In a
previous post I identified three aspects of sex which manifestly give it a
special moral significance: It is the means by which new human beings are made;
it is the means by which we are physiologically and psychologically completed
qua men and women; and it is that area
of human life in which the animal side of our nature most relentlessly fights
against the rational side of our nature.
When natural law theorists and moral theologians talk about the procreative and unitive functions of sex, what they have in mind are the first two
of these aspects. The basic idea of
traditional natural law theory where sex is concerned is that since the good
for us is determined by the natural ends of our faculties, it cannot be good
for us to use our sexual faculties in a way that positively frustrates its procreative and unitive
ends. The third morally significant
aspect of sex, which is that the unique intensity of sexual pleasure can lead
us to act irrationally, is perhaps less often discussed these days. So let’s talk about that.
Aquinas provides illuminating guidance on our subject in his discussion in the Summa Theologiae of the eight “daughters” or effects of lust. Keep in mind that “lust,” when used pejoratively by Aquinas and other natural law theorists and moral theologians, does not mean “sexual arousal.” There is nothing wrong with sexual arousal, even intense sexual arousal, in itself. Rather, “lust” is used in natural law theory and moral theology as a technical term for sexual desire that is in some way disordered. In what sense might it be “disordered”? Aquinas writes:
A sin, in human acts, is that which
is against the order of reason. Now the
order of reason consists in its ordering everything to its end in a fitting
manner. (Summa
Theologiae II-II.153.2)
So, reasonable
or well-ordered sexual desire is sexual desire that is “order[ed]… to its end”
and “in a fitting manner.” Thus, sexual
desire is unreasonable or disordered if it is indulged in a way that frustrates
its natural ends, or if it is indulged in an unfitting manner.
Disorder of
the kind that involves frustration of the natural ends of sexual desire would
in Aquinas’s view exist when, for example, such desire is directed at something
other than a human being of the opposite sex, or when the sexual act is
prevented from reaching its natural climax in insemination. An example of sexual desire that is disordered
in its manner would be adulterous sexual desire. Suppose you find some person of the opposite
sex other than your spouse attractive.
So far there is no sin. Suppose
that sexual thoughts and images about this person enter unbidden into your
consciousness. So far, still no
sin. But now suppose that instead of
pushing these thoughts and images out of your mind and turning your attention
to something else, you willingly and actively entertain them. Now there is a sin of lust. Finding this other person attractive is of
itself perfectly natural, and in the right circumstances (being married to the
person) there would be nothing wrong with letting this attraction draw you into
sexual fantasy and intense arousal. But
because you are not married to the person and are married to someone else,
circumstances make such fantasy and arousal disordered and sinful.
For present
purposes, though, I will put to one side questions about what sorts of desire
and behavior, specifically, count as lustful or disordered. Controversies over the natural law position
on extra-marital sex, homosexuality, contraception, etc. are not to the present
point. (I have addressed those matters in
other places, such as here.)
For our topic here is primarily not lust
itself but rather the “daughters” or effects
of lust -- the way in which sexual desire that is disordered tends to bring
further moral disorders in its wake.
One more
preliminary note: To say that some further moral disorder is an effect of lust
is not to say that it invariably and fully follows from lust. We are talking here about tendencies. The longer and more thoroughly someone’s
sexual desires are disordered, the more likely he is to fall into the other
moral disorders Aquinas speaks of. But
if sexual desire is less thoroughly disordered, or if the disorder is
counteracted by efforts to correct it, then naturally the secondary disorders
are less likely to follow, or will not be as great as they otherwise would be.
The daughters of lust
Of the eight
“daughters of lust,” the first four concern the intellect and the last four the
will. The first “daughter” or effect is
what Aquinas calls “blindness of mind,” whereby the “simple [act of] understanding,
which apprehends some end as good… is hindered by lust.” What Aquinas has in mind here can be
understood as follows. The intellect has
as its natural end or final cause the grasp of truth. Truth, however, is a “transcendental,” as is
goodness, and the transcendentals are convertible with one another. That is to say, truth and goodness are really
the same thing looked at from different points of view. Hence the intellect is no less naturally
directed toward the grasp of the good as it is toward the grasp of truth. (See pp. 31-36 of Aquinas
for discussion of the transcendentals.)
Now, when,
for whatever reason, we take pleasure in some thing or activity, we are
strongly inclined to want to think that it is good, even if it is not good; and
when, for whatever reason, we find some idea attractive, we are strongly
inclined to want to think that it is true and reasonable, even if it is
neither. Everyone knows this; you don’t
have to be a Thomist to see that much. The
habitual binge drinker or cocaine snorter takes such pleasure in his vice that he
refuses to listen to those who warn him that he is setting himself up for
serious trouble. The ideologue is so in
love with a pet idea that he will search out any evidence that seems to confirm
it while refusing to consider all the glaring evidence against it. The talentless would-be actor or writer is so
enamored of the prospect of wealth and fame that he refuses to see that he’d be
better advised to pursue some other career.
