Does Goodness Really Exist?
As philosophers go, Paul Ricoeur isn’t one who has me doing double-takes and gasping, “Did he just say that?” Nietzsche, yeah, but Ricoeur? Not so much. So it was with some surprise popping of the eyes and jerking of the head that I read the following remark in his essay Metaphor and the Semantics of Discourse:
The unfortunate dispute over universals in the Middle Ages was possible only because of confusion between the singularizing and predicative functions: for it makes no sense to ask whether goodness exists, only whether some thing, which is good, exists. The dissymmetry of the two functions thus also implies the ontological dissymmetry of subject and predicate.
Lady Philosophy knows I’ve never taken my man Ricoeur for a Platonist, but golly was I provoked by his accusation that some of philosophers in the Middle Ages who debated the existence of universals suffered from confusion about the subject and the predicate of a sentence. So…is our friendly neighborhood hermeneutic phenomenologist correct? Does it make no sense to ask the question I ask in the title of this post?
To understand why Ricoeur says this, it will help to back up a few steps and examine what he means by the identifying or singularizing function of language and the predicative function of language.
The first function, that of identifying, is the function of language to specify one thing and one thing alone. Language accomplishes this function with the proper noun, of course, but also with the pronoun, the demonstrative, and the use of a definite article followed by a determinant (the such-and-such). The following examples identify and singularize: Kyle Cupp, I, that grammarian, the blogger writing this post.
The second function, predication, is the function of language to say something about the subject. The predicate may be an adjective of quality (good) or its substantival counterpart (goodness), a class to which the subject belongs (human), a relation, or an action. All of these are universalizable; they can be said of more than one subject. Both Aquinas and Augustine were Catholics.
Ricoeur links the notion of existence to the singularizing function: “the identifying function always designates entities that exist (or whose existence is neutralized, as in fiction).” He goes on: “Proper logical subjects are potentially existents. This is the point at which language ‘sticks,’ where it adheres to things. By contrast, in having the universal in view, the predicative function concerns the nonexistent.” I can refer you to what is spoken of by the subject, but I cannot put before you or your mind predicates divorced from subjects. I cannot show you good without showing you something good. I cannot shine a light on human without a human being. I cannot point you to a between without showing you the things in the relation. I cannot have you visualizing an action without something in action.
In this analysis, goodness, being associated with the predicate, doesn’t actually exist. It’s not an existent, or possible existent, or a fictional existent. But what if we make goodness the subject of a sentence? If I say, “Goodness is that for which I strive,” am I not referencing some existent called goodness. I’m not sure I am. I may be referring to an idea, but am I really referring to something beyond the linguistic, something that exists apart from language? An idea is, of course, formed by language, but it typically points to something beyond itself. I have an idea of something. But this is precisely the question: does my idea of goodness actual point to something beyond itself? Is there goodness itself beyond the idea of goodness? Or am I merely referring to an idea and not an existent apart from the idea? Simply making goodness the subject of a sentence doesn’t mean goodness has existence. It may simply be a helpful way of using language that doesn’t actually correspond to reality.
Is there a singular, identifiable thing called goodness that language can reference, to which the word “goodness” corresponds? To answer that question is to answer whether or not Ricoeur is correct.
Kyle Cupp is a freelance writer and editor with a background in literature, language, and philosophy.
Comments are closed.
“It may simply be a helpful way of using language that doesn’t actually correspond to reality.”
First: It may not be “helpful” if what it tends to do is engender actions based on a illusion.
Second: When Jesus asked “Why do you call me good?” was He not saying that He, as apart from the Father, did not partake of “Goodness?” He implies that although he might be “good,” he is not “Good” since only the Father is “Good.”
Third: It seems to me that all such questions inevitably lead to a dualism, between, let’s say, “existence” and “Existence.” Goodness has no “existence,” but it has “Existence,” if only in the Father.
Kyle, I am not formally educated in philosophy but I will comment with the confidence of almost 64 years of prejudicial observation which has slowly but surely been redirected and restructured by my living conscience(my spouse) into a more compassionate prejudicial observational perspective. With that in mind it seems to me that, first, goodness is a subjective term based on the perspective of the observer and their basic instinctive preverbal reaction to their immediate social environment which is then reinforced or amended by future emotional and intellectual learning in association with significant others throughout the critical developmental periods and relationships within those periods in one’s life.
