 2008; 12(2):78-107.

summary:

In recent historical times, we have witnessed a recovery of classical philosophy which, inspired by the Greeks (Plato and, especially, Aristotle), had a privileged expression with Thomas Aquinas. However, this recovery of Thomistic philosophy has brought with it some strange ideas that had been developed in later times. Here, the deviation produced in the study of morality by essentialist ideas is clarified by briefly examining its Platonic and Augustinian historical roots, what the Aristotelian influence consisted of, what characterised essentialist scholasticism and its repercussions on ethical theory. Subsequently, from a Thomistic philosophy of moral action, an approach to the study and evaluation of human acts is proposed; with the elements that are provided, topics are examined in which the essentialist deviation has been able to produce confusion: indifferent actions, double effect and the indirect voluntary or in causa. It concludes by showing a brief outline of the practical guidelines that can be followed to carry out an ethical assessment of an action.

I. What is essentialism?

a) Platonic and Augustinist roots

b) Aristotelian influence

c) Essentialist scholasticism

d) Impact on ethical theory

II. Thomistic approach to the question

(a) Forecasting

b) Intent

c) Decision-action

  1. Decision and moral object
  2. Decision and action
  3. Objective morality
  4. Circumstances
  5. Indifferent actions

d) Tolerated effects

  1. Effects and means
  2. Effects and voluntariness
  3. Moral assessment
  4. Consequences and circumstances
  5. The double effect action
  6. The "indirect volunteer" or "in causa volunteer".

e) Side effects

III. Conclusion

Postscriptum (2008)

Notes

In the manuals of moral theology, the tendency in the first half of this century has been to expound the doctrine of St Thomas Aquinas. The return to St Thomas, after a period of essentialist or formalist inspiration - which owes much to Suárez - has been brought about, to a large extent, thanks to the impulse of the Popes: since Leo XIII, who initiated the critical edition of Aquinas' works, all the Popes have insisted on the advisability of drawing inspiration from his reflections.

However, this return to St. Thomas has been made on the basis of some previous ideas. The first cultivators of scholastic philosophy who considered returning to the Thomistic spirit had a more or less formalist background. It is logical that, when interpreting the texts of St. Thomas, these ideas influenced their understanding of what they read. This influence, to some extent unavoidable, has been decisively present in the view of St. Thomas transmitted during this century.

With the passage of time, the cultivators of Thomistic philosophy have become aware of the formalist or essentialist interpretation of St. Thomas. However, this interpretation, being the fruit of a mentality, is not limited to some sections of his philosophy, but extends to all those aspects in which the Thomistic and essentialist interpretations differ. And, in some areas, the essentialist view is presented with such subtlety that it is difficult to distinguish.

Some of this is true in the field of morality. Although it is a field apparently far removed from essentialist views, it is not free from their influence. In these pages we want to show that the study of morality that is sometimes considered, and even referred to St. Thomas as its initiator, contains elements that are alien to his thought. As a consequence, we will show the proper way, in our opinion, to interpret the study of the morality of human acts that St. Thomas makes at the beginning of the Secunda Pars of the Summa Theologiae. The recent Encyclical Veritatis splendor has come to underline especially some of these genuinely Thomistic elements, and will allow us a fruitful deepening.

The publication of this encyclical has given rise to a polemic, sometimes not without acrimony, especially concerning the correct way of understanding the moral object1. It is not the purpose of this contribution to contribute to it. However, at certain moments, especially when we refer to the moral object and intentionality, it will be reasonable to mention some of the concepts that have been brought up in the discussion. However, these comments will not be exhaustive: to do justice to the polemic would require more length than we will devote to it here.

I. What is essentialism?

The first task is to define exactly what is meant by essentialism - or formalism, as it has also been called - and to find out what its characteristics are. From these basic notes we derive a way of looking at reality, with typical statements that will allow us to discover its presence in different contexts.

In order to study the basic features of essentialism, the clearest procedure is to make a brief historical introduction pointing out its origin and its fundamental manifestations. This procedure is opportune, since essentialism is the recovery of the forma mentis of medieval Augustinianism after the introduction of Aristotle in Western Europe. Therefore, we must first analyse medieval Augustinism. But medieval Augustinism is the philosophical current which has its origin in the corrected Platonism of St. Augustine. Therefore, in order to understand it fully, it is necessary to go back to Plato in search of some founding ideas.

a) Platonic and Augustinist roots

Plato's philosophical explanation of the world starts from a basic principle: man can think - and can therefore know with certainty, without his knowledge being subject to the mutability of the world around him - thanks to the existence of immutable intelligible objects, the Ideas. These Ideas are entities whose nature consists in their being everywhere the same and the same, unique and individual, and are characterised by their containing something thinkable. The Idea "cat" is simply the pure "gate-ness" which exists and navigates in the world of Ideas. The existence of Ideas consists in being themselves, in having a "something" or quidditas, and in nothing else. The interpretation usually given to this quality consists in affirming that Plato made an illicit transfer of a logical property from thought objects to reality, and this is undoubtedly the most coherent criticism that can be made of him.

In order to get man to think Ideas, Plato must postulate that man is the soul. The soul knows the Ideas when it is in "heaven", before descending into the world, and here below, at contact with things Materials, it remembers the Ideas.

The medieval Augustinists soften this outline: there are no Ideas in heaven, in heaven there is God, who contains in Himself, in a very simple unity, all ideas. Souls have not pre-existed, but God creates them when each man comes into the world. And in order to know, men need the illumination of God, who possesses within Himself the ideas that can be known.

However, since we refer ideas to things, this basic outline should be softened still further: in the things we experience sensibly there is also that idea which is in the divine intelligence. Augustinists call this idea that is within things "form", and this explains why things are what they are. It was really the late Platonists (including the Augustinists) who introduced the Platonic ideas into things, because Aristotle, when speaking of forms, was thinking of something different (later we will make further considerations to fully clarify this difference between Aristotle and the medieval Augustinists, heirs of Plato): the word "form", among the Augustinists, means the same as the Platonic idea, that is, something equal to itself, identical and indestructible2; for the Augustinists, the forms are sameness. But the forms that are in things are not in direct contact with the intelligence: the forms do not illuminate the intelligence (it is a problem similar to that of the communication of the res extensa and the res cogitans in Descartes). The Augustinists, inspired by Platonism, are in favour of God illuminating the intelligence so that man can know the "something" of things Materials: from the intelligence of God, who has the ideas, comes the intellectual light and the knowledge to man.

Logically, when a change appears, and one begins to designate with a different word any given thing, there has been the appearance of a new form. But since the Augustinists consider that the forms are like Plato's Ideas, equal to themselves, indestructible, unique, etc., they need the new forms to be somewhere in order to appear in the result of the change. The solution is the seminal rationes, "small" forms that every entity has at reservation to be brought out of that hidden state by the motive cause at the moment of change3. In fact, the medieval Augustinists seem to describe movement exclusively in a formal way (their inclination is to find out how a thing, from being "something", becomes a different "something"), and movement analysed in the Aristotelian style hardly appears in their considerations: as an energeia which, starting from one entelequeia, reaches another, that is, as an activity which, starting from an origin, reaches its termination, term or limit4.

This set of philosophical theses of medieval Augustinism are not properly theses but, rather, mentality: one often finds their corollaries, without finding an explicit reflection that leads to them. For this reason, we could say that the basic idea of Augustinianism is, rather, a mentality. And this mentality makes medieval Augustinism defend, among others, the aforementioned theses. It seems doubtful that, with the exception of St. Thomas (with his disciple Thomas of Sutton, and perhaps St. Albert on some questions), there were any medieval philosophers who did not have an Augustinian mentality.

b) Aristotelian influence

This being the case, the works of Aristotle appeared in the West. And the Aristotelian argumentation that reached the West was so rigorous that the medieval Augustinists had to turn back from their classical positions: the divine illumination of the human understanding in order to be able to know, the seminal rationes, and many other details that I do not have the occasion to mention now. Scholastic philosophy after Aristotle's entrance will no longer return to these approaches.

We have mentioned that at the heart of the Augustinian forma mentis seems to be the Platonic consideration that "the really real" are the Ideas, although suitably softened. And they are the really real with a reality different from that which is spontaneously understood with respect to things: with the reality which Plato supposed for the Ideas, that is, with a reality which is a logical property. In other words: for a Platonist and for an Augustinist, what is really real (with the same subject of "ideal" reality) are the "somethings" of things. If a thing can be said to be in act, to exist, or to have some subject of activity, it is because within it there is a "something" (equivalent to Plato's Idea) that causes the thing to be in act, to exist or to have some subject of activity. In other words: for Platonists and medieval Augustinists the real is reduced to formal sameness, to being "something" identical to itself, whose substance is simply the "something" ("gate-ness", "caballeity", etc.). The immediate consequence is that every reality can be described by a word that adequately expresses what it is.

The works of Aristotle, and with him St. Thomas, approach the question quite differently. In explaining motion, they undoubtedly try to explain the appearance of a new "something" in things. But, fundamentally, when they try to explain motion, they try to explain exactly that, motion, i.e. the act of what is in potency insofar as it is in potency - which is not "something" - and not so much its result, with its "something" that enables it to be described. Consequently, for Aristotle and St Thomas, the problem to be explained in movement is not only that the entity that is result of the movement is described with words other than the beginning of the movement, but that it is a question of explaining "the moving itself", the activity of the movement.

From this approach, Aristotelianism defines that there are four causes of movement: that which is moved (or subject), that which gives the activity of the movement (or efficient or motive cause), the contrariety - the initial and final "something" of the movement (or formal cause), and the finished act towards which the movement tends (or final cause)5. In this description of the movement there are elements that can be described in words, since its nature is a "something": the initial and final "something", the contrariety. But there are other elements that cannot be described in words. Thus, the subject, in certain movements (the accidental ones) is an entity, and it can be described with the word that designates its substance: "dog", "cat", etc. But, at other times, there is no such possibility: in the substantial change what remains is the subject prima, which does not possess any "something"; even if the words "subject prima" are used, no "something" existing in that subject prima is implied.

Words are powerless to designate or make the activity of the movement itself understood. For the act is not "something" until the movement is finished. And, even with the movement completed, the word that enables us to designate the result of the movement does not describe the act, but the form of the act. This is why Aristotle insists that the act cannot be defined, but only shown6. The movement and activity of beings is a self-evident perception, but the words we use to speak of reality ("dog", "cat", "green", "three metres") do not point to that activity, but merely indicate the form in which that activity manifests itself.

