THE SEARCH FOR WISDOM

In the last chapter the concept of final causality as an attribute of all Being was discussed. In this chapter Meta-Science is called on to answer certain objections to the explanatory use of final causality in the specials sciences, first of all in natural science. While biologists claim they can do with the concept of "teleology," they certainly cannot do without the notion of "function" in explaining the various organs of a living thing and their operations. The term "function" indicates a regular process needed to maintain life and hence requires the scientist to observe or discover how that function accomplishes a certain result necessary or at least useful to the organisms' development, survival, and reproduction. To grant this is to concede that the function of an organ or organ system is predetermined to produce a definite and uniform effect that maintains the existence of the organism. This, and no more, is exactly what Aristotle meant by "teleology" or "final causality." Little is gained by substituting, as most biologists today do, "function," "teleonomy," directedness," "adaptation," etc. for the rejected term "teleology."[1]

Biologists also often suppose that the neo-Darwinian theory of how organisms have come into existence by natural selection adequately explains them without resort to teleological considerations. Without entering in detail into the now again hotly debated question of whether Neo-Darwinianism is an adequate explanation of the origin of life and its species, it suffices here to point out that theories of evolution must choose between two main possibilities. [2]

1). If organic evolution is determined by some innate tendency of matter to develop into intelligent life, as, for example, Teilhard de Chardin believed, such a theory of evolution is obviously teleological. Only a few biologists today, however, would claim that the evidence favors any such "law of evolution" that would make inevitable the development of life, especially intelligent life, in the universe.

2). On the other hand, if organic evolution is fundamentally the result of the chance concurrences of various natural processes, as most Neo-Darwinians maintain, and hence might just as probably or even more probably have failed to produce any of the organisms that still exist or even life at all, it is indeed non-teleological, since chance events by definition are non-teleological. In that case Darwinism is an historical rather than a scientific explanation, if "scientific" is taken in the ordinary sense of explanation through universal laws intrinsic to material things.

Thus, for example, geological science can describe the Grand Canyon and reconstruct the history of how it was formed by various natural forces acting in a certain factual sequence, but there is no natural law that made necessary this sequence of events or the consequent existence of this canyon or indeed of any canyon at that place or of its vast dimensions. It will not do to explain it by some law of erosion by water, since in a different and equally probable scenario the plateau into which the Grand Canyon is cut might never have been raised to sufficient altitude to have this result. For it to have been produced various independent lines of causation had to concur by chance. It is in this way that Darwinism posits no single natural force that could guide these many different forces to produce any particular unique result.

Of course Neo-Darwinists might reply that the notion of "natural selection" avoids this dilemma, since it explains the existence of functioning organisms by their "adaptation" to environmental changes. Before Darwin, J. B. Lamarck (1774-1826) hypothesized that this "adaptation" implies some ability in the organism not only to maintain itself in its actual environment but also to meet new challenges as the environment changed. He, therefore, posited an "inheritance of acquired characteristics" by which the achievement of adaptation to small changes in the environment would be inherited by the next generation and thus adaptation would keep pace with environmental change. Obviously this theory implies that inheritance is teleological at least in one respect, namely, that it is predetermined to pass on successfully adaptive traits to the next generation. Contrary to Lamarck's theory, however, modern genetics shows that the transmission of the genome from generation to generation is independent of the adaptive success of any particular generation provided it manages to reproduce. Hence Neo-Darwinians argue that the true causes of evolution are changes in the environment that "select" those mutations that will produce a new and better-adapted species. Yet this presupposes that the sequence of environmental changes is such as to gradually form the more and more complexly organized species that have in fact emerged.

The latter possibility amounts to saying that there is a teleological tendency in the changes of the environment to shape organisms that can survive, and thus we are back to the first of the above alternatives, namely, that a general law of evolution exists. Thus teleology cannot be eliminated from biological explanations except by desperately attributing evolution entirely to chance and thus reducing it to a history of emerging species that provides no scientific explanation in terms of natural law. Nor can it be argued that the "law of natural selection" produced this continuous sequence, since this "selection" is nothing more than the sequence of environmental changes that was itself not law-like but purely historical and a matter of chance. Thus the failure of Neo-Darwinism to take into account the necessarily teleological character of scientific explanations has rendered it a scientifically highly unsatisfactory explanation of the phenomena it attempts to explain.

When we turn to physics and chemistry and deal only with non-living entities, it may seem more plausible to explain them scientifically without resort to such concepts as "function," but in fact this is not the case. The inanimate universe is not, as Heraclitus claimed or as some process philosophers argue, simply a "flux" of matter. Processes can be observed only because they produce relatively stable objects that for a time maintain themselves in existence. The universe consists, in part at least, of relatively stable molecules and atoms without which chemistry would have nothing to study. What we know of these objects is that they have a structure that can maintain itself against many kinds of external disruptions.

While homeostatsis is often said to be characteristic of living organisms, at least something analogous to it is observed in atoms and molecules. As noted in the last chapter, atoms and molecules maintain themselves in existence even when their structure is somewhat disrupted. It takes considerable energy from outside to destroy most atoms and when the normal number of electrons is torn from the nucleus of an atom of any element, the atom is so structured that it tends to regain them from the environment. It is true that radioactive elements seem to be self-destructive, but this process of breaking down is protracted and eventually results in the production of more stable elements. Molecules have a similar stability due to the chemical bonding of the atoms that enter into a molecule as its stably united parts.

According to modern physics, relatively stable atoms and molecules have been formed out of elementary particles that are bearers of various forms of "energy" and which were ultimately generated either in the original Big Bang or latter within various stellar objects. Did the chaotic energy of the Big Bang, much of which still remains as the radiation that fills the rest of space, necessarily produce the super-galaxies, galaxies, stars, and finally relatively stable atoms and molecules? It is of course the project of current quantum mechanics as it has been verified in certain present circumstances to construct a model of a Big Bang having certain initial conditions from which it is possible to deduce that this specifically structured universe as we observe it could have developed.

According to Stephen Weinberg, [3] "It is possible that eventually the initial conditions [of the universe] will appear as part of the laws of nature" but he has also admitted that:

He goes on to mention how "chaos theory" shows that the future cannot be predicted in any concrete detail. The more modest proposal of finding a theory that, given certain initial conditions, would predict the probable formation of an expanding universe made of galaxies, stars, atoms, and molecules much as we observe it, is, however, not so implausible. Such a theory might be something like a statement that from what we know about H2O we can predict that if its temperature is continually lowered it will finally produce crystals of ice. Note, however, that such an explanation is teleological since it is based on an inherent property of water that predetermines that when that it is subjected to certain specific conditions the same effect will always be produced without its destruction as water. We can establish this, however, by direct observation; while the state of matter and energy in the Big Bang is beyond possible observation.

To sum up this point, the denial of final causality as a necessary element of natural scientific explanation is due to a gross misunderstanding of the term. To speak of natural forces that, precisely because they are "natural," have in the same conditions uniform effects is to admit that they are inherently predetermined to produce such effects. If these effects also result in the observable relative stability of certain kinds of bodies, this is what is meant by a teleological explanation of the existence and activity of these bodies.

As for teleology in the mathematical sciences, since these disciplines abstract from change and deal with idealized quantity as their proper subject they do not make use of explanations in terms of efficient causality. And since final causality is correlative to efficient causality, they do not demonstrate through final causality either, but only through formal and material causality, and the latter merely in the sense that the parts of any quantitative whole are its secondary matter. Yet mathematical objects can be beautiful, because sensible beauty consists, as shown in the last chapter, not only in beautiful sense qualities, but also in their intelligible relations of similarity, contrast, symmetry, proportion, etc. These relations have a remarkable clarity in mathematics and beauty is just such clarity in relation to human cognition. Hence mathematicians often speak of a particular mathematical theorem as "elegant" or "beautiful" and natural scientists similarly praise certain models used in mathematical physics.

Finally, it should be noted that insofar as appropriate mathematical models can be used in mathematical physics to calculate measurements of motion and time as functions or relations between sets of quantities, these models, although they themselves are motionless and timeless, can be used to measure the efficient causality of natural forces. Change moves from potentiality that no longer exists to a new actuality that does not yet exist. A line that is a vector → directed from potency to act, past to future, but not in the reverse, can analogically model this progression from potentiality to actuality. It would be false, however, to think that, as all parts of the line are actual, so all parts of the motion are actual, when in fact only one point on the "line" is actual, the "now" or "present." It is only mentally that pat, present, and future are portrayed as equally existent. Such a vector, however, can be used to model a change and the arrow symbolizes the teleological predetermination of the efficient cause of that change.

In the practical sciences the good and the bad take on a central position as the first principles of practical reasoning. Two different basic conceptions about what is ethically good and bad have run throughout the history of human thought depending on what is supposed to be the criterion of what is morally good or bad. One view is that of deontology (from Greek deontos, duty) or voluntarism according to which this criterion is the will of someone who has authority over the agent's actions. [4] This will is expressed in authoritative commands, laws, rules, or norms that ought to be obeyed. Hence morality reduces primarily to obedience to legitimate authority. A familiar example of this type of morality is the Torah or Law of the Hebrew Scriptures ("Divine Command Ethics)," but it is to be found in most cultures. The Jewish Law had is precedent in the laws of the Babylonians and Egyptians. Today also in our law schools the prevailing legal theory is "Legal Positivism" which rests the validity of law purely on the will, not of God, but of the human legislators.

Experience shows that the danger of this voluntaristic, legalistic deontologism is that it can encourage ethical minimalism. As Jesus' Sermon on the Mount that begins with the Beatitudes shows, the Gospel calls on Christians to become "perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect." If, however, morality is simply obedience to laws, then we are tempted to interpret the law so that it demands of us the least effort or inconvenience possible. On the other hand, in reaction to this minimalist laxism ethical voluntarism can also generate a scrupulous rigorism that makes no allowance for situations not foreseen in a written law.

The other ethical approach is that of teleology or an ethics of ends and means according to which law is the expression not just of the will, but also, and more fundamentally, of the wisdom of the law-maker. Hence what makes an act morally good or bad is not precisely because legislators have made a law about it, but because they knows what kinds of acts will in fact promote or harm human persons as means to the goal or end of their life, true happiness. Consequently, if in fact the law does not embody such wisdom it is invalid and if it is certainly known to be contrary to wisdom should be disobeyed. Thus a teleological ethics sees law as moral guidance but not as the ultimate ground of morality or of moral judgment.

A "natural law" ethics, therefore, as teleologists understand it, is based primarily not on God's will but on his wisdom as the Creator who has made us to be happy and guides us to choose those means that will lead to happiness. By giving human persons and pure spirits intelligence and free will the Creator has given to them the capacity to participate in his wisdom, to understand their natures and hence the ordered needs of these natures and how they can be satisfied by intelligent, realistic choices. For Jews, Christians, and Muslims the revealed Law contained in the Scriptures supports this natural participation in God's wisdom about good living. For Christians, furthermore, this revelation shows that the perfect happiness to which God has freely called us exceeds (but also includes) the imperfect happiness that is the teleology of our natures. This perfect happiness is a share in the fellowship of the Trinity of Persons that is the One God.