Secondly, goodness implies a duality of perception within the context of being in opposition to badness. This noun also begins within the preverbal subjective experience of the human being in relationship to others responsible for the immediate care of this dependent developing human.
At this point of my comment I am becoming aware of the complexity of this question you posted and I am beginning to experience hot flashes caused by the realization of the multitude of implications which can be defined as goodness within the subjective experience of being human.
It appears to me that goodness must be looked at from two perspectives. The first perspective would seem to be to develop an understanding of goodness related to the finite experience of individual development in relationship to self and others and the outcome of the person’s experience in that social environment.
Secondly, is there some transcendental natural law which is acted out and incapable of being verbalized that is universally present in the human being’s psyche that could explain her or his instinctive reactivity to human relationships that is wrongfully labelled as good or bad by the subjective observers of this reactivity?
I am done for now.
Btw, the further implication of the dualism of which I speak would be that evil would have real “existence.” It would be “Existence” of which evil does not partake, since that, like “Goodness” belongs solely to the Father. Everything accessible to our senses is an admixture of “good” and “evil.”
If one can say that goodness does not exist, only “some thing” which is good, then why could one not say that evil does not exist, only “some thing” that is evil?
Seems like a goose/gander thing to me.
To ask “does goodness exist?” cand be reworded into the question “whether there is a subsistent goodness?” which is also the question “whether there is a subsistent existence?” due to convertibility of being and goodness. Good old metaphysics questions, these.
To say that there is convertibility of being and goodness is to set up an entirely debatable equation. If that’s a given, Kyle has no question.
But all that actually amounts to is evading the issue throught the regurgitation of unexamined rote learning.
I’m not evading the issue by “regurgitation of unexamined rote learning” (a truly insulting suggestion). In fact, I’m not even attempting to answer the question. I’m just saying that the question has been posed in the way I forulated,and that perhaps that’s how it should be approached. Further, even if being and goodness are convertible, it may be the case that there is no such thing as subsistent goodness/being.
Charles–
You’re right. That was an exceptionally poor choice of words. I sincerely hope that you will accept my apology.
Thank you Rodak. Apology accepted and forgiveness given. God Bless!
“But what if we make goodness the subject of a sentence? If I say, “Goodness is that for which I strive,” am I not referencing some existent called goodness. I’m not sure I am. I may be referring to an idea, but am I really referring to something beyond the linguistic, something that exists apart from language?”
As I recall, this problem arose in particular with the word ‘nothing.” If I make ‘nothing’ the subject of a sentence, saying for example “Nothing is better than ice cream,”what am I talking about? Nothing? But I seem to be talking about something.
The solution was to simply reword the sentence: “Ice cream is better than everything.” Same meaning, but the problematic word has been eliminated. And a similar approach to goodness would work: instead of saying “Goodness exists” with its problematic assumption of a platonic Form of Goodness, simply say “Good things exist.”
Metaphysical problem solved; ethical problem pending. . .
Isn’t this a problem for many abstractions? Does justice exist? Does red exist? Does beauty exist?
I am sure I will garble this, but I was reading Ernst Mayr’s book What Evolution Is, and he was saying one of the things that was a roadblock to the acceptance of Darwin’s theory of evolution was that in the thinking of the time, men were men, apes were apes, chimps were chimps, and so on, and the idea of there being something intermediate between any two kinds of creatures was not accepted philosophically. It often strikes me that dividing things into a fixed number of categories is often artificial. For example, we take for granted that every human is either male or female, and yet when, for the purpose of sports, certain individuals are tested for being male or female, it becomes a nightmare to define exactly what/who is and is not a female.
Indeed, the problem may be a tad overwrought by Ricoeur, or just a tad too dramatic. Let us choose a less provocative question: Does humanity exist? Answer no, you seem just silly. Answer yes, and we begin to joke about perfect oak trees and perfect gazelles floating around in some magical realm of Forms. Of course, humanity is an abstraction, but not for that reason unreal. There is no “subsistent humanity” somewhere, apart from actual individual instances of human beings. At the same time, each individual human being is in fact human, and thus the intellectual abstraction “humanity” is something real, and not a placeholder or a mere name grouping, arbitrarily, a bunch of radically particular things.
