andrew m. lang acpa 2009 article

© 2010, American Catholic Philosophical Association, Proceedings of the ACPA, Vol. 83

Clarifying Two Central Issues in Double Effect Reasoning Debates

Andrew M. Lang

Abstract: The principles whereby the reason operates in ethically complicated situations has been subject to long-standing debates in Catholic Philosophy. A classic text which exemplifies this is Aquinas’s consideration of self-defensive kill-ing. In this paper I clarify two central issues in double-effect reasoning debates surrounding this text. Both issues are connected to the seemingly simple but actu-ally complex task of accounting for the “chosen means” of self-defense. The first issue is whether the “chosen means” are also able to be considered a “proximate end,” to which the intention is directed. The second is determining whether the assailant’s death is related to the “chosen means” per se and therefore to the rest of the moral action. Resolving these issues will provide grounds for answering the broader question implicit in the situation of self-defensive killing: what is to be done when human actions would inevitably entail that some evil is instrumentally tied to realizing some good?

Introduction

At the heart of St. Thomas Aquinas’s brief consideration of self-defensive killing1 lie inchoate the two central issues in double-effect reasoning (DER)2 debates. Both issues are connected to the seemingly simple but

actually complex task of accounting for the “chosen means” of self-defense. The first issue is whether the “chosen means” are also rightly able to be considered a “proximate end” to which the intention is directed. The second issue is the determination of whether the assailant’s death is related to the “chosen means” per se or per accidens, and therefore to the rest of the moral action. The broader question implicit in the situation of self-defensive killing could be put this way: what is to be done when specific human actions would inevitably entail that some evil is instrumentally tied to realizing some good?

In this paper I will attempt to clearly define the two aforementioned central issues according to the principles of Aquinas, and will suggest an answer to the broader question posed. The order of the paper will run as follows. I will first present

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the specific situation of self defense where the only means of defense inevitably entails the death of the attacker, an extreme case of which is found in ST II-II, q. 64, a. 7. In the course of this presentation, I will consider how it requires a deeper account of Aquinas’s normative principles of moral action. I will give that account, and show that one decisive component of Aquinas’s understanding of the “chosen means” is that they also bear a ratio of “proximate end.”

Then I will focus on the recent scholarship of Joseph Boyle and Edward Krasevac.3 They read Aquinas as suggesting that the evil effect of the death of the assailant, though in some way caused by the means, is only related per accidens to the means when morally considered. What is essential to the explanation is showing that such means do not have the evil effect in their ratio, and further that this is so even if the evil effect is instrumental on the level of genus naturae.4 Finally, I will consider whether I have gotten any closer to resolving the general question posed: what is to be done when a specific human action inevitably entails that some evil is instrumentally tied to realizing some good?

The Relevant Situation of DER and Its Underlying PrinciplesIn order to bring out the foundation for the issues I will be examining, I will

next provide the basic setup of the DER situation I will be considering from the Summa II-II 64.7.5

In this text, an aggressor violently attacks an innocent private person,6 i.e., a citizen without civic, juridical, or public authority in general. In the name of self defense, which is a natural right, the private citizen may intend to save his own life and take the means to do so. However, this particular act of self defense entails the aggressor’s death as a result.7 Thus, two results exist even when the defense is done “moderately” and not out of proportion to the end (non sit proportionatus fini). “Proportional to the end” here means doing what is necessary to preserve life and nothing more. The evil outcome is not the cause of the good effect, but results from the use of proportionate means.8 Thus, the private person is not blameworthy for his lethal self-defense if he intends only to save his life in a moderate and required way, such that the death of the assailant is praeter intentionem.

The situation is thus generally described, but serious questions remain. It is unclear what precisely is understood by “act”: does it include both the exterior physi-cal act and the moral act, or is it just a moral act (which would include willing or intending)? It is also unclear what is understood by “intention”: is intention merely the desire to preserve life, or is intention the decision to kill, or is it something else? To answer these questions one must have a broader ethical understanding of the notions of “object,” “act,” and “intention.” The ambiguity of these terms points to the need to consider them in their foundational context of ordinary moral action, which is both more known and more intelligible.