Pagan Greek and Roman ethics were teleological, since they measured the morality of actions by their relation to happiness (eudaemonia, summum bonum), but differed on what this goal of happiness consisted in. For the Epicureans, taking a view not difficult for most of us to understand, this goal was simply pleasure.[5] Yet few, if any ethicists have adopted this goal without qualification, because a life of unbridled sensual dissipation is obviously destructive and contrary to human dignity. Actually the Epicureans themselves advocated a simple, quiet life in the country with a few agreeable friends, not unlike the Biblical advice of Qoheleth,

Yet while the Epicureans greatly feared the gods and wanted to believe they were remote, Qoheleth thanks God for the good things of this life and warns that our enjoyment of them must be within God's laws. Since at the time he wrote there was as yet no adequate revelation from God of what happens after death, Qoheleth, as a devout Jew, was unwilling to base his ethics on the fantasies of the pagans about such a life. In opposition to the Epicureans, the Stoics argued that the goal of life was a serenity of mind achieved by discipline of the passions. Yet, since for the Stoics this freedom from passion made possible perfect obedience to natural law, their system had a distinctly deontological flavor, but also assimilated many elements of the Platonic-Aristotelian ethics. [6]

For Plato and Aristotle, however, since they believed in the spiritually of the human intellect, happiness could not be merely physical pleasure. Hence they both held that happiness was to be found in the search for truth, that is, in contemplation. For Plato, this contemplation of truth is attained by the escape of the soul from its entombment in the human body and its return to its eternal vision of the One and the Good. The means to this return of the soul to its original state is the philosophical life of virtue dedicated to the pursuit of wisdom. After death the philosopher hopes to make this return, but for those who lack perfect virtue in this life the reincarnation of the soul is inevitable.[7] Those who die in an imperfect state will be reincarnated in a body appropriate to that state, so that the vicious are doomed to become animals and the less vicious to become human slaves. Only the best will be philosophers on the way to wisdom within that immediate lifetime. Because Aristotle never adopted the Platonic dualistic conception of the soul-body relation nor reincarnation his view of the kind of contemplation that is the goal of human life was more compatible, as we will see, with Christian doctrine.

The Christian Fathers of the Church naturally devoted much time to ethical questions, as did the medieval university theologians who generally followed Aristotle. Yet they read Aristotle with a marked Platonic tendency to dualism. Late Middle Ages a deontological approach to ethics took the lead in Christian universities. Beginning with Dun Scotus, the Franciscan school in opposition to the Dominican Aquinas gave priority in ethics to the will rather than the intellect. [8] Hence they preferred a deontological type of ethical system, called "voluntarism," for three reasons. First, because St. Francis had wonderfully exemplified Christian love, it seemed to his followers that eternal happiness must consist principally in the union with God through love, and only secondarily through knowledge. [9] Secondly, the Franciscans were concerned to condemn the interpretation of Aristotle prevalent in the teaching of philosophy in medieval universities and derived from the Neo-Platonic, Arabian commentators, because it seemed to deny free will to God as the First Cause. Third, William of Ockham, also a Franciscan but a severe critique of Scotus, nevertheless accepted Scotus' voluntarism yet related it to his own Nominalism that under his influence came to dominate the universities and lay the ground for the Protestant Reformation. This Nominalism raised such grave doubts as to the capability of human reason to understand the nature of God or his purposes in creation that it made it seem that a teleological ethics would be impossible unless confirmed by the revealed commands of God. Hence Protestant Reformers whose theological education was Nominalistic but who, in reaction to the Pelagian tendencies of Nominalism insisted on the inability of fallen human beings to love God, also adopted a fideistic, voluntarist, and thus deontological ethics. They found support for deontologism in the dialectical opposition of salvation by obedience to the Divine Commands of the Old Testament Law vs. the salvation by grace proclaimed in New Testament Gospel.

The debate between deontologism and teleologism reached a climax during the Post-Reformation period in the famous "Controversy Over Moral Systems" that used up all too much energy among the theologians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that should have to meeting the Enlightenment attacks on Christianity. The principal remaining difference was over the way the traditional legal dictum, "A doubtful law does not oblige," should be interpreted. One side, called "probabilism," favored by most Jesuits and Redemptorists, held that when the interpretation of a law was doubtful it was consistent with obedience to follow whatever interpretation could claim as "solid probability" according to several recognized expert and orthodox moralists The other side, called "probabiliorism," favored by most Dominicans, held that the more probable interpretation of the law ought to be followed. Back of this difference obviously was that between the voluntarist tradition and the teleological tradition in ethics. If the law as such is the basis of morality then one is obliged to obey it only as it appears to be the will of the law-maker. On the other hand, if the law only provides wise guidance to the goal of happiness, then obviously one should follow the interpretation of the law that will more probably lead to that goal. Unfortunately the debate seldom touched directly on this fundamental issue and the Church officially rejected both laxism and rigorism but did not definitively resolve the differences between more moderate positions.

In the Enlightenment the Lutheran version of this Divine Command Ethics influenced Immanuel Kant, but he gave it a radically new form. Kant spoke in a traditional manner of the moral law of God, but also rejected the possibility of a "metaphysical" knowledge of God---taking "metaphysics" as an a prioristic science (in the idealistic tradition that through Leibniz went back to Descartes, Suarez, and Scotus, as explained in Chapter II) in which Kant was educated. [10] Hence Kant viewed the concept of "God" as merely a practical regulative idea needed in ethics to provide a fear of punishment and a hope of reward as a motive for moral conduct for the guidance of the less virtuous as necessary for social order. Hence Kant could not base morality on God's will and commands, since these were for him unknowable.

Moreover, Kant thought that to make human conscience depend on any authority external to it (heteronomy, other law) would detract from genuine human responsibility. Therefore he made individual conscience (autonomy, self law) the ultimate determinant of what is good or bad. Thus each person is his or her own lawgiver. One might object that if everyone were his or own lawmaker, there would be as many codes of law as persons, and society would become impossible. But Kant did not see this as a problem, because he thought that reason is the same in every human individual, although he granted that because the passions war against reason, not all persons makes use of this common and evident reason.

Thus for Kant true morality is obedience to a "categorical imperative" that has the form, "Act so that your conduct is such that you would be willing for everyone to do the same." For example, lying is wrong because we would not want others to lie to us. The difficulty with this rule, of course, is that it has a purely formal character since, while it establishes that all moral precepts must be universal, it tells us little about the concrete content of such rules. To give content to a Kantian type ethics, therefore, one needs to resort (as apparently Kant himself did) to the theory of Jean-Jacques Rousseau of a "moral sense" [11] by which all humans, when not spoiled by their culture, have true feelings about what is right and wrong.

In the British tradition both the influence of Kant and Rousseau were felt, but perhaps the most characteristic tendency was that exemplified by Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) in the form of the "hedonic calculus" of "the greatest pleasure for the greatest number" basic to the moral theory called "Utilitarianism" that seems to dominate modern culture.[12] Such an ethics of course is of the teleological type, but puts little emphasis on an intellectual, contemplative goal for life, but rather on a state of subjective "feeling" (like Rousseau) and the achievement of purely practical goals that promote such feelings of satisfaction. In the United States this took the form of John Dewey's Pragmatism or Instrumentalism in which truth is not a goal but a means to a goal. In the twentieth century these view took the form of G. E. Moore's "moral sense," then of the "emotivism" of certain Analytic Philosophers, who, however, discarded emotivism for a "good reason" ethics that has marked utilitarian and pragmatic features.

Thus Christian thinkers, however, both Protestants and Catholics, were faced in the late nineteenth and during the twentieth century with the problem of justifying their traditional moral standards in the face of the growing secularism of modernity. Some Protestant theologians answered this challenge by upholding a fundamentalist emphasis on the Biblical letter of the law. Others, often influenced by Kantian idealism, moved toward a "liberal' interpretation of the Biblical law by an exegesis that emphasized its historical, cultural conditioning that seem to require a re-thinking in terms of modern culture. An influential example of such a theory was Joseph Fletcher's "Situation Ethics" that sought to reduce all ethical decision to a single Biblical command, "Do what is most loving." Only too obviously, as another Protestant theologian, Paul Ramsey, pointed out, this single norm is so vague that it can be understood in so many different ways as to be simply arbitrary. In U. S. secular ethics a common methodology was that of "Principalism" in which in a Kantian manner moral decisions were reduced to a few very general norms such as the "Principle of Beneficence" and the "Principle of Autonomy" or a much more extend list of "human rights," but these were generally justified only as consistent set of norms based on the attitudes views of a majority within a given culture at a given time. Ethics of this type are often further refined by the methods of Analytic Philosophy and its reference to "good reasons." In such a U. S. philosopher as Richard Rorty we have an eloquent exponent of a pragmatic, moral and cultural relativism that returns us to the days of the Greek Sophists.

In Catholic circles, beginning with the Thomistic Revival of Leo XIII, there was a gradual return to the teleological type of ethics promoted by Aquinas. By the employment of an Aristotelian epistemology Aquinas had provided a remarkably systematic account of Christian ethics in the Second Part of his Summa Theologiae. The first subdivision of this Second Part (I-II) supplies a very careful analysis of the foundations of moral theology, while the second subdivision (II-II) presents a "ethics" in great detail. By a "virtue ethics" current moral theologians mean one in which virtue the principal stress is on character formation. A virtue ethics could be either deontological or teleological, but Aquinas' view is strongly teleological and begins in the Summa Theologiae I-II, qq. 1-5) with a discussion of what true happiness is. As a Christian he shows that this is the beatific vision of God possible only through grace, but that this also includes as a subordinate goal that kind happiness in rational contemplation proper to human nature, just as Aristotle pictured it.

Aquinas, however, maintained that the Divine Law is not the will of God, but the Wisdom of God that guides his loving care of his creation and that the divine and natural laws are the human participation through our God-given intelligence and freedom in following this way toward true happiness. This goal, innate to human nature, is the attainment of happiness. This natural human happiness consists in the fulfillment of human needs (of which the chief is contemplative knowledge) that are either freely chosen or naturally given in an orderly manner that integrates them into one unified though complex goal. Those needs that are not innate but freely chosen (for example, a need for a particular chosen hobby) must be consistent with those that are naturally given and hence necessary and are therefore goods per se, that is valuable in themselves and not merely as means to other goods.

Theologically Aquinas grounded this teleological ethics in Jesus' criticism of the Pharisees of emphasis on the "letter' rather than the "spirit" of the law. By "letter" was meant the deontological emphasis on obedience, while by "spirit" was meant the teleological emphasis on the purpose of the law and the need of sincere and intelligent cooperation with that purpose. In Aquinas' theology this emphasis is understood as the internalization of the law by the presence of the Holy Spirit in the Christian soul by grace in the form of the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love.

Aquinas broadly identifies the human needs that constitute the principles of a natural ethics as (1) physical health including security and necessary external property; (2) family life for the education of all children and for the sexual fulfillment of those who freely choose to marry; (3) participation in a human community; (d) true knowledge. [13] These goods, though per se, are hierarchically ordered and unified by the supreme good of true knowledge. Aristotle in the last book of his Nicomachean Ethics argued that since things are specified by what is best in them and human nature is specified by intelligence, it is the achievement and enjoyment of true contemplation, that is knowledge of the highest truths accessible to human beings. The Latin contemplare that etymologically refers to the observation of auguries in a temple, or signs of the will of the god, translates the Greek theorein to know what it is valuable to know for its own sake.

This does not mean, however, as some have thought, that for Aristotle contemplation is the exclusive goal of human life. [14] Aristotle, a thorough realist, is quite clear that the other needs must also be satisfied, since one who lacks adequate material goods and health, family support, and society cannot engage in contemplation. Nor should we think of this "contemplation" as mysticism or some rarified kind of knowledge possible only for a few. In modern terms what Aristotle had in mind was in general what today we would call "the search for meaning in life" and more specifically the wisdom of Meta-Science.

