Method in Moral Theology - A Highly Selective Overview

MEDICAL ETHICS
A Roman Catholic Perspective
Monsignor Peter R. Beaulieu, M.A., S.T.L.
METHOD IN MORAL THEOLOGY-A HIGHLY SELECTIVE OVERVIEW

"Special care must be given to the perfecting of moral theology. Its scientific exposition,
nourished more on the teaching of the Bible, should shed light on the loftiness of the calling of
the faithful in Christ and the obligation of bearing fruit in charity for the life of the world"
(Optatam totius, n.16).

Eudaimonia Right Action that Leads to Well-being

In Aristotles, Nicomachean Ethics, what has come to be labeled eudaimonistic ethics entails
right actions that lead to human flourishing or the greater well-being of each human persons
unique self-understanding. If you extend the notion of well-being from its narrowest point to its
broadest scope, then, even social ethics can be deduced from that intellectual starting point.
Later on, Saint Augustine adapted the original Greek concept into beatitudo. Subsequently, St.
Thomas Aquinas transformed Augustines notion of beatitudo into ultimate well-being or
happiness as the direct perception of God (i.e., the Beatific vision) or complete blessedness.
This general ethical theory encompasses any conception of morality that puts human happiness
and the fulfilled life of the individual moral agent as the center of ethical concern. Plato, too,
articulated what could be called a form of reverse eudaimoniasince people cannot be happy
doing evil, they must do goodhappiness cannot be found in conduct at odds with the human
person. The human soul has three parts: (1) reason and judgment; (2) spirit, courage, and
pride; and (3) appetites and desires.

Understanding Any Ethic of Happiness

Morality is based on desire, not obligation in stark distinction with the work of philosophers such
as Immanuel Kant. Happiness (or eudaimonia) is not equivalent to pleasure or the absence of
pain, which would be hedonism, nor is it getting what you want. Instead, because happiness is
achieving the good life, any ethic of happiness is a normative ethic that yields objective
standards of what constitutes human flourishing (or moral excellence), norms by which an
action can be judged as right or wrong.

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The individual agent seeks his/her own gooda life of fulfillment and human flourishing.

Three basic assumptions: (1) All people want to live well; (2) Living well depends upon the
choices that we make; and (3) Intelligent choices require thought and reasoning.

There are also three basic human inclinations: (1) Biologicalfood, shelter, health and so on;
(2) psychologicalemotional and cognitive satisfaction, as well as the freedom to exercise
some choice; (3) Socialdesire for healthy interpersonal relationships of love and friendship;
mutual (or contractual) agreements rooted in the concept of justice, participation in the polis (or
social community). Therefore, proponents of this ethical theory believe that there is a
deep-seated, shared view of what constitutes the good life.

Virtues are habitual actions that contribute to the good life and safeguard it. Basic inclinations
that concern moral virtue are: (1) satisfaction of appetites---temperance; (2) Action despite fears
or risks---courage; (3) seeking close personal relationshipslove; (4) seeking honor and/or
personal recognitiondignity.

Todd A. Salzman, ed. Method and Catholic Moral Theology: The Ongoing Reconstruction.
Omaha, NE: Creighton University Press, 1999

.____________. What Are They Saying about Roman Catholic Ethical Method? Mahwah, NJ:
Paulist Press, 2003.

Servais Pinckaers, OP. Trans. by Sr. Mary Thomas Noble. The Sources of Christian Ethics.
Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1995

._________________. "The Place of Philosophy in Moral Theology." LOsservatore Romano.

June 16, 1999, p. 14.

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