And so forth. That taking
pleasure in what is in fact bad or false can impair the intellect’s capacity to
see what is good and true is a familiar fact of everyday life.
Now, there
is no reason whatsoever why things should be any different where sex is
concerned. Indeed -- and this is part of
Aquinas’s point -- precisely because sexual pleasure is unusually intense, it
is even more likely than other
pleasures are to impair our ability to perceive what is true and good when what
we take pleasure in is something that is in fact bad. In particular, habitually indulging one’s
desire to carry out sexual acts that are disordered will tend to make it harder
and harder for one to see that they are
disordered. For one thing, the pleasure
a person repeatedly takes in those acts will give the acts the false appearance
of goodness; for another, the person will be inclined to look for reasons to
regard the acts as good or at least harmless, and disinclined to look for, or
give a dispassionate hearing to, reasons to think them bad. Hence indulgence in disordered sexual
behavior has a tendency to impair one’s ability to perceive the true and the
good, particularly in matters of sexual morality. In short, sexual
vice makes you stupid.
Even here
you don’t need to be a Thomist to see that much. Everyone knows that overindulgence in sexual
pleasure can blind someone to the likely bad effects of such indulgence. In particular, everyone is familiar with
examples like that of the lecherous boss or teacher who sexually pursues
subordinates or students despite the risks to his family or career, the woman
who deludes herself into thinking that the married man she is having an affair
with will leave his wife and marry her, the pornography user who refuses to
admit that he is addicted, and so on.
Of course,
there are lots of things the Thomist regards as sexually disordered which many
people these days do not regard as
disordered. In part this is, from a
Thomist point of view, a consequence of widespread intellectual error. For when the general metaphysical framework
underlying traditional natural law theory -- essentialism, teleological
realism, and so forth -- is properly understood, it is pretty obvious that the
general natural law approach to sexual morality is perfectly reasonable, and
indeed pretty hard to avoid, given that metaphysical framework. Moreover, the framework itself is not only
perfectly defensible, but also (as I
have argued at length) pretty hard to avoid when properly understood. The trouble is that in contemporary intellectual
life most people know nothing of, or at best know only crude caricatures of,
that metaphysics and of the traditional natural law theory that rests on
it. Hence they fail to understand the
rational foundations of traditional sexual morality.
But the
Thomist is bound to judge that mere
intellectual error is not the only problem.
For it’s not just that people in contemporary Western society commonly disagree, at an intellectual level, with
the natural law theorist’s judgments about what is disordered. It’s that they commonly act in ways that natural law theory says are disordered. And if such behavior has a tendency to impair
one’s capacity to perceive what is true and good, especially where sex is
concerned, then it follows that widespread rejection of traditional sexual
morality is bound to have as much to do with the sort of cognitive corruption that
Aquinas calls “blindness of mind” as it does with the making of honest
intellectual mistakes. That people who don’t behave in accordance with traditional
sexual moral norms also don’t believe
that these norms have any solid intellectual foundation is thus in no way
surprising. On the contrary, that’s exactly what natural law theory
itself predicts will happen.
It is in
light of this fact that we need to evaluate the
refusal of some contemporary academic philosophers even to consider
arguments in defense of traditional sexual morality. Those who take this attitude claim that such
arguments need not be taken seriously because they are mere expressions of
“bigotry.” Now, one problem with this
position is that it is manifestly fallacious. It either begs the question, since whether traditional
sexual morality really is “bigoted” rather than rationally justifiable is
precisely what is at issue; or it is a fallacious ad hominem, an attempt to dismiss the arguments on the basis of the
purportedly disreputable motivations of those who put them forward.
Another
problem, though, is that this strategy of dismissing the arguments for
traditional sexual morality as mere rationalizations of “bigotry” can be
stalemated by the counter-accusation that those who reject traditional sexual
morality suffer from what Aquinas calls “blindness of mind.” The traditional moralist might respond: “Of course you would dismiss the
arguments as mere bigotry! That’s
because your intellect has been so clouded by sexual vice that you cannot even
see what is good and true where sex is concerned, and don’t even want to try to see it!”
Of course,
if the Thomist left it at that and merely
accused the other side of blindness of mind, he too would be guilty of begging
the question or of a fallacious ad
hominem. What that shows, though, is
that there is simply no rational way to avoid engaging in debate with those
with whom you disagree on the subject of sexual morality. If the defender of traditional sexual
morality is to avoid resorting to a mere question-begging ad hominem, then he has to give arguments for his position and to answer
the arguments of the other side. And if
the critic of traditional sexual morality is to avoid resorting to a mere
question-begging ad hominem, then he
too has to give arguments for his position and to answer the arguments of the
other side. It is the side that merely flings abuse at its opponents and refuses to
engage in debate that is the truly bigoted side.