Now, goodness is a tad different, as a transcendental, which is to say that there is nothing that is of which good cannot, in some sense, be posited. Good, in fact, pace Ronald King above, does not require a duality, viz. an existent evil. A “good X” is nothing other than “an X which succeeds at being what it takes to be an X”. That is, good and being differ in respect, not in referent. It is thus perfectly intelligible to describe what it would take for an apple to be a good apple without ever adverting to a bad/evil apple. We do not have to have any instance of a failure to be to recognize relative success at being.
While a subsistent humanity seems odd, since part of “being human” entails flesh, bones, being in space and time, etc., none of which can be said of “humanity”, “goodness” does not suffer the same limits. “Being which is in all sense desirable and which contains every perfection to which all other things tend” is intelligible as subsistent. This is why we can call God both “the Good” and “Goodness itself”. So, granting all the necessary qualifiers of the analogous use of language, we can say “Goodness exists” even as we can say “God exists”.
Does nerdiness or straight flushness exist? There are people many would agree could be described as nerds, although this is a very recent concept. And their are straight flushes in poker. Does fantabulousness exist? I am not a great fan of seafood, and there are a limited number of kinds of fish I like (sole, halibut). When I am asked if I want fish for dinner, I say, “Okay, but no funnyfish.” That is my own category, and it contains things like monkfish or catfish. It is an abstraction that has meaning to me. Does funnyfishness exist?
Let’s consider your suggestions one at a time. Nerdiness does indeed seem to indicate something real, albeit accidental and not substantial, about people. It is not so worrisome that we have picked out this trait only relatively recently. Even in the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle will note that some vices, e.g. have no proper names, but does not for that reason deny their existence. (He opines that they may be less common and so have no denomination, but are still real.) Likewise, straight flushness seems real enough, insofar as “being a straight flush” is a real feature of a hand of cards actually present in the playing of poker. Of course, unlike being a nerd, being a straight flush is altogether the product of human artifice. Since a hand in poker is this only a substance, viz. some one thing, improperly speaking, the reality of “being a straight flush” is less robust than the reality of being a nerd, itself less foundational than the reality of being a man. All the same, each of these posit something actual of something existent which can be understood or abstracted from any given instance of those things of which it could be posited. At the same time, insofar as “being a nerd” is accidental (and thus only able to be posited of a rational agent), it could not in any way be subsistent (there could be no “nerdiness itself” floating around somewhere), and even less so of “being a straight flush”.
Fantabulousness seems to be a different case. Now, perhaps you have something definite in mind, some real discrete quality of things which we identify with the word fantabulous. In actual use, however, this word seems more to be a kind of rhetorical flourish for comical or camp effect without denoting anything actually discrete from other qualities. For this reason, I would be hesitant to think such a quality existed in reality.
Funnyfishness is yet another case. Now, it might be the case that there is some actual quality possessed by all those fish you denote as “funnyfish” that distinguishes them from the kinds of fish you like. However, more likely this is an improper class made up on negative grounds, viz. not possessed of qualities you like or, even more generally, possessing any of a wide set of reasons for which you dislike them. Note here that there is no actual existent quality which you are picking out in order to place these fish (e.g. monkfish and catfish) in the category “funnyfish”, so in truth you have not abstracted anything that has meaning to you.
Consider another case, that of “being flightless”. While we can, improperly, speak of the category of “flightless birds”, this does not make flightlessness something real in the way that able to fly is real. The latter is some actual thing existent in, e.g., many birds and insects. The former is merely a negation, but is no more something actual than blindness is something real and actual in an eye. A blind eye is lacking some features, or is malfunctioning in some of its features, but does not possess some actual thing that we call blindness. For the same reason, I suspect that funnyfish is for you a catch-all set including all kinds of fish you do not like, without actually picking out some real, existing feature in them which makes them belong to a natural class.
What is at stake in all of this is the nature of definition. Not everything we can simply denote (i.e. use words to point out) is, in an Aristotelian sense, actually defined. For Aristotle, a definition is a feature of things and not of words. It is what actually specifies something to be the kind of thing it is. This is why, e.g., we cannot have an Aristotelian definition of lumeniferous ether because there is no such thing. It was posited once by scientists to account for the wave motion of light, but its “definition” was merely denotative, meaning “that medium which we assert must exist since all waves are motions of media and light exhibits motion like a wave and therefore must have some medium.” When we found we could/had to account for the behavior of light differently, the placeholder lumeniferous ether proved to be an empty category picking out no actually existent thing.
By which I meant luminiferous and not lumeniferous.