Generally, all human acts are composed of matter and form.9 Within the realm of properly moral action,10 moral acts have an interior and exterior aspect. The in-terior aspect of the moral act is the “intention,” which has as its proper object is the

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end. The exterior aspect of the moral act is the “chosen means,” insofar as they are a physical act, as well as the accompanying circumstances. These are bound together “intimately and vitally as matter and form, as body and soul . . . they communicate their moral quality to each other.”11 The principle is that form orders matter and makes it intelligible. The exterior act is understood and ordered by its end,12 the intention.13 Precisely put, the appetitive intention of the end is the principle of the “chosen means” to the end,14 and therefore of the exterior act.15 Intention, choice, the means chosen, and the other parts described ultimately constitute one seamless moral act, “much as a whole is one though it has many parts.”16 These parts are not actually understood as a many acts, but rather “only potentially many; only some of them actually come to be separate wholes when something goes wrong.”17 Each of these parts also contributes to the moral goodness of human action, as Aquinas notes.18

Aquinas goes on to stress that the morality of an act depends especially upon the end of the act.19 As the will is formal in regard to the external action, external actions do not have a moral quality, except insofar as they are voluntary. “Conse-quently the species of a human act is considered formally with regard to the end, but materially with regard to the object of the external action.”20 This might seem to be a complete account of the parts of moral action such that we can move on to consider DER. However, Aquinas provides numerous texts which show there is additional complexity to the above account which, for the purpose of this paper, needs to be addressed.

Intending the MeansThe first modification to the above account which needs to be made is based

on Aquinas’s statements in numerous places that it is possible to intend the means. I will examine one text in particular where Aquinas asserts this directly.21 In this text, Aquinas begins by affirming what was stated above, namely that intention refers to the end insofar as it is the term of the will. However, “term” can be taken in two ways:

First, the very last terminus, when the movement comes to a stop; this is the terminus of the whole movement. Secondly, some point midway, which is the beginning of one part of the movement, and the end or terminus of the other. Thus in the movement from A to C through B, C is the last terminus, while B is a terminus, but not the last.

From this, Aquinas concludes that intention, while always bearing on an end, needs not bear on the remote or ultimate end. Jensen notes that the mediate end is referred to by Aquinas as ad finem, typically translated as “means.” In other words, intention concerns the end, but end is generic: it can either refer to the “remote end” or to the “proximate end” the latter which has an aspect of an end and yet are means to a further remote end.

Aquinas illustrates this aspect of the proximate means/end in the next article:


Now intention is a movement of the will to something already ordained by the reason, as stated above (A 1, ad 3). Wherefore where we have many things in reality, we may take them as one term of intention, insofar as the reason takes them as one: either because two things concur in the integrity of one whole, as a proper measure of heat and cold conduces to health.22

In the example above, medical procedures only make sense if they are for the sake of health. A present-day example helps clarify this. Taking an insulin shot has the direct effect of balancing one’s blood sugar level. Yet at the same time, “intention is not only of the last end . . . but also of an intermediary end.”23 In the efforts of a diabetic to balance his blood sugar levels, he must take the shot and shoot insulin into his leg. The act of taking a shot is “some point midway, which is the beginning of one part of the movement, and the end or terminus of the other.”24 Jensen aptly articulates the principle which should be taken from this: “When Aquinas says that intention concerns the end and choice concerns the means, he does not exclude the possibility that they both concern the same object, which may itself be ad finem.” Intention pertains to the means insofar as they can be considered as “proximate end,” while means considered as “chosen” are related towards a more remote end. However, it remains unclear how the moral goodness of an action is specified by choosing the “remote end” or the “proximate end.” Hence, it must be explained which end, if one or the other, morally specifies an action.

Which End Specifies Moral Action?Just as Aquinas takes the general principles of action, form and matter, from

Aristotle, he also seems to affirm Aristotle’s position that remote moral ends are more formal than proximate ends. In Book Five of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle compares two men, one who commits adultery for the sake of gaining money, and another who spends his own money to commit adultery. We find Aristotle stating that the former is better considered greedy, and the latter lustful.25

Aquinas explains his reasons for agreeing with this text thus:26 one bad action is ordered to another bad action, and therefore the man committing these acts is bet-ter described by the action which obtains his final purpose.27 In many other places, Aquinas shortens this explanation to the dictum “he who commits adultery for the sake of theft is more of a thief than an adulterer.”28 To state the dictum formally, lust is a “proximate end” which is committed for the sake of meeting the remote end of satisfying greed, the satisfaction of which is desired per se, that is, primarily and for its own sake.