But I
digress. The other three “daughters of lust”
that concern the intellect follow straightforwardly from blindness of
mind. The second is what Aquinas calls
“rashness,” which concerns the way disordered sexual desire hinders “counsel
about what is to be done for the sake of the end.” What Aquinas means here is that just as
pleasure in what is disordered can blind us to the true ends of our sexual faculties, so too can it blind us to the means to achieving those ends.
The third
daughter of lust is what Aquinas calls “thoughtlessness,” and what he appears
to have in mind is a failure of the intellect even to attend to ends and means
in the first place. In other words,
whereas “blindness of mind” involves the intellect’s attending to the question
of the ends of sex but getting them wrong, and “rashness” involves the
intellect’s attending to the question of the means of achieving those ends and
getting those wrong too, “thoughtlessness” involves the intellect’s not even
bothering with the question of what ends and means are proper. The “thoughtless” man simply pursues the
disordered pleasures to which he has become addicted in something like a
sub-rational way, “mindlessly” as it were.
His intellectual activity vis-à-vis sex no longer rises even to the level
of rationalization.
The fourth
daughter of lust is “inconstancy.” Here
the idea seems to be that even when the lustful person is not utterly sunk in
“blindness of mind,” “rashness,” and “thoughtlessness” and thus still has some
grasp of the proper ends and means vis-à-vis sex, that grasp is nevertheless tenuous. The pleasure of disordered sexual behavior
constantly diverts the intellect’s attention, so that what is truly good is not
consistently perceived or pursued.
Now, for
Aquinas, will follows upon intellect, and thus, unsurprisingly, the daughters
of lust include four disorders of the will in addition to the four disorders of
the intellect. Aquinas describes the
fifth and sixth daughters of lust as follows:
One is the desire for the end, to
which we refer "self-love," which regards the pleasure which a man
desires inordinately, while on the other hand there is "hatred of
God," by reason of His forbidding the desired pleasure.
“Self-love,”
it seems to me, can be understood as follows.
The “thoughtless” person is entirely sunk in his disordered sexual
pleasures. The person manifesting
“blindness of mind” and “rashness” is also sunk in disordered sexual pleasure,
but has managed to cobble together a network of rationalizations for his
pursuit of these disordered pleasures.
Either way, though, the lustful person’s focus has turned inward, on the
self and its own pleasures and intellectual constructions, rather than outward,
toward what is actually good and true. The mind corrupted by lust wants to make
reality conform to itself, rather than to make itself conform to reality. Hence the very idea that there is such a
thing as a natural, objective moral order, especially where sex is concerned,
becomes unbearable to the lustful person.
The sequel,
naturally, is what Aquinas calls “hatred of God.” For God is Being Itself, and since being,
like truth and goodness, is a transcendental, it follows that God is also Truth
Itself and Goodness Itself. These are
all just different ways of conceptualizing the same one divine reality. Thus, to hate what is in fact true and good is ipso facto to hate what is in fact God. Of course, the person lost in disordered
sexual desire might claim to love God.
If such a person knows he is lost in disordered desire and seeks to be
freed from it, this love is sincere. He
still has some perception of what is truly good and wants to strengthen his
grasp of it and his ability to pursue it.
But suppose the person loves his disordered desires, hates those who
would call him away from indulging those desires, and refuses to take seriously
the suggestion that such indulgence is contrary to the divine will. Then his purported love of God is bogus. It is not really God that he loves at all,
but rather an idol of his own construction.
The last two
daughters of lust are what Aquinas calls “love of this world” and “despair of a
future world.” Now, for Aquinas a human
being qua rational animal has both corporeal powers (namely our animal powers
of nutrition, growth, reproduction, sensation, appetite, and locomotion) and
the incorporeal powers of intellect and will.
It is the latter, higher powers that make our souls immortal and
destined for a life beyond the present one.
Since our animal powers, and the pleasure associated with their
exercise, are natural to us, there is nothing wrong with our loving these
things. But by “love of this world” what
Aquinas has in mind is an excessive
love of these things. Disordered sexual
pleasure, by virtue of its intensity, has a tendency to turn us away from the
goods of the intellect. In part this is
because such pleasure blinds us to what the intellect would otherwise see to be
true and good, but also in part because even where the lustful person can still
perceive truth and goodness, its pursuit is difficult since the pleasure he
might take in it is so much less intense than the disordered sexual pleasure to
which he is in thrall.
Naturally,
then, the lustful person is bound to be uninterested in the next life, and
disinclined to do what is needed to secure his future well-being within
it. It will seem cold, abstract, and
dull compared to what he has set his heart on in this life. And thus it is no surprise that Christian
theologians have traditionally emphasized the dangers sexual sins pose to one’s
immortal soul. This is not because such sins
are the worst sins -- they are not -- but rather because the pleasure associated
with them makes them very easy to fall into and, if they become habitual, very
difficult to get out of. (Churchmen who
want to downplay the significance of sexual sins in the name of compassion
are thus acting in a way that is in fact anything but compassionate.)
