80. A map of good and evil
80. A MAP OF GOOD AND EVIL
What makes anything good or evil?
A fourfold goodness may be considered in a human action.
First . . . as much as it has of action and being, so much has it of goodness. (This is the goodness of its being, or ontological goodness, that point #79, above, speaks of.)
Second, it has goodness . . . which is derived from its suitable object. The “object” of an act means what is done by it. Is it a robbery or a payment? Is it taking an innocent life or saving one? Is it telling truth or telling lies? The moral law, summarized in the Ten Commandments, defines which objects (acts) are morally good and which are morally evil.
Thirdly, it has goodness from its circumstances. When one is hungry, eating is physically good and feeding is morally good; when one is full, not so. Married lovemaking is good, but not when medically dangerous. Sugar is good, but not to a diabetic. The moral law cannot define all the possible changing circumstances, so our reason and imagination and cleverness must play a major part in our moral judgment of concrete cases, in applying general principles to particular circumstances.
Fourthly, it has goodness from its end.
The end is what we seek; thus it is our motive. It is in our motive and our desire before it is achieved in the world. This existence in our desires, this “motive”, is subjective and psychological. Giving money to the poor, though objectively good, is not subjectively good if its motive is pride and vanity (I-II,18,4).
Thus for any act to be good it must be both ontologically good (the first point), and morally good, which includes doing the right thing (the second point), in the right way (the third point), and for the right reason and motive (the fourth point).
The second of these four dimensions (the rightness or wrongness of the act itself) is objective and absolute, the third (the circumstances or situation) is objective and relative, the fourth (the end or motive) is subjective and absolute. Thus morality is both objective and subjective, both relative and absolute, not at the same time in the same dimension but in its different dimensions.
Legalism sees only the second dimension, doing the right thing. Relativism sees only the third dimension, changing circumstances. Subjectivism sees only the fourth dimension, subjective motive. Every error sees a part of the truth, but fails to see another part. This is what makes St. Thomas so great: his synoptic vision of the whole.
A human act must be whole to be good, as the human body must have a whole set of working organs to be healthy. Any one malfunctioning organ can kill you; thus defect in any one of the three dimensions of morality can make the act wrong. Or, to use another analogy for the same point, a moral act is like a work of art. If a piece of music is too loud, or too long, or too sweet, or too sour, it is defective. Or if a story has unbelievable characters, or theme, or plot, or style, it is a bad story even if its other dimensions are good. Everything counts.