All this description of movement as an act "elusive" to designation does not detract from the fact that, indeed, movement also has aspects that are adequately named with a word. In fact, the formal and final causes are designated by a word, the "something" of the act that they are, although, in the case of the final cause, this designation can be a source of confusion.

c) Essentialist scholasticism

Although, as we said, philosophers after Aristotle's entrance in the West had to retract a number of commonly accepted theses, this did not bring about the change of mentality that the new contributions seemed to demand. For this forma mentis to have changed, it would have been necessary to make topic widely known the basic approach that provoked the Augustinian thesis, that is to say, the equality of properties between the forms of things and the Platonic Ideas. For this reason, it seems justified to adopt as a working hypothesis the following thesis, which we will develop below: the essentialism of late scholasticism is the reappearance of the Platonic-Augustinian inspiration within a philosophical context that has accepted the Aristotelian reasoning on movement, potency and act.

Among the causes of this return to schemes prior to the introduction of Aristotle in the West, one must recognise the role played by the conciliatory spirit of St Thomas. He was a profoundly Aristotelian philosopher (one need only observe the relative number of quotations from the Philosopher in his works). But, unlike Aristotle, he was not at all a polemicist, but profoundly conciliatory, and he allowed himself to take on a multitude of medieval Augustinian ways of speaking, so much so that his positions can be confused with those of the Augustinianism that surrounds him if one's attention to detail is not sharpened. Although he rejected outright many Augustinian approaches, on other occasions he accepted the formulations that the philosophers of his time gave to the problems. These formulations could be misinterpreted, but he did not consider it necessary to reject them simply because they could easily be interpreted in a Platonist manner: there were enough issues of real importance to be solved at that time to add issues that were not so immediately vital. And this conciliatory spirit led to later misunderstandings. The condemnation of Thomistic theses by Stephen Tempier7 also contributed decisively to the survival of the Augustinist mentality.

How could Aristotelianism have been influenced by the Augustinian mentality, giving rise to what we know as essentialism? How could two such contrary positions be married? Although it would be subject for a more detailed investigation, we can sketch the following explanation: once the approach of the seminal rationes was overthrown, essentialism found a place for the Platonic outline within the Aristotelian description of movement. He accepted that potency exists, and that it is distinct from the act that can come into being - by the action of the motive cause - but, at the same time, he asserted that, if potency can be considered to exist, it is because the essence of that potency, its "something", is considered. Therefore, the potency, although it can receive an act, is no longer pure potency8. If it were pure potency it would have no "something", it would not even be thinkable, and yet we are considering it now. As a conclusion of this approach, it is necessary for him to admit that pure potency, the subject prima even, is not pure potency, but is a certain act, since it has a "something". This something, in the case of potency, is so weak that it can only be described by saying "being able to receive an act". This "being able to receive an act" is an expression of my thought: therefore even the subject prima possesses an essence or quidditas.

In this way of seeing things, being potency and being act still satisfy the Aristotelian conditions: potency receives the act, and is actualised by it. But the meaning of this phrase is different from the Aristotelian-Thomistic one. Suffice it to observe that, for an Aristotelian, what has an essence, a "something", is the entity9, whereas essentialism erroneously transfers to the constitutive principles of the entity what is valid only for the whole entity. This position, seen from Aristotelianism, claims that the entity is a composite of entities in act.

However, this criticism is superficial, because it does not allow us to find out why essentialism gives such a peculiar interpretation of act, potency and movement: to get to the bottom of it, it was necessary to go back to the mentality that ends up producing theses that are foreign to the philosophy of St. Thomas.

d) Impact on ethical theory

After this historical excursion, which has allowed us to understand the forma mentis of essentialist philosophy, we can move on to see the repercussions that this way of looking at things has on ethical theory.

In analysing the moral act, essentialism considers acts of the will to be acts in the essentialist sense, i.e. "something". The human will, when it wills a certain object, what it does is to produce an act, which can be described by a word. For example, in the case of wanting to go to the mountain, "to go to the mountain" would be the description of the act of the will.

However, by analysing the act of the will alone, we are not in a position to judge the morality of a person's actions. The reason for this is that people make decisions based on previous acts of the will, the intentions. Thus, a person can go into the bush to gather mushrooms (intention "to gather mushrooms") or to hunt in a forest that does not belong to him (intention "to steal game"). Consistent with this observation, it will be argued that, in order to evaluate a moral act, it is necessary to consider not only the decision that is made, but also the intention behind that decision.

So far, it seems that we have not said anything that differentiates Thomism from the essentialist position. But we have. Concretely, essentialism thinks that acts of the will have a form (their essence: "to go to the mountain", "to gather mushrooms", "to steal game") which coincides with the description of the action that is performed. "Going into the bush" and "gathering mushrooms" is both an act of the will and an action performed by man. Because of this way of seeing things, essentialist morality speaks little of intention and decision, and speaks much of its projections, which, taking the terms of the Thomistic tradition, it calls moral end and moral object. In noting this change of emphasis, we are not making a superfluous clarification, for this way of looking at things has practical consequences for ethical theory.

Concretely, a problem soon appears: complex human actions cannot be analysed well by means of the indicated procedure (examining the intention or end and the action or moral object). Because there are actions that have relevant details that cannot be adequately explained by the end and the moral object alone. Essentialism then discovers that, in the analysis of action given by Thomas Aquinas, there is another element, the circumstances, which allows other factors that do not fit within the end or the moral object to be framed. Thomas's example is well known: within the bad action of hitting a person, the fact that he was hit in a sacred place would be a circumstance (the sin would be greater given the dignity of the place of the offence). Thus, factors that do not fit within the end and the object have a very wide scope to be included. Coherent essentialism brings no further elements to the analysis of the moral act.

But common reflection knows that, if only object, end and circumstances are considered, relevant elements of morality are left out. For example, there are actions that are performed out of ignorance. Therefore, treatises and manuals will include a chapter devoted to ignorance, its types and repercussions on moral acts. However, this chapter is developed relatively independently of the philosophical reflections: it is not usually a deduction, from the nature of human action, of the role and value of ignorance within moral action, but a series of reflections, quite rightly, on the moral valuation that each subject of ignorance deserves. This section is developed, so to speak, outside philosophy, relying on the common sense and moral prudence of those who have developed these manuals. These authors find in the Summa Theologiae some articles dedicated to the question10 , which support their moral opinion, undoubtedly correct, but the whole of this moral study remains disjointed.

Moreover, moralists also realise that there are complicated actions, from which good effects and bad effects follow; is it permissible to do them? Their answer is similar to that of ignorance: they rely on their prudence and good moral sense to devise a set of rules to find out when such actions with multiple effects are morally right and when the undesirable effects make the action wrong. These are the rules of voluntarism in causa or indirect voluntarism: that the action itself is good or indifferent, that the bad consequence does not follow directly from the action performed, that the action is done for a good purpose and that there is a proportion between the good effect and the bad effect.

These rules (with their various variants), despite the various criticisms they have received, seem to me to be correct. Their only shortcoming is that, like the circumstances and the connection of ignorance with morality, they paradoxically have no basis in essentialist philosophy. Their existence is due to tradition alone. Nobody knows for sure why they are there. The common sense of moralists must bear a good part of the responsibility for their existence; but the common sense of moralists is not a philosophical foundation. And since morality is not mere tradition, but also something accessible to reason, it seems right to try to give a foundation to ethics, and not to entrust it only to the virtue of prudence. Fortunately, this foundation was made sufficiently clear by St. Thomas, and various modern authors have helped to recover it11 , although essentialism, due to its forma mentis, sometimes gives misleading interpretations of his texts.

II. Thomistic approach to the question

St Thomas's approach to moral acts begins at an extreme that does not properly belong to the study of ethics: an adequate description of immanent actions, that is, acts of the understanding and the will12. For Thomas, what a man thinks or wills can undoubtedly be described in words: he thinks of a dog, he wills to go to the mountain. But man's thinking and willing are not something that can be described in words. For, for Aristotelianism, when man understands or wills, he is not producing a form or essence that can be described in words. What he does is to exercise the act that he is, so that some reality remains as the object of that act (object understood in the case of the intelligence, object willed in the case of the will). Man thus develops an activity that enables him to "touch" external things13. With this "touching" he knows or wills them. But his understanding or his willing are in no way what the intellectual capacities attain: they are two distinct realities.

However, it is evident that, in the first instance written request, in order to describe this activity of understanding or willing, Thomism needs to have recourse to the word that designates the object understood or willed. Hence Thomas admits that the end and the moral object are determinants of the act of the will that make it possible to know it, that make it possible to know what is willed14. But the end and the moral object are not acts of the will. Essentialism, however, repeats: "the intention is the end...". 15

Veritatis splendor is fully consistent with the Thomistic approach. Thus, referring to the decision of the will, it affirms that "the object of the act of willing is a freely chosen behaviour "16, and not the will itself. Now, the connection between the act of the will and the action is produced by means of the "something" in which both coincide, by means of their quidditas or moral object, which is both a definition of the voluntary act and a human description of the physical action; the action is a determinant of the will thanks to this quidditas. This is why, a few lines further down, the encyclical makes the previous sentence a little more explicit and states: "The object is the proximate end of a deliberate choice that determines the act of the will of the person who acts "17. It is therefore necessary to admit that the connection between the will and actions is different from that affirmed by essentialism. This intentional aspect of the act of the will is admitted even by those who criticise Veritatis splendor for its approach to the moral object: the voluntary act is a "pointing towards" also for them18 .

On this basis, the Thomistic analysis of the moral act sample differs from what we have seen above.

(a) Forecasting

First of all, it is necessary to underline that what is judged when studying man's actions from the moral point of view is the correctness of the will, whether man chooses the objectives that are right for him; whether, in short, his actions can be approve because he has been good, because he has a good will19. And how does this good will manifest itself?

In the first place by means of reflection. The act of the understanding is governed by the act of the will20. Therefore, the good man will not act in ignorance, and will actively seek to eliminate it from his conduct: if he does not know what is good and what is evil and has a good will, he will not want to run the risk of doing evil, and will seek to inform himself diligently before acting.