The opposite extreme
So far we
have been talking about sins of excess where sexual pleasure is concerned. But it is very important to keep in mind that
here as in other areas of human life, there are disorders of deficiency as well
as disorders of excess. Speaking of
pleasure in general, Aquinas writes:
Whatever is contrary to the natural
order is vicious. Now nature has
introduced pleasure into the operations that are necessary for man's life. Wherefore the natural order requires that man
should make use of these pleasures, in so far as they are necessary for man's
well-being, as regards the preservation either of the individual or of the
species. Accordingly, if anyone were to
reject pleasure to the extent of omitting things that are necessary for
nature's preservation, he would sin, as acting counter to the order of nature. And this pertains to the vice of
insensibility. (Summa Theologiae II-II.142.1)
Aquinas immediately
goes on to note that it is possible to forsake pleasure in a way that is not
vicious, as when one chooses celibacy for the sake of the priesthood or
religious life. There are also unusual cases
where even spouses might agree to abstain from sex for spiritual reasons. But these are not (or should not be) cases
where sexual pleasure is rejected as bad, but rather cases where it is regarded
it as good but nevertheless forsaken for the sake of something even better. And the normal course of human affairs is for
people to marry, and when they marry to have sexual relations. That means that sexual pleasure is simply a
normal part of ordinary human life. That
is inevitable given that we are, by nature, as much corporeal and animal
creatures as rational ones.
A “vice of
insensibility” vis-à-vis sexual pleasure would, accordingly, plausibly be
manifest in a marriage where one spouse refuses to make love, or does so only grudgingly,
or does so willingly but with complete lack of interest, the way one might without
protest agree to do the dishes or take out the trash. (Of course, spouses are sometimes ill, or
tired, or stressed out, or otherwise just not in the mood and thus would rather
not have sex. There’s nothing necessarily
wrong with that. The problem is when one
spouse exhibits a habitual aversion
to or disinterest in sex.)
Just as the
will might be insufficiently drawn toward sexual pleasure, so too can the intellect
take too negative a view of it. For
example, some Christian theologians of earlier centuries were suspicious of
sexual pleasure, and erroneously regarded it as something that attends sexual
intercourse only as a result of original sin.
Aquinas rejected this view, and in the centuries since his time, natural
law theorists, moral theologians, and the Magisterium of the Catholic Church took
an increasingly more positive view of sexual pleasure as nature’s way of
facilitating the procreative and unitive ends of sex.
So just what is the deal with sex, anyway? Why
are we so prone to extremes where it is concerned? The reason, I would say, has to do with our
highly unusual place in the order of things.
Angels are incorporeal and asexual, creatures of pure intellect. Non-human animals are entirely bodily, never
rising above sensation and appetite, and our closest animal relatives reproduce
sexually. Human beings, as rational
animals, straddle this divide, having as it were one foot in the angelic realm
and the other in the animal realm. And
that is, metaphysically, simply a very
odd position to be in. It is just barely
stable, and sex makes it especially difficult to maintain. The unique intensity of sexual pleasure and
desire, and our bodily incompleteness qua men and women, continually remind us
of our corporeal and animal nature, pulling us “downward” as it were. Meanwhile our rationality continually seeks
to assert its control and pull us back “upward,” and naturally resents the
unruliness of such intense desire. This
conflict is so exhausting that we tend to try to get out of it by jumping either
to one side of the divide or the other.
But this is an impossible task and the result is that we are continually
frustrated. And the supernatural divine
assistance that would have remedied this weakness in our nature and allowed us
to maintain an easy harmony between rationality and animality was lost in original
sin.
So, behaviorally,
we have a tendency to fall either into prudery or into sexual excess. And intellectually, we have a tendency to fall
either into the error of Platonism -- treating man as essentially incorporeal,
a soul trapped in the prison of the body -- or into the opposite error of
materialism, treating human nature as entirely reducible to the corporeal. The dominance of Platonism in early Christian
thought is perhaps the main reason for its sometimes excessively negative attitude
toward sexual pleasure, and the dominance of materialism in modern times is one
reason for its excessive laxity in matters of sex. The right balance is, of course, the
Aristotelian-Thomistic position -- specifically, Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophical
anthropology, which affirms that man is a single substance with both corporeal and
incorporeal activities; and Aristotelian-Thomistic natural law theory, which upholds
traditional sexual morality while affirming the essential goodness of sex and
sexual pleasure.
Anonymous,
ReplyDelete[Quoting me]: "The problem is that all your interlocutors need to show here, is that it's wrong on a natural law conception of wrong. I think they've done this quite capably."
Can you direct me to the post where this was accomplished?
I'm still very unclear on why the perversion of the reproductive faculty inherent in the use of contraception is against the common good.