Aquinas seems to make clear in other texts that the primary importance of the remote end is not merely as a principle only applicable to evil actions, but also to even the highest virtue, charity.29 Charity is the act “for the sake of which” all others are performed; it is the end of the virtuous man. Again, we see the same structure of action which places primacy on the “ultimate end:” charity is both the purpose behind and the principle of the order of any other act of true virtue.


At this point it might appear that the end of human action is best understood by the “remote and ultimate end,” and that we have settled the question at hand. But Aquinas’s thought is far from fully explained, let alone made sensible. First of all, in asserting that the “ultimate end” determines action, we are left with the unresolved conclusion of the previous section that intention can pertain to proximate “chosen means” insofar as those means have an aspect of the end in their account. The ex-planation given in this section seems to omit the incorporation of this aspect.

But there is an even more jarring difficulty: Aquinas flatly contradicts the assertion that the “ultimate end” is what determines a moral act.30 Consider the following text where Aquinas again offers an explanation of the case of the one who commits adultery for the sake of theft:

Vices take their species from their proximate end, while, from their re-mote end, they take their genus and cause. Thus in the case of adultery committed for the sake of theft, there is the species of adultery taken from its proper end and object; but the ultimate end shows that the act of adultery is both the result of the theft, and is included under it, as an effect under its cause, or a species under its genus, as appears from what we have said about acts in general (FS, Q18, A7). Wherefore, as to the case in point also, the proximate end of heresy is adherence to one’s own false opinion, and from this it derives its species, while its remote end reveals its cause, viz. that it arises from pride or covetousness.31

In the previous text in which we examined of the adulterous thief, Aquinas clearly identified that the man is described per se by his “ultimate end.” The reason for this seemed to be due to the fact that his “proximate ends” were for the sake of an “ultimate end.” However, this text seems to assert the opposite case: Aquinas says adultery has “a proper end and object,” and such vices take their “species from their proximate end.” The “ultimate end” is described in this text as a genus which exhibits some influence on the “proximate end,” not as essentially determining it, but as a cause.

Additional texts of Aquinas which deal with other vices show the same analysis. For example, when describing the dissembler, profit or glory is the “remote end.” Nevertheless, bearing false witness is the “proximate end” from which the act has species.32 Here Aquinas emphasizes: “One and the same action, insofar as it arises from the agent, is ordered to only one proximate end, from which the act has species, but may be ordered to many remote ends, of which one is the end of the other.”33

So how are these texts consistent? Some assert the “remote end” is formal with regard to the species of action; others state the proximate end is formal in the same way. Unfortunately, the answer is quite complex and to attempt to fully answer the question would take me too far afield from the focus of this paper.34 However this much is clear: since both the “proximate end” and the “remote end” give moral species, both good remote and good proximate ends must be chosen for a moral action to be good. Intending an evil as a “proximate end” for the sake


of some greater good is as deficient morally as having an evil end and using good means to achieve it.35

There is additional and critical aspect of these principles identified in the scholarship of Joseph Boyle and Edward Krasevac. While agreeing that the means are also a “proximate end,” they insist on carefully defining what the rationes of the “chosen means” are. How they distinguish this ratio allows for the possibility of self-defense, even if evil is instrumentally tied with that self-defense, and this significantly helps to answer the important issue in question which was cited in the introduction, namely how the evil effect is related to the “chosen means.”

Boyle begins by affirming what was already discussed in this paper, that the agent intends the end of his action, and not the means as such, and that in many human acts, means also are intended as an end and in general both the ends of ac-tion and means are within the agent’s intention in some way.36

However, Boyle observes there is a further distinction which Aquinas makes. This distinction is between what is per se intended and what is intended per accidens.37 Intending something per se is the primary sense a way a thing is intended, which has been the operative meaning of intention thus far in this paper. What is intended per accidens is distinguished by comparing per se and per accidens effects of the intention. First, there are those per accidens effects which are in no way intended. Aquinas’s example is the “freak accident” of a lumberjack in the wilderness accidentally felling a tree on a passer-by. The second kind of effect, the per se effect, are those which follow always or for the most part along with some other good which is intended per se. Such an accidental effect is “not separated from the agent’s intention.”38 At the same time these effects are treated as “not per se intended.”39 Boyle takes from this that “presumably we could say that they are intended per accidens.”40 This is key, because Aquinas identifies in other places that which is per accidens to that which is praeter intentionem.41

