Aristotle famously contends that every physical object is a compound of matter and form. This doctrine has been dubbed “hylomorphism”. It is best to look at form as a parameter within a perimeter in which matter (stuff) resides. As well as I can determine, neither form or matter is permanent. Form can and often does change; whereas, matter can morph into a tertium quid when combined with other matter, thus constituting other stuff. This I believe would be substantial matter; whereas, pure matter is what constitutes the basic element and/or combination of elements in things. In some ways, all matter can be reduced (divided into) a more basic form--which, of course, limits form primarily to a restrictive informative cognitive function. So, in a sense, with Aristotle, to categorize form and matter is a convenient cognitive device, the way or method we go about naming something.
Indulgences
Indulgences is the forgiveness of canonical punishment imposed upon a contrite sinner. Doctrinally it is a merciful sanctifying grace and not the forgiveness of actual sin which must precede the remedial punishment thereof. At present only the pope has authority to authorize the practice, either by he himself or a designated surrogate Bishop/s whom he appoints. (See: venial and/or cardinal sins.
Also note: I John 5:16-18 (NIV)
16 If you see any brother or sister commit a sin that does not lead to death, you should pray and God will give them life. I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death. There is a sin that leads to death. I am not saying that you should pray about that. 17 All wrongdoing is sin, and there is sin that does not lead to death.
18 We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin; the One who was born of God keeps them safe, and the evil one cannot harm them.
Comment on 1 John 5:16-18:
John distinguishes the effects of mortal and venial sin as well. Members of the Body of Christ can pray for someone who commits venial sin (sin “which is not deadly”) and “life” (Gr. – zo-ay, or the divine life of God) and healing can be communicated to him through that prayer. But when it comes to “deadly sin,” St. John tells us not to “pray for that.” This is not meant to say we should not pray for a person in this state of sin at all. Scripture is very clear that we should pray for “all men” in I Tim. 2:1-2. The context seems to indicate that he is referring to praying that God “give [the wounded member of Christ] life” directly through that prayer. Divine life and healing can only come through members of the Body of Christ to other members in a direct way if the person being prayed for is in union with the Body of Christ. For mortal sin, one can only pray that God would grant the grace of repentance to the sinner so that they may be restored to communion with the Body of Christ through the sacrament of confession.
The Papacy:
synergistic vis-a-vis monergistic role
A synergistic as opposed to a monergistic
role for the Bishop of Rome—that is to say, that he has a synodical role as
chairman, but not an inherent role outside of that. This, of course, restricts
his authority to that allocated by the presiding synodical bishops. Thus,
without an ecumenical council the Roman pope cannot speak for the universal
church in formulating new doctrine. This seems to be the position of the
Eastern synods who articulated a canonical rather than a Petrine justification
for Roman primacy. Key passages in that regard include the following
statements:
The Eastern
church has never taken into account the developments about the Roman bishop as
vicar, successor or heir of the Apostles Peter . . . The East never shared the
Petrine theology as elaborated in the West. (Source: In How Can the Petrine
Ministry Be a Service to the Unity of the Universal Church? ed., James F.
Puglisi (Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing
Company, 2010), pgs. 34-48.)
Accidentals
The nine kinds of accidents
according to Aristotle are quantity, quality, relation, habitus, time,
location, situation (or position), action, and passion ("being acted
on"). Together with "substance", these nine kinds of accidents
constitute the ten fundamental categories of Aristotle's ontology.
Clue: Accidents are the minds way of categorizing, and are unique and inseparable from the peculiar incident at hand, available only in the present as a concept of impenetrable, yet ongoing concrete reality, unless substantially acted (the passion part) upon.
Catholic theologians such as
Thomas Aquinas have employed the Aristotelian concepts of substance and
accident in articulating the theology of the Eucharist, particularly the
transubstantiation of bread and wine into body and blood. According to this
tradition, the accidents of the appearance of bread and wine do not change, but
the substance changes from bread and wine to the Body and Blood of Christ.
Comment: Tentatively--the first reaction is, either this is poor theology or sloppy philosophy. Contradictive to reason, if left at that. However, such reasoning can be sustained by and through revelation. In that case, to bother to make distinctions is laden with philosophical and/or theological pitfalls. Better to accept the doctrine by faith and leave it there. The "body, soul, and divinity" of Christ is present and available, but only through faith, is a standard argument. Which seems to be a reasonable reply for many; however, that reply does not take into account Paul's warning to "not take it unworthily (1 Corinthians 11: )." This could, however, mean could mean without the necessary faith, which would leave the participant unworthy to participate because of the lack of sanctifying faith.