I note that, in your reply, you were specifically asking me to point you to a previous post.
Georgy Mancz: Evolution is about how a living thing came to be, not strictly speaking what is is.
ReplyDeleteSince you implored, how can I resist? I do agree with the responses already given. I would say the answer to Matt’s question is yes and no: of course a (true) evolutionary explanation of how man developed would shed light on his current nature; just as knowing how infants develop sheds light on adult humans. But we cannot simply take some fact about babies and apply it to adults (“solid food is unsuitable for infants, therefore adults shouldn’t eat it either”!); and in fact, we may be able to make sense of our knowledge only in hindsight — for example, in order to undertsand why adults have navels, we would need to understand how the umbilical cord works for babies in the womb, but you'd have a hard time deducing this a priori if you didn’t already know what adults were like. So evolutionary knowledge may be useful only if we already know what human nature is. Furthermore, an infant is substantially the same thing, the same species as the adult human, whereas an evolutionary ancestor is not even the same kind of thing — as Georgy points out, it is about how something came to be, not what it is. Most importantly, the step from irrational being to rational being is greater than any other evolutionary aspect, and does not itself admit of degrees or gradual development. Either you have an immaterial intellect or you don’t; likewise for free will. That human beings are capable of cannibalism provides absolutely no reason to suppose that it’s “natural”, not even if man had evolutionary ancestor that were cannibals (i.e., for which cannibalism was part of their proper nature).
Matt Sigl: After all, if the sexual organ can be shown to have a function in intrinsic biological human flourishing that is outside the current boundaries of what we consider Natural Law, would that not just then mean that we should change our scope of what the Natural Law IS?
Well, the application of natural law would change, because you are posting that we discovered we were wrong about human nature all along, and a more accurate understanding of our nature will (naturally!) lead to a more accurate understanding of our moral obligations. Of course, in actuality, no such thing has been shown; in fact, the more we learn about our physiology the more we see how well traditional moral precepts about sexuality fit it (for example, discovering how the chemical reactions work to reinforce bonding between the couple, and so on).
But, the majority of people who follow traditional sexual morality do not do so because they are convinced by Natural Law Arguments. Remember, Natural Law, as I understand it, claims to be demonstrable without reference to revelation, perhaps even without reference to theism. (Though you rarely see a Natural Law conceptual system disentangled from an overarching theistic worldview.)
Of course, there’s a reason for that: natural law depends on natures, and natures depend on a directing intelligence (the Fifth Way in a nutshell). So while natural law does not rely on revelation or any direct theology, it’s not too surprising that rejecting the theology should lead to different conclusions one way or another. But I even have to disagree that most people do not follow natural law — they do not do so explicitly or consciously, insofar as the vast majority of people have never formally studied the philosophy of natural law in the first place — but the vast majority does have experience with human nature, and what are nowadays labelled Catholic positions appear throughout history across all different cultures. So these conclusions can’t be all that unconvincing, either.
I have sympathy for Anonymous Sunglasses's confusion; heck, I sometimes have trouble following these threads even when I know what’s going on, let alone when trying to come to terms with a new argument that requires a new way of thinking. In fact, I was confused when the conversation diverged into talk of the common good. Frankly, I don’t really understand what Brandon was getting at by saying perverted-factulty arguments don’t necessarily entail moral obligations, since that — at least in the broad sense — is pretty central to the presentations of natural law that I have seen.
ReplyDeleteFor what it’s worth, I think that line of argument is central to Sunglasses’s questions, so here is how I would reply: going back to sight, NFP (Natural Focal Processing) involves wearing sunglasses or closing one’s eyelids; artificial contravisualisation involves pinching off the optic nerve so that the signal never finishes reaching the brain. Clearly, there is a fundamental difference between the two approaches: one merely takes advantage of how vision naturally works, while the other interferes with how vision is supposed to work and prevents it from actually working that way. To our modern ears, trained in utilitarianism and consequentialism, the effects sound similar, but clearly in terms of the nature involved (i.e. the way the human body naturally works), there is a drastic distinction. The artificial method actually involves breaking your vision (albeit temporarily (you hope!)).
Much the same thing applies to artifical contraception: as opposed to NFP, which merely takes advantage of how the human body naturally works, it involves breaking the natural biological process that occurs, to stop it completing in the natural way. Note that this natural completion typically results in conception, but not always; that is why it is only the general allowance of conception that is required. An act that does not happen to result in pregnancy — as NFP might facilitate — is not wrong for that specific reason, although it might be for some other reason. The problem is trying to change the way the act itself works, by attempting to alter the biology of the couple to act differently, in a not-quite human way. It is effectively dehumanising; like making different kinds of organisms that are very like human beings, but not quite the same. Cf. Anscombe’s talk of changing the "kind of act” it is; it is not an act of human sexuality, strictly speaking, but an attempt at some quasi-humaniod sexuality instead.