Therefore, before considering the object, purpose and circumstances, and the rules attached to the indirect voluntary, a morality that adequately understands human action must consider the foresight of the man who acts, for this depends on the will. Whoever does not reflect before acting is because he does not want to, and this is morally imputable. This explains the connection between the study of ignorance in the Summa and the study of the rest of the moral act, a connection that essentialism does not emphasise.

Veritatis splendor explains this connection between understanding and will when it tries to clarify that conscience is not an autonomous source of morality, but that the intellectual judgement prior to action must attempt to search for the moral truth of the action being carried out: "The maturity and responsibility of these judgements [of conscience] - and, in final, of man, who is their subject - are demonstrated .... by a pressing search for truth and by allowing oneself to be guided by it in one's actions "21. 21 Furthermore, adequate foresight also encompasses the material occurrence of the facts and the foreseeable consequences22.

As is evident, to speak simply of foresight is to summarise in a single term the complex interrelationship that exists between the understanding and the will at the moment of action23 , and the acts of prudence that lead to appropriate action. When developing his moral theory, St Thomas, when speaking of the acts of the understanding that precede those of the will, prefers to speak of committee24, that is, of the act of prudence (intellectual act) prior to action, and it is more correct to consider it as such. The term foresight, however, is more Spanish and conveys the same idea: reflection prior to action; this reflection, of course, is only possible as an act of the virtue of prudence. Otherwise, it is impracticable25.

Moreover, we must consider that the act of committee allows us to know not only what is going to happen as a result of the action, but also, and above all, whether the action is good or bad and whether it should be put on internship or rejected (even if the will, freely, can then act against the committee of prudence). The prudential knowledge is a practical knowledge , which moves the will - freely - towards good action. In fact, St Thomas uses the term foresight only when he speaks of foreseeing the consequences of action26 , and so does Veritatis splendor27. In any case, I think that the term foresight can also be used to designate the act of committee of prudence; although the term committee refers more specifically to the practical and moral (prudential) aspect of the action, it does not exclude the knowledge of the consequences of the action, but embraces it and, as I pointed out above, the term foresight is more Spanish. In short: the act of committee is a certain intellectual, practical "seeing", and refers above all to the moral aspect of the action; but, precisely because it is a certain intellectual "seeing", it can also be called foresight.

Finally, it is interesting to note that Veritatis splendor, in speaking of conscience, and referring to St. Thomas, points out that "in order to be able to 'distinguish what is the will of God: what is good, what is pleasing, what is perfect' (Rom 12:2) ... a kind of 'connaturality' between man and the true good is indispensable. Such a connaturality is founded and developed in the virtuous attitudes of man himself: prudence and the other cardinal virtues, and in the first place the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity "28. Therefore, it must be borne in mind that, when we use the expression "formation of conscience", we are really talking about the formation of the cardinal virtues, especially prudence, with support in the supernatural organism provided by the theological virtues; and we are not referring to an entity called conscience that has to be shaped in some way29.

b) Intent

Once he knows, thanks to the act of prudence, the goal to be pursued in the situation in which the moral agent finds himself, it is up to man to will or not to will what the intelligence proposes to him. To will a goal is to have intentions. Intention is the act of the will that moves man to achieve, by means of subsequent actions, a certain goal30. Intention is not the end, although the end pursued is what enables us to describe intention in words.

The good or the bad is not the end, but the will that wills a suitable or unsuitable end, that conforms or does not conform to what it knows beforehand by the judgement of prudence31. The ends, whatever they are, that is, the physical facts that are the term of the voluntary act of trying32 , are, considered in themselves, morally indifferent. Every reality is only good or bad (from the moral point of view) in comparison with the nature of the man who acts33.

Therefore, the second element necessary to judge someone's goodwill is to look at his intention. To speak of the end is correct, for the end is the object of the intentional act. But to speak only of end is potentially misleading, as the history of morality in the last five centuries seems to indicate. It is preferable to speak directly of intention. Evidently it is the intention of an end. But what counts, morally speaking, is not the end, but the will to that end, that is to say, the intention of the person, which is what makes it possible (at least in part) to judge it morally34.

The encyclical Veritatis splendor, in analysing consequentialist or proportionalist ethical doctrines, expresses itself in the same sense: it speaks of end to refer to the end towards which the deliberate choice of the will is ordered, while it uses the word intention to refer to the act of the will that refers to the ultimate goal 35. He also insists that, in order to sustain a correct ethical theory, it is necessary to consider not the facts (i.e. the ends in themselves), but the point of view of the acting subject36 (i.e. the intention). This is precisely what Thomistic doctrine does, which focuses on intention, even though it must speak of ends in order to clarify what is intended.

It must be specified that the intention of the end encompasses the end pursued and the intermediate ends that lead to it: in a single act of the will there is room for several different objects, provided that they coincide, at least in part, in their formal reason37 ; in this case, that they share their orientation towards the end pursued. This formal unity makes it possible to include all the ends in a single intentional act. There are not, therefore, several different intentions of a single subject that move him to the end he is pursuing. McCormick, however, distinguishes between ends and motives; the ends would be the intermediate ends and the motives would be the more distant ends, which are really those pursued by themselves; to each of them would correspond a different subject of intention38. This interpretation, made in line with n. 80 of Veritatis splendor, does not seem correct: as we will see below, only an intention can move us to action.

c) Decision-action

Once there is an intention, things can be done. A person without intentions does nothing. The intention is the inner motor of other successive actions that make it possible to reach the intended end. This unitary orientation is what makes it possible to give continuity and effectiveness to the set of actions that would otherwise remain unconnected. The way to execute these intermediate actions between the present moment and the desired state of affairs (the intended end) consists in deciding to do them and, consequently, to execute them.

Since the decision to perform a particular action is not necessarily required by a certain intention (the intention to be rich does not oblige one to steal, although this procedure is often the easiest one), the decisions of the will deserve an assessment apart from the intention39. In other words: a good intention does not imply that the decisions derived from it are good.

Therefore, in order to judge a person's action, in addition to examining his foresight and intention, it is necessary to see whether the other acts of the will that lead to the intended end are good or bad. That is to say, in addition to the foresight and intention, it is necessary to examine the decision that the person makes.

1. Decision and moral object

The decision refers to the action that man is performing40. This action is described in words: driving a car, hunting, etc. This description coincides with the description of the will that performs it: it is impossible to give a purely physical description of a human action while maintaining a minimum of coherence41; in other words: the decision of the will puts the crux of the action that is performed, and performs it. The description of the crux of the action is the moral object42. Therefore, the moral object is with respect to the decision the same as the end is with respect to the intention: that which it is about43. And the only way to describe a person's decision is to mention the "something" of the action, i.e. the moral object.

2. Decision and action

However, what morality judges is not the action, but the act of the will that performs it. What is morally good or bad, as far as the action is concerned, is the decision of the will, the tending of the will towards that particular action44. Its execution is not what is fundamental: if someone decides to do something bad, and cannot execute it because of physical impossibility, he has already acted badly because he has a bad will45 , and the same happens with a good decision. Even so, the fact that the action is actually carried out makes the act of will complete and, for this reason, the completed action has more moral weight than the one only decided and not carried out46.

Therefore, in order to analyse the goodness or badness of an action, in addition to foresight and intention, it is necessary to examine the decision together with the action it entails. Again, to speak only of moral object with respect to the decision-action (just as to speak only of end with respect to intention) is confusing, for it shifts the emphasis of morality from the will that performs the action (where the weight of morality really lies) to the human "something" of the action performed.

The problems that arise in this way are numerous. The main one is that it is very difficult to show the distinction between the moral object and the occurrence of the action, of the physical facts. Thus, when we say that killing is wrong, at first written request it seems that we are referring to the physical fact of producing the death of someone. It is concealed that it is wrong to want in a practical way (to decide and execute, decision-action) the death of someone. But, if that extreme is hidden, the result is that moral principles must have "exceptions"; indeed, we all realise that killing in self-defence, although not the most desirable thing to do, can be done without moral guilt if the aggressor posed a mortal threat: it is a right decision-action. However, applying the essentialist outline of the moral object together with the easy confusion of the moral object with the physical action47 , that action would be wrong (it is killing a man, which is a wrong action); and this interpretation is simply unacceptable. But, if this were so, moral principles must have exceptions in order to be compatible with common sense.48 How can this assertion be reconciled with the observation that there are always wrongful actions? It is simply impossible.

The way out of this difficulty is quite easy: when it is affirmed that there are actions that are always bad, we are not saying that a physical action is always bad. We are saying that such an action is something that should never be decided voluntarily49. Thus, whoever kills an aggressor in self-defence is defending himself (decision), and the moral object (the "something", the quiditative description of his decision) is to defend himself. Therefore, his decision is good even if it results in the death of the aggressor. The will of the one who defends himself justly is good, and that is what is to be judged from a moral point of view. However, from a rigorously essentialist point of view, with its insistence on the moral object, which becomes confused with the action, the one who defends himself would not receive a clear approval50.

Objective morality

The moral view held by St. Thomas and his commentators, as well as by Veritatis splendor, can be called objective morality51. The meaning of the expression is as follows: objective morality is the morality which holds that acts of the will are determined by their object, that is, by the quid of the action they produce, since it is the decision of the will concerning the action to be performed here and now that bears the greater part of the morality of the action52; and that there are objects (quid of the act of the will) which it will always be wrong to attempt or choose, because they cannot be ordainable to God or to the true good of man53. Objective morality or moral order goal is a fixed reference for the goodness of conduct that applies to all voluntary acts.

In this respect, we must avoid the relatively frequent confusion that associates the fixity of the moral order goal with the fixity of material reality. According to this view, the immutability of the moral order would derive from physical actions: certain physical actions would always be bad, and moral principles would be immutable because physical reality, with its intrinsic laws, is immutable54. Perhaps this confusion is due to the other, previously mentioned, between moral object and physical realisation of action.

As it follows from what has been said above, the immutability of the moral order is not derived from the physical reality on which the choices of the acting subject are based, but is derived from the natural laws internal to the acting subject; the execution of the action is subsequent to the subject's decision, and the action is already good or bad before it is executed. For this reason, it is impossible to derive moral laws from physical actions. The expression "objective moral law" refers to the natural law internal to the acting subject.