The Papacy:
synergistic vis-a-vis monergistic role
A synergistic as opposed to a monergistic
role for the Bishop of Rome—that is to say, that he has a synodical role as
chairman, but not an inherent role outside of that. This, of course, restricts
his authority to that allocated by the presiding synodical bishops. Thus,
without an ecumenical council the Roman pope cannot speak for the universal
church in formulating new doctrine. This seems to be the position of the
Eastern synods who articulated a canonical rather than a Petrine justification
for Roman primacy. Key passages in that regard include the following
statements:
The Eastern
church has never taken into account the developments about the Roman bishop as
vicar, successor or heir of the Apostles Peter . . . The East never shared the
Petrine theology as elaborated in the West. (Source: In How Can the Petrine
Ministry Be a Service to the Unity of the Universal Church? ed., James F.
Puglisi (Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing
Company, 2010), pgs. 34-48.)
Scholasticism
Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury,
is considered the father of scholasticism. Scholasticism is presuppositional
dialecticalism that is based on the authority of truth revealed to the Church.
It is therefore a compromise between philosophy and revelation; thus,
philosophy becomes a handmaiden of theology, as such. Can we then say that
scholasticism is based on prejudice?
Accidentals
The nine kinds of accidents
according to Aristotle are quantity, quality, relation, habitus, time,
location, situation (or position), action, and passion ("being acted
on"). Together with "substance", these nine kinds of accidents
constitute the ten fundamental categories of Aristotle's ontology.
Catholic theologians such as
Thomas Aquinas have employed the Aristotelian concepts of substance and
accident in articulating the theology of the Eucharist, particularly the
transubstantiation of bread and wine into body and blood. According to this
tradition, the accidents of the appearance of bread and wine do not change, but
the substance changes from bread and wine to the Body and Blood of Christ.
Ethics
Duty-based or Deontological ethics
Deontological (duty-based) ethics are concerned
with what people do, not with the consequences of their actions.
- Do
the right thing.
- Do
it because it's the right thing to do.
- Don't
do wrong things.
- Avoid
them because they are wrong.
Under this form of ethics you can't justify an
action by showing that it produced good consequences, which is why it's
sometimes called 'non-Consequentialist'.
The word 'deontological' comes from the Greek
word deon, which means 'duty'.
Duty-based ethics are usually what people are
talking about when they refer to 'the principle of the thing'.
Duty-based ethics teaches that some acts are
right or wrong because of the sorts of things they are, and people have a duty
to act accordingly, regardless of the good or bad consequences that may be
produced.
Some kinds of action are wrong or right in
themselves, regardless of the consequences.
Deontologists live in a universe of moral
rules, such as:
- It
is wrong to kill innocent people
- It
is wrong to steal
- It
is wrong to tell lies
- It
is right to keep promises
Someone who follows Duty-based ethics should do
the right thing, even if that produces more harm (or less good) than doing the
wrong thing:People have a duty to do the right thing, even
if it produces a bad result.
So, for example, the philosopher Kant thought
that it would be wrong to tell a lie in order to save a friend from a murderer.
If we compare Deontologists with
Consequentialists we can see that Consequentialists begin by considering what
things are good, and identify 'right' actions as the ones that produce the
maximum of those good things.
Deontologists appear to do it the other way
around; they first consider what actions are 'right' and proceed from there.
(Actually this is what they do in practice, but it isn't really the starting
point of deontological thinking.)
So a person is doing something good if they are
doing a morally right action.
Good and bad points:
Good points of duty-based ethics
- emphasises
the value of every human being
- Duty-based
ethical systems tend to focus on giving equal respect to all human
beings.
- This
provides a basis for human rights - it forces due regard to be given to
the interests of a single person even when those are at odds with the interests
of a larger group.
- says
some acts are always wrong
- Kantian
duty-based ethics says that some things should never be done, no matter
what good consequences they produce. This seems to reflect the way some
human beings think.
- Rossian
duty-based ethics modified this to allow various duties to be balanced,
which, it could be argued, is an even better fit to the way we think.
- provides
'certainty'
- Consequentialist
ethical theories bring a degree of uncertainty to ethical decision-making,
in that no-one can be certain about what consequences will result from a
particular action, because the future is unpredictable.
- Duty-based
ethics don't suffer from this problem because they are concerned with the
action itself - if an action is a right action, then a person should do
it, if it's a wrong action they shouldn't do it - and providing there is
a clear set of moral rules to follow then a person faced with a moral
choice should be able to take decisions with reasonable certainty.