It follows, of course, that while the lesser goods of physical life, family, and society are necessary conditions of the highest good, namely, knowledge, they are subordinated to it and can in a measure be sacrificed to it. Yet they also can never be totally neglected. Hence Aquinas followed Aristotle in insisting that the contemplative life needs a certain amount of material possessions, but not many, and that for these to be readily available there must be some private property, though its use must be regulated for the common good. They both also recognized that many persons are so occupied in the practical life of society that the "contemplative life" devoted principally to study is impractical for them. Hence to them Aristotle assigns a genuine but secondary kind of happiness in which the practice of the active virtues predominates, the "active life." As for the second of these four needs, namely, sexual fulfillment, Aquinas, following the counsel of St. Paul (1 Cor 7:32-35) held that while it was natural for all humans to marry and have a family, nevertheless, in the present fallen and sinful human condition, domestic life is often a hindrance to the achievement of the highest element in happiness, namely, contemplation. Hence it was not obligatory for all to choose marriage but some could freely choose celibacy, provided that a sufficient number married so as to maintain the species and the education of new members.

To satisfy these human needs in a consistent way requires that each person intelligently follow the natural law and thus participate in the wisdom of the Creator. To do this, however, certain basic life problems must be solved and to solve these person must develop moral character or a set of skills "called "virtues." A virtue is not a mere "habit" in the English sense of that word, that is, a routine pattern of behavior. Such habit formation is necessary for us so that like animals we can act in a routine manner without constantly making new decisions. But life presents us with ever-new situations for which a routine response is not adequate and may even be disastrous. A "virtue" is a sill that makes us flexible in adjusting to new situations and solving them intelligently and creatively.

For Aristotle and Aquinas the fundamental problems that require virtue are (1) control of biological drives for pleasure, especially for food and sex (temperance or moderation); (2) control of biological drives for aggression or flight in the face of danger or the need for endurance in painful situations (fortitude or courage and patience); (3) control of the will to respect the rights of others as well as one's own needs (justice); (4) control of intelligence so as not to act on impulse but to make thoughtful and informed decisions (prudence or practical reasonableness). With these major or "cardinal" virtues, Aquinas links a number of similar assistant virtues. Contrary to Plato, Aristotle and Aquinas did not consider these four cardinal virtues to be qualities of any moral act but held that their objects were different and especially difficult problems of human living.

For Aquinas, therefore, the practical science of ethics is not simply about particular moral decisions but more fundamentally about the formation of a virtuous character. Ethics is in fact simply the more theoretical, universal, and scientific aspect of the virtue of prudence, since prudent (practically wise) persons are first of all concerned to perfect their own characters by striving always to act in the light of reason, that is, of the general truths about right and wrong provided by ethics as a practical science.

For Aquinas, writing from the worldview of Christian faith, an ethics directed only to the moral problems of the present life considered apart from the historical situation of humanity was very incomplete. Though Aristotle demonstrated as part of natural science in his De Anima that the human intelligence is immaterial, in his extant works he does not tackle the question of the fate of this spiritual soul after the death of its material body. Yet again it is very difficult to reconcile the survival of the soul after death with Aristotle's principle that "Nature does nothing in vain." According to his anthropology intellectual knowledge depends on the bodily senses, but death seems to render impossible the attainment of a human being's natural end, namely, true happiness in which the supreme good is intellectual contemplation.

As a Christian theologian, for Aquinas this difficulty was ultimately answered by the revealed doctrine of the resurrection of the body. But even if this view is accepted the problem of the state of separated souls prior to the resurrection remains a problem. Hence some Protestant thinkers have argued for "soul sleep" and the re-creation of the souls of the dead at the resurrection, as Muslims also believe. Aquinas, however, thought that Meta-Science, since it deals with the analogy between material and immaterial Being, assures us that the soul survives and retains an intrinsic relation to the body it has lost and that it requires to constitute a complete human person. Hence, as was shown in Chapter VI, he was convinced that the separated soul continues to contemplate in a manner that resembles that of the pure spirits. This is possible because it no longer acts as a form of the matter of the body that in bodily life limited the proper and direct object of its intelligence to the essence of material things. Thus in its separated condition the human soul's self-consciousness of its own spiritual acts (and hence of the spirituality of its intelligence and of the self for which it is a property) ceases to be indirect and becomes direct by "immediate information," just as it is for pure spirits.

Aquinas, using a term of St. Augustine's speaks of this mode of knowledge as a "divine illumination" but by this means the natural participation of the angels in divine knowledge through the innate ideas given them in their creation as part of their very natures. Yet Aquinas, as we have seen, holds that human souls, unlike pure spirits, do not have innate ideas. Hence he argued that God must give to human souls at death, in addition to those abstract concepts they have learned during their bodily lives, such ideas of concrete singulars as are necessary for them to know during the time before their reunion with their resurrected bodies.

Those virtuous souls, therefore, who at death are committed, along with other good spirits, to the true natural end of the contemplation of God will continue this contemplation after death and even more perfectly than in this life and thus will attain a true natural happiness, although an imperfect one, both because of the lack of their complete body-soul personhood and also because their natural happiness is limited by their finite natures. Perfect beatitude, Aquinas holds is possible only by intimate participation in the life of God to which creatures have no natural right, although the Christian Gospel assures them it can and should be attained by the unmerited grace of God that transcends creaturely limitations. [15]

Thus Meta-Science provides some account of the state of separated souls that permits us to be consistent in saying that the natural goal of human life is the contemplation of God and creation most perfectly attained after death by those who have lived earthly life virtuously. Moreover for Aquinas the achievement of the true goal of life goal must be made in one lifetime, not, as for Plato and the Hindus, after a cycle of reincarnations of an eternal soul, since for him the human soul comes into existence only when God creates a soul for the human body in the womb. Some Thomists ask, without finding a certain answer, whether the natural end of the human person requires that God will eventually resurrect all human bodies so that human souls might again in justice enjoy full human personhood. [16] What is certain for Christian faith is that the Creator did not only freely produce the world, including its spiritual beings, out of nothing and order his creation so that these creatures could reach their true natural ends.

Far beyond any demand of their natures God has also freely chosen to invite all his intelligent creatures to enter the divine community of the Trinity, whose very existence in God is beyond the capacities of natural human knowledge and can be known only through God's revelation. This comes about only by grace. This term "grace" is often also used in describing the bahkti devotions to a particular god in Hinduism or to the Buddhas of Mahayana Buddhism to indicate that those who in this life find they cannot practice the asceticism and concentrated meditation required to achieve release from suffering, can do so by the invocation of gods or Buddhas. While this analogy with the Christian term "grace" is important for dialogue, there is a profound difference between the two uses of the term. For the Christian "grace" is not merely the help of superior spiritual beings to achieve that enlightenment which is the natural destiny of the human spirit. It is also a transforming action of God by which a human person is elevated from his or her natural condition, as ordered to a purely natural goal, to a "participation in the divine nature" (2 Pt 1:4). In this sense monistic or non-dualistic systems such as Hinduism or Buddhism exclude "grace" since in fact the human spirit is from all eternity identical with the Absolute.

For Christians this union with God in the intimacy of the community of Trinity is not the innate goal of human nature but is an elevation of human existence that is entirely generous on God's part. Nor does human salvation result in a loss of the individual existence of creatures given them by their Creator as distinct from the Creator's own existence. Salvation completes created persons by enabling each of them to enter into an interpersonal, I-Thou with God.

The Catholic Church's recommendation of the ethical thought of St. Thomas Aquinas did not exclude the need to revise it in view of developments in modern culture and the proposed revisions, especially after Vatican II, although generally teleological in orientation, took quite varied forms. One revision, suggested even before Vatican II, was to reemphasize the elements of Aquinas ethical thought that were supported by the Church Fathers. A leader in this type of revision was Henri de Lubac S.J., [17] who argued that since Aquinas speaks of "the natural desire for the beatific vision, [18]" he must have held, as the Church Fathers seem to have done, that in fact there is only one goal for human life, the supernatural one provided by grace. Yet de Lubac, in order to maintain, as Catholic orthodoxy requires, that our supernatural ordination is utterly gratuitous, argued that to save this gratuity it is sufficient to hold that although there is only one supernatural end for the human person it cannot be attained by human powers but only by grace. [19]

In fact, however, for Aquinas as an Aristotelian, de Lubac's thesis that we human person have no natural end, would imply also that we have no human nature, since without its own proper final cause no substantial nature is possible. Although this question remains controversial [20] most Thomists understand the term "natural desire" used by Aquinas to be conditional. Thus our spiritual, intellectual nature desires the absolutely perfect beatitude that only a face-to-face vision of God could provide, if it is possible, but only if it is possible. Reason, however, cannot demonstrate this possibility, but can only answer those who claim that the notion of the beatific-vision for a creature is self-contradictory, that is, who deny that the intellectual creature is capax Dei. Yet our nature is not frustrated by the fact that we cannot attain a good that we do not even know to be possible. We would be frustrated only if we had no natural goal of life attainable by human powers, since then we would have a free will that could not be exercised, since our freedom cannot be rationally exercised without an ultimate goal that is knowable by reason.

Hence, besides the natural virtues necessary to satisfy the teleology intrinsic to human nature Aquinas argues that we need supernatural or "infused" virtues to attain union with God as One God in Three Persons. [21] Some of these are moral virtues that simply elevate the corresponding natural moral virtues, but some are "theological virtues," namely, Christian faith, hope, and love (agape) that directly unite the baptized to God in his inner life as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Thus Aquinas says that natural happiness, though it is proportionate to human nature, is still an imperfect happiness appropriate to the limitations of a created nature, while the beatific vision of eternal life in which God is known as He is and loved unreservedly is a share in God's perfect happiness. Natural human happiness, on the contrary, although "perfect" in relation to human nature, is imperfect relative to God's truly perfect happiness. To share in God's perfect happiness is a gift that no merely human effort can deserve. It is a gift that can be finally possessed by those who through grace cooperate with grace. But without grace we can do absolutely nothing to earn a salvation that is the totally free gift of God. Thus apart from all theological issues, Aquinas on the basis of reason defends the existence of a natural ultimate end as the principle of rational ethics and thus provides an ethics independent of faith in Christian revelation.

In Protestant circles the ethics of the Lutheran moralist Helmut Theilecke was especially influential. [22] On the basis of the Lutheran simul justus et peccator, he maintained that fallen humanity, while always relying on God's forgiveness for the sin involved, is nevertheless sometimes forced to compromise between Gospel morality and its worldly situation and thus perform an evil action because, though sinful, it is the lesser evil. In a very different vein, another Protestant theologian Joseph Fletcher proposed a "Situation Ethics" that reduced all moral norms to a single precept, "Do what is most loving" but since this left the meaning of "love" undefined, it provided little real guidance. [23] One of its strongest opponents was still another Protestant moralist, Paul Ramsey, who maintained the primacy of love by a deontological methodology that posited absolute moral norms that one was never justified in violating.

In Catholic circles Bernard H�ring proposed another type of revision. Writing in the Redemptorist tradition of moderate voluntarism derived from St. Alphonsus Ligouri, H�ring thought to adapt moral norms to difficult situations by a greater appeal to the virtue of epicheia by which a lenient interpretation is given to the law in difficult cases. His discipline Charles Curran, somewhat like Theilicke proposed a "theology of compromise," according to which original sin produces situations in which what is objectively wrong can be justified by the agent's good intentions. For example, a homosexual may engage in homosexual acts provided these acts are motivated by sincere and "responsible" love, because no other possibility of sexual fulfillment is open to him. Yet, contrary to Theilicke, Curran holds that such an act would be objectively moral and free of all sin. [24] Curran also is very critical of the interpretation of the natural law found in papal documents, especially ones dealing with sexual morals, on the grounds that it is distorted by "physicalism' or "biologism" because it emphasizes the physical character of an act rather than the intention of the agent that gives it a human moral character. This has been his constant criticism of the encyclical Humanae Vitae and its condemnation of contraception.