4. Circumstances

St Thomas, in analysing the goodness of action, speaks of the fact that, in addition to the moral object, the circumstances must be considered55. The reason why circumstances must be considered is very simple: the moral object allows us to give a description of the action-decision. However, this description may fall short in the case of certain actions. Thus, voluntarily and unjustly killing a person is called murder. And "murder" is a moral object. If we add the circumstance that the murdered person is closely related to the murderer, the sin is changed from being called murder to being called patricide, a different moral species or moral object. But there are actions in which we do not have a new word to designate what is done, and we have to add complements to the main definition of the action. Thus, following his classic example, striking a person is a sin against the fifth commandment. And striking a person in a sacred place, without changing the substance of what is done, adds a certain gravity to it which is not included in the aggression and which is relevant to judge the evil of what is done56. This complement to the definition of the action is the circumstances. To give a similarity in describing an entity: we describe something by its species (a dog) and we specify it with accidents that do not change the species, but introduce modifications (hunting, lapdog). Similarly, we describe what is being done by its species (its "something" or moral object) and we complete the description with a series of accidents or circumstances (other "somethings" that allow us to fully understand what is being done)57.

Therefore, if we consider the action-decision instead of the moral object (a consideration which, as we have seen, is less disorienting), the circumstances are superfluous, since they are included in the action-decision: they are a (undoubtedly necessary) complement to its definition, which is given to us by the moral object.

As is evident from what has been said above, there is not the slightest problem in continuing to speak of moral object and "circumstances". St Thomas himself uses these expressions in order to be able to speak of decision and action in an accessible way. However, if these terms are used, care must be taken to make it clear that they do not refer to physical actions, but express what the subject's decision-action, the act of his will, is. "Moral object" and "circumstances" are terms which do not in themselves show what they are intended to express: the act of the will, which is what is qualified as good or bad. Undoubtedly, the term that indicates this more precisely is "decision"; and since the physical realisation of the act of the will also contributes something to the morality of the action, it seems appropriate to add "action" to it. The word action refers here, as in ordinary language, to the material realisation of what has been decided. It seems appropriate, therefore, to use other terms ("decision-action") that do refer directly to the voluntary, and therefore moral, meaning of human action.

In conclusion: the expressions "moral object" and "circumstances" are technical terms, with a precise meaning in philosophy, which require further explanation to clarify their meaning in detail. This problem does not arise with the terms "decision" and "action", where the technical meaning and the vulgar meaning coincide.

It is interesting to note that the word "circumstances" appears very rarely in Veritatis splendor58. And, in those appearances, this term does not have the technical meaning that we have seen that St. Thomas gave it (it has a meaning that is also found in Aquinas and which we will see later). The reason for this almost disappearance is very simple: since the encyclical approaches the moral act by considering it directly as a deliberate act of the will59 , it does not need to use the circumstances to reach it indirectly, since it is referring directly to the voluntary act. Although, in order to describe a concrete action it may be necessary to use those accidental complements to the definition which are the circumstances, it is not necessary to use them to describe how the moral act develops and what is the root of its goodness or badness. In short: the encyclical leans towards the consideration of the core of morality - the act of the will - and relegates its quiditative description - the circumstances. It is the same approach as the Thomistic study of the moral act. Circumstances are necessary, and not always, only to describe fully a concrete action.

5. Indifferent actions

As is evident from the Thomistic study of the moral act, and as St Thomas himself expressly mentions, there can be human acts that are morally indifferent because of their object. In such actions, the will's decision concerns an object which, in itself considered, does not indicate order or disorder of the will that chooses it. Aquinas gives as examples picking up a straw from the ground or going to the country60. In fact, these actions, considered in themselves, do not involve order or disorder with the law of nature.

However, to consider the decision (or the moral object) separately from the rest of the elements of the moral act is artificial. There really is no such thing as an action consisting only of a pure decision: all actions also contain a prior foresight, are motivated by an intention, and have consequences. And it is impossible for indifferent intentions to exist. Therefore, every concrete human action is either good or bad, even if its decision (which is described by the moral object) is really indifferent61.

Despite the clarity of this formulation, it is relatively common to find the opposite thesis: there can be no indifferent actions, not even considered in themselves. This way of considering things is perhaps the result of an excessive emphasis on the moral object as the fundamental qualifier of the goodness or badness of an action, an emphasis probably derived from its essentialist consideration. Indeed, if all the weight of the goodness or badness of an action lies in the moral object, it is quite impossible for there to be actions indifferent to their object, because it is precisely the object that makes an action good or bad. In St Thomas, the consideration of the object as source of morality (as the determinant of the will's decision) is suitably counterbalanced by other elements, and there is no objection to affirming that there are indifferent decisions-actions if they are considered in themselves; there cannot be if the action of the moral subject is considered as a whole.

d) Tolerated effects

For the moral analysis of an action we have already established that we must examine whether the foresight was sufficient, whether the intention is good and whether the action-decision is also good. However, this is not enough. Often, human actions, especially in these times of new social complexity, have effects other than those intended. It seems coherent that these effects, because they derive from an act of the will, are related to the moral qualification of the will that provokes them. In fact, St. Thomas devotes an article of the Summa to the effects of action, from which perhaps not all of its potentialities have been extracted62.

Veritatis splendor also makes numerous references to the consequences of the action as a factor to be taken into account in judging its goodness or badness63. The encyclical does not specifically seek to clarify the role of the consequences in the evaluation of the moral act, but rather to point out the excesses that seek to determine the goodness or badness of actions only in the consequences and in the intention. However, in criticising these excesses, he makes sufficiently clear the relevance of consequences within the moral act.

1. Effects and means

In complex actions, the action-decision does not usually refer to the intended object, but to a means leading to the intended end. This means that is used to achieve the end bears the same relation to the end as it does to the unintended effects: it is its cause or, in other words, it is a means that produces it. As we have seen, the means executed, being the object of the voluntary act, must always be good. There cannot be a good will that chooses bad means to achieve an end it intends. Such a choice would imply bad will even if the ends were good. This illustrates, from a philosophical point of view, the non sunt facienda mala ut eveniant bona of St. Paul to the Romans.

There may be other means that are not the object of the decision: when the action (executed by the decision) produces effects that lead to the intended end, these effects are means to the end. Properly speaking, these intermediate effects between the action and the end cannot be called consequences of the action. Their relation to the act of the will is different from that of the tolerated effects or consequences of the action; namely, the means not directly executed are willed by the very act of the will that wills the end, i.e. by the intention. The intention, in willing the end, also wills all the events that lead to it64. In short: in this case too, the means cannot be considered as effects or consequences.

Therefore, tolerated effects are not means, but foreseeable consequences - they do not happen by chance - that always or most of the time follow from one's action, thus falling within voluntariness65 ; they are not what one intends (even if they are, in their own way, voluntary). Therefore, there can be bad tolerated effects of a good action. These tolerated effects correspond neither to intention nor to choice. If they corresponded to them, they would be the moral end or object.

Effects or consequences are, therefore, events that result from the execution of an action, but which are neither the object of intention (they are neither the end nor the means) nor of decision (they are not the action).

2. Effects and voluntariness

Man, if he has had adequate foresight before acting, knows the effects that will result from his action, and knows, if any, that some of them are undesirable or undesirable: these are the tolerated effects. Tolerated effects are voluntary. They are not intended, because they are not the intended end. But it cannot be consistently said that they are involuntary. If they were absolutely involuntary, they would simply not be attributable to the subject66.

Therefore, man, in acting, wants them, he makes them the object of the intentionality of his will. It is not that he intends them (they are not his intention). But he wants them. If he did not want them at all, he would not undertake the action he does. To tolerate is precisely that: to accept with the act of the will some effects of the action, which are not what was directly intended67.

As we have seen, when analysing the goodness of human action, we are fundamentally analysing the goodness of its voluntary act. Therefore, if effects are related to the will, they must also be considered when assessing an action68. The essentialist-inspired treatises on morality seem to omit this point. In any case, as we shall see later, they include it in the circumstances.

3. Moral assessment

In order for an effect or consequence to be morally relevant, it is necessary that this effect has been foreseen69 , and that it always or most of the time occurs as a consequence of the action that has been undertaken70 ; once this is admitted budget, we are in a position to assess whether it is lawful to undertake an action that has a tolerated effect.

Again, what we said above with regard to the moral object applies here: in assessing the effects of an action from the moral point of view, we must not consider the physical facts. What is to be considered is: whether it is good or bad to will these effects, whether it is proper for man to put his will into certain things that are the effect of his action71. To set about evaluating the facts themselves does not correspond either to the Thomistic explanation of the moral act or to a reasonable understanding of human action. Such an approach would place the morality of the action, not in the will of the one who acts, but in the things themselves. And, if it is admitted that goodness or badness is in the things themselves, we would again be forced to accept that moral principles admit of exceptions72.

How are the tolerated effects - if they exist - to be assessed within the moral act? How do they influence the morality of an action? The answer must come to us by examining the goodness of the will that wills, together with what it intends and what it does, the effects it tolerates. It has already been made clear that the intention and the decision (together with the corresponding action) must be good. If they are bad, there is no point in talking about tolerated effects: the will has a bad object (intended or decided) and is bad; no consequence or effect can change this initial assessment. But if the intention is good and the decision-action is also good, it is worth considering whether tolerated effects are admissible in that case, and whether we can judge the will of the one who acts as good.

A good will is manifested in that it performs good acts, in that it sets its intentionality on objects that are suitable for man. Therefore, bad effects will be tolerable as long as the set of things that the will of the person acting can be evaluated as good (always under the assumption that the intention and the decision are good, as we have seen).

Within this context, in order to see whether the will is globally good, we have to compare whether it wills, on the whole, more good than evil. This can only be done by comparing the act of the will that moves the whole action (the intention) with the voluntary acceptance of the tolerated effects. What is tolerated must therefore be proportionate to what is intended73. If, in order to achieve a good, an evil greater than that good is tolerated, that will is evil. If, in order to achieve a good, a lesser evil is tolerated, that will is good.

As we mentioned at the beginning of this article section, Veritatis splendor considers that the effects of an action are relevant when considering whether it is good or bad. However, as the integration of the evaluation of the effects with the rest of the moral act is not the object of its speech, it does not provide further details in this regard. At summary: in order to examine the morality of an act, in addition to the foresight, the intention and the decision-action, it is necessary to examine whether there is a proportion between what is intended and what is tolerated.

