what is good and what is right
TRANSCRIPT
WHAT IS GOOD AND WHAT IS RIGHT
James F. Keenan
I. Roots of the Distinction
Goodness – describes a person acting out
love
Asks whether the person strives to answer the call of Jesus to love God and neighbor
Rightness – describes the behavior that promotes the value in the world
-asks whether certain actions makes the world a better place to live in
II. Locus of the Distinction
Rightness
Choice
Intention
Has a specific answer
Goodness
Moral motivation
What moved the person to do the act
III. The New Distinction and Church Teaching
Contemporary notion of goodness is dynamic
3 descriptions of the agent acting Choice describes the actual action Intention gives the reasons for that
action Moral motivation gives the description
of the fundamental stance out of which an agent moves himself or herself
Question of order (which comes first?)
The question of goodness precedes the question of rightness
Goodness We ask whether a
person moves himself or herself to find the right
Rightness We ask whether
one has actually found the right
The question is not “what I have done wrong”,
rather it is,
“AM I STRIVING TO BECOME A BETTER PERSON TO MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE?”
APPLICATION QUESTIONS
When you do the wrong thing, is it always necessarily bad?
When something is bad, is it always necessarily wrong?
When you do the right thing, is it always necessarily good?
When you do good, is it always necessarily right?
When you do the wrong thing, is it always bad?
When something is bad, is it always wrong?
When you do the right thing, is it always good?