OCR Religious Studies: A Level Year 2 by Michael Wilcockson & Michael Wilkinson

Author:Michael Wilcockson & Michael Wilkinson [Wilcockson, Michael; Wilkinson, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hodder Education
Published: 2017-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

(e) Moral responsibility

A central concern for Aquinas, as for many medieval thinkers, was the question of when we can ascribe moral responsibility. Plato notoriously believed, as Greek thought in general had done, that we do wrong only as a result of ignorance. For Plato, everyone desires the good, but most people (other than true philosophers) are more or less ignorant of what the true good is. Plato held the common Greek view that if we know the good, we are bound to do it.

Aristotle disagreed. He thought that we can know the good but fail to do it, perhaps because we have fallen into bad habits or lack the courage to do what we know we should. In Nicomachean Ethics, Book III, Chapters 1 and 2, Aristotle considers the nature of moral responsibility, in terms which have had deep influence on later discussion. Aquinas, both in his Commentary on Nicomachean Ethics (Sententia Libri Ethicorum (1270–71)) and in the Summa, is explicit about his debt to Aristotle, and his ideas should be seen as a development of Aristotle’s theories.

Aristotle considers two factors which might excuse someone from being blamed for an action. One of these is ignorance, the other, lack of choice. In Aquinas, these ideas are developed, and Catholic moral theology, following Aquinas, still teaches that to commit a sin, one needs full knowledge and full consent.

As Aristotle notes, ‘full consent’ is a difficult notion. When does one freely choose? Aristotle notes that it is not always easy to decide:

When we think of the things that are done from fear of greater evils or for some noble reason (for example if a tyrant were to order one to do something wicked, having one’s parents and children in his power, and if by doing the action they would be saved and not be put to death), it may be debated whether such actions are involuntary or voluntary. Something similar happens if the captain of a merchant ship throws goods overboard in a storm; for in the abstract no one throws goods away voluntarily, but to secure the safety of himself and his crew, any sensible man does so. Such actions, then, are mixed, but are more like voluntary actions. They are chosen at the moment they are done, and the purpose of an action is relative to the occasion. Both the terms, then, ‘voluntary’ and ‘involuntary’, must be used with reference to the moment of action. In these circumstances the man acts voluntarily because the choices that move the body to act are in him. Those things which are choices of the man are in his power to perform or not. Such actions, therefore, are voluntary, but in the abstract are perhaps involuntary because no one would choose any such act in itself.

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book III, Chapter 1

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