4. Consequences and circumstances

We have seen that the term "circumstances" has, for St Thomas, a technical sense (an accidental complement to the definition of what is being decided), and this sense is the one we have used up to this point, employee . There is also another way of using this term, less technical and more similar to its current use. This meaning is also used by St Thomas74 and appears both in Veritatis splendor75 and in the Catechism of the Catholic Church76. Its meaning, from this other point of view, would be approximately the following: circumstances are the set of things that are, as it were, around the action and that have a certain relevance for it77.

From this initial and more generic point of view, anything that is not included in the decision or act of the acting will (which refers only to the moral object) can be considered a circumstance. Thus, viewed from the point of view of the act of the will, the various elements of the moral act can be considered its circumstances; circumstances would be the end78 , as well as the accidental details that outline the moral object79 or the consequences80.

As is evident, this consideration of what is around the act as circumstances is perfectly reasonable and valid. However, its practical use in the assessment of concrete situations raises several problems. The main one is that the connection of the circumstances with the moral subject becomes rather obscure. It is rather counter-intuitive, when circumstances are used in this broad sense, to connect them with the human will. It seems, at first written request, that we are talking about the facts that are derived from the decision of the will, so that, with the facts alone, we would be in a position to morally evaluate a decision. This, as we have shown above, cannot be done while maintaining a minimum of coherence. And this connection with the subject who acts is essential: Veritatis splendor recommends always considering moral acts from the point of view of the subject81.

As part of this difficulty, the connection between the effects or consequences of the action and the will of the acting subject is also obscured. In fact, St Thomas, in order to assess the influence of the consequences of an action on the moral act, abandons the quiditative description of the consequences as a special subject of circumstances. He adopts the point of view of the subject who acts, and considers, quite rightly, that, in order for it to be morally acceptable to tolerate certain effects, these must be proportionate to the end that is intended82. From the point of view of the qualitative description, this result would be almost impossible to obtain.

One of the problems of essentialist-inspired morality is precisely that, because of its presuppositions, it cannot abandon the quiditative description of action and can only consider effects as circumstances. Perhaps for this reason, his assessment of the influence of the effects of an action on morality has never been as clear and limpid as that of St. Thomas. He limits himself to establishing the necessity of proportion between what is intended and what is tolerated. Moreover, in the Thomistic study, the connection of the effects with the subject is patent: the moral agent tolerates them.

From the above, it is clear that it is preferable to speak of the effects of the act as such effects or consequences, and to renounce their quiditative description. Even if the effects are circumstances that happen to the moral act (seen from the moral act they are something that is around - that circum-states -), and have a quid that can be described, this way of approaching them dangerously hinders a clear understanding of the morality of the subject who provokes them with his decisions.

5. The double effect action

Classical moral studies, following the systematisation of St Thomas in the Summa Theologiae83 , analyse the object, the end and the circumstances in the moral act. In order to examine the lawfulness of actions that have both good and bad effects, these three elements are not enough, and they have to resort to the elaboration of rules that make it possible to determine whether an action with both good and bad effects can be carried out without moral guilt. These rules constitute the so-called principle of double effect action.

Their formulation varies from one author to another. One of them, mentioned above, describes them as follows: a) that the action itself is good or indifferent, b) that the bad consequence does not follow directly from the action performed, c) that the action is done for a good purpose, and d) that there is a proportion between the good and bad effect.

If we examine these rules from the point of view that we have seen so far at employee , we observe that, correctly understood and for practical purposes, they are another way of formulating what we have said. Thus, rule a) is equivalent to saying that the decision-action must be good or indifferent, as we have stated above. Rule b) tries to exclude that the bad consequence is a means to the intended end; if that bad consequence were a means, it would follow the action more closely than the end; therefore, with this rule, the possibility of doing evil in order to achieve good is eliminated. Since the means are intermediate ends, the object of the intention of the subject who acts, this rule is included in the obligation that the intention be good. (c) is directly equivalent to saying that the intention must be good. And (d) is equivalent to what St Thomas affirmed with regard to the tolerated effects: that they must be in proportion to what is intended, since what is intended is, in addition to being the object of the intention, an effect of the action.

Other formulations of the principle of double-effect action can also be traced back, without particular difficulty, to the Thomistic principles set out above, although for the sake of brevity we shall omit to give further examples here. We therefore come to the conclusion that, if instead of examining in an action only the object, the end and the circumstances, we examine the intention, the decision-action and the proportion of the tolerated effects to what is intended, the rules of the principle of double-effect action are superfluous, since they are perfectly understood and integrated in the approach of the moral act that we have been explaining, which is wider and deeper from the theoretical point of view than the one normally used.

6. The "indirect volunteer" or "volunteer in causa".

One last brief clarification remains to be made about the expressions "indirect voluntary" and "voluntary in causa". With these expressions, moralists usually refer to the connection of the effects of an action with the voluntariness of the subject who acts: if these effects are neither the thing intended nor the thing done (they are not the direct object of the act of the will), their connection with the will must be indirect, through the object chosen by the will, or in causa, since the object chosen is the cause of the effect subsequently occurring.

St Thomas, however, takes a somewhat different approach. On the one hand, he uses the expression "indirect voluntary" only to refer to the effects of voluntary omissions of actions that should have been carried out, such as that of the pilot of the ship who abandons his post and causes a shipwreck.84 The shipwreck would be "indirect voluntary", which is equivalent to saying that it is voluntary without an exterior act but, of course, with an interior act. The shipwreck would be "indirect voluntary", which is equivalent to saying that it is voluntary without an external act but, of course, with an internal act of the will, which makes the shipwreck imputable to the deserting pilot85.

On the other hand, he speaks of "voluntary in causa" to refer to the effects of an action which are not wanted in themselves, but which are produced as result of the action that has been undertaken. Thus, whoever gets drunk voluntarily, is responsible in causa for what he later does in a state of drunkenness86. Therefore, the "voluntary in causa" is also voluntary, but in a peculiar way: the intention is not of the "voluntary in causa" effect but only of the cause. What differentiates the "indirect voluntary" effects from the "voluntary in causa" is only that in the first case it is an act that is omitted, while in the second it is an act that is committed. Although later theology tends to identify "indirect voluntary" with "voluntary in causa", in St Thomas these expressions are not equivalent. But, for Aquinas, in both cases, the effects that are produced, although not intended, are imputable to the will of the subject who acts. In a way, they are voluntary. Concretely, they are tolerated effects.

After having made these divisions, when speaking of the influence of the effects on the morality of the action, when it seems that he should be referring to the indirect voluntary or the "voluntary in causa", St Thomas omits these expressions, which remain a mere theoretical or academic distinction. He then speaks of the influence of the effects of the action on its goodness or badness, and establishes, as we have already seen, that the foreseen or reasonably foreseeable effects that necessarily occur as a consequence of the action (the tolerated effects) must be proportionate to what is intended87.

This apparent divergence is easily explained: the division of the voluntary into direct and indirect and in se and in causa is valid. However, this division, typical of scholastic formal rigour, does not provide any useful element to evaluate concrete actions. To study them, one has to look at things in a different way: to see whether the tolerated effects are proportionate to what is intended, regardless of whether the will that provokes them can be related to them in one way or another. And this is what Thomas does: after establishing the division of voluntariness on the theoretical level, he establishes the practical procedure of assessing the influence of the effects of an action on its morality, without applying the theoretical division.

By following this approach to the tolerated effects, a supplementary advantage can be obtained: the connection of the tolerated effects with the will is not blurred. For it is inevitable that the expressions "indirect voluntary" and "voluntary in causa" will lead one to think that the effects are not properly voluntary, an error, as we have seen, typical of the essentialist position, which seems to reduce what is voluntary to what is immediately related to the will: to the object with its circumstances and to the end. By using the expression "tolerated effects", the relation of the effects to the intentionality of the will is kept clear: without being intended, the tolerated effects are connected with the act that provokes them, since the latter always or most of the time causes them. For this reason, although in a peculiar way, they are voluntary and imputable to the subject who acts.

e) Side effects

We referred, at the beginning of the tolerated effects, to the new complexity in which man's life moves nowadays. This new complexity has made new aspects appear in the moral panorama, which did not exist when St. Thomas elaborated his ethical theory: the secondary effects of actions. This question has recently been analysed by Spaemann, whose study has clarified the moral analysis of these previously non-existent effects88.

Side effects of an action are those effects that are more or less remote, scarcely or hardly foreseeable. However, although these effects are initially difficult to detect, once they occur they are well known, and can be adequately foreseen for similar occasions and, to some extent, controlled. Pollution and litter are typical examples of moral side-effects: in the early days of industrial society, it was difficult to foresee that the installation of industries could cover an entire region with soot, and manufacturers of perishable goods did not easily know the problems that empty packaging would produce. Examples such as these can be found in all walks of life: remote repercussions of political or economic measures, public life regulations, standards, etc.

Side effects are particularly indomitable: when measures are taken to try to prevent them or mitigate their effects, these measures have, in turn, other unforeseen effects that complicate matters. There is no possibility of completely avoiding them89 . This means that, when considering them from a moral point of view, two ideas must be brought into play.

1. On the one hand, as tolerated effects, they must be assessed as any tolerated effect: by examining whether it is an effect that is proportionate to the intention. In assessing it in this way, we are assessing, as in the case of tolerated effects, the will of the perpetrator. In this case, we are assuming that the side-effect is already known, that we do not have to assume, with unusual ability, effects that have not yet occurred.

2. On the other hand, its pervasiveness and difficult avoidability must be taken into account. This consideration guides action in the sense of not undertaking too many new initiatives that will complicate the picture with unwanted side effects. Undoubtedly, if there is something to be done that appears to be a good action with no particular drawbacks, it should be done. But when it comes to managing complex issues, such as policies, it is better to patch up a problematic situation than to come up with a whole new order, which will also produce problems that we may not be prepared to solve90. This approach to unknown side-effects is the only guarantee for minimising the undesirable effects of the action we are about to take. This second point of view is the one to be put into action in the case of side effects that are not yet well known or, indeed, unknown.