- Of
course things aren't that clear cut. Sometimes consequentialist theories
can provide a fair degree of certainty, if the consequences are easily
predictable.
- Furthermore,
rule-based consequentialism provides people with a set of rules that
enable them to take moral decisions based on the sort of act they are
contemplating.
- deals
with intentions and motives
- Consequentialist
theories don't pay direct attention to whether an act is carried out with
good or bad intentions; most people think these are highly relevant to
moral judgements.
- Duty-based
ethics can include intention in at least 2 ways...
- If
a person didn't intend to do a particular wrong act - it was an accident
perhaps - then from a deontological point of view we might think that
they hadn't done anything deserving of criticism. This seems to fit with
ordinary thinking about ethical issues.
- Ethical
rules can be framed narrowly so as to include intention.
Bad points of duty-based ethics
- absolutist
- Duty-based
ethics sets absolute rules. The only way of dealing with cases that don't
seem to fit is to build a list of exceptions to the rule.
- allows
acts that make the world a less good place
- Because
duty-based ethics is not interested in the results it can lead to courses
of action that produce a reduction in the overall happiness of the world.
- Most
people would find this didn't fit with their overall idea of ethics: it is hard to believe that it could ever be
a duty deliberately to produce less good when we could produce more...
A C Ewing, The Definition of Good, 1947
- hard
to reconcile conflicting duties
- Duty-based
ethics doesn't deal well with the cases where duties are in conflict.
Kantian duty-based ethics
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was arguably one of
the greatest philosophers of all time.
Kant thought that it was possible to develop a
consistent moral system by using reason.
If people were to think about this seriously
and in a philosophically rigorous manner, Kant taught, they would realise that
there were some moral laws that all rational beings had to obey simply because
they were rational beings, and this would apply to any rational beings in any
universe that might ever exist:
The supreme principle of morality would have an
extremely wide scope: one that extended not only to all rational human beings
but to any other rational beings who might exist - for example, God, angels,
and intelligent extraterrestrials.
Samuel J. Kerstein, Kant's Search for the
Supreme Principle of Morality, 2002
Kant taught (rather optimistically) that every
rational human being could work this out for themselves and so did not need to
depend on God or their community or anything else to discover what was right
and what was wrong. Nor did they need to look at the consequences of an act, or
who was doing the action.
Although he expressed himself in a
philosophical and quite difficult way, Kant believed that he was putting
forward something that would help people deal with the moral dilemmas of
everyday life, and provide all of us with a useful guide to acting rightly.
What is good?
Although Kantian ethics are usually spoken of
in terms of duty and doing the right thing, Kant himself thought that what was
good was an essential part of ethics.
Kant asked if there was anything that everybody
could rationally agree was always good. The only thing that he thought
satisfied this test was a good will:
It is impossible to conceive anything in the
world, or even out of it, which can be taken as good without limitation, save
only a good will.
Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of
Morals
All Kant means is that a good will alone must
be good in whatever context it may be found.
It is not good in one context and bad in
another.
It is not good as a means to one end and bad as
a means to another.
It is not good if somebody happens to want it and
bad if he doesn't.
Its goodness is not conditioned by its relation
to a context or to an end or to a desire.
H J Paton, The Categorical Imperative, 1948
(layout by BBC)
Other things that we might think of as good are
not always good, as it's possible to imagine a context in which they might seem
to be morally undesirable.
Kant then pondered what this meant for human
conduct. He concluded that only an action done for 'a good will' was a right
action, regardless of the consequences.
But what sort of action would this be? Kant
taught that an action could only count as the action of a good will if it
satisfied the test of the Categorical Imperative.
Kant's Categorical Imperative
The Categorical Imperative
Kant's version of duty-based ethics was based
on something that he called 'the categorical imperative' which he intended to
be the basis of all other rules (a 'categorical imperative' is a rule that is
true in all circumstances.)
The categorical imperative comes in two
versions which each emphasise different aspects of the categorical imperative.
Kant is clear that each of these versions is merely a different way of
expressing the same rule; they are not different rules.
Moral rules must be universalisable
The first one emphasises the need for moral
rules to be universalisable.
Always act in such a way that you can also will
that the maxim of your action should become a universal law.
To put this more simply:
Always act in such a way that you would be
willing for it to become a general law that everyone else should do the same in
the same situation.
This means at least two things:
- if
you aren't willing for the ethical rule you claim to be following to be
applied equally to everyone - including you - then that rule is not a
valid moral rule. I can't claim that something is a valid moral rule and
make an exception to it for myself and my family and friends.