This distinction applies directly to the evil related to the DER situation of self-defense. “Aquinas regards the killing which he calls here praeter intentionem not as a means but as a consequence of the act of self-defense.”42 This is implied textu-ally in ST II-II, q. 64, art. 7 where this kind of self-defensive killing is contrasted to directly intending to kill another in order to defend oneself, which Aquinas, following Augustine, finds sinful.43

Boyle takes as another sign in support for his position Aquinas’s texts which contrast killing praeter intentionem to the killing which is licit for the person in a public office. “This contrast presupposes that the death of the attacker is not a means to those cases where Aquinas regards it as praeter intentionem, as it is in those cases where it is intended.”44 The public servant intends to protect the common good by the means of killing, and so it seems conversely to follow that killing which is praeter intentionem is not to be understood as a means taken properly.

A third argument, ensuing more from reason than from any text in Aquinas, settles the issue for Boyle. It is not the death of the attacker as such which saves the one defending himself in the PDE situation. One ought not to thwart the attack “by ensuring that the assailant, being dead, can threaten no more,” because to do


this is to “take death as the means.”45 Rather one can simply endeavor to stop the attack such that “one is saved not because the assailant is dead but because one has stopped the attack,” though it be a natural effect that the attacker dies.46

Here Thomas Cavanaugh raises a thoughtful objection against Boyle, a re-sponse to which will clarify Boyle’s position.47 Cavanaugh points to the seventh letter of Pascal’s Les provinciales where we find the infamous grande methode de diriger l’intention.48 Here Pascal’s Jesuit proposes a method whereby one swordsman intentionally ambles about a dueling green, not intending to fight his opponent, who also happens to be taking the same stroll. Of course, if the opponent attacks, it is licit to defend oneself. To follow such logic would not be “directing one’s inten-tion” to dueling, but to the stroll.49 The objection then runs that a similar kind of false casuistry also applies to Boyle’s theory I have given, as it appears to claim that intention can be “withheld” from the bad effect which necessarily follows along with the good.50

The difficulty with this objection is it conflates Pascal’s disingenuous Jesuit whose intention is to bring about acts with no intrinsic causal connection that will lead to his “defense” (which is in fact his prerogative—he wants a fight) and a situ-ation where one legitimately needs to defend oneself and the only means available are both directly ordered to realizing the end of self-defense and have the effect of the death of the assailant. In the latter case, “there is nothing about the nature of intention which requires that one intend those effects which follow from ones end.”51 Intention is an act of the will bearing on the end only insofar is it is the “term of something ordered to it, namely, the means.”52 The effects of an intended act have no relation to this ordering relationship: “what is neither ordered to the intended end nor a part of the good which specifies this order does not fall within the intention (emphasis mine).” Here Boyle makes two crucial distinctions: that the means are directly ordered to that end and have the ratio of the good of the end. Each distinc-tion deserves a closer examination.

Aquinas explains the significance of the means being ‘directly ordered’ to end in the following passage:

The object of the external act can stand in a twofold relation to the end of the will: first, as being of itself ordained thereto; thus to fight well is of itself ordained to victory; secondly, as being ordained thereto accidentally; thus to take what belongs to another is ordained accidentally to the giv-ing of alms. . . . Accordingly when the object is not of itself ordained to the end (per se ordinatum ad finem), the specific difference derived from the object is not an essential determination of the species derived from the end, nor is the reverse the case. Wherefore one of these species is not under the other; but then the moral action is contained under two species that are disparate, as it were. Consequently we say that he that commits theft for the sake of adultery, is guilty of a twofold malice in one action. On the other hand, if the object be of itself ordained to the end (per se ordinatum ad finem), one of these differences is an essential determination


of the other. Wherefore one of these species will be contained (continebitur sub altera) under the other.