III. Conclusion

In the Thomistic study of the moral act, recently endorsed by the Encyclical Veritatis splendor, the acts of the will, which we have been mentioning in the course of this analysis, are not "something", as essentialism claims, but an immanent activity of man which moves him in his actions. The will is not a factory of ends and moral objects, but an engine of human vital activity, which orients human action towards certain ends and actions, but which also links it to other aspects that must be taken into account. If these aspects are added to those normally mentioned in the study of the moral act (object, end and circumstances) and the terminology is adjusted to better adapt to the common meaning of the terms, we find that, in order to examine the morality of an action, the following must be assessed:

1. If there has been adequate foresight (an act of prudence governed by the will).

2. If the intention is good.

3. If the decision-action is a good one.

4. Whether the tolerated effects are commensurate with what is intended.

5. Whether side effects are commensurate with what is intended or, if unknown, have been avoided by minimising innovations.

All these conditions must be fulfilled simultaneously for an action to be good. If only one of them fails, the action, taken as a whole, will be bad.

Postscriptum (2008)

The original writing of this manuscript dates back to the mid-1990s, shortly after the publication of the Encyclical Veritatis Splendor. Since then, there have been authors, such as Rhonheimer91 or Joan Costa92 , who have touched on the background topic with success and at greater length than this article: in these works the emphasis is placed on the recovery of the acts of the subject as the foundation of ethics, a question that essentialism had left blurred, in a process explained in great detail in Costa's work. It is a topic which the Encyclical Veritatis Splendor underlines as a fundamental question in ethics.

However, although this deviation from Thomistic doctrine is dealt with here and a few reflections are made on it, the aim of the article goal was to provide a practical and intuitive system for judging medical acts. Indeed, it is now commonplace that one of the problems of bioethics today is the complexity of the subjects it has to judge, due to their numerous technical details. It was therefore necessary to focus on the acts of the subject, and to avoid philosophical technicalities as far as possible when examining acts from an ethical point of view. financial aid I believe that the proposal can cover this goal; in any case, for its application, the more detailed ideas of Iceta93 will be of great help. He elaborated, almost simultaneously with this article, a protocol of ethical analysis that seems to me to be very effective for resolving doubts in ethics committees. It will be easy for the reader to fit the ideas that he has read here with the core elements of Iceta's protocol .

committee I hope that this contribution, together with the above-mentioned protocol , can facilitate the work of the Ethics Committees in making difficult decisions in healthcare.

Notes


(1) Although many more could be mentioned, the following articles are a representative sample of the different positions on the subject: Peter Knauer. Fundamental concepts of the encyclical "Veritatis splendor". In: "Reason and Faith" 229 (1994) 1, pp. 47-63, Richard A. McCormick. Some early reactions to Veritatis splendor. In: "Theological Studies" 55 (1994), pp. 481-506 and Martin Rhonheimer. "Intrinsically evil acts and the moral viewpoint: clarifying a central teaching of Veritatis splendor. In: "The Thomist" 58 (1994) 1, 1-39.

(2) Cf. the first chapter of Gilson's El ser y los filósofos (Eunsa, Pamplona, 1979, pp. 21-75), suggestively graduate "Sobre el ser y lo uno" (On Being and the One), on Platonic philosophy.

(3) This affirmation would require further clarification and research: although in Augustine the seminal rationes are divine ideas not yet inserted in things, in later Augustinianism these rationes come to be in things as potential forms. Thus the path towards the esse essentiae of formalist philosophy is initiated.

(4) Cf. Ricardo Yepes. La doctrina del acto en Aristóteles. Eunsa, Pamplona, 1993, pp. 265-288.

(5) Cf. Aristotle, Physics, 195a-b.

(6) Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1048a-b. Cf. Ricardo Yepes, op. cit., pp. 246 ff.

(7) Although it was only a local condemnation by a bishop, Tempier's sentence had enormous repercussions in the universal Church, almost like those resulting from the condemnations of a universal council. Cf. Hissette, R. Note sur la réaction "antimoderniste" d'Etienne Tempier. In: "Bulletin de philosophie médievale" 22 (1980), pp. 88-97.

(8) The following text by Francisco Suárez may serve as an expression of this Platonist way of conceiving potency and act: "Potentia et actus non bene dicuntur entis principia; ens enim est simplicissimum et ideo quomodocumque existit est ens in actu etsi forte in potentia ad aliud" (Disputationes metaphisicae, d. 15, s. 9).

(9) And everything that is said to be an entity in some way, according to the analogy of this concept.

(10) Cf. S. Th., Ia IIae, q. 6, aa. 1, 2 and 8.

(11) Following on from the exposition of St Thomas, we will mention particularly outstanding works that have rediscovered and deepened important questions of Thomistic morality; these quotations will not be necessary on questions that are generally accepted common heritage. The recent author who has most caught my attention is Grisez (especially his The Way of the Lord Jesus. Vol. I: Christian Moral Principles -Chicago, Franciscan Herald Press, 1983, 971 pp.- and the more mature reworking in collaboration with Shaw Fulfillment in Christ. A Summary of Christian Moral Principles -Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 1991, 456 pp.-).

(12) Although the Thomistic reasoning that follows is philosophical, Pinckaers rightly argues that the Thomistic philosophical analysis of the moral act forms a whole with what is properly Christian in human behaviour. Cf. Servais Pinckaers. Las fuentes de la moral cristiana. Pamplona, Eunsa 1988, 592 pp. (pp. 227 ff.) and El evangelio y la moral. Barcelona, Eiunsa 1992, 276 pp. (pp. 69 ff.).

(13) This "touching" is, in any case, indirect, through a mental object (which constitutes the concept) and the adequatio of this object with reality: cf. De veritate, q. 1, a. 2, c. Regarding the reference of the will to reality, cf. Intención. Paidós, Barcelona 1991, especially pp. 85 ff.

(14) For St Thomas, the moral object is the term (or determinant) of the decision, and thus he compares it to the form of the end of the movement, which is the term of the movement itself: "Sicut autem res naturalis habet speciem ex sua forma ita actio habet speciem ex obiecto; sicut et motus ex termino" (S. Th., Iª-IIae, q. 18, a. 2, c.). Intention and end also maintain this relationship: "Et ideo manifestum est quod principium humanorum actuum, inquantum sunt humani, est finis; et similiter est terminus eorundem: nam id ad quod terminatur actus humanus, est id quod voluntas intendit tamquam finem" (S. Th., Iª-IIae, q. 1, a. 3, c.).

(15) The examples could be multiplied, and not to the detriment of those who maintain this thesis, for it is not a matter that is obvious at first sight. However, the question changes considerably if the author who makes this assertion has explicitly accepted the intentional nature of acts of the will. This is the case with Knauer who, on the one hand, equates intention and end by speaking of "the "intention", i.e. the "purpose of the one who acts" ...". (Peter Knauer, op. cit., p. 56), while on the other hand he accepts the intentionality of the will by echoing the terms of Veritatis splendor and says that "only that which is intended by the one who acts can be the "object" of the action and thus the end of the action itself; it is that towards which "the will deliberately tends" (ibidem)" (ibidem). Any contradiction can be derived from this contradiction result. However, this author's position is more complex, as it is based on the distinction between finis operis and finis operantis. This distinction does not appear in the Thomistic analysis of the moral act and, at least in part, makes the morality of the action rest on the physical reality.

(16) Veritatis splendor, n. 78.

(17) Ibid.

(18) Cf. Peter Knauer, op. cit., p. 56 and Richard A. McCormick, op. cit., pp. 494 et seq.

(19) "The morality of acts is defined by the relationship of man's freedom to the true good. ... Action is morally good when the choices of freedom are in conformity with the true good of man and thus express the voluntary ordering of the person towards his ultimate end. ... Action is morally good when it bears witness to and expresses the voluntary ordering of the person to the ultimate end and the conformity of the concrete action with the human good as it is recognised in its truth by reason": Veritatis splendor, n. 72. "Principium autem bonitatis et malitiae humanorum actuum est ex actu voluntatis": S. Th., Ia, Ia-IIae, q. 19, a. 2, c. Grisez has developed this idea at length, relating it to human fulfilment, in Germain Grisez, Russell Shaw, Beyond the new morality, Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press 1980 (revised ed.), 232 pp. Finnis, commenting on Aristotelian ethics, also relates good moral action to properly human goods. Cf. Fundamentals of Ethics. Oxford, Clarendon Press 1983, 165 pp. (pp. 50-3), and Natural Law and Natural Rights, Oxford, Clarendon Press 1986, 425 pp. (pp. 81-90). To this relation of the good act to adequate particular ends we should add the intellectus or intuitus of the good or ultimate end, outlined by Aristotle and present in St. Thomas - which Finnis considers a merely theoretical question (cf. Fundamentals ..., p. 14 et seq.) - as well as the supernatural enrichment of this intellectual act.

St Thomas, in the same way that he considers the entity to be an act (actus essendi) limited by an essence, in which the subject prima, the substantial form and the accidental forms can be considered, considers the voluntary act to be an act (intentional) limited or determined by a series of quidditates: the object, the end and the circumstances: cfr, Ia-IIae, q. 18, a. 4, c, where he distinguishes the actio and the quidditates of that actio: the species (moral object), the circumstances (equivalent to accidents), and the end, which, looked at from the point of view of the action, is like a certain accident (ibidem, ad 2). He also expresses the priority of the act of the will by saying that the act of the will is compared to the external realisation as the formal to the material: S. Th., Iª-IIae, q. 18, a. 6, ad 2.

(20) "Voluntas movet intellectum quantum ad exercitium actus: quia et ipsum verum, quod est perfectio intellectus, continetur sub universali bono ut quoddam bonum particulare": S. Th., Iª-IIae, q. 9, a. 1, ad 3. This element is made explicit, together with the rest of the Thomistic analysis of human action, in Odon Lottin. Morale fondamentale. Tournai, Desclée 1954, 546 pp. (pp. 229 ff.).

(21) Veritatis splendor, n. 61.

(22) "Certainly, great importance must be attached ... to the goods obtained and the evils avoided as a consequence of a particular act. This is a demand for responsibility": Veritatis splendor, n. 77.

(23) Cf. S. Th., Ia-IIae, qq. 15-17. Cf. Lottin, op. cit.

(24) Cf. S. Th., I-IIae, q. 14.

(25) Cf. Giuseppe Abbà, Felicidad, vida buena y virtud, Barcelona, Eiunsa 1992, pp. 76 and 203-205.