None of this contradicts the further points about the common good, etc. — these all apply too, but the level of our human faculties and how they naturally work sets a minimum standard. We can go much further, but not any less far than what we are. You can add external context, but you can’t remove intrinsic context — extrinsic factors come and go, but your human nature is always fully present wherever you are. As rational beings, it is our nature to act rationally. Using a helium balloon as a paper-weight is irrational, because it is not in the nature of a helium balloon to weigh down papers. It would be perverse to try (and in such a silly case, we might question the sanity of anyone who tried). It is likewise perverse to wear sunglasses all the time so that you can never see anything — and if you did so deliberately, say for the sake of vanity — then you would be committing a moral fault. (Since sunglasses don’t completely block sight, it might be only a mild fault, of course.) If you never ate, that would go against your nature, and would be immoral. Not eating at any particular time is not immoral, of course (at least, not without bringing in other circumstances), but “uneating”, that is, forcing your eating-apparatus to function in a broken way by making yourself vomit up good food would be perverse, and thus wrong. Always using NFP to avoid having any children would be wrong, and sabotaging a single act of sexual intercourse would also be.
@Sunglasses:
ReplyDelete"I'm sorry, didn't Brandon say that the only way anything can be morally wrong (or a moral issue at all) is if it violates the common good? Did I misunderstand him or do you disagree?"
Again, what I took Brandon to be saying is that moral right and wrong are narrower concepts than ethics and virtue generally. The misuse or perversion of a natural faculty isn't virtuous, so it's bad/wrong in the broadest sense. But I understood Brandon to mean that unless there's a common good involved, that wrong isn't, strictly speaking, a violation of a specifically moral obligation.
@Mr. Green:
ReplyDelete"Frankly, I don’t really understand what Brandon was getting at by saying perverted-[faculty] arguments don’t necessarily entail moral obligations, since that — at least in the broad sense — is pretty central to the presentations of natural law that I have seen."
Well, there's morality and there's morality. If I'm right about what Brandon meant, then I'm in at least basic agreement with him that our obligations to other people and involving a/the common good have a greater ethical importance than our "obligations" to our own good. I would not, however, agree with Robert Heinlein (writing as Lazarus Long in Time Enough for Love) that "hurting yourself isn't sinful—just stupid" if that means there's just nothing wrong with self-harm at all. My own inclination is to say that failure to pursue one's own good is unethical or vicious (i.e. "anti-virtuous"), but not immoral.
Interestingly (to me, anyway), the current usage of these terms seems to be the other way around: "ethics" is commonly taken to be a narrower term than "morals," and (especially in business and medical contexts) it seems to be accepted that a practice can be "ethical" (in accordance with professional ethics) without being "moral" (good or right). I can't say I'm too bothered about the choice of terms as long as the distinction is made; it reminds me of something John Leslie said somewhere about "existence" and "reality," to the effect that we can say that mere possibilities are real but don't exist or that they exist but aren't real, but it doesn't much matter which.
Either way, what I think matters is that, because we're social/political animals and because the interests of others of our kind are at stake in some/many/most of our actions, there's a sense in which acts that tend toward the well-being of people other than ourselves have a greater "shouldiness" or "oughtiness" about them than acts that tend only toward own own.
Eek. In that last sentence, "own own" should be "our own."
ReplyDelete@Sunglasses:
ReplyDelete"I don't understand how using contraception prevents 'mutual self-giving.'"
Well, as I've mentioned a couple of times, I'm not (yet) Catholic myself and I'm not (yet) 100% on board with the Church's teachings on this subject although I regard them as worthy of the greatest respect and take them with the utmost seriousness. But if you want a pretty good explication of this point beyond what you've already received in this thread, this one strikes me as pretty good.
"I don't understand how using contraception prevents 'mutual self-giving.'"
ReplyDeleteSpeaking as a Catholic, I really don't see why this is so hard to grasp.
Natural law holds that it is wrong, in the absence of some higher end, to frustrate the natural ends of our faculties. Contraception acts against against the procreative end of sex for obvious reasons. It acts against the unitive end of sex inasmuch as it prevents complete mutual self-giving; for either or both of the parties involved are holding back their fertility, thus not fully giving of themselves. This seems clear enough to me.
This might be too late but I'm going to go back to the two concerns I brought up since they probably resolve to the same type of query over ends and means
ReplyDeleteScott said,
I think your use of "only" here indicates the source of the problem. It's true that in the order of nature, the unitive end exists only because the procreative end does, but it's not therefore true that it doesn't exist as an end to be satisfied in its own right; the one isn't only a means to the other from the point of view of the animal (rational or otherwise) whose well-being is at stake
Matt said,
From these two sketchy thoughts - procreation gives sex its meaningfulness (meaningfulness being a social thing to boot), and is the condition by which the "endiness" of both parties is preserved in the act (that is, when they both strive together for that common, meaningful end).