For Aquinas, if the means are per se ordered to their end, they are considered as contained by the species of the intention as determined by that intention.53 Edward Krasevac, commenting on the same passage, notes that “if the use of deadly force is the only way in which the life of the one unjustly attacked can be saved, it is indeed in ‘due proportion’ to the intention of the self-defense.”54 Again, the reason for this is the fact that in this situation, the defense requires the use of deadly force. It is precisely the use of force which immediately brings about the end of defense; the fact that it is deadly is per accidens, and is an effect of the force. Here the death is an “immediate and natural consequence; but it is praeter intentionem.”55

This helps explain how the “chosen means” take their ratio of the good of the end. In the above DER situation, the defender’s “proximate end” is determined by what they are trying to achieve in their commanded acts. The grounds for allowing the means to take on this ratio are due to the fact that they naturally have an immediate effect of bringing about the effect which is the end of defense. It is precisely insofar as they are considered as such (being a means of defense) that they are relevant to the defensive agent. On the level of the genus naturae the means may be instrumental to the death of the assailant, but at the same time they are per se causing the defense of the assailed, and this later causal relationship is clearly what is of interest for the assailed. Krasevac puts it this way: “their [the ‘chosen means’] moral directedness is determined by the object if the act—that to which the intention is directed, and which at least one of the per se outcomes of the agent’s commanded acts.”56 The effect of death, considered precisely as deadly, is not the relevant ratio for the defender and is praeter intentionem; indeed if the defense could be successfully undertaken and not be deadly, he would be obligated to choose those means. Rather deadly defensive means are chosen because they are the only available means naturally ordered to the legitimate good of defense.

ConclusionI have endeavored to show that in the DER situation presented, the evil effect

is per accidens to the “chosen means” morally considered, are also praeter intentionem, and therefore outside of the account determining the quality of the moral action. When asking “what is to be done when specific human actions would inevitably entail that some evil is instrumentally tied to realizing some good?” I have shown how a good intention may be justifiably realized even if the situation may demand choosing means which entail per accidens evils which are instrumental on the level of genus naturae. This is certainly a complex and difficult issue, with many questions still yet unresolved.

Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology


Notes

1. ST II-II, q 64, a. 7. I will hereafter be taking my Aquinas text from the Leonine edition, and basing my translation on the online Benziger Bros. edition (1947): Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. The Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York, Cincinnati, Chicago: Benziger Bros., 1947). All Latin Aquinas text taken from the public database: “Opera Omnia Sancti Thomae,” in Obras Completas de Santo Tomás de Aquino, Pontificio Ateneo Regina Apostolorum, Versión de prueba. Copyright data n/a.

2. I follow Thomas Cavanaugh in this terminology: Thomas Cavanaugh, “Aquinas’s Account of Double Effect,” The Thomist 61 (1993): 107–122. DER has been diversely called (1) the Principle of Double Effect (PDE), by J. Selling, “The Problem of Reinterpreting the Principle of Double Effect,” Louvain Studies 8 (1980) and Edward Krasevac, “The Good That We Intend and the Evil That We Do: A New Look At Praeter Intentionem in Aquinas,” Angelicum 79 (2002): 844; (2) the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE), by W. Quinn, “Actions, Intentions, and Consequences: The Doctrine of Double Effect,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 18 (1989) and The Doctrine of Double Effect: Philosophers Debate a Controversial Principle, ed. P. A. Woodward (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001); (3) the Rule of Double Effect (RDE) by P. Ramsey, “Incommensurability and Indeterminacy in Moral Choice,” in Doing Evil to Achieve Good: Moral Choice in Conflict Situations, ed. McCormick and Ramsey (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1978), 69–144; and (4) the Schema of Double Effect by Steven A. Long, “A Brief Disquisition Regarding the Nature of the Object of the Moral Act According to St. Thomas Aquinas,” The Thomist 67 (2003): 45–71. DER seems particularly apt for at least three reasons. First, it is not merely one principle but rather a set of respectively integral and conjunctively utilized criteria. Nor is it necessarily doctrinal in the authoritative sense, at least primarily. Finally, it is not an imposition, as schema can denote.

3. In Joseph Boyle, “Praeter Intentionem in Aquinas,” The Thomist 42 (1978): 649–665; Krasevac (2002); Edward Krasevac, “Can Effects That are Inevitable and Instrumental be Praeter Intentionem?” Angelicum 82 (2005): 77–88.