On very different lines, the Jesuit moralist Gerard Gilleman, S. J. urged a return to the teleological ethics of Aquinas with an emphasis on love of God and neighbor as the supreme moral virtue.[25] In Catholic circles the nature of this Christian love that commits us to the true goal of life became a central issue. Karl Rahner, S. J. in an influential essay "A Formally Existential Ethics" [26] renamed Aquinas' "ultimate end" "the fundamental option" to show the profound level at which this commitment is made by what Rahner called an exercise of "transcendental freedom." On the other hand, Servaise Pinckaer's, O.P. [27] emphasized that Aquinas the natural teleology of the human will in its freedom is not (as Ockham and the voluntarist tradition maintained) indifferent to the moral good and evil, but is naturally inclined to the good rather than evil, although it is now weakened by original sin. This fundamental orientation of the will to the good makes the practicality of ethics very different from that of the technologies, since their goals are not natural, while the goal of morality is thus innately determined.

Rahner, unlike Pinckaer's, developed his ethical position from the perspective of Transcendental Thomism under the influence of Kant and Heidegger. According to Rahner the "fundamental option" takes place within the subject in a manner that is a priori to concrete moral decisions although it is made in and through them. Thus concrete moral decisions take place at the "ontic" or merely factual level, while their real "ontological" moral significance is given by the fundamental option that underlies them. Rahner did not show in any detail how such a transcendental theory could function for actual moral decision or guidance. Unfortunately and, I believe, quite contrary to Rahner's intentions, this abstract proposal was interpreted by some to mean that persons might retain their fundamental option for God and neighbor, while at the same time committing "serious" sins as long as this did not change their fundamental option for God and thus become a "mortal" sin depriving a person of the "state of grace." Thomists would hold that it is not possible freely and knowingly to commit a serious sin without changing one's commitment to God and thus losing the state of grace, because in every free and deliberate act one intends it as a means to the ultimate goal of life to which one is committed.

Some priests seized on this notion as pastorally helpful in dealing with persons involved in addictive behavior, since it would make it possible for confessors to assure such penitents that they remain in the state of grace even when yielding to their sinful addiction. In fact, however, this pastoral aim can only be honestly achieved by recognizing the limitations of freedom and moral responsibility in persons of good will who are striving to be free of an addiction. It is possible that their addictive acts are not free and hence are not sinful, or at least their freedom and hence their sinfulness is diminished provided they take the proper means to be freed of their addiction.

Another very different proposal for the revision of Thomistic ethics has been made by Germain Grisez and others of whom he is the leader, [28] notably by John Finnis using the methodology of Analytic Philosophy. Grisez has always been a strong defender of the Church's moral teaching, but purposes two important revisions of Thomistic ethics. First he rejects the view of most Thomists that ethics presupposes an anthropology on the grounds that this is inconsistent with Aquinas' notion of ethics as an autonomous science based on its own evident first principles. Second, Grisez' rejects Aquinas' thesis that human morality is to be judged solely by its relation to a single ultimate goal, namely contemplation. For this ultimate goal Grisez substitutes a set of eight goals, four of which are "substantive," and four "existential" or "reflexive."

In Volume I of his principal work Grisez listed as incommensurable the goods of (1) physical health, (2) knowledge of truth and appreciation of the arts; (3) play and exercise of skills. In the second volume (p. 5) he added (4) marriage. Note, however that for Grisez' "justice and friendship" are existential goods, while for Aquinas they are substantive. Aquinas would probably have also listed Grisez' third substantive good "play' as part of physical health. Since Grisez's ethics does not presuppose an anthropology, he explains that these per se ends are discovered in moral discourse by asking " 'Why are you doing that'? Persisting with that question eventually uncovers a small number of basic purposes." [29] Grisez' other four incommensurable goods, the existential ones are (1) self-integration), (2) practical reasonableness or authenticity; (3) justice and friendship, (4) religion. [30]

These eight goods are "incommensurate" in that they are not hierarchically ordered, since each is an independent good per se that can never be ethically violated. Thus, because it is always wrong to violate any one of the incommensurable goods, Grisez, in agreement with Aquinas, but on different grounds, defends the existence of exceptionless negative moral norms (absolute norms)

In Grisez's system, however, the unity of moral life consists in the "integral fulfillment" of all these incommensurable goods in a balanced way that preserves them all. This harmony or balance, however, is not the result, as Aquinas maintained, of the relation of all human acts as means to a single end, but is achieved through the pursuit of the existential goods, such as "practical reasonableness" or "religion" (!). This Grisez claims improves on Aquinas by providing "middle premises" between the basic principles of ethics and concrete, practical decisions. Thus Grisez minimizes the importance of "virtue theory," that looms so large in Aquinas' own ethics, because he thinks it cannot supply precise middle premises.

On examination, however, this revision of Thomistic ethics presents many difficulties; first of all because, like the Gilsonian view of metaphysics, it neglects the "order of learning" that seems to me an essential element of Aquinas' Meta-Science. It was shown in Chapters III and IV that, just as Grisez holds, every formally distinct science begins with principles that it does not demonstrate but that are directly evident. Nevertheless, it is also true that every science except natural science presupposes natural science as its material condition, since all our knowledge must ultimately rest on the knowledge of the sensible, the proper subject of natural science. Thus ethics presupposes an anthropology provided by natural science, since natural law is simply conformity with the needs of human nature. Its first principles become scientifically evident only after natural science has established the existence of human nature and its needs. While it is true that to reason correctly about ethical matters it is not absolutely necessary to have a scientific and critical understanding of human nature, this is necessary for a critical scientific ethics. Thus Grisez in the practical order, like Gilson and Owens in the theoretical order as regards the validity of metaphysics, by neglecting the Aquinas' ordering of the sciences imperils the validity of ethics.

Second, Grisez is mistaken in saying that a hierarchy of moral ends would reduce all but the ultimate end to mere means. According to Aquinas a moral good can be good per se yet subordinate to a greater good. [31] Without such a hierarchic ordering of ends Grisez' theory is forced to find this unity in a balance of the four incommensurable substantive goods by the achievement of the four incommensurable existential goods.

Third, to say that contemplation is the true ultimate end of human behavior does not mean that only those who live a contemplative life can attain the ultimate end. For Aquinas the beatific vision is the all-sufficient goal in the life of grace, but the natural goal does not consist in contemplation alone. The natural goal is the integral satisfaction of all human needs according to their hierarchical ranking, with contemplation at the top. Moreover, "contemplation" must be taken at the natural level in the broad sense that includes all kinds of theoretical knowledge. Thus those engaged in the active life can also share in contemplation although the time and energy they give to it is more restricted than those who live the contemplative life. All human living requires some knowledge of the truth exceeding purely practical knowledge. Thus Aquinas defends the "mixed life" when he advises us "To contemplate and then share what one has contemplated with others (Contemplare et contemplata aliis tradere). [32] What Aquinas is saying is that human life cannot be truly happy if it is not centered in a knowledge of the Creator as the source and goal of human life, since without this understanding the world, as Sartre proclaimed, is "absurd," and, contrary to Sartre, it is hopeless folly for us to try to give it meaning by our own "creative" will.

Fourth, the four substantial goods proposed by Grisez, are much the same as those that, as we have seen, Aquinas identified. Grisez holds, however, that the four existential goods, since they imply a manner of choice that harmonizes and integrates, provide the unity and balance of all these eight incommensurable goods without reference to a single ultimate goal as Aquinas maintained was necessary. Yet if one examines Aquinas' notion of the virtue of prudence it becomes evident that its eight acts: memory, reasoning, understanding, docility and ingenuity, decision, foresight, circumspection, and caution, [33] provide for all that Grisez assigns to his existential goods. Thus it is prudence that achieves the balance and integration of goods that Grisez calls "integral human fulfillment. It does so, however, by seeking and choosing appropriate means to achieve those hierarchically ordered goods that satisfy our substantive needs in relation to the true ultimate end of life. To give such integrating acts objective content, however, it is necessary to return, as Aquinas does, to anthropology so as to apply general principles to concrete practical conclusions. Thus Grisez's revision of Aquinas adds nothing except needless complications that lack a firm grounding in anthropology. Grisez has attempted an "integration" or "harmony" of decisions about diverse incommensurable goals without providing a unifying principle of order.

While Grisez' system, particularly because of its courageous Catholic orthodoxy, has had some influence, this does not compare to that of "Proportionalism" that has been favored by "dissenting" Catholic moralists in their criticism of official Church teaching.

After Vatican II Proportionalism flourished until the encyclical of John Paul II, "The Splendor of Truth" (Veritatis Splendor) declared it to be incompatible with the Catholic tradition of exceptionless negative moral norms. Yet some proportionalists still dissent from the Church's teaching on the grounds that the encyclical misrepresents their position. [34] Here we are, however, interested in this question only as regards natural law ethics, not theological considerations. Since the essential ethical thesis condemned by the encyclical is the assertion that no moral act can be judged evil simply on the grounds of the moral object intended, proportionalists should be asked whether they do or do not accept this proposition. The encyclical rightly calls Proportionalism "teleologism." as distinguished from the teleology of Aquinas and other classical authors; and rejects the notion of the "fundamental option" as that is understood by those who claim that serious sins are not necssarily mortal sins. Certainly it seems contradictory for proportionalists to claim to have a teleological ethics and yet deny that some kinds of human acts by their very nature (i. e., their moral objects) cannot lead to the telos or goal of human life but obstruct it and are therefore intrinsically evil. It may be that "All roads lead to Rome" but certainly not all kinds of acts lead to true happiness. Proportionalists also often join Charles Curran in denouncing Humanae Vitae for its alleged "physicalist" understanding of natural law.

In fact it was during the controversy over the morality of contraception that Proportionalism first emerged. It was a distinguished moralist of the Gregorian University in Rome Joseph Fuchs, S. J. in an important article on "Absolute Moral Norms" who first defended the theory. [35] He argued that more "objective" moral decisions can be made if not only the moral object of an act but all three factors of the act, object, intention, and circumstances are taken together. [36] Of course, Aquinas would agree. But Fuchs meant by this that the nature of the moral object by itself could never make the act essentially evil and thus ground an absolute (exceptionless) negative concrete norm forbidding it. This revision of Aquinas, as Veritatis Splendor declares, is contrary to Catholic moral tradition that has always held that certain kinds of acts, such as the direct killing of innocent persons, is always wrong, no matter in what circumstances or with what intention.

Thus Fuchs dropped the rejection of any species of act as intrinsically evil and reduced the specification of morality wholly to the application of a " Principle of Proportionality" or as some prefer to say, " Principle of Moral Preference." By this principle an act could be judged to be morally good if, when its object, circumstances, and intention were taken together, it had greater positive than negative moral value. This theory attained great influence in the United States through its advocacy by Richard McCormick, S.J. who even claimed it to be "self-evident" because the object could be a moral object only if it was intended to achieve the best possible results in the actual circumstances.

The fallacy of this seemingly reasonable argument becomes clear, however, when Aquinas' understanding of the "moral object" is taken fully into account. For him the morality of act has only two kinds of specifiers, not three. The intention of the moral object is the primary and essential specifier, while the circumstances, including any circumstantial intentions, are only its secondary and accidental qualifiers. A circumstantial intention is merely some secondary and accidental motive that qualifies but cannot change the essential character of the intention of the moral object but only increase or decrease the goodness or evil of the act. Hence if the intention of the moral object is essentially evil it cannot be made essentially good by some accidental motive, although its evil can sometimes be mitigated by such a secondary motive. Thus a murderer out of pity for his victim (a good motive) may choose to use a less painful way to destroy that victim (his essential intention of his evil moral object). On the other hand, murder can be made still worse by evil secondary motives, such as revenge, greed or sadistic pleasure. Yet no secondary good intentions can make killing an innocent person morally good.