I understand how something can be both an end in itself and a means to other ends* but I find it hard to comprehend how something that is only an end relative to another can also be an end in itself.
To give a probably less than adequate illustration: If I want to visit Moscow then being in Moscow is an end. If then I decide I would like to see the Kremlin I can do so if and only if the first end is satisfied. So being in Moscow is a Necessary Condition of visiting the Kremlin but attempting to visit said building is not a Necessary Condition for attempting to visit Moscow.
*Most human actions are. God is the only end that is not also a means
@Daniel:
ReplyDelete"I find it hard to comprehend how something that is only an end relative to another can also be an end in itself."
Eating is pleasurable for us because, as animals, we rely on it for nutrition, but since it is pleasurable for us, enjoying the taste of well-prepared food is also an end in itself. Where's the problem?
Again, your use of "only" strikes me as problematic. The unitive end of sex isn't only a means to its procreative end even though the latter explains, as a matter of biological history, how it came to have the former.
ReplyDeleteOn topic it seems worth mentioning this book due out in less than ten days time:
http://www.amazon.com/True-Love-Josef-Seifert/dp/158731889X/ref=la_B001JY73OW_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1424118046&sr=1-2
@Scott,
Thanks
Again, your use of "only" strikes me as problematic.
Yes, I know - how it can be anything more than 'only' given those conditions is the prime question for me. Perhaps I should try to swallow my dislike of Ethics as a subject and read some more in depth work on Natural Law in this area.
Eating is pleasurable for us because, as animals, we rely on it for nutrition, but since it is pleasurable for us, enjoying the taste of well-prepared food is also an end in itself. Where's the problem?
Okay to work from this analogy: If one is offered the choice of two meals with roughly equal nutrition value one of which is bland and the other flavorsome and pleasant is it immoral to chose the former instead of the latter?
@Daniel:
ReplyDelete"Okay to work from this analogy: If one is offered the choice of two meals with roughly equal nutrition value one of which is bland and the other flavorsome and pleasant is it immoral to chose the former instead of the latter?"
All else equal, I'd put that in the territory Brandon describes as involving better and worse rather than morally right and wrong. Deliberately choosing a less tasty meal over a more tasty one strikes me as without any specifically moral import, but if it's done for no good reason, then one has done worse than one might have.
@Daniel:
ReplyDelete"Yes, I know - how it can be anything more than 'only' given those conditions is the prime question for me."
I'm not sure why that question is so puzzling. The unitive end of sex exists in nature because without it the procreative end wouldn't ordinarily be fulfilled, but that doesn't mean that for the person having the sex, the unitive "end" is nothing more than a means; indeed, if it were, it would fail, because the whole point is to make the procreative act pleasant in its own right so that even subrational animals will undertake it without having procreation as an explicit subjective purpose at all.
Why is that any more problematic than, say, my visit to my family physician being both an end in itself (because my doctor is also my friend; I've known him since twenty years before he even became a doctor) and also a means (because I'm visiting him for the sake of my health)?
"Why is that any more problematic than, say, my visit to my family physician being both an end in itself (because my doctor is also my friend; I've known him since twenty years before he even became a doctor) and also a means (because I'm visiting him for the sake of my health)?"
ReplyDeleteTo add to this, since I was mentioned in Daniel's comment...
Your visiting your friend, the doctor, involves him as an end in your own health as a doctor. He is able to practice his trade, to actualize his potential thereof on your person. You, in turn, are treated for your health, and, in this relation your own endiness (since that's a technical term now) is established as he, by his doctoriness promotes your healthiness.
On the other hand, in the case of contraception, so the argument might go, the female and the male are related to each other in a way that stifles that which allows them to uniquely contribute to the relationship in the sex act. You might think of contraception like lying to the doctor about a pain, or withholding some important information from him because you think that it will lead to uncomfortable tests and such. You would be, in some way, preventing him from fulfilling his role as a doctor, and thusly treating him as a means, say, to hear what you want to about your health or something like that.
(I should add, after all this, that I [too] am not ultimately in agreement with the absolute badness of contraception, but the fact that the traditional natural law position on it makes so much sense does bother me).
I have a question about how natural law relates to the reproductive faculty and its end. What do you think about the following scenario: say we discover that semen has medicinal properties relative to some quite pernicious disease. This quality would be, I take it, accidental to the nature of semen, which would still, qua its nature, be FOR insemination, not FOR treating disease. Yet could we morally procure semen, in any fashion whatever, so as to make use of its hypothetical medicinal properties? Perhaps we should add that semen is the only known treatment for the malady.
ReplyDeleteNow think the same regarding blood: blood, which qua nature transfers oxygen, etc., is found to be a palliative of some sort. My sense is that we will have less moral qualms about harvesting blood than semen -- even though we are putting each to a purpose besides that deriving from its nature -- but I am not sure. I would be interested to hear any thoughts on this.