(26) Cf. S. Th., Iª-IIae, q. 20, a. 5

(27) "The weighing of the goods and evils foreseeable as a consequence of an action ...": Veritatis splendor, n. 77.

(28) Veritatis splendor, n. 64.

(29) "In the case of positive moral precepts, prudence must always play the role of verifying their relevance in a given situation, for example, taking into account other duties which are perhaps more important or more urgent": Veritatis splendor, n. 67; ordinary language attributes this role of prudence to the "well-formed conscience". Abbà also expresses the same idea in his study, which has brought the role of the virtues in moral action back to the forefront. Cf. Giuseppe Abbà, op. cit., pp. 256-258 and 260-261. Lottin has a classic analysis of virtue in St. Thomas (Études de morale, histoire et doctrine. Gembloux, Duculot 1961, 365 pp.), and there are other works of undoubted quality on this same subject subject.

(30) "Intentio, sicut ipsum nomen sonat, significat in aliquid tendere. In aliquid autem tendit et actio moventis, et motus mobilis. Sed hoc quod motus mobilis in aliquid tendit, ab actione moventis procedit. Unde intentio primo et principaliter pertinet ad id quod movet ad finem": S. Th., Iª-IIae, q. 12, a. 1, c.

(31) "The rational ordering of the human act towards the good in all its truth and the voluntary pursuit of that good, known to reason, constitute morality": Veritatis splendor, n. 72. Critics of the Veritatis splendor position, on the other hand, point out that morality is determined, at least in part, by the physical reality of the action or its consequences, which are generally referred to as premoral goods or values. Cf. Peter Knauer, op. cit., p. 59-60 and Richard A. McCormick, op. cit., p. 504.

(32) Here the term occurrence, a translation of the English word event, from analytic philosophy, would be pertinent. Physical occurrence, mere facts, would be an occurrence, while that occurrence, linked to the will that wills it, becomes an end and, therefore, acquires a moral qualification. But it acquires it only because it is the term of an act of the will, not because the occurrence itself contains morality.

(33) "If the object of the concrete action is not in harmony with the true good of the person, the choice of such an action makes our will and ourselves morally evil": Veritatis splendor, n. 72. Cf. works of Grisez and Finnis, in grade 19. agreement This idea is expressed by St. Thomas saying that an action will be good or bad if it is in accordance with the "ordo rationis": "Actus humanus, qui dicitur moralis, habet speciem ab obiecto relato ad principium actuum humanorum, quod est ratio. Unde si obiectum actus includat aliquid quod conveniat ordini rationis, erit actus bonus secundum suam speciem, sicut dare eleemosynam indigenti. Si autem includat aliquid quod repugnet ordini rationis, erit malus actus secundum speciem, sicut furari, quod est tollere aliena": S. Th., Iª-IIae, q. 18, a. 8, c. Indeed, it is reason (by means of the virtues) that discovers the demands of nature; to speak of "ordo rationis" is to speak of the truth of man, and of human nature (cf. Veritatis splendor, n. 51).

(34) "Bonitas voluntatis ex intentione finis dependet": S. Th., Iª-IIae, q. 19, a. 7, s. c. "In actione humana bonitas quadruplex considerari potest ... Quarta autem secundum finem, quasi secundum habitudinem ad causam bonitatis": S. Th., Iª-IIae, q. 18, a. 4, c.; this relation to the cause of goodness is the intentionality of the will.

(35) Cf. Veritatis splendor, nn. 71-83.

(36) "In order to grasp the object of an act, ... one must place oneself in the perspective of the person who acts": Veritatis splendor, n. 78. Here Veritatis splendor refers to the act of choosing, but it is equally applicable to intention, which is also a choice, not of means (or intermediate ends), but of ends. This same idea - ethics can only be realised by considering the point of view of the subject who acts - is also referred to by Abbà (op. cit., pp. 107-113). And it is this point which, in one way or another, is postponed in consequentialist or "teleological" ethics, as we shall see below.

(37) "Multa, secundum quod sunt distincta, non possunt simul intelligi; sed secundum quod uniuntur in uno intelligibili, sic simul intelliguntur": S. Th., I, q. 58, a. 2, c. This reasoning, which St. Thomas applies to the act of the understanding, can be applied equally to the act of the will, which also has an intentional nature.

(38) Cf. McCormick, op. cit., p. 496.

(39) "Non oportet quod semper ex fine insit homini necessitas ad eligendum ea quod sunt ad finem: quia non omne quod est ad finem, tale est ut sine eo finis haberi non possit; aut, si tale sit, non semper sub tali rationi consideratur": S. Th., Ia-IIae, q. 13, a. 6, ad 1. "The consideration of these consequences - as well as of intentions - is not sufficient to evaluate the moral quality of a particular choice. The weighing of the goods and evils foreseeable as a consequence of an action is not an adequate method for determining whether the choice of that concrete behaviour is, "according to its species" or "in itself", morally good or bad, licit or illicit": Veritatis splendor, n. 77. As can be seen, Veritatis splendor prefers to speak of "choice", instead of using "decision", as we are doing, and St. Thomas does the same (cf. S. Th., Iª-IIae, q. 13). In any case, as is obvious, the meaning of these two terms, in this respect, is practically equivalent.

(40) "The object of the act of willing is freely chosen behaviour": Veritatis splendor, n. 78. "Electio semper est humanorum actuum": S. Th., Iª-IIae, q. 13, a. 4, c, in fine.

(41) Because of this impossibility, it is contradictory to speak of pre-moral goods or values. Rhonheimer analyses in detail the incongruities of describing human action solely on the basis of events or occurrences and concludes that one must always turn to man's inner self in order to be able to describe his actions. Cf. op. cit., especially pp. 11 ff. In fact, McCormick, in his criticism of Hittinger's commentary on Veritatis splendor, is completely correct in this respect: what makes it possible to describe an action is its human what; however, by giving as an example that "self-stimulation for sperm testing is a different human act from self-pleasuring" sample he fails to see the moral object, the what of the decision, and reduces this what to that of the intention, while, as can be deduced, the action would be reduced to a mere physical occurrence. Cf. Richard A. McCormick. Some early ..., p. 495.

(42) "Obiectum non est subject ex qua, sed subject circa quam: et habet quodammodo rationem formae, inquantum dat speciem": S. Th., Iª-IIae, q. 18, a. 2, ad 2. For this reason, the moral object is not the physical description of the action, but the human description of that action. By seeing the physical action of a person we can suspect what he is doing, but we do not come to know it with full certainty. Thus, to bring about the death of a person may be "to defend oneself", "to murder", "to do justice", etc.: these are descriptions of the decision of the will which is realised in the physical action, and this is what is of interest in evaluating the action from the moral point of view: "One cannot take as the object of a given moral act, a physical process or event alone" (Veritatis splendor, n. 78).

(43) Cf. the introduction to section II.

(44) "There are concrete behaviours whose choice is always wrong because it involves a disorder of the will, that is to say, a moral evil": Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 1761, quoted literally by Veritatis splendor, n. 78.

(45) "Whoever looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart": Mt 5:28.

(46) "Si autem loquamur de bonitate actus exterioris quam habet secundum materiam et debitas circumstantias, sic comparatur ad voluntatem ut terminus et finis. Et hoc modo addit ad bonitatem vel malitiam voluntatis: quia omnis inclinatio vel motus perficitur in hoc quod consequitur finem, vel attingit terminum": S. Th., Iª-IIae, q. 20, a. 4, c.

(47) This confusion of the moral object with physical action is not accidental, for it derives from the Platonism that underlies essentialist-inspired morality. Such confusion parallels the ambiguity that Platonism must sustain with regard to the nature of Ideas. Although it would be too long to show it in detail here, we can at least outline the Platonic ambiguity at the outset: Platonism assumes that the Ideas are the principles that explain reality; however, viewed from Aristotelianism, Platonic ideas encompass both formal principles (the quid of things) and Materials (the universality of the constitutive elements of things): the Ideas are ambiguous, and are situated, paradoxically, between the eidetic and the material (cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 991b, 992b and 1080a). For this reason, Platonist philosophies are often seen to make a "material" composition of things on the basis of Ideas, which are apparently not principles Materials. This same ambiguity occurs in the essentialist consideration of the moral object, which is sometimes considered an act of the will (and has an eidetic nature) and at other times is made to be equivalent to physical action (and has a material nature).

(48) This is partly the position of Schüller, who affirms that bad means can be accepted if the end is good. Thus, he gives the example of the action of the doctor who, in order to cure, must injure (perform a surgical operation on) his patient. Such an evil means would be acceptable for the sake of the good end (healing). And the moral principle of not inflicting injury must admit of exceptions. Cf. Bruno Schüller. Wholly Human. Essays on the Theory and Language of Morality. Washington, Georgetown University Press 1986, 220 pp., pp. 150-160. Schüller loses sight of the fact that the doctor, in operating, is doing something good (the crux of his decision is to treat surgically, and it is good), even if the action might seem harmful and bad. The doctor is acting well and there are no exceptions to moral principles.

(49) "Tradition teaches ... that certain kinds of choice and intention are incompatible with love of God and the pursuit of the Kingdom because they are incompatible with love of the human good ... such choices and intentions must simply be excluded from our deliberation and choice": John Finnis. Moral Absolutes. Barcelona, Eiunsa 1992, pp. 65-66. With somewhat different emphases and in more detail, the same idea can be found in Pinckaers (Universalité et permanence des lois morales. Fribourg, Editions Universitaires 1986, 454 pp., and Ce qu'on en peut jamais faire: la questions des actes intrinsèquement mauvais. Histoire et discussion. Fribourg, Editions Universitaires 1986, 139 pp.).

(50) As is evident, common sense has no difficulty with this action: it knows that the person who defended himself did not intend to kill, and that he acted well, although less well if, in his defence, he had managed to repel the aggressor without killing him. However, from a theoretical-essentialist point of view, the solution to the case is rather problematic. On the other hand, the approval of defensive conduct does not detract from the fact that non-defensive conduct, which may be reasonable, required by charity and even heroic, can also be good in certain cases.

(51) Veritatis splendor, n. 82, specifically uses the expression "moral order goal", taking it from the declaration Dignitatis humanae.

(52) "The morality of the human act depends above all and fundamentally on the object rationally chosen by the deliberate will": Veritatis splendor, n. 78.