So, for example, if I wonder whether I should
break a promise, I can test whether this is right by asking myself whether I
would want there to be a universal rule that says 'it's OK to break promises'.
Since I don't want there to be a rule that lets
people break promises they make to me, I can conclude that it
would be wrong for me to break the promise I have made.
- if
the ethical rule you claim to be following cannot logically be made a
universal rule, then it is not a valid moral rule.
So, for example, if I were thinking
philosophically I might realise that a universal rule that 'it's OK to break
promises in order to get one's own way', would mean that no-one would ever
believe another person's promise and so all promises would lose their value.
Since the existence of promises in society requires the acceptance of their
value, the practice of promising would effectively cease to exist. It would no
longer be possible to ‘break’ a promise, let alone get one’s own way by doing so.
Moral rules must respect human beings
Kant thought that all human beings should be
treated as free and equal members of a shared moral community, and the second
version of the categorical imperative reflects this by emphasising the
importance of treating people properly. It also acknowledges the relevance of
intention in morality.
Act so that you treat humanity, both in your
own person and in that of another, always as an end and never merely as a
means.
Man and, in general, every rational being
exists as an end in himself and not merely as a means to be arbitrarily used by
this or that will. In all his actions, whether they are directed to himself or
to other rational beings, he must always be regarded at the same time as an
end...
Immanuel Kant, The Categorical Imperative
Kant is saying that people should always be
treated as valuable - as an end in themselves - and should not just be used in
order to achieve something else. They should not be tricked, manipulated or
bullied into doing things.
This resonates strongly with disapproving
comments such as "he's just using her", and it underpins the idea
that "the end can never justify the means".
Here are three examples of treating people as
means and not ends:
- treating
a person as if they were an inanimate object
- coercing
a person to get what you want
- deceiving
a person to get what you want
Kant doesn't want to say that people can't be
used at all; it may be fine to use a person as long as they are also being
treated as an end in themselves.
The importance of duty
Do the right thing for the right reason,
because it is the right thing to do.
Kant thought that the only good reason for
doing the right thing was because of duty - if you had some other reason
(perhaps you didn't commit murder because you were too scared, not because it
was your duty not to) then that you would not have acted in a morally good way.
But having another reason as well as duty
doesn't stop an action from being right, so long as duty was the ‘operational reason’ for our action.
If we do something because we know it's our
duty, and if duty is the key element in our decision to act, then we have acted
rightly, even if we wanted to do the act or were too scared not to do it, or
whatever.
Rossian duty-based ethics
Kantian ethics seems pretty uncompromising and
not really suited to the untidiness of many moral choices that people have to
make.
The 20th Century philosopher W. D. Ross [Sir
David Ross] (1877-1971) suggested that it would be helpful to look at two kinds
of duty:
- Prima
facie duties
- Actual
duties
Prima facie duties
- are
self-evident and obvious duties (prima facie is a Latin expression
meaning 'on first appearances' or 'by first instance')
- can
be known to be correct if a person thinks about them and understands
them: when we have reached sufficient mental maturity
and have given sufficient attention to the proposition it is evident without
any need of proof, or of evidence beyond itself
W D Ross, The Right and the Good, 1930
- should
be promoted, "all things considered"
- can
be outweighed by other prima facie duties.
Actual duties
This is the duty people are left with after
they have weighed up all the conflicting prima facie duties that apply in a
particular case: the ground of the actual rightness of the act
is that, of all acts possible in the circumstances, it is that whose prima
facie rightness in the respects in which it is prima facie right most outweighs
its prima facie wrongness in any respects in which it is prima facie wrong.
W D Ross, The Right and The Good, 1930
Ross listed seven prima facie duties:
- Fidelity
- Reparation
- Gratitude
- Justice
- Beneficence
- Self-improvement
- Non-maleficence
(avoiding actions that do harm)
Calling these 'duties' may be a bit misleading,
as they are not so much duties as "features that give us genuine (not
merely apparent) moral reason to do certain actions".
Ross later described prima facie duties as
"responsibilities to ourselves and to others" and he went on to say
that "what we should do (our duty proper [our actual duty]) is determined
by the balance of these responsibilities."
Problems with the Rossian approach
Ross's idea still leaves some problems:
- How
can we tell which prima facie duties are involved in a particular case?
- How
can we compare and rank them in order to arrive at a balance which will
guide us as to our actual duty?
Ross thought that people could solve those
problems by relying on their intuitions.