Furthermore, it must be kept in mind that for Aquinas the moral object is itself intended as means to the ultimate end. Hence in every such deliberate choice an intention of that end is also present and is in fact the "prime mover" of the choice. A person committed to the true end of life many not consciously think of their ultimate end in making their choice of means, but if it becomes evident in their deliberations that a certain choice might be seriously contradictory to achieving that end, they will refuse to do it. If they yield to the temptation to make such a choice of an evil means, they can do so only by abandoning their commitment to that true ultimate end and making a new commitment to some false ultimate end. Thus a Christian committed to love of God and neighbor who deliberately murders can do so only by abandoning a realistic hope of union with God and neighbor in the common good by committing himself to a life of self-seeking that, as long as he fails to repent, will block his path to true happiness.

The error of both Situationism and Proportionalism is to ignore the fundamental difference between the intention of the moral object that is the essential and primary motive of choice and other secondary motives or intentions that may be mixed with it. Hence, first of all, they fail to determine the moral object before asking about its possible qualification by secondary motives. Instead Proportionalists claim that the moral object if considered concretely only insufficiently specifies the act morally and must be supplemented not only by the circumstances but also by an "intention" that is not the intention of the object, yet is also not a circumstance. The result is that this theory often becomes in fact much like the "intentionalism" of the medieval moralist Abelard who thought that a good intention can make a bad act good, "Doing evil that good may come from it."

When this objection is raised to Proportionalists they attempt to answer it by explaining that what they mean to say is that the weighing of the positive and negative values of the act is to be decided prior to intending it. Hence these are "pre-moral" or "ontic" (purely factual) judgments of proportional values. Only when after they have decided that the act has more positive than negative values do they "intend" it so that it acquires an "ontological" moral goodness. Hence they claim their intention is to perform a good act, not one that is partly evil.

This argument, however, raises several difficulties. Proportionalists say that it is not fair to call them "consequentialists," "utilitarians," or "pragmatists." Yet it is not at all clear what is meant in their system by positive and negative "values." For Aquinas, who uses the term "good" rather than "value," moral goodness and badness is determined by the relation of the means to the true end of life. Any other evaluation is as such merely "physical" and is not morally specified (hence Curran wrongly accuses Thomists of "physicalism"). For example, to describe an act as "killing a human being" tells us it is physically destructive but does not evaluate it as morally good or bad, since killing someone with intention of self-defense or with the intention of revenge are morally specifically different kinds of acts. Thus a weighing of positive and negative "pre-moral" or merely physical values cannot of itself ground a moral judgment.

A teleological ethical judgment weighs "values" only be terms of the relation of means to ends. It is true that a good means to the true end of human life may have some secondary bad effects that are not intended and yet be justified by the Principle of Double Effect if these are not proportionally greater than the good intended. It is not possible, however, to morally intend a means that is essentially contradictory to the true goal of life yet to compensate this by weighing up the positive values of secondary circumstances or intentions. These circumstances including circumstantial intentions are merely accidental to the primary and essential object intended. Hence it is not possible to weigh values of two entirely different orders. Thus proportionalists are deceived in thinking this is possible by their failure to understand what "intention of the object" means for Aquinas. Therefore the Proportionalist methodology can only result in arbitrary moral judgments. When we are faced by a moral dilemma, only a little imagination is required for us order to think of circumstances or good "intentions" that might seem to outweigh the essential character of an act.

Thus President Harry Truman, no doubt in good conscience, found it easy to suppose that in the circumstances of war and with the good intention of saving many human lives, he was justified in terrorizing Japan into surrender by dropping two atomic bombs on thousands of innocent Japanese. No doubt, also Osana bin Ladin reasons in much the same way about his terroristic acts piously intended to free Dar-Islam from the presence of the infidel. But an act of terrorism performed with the direct intention of killing the innocent is essentially contradictory to the true ultimate goal of human life. Thus the appreciation given by Meta-Science of what it means to speak of the moral good, of the teleology of moral decision, and of the difference between what is primarily and essentially intended and what is secondary and accidentally intended exemplifies its clarifying service to ethics.

Before leaving this topic, however, something needs to be said about morality as it pertains to and is influenced by pure spirits, since, like human persons, they do have free will and must makes choices, although as shown in Chapter VI D2 a, these choices are irrevocable. It is, therefore, reasonable to suppose that while most pure spirits have chosen their own good and that of the universe, some like human persons, have chosen evil. In most cultures it is believed that there are both good and evil spirits, although their existence is variously explained. For example it is not clear in Zoroastrian, Manichaean, and Gnostic dualism whether spirits are by nature good and evil only by their own free choice or whether they were created evil. In some religions even good spirits can become malevolent if not properly propitiated.

In Christianity and less explicitly in other monotheistic cultures it is believed that the angelic spirits were all created good but from the beginning of their existence some chose evil and hence wage constant warfare against God's plans for the good of creation. God tolerates these evil spirits in order to test human beings (see the Book of Job and Jesus' own temptation by Satan in the desert, Mt. 4:1-11 and parallels.) so that humans may acquire greater virtue. In the last judgment these demons will be forever subdued. Aquinas argued that evil spirits can never repent, but human sinners by the grace of God can do so. After death, however, human persons like the angels have a fixed destiny although they may not reached their final reward without first undergoing a process of spiritual purification by God (purgatory).

Aristotle and Aquinas both emphasize that human persons are by nature social, both in the sense that they need others to achieve their individual goals, but also that because their happiness culminates in spiritual goods that can be and ought to be shared by many. Hence in addition to dealing with the ethics of individual life, Aristotle in one of his most remarkable works, the Politics that beautifully exemplifies his empirical methodology, treats of human life in community. Both he and Aquinas hold that there are at least three distinct ethical sciences, that of individual life, family life, and social or political life. Yet Aristotle wrote only a very brief treatment of the second of these as Book I of the Politics. Aquinas never gave it fully detailed treatment. In the writings of recent popes of the Catholic Church, especially of John Paul II, it has received much greater attention. From a philosophical, as well as a theological perspective, John Paul II has emphasized that good families family are the necessary foundation of the larger society. Good family life is needed for the education of its citizens and is the "school of love" for adults who by permanent commitment to each other fulfill their sexual needs and fully develop their ability to form relations of trust and empathy with their children and their fellow citizens. [37]

In view of the accusation that the Catholic Church promotes "patriarchalism", John Paul II has put great stress on the equality of man and woman in marriage. In traditional Catholic ethics, however, attention has also been given to the difference between the roles of husband and wife, father and mother in the family community. Since unity of decision is necessary in any community, whether in a family or in the larger society, there must be an agreement on how if, after consultation and dialogue, a final practical judgment must be definitively made. Aquinas points out against anarchistic theories that because practical judgments depend on concrete experiences that are never the same for all and because there are often several ways of accomplishing an end, none of which is without problems, decision by consensus is not practical for common life. [38] Benjamin Franklin is said to have answered the question, "Who should be head of the family?" by replying, "The husband should rule the roost only if he were the more sensible of the two." [39] Well and good, but who is to decide who is " the more sensible?" I am sure Franklin thought he was more sensible than his wife. Nature has itself provided, therefore, for a certain hierarchical structure in the family that does not dependent on a debate as to whether husband or wife are the more reasonable.

Parents must decide for the children in major matters, and when, after consultation the parents disagree, the husband must make the final decision, not, of course simply in his own interest, but for the common good of the family. Hence, while both parents must have the virtue of domestic prudence, this is above all the husband's responsibility because he is usually more free of the restrictions entailed by pregnancy and early child care and hence is more involved in the external affairs of the society which family decisions must also take into account. Realistically, also, his superior physical strength gives him the power to enforce his decisions!

In the political order, however, there is no such evident natural designation of communal authority. Consequently, Aristotle points out that three types of constitutions (not necessarily written but agreed upon) are possible for human societies.[40] Final decision for common action for the common good can be entrusted either to one person, several, or the whole community. Each system has advantages and disadvantages. Monarchy (rule of one, not necessarily hereditary) best provides for unity of decision but also depends on the necessarily limited experience and prudence of the ruler. Aristocracy (rule of an elite, not necessarily hereditary) has the advantage that the different talents of the elite can balance and moderate each other, but also often leads to rivalry and disunity. Democracy (the rule of all citizens) has the advantage of freedom for the individual and of support for decisions made by the majority, but often neglects the rights of minorities. Moreover, of because of its lack of unity in decision, a democracy may easily be tempted to accept or succumb to a tyrannical and demagogic dictator.

Any of these three forms of government must rule for the common good, since if they serve only the private interests of the one ruler, of an elite, or of factions in a democracy, they become tyrannies. Hence Aristotle concludes and Aquinas agrees that usually the best form of government is the "republic" or mixed form in which elements of all three simple forms are combined. The founding Fathers of the U.S. Constitution followed this classic advice with notable success when they established a President for unified action, a congress for more experienced and representative deliberation, and popular vote for both the president and the congress.

Modern ethics, especially the social doctrine of the Catholic Church, has also developed the "Principle of Subsidiarity" based on these same principles. Subsidiarity requires that: (1) Social decisions should be made as far as possible by those most affected by them and hence most experienced in their effects, that is, at the lowest possible level of the social hierarchy. (2) Higher levels of social organization must, however, oversee and supplement decisions at the lower level in order to insure the attainment of the common good. (3) Higher levels must not permanently retain such supplementation and regulation but should educate and encourage the lower levels to resume their responsibilities.

The goal of common decision and action in any society must be the common good and this requires obedience according to the virtue of legal justice by all members of the society. On the other hand the common good is not merely the good of those in authority or of some abstract entity (totalitarianism) but precisely the good of each and all the members of the society. How is this possible? Is there not sometimes a contradiction between the private and the common good? Aquinas answers that the good of the human person consists both in private and common goods. [41]

Private goods, such as our clothing, and our homes, and the things we eat and drink, cannot be well shared with others because they are material goods that must be divided to be consumed privately. Yet, there are goods that are essentially common, such as the security of the state. But primarily it is spiritual goods that can be shared without division precisely because they are spiritual, namely, virtue and knowledge. In fact these are best achieved through sharing. When a teacher shares his or her knowledge with a pupil, neither loses and both gain! Aristotle and Aquinas both argued that the goal of political life, just as for personal life, is the contemplation of truth. The fact that so often it is supposed that the goal of government is public order, military power, and material prosperity is why governments often become totalitarian and abusive of human rights.

Though for Aristotle and Aquinas the goal of government is to promote the virtue and wisdom of its citizens, it should do this in harmony with the Principle of Subsidiarity. Since the virtue proper to rulers is prudence not speculative wisdom, Plato was wrong in asking for a "philosopher king." Rather government should promote virtue by supporting but not dictating to heads of families, schools, and religious centers and should concern itself not principally with the more private aspects of morality but with those that directly affect justice and human rights.

As in the family life there needs to be private property in material goods as an instrument so the state has to regulate the production and distribution of wealth using the architectonic technology of what is today called "political economy" as its instrument. In his times and culture Aristotle faced the fact that for an adequate civil economy many human beings had to do manual work as slaves (some 50% at least of the population of most Greek cities). Hence they could not have the leisure necessary to gain a liberal education that would make it possible for them to participate in the common good of society. Moreover, without the work of slaves the free citizens would not have the leisure for the liberal education necessary to be citizens with the opportunity of attaining to contemplation. Thus the slave, though naturally a member of the human species, could not achieve the natural goal of human life, while the citizens could does so only if they enjoyed the leisure that the existence of a slave class could supply. Thus for Aristotle the seemingly necessary institution of slavery looked inconsistent with his general teleological principle that "natures does nothing in vain," that is, that where there is a natural end, there is a natural way to it. The only solution to this paradox that he was able to suggest [42] was that at least it was better for a slave to enjoy some of the "trickle-down" benefits of civilization than to be a nomad barbarian.