(53) "Intention is good when it aims at the true good of the person in relation to his ultimate end": Veritatis splendor, n. 82.

(54) To some extent, the difficulties of consequentialist or teleological ethics in accepting immutable moral principles derive from this attempt to ground morality in physical reality, which explains the constant reference of these ethics to ontological or premoral goods and evils, that is, to the good not completely but to some extent morally contained in the physical facts considered in themselves. This moral weight of the physical facts is combined without problems with assigning to the intention of the end another part of the weight of morality, but not with assigning it to the choice of means. Cf. Schüller, op. cit. and Die Begründung sittlicher Urteile, Düsseldorf, Patmos 1973. A more difficult position, which simultaneously upholds the moral weight of physical facts and that of intention and, in a difficult balance, acknowledges the moral impact of choice, is found in R. A. McCormick, Ambiguity in Moral Choice (Pere Marquette Lecture in Theology, 1973). Milwaukee, Marquette University 1973.

(55) "Plenitudo bonitatis eius [actionis] non tota consistit in sua specie, sed aliquid additur ex his quae adveniunt tanquam accidentia quaedam. Et huiusmodi sunt circumstantiae debitae. Unde si aliquid desit quod requiratur ad debitas circumstantias, erit actio mala": S. Th., Iª-IIae, q. 18, a. 3, c. All classical textbooks commenting on St Thomas refer to this element. In addition to the meaning of the term "circumstances" that we explain here, there is a second, different meaning, also present in St. Thomas, which we will analyse in section d), 4.

(56) Cf. S. Th., I-IIae, q. 18, a. 10, c.

(57) Cf. ibid.

(58]) Cf. Veritatis splendor, nn. 74, 77, 80 and 81.

(59) Cf. ibidem, n. 76.

(60) Cf. S. Th., I-IIae, q. 18, a. 8, c.

(61) Cf. S. Th., I-IIae, q. 18, a. 9, c.

(62) "Respondeo dicendum quod eventus sequens aut est praecogitatus, aut non. Si est praecogitatus, manifestum est quod addit ad bonitatem vel malitiam. Cum enim aliquis cogitans quod ex opere suo multa mala possunt sequi, nec propter hoc dimittit, ex hoc apparet voluntas eius esse magis inordinata.

Si autem eventus sequens non sit praecogitatus, tunc distinguendum est. Quia si per se sequitur ex tali actu, et ut in pluribus, secundum hoc eventus sequens addit ad bonitatem vel malitiam actus: manifestum est enim meliorem actum esse ex suo genere, ex quo possunt plura bona sequi; et peiorem, ex quo nata sunt plura mala sequi. Si vero per accidens, et ut ut in paucioribus, tunc eventus sequens non addit ad bonitatem vel ad malitiam actus: non enim datur iudicium de re aliqua secundum illud quod est per accidens, sed solum secundum illud quod est per se.": S. Th., Iª-IIae, q. 20, a. 5, c.

(63) Cf. Veritatis splendor, nn. 71-77.

(64) Cf. S. Th., Ia IIae, q. 8, a. 2, c. See also grade 13.

(65) "Morales autem actus recipiunt speciem secundum id quod intenditur, non autem eo quod est praeter intentionem, cum sit per accidens": S. Th., IIª-IIae, q. 64, a. 7, c. Here intentionem must be understood in a broad sense: everything that does not fall within the act of the will, which is intentional. Cf. also S. Th., IIa-IIae, q. 43, a. 3, c.

(66) Speaking of the death of a man that follows from an action by chance, after saying that it is not imputable to the subject and therefore not sinful, St. Thomas affirms: "Contingit tamen id quod non est actu et per se volitum et intentum, esse per accidens volitum et intentum, secundum quod causa per accidens dicitur removens prohibens. Unde ille qui non removet ea ex quibus sequitur homicidium, si debeat removere, erit quodammodo homicidium voluntarium" (S. Th., IIª-IIae, q. 64, a. 8, c.). That is to say: the effects that follow from actions are voluntary, although in a peculiar way; in the case of undesirable effects, Spanish uses the term tolerate. The tolerated effects are, in their own way, voluntary. Cf. also section II, d), 6.

(67) Of recent scholars, Grisez is the one who has best systematised this connection between voluntariness and tolerated effects. Cf. Grisez. The Way ..., chapter 6, pp. 141-172 and Grisez-Shaw. Fulfillment ..., chapter 6, pp. 60-74.

(68) "Eventus sequens aut est praecogitatus, aut non. Si est praecogitatus, manifestum est quod addit ad bonitatem vel malitiam": S. Th., Iª-IIae, q. 20, a. 5, c.

(69) Or reasonably foreseeable, which is the same thing, since we have accepted that one must foresee before acting. The unpredictable person who does not see the effects that always or most of the time follow from his action is also responsible for them, even if he did not have them in mind when he acted. Cf. section III, d), 6.

(70) In the terminology of St Thomas, that it is an effect per se and not per accidens: cf. S. Th., Ia-IIae, q. 20, a. 5, c. (see text at grade 62).

(71) Cf. section II, c), 2 and grade 42.

(72) Consequentialists think that morally correct action is aimed at obtaining a desirable state of affairs. On this assumption, they always find situations in which normally accepted moral principles can - or even must - be violated, for the sake of the greater good to be achieved. And, also under budget, they claim that those who defend immutable moral principles - the "deontologists" - do not seem to want to understand what they are talking about (cf. Schüller. Wholly ..., p. 166). The problem, rather, is the reverse: from the attempt to obtain a desirable state of affairs one is not in a position to analyse the goodness of the will that drives the action and, for this reason, consequentialists cannot understand objective morality. The work by Finnis, Boyle and Grisez Nuclear Deterrence, Morality and Realism (Oxford, Clarendon Press 1987, 429 pp.) sample is a good example of these differences between objective and consequentialist morality, analysing the concrete case of the Cold War with nuclear threats.

(73) In order to evaluate as right or wrong an action which, per se, produces undesirable effects, St Thomas only mentions proportion to the end intended: "Potest tamen aliquis actus ex bona intentione proveniens illicitus reddi si non sit proportionatus fini" (S. Th., IIª-IIae, q. 64, a. 7, c). Cf. also Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 2269, in fine. Knauer also speaks of this proportion, taking it from the formulation of the principle of double effect, but he does not refer it to the goodness of the will, but to the desirable state of things, constituted by pre-moral goods or values (op. cit., pp. 59-60). The result of this initial bias can be deleterious for a correct moral consideration of concrete actions, even in spite of the precautions it takes (universal formulation and respect for values taken globally).

(74) Cf., for example, S. Th., I-IIae, q. 20, a. 4, c.: "Si autem loquamur de bonitate actus exterioris quam habet secundum materiam et debitas circumstantias ...". Cf. S. Th., Ia-IIae, q. 7.

(75) Cf. Veritatis splendor, nn. 74, 77, 80 and 81.

(76) Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 1754.

(77) In the words of the Catechism, "Circumstances, including consequences, are the secondary elements of the moral act" (ibidem). As can be deduced from this definition, the meaning used here is broader than the more technical and strict one we have previously employee . The initial definition that St. Thomas gives of circumstances can be assimilated to this one from the Catechism: "Et ideo quaecumque conditiones sunt extra substantiam actus, et tamen attingunt aliquo modo actum humanum, circumstantiae dicuntur" (S. Th., Iª-IIae, q. 7, a. 1, c.).

(78) This is the classic circumstance cur. Cf. S. Th., Ia-IIae, q. 7, aa. 3 and 4.

(79) Circumstances in the restricted sense, as we have used the term so far employee . Cf. S. Th., I-IIae, q. 18, a. 10.

(80) Which would be the circumstance quid: "Circumstantia dicitur quod, extra substantiam actus existens, aliquo modo attingit ipsum. Contingit autem hoc fieri tripliciter: ...; tertio modo, inquantum attingit effectum. ... . Ex parte autem effectus, ut cum consideratur quid aliquis fecerit". (S. Th., I-IIae, q. 7, a. 3, c.).

(81) "In order to be able to grasp the object of an act, ... one must place oneself in the perspective of the person who acts": Veritatis splendor, n. 78. Cf. section II, b).

(82) Cf. section above.

(83) Cf. S. Th., Iª-IIae, q. 18, aa. 2, 3 and 4. The work of A. Fernández, El principio de la acción de doble efecto (doctoral dissertation, Pamplona 1983) has helped us in the elaboration of this and the following section .

(84) Cf. S. Th., I-IIae, q. 6, a. 3, c.

(85) Cf. ibid.

(86) Cf. S. Th., Ia-IIae, q. 77, a. 7, c.

(87) Cf. S. Th., IIa-IIae, q. 64, a. 7, c. Cf. section II, d), 3.

(88) Spaemann R. Side effects as a moral problem. In: Crítica de las utopías políticas (Library Services Temas Nuestro Tiempo, vol. 50), Eunsa, Pamplona 1980, pp. 289-313.

(89) Cf. Alejandro Llano. Complexidad creciente y crisis de gobernabilidad. In: La nueva sensibilidad, Espasa-Calpe, Madrid 1988, pp. 27-39.

(90) Cf. S. Th., Ia-IIae, q. 97, a. 2, c. St Thomas refers in this article to the problems produced by new laws, which interfere with acquired customs and cause the law, taken as a whole, to lose its force. For this reason, he advocates that legal changes should take place only if there is a great need for reform. As is evident, the loss of force of the law by going against custom is a side effect of a new ordinance which, in itself considered, may be good and desirable.

(91) Martin Rhonheimer. La perspectiva de la moral: fundamentos de la ética filosófica. Madrid: Rialp, 2000.

(92) Joan Costa Bou. El discernimiento del actuar humano: contribución a la comprensión del objeto moral. Pamplona: EUNSA, 2003.

(93) Iceta M. Futility and decision-making in palliative medicine. Córdoba: Cajasur, 1997; 306. Unfortunately, this work has had little circulation and is out of print. However, the original text of the research that gave rise to this work can be downloaded from the Internet at the following address: https://www.unav.edu/documents/18304422/19109437/el-concepto-medico-de-futilidad-y-su-aplicacion-clinica.pdf; although the text is not as finished, the fundamental concepts are perfectly exposed. Although the title may suggest that the book refers to a very specific issue, in reality it raises a protocol that is applicable to virtually any medical practice.

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