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Intrinsic Evil, Truth and Authority

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

John O'Neill
John O'Neill
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Lancaster, Lancaster LAI 4YG
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Abstract

This paper responds to Pope John Paul's Veritatis Splendor. It defends one of its claims, that some human acts are intrinsically evil, and relates it to another, that one should live in truth. It outlines two versions of the idea of living in truth and argues that the Thomist position defended in the encyclical is to be preferred. However, the paper rejects the encyclical's authoritarianism. It criticizes not the concept of ‘authoritative teaching’ as such – all teaching presupposes epistemological authority – but the way in which the encyclical's characterization of such authority is incompatible with one of its preconditions – reasoned dialogue.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , June 1995 , pp. 209 - 219
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

1 Pope, John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor (London. Catholic Truth Society, 1993)Google Scholar, section 3.

2 Ibid., sections 88 and 100.

3 Ibid., section 88. His own views on this subject predate Humanae Vitae: see Wojtyla, Karol, Love and Responsibility, trans Willetts, H. (London: Collins, 1981: first edition, 1960)Google Scholar, chapter 4.

4 John Paul II, op. cit. sections 78 ff.

5 For further discussion of this point see J. O'Neill: ‘“The same thing therefore ought to be and ought not to be”: Anselm on conflicting oughts’, Heythrop Journal, 1994, forthcoming.

6 Williams, B., ‘A Critique of Utilitarianism’, in Smart, J. J. C. and Williams, B., eds., Utilitarianism: For and Against (Cambridge: University Press, 1973), pp. 116–17.Google Scholar

7 Havel, V., ‘The Power of the Powerless’, in Living the Truth (London: Faber and Faber, 1989), pp. 41 ff.Google Scholar

8 Ibid., p. 55.

9 Ibid., p. 54.

10 Ibid., p. 57.

11 Ibid., p. 57.

12 John Paul's rejection of that doctrine is older than the encyclical. It is found stated in more phenomenological terms in part two of The Acting Person. Typical is the following: ‘There is no question of assigning to the conscience, as Kant argued, the power to make laws – followed by an identification of this power with the notion of autonomy and thus with the unrestricted freedom of the person. The conscience is no lawmaker; it does not itself create norms; rather it discovers them, as it were, in the objective order of morality or law.’ Wojtyla, Karol, The Acting Person, trans. Tymieniecka, A. (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1979CrossRefGoogle Scholar; translated from the Polish edition, 1969).

13 There are striking parallels between Pope John Paul II's criticisms of that ethic and those of Hegel in part II of The Philosophy of Right.

14 See Plato, , Protagoras, trans Guthrie, W. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1956), pp. 329 ff.Google Scholar; Aristotle, , Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Irwin, T. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1985)Google Scholar, book VI, ch. 13; Aquinas, , Summa Theologiae (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1963)Google Scholar 1a–2ae, question 65. My own views owe much to Geach, P., The Virtues (Cambridge: University Press, 1977), pp. 162 ff.Google Scholar

15 Aquinas expresses the point thus: ‘conscience is not said to bind in the sense that what one does according to such a conscience will be good, but in the sense that in not following it he will sin’. Thomas Aquinas, The Disputed Questions on Truth, trans. J. McGlynn (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1953), question 17, article 4, pp. 331–2.

16 Compare Geach on inconsistency: ‘Being inconsistent implies having gone astray; but not all error, all wrong judgement, is equally bad, and inconsistency in the right place may save a man from worse errors than if he were not there inconsistent.’ P. Geach, op. cit., p. 167.

17 Aquinas asserts that conscience is an act of applying general knowledge to a specific act. Its efficacy depends on good judgement. Thus he responds to Basil's claim that conscience is ‘the natural power of judgement’ thus: ‘Conscience is called the natural power of judgement in so far as the whole examination or counselling of conscience depends on the natural power of judgement’ Aquinas, Thomas, Disputed Questions, question 17, article 1, pp. 315 and 321.Google Scholar

18 John Paul II, op. cit., section 63. The authority invoked is Aquinas (op. cit. question 17, article 4).

19 An account of some of the differences both with Catholic and Marxian accounts of the good life is to be found in O'Neill, J., ‘Humanism and Nature’, Radical Philosophy LXVI (1994), 21–9.Google Scholar

20 John Paul II, op. cit. section 13 (emphasis in the original).

21 Kant, , ‘An Answer to the Question: “What is Enlightenment?”’, in Reiss, H., ed., Political Writings (Cambridge: University Press, 1991), pp. 54–5Google Scholar (emphasis in the original).

22 I put aside here any internal Catholic debate there might be about the proper role of Conciliar and Papal authority.

23 Winch, P., ‘Authority’, p. 99 in Quinton, A., ed., Political Philosophy (Oxford: University Press, 1967).Google Scholar

24 Oakeshott, M., Rationalism in Politics (London: Methuen, 1962)Google Scholar represent the best modern elaboration of this view. In the philosophy of science the theme is developed at length by Kuhn. I discuss it further in O'Neill, J., Worlds Without Content: Against Formalism (London: Routledge, 1991),Google Scholar ch. 1.; and Ecology, Policy and Politics: Human Well-Being and the Natural World (London: Routledge, 1993)Google Scholar, ch. 8.

25 The views of Foucault are particularly influential in this regard: see, for example, Foucault, M., Power/Knowledge (New York: Pantheon, 1980).Google Scholar

26 It has been put to me that it is the social authority of the hierarchy that is at stake in the continued defence of the existing line on contraception, a defence that looks increasingly irrational and unethical with the spread of the HIV virus. To change the doctrine here would be to admit error from one in a position of papal authority. The problem has become one of authority, not doctrine.

27 Augustine, On Order, 11.9.26, in Bourke, V., ed., The Essential Augustine (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1974).Google Scholar

28 Augustine, The True Religion, 24.45.

29 Augustine, On Order, 11.9.27.

30 Ibid.

31 An earlier version of this paper was read to a session on Veritatis Splendor held by the Centre for the Study of Cultural Values, Lancaster University (1993). My thanks for comments made on that occasion.