Aquinas somewhat improved this unsatisfactory solution of Aristotle [43] by adding the qualification that the enslavement of persons can only be justified as a punishment for crime, for example, for the aggressors in an unjust war. Yet it is more merciful, Aquinas argued, to enslave prisoners of war than to kill them and still more merciful, when this is economically and socially possible, to emancipate them and their families who share their fate. Aquinas notes, however, that as private property has become "natural " only in the fallen condition of humanity when selfishness and crime has become so common, so it is with war and slavery.

Today we are shocked that these great ethicists with their strong views of the dignity of human nature would have accepted any justification of slavery, since by Aristotle's own definition to be a slave is human being who id treated not as an end in himself but as a mere instrument used by free persons to attain their own ends. [44] Yet Aquinas agrees with Kant that, "Every person must be treated as an end not as a means." To be honest, however, we must admit that this question still faces us today. Not only did Communism and National Socialism impose slavery on dissenters, but also slavery still exists at least marginally in certain countries.

What is even worse, in our own United States, prosperous as it is, a large part of the population does not vote, that is, does not participate as free citizens. As the gap between rich and poor widens many of the poor are not able to rise to that level of liberal education that would make it possible for them to vote intelligently. Our capitalistic economy for all its productivity leaves the poor to the "trickle down" of prosperity enjoyed by the rich. The United States has only partially implemented the redistribution of wealth that European governments effect by relatively high taxes, stoutly resisted here. History seems to show that the human race, whether by reason of "original sin" as the Christian worldview holds, or whatever other explanation is given to the actual "human condition," has never made sufficient use of its native intelligence to achieve a level of productivity that would permit all its members to live in a truly human way.

In modern times science and technology along with higher general levels of literacy and education and participatory government have enabled the so-called First World (the Western Ecumene) to attain a level of production that might make such a life possible for all. But the Second World, that is, what remains of Communism, principally now in China, and even more the Third World suffer from a desperate poverty that remains well below that level. Moreover, the prosperity of the First World has been in a considerable measure built on the exploitation (enslavement) of the Third World. Thus the problem that Aristotle and Aquinas faced is still solved only on paper in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

It can at least be said for Aquinas and the Christian worldview generally that it did not accept the Greek contempt for manual work that in pagan eyes made contemplation impossible for most human beings. The example of the carpenter, Jesus of Nazareth and of the tent-maker, St. Paul, and the whole institution of monasticism with its Benedictine model of Ora et Labora, a life of prayer and work with one's hands, opened the possibility of contemplation of divine reality to all. Such a life, however, requires the pursuit of moral "virtue," that is, those practical skills by which the general norms of morality can be applied in a consistent manner to the concrete particular situations met in actual life. The discipline of manual work and such poverty as suffices for a simple life style can in fact promote the acquisition of such virtue, while the life of lazy indulgence that wealth often engenders is a grave obstacle to good character. Though human freedom makes it possible for even bad persons sometimes to do the right thing, consistently good moral behavior in difficult situations requires well-practiced virtue.

To sum up this discussion it should again be emphasized that, since a teleological ethics takes its principles not primarily from the will of a legislator, but from those goals that are given in human nature, it has to be grounded on an anthropology or analysis of human nature. This analysis of human nature is first of all the eminent subject of natural science. Hence, while ethics does not formally depends on natural science, it presupposes it as its as its necessary material (not formal) condition. We cannot decide how humans "ought" to behave unless we first know what are their natural needs and their powers to fulfill these needs actually "are."

In fact Aristotle realistically notes that we should look for less certainty in ethics than in natural science because of the great complexity of human nature and human relationships.[45] Hence ethicians need have only a general knowledge of natural science, although they must be opened to any new scientific information that may improvement ethical analysis. Thus the principals of ethical science are directly evident from human experience and constitute it as the three autonomous but related disciplines, since the problems of individual ethics, the ethics of managing a family, and the ethics of managing a larger community have different specific goals and present different problems in attaining those goals.

When in the ethical sciences we speak of "human nature" the term "nature" is only analogous to its use in natural science, since the latter refers only to material things, and natural moral law is only analogous to natural physical law. Once it has been concluded that the supreme and most specifically human goal of human life is true contemplation and that this requires a kind of knowledge that extends to spiritual realities, it becomes evident that the completion of ethics must pertain to Meta-Science. What Meta-Science adds to ethics as such is precisely the appreciation of the human person as spiritual and thus ordered to God and to the community of other spirits.

From the foregoing we can also conclude how important it is in interdisciplinary and multicultural dialogue to make use of Meta-Science and its comparative study of worldviews to relate natural science and especially the fields of anthropology and psychology to the comparative study of ethical systems. The marked contrast between the secular materialist worldviews and those that understand the human person primarily in spiritual terms must be faced. Furthermore within spiritual worldviews the important differences between the monotheism of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam on the value of the human person and the chiefly monistic perspectives of Hinduism and Buddhism with their key concept of reincarnation must be frankly recognized. The relative lack of concern of the Chinese and Japanese cultures about the future life must also be acknowledged. At the same time the convergence of these various worldviews on many moral norms must also be acknowledged and reinforced by cooperation for peace and social justice.

The practical goals of the ethical sciences are fixed in human nature and are thus unconditional, while the goals of the technologies are freely chosen and thus are conditional. I am ethically obliged to try to keep healthy, but while I am obliged to play ping-pong according to the rules of the game, this is so only if I freely choose to play ping-pong. Hence, the technologies are subordinated to the ethical sciences, since unless what they achieve is helpful for a good life they are a waste of time, and if it is harmful (the production of atomic weapons or cigarettes) they are immoral and cannot be properly called "practical." The so-called "technological imperative" to do whatever we have the technological power to do, is obviously bad ethics.

Much has already been said about technology in previous chapters. Here it is only necessary to relate the metascientific notion of "goodness" to what for us today is the pressing problem of environmentalism. [46] We human beings could not exist without the remarkably balanced ecology of our earth, and hence we must always be concerned that our use of technological control over the environment preserves these features and alters them only in view of a good life for all humanity. Yet current discussion of environmentalism sometimes loses sight of the fact that our obligation to preserve and perfect the environment is primarily to promote good human life, not to preserve the inanimate or subhuman species that constitute this environment. No doubt rocks, trees, whales are ontologically good in themselves, but if the teleological aspect of natural science that has been defended in this book is correct, non-intelligent things find their ultimate perfection in their service of intelligent life. Moreover, sub-human animals do not have intelligent, spiritual life as we have human persons, but at best only present a preparation for the existence of human life.

To hold, as Peter Singer has argued,[47] that animals have "rights" because they can feel pain is mistaken for two reasons. First, and most important, the rights of human beings are not founded on their ability to feel pain, since even unconscious persons who feel no pain have rights, but on their personhood. Personhood is marked by intelligence and free will which humans but not animals possess. Second, it is gratuitous to assert that animal pain is identical with human pain. Studies of human pain show that it consists not only in a physical feeling but also in the fear and anxiety of the sufferer who may see this pain as a sign that happiness as the goal of life is becoming inaccessible or that it has to be met with a great effort of courage and patience. This major component of pain is lacking in animals because they lack true self-consciousness and a perception of an ultimate goal of life. Hence animals have "rights" only in an analogous sense, namely, that they deserve to be treated with respect for the remarkable and valuable creatures they are and spared unnecessary injury or suffering. Moreover, cruelty to animals tends to brutalize their human abusers and inclines them to abuse other humans. Unless one accepts the notion of the transmigration of souls of Eastern religions, however, we do sub-human creatures no injustice to use them for morally good human purposes.

Yet we must also keep in mind that the greatest service that the material universe serve for spiritual beings, including human persons, is not just the provision of material needs. Among spiritual beings only human persons require that material support, but all spirits, including the pure spirits, need the material universe as the mirror in which they come to a natural knowledge of the Creator. Although pure spirits know by innate ideas not by sense contact with the material universe, some of these innate ideas have as their objects concrete material realities. The Creator has carefully adjusted the material universe to the ways his creatures can know that universe in its truth that has the clarity of beauty. By its beauty the orderly universe attracts intelligent creatures to God in love. That is why our universe is also called a "cosmos," which in the Greek signifies "That which is in good order."

Consequently, environmentalism must use as its criteria for making legitimate changes in the environment not only whether its biodiversity in ecological balance will continue to supply our material needs, but also whether such changes will increase the beauty of our garden earth that is both a natural wonder and a work of human art. Without a rich biodiversity this work of wonder and of art will be greatly diminished, although, of course, we cannot preserve all the species of living things that have existed in the course of evolution. In our respect for the earth and its beauty we can find much support in all the great religions of the world and in the traditional religions of marginal peoples since in all of them there is a sense and mystery of nature as is evident in their arts.

In every culture its value system or ethics and politics finds expression in the fine arts, not precisely as persuading to right action since that is the function of rhetoric, but as portraying the world and human life in their striving for perfection. The fine arts are a kind of mean between the practical and the theoretical disciplines. They are practical in that they produce external objects, but they are theoretical in that these objects are not of practical use but are produced to be contemplatively enjoyed. Because their goodness is contemplative, it consists in their expression of some kind of truth, but not a truth hard to grasp, since then it would not be enjoyable, but truth precisely as it is fitted to our human mode of cognition, and we have seen that this is truth as it is beautiful. Current art criticism often eschews the term "beauty" because to some it connotes a type of idealizing art that lacks strength and tends to sentimentality. As "beauty" has been defined in this chapter, however, it includes strength and sublimity, and in no way implies sentimentality. It may seem to some odd, however, to say that in the arts we contemplate truth in its beauty. Why truth? Is it not rather the sensible qualities of the art object, its color, textures, shape, symmetry, or its melodies and harmonies, or its grace of movement and gesture, or its imagery and play of language, not truth, that is contemplated? Again, do not art objects appeal to our feelings and emotions rather than to our intellects?

The answer to such questions about the fine arts becomes clear if we note that because of the human mode of knowing through the senses, the meaning or truth of things is most easily known by us and hence known precisely, not in abstract thought, but in its beauty when it is given sensible expression. This accessibility of the object is also facilitated by emotional empathy with an object that makes us connatural to our human way of knowing. Our knowledge of truth in the scientific, abstract, and purely intellectual mode is indeed more perfect in precision and certitude, but in this mode it is difficult for all but the most expert, while the same truth when given sensible expression can be easily grasped, at least by those of cultivated taste. That is why, as said earlier, that when in the development of the Enlightenment worldview primary reliance for truth was placed on a fact-free, mathematicized science, other aspects of truth, including its enhancement in value by its beauty, led to the Romantic Movement in which the kind of contemplation provided by the fine arts became a substitute for religious contemplation.

An important result of this divorce of the fine arts from a value-free science has been the remarkable evolution of "modern art." The Neo-Classicism and Academicism of the late eighteenth and much of the nineteenth century looked back to a tradition that had flourished in the Christian Renaissance, a phase of art history not yet marked by the separation of the fine arts from the Church and its liturgy. But with the advance of the Secular Humanism born of the Enlightenment in the latter part of the nineteenth century a radically new experimentalism began in an effort to find a style of art really expressive of this secularizing ethos.