4. The idea here is that as long as the means have an intrinsic ordering to their end (per se ordinatus), they may be chosen, even if they result in evil. In this way, the “chosen means” considered as a “proximate end” still retain a good moral quality, because although the “proximate end” has an effect of death, it also has the good of being a cause of protect-ing life. Hence the “chosen means” may be chosen knowing they would be deadly, but not because they were deadly. Rather they are chosen because of the good which they directly (per se ordinatus) bring about. This careful analysis does much to explain the significance of above-mentioned second issue which is whether the evil effect is related to the “chosen means” per se or per accidens and therefore to the rest of the moral action.

5. Aquinas, ST, II-II, q. 64, a. 7c: “Nothing hinders one act from having two effects, only one of which is intended, while the other is beside the intention. Now moral acts take their species according to what is intended, and not according to what is beside the intention, since this is accidental as explained above (II-II, q. 43, a. 3; I-II, q. 12, a. 1). Accordingly the act of self-defense may have two effects, one is the saving of one’s life, the other is the slaying of the aggressor. Therefore this act, since one’s intention is to save one’s own life, is not unlawful, seeing that it is natural to everything to keep itself in “being,” as far as pos-sible. And yet, though proceeding from a good intention, an act may be rendered unlawful, if it be out of proportion to the end. Wherefore if a man, in self-defense, uses more than necessary violence, it will be unlawful: whereas if he repels force with moderation his defense


will be lawful, because according to the jurist, “it is lawful to repel force by force, provided one does not exceed the limits of a blameless defense.” Nor is it necessary for salvation that a man omit the act of moderate self-defense in order to avoid killing the other man, since one is bound to take more care of one’s own life than of another’s.”

6. ST II-II, q .64, a. 3-7. A private person is relevantly distinct from a civil authority here in that the former may never justifiably intend to take another citizens life, for this would be murder.

7. Admittedly, Aquinas’s account seems generic enough to imagine situations other than merely this one. However, this more extreme case will be the case considered in this paper, and is certainly recognized as one of the paradigmatic examples of DER. See Cavanaugh (1993), 115; also Krasevac (2005), 80 provides a classification of paradigm cases.

8. From this arises the commonly described “four principles of double effect,” but I am not formally equating my description above with any of the various formulations of double effect, because it is just the question of this paper how to properly form some of these principles, and what the general understanding is behind the way these principles are formed.

9. Cf. ST I-II, q.1, a. 3: “Each thing receives its species in respect of an act and not in respect of potentiality; wherefore things composed of matter and form are established in their respective species by their own forms. And this is also to be observed in proper movements. For since movements are, in a way, divided into action and passion, each of these receives its species from an act; action indeed from the act which is the principle of acting, and passion from the act which is the terminus of the movement. Wherefore heating, as an action, is nothing else than a certain movement proceeding from heat, while heating as a passion is nothing else than a movement towards heat: and it is the definition that shows the specific nature. And either way, human acts, whether they be considered as actions or as passions, receive their species from the end.” (Emphasis is mine.)

10. Thus setting aside acts considered in the abstract, or in genus naturae (as termed in ST I-II, q.1, a. 3, ad. 3 and other places), which are outside of circumstance or intention, as “killing,” which taken abstractly does not have moral specificity.

11. Servais Pinckaers, The Pinckaers Reader, ed. John Berkman and Craig Steven Titus, (Washington: CUA Press, 2005), 210. Here I am following Pinckaers’s reading.

12. ST I-II, q. 1, a. 3.

13. Intention “may strike us as being linked to thinking rather than willing,” but what needs be understood is that will, while certainly being intellectually informed, bears on the end appetitively. C.f. Ralph McInerny, Aquinas on Human Action: A Theory of Practice, (Washington: CUA Press, 1992), 63.

14. To be even more specific, intention would compel the intellect to choose, or to see the viable means available, and once those means are seen, the will as “commanding choice” would execute the command, the execution manifest as the “exterior choice.” Cf. ibid, 69.