Thank you for taking the time to answer so fully!
Dominic, I wish I had time to get into this more but company is now entering and I must go and will not return until Sunday. There must be a referent for human beings to evaluate whether something is good or not. That can only occur with the senses and the duality that occurs within the senses of comfort and discomfort, pleasure and not pleasure, etc. If there is only comfort or pleasure then good would never be understood in its proper context. I propose it would only be experienced as common and expected. For good to exist it must be appreciated.
Sorry I don’t have more time. No good will come to me if I don’t stop now.
I would suggest that that referent is being; if something is, then it is good.
It does not seem in actual experience that we need to experience something as bad to appreciate it for being good. I don’t have to eat a bitter, rotten orange to appreciate a sweet one. I don’t have to hear a song sung poorly to enjoy a song sung well. What is more, I can even distinguish between good and better without reference to any defect. I can say of, e.g. a my grandmother’s chocolate cake that it is better than one I ate at a restaurant without ever having to have experienced either cake as in some way failing at being chocolate cake. It seems perfectly reasonable that I can say of the cake at the restaurant that it is good, that it succeeds in every way at being a chocolate cake, and that my grandmother’s succeeds even more.
Evil/bad/defective, on the other hand, is parasitic of the good. For something to be a bad apple is only intelligible if I know what it takes to succeed at being an apple, and for that reason, what a good apple is. On the other hand, to know what a good apple is just is the same thing as knowing what an apple is. I do not need to know how it might go wrong to know and appreciate it for how it has gone right. On the other hand, I can only understand how a thing has gone wrong if I understand what it means to go right.
Similarly, I can enjoy feeling healthy and fit, and know what it means to be even healthier, without having been sick. Granted, having been sick and then gotten better gives me a different kind of appreciation for the good of health, even as being a sinner and then being redeemed gives a different appreciation of holiness and goodness than not needing redemption at all. Still, goodness it a thing to itself. It is things rightly working, and thus it is its own proper context.
This is why there is an asymmetry between good and bad. Good is altogether intelligible and appreciable on its own. Bad is only intelligible in light of the good.
May I say that topics like these:
1. Make my head hurt; and
2. Make me exceedingly glad that there exist both Kyle and Dominicans?
Fascinating stuff.
“I would suggest that that referent is being; if something is, then it is good.”
The is precisely what I was referring to when I made the unfortunate “regurgitation” reference apologized for above. What is to say that “if something is, then it is good?” Is an HIV retrovirus “good?” This is certainly not universally held to be the case. Nor it is proven logically. Nor is it proven experientially. If it is based on Genesis, then must we take all of Genesis literally, along with the idea that God finished the creation on the sixth day and pronounced it to be “good?”
One can arrive at the convertibility of being and good without reference to Genesis, but rather by an analysis of what we take to be the meaning of good. Consider what we mean by “a good apple” or “a good broom” or “a good lung”. Each of these is called good to the extent that it succeeds at being what it takes to be what it is. So, a good apple has all those things an apple should have without having anything it shouldn’t have, and likewise with brooms and lungs, or anything else for that matter. Such things are attractive in a fundamental sense for their being successfully what they are. So, yes, in this sense, even immunologists will admit that there is something attractive, i.e. good, about viruses, in and of themselves, however ugly their effect on living organisms.
This is partly true because sometimes the flourishing of one thing (it’s being good at what it is) comes at the expense of something else (which is then an evil for that other thing). However, that does not undo the basic point that something is a good X because it succeeds at being an X, and hence, “good” and “being” are the same in referent, but differ in account.
Mind you, good and bad are not mere binaries. To use scholastic language, something can be good secundum quid (i.e. in a certain respect) without being good simpliciter (i.e. absolutely speaking). An apple might have good color, but nothing else it takes to be a good apple. A human being might be a good liar or a good torturer, but this is only good secundum quid. Since what it means to be human is to be, among other things, rational, and since lying and torture are fundamentally counter to reason, to be “good” at either of these (i.e. to do them successfully) is in fact to fail at being human. Hence, we can say that such persons are not good human beings simpliciter even while, under some description, they are good (e.g. they are still functioning organisms, they still make some use of reason and will, they may love their dogs or wives, etc.).