For this purpose one approach was that of an objective Realism that resembles the scientific approach to reality, but in the visual arts and music Realism was soon replaced by Impressionism that emphasized not the object seen but our subjective impressions of the object. [48] Soon at the turn of the twentieth century this became Expressionism and Abstractionism. Emphasis on the truth of the object was replaced by the exaltation of the creativity of the artist, supposedly freed of representing any recognizable object so as to be completely free to create new objects unconnected with reality.

Yet it is now generally recognized that "formalist" art theorists went too far when they claim that art works mean nothing but themselves as objects viewed simply as pure patterns of sensation. When a painting becomes nothing but a visual pattern, or a piece of music nothing but an arrangement of notes, it is reduced to a mere decoration whose beauty is quite superficial and cannot long engage contemplative enjoyment. Wallpaper can be a pleasing background for living but only the most effete esthete is likely to contemplate it for long. The same goes for "background" or "waken music.

We humans are so constituted that purely sensible patterns always have at least something of the character of a sign that conveys other meanings to us than mere sensible pattern. Who can deny that music expresses human feelings or emotions and that in doing so it conveys something that is true to human experience or is false and meretricious? So does "abstract" painting, sculpture, and dance and of course poetry and fiction have some objective reference, however obscure. Human feelings and emotions cannot be simply separated from the truth of the things that arouse such emotions. One cannot love or hate emotion itself but only objects, persons, and events that arouse emotions..

Hence if I carefully examine my very real enjoyment of modern "abstract" works of art (at least some of them) I discover that they do have meaning for me beyond their purely formal qualities and hence truth or falsity. The questionable aspect of modernism in art, however, is that too often this "meaning" is little more than the artist's egoistic assertion of his freedom to display his originality. The result has been that at the end of the twentieth century modern art seems worn out and what is being produced often resorts to shocking the beholder or propagandizing for some cause rather than producing a work that can be enjoyed for its contemplative beauty. Thus the distinctions between poetry, politics, and pornography vanish.

Meta-Science would suggest that the way out of this dilemma is to return to a genuine interest in the objects that constitute the world of human life, not indeed to mechanically represent them like a photograph (though, of course, a photograph can be a work of art), nor necessarily to idealize them, but to enter into their essential natures and dynamism. This will be possible only when our scientific understanding of the world also recovers its teleological understanding of final causality in nature. In all cultures the worldview and value system is expressed in its fine arts and religious rituals. The truths of any culture, even its most profound truths that are difficult to express in verbal language, are expressed in a way accessible even to the popular, untrained viewer or hearer. It has been argued that the primordial art was the dance,[49] for which music, poetry, costume and setting were then provided. Fine art had a communal setting before it was consigned to museums. Meta-Science, therefore, can assist artists today to begin once more to free themselves from the notion of "creativity' that is really narcissistic and once more draw their inspiration from the artistry of their Creator displayed in his creation.

Dialogue with Platonic and Hindu and Buddhist ethics can begin with their common agreement that the goal of worldly life is the release (Hindu moksha) of the spiritual soul from the cycle of reincarnation and the ignorance and suffering it entails. For Hindus this release is the return of the atman or soul to the Absolute or Brahman and is to be achieved by the practice of asceticism and meditation. Thus it is traditional in India to divide a lifetime of a Brahmin (priestly caste) into four periods, that of the learner, then of the householder or married man, then of the forest dweller who lives an ascetic life, and finally that of the solitary mystic who has attained to or is approaching enlightenment.

Most Indians probably live according to the customary rules of their caste, not expecting enlightenment in this cycle of their lives, while only a relatively small number engage in the life of direct striving for release and constant meditation. Hence in India four goals of life were recognized: (1) moksha or release; (2) dharma, a life of duty or obedience to accepted norms; (3) artha, a life of material prosperity; and (4) kama a life of pleasure. From the seventh century BCE these goals were expressed in writings called sutras. Sometime after the second century BCE the Laws of Manu codified the mythical origin of the caste system of priests (the brahmins or "twice-born, that is, those initiated to perform priestly rituals), rulers, farmers and merchants, and sudras (manual workers). It also assigns the responsibilities of each caste.

These ethical rules of Hinduism are very much mixed with complicated ritual practices intended to enforce the caste divisions and their respective norms. Central to the Vedic religion was the idea of sacrifice. This ritual, however, was not, as for Judaism, primarily an act of acknowledgement of the Creator, but rather an invocation of power tending to be thought of in terms of magic. Thus creation itself was pictured as the sacrifice of the primitive man (Manu) from the various parts of whose body the castes were born. Little attempt, however, was made to systematize these rules on a principled basis.

The Buddha, Gautama Siddhartha (563?-583? BCE), who belonged not to the priestly Brahmin case but to the warrior caste, instituted a radical reform of Hinduism, though retaining the doctrine of reincarnation and enlightenment, based on the Four Noble Truths: (1) Life is a torment of pain and pleasure. (2) It is caused by human desires. (3) This torment will cease only with the cessation of such desires. (4) Only the "Middle Way" between extreme asceticism and worldly indulgence, exemplified by the Buddha, can bring cessation of desire and result in unending peace. This Middle Way is an eightfold Path of achieving the (1) right understanding of life; (2) the resolve to travel this way; (3) right action; (4) right speech; (5) a simple way of life; (6) continued effort; (7) right "mindfulness"; (8) right concentration. The first five of these eight steps refer essentially to morality, the last three to meditation.

As we have already seen, Buddhist meditation, however, unlike that of Hinduism, does not seek the total emptying of phenomenal consciousness, but rather an acute awareness of phenomena that reveals their transience and impermanence. Thus the extinction of desire cannot be achieved as long as there remains any illusion that anything is permanent in the cyclic flux of the impermanent. Hence one has to become convinced through constant meditation of the emptiness of all things, even of one's self as a person. It must be realized that all the things of experience are merely aggregates of interdependent appearances that will dissolve into nothingness with the dissolution of these temporary co-dependent bonds. The goal of this mediation and of human life is the attainment of Nirvana or extinction of desire, a condition of peace beyond pain and pleasure.

As related in the last chapter, Buddha claimed to have attained Nirvana but then to have decided out of compassion for others to continue life for some forty-five more years that he might instruct others how to gain this same release. His compassion was thus by its total detachment even from the desire for Nirvana the manifestation of his attainment of Nirvana. In contrast to this conception Christians believe that Jesus' compassion for sinners was for the sake of the sinners who might through his sacrifice attain to eternal life. Jesus died not to demonstrate his detachment from desire, but out of love for his fellow humans. As for the persons whom the Buddha saves from desire, neither he nor they are anything but empty and impermanent aggregates of the world of flux that is in fact identical with Nirvana since both are wholly "empty."

When disciples asked the Buddha, "What is Nirvana? he refused to answer since to do so would have falsified what cannot be expressed in any human terms. He denied that it was annihilation, but refused to say whether it continued after death, since it is obvious that it must transcend the categories of time. Hence in later Buddhist speculation it was said that the phenomenal world of flux is identical with Nirvana since it is entirely empty and thus no way positively distinguishable from Nirvana.

While the Buddhist conception of a celibate, begging life made sense for "monks" (note that Christian and Buddhist monasticism are actually very different in their purposes) wholly dedicated to seeking Nirvana, it appeared to have little to say to the laity who could not expect to attain that goal until in some remote incarnation they became monks. Hence, building on certain elements already present in early Buddhism called the Theravada or Hinayana, a new form of Buddhism called the Mahayana arose, especially promoted by a great sage Nagarjuna, (c. 100 CE). According to Mahayanists the historic Buddha was only one of many Buddhas who are in fact, like the Hindu avatars, only apparitions of a transcendent Buddha identical with the impersonal Absolute. These many Buddhas are all moved by compassion for humanity and by devotion to them and by their spiritual help, anyone, monk or laymen, may come to realize their own "Buddha nature" and perhaps even now to attain Nirvana.

All these versions of Buddhism, however, have Nirvana as their ultimate goal and propose the same Middle Way of ethical life. One of its notable features is the emphasis (found also in other Indian religions because of the concept of reincarnation) on non-violence that extends even to animal life. In Tantaric Buddhism that is especially prominent in Nepal emphasis is placed not only on special meditation techniques such as the contemplation of mantras (symbolic pictures) but also on magic.

In some versions of Tantarism an eroticism is practiced in strong contrast to monastic chastity. Certain practices in Hinduism also seem to revert to the sexual rituals of the ancient fertility religions. While even in Judaic and Christian mysticism married love is a sacrament of the union of God and his Church, or a metaphor for the union of God and the individual soul, these monotheistic religions have always rejected any confusion of sexual indulgence with spiritual mysticism.

One may well wonder how Hindu ethics with its emphasis on the ascetic life has been able to provide a practical ethic for the Indian laity for whom such a life is hoped for only in some distant reincarnation. This need was met in Mahayana Buddhism by the doctrine of faith in the help of some transcendent or actually incarnated Buddha and in Hinduism by bhakti devotion to a god, Vishnu or Shiva, conceived as a manifestation of the Absolute sought by ascetics in meditation. Thus the great ethical classic of Hinduism, especially popular Hinduism, is the Bhagavad-Gita ("Song of the Glorious One") that forms part of the epic Mahabharata.[50] It was probably added to this epic sometime between 400 and 100 BCE perhaps to match the asceticism of the Jains and Buddhists who did not accept the Vedas, and also to support the Hindu social system by showing the need for an ethics of social responsibility according to Hindu law.

The theme of the Mahabharata goes back to the Aryan dualism founded in the oldest of the Vedas, the Rig Veda according to which the present world order emerges cyclically from titanic struggles between good and evil forces. In the Gita this great, eschatological battle between a good and evil tribe is about to begin. The leader of the good tribe, Arjuna, stands in his chariot ready to enter the fray when, thinking with horror of the terrible slaughter that is to follow, he throws down his bow in despair. But his charioteer urges him on. This charioteer is really Krishna, the supreme and Glorious Lord identical with Vishnu, who has come to begin a new cosmic cycle after the time of quiescence (pralaya). Krishna instructs Arjuna by first showing him that he is blinded by ignorance since he still accepts the Vedic dualism of Matter and Spirit as elaborated in the Samkkya philosophy. [51] This Vedic faith in the power of ritual sacrifices is only a half-truth. The real truth is that if Arjuna carries out his duties in life (dharma) by engaging in the war he will himself become a sacrifice and thus will be enlightened so as to understand that he and all things are identical in mutual love (bhakti) with God, that is, Krishna.

Thus while retaining the essential doctrines of Hinduism concerning reincarnation and salvation through ascetic meditation, this great poem provides a more positive conception of moral duty for the laity in Hindu society. It does this by a genuine theism that, however, remains monistic. This is true also of the other great Hindu epic the Ramayana directed more to the Hindu upper classes than is the Gita. [52] Its theme is the struggle of the royal hero Rama against evil and the fidelity to him through many perils of his wife Sita. In this story Rama stands for Vishnu and the devotion of his wife, and of his wonderful monkey servant, and even in a hidden way of his evil opponents, is supposed to inspire bakti devotion to this god Vishnu, who symbolizes the Absolute.

Chinese culture, even when it received Buddhism, had a very pragmatic orientation that was in marked contrast to the speculative and mystical perspective of Hindu culture. Confucius (Latinized form of Kung Fu-Tze, 551-579, BCE) presented an ethic whose goal was entirely this-worldly. He did indeed believe in "Heaven" and the Decrees of Heaven" considered as the impersonal order of Nature. But Confucius did not teach much about "Heaven" and actively discouraged interest in spirits as distracting from ethical concerns about practical daily life. He attentively practiced the rituals of traditional Chinese religion (li) as ways of educating his students in a proper respect for tradition, authority, and propriety of manners, but had little to say about the religious significance of these rituals.