15. ST I-II, q. 13, a. 4.

16. ST I-II, q. 17, a. 4.

17. McInerny (1992), 69. The classic case to bear out “something going wrong” is the man who commits adultery in order that he may steal, found in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics Bk. 5, Ch. 2. He seems to have two distinct ends, stealing and committing adultery. Here


the species of adultery is not under the species of killing, but according to Aquinas in ST I-II, q. 18. a. 7, “then the moral action is contained under two species that are disparate, as it were.” The upshot is, while it is possible to speak of the adulterous thievery as one action, strictly speaking two moral acts are in fact taking place, because the “object is not an essential determination of the species derived from the end.” This lack of “essential determination” makes the exterior object out of proportion to the end (non sit proportionatus fini), and takes therefore its own distinct moral relevance. Cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. J. Sachs, (Focus, 2002).

18. ST I-II, q. 18, a. 4.: “Accordingly a fourfold goodness may be considered in a hu-man action. First, that which, as an action, it derives from its genus; because as much as it has of action and being, so much has it of goodness. . . . Secondly, it has goodness accord-ing to its species; which is derived from its suitable object. Thirdly, it has goodness from its circumstances, in respect, as it were, of its accidents. Fourthly, it has goodness from its end, to which it is compared as to the cause of its goodness.”

19. ST I-II, q. 18, a. 6.

20. Ibid. ST I-II, q. 18, a. 6.

21. In ST I-II q. 12, a. 2–3. For a comprehensive consideration of the places Aquinas speaks of willing the means/proximate end, see Pilsner, 217–222.

22. ST I-II q.12 a. 4 ad. 3. Aquinas goes on to say that this is possible in cases which do not obviously have the natural relationship of medicine and health. The example he provides is acquiring wine and clothing which may be included in one’s intention to acquire wealth “because two things are included in one which may be intended.” How this is really one intention is an interesting but complex question, the explanation of which I will set aside as it is not directly pertinent to the moral questions about things which have a natural con-nection like medicine and health.

23. Ibid. ST I-II q.12 a. 4 ad. 3.

24. Ibid. ST I-II q. 12 a. 4.

25. Nicomachean Ethics 1130a24-28. “Gaining money” illicitly for Aristotle and Aquinas is a kind of thievery.

26. “Clearly, if a vicious or evil act is ordered to another unbecoming end, from this fact it will obtain a new species of vice. This is so when a man commits adultery for the sake of gain, for example, to rob a woman or to take from her in any way whatsoever. Also it happens sometimes that a man commits adultery entirely because of concupiscence, so that he not only does not gain but rather gives something of his own and suffers a loss of his goods. A man of this sort seems to be lustful, essentially speaking (per se), since the vice of lust is strictly ordered to the satisfaction of concupiscence. But the man who commits adultery to take a woman’s goods does not seem to be lustful, absolutely speaking, because he does not intend lust as his end. He seems rather to be unjust since he sins against justice for the sake of gain. In Comm. Ethic, Bk. 5, lc. 3. From Aquinas, Thomas St. Commentary on Nicomachean Ethics, Trans. C. I. Litzinger, (Chicago: H. Regnery Co, 1964).

27. Again, here there are strictly speaking two actions, one distinct action for the sake of the other. Cf. footnote 16.

28. See Pilsner 225 for a listing of where this dictum appears. Cf. Joseph Pilsner, The Specification of Human Action in St. Thomas Aquinas, (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1998).


29. “In all voluntary actions, that which is part of the end is formal . . . the act of all other virtues are ordered to the proper end of charity, which is its object, namely the highest good.” q. 2, a. 3 of Thomas Aquinas, On the Virtues, trans. J. P. Reid, O.P. (Providence: The Providence College Press, 1951).

30. See ST I-II, q., a. 3, ad. 3, ST I-II, q.73, a. 3, ad. 1, ST I-II, q.107, a. 1, De Malo q. 2, a. 6, ad. 9. Thomas Aquinas, On Evil, trans. Jean Oesterle, (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993).

31. ST II-II, q.11, a. 1, ad. 3.

32. ST II-II, q.111, a. 3, ad. 3.

33. Ibid.

34. See Pilsner, 234–243, for a resolution of this discrepancy of which Aquinas was clearly aware, as indicated in numerous places including ST I-II, q.17, a. 4; ST I-II, q. 18. a. 7; ST II-II, q.11, a. 1, ad. 3.