Then, if a given virus is “good” because it is a perfect example of its kind, how is it any more licit to cripple or destroy that good virus than it is to cripple or destroy any other good thing, such as a broom, or a lung? How dare we interfere with the teleology of that virus, which has been designed by God to invade a host and multiply at the expense of that host’s physical integrity? (that host now becoming, presumably a “good” example of a host organism successfully invaded by a “good” virus.) How is this essentially different from practicing birth control? If “it’s all good,” then must it not all be left to “do its own thing?” It seems to me that this question is never examined in its entirely, but is always chopped up into little pieces, some which (when seen in isolation and out of context) tend to make us comfortable in our environment, by removing from our sight the objects of our fear and loathing.
I am afraid that you are equivocating with “good” here, with quite unhappy results. That something is good in itself (ontologically) does not convert with the claim that it is a moral good. While it is certainly true that it would be wicked to act against a moral good, the same would not hold for good things as such.
The difference is simple enough. Suppose your aunt bakes you a really good pie. Now, the goodness of the pie, as such, is in the pie as existent. However, the end for which the pie exists is to be eaten. Indeed, part of what makes a good pie a good pie is that it is good for eating. So, while it is certainly not good for the pie, it is terribly good for you to eat it.
Another example: A fox eats a chicken. It is not for the good of the chicken; it is for the good of the fox. It is also for the larger cosmic good that some individual things do not flourish, as they are, on a larger scale, ordered for the good of another. So, if God creates carnivores, it is good that animals be eaten, although clearly not good for the animal that is eaten. (It is also good that they do not always succeed, since they would then starve as there would be no prey left alive.)
Now, “being a host organism” is not a substantial reality, but an accidental one. So, nothing can ever fulfill its end through being a host to a parasite, any more than the chicken’s end qua chicken is fulfilled in being eaten. So, a host organism fulfills its good in fighting off a virus (even as the virus fulfills its good in trying to thrive, albeit at the expense of the host).
Once again, a reminder: this all has to do with ontological and not moral goodness. This is why one cannot and need not draw a moral conclusion, e.g. “must it not all be left to ‘do its own thing?’” It is only with persons that ontological goodness maps onto moral goodness, since successfully being human entails being moral. Furthermore, for one human being not to intervene to help another (who is, e.g. afflicted by a virus) on the premise that the ontological goodness of the virus is of equal value to the goodness of the human person is for that human being to have failed miserably in being human! With all due respect to the Jains, we are not committed to the claim that the good of each thing is morally relevant. We were meant to, e.g. eat, make clothes, build houses, produce art, etc., all of which come at the expense of other things. That we destroy something (ontologically) good for our benefit is, then, not morally problematic at all. We believe, without worries, that we are more important than viruses!
Quite honestly (no snarkiness here), I have absolutely no idea how you made the leap to birth control, so I hesitate to make any response.
“successfully being human entails being moral.”
I may tend to agree with you there, in a political sense. But I don’t think that a) this is a given; because, b) there is no one human definition of “moral.”
For instance, the people who actively support birth control think that they are taking the moral high ground, and they can make a good, rational set of arguments to support that contention. They can show you numbers proving that preventing births saves lives, just as you can show that preventing viral epidemics saves lives. Being human we pretty much have our anthropocentric bias built in. But, actually, in terms of the overall ecological system of the planet, human behavior is one of the major threats to the creation. Your virus may well have been designed by the Creator specifically for the purpose of controlling human population size. When you mess with anything, you are playing against God’s game plan. Things are make us feel safe, we call call “moral.” But let’s be honest about how we got to those definitions.
“But, actually, in terms of the overall ecological system of the planet, human behavior is one of the major threats to the creation.”
I hope that many absorb your words and then fully realize them as a call to sacrifice as well as an overall urgent call to action. The evidence is beyond compelling.
Two points. First, that people disagree over what counts as moral does not entail or warrant a rejection of the claim that the good and being are convertible. To use your example, someone in support of wide and generous use of artificial birth control as a means of responding to a concern about overpopulation is likely to see his claim as rooted in what a rational person ought to do faced with such a situation. They are also likely to regard what is right, fitting, and appropriate for human behavior is markedly different from what it right, fitting, and appropriate (if such words even make sense apart from moral agents) for, say, rabbits. That rabbits by “doing what comes naturally” in Australia are, as an invasive species, causing irreparable harm is true, but to call their behavior immoral would be a category error. I also think such a person is in error as regards birth control as a morally licit method, but I also admit that such a claim needs to be shown to be the case and is not immediately evident to every rational agent, even if I do hold that the other position is not ultimately justified or justifiable.