Confucius' chief work is the Analects, a collection of his brief sayings on ethical topics, probably collected by his pupils. These sayings, like the Proverbs, and other Wisdom Literature of the Hebrew Scriptures and of the even earlier Egyptian wisdom sayings, express both personal insights and a fund of traditional moral experience. Confucius' chief concern was the development of the "superior person" or "gentleman" (jun zi) whose primary characteristic is the virtue of "benevolence" (jen or ren).

Confucius stressed the importance of developing such virtues by an education not unlike that of the Greek "liberal arts." It is centered on a careful study of the traditional Five Classics of poetry, music, history, and divination, with the Analects as the fifth. Such a study aims particularly at restoring the proper "naming" of things, that is, at precision of thought and expression. Contrary to the emphasis of the prevailing Legalist School during that chaotic time on the necessity of coercive government to maintain public order, Confucius taught that only through the development of a class of superior persons would it be possible to reform the social and political order and maintain peace. Eventually this type of Confucian education became official in China under the Han in about 136 BCE and exams based on it became the test for all government positions.

Undoubtedly Confucius believed that his moral teachings rested on a correct understanding of human nature as established by Heaven, but he left the defense of this position to later disciples. An especially influential disciple, Mencius (c. 372-c.298 BCE), maintained that human nature is essentially good, while Hs�n Tzu (c. 313-328 BCE) took the opposite view. Confucius' approach was also opposed by Taoists such as Chuang Tzu (c. 369-286 BCE) who were suspicious of the artificiality of Confucian education and advocated more trust in human instincts and a life in harmony with the whole of nature. For a time the teachings of Mo Tzu (c. 468-376 BCE) prevailed. He opposed Confucius' emphasis on ritual, filial piety, and the fulfillment of duties to those closest at hand. Instead the Mohist School emphasized that Heaven is the origin of morality and promoted a universal benevolence toward all persons without distinction.

As a result of such criticisms Confucianism during the period from 221 BCE to 960 CE assimilated many elements of Taoism, Mohism, and Buddhism. After 960 CE until the Marxist revolutions of 1912 Neo-Confucianism prevailed, but took two opposite perspectives. On the one hand, the School of Principle or Reason lead by Chu Hsi (1130-1200 CE) held that the universe can be reduced to one Great Ultimate Principle conceived as the origin of positive male forces (yang) and negative female forces (yin) that constitute all material things. On the other hand the School of Mind led by Wang Yang Ming (1472-1529) taught that a universal Mind contains all things and is identical with the moral law of the universe. Thus Meta-Science cannot but raise the question whether Confucian ethics, excellent in its details as it is, has ever achieved a secure foundation in an anthropology that adequately defends the spiritual nature of humanity.

How then does the transcendental, analogical concept of the "Good" and its final causality help to overcome the fragmentation of knowledge, contextualize this knowledge in historical world-views, and open the way to fruitful dialogue among various parties?

First of all we note that in all worldviews there is the central question of the meaning of human life in relation to a trans-human reality. Clearly this is true of the great Eastern world religions that aim at the Good conceived first of all negatively as release from suffering. It is true also of the monotheistic religions that aim at salvation not only as liberation from suffering but also as eternal life in communion with a personal God. Are these two different conceptions of religion or are they somehow reconcilable? One cannot escape, for example, the quesiton of whether the goal or good of Buddhism is merely negative or positive and in what sense. Does the renunciation of all desire that Buddha, as well as some Stoics in their doctrine of apatheia, seemed to have taught, or that of "holy indifference" promoted by some Christian mystics, amount to a doctrine that it is even wrong to desire happiness? Kant's deontological ethics seems to support such a conclusion, as Schopenhauer seems to have concluded when he embraced this Eastern principle.

As for the dialogue between the transcendent religions and Secular Humanism the question arises concerning the relation of the human good to the good of the universe. Some might say that the universe is meaningless and cannot be said to have a good at all, it just is, without purpose or goal. Yet great Secular Humanists such as Einstein, Marx and John Dewey seem to teach that the goal of human life is to understand the awesome order of the universe and in its light bring some similar order into human life and society. The question becomes acute in the opinions expressed by some in the Ecological Movement who ask whether perhaps the universe would be better if there were no humans on the planet at all! Thus in every worldview the affirmation or the vehement denial of a goal for human life or its relation to the good of the universe or participation in the goodness of God stands at the center. It is contextualized by the whole perspective of the culture and contexualizes it. Hence, it must be central to dialogue and intercultural research.

This central issue, therefore, splits into two related questions: the good of human beings and the good of the universe. In a Confucian perspective as in many others, the good human life is that which conforms to the "Decrees of Heaven." Hence one must go on to ask whether "Heaven" is a personal God whose wisdom and will guide the universe or rather a Stoic impersonal natural law or Logos immanent to the material world. Hence in the ethical disciplines, the moral good or summum bonum, whether it is conceived as a supreme good or an harmonious fulfillment of many human needs, as well as whether it is individual or communal, is the first principle on which an ethical science is constructed. Dialogue will be frustrated unless it is recognized that this is a debatable questions to be explored not assumed to be answered yes or not or to have no answer.

The other question, whether there is and what is the goal of the universe is inescapable in natural science. Yet many scientists think it even absurd to ask. Yet it is essential not to confuse the ethical and the scientific question or the ways in which the term "good" is proper to each discipline. Natural science can speak of what is "good" for something only in the limited sense of a teleology in things less than animals that have no cognition and hence know no aim, but is simply the predetermination of natural efficient causes that explains the regularity of their effects that are expressed by natural laws. Animals, on the other hand, certainly seek the satisfaction of their needs (goods) that by instinct they perceive as leading to physical pleasure or the avoidance of physical pain. Yet there is no evidence that subhuman animals perceive such goods in terms of the intellectual abstract notion of "ends and means." In human beings, however, this becomes evident in the freedom with which they choose means to ends in ways not completely determined by instinct or training.

[1] See Phillip P. Sloan, "The Question of Natural Purpose," in Ernan McMullin, ed. Evolution and Creation pp. 121-150. He refers to Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought, pp. 47-51 as a chief advocate of the concept of "teleonomy."

[2] See Jon Buell and Virginia Hearn, eds.� Darwinism: Science or Philosophy? for a symposium in which the current debate was well represented; also Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker; Michael Denton, Evolution: a Theory in Crisis; Anthony O'Hearn, Beyond Evolution: Human Nature and the Limits of Evolutionary Explanation; Ernan McMullin, ed. Evolution and Creation.; Phillip E. Johnson Darwin on Trial 2^nd ed.

[3] Steven Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory, pp. 35-36.

[4] The distinction between deontological or duty ethics and teleological or means-ends ethics has become confused in much ethical writing by identifying it with an entirely kind different distinction between aystms of ethics that hold that certain kinds of actions are intrinsically wrong and always morally forbidden and those ethical theories that deny things. Authors often identify the support of absolute norms against intrinsically immoral acts with deontology, but this view is common in teleological ethics as well (notably in Thomistic ethics), while some deontologists would deny absolute moral norms.

[5] See A. J. Festugi�re, O. P., Epicurus and His Gods, pp. 27-50 on ethical theory.

[6] On this see John M. Rist, Stoic Philosophy that deals principally with Stoic ethical theory.

[8] Franciscan voluntarism has been much misrepresented. For better interpretations see Allan B. Wolter, O.F. M., Duns Scotus and the Will and Morality, Marilyn McCord Adams, "William of Ockham: Volutnarist or Naturalist?" in John F. Wippel, Studies in Medieval Philosophy, pp. 219-248; and Francois-Xavier Putallaz, Insolente Libert�: Controverses et Condmenations au XII si�cle and Figures Franciscaines: de Bonaventure � Scot.

[9] Aquinas agreed that in this life the love of God has priority over the knowledge of God. While we cannot love God unless we know something of him, in this life our knowledge of God always falls far short of the love of him that grace makes possible. Yet in eternal life, according to Aquinas, love is completed by the perfect knowledge of God given by the beatific vision, so that the union with God is perfected by knowledge and in that sense is superior to love as its source and goal, as knowledge is superior to will as its source and goal. The Franciscans think that this to much demeans love so much celebrated in the New Testament.

[11] An excellent discussion of the relation of Rousseau and Kant in ethics is given by Stephen Darwall in his course History of Modern Ethics, Internet http://www.la.utexas.edu/~pd/histeth/histeth/.lect 22.html

[12] On Bentham see Elie Hal�vy, The Growth of Philosophical Radicalism ; also see J.J.C. Smart and Bernard Williams, Utilitarianism" For and Against.

[14] See the essay of Daniel T. Devereux, "Aristotle on the Essence of Happiness, in Dominic J. O'Meara, ed. Studies in Aristotle, pp. 247-260.

[15] S. Th., I, q. 89, aa. 1-8. It was on this basis that Aquinas also proposed the famous "Limbo" (threshold) theory that unbaptized children, innocent of personal sin, yet deprived by original sin of the grace they would have inherited from the first parents of the human race, would enjoy only a state of natural happiness. This view is philosophically plausible, but perhaps falls short theologically, since many theologians today hold that the grace of Christ is mediated to these souls by the prayers of the Church.

[16] For the various views of the after life see Harold Coward, ed., After Death in World Religions..

[17] See his, Surnaturel: etudes historiques and in his English a more nuance statement in view of the criticisms of others A Brief Catechesis on Nature and Grace..

[18] See William H. Marshner, The Last End of Man According to Lubac: a Critical Appraisal.

[20] For a recent and very thorough treatment of this question see Denis J. M. Bradley, Aquinas on the Twofold Human Good: Reason and Human Happiness in Aquinas' Moral Science. He is content to leave it as a "paradox."

[21] Ibid., I-II q. 51, a. 4. Here Aquinas argues that there can exist at that same time a natural virtue proportionate to the natural end of an individual and a corresponding infused virtue proportionate to that individual's supernatural end.

[22] In volume I of his Theological Ethics, edited by William H. Lazareth 2 vols., Theilicke treats of moral compromise at great length and with a great subtlety to which I cannot do justice in this brief reference.

[24] On this see Donald R. Kapitz, Compromise or Regret: A Critique of Charles E. Curran's Theory of Compromise.

[25] The Primacy of Charity in Moral Theology.

[26] Karl Rahner, "On the Question of a Formal Existential Ethics," Theological Investigations, vol. 2. pp. 217-234. On this see m y articled "Fundamental Option And/Or Commitment to Ultimate End," a paper for a symposium of the Karl Rahner Society at the national convention of the Catholic Theological Society of America, June 1996, Philosophy and Theology 10, 1, Jan, 1997, pp. 113-141.

[27] See The Sources of Christian Ethics, pp.82-86.

[28] See Grisez' The Way of the Lord Jesus, Vol I, Christian Moral Principles.

[29] The Way of the Lord Jesus, Vol. II, p. 567, see also I, pp. 195 f.

[31] Thus Aquinas distinguishes between a bonum honestum that is good per se as an end or a means and a bonum utile that is good only as a means and bonum delectabile that is only the pleasure accompanying the use of a means that is or is not appropriate to the end. S. Th. I, q. 5, a. 6 and I-II. q. 99, a. 5.

THE WAY TOWARD WISDOM
An Interdisciplinary, Intercultural Introduction to Metaphysics

Benedict M. Ashley, O.P.

Chapter XI: Finality in the Special Sciences

THE WAY TOWARD WISDOMAn Interdisciplinary, Intercultural Introduction to Metaphysics

Benedict M. Ashley, O.P.

Chapter XI: Finality in the Special Sciences

THE WAY TOWARD WISDOM
An Interdisciplinary, Intercultural Introduction to Metaphysics