35. Steven Long holds that in certain situations killing may be directly chosen by the civilian as a ‘natural means’ to stopping the assault. He states that in such an act there are two effects: “one which is properly intended as the end of the defense (preserving the life of the innocent), and one that is the deliberately chosen means of defense (a lethal act) stopping—by killing—the assailant. This is, to borrow Jensen’s phrase, an “unacceptable conclusion” in light of Aquinas’s claim that both the “proximate end” and the “remote end” give species to moral action, as I have argued is clearly Aquinas’s position. Long appears to fail explaining the many places in Aquinas where “proximate end” is pertinent to the intention. Jensen (2003), 626. For a recent reply by Long to Jensen’s criticism on this point (as well what seems to be a rearticulation of Long’s overall stance given here) see “Reply to Jensen on the Moral Object” Nova et Vera 3.1, (2005): 101–108, esp.102

36. Boyle, 657.

37. Found in De Malo q.1, a. 3, ad. 15

38. Ibid. q.1, a. 3, ad. 15.

39. Ibid. q.1, a. 3, ad. 15.

40. Boyle, 660.

41. De Malo, Q.1, q.3, c.

42. Boyle, 661.

43. ST II-II, q. 64, a.7, ad. 1.

44. Boyle, 661.

45. Ibid.

46. Thomas Cavanaugh, after considering the nature of the private citizen, argues that for a private citizen, it is unjust to take a means of defense which inevitably entails the death of the aggressor. His reading hinges on his understanding of how force must be proportionatus fini. Cavanaugh posits he cannot take the life of the attacker in self defense because it neces-sarily “corresponds to an intention . . . to take the assailant’s life.” With the example of a lethal defense with a broadsword he states: “such a sword stroke is proportioned to the preserva-tion of life only insofar as it is proportioned to taking the aggressor’s life.” For Cavanaugh, if one then chooses to make such a stroke in defense, he must intend both actions, namely homicide and self defense, equally as ends. Consequently, one is also morally responsible


for both actions: “when one kills someone whose life one has knowingly endangered, one is ethically responsible for his death.”

At this point I will not offer a full refutation of Cavanaugh’s position, but simply point out that there seems to be a conflict with the often repeated fundamental natural good of one to preserve their life. The foundation for this desire is rooted even more deeply by the love which all beings have for themselves by nature. This is a nature which God has made, and therefore it is a most worthy love, both with respect to the individual with that nature and with respect to the community, which they contribute to by their intrinsic goodness. (Cf. ST II-II, q .64, a 5 and 7.) Cavanaugh’s view seems irreconcilable with this position because he holds preserving the good of the state is more important than protecting one’s life. Admit-tedly, he denies he holds this, and maintains in other places that, ceteris paribus, one is more obligated to preserve oneself more than others. Cavanaugh, 116 and 120.

47. Cavanaugh, 111. Cavanaugh raises another objection based on the much-discussed “quandoque” text of ST II-II q. 64, a 7, ad. 4. Cavanaugh alleges this text to contradict the claim that the necessary deadly consequence in the case of lethal self defense may be praeter intentionem. Here Aquinas states the act which is proportional to self defense only “sometimes” results in homicide. Cavanaugh reads this to be saying that in this text Aquinas “does not ap-pear to consider the foresight of an inevitable consequence” as praeter intentionem. However, there seems to be no textural grounds that this reading is the only plausible one—it seems just as plausible to take “quandoque” to distinguish (1) the necessary and inevitable cases of homicide in self defense from (2) DER cases where some other means may be possible. This latter reading does not conflict with the reading of Boyle and Krasevac. Cf. Cavanaugh, 117.

48. Blaise Pascal, Les provinciales (Paris: Editions de Cluny, 1943), 243.

49. A detailed discussion of this argument with respect to its fairness and influence can be found in Steven Toulmin and Albert Jensen, The Abuse of Casuistry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).

50. Cavanaugh, 111.

51. Boyle, 664–665.

52. Boyle, 665.

53. This is a beginning of an answer to the unresolved question of the previous section considering which ends specifies moral action, but again, I will not consider the solution here.

54. Krasevac 2002, 843.

55. Boyle, 662.

56. Krasevac 2005, 82. Again, “directing” the intention here is not based on a subjective decision, but on the fact that the means have the natural foundation which allows them to be considered under two rationes, one of which is relevant to the moral agent and to which they are concerned with or ‘directed’ towards.

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andrew m. lang acpa 2009 article

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