This, however, leads to the second point, viz. “anthropological bias”. If by bias you only mean that humans prefer the good of human beings over the good of other living and animate things in a way those other things do not reciprocate, then I gladly concede. However, if by bias you mean to suggest an unjustified or unwarranted preference, then we have hit an impasse. If in truth you do not see that viruses do not have the value that human beings have, and that this is an objective truth and not mere special pleading because we happen to be human, then we can have no real further grounds for moral discourse. I do not say this lightly or happily. However, that we may rightly and morally make use of the things of the earth and subordinate their good to ours is a basic intuition arising from the appreciation of the kind of good a person is. It is not a “given” in the sense of “posited without any prior justification” but rather a basic intuition of the inherent value of different kinds of things. (It is, for example, the way that we can tell immediately not only that Swift’s “Modest Proposal” was intended as satire, but also that the proposal itself, if actually heeded, would involve moral depravity of the highest order.)
Granted, the good of persons does not in any way entail, e.g. any obvious or unimpeded right to eliminate entire species, “increase and multiply” beyond the means of the world to sustain us, deal with the irrational beasts of the world callously and with disregard to their beauty in the sheer fact of their being, etc. I even agree that God makes use of viruses, and for that matter earthquakes, forest fires, falling bridges, snow storms, rusty nails, and anything else to achieve his ends. He is the Provident Lord of all, and all falls under his dominion. This does not, however, even remotely yield the conclusion that “when you mess with anything, you are playing against God’s game plan.” Quite the contrary, being the kind of things that we are (rational animals), we can see that our flourishing, and indeed the flourishing of every animate things, entails “messing with” things all the time, and that this is not in any way immoral. Indeed, had God not wanted such “messing with things” he would not have made the kind of universe he made; in other words, that we use other things for our good clearly is part of his “game plan”.
So, put simply, I see no need to grant your proposal that human morality is special pleading, nor do I find it accurate at all to suggest that it was to “make us feel safe” that we “invented” something called “morality”.
I think that I did not say “anthropolical bias,” but rather “anthropocentric” bias. And I think that this is a major distinction. Anthropocentric thinking places man, rather than God, at the center of human activity. Man was given stewardship of the earth; man was charged with being a caretaker, with limited duties and powers, not a dictator, whose power is limited only by the limits of his technical ingenuity.
“we can see that our flourishing, and indeed the flourishing of every animate things, entails “messing with” things all the time, and that this is not in any way immoral.”
Animate things, do not “mess with things.” They use them (if they are sentient) or interact with them (if they are not) as they were designed to use, or to interact, with them. Only man devises novel ways to use naturally occuring things for his own devices; or sometimes even creates things which do not occur naturally. Thus, man plays God. Some God-fearing groups have always said “Enough is enough” and have withdrawn from the general population in order to attempt to live more “naturally”–although they would probably not express it that way, but rather as living more “humbly” or more “piously” or more “obediently.”
“Indeed, had God not wanted such “messing with things” he would not have made the kind of universe he made; in other words, that we use other things for our good clearly is part of his “game plan”.”
Yes. This is exactly what I have said, albeit, I’ve made that point by trying to show the absurdity of its polar opposite (i.e.,not using vaccines.) But I have yet to be shown why birth control (the thing “we use…for our good” chosen by me to illustrate my point) is any more immoral than giving blood transfusions, or vaccinating whole populations. The drop in infant mortality, and comensurate population growth–especially in populations not widely practicing effective birth control–is a major cause of hunger, disease, disability, even war. It is, in short, miserably bad stewardship. No good shepherd allows his flock to become too large for his available pasturage.
Thus, if we are to say that human morality proscribes the use of effective birth control for the good of all, then some kind of “special pleading” is certainly needed to validate that position. It seems to be directly in conflict with the concept of stewardship. And to be a good steward, or a good shepard, or a good father, or a good pastor, would seem to me to be the definitive demonstration of being a good neighbor, and a good moral agent.
We have traveled quite far from the question of the convertibility of good and being, so I won’t extend this much further. I will only make a few notes:
(1) I grant your definition of anthropocentric, and grant that, as you define it, it is objectionable. However, nothing in the claim of the convertibility of the good and being, nor the claim that successfully being human and being moral are convertible, is any way implies anthropocentrism.