Separately, does natural law allow an unmarried man worried about his sperm count but who cannot gather up semen from a nocturnal emission (say he never has these, itself a possible cause for his concern) to procure semen through masturbation so as to have his count tested? I don't mean to harp on hard cases, but would be interested to learn about this as well. I apologize if this has been covered in the many, many comments; I have not been able to read them all.
Jeremy
@Anonymous Jeremy:
ReplyDelete"What do you think about the following scenario: say we discover that semen has medicinal properties relative to some quite pernicious disease.…[C]ould we morally procure semen, in any fashion whatever, so as to make use of its hypothetical medicinal properties?"
As I understand things, the moral problem is with the perversion or positive frustration of faculties. Surely it would be morally permissible, say, to extract seminal fluid by hypodermic needle; that wouldn't involve (as far as I can see) any frustration of a faculty.
A rough analogy: Suppose the cure for a certain deadly disease were locked behind a door that could be unlocked only by speaking a certain sequence of sounds ("too-pluss-too-iz-sicks") that, when interpreted according to the ordinary conventions of English, would constitute a lie. It seems to me that it would be morally unobjectionable to make the necessary sounds (as long as, e.g., one has made clear to anyone listening that one is making them only as sounds and not as an expression of a proposition one wants them to believe).
But that's a first-look opinion from a non-expert. Anyone else care to weigh in?
I wouldn't say artificial sweeteners are inherently evil, they exist to bring about a good (the pleasure of eating) and as long as they have no side effects, there is no evil being done directly.
ReplyDeleteOut of interest where does Natural Law stand on artificial insemination? The semen is produced in the natural manner for the purposes intend, employed where intended and all things being well has the effect intended. Can the faculty be said to be frustrated in such cases?
ReplyDelete@Scott,
I'm not sure why that question is so puzzling.
I tend to think that if something is an end in itself it must be separable from whatever it might also be a means towards. To go with your example you could equally visit your physician friend on a purely social basis or you could visit a physician whom you knew solely in a professional capacity.
that doesn't mean that for the person having the sex, the unitive "end" is nothing more than a means; indeed, if it were, it would fail, because the whole point is to make the procreative act pleasant in its own right so that even subrational animals will undertake it without having procreation as an explicit subjective purpose at all.
My worry here is that the analogy with non-rational animals is inadequate and for other reasons than the former's not knowing that action they undertake is good. On this account though the pleasant experience associated with the sexual act remains the significance behind it turns out to be a sort of illusion we can see through. What is a lover? A spasm, an instance of a certain qualia, reproduction and someone to feed and care for the child until they themselves are ready to go through the same process.
If persons are means to one's flourishing then we should not care whether other people are zombies or not since both can do the job just as well – yet we do so there must something missing (I suppose this is similar to Nozick’s brain in a vat of pleasure solution thought experiment).
@Matt,
Thanks for the response. For what it's worry my concern is not over the moral status of contraception per see - it's what the grounds for claiming its being immoral may imply for the value of persons in general that give me cause to object.
@Daniel
ReplyDelete"Thanks for the response. For what it's worry my concern is not over the moral status of contraception per see - it's what the grounds for claiming its being immoral may imply for the value of persons in general that give me cause to object."
I'd like to understand better what you mean. It seems to me that concern for the value of persons is built into the grounds for claiming it is immoral.
No they're not :)
ReplyDeleteWe all discriminate. Each of us in our own way. Every time we choose to walk on the opposite side of the street from a group of people because of their menacing appearance, that is an act of discrimination. I prefer the word "discernment".
ReplyDeleteRegarding proposed LGBT ordinances:
Why stop there? Why not encompass the entire spectrum of paraphilia? Why not include incest? polyamory? zoophilia? anthropophagy? pedophilia? necrophilia? Although the concept of mutual consent has relevance in some instances, I am not being flippant. The larger question: If there is no such thing as a magnetic field, of what value is a compass?
Sandy Kramer
PrincetonUniversity@Cox.net
The Catholic Church reduces the natural beauty of sex between loving couples to a household chore by teaching that sex and marriage are ordered solely towards creating children and ideal conditions for raising children and that sexual pleasure is a merely a “lure” to get people to do this:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.catholic.com/quickquestions/are-marital-relations-not-supposed-to-pleasurable-because-they-are-only-for-reproduct
If you hadn't been raised from childhood by this oppressive system, then if someone asked you "Is it morally wrong to use a condom or masturbate?" you'd scoff and say "Of course not! What cruel person told you that?!?!?".
In the above given link, not the presence of the word "please is not a purpose of sex". Not the the choice to use the indefinite article "a", thus saying "a purpose" rather than using the definite article and saying "the only purpose". That particular sentence is the part of the paragraph that clearly implies "It is supposed to be pleasurable, but only because God has no alternative lure, and if he did he'd use that and sex wouldn't be pleasurable.". It thus implicitly gives sexual pleasure the status of something dirty but necessary.