BOOKS REVIEWS

Cristobal ORREGO

University of the Andes (Chile) / CONICYT (Fondecyt 1080680) cristobal.orrego@law.ox.ac.uk

Good and Evil Actions. A Journey through Saint Thomas Aquinas

(Steven J. Jensen, Good and Evil Actions. A Journey through Saint Thomas Aquinas. Washington, D.C., The Catholic University of America Press, 2010) This is the latest account of the specification of actions within the Thomist tradition. The differing Thomist positions, according to the Introduction and the first chapter, are three. (1) Physicalism assigns a key role to the physical structure of the action in the determination of its moral species, with some level of independence from the intention of the agent. Hence when a doctor crushes the skull of a baby to end a death threatening labour, he thereby directly kills the baby, because, from the point of view of the causal structure and the nature of human beings, to crush their heads is to kill them. (2) Abelardianism disregards the causal or physical structure of actions, and focuses on Aquinass dictum that actions receive their species only from what is intended and not from what lies outside intention. Hence a doctor can intend to crush the skull of a baby to end labour and save the mother without intending to kill the baby, but accepting the death as a side effect. So craniotomy is not specified by the death of the baby, although it inevitably causes death. And (3) Proportionalism combines a physical understanding of actions with an understanding of moral species as defined not by their natural structure but by their moral evaluation, so that the moral species of an evil action includes the judgment that forbids the action. A physical craniotomy would be an undue killing if used as a method to kill a baby with no proportionate
267

Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology, vol. VII, no. 2/2010

reason; but in cases of obstetrical crisis the performance would be deemed proportionate to save the life of the mother, and hence the same physical action would fall outside the definition of the moral species of murder. A virtue of the book is that it uses this dialectical contraposition of differing views to grant to each one its due, and to defend an original opinion using their insights. Chapter 1 describes the problem of action specification, and sets the main examples to be used, the most important one being the distinction between craniotomy and hysterectomy (8-19). It proceeds then to explain how many different descriptions of an action can be true, prompting the problem of determining which one is the essential description for moral purposes. The distinctions between interior and exterior actions of the will, on the one hand, and between natural and moral species of the same action, on the other, are used to propose a twofold thesis: that voluntary actions as originated in the will receive their species from what is intended, and not from what is outside intention (26-28), and that the exterior actions as derived immediately from a natural power commanded by the will have nevertheless each one its own finis operis, which does not derive from the agents intention but from some other originating source, such as a natural inclination (28). The tension between the two tenets is apparent, since the author has shown already that the essential or per se order of an action, which draws the line between relevant and irrelevant descriptions, arises from intention alone (see 19-28). Jensen finds the resolution of this tension in nature: Nature itself must provide the intention (30), as eating is ordered to health, sexual intercourse is ordered to generation, and speech is ordered to truth or falsity (31). But he realizes that this order of nature provides only the natural species, for the moral species of the exterior action must be in comparison to the properly human origin of reason and will (42). The tension, then, remains. The author most fittingly devotes the next two chapters to dealing with the two aspects of his account that seem to be in conflict. Chapter 2 is a sustained effort at characterizing intention, taking for granted that the intention of the agent plays a central role in the specification of human actions (44). Jensen distinguishes three different views about what constitutes the object of intention. (1) The concomitant-intention view includes within the scope of intention nearly everything foreseen (45). This opinion has been largely discredit (45) and nobody would ascribe it to Aquinas. (2) The end-intention view includes within intention only the end desired, but not the action chosen to
268

BOOKS REVIEWS

achieve the end. It is rejected because of textual support that Aquinas considers the means as object of intention in so far as the action chosen as a means is the proximate end of the will (46-49). Finally, (3) the meansintention view includes as intended both the means chosen and the further end towards which the action is ordered by the agent, and both specify the action (49-52). The justification of self-defence in ST II-II 64, 7, is used to test and reject end-intention and a form of means-intention that Jensen calls description-intention, which holds that a means is intended only under the description or formality under which it serves as a means (58). But then Jensen realizes that in rejecting the descriptionintention view, which is the closest to the isolated reading of 64, 7 (fairly presented at 53-56), it becomes impossible to justify even an action that injures the attacker (62-64). In other words, if we cannot separate the description stopping the attacker from the description injuring/killing as different objects of intention (and hence different action-specifiers), the justification of self-defence cannot be based in the distinction intended/ unintended, for there are at least some cases of self-defence in which the agent needs to choose a level of force that injures or kill. Jensen proposes, then, an alternative justification of self-defence. In emergency situations private individuals act invested of public authority and hence may directly kill for the common good (64-66). Then, after dealing with some other problems, Jensen comes with one of his main discoveries: that even though intention specifies moral actions, from other point of view the exterior action specifies the intention (70-72). Chapter 3 is a detailed defence of the thesis that rather than intention drawing the line between action and consequence, it seems that the action itself must draw the line between intention and what is outside intention (73). In order to prove this tenet, the author distinguishes between the exterior action performed, which is directed to its actual end by the intention of the will (and so it is specified by intention), and the exterior action as conceived by the deliberating agent, which is previous to the actual intention and has a nature of itself, that the agent is forced to acknowledge both in its causal properties and in its rational properties. This exterior action conceived has many characteristics that do not depend on the agents intention, but which do specify the action conceived (see 74-91 and 103-127), and do specify the intention of the will when the action is in fact chosen or intended. That distinction leads to another one. There is an order of reason that determines the moral species of the exterior action conceived, and this is a matter of objective morality, of whether or not a given subject-matter
269

Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology, vol. VII, no. 2/2010

is rationally fitting to be acted upon in a certain way: an innocent human being is not proper matter to be killed; an animal is not fitting matter for sexual intercourse; words are not fitting matter to express what is false; etc. This is the order that the actual action should have. But there is another order that the free agent in fact introduces upon some matter, when he intends to do something upon it. This is the order that the action actually takes from the intention that directs it as performed. The disagreement between the two orders is moral evil, for it occurs when the will of the agent introduces an order in action contrary to the order that reason itself gives to the action. Chapter 4 explains the order that actions should have, which is based mainly in the order of reason towards the human good. Evil actions are evil because they bear upon a human being in a way that uses him only as a means; but they are not evil if, bearing upon another matter, cause harm praeter intentionem; and hence the difference between craniotomy and hysterectomy (and in general the other applications of the distinction direct/indirect without accepting the description-intention view). On the other hand, a human being that deviates from the order of reason to the common good becomes fitting matter for punishment. Chapter 5 addresses the most difficult problems related to the specification of action in the Thomist tradition: the divine dispensation of killing the innocent, polygamy, and stealing; some texts of Aquinas stating that some evil actions can become good; craniotomy and other forms of destroying an unborn human being, directly or indirectly (that is the question); trolleys and spelunkers; using ones own or anothers body as a shield against bullets; palliative sedation; etc. Chapter 6 tries to provide a similar analysis for actions that do not bear upon human beings, but that in some analogous way are diverted from the order that they should have. In the case of human beings, the order of reason was taken from the requirement of love for others, and particularly from the order to the common good as a shared good. In the case of other kinds of actions, such as different sins in matters of speech (v.gr., lying) or sexual intercourse (v.gr., bestiality), the order that ought to be is taken from the teleological order of reason (276) that directs non-rational powers to intelligible human goods: the new life and marital fidelity, the expression of truth, etc. Finally, chapter 7 collects all the findings of the book in a single exposition of the specific division of actions in good and evil. Jensen explains why some actions that in their natural species imply some evil
270

BOOKS REVIEWS

(v.gr., killing a human being or a mans wearing womens clothes) can fall under different moral species, evil and good. In this context, moral absolutes are explained as kinds of actions that can never be deprived of their evil character once they have been properly described (without any proportionalist tautology). In view of the confusing situation of contemporary Thomism, nobody should be surprised if Professor Jensen meets all sorts of misunderstandings, criticisms, and counterarguments. I myself think that his justification of killing or injuring in self-defence is both erroneous and against the teaching of St. Thomas, and it is inconsistent with Jensens own thesis that public authority may directly kill only the guilty (for self-defence is licit against objective threats by innocent persons). It is also inconsistent to affirm that a public official can intend to harm a person under the formality of the order to the common good, so that killing a man is no longer evil; but at the same time refute the very same distinction of formalities in description-intention theories. Moreover, the distinction between action conceived and action performed overlooks that actions are conceived precisely as intended objects of the will, so that the intention that specifies actions is present also in actions as conceived. Furthermore, to ascribe Abelardianism to Finnis seems harsh in view of his arguments against Peter Abelard. Besides, the disagreement between Jensen and Finnis (on this point about intention only) seems to amount to a different application of the distinction intended/foreseen only to the case of craniotomy (and fat spelunkers). In all other cases of termination of pregnancy for the sake of the mother it is possible to act upon the mother just to remove the foetus (a change of place). And so on, and so forth. There is no single thread of argument about which one would not ask a question or pose an objection. This means that the book is worthy of praise, careful reading, and thought, and serious discussion, for it advances the Thomist tradition hopefully towards a new synthesis and a deeper understanding.

271