(2) The question as to whether other animate creatures “mess with things” is, I fear, question begging. Beavers, for example, surely make use of branches and other matter to produce notable impact on their environment. Rabbits and kudzu, introduced in new environments (Australia and the American south, respectively) have had quite notable and negative impact on the local environment. You can say that this is simply natural, and I concede. However, since by natural we surely must mean “in accord with their nature” then it would follow that human artifice is in accord with human nature. So while human beings interact with and alter their environment in ways not simply quantitatively but also qualitatively different from other animals, this is surely because human beings have a rational nature, so their impact will bear the marks of intelligence in a way that those of other animals will not (save the intelligence of God who made them). So, human beings are no more playing God through artifice than beavers or chimpanzees are for using simple tools.
[I should also note hear that, while many people may have withdrawn from corrupt society, there is little to no tradition of a radical break from the intelligent use of the created world. Even the Amish, e.g. build houses, grow crops, make clothes, etc.]
(3) Probably most to the point, and why this would rightly belong to a different thread, is the following, namely that one cannot legitimately move from the claim that overpopulation is a failure of stewardship (fair enough) to the claim that artificial birth control is moral. While indeed no good shepherd allows his flock to become to large for available pasturage, human beings are not sheep! What is at issue here is not whether one ought to be attentive to population and resources. The issue is whether this means of doing so is moral. You and I surely agree that we are not justified in doing any and everything at all to respond to a problem. (Hence my reference to Swift’s “Modest Proposal” in which he satirized the English response to Irish poverty by suggesting that the Irish eat their children!) Since those, at least in the Catholic Church, and classically among Christians in general, who have considered artificial contraception a moral evil have done so on ground unrelated to the matter we have been discussing here, and have certainly not done so by a facile rejection of it because it is the product of artifice, I suggest that further inquiry of this question migrate elsewhere.
Pax?
There is precious little qualitative difference–from the childrens’ perspective–between eating Irish children and starving them to death. Although the latter is presumably more drawn out, and probably more painful.
The “ground unrelated to the matter we have been discussing here” is not really unrelated at all, is it? Is not the issue of whether it is better to be than not to be very much at the heart of the birth control issue? Therefore, is not the question of whether preventing something that does not exist from coming into potential existence, a related question? Does a potential good (conception; coming into being) have real existence? And if not, how is contraception immoral? Here also we have an alleged “good” that pertains to no actual existent, but only to the potential for such an existent.
The wrongness of contraception is predicated not upon the nebulous “right of the non-existent to existence” but upon the rational use of the generative faculty. The proper question is whether it is reasonable to use the generative faculty without reference to its natural teleology. It may be common among the unlearned to argue that sperm and ova have rights, but you won’t find that line of argument in any Church documents, nor in the writings of those who defend Church teaching.
The “ground unrelated to the matter we have been discussing here” is not really unrelated at all, is it? Is not the issue of whether it is better to be than not to be very much at the heart of the birth control issue? Therefore, is not the question of whether preventing something that does not exist from coming into potential existence, a related question?
No, because the answer to the second question is “no” as well. The question of whether “to be or or not to be” of something which does not actually exist is not at the heart of the birth control issue. The question is whether this means of spacing births is in accord with human, i.e. rational nature, and in accord with the act of human procreation in its fullest specificity, i.e. as the (material) means by which human persons, in bodily union, cooperate with God in the transmission of human, and thus personal life.
Admittedly, many supposed methods of contraception are at least potentially, and sometimes directly, abortifacient rather than contraceptive per se, but here let us confine our concerns to what is contraceptive properly speaking. The good is not alleged nor referring to something or someone non-existent, but to the real, existing man and woman engaged in sexual union.
Dominic,
Great comments!
Thank you.
“The proper question is whether it is reasonable to use the generative faculty without reference to its natural teleology.”
The answer to this is, “Yes, of course.” It’s perfectly reasonable to use “the generative faculty” with reference only to pleasure.
“he question is whether this means of spacing births is in accord with human, i.e. rational nature, and in accord with the act of human procreation in its fullest specificity,…etc.”
Again, the answer is, “Yes, certainly.” If it is ever morally licit to engage in sexual activity merely as an expression of love (admittedly combined with pleasure), then using a condom is not qualitatively different from using a basal temperature chart and an anal thermometer to achieve the same result, i.e. sex without conception. To say otherwise is (dare I say) hypocritical.