Tag: Morality

XC – Obedience School For Christians

I had a brief dialogue with Richard Cocks at Orthosphere recently, and something about it rubbed me the wrong way. He was making a point that the opposite of Freedom is Slavery, and so Freedom is and ought to be the great mystery of life. In disagreeing, I argued that Freedom has two alternatives: Obedience and Slavery. Richard had this to say in reply:

As for obedience, I’m in favor of obedience for dogs and small children who can’t be trusted to be morally autonomous because they can understand only “this displeases me” but not why. But I don’t want my 23 year old son to obey me. I want him to join me in loving communion and shared ideals. Bearing in mind that he is a morally sound, well-meaning individual who, when he makes mistakes, he makes them involuntarily and accidentally. I am not here to judge him, but to be a parent who is there for him if and when he needs me, but mainly to loosely join our lives together in comradery and fellowship. He is free to communicate if and when he chooses with no consequences from me. Certainly no threats.

Richard Cocks, Orthosphere

This is an excellent critique, and forces me to explain why exactly Obedience ought to be preferred to freedom. I attempt to go into that here.

Freedom

When people refer to freedom, they generally are thinking of a few different things. 1) Autonomy, or the unrestrained nature of being. Any inhibition necessarily reduces autonomy, and is therefore opposed. 2) Liberation, the changing of one state to another. When I did Exodus 90, they described the process as “Freedom”. We weren’t any more free than when we started, but we changed states from ignorance of our own sin to a state of awareness and repugnance of our own sin. We were liberated from the shackles of sin. Some might consider themselves liberated from school at the end of a school day, or liberated from their parents when they move away from home. This kind of freedom implies by the change in state that there are new choices available to them which, by some external force, were previously unavailable. 3) Independence, or the absence of dependence on anyone else. This is differentiated from Autonomy, in that autonomy is freedom of action, while Independence is freedom from responsibility. The Independent rely on no one, and have no one relying on them. They are “free” to act without consideration of anyone’s interest.

The Freedom which Richard wishes for his son is the first sort of Freedom. He doesn’t wish to impose upon his son a sense of morality (which would surely make his son desire the second sort of Freedom), but rather would like his son to have the Freedom to choose a path, and he would like his son to freely choose the path that he himself chose. He wants to avoid using carrots or stick to incentivize certain behaviors, for fear of reducing his Freedom in the third sense.

Unfreedom

Richard said that the opposite of Freedom is Slavery, and I suggested that another corollary would be Obedience. Let’s re-examine these ideas given the clarifications above.

If we take the concepts introduced in 1, 2, and 3 above and simply invert them, we have a pretty clear depiction of Slavery. 1) Restrained nature of being. 2) Changing from a more-free to less-free state. 3) Dependence, totally reliant on others. But lets not rush to the other side of the scale: One can be restrained without being enslaved. One can burden themselves for some different benefit than immediate self interest. One can be partially dependent and have some advantages.

Lets consider livestock, specifically horses. Wild horses are romanticized as roaming free on the plains of the American west. They need to forage for food for themselves. Fight for mates for themselves. They live in the elements of the outdoors, their wounds can quickly become fatal. But consider farm horses. They don’t have to look for food at all. They are selectively bred. They are protected from the elements. Their wounds are cared for. In exchange, the horses must be put to some work. Some pull carts or farm equipment, others race: regardless, they must work.

To my mind, this is what Christ refers to when he says the yoke is easy and the burden is light. He restrains us, but doesn’t hurt us. We must do work, but it is not hard. This is a picture of Obedience.

Practical Obedience

I am not too far removed in age from Richard’s son, so I will use myself as an example instead. If I lived at home, my parents would be right to expect obedience from me in certain things. They would be unhappy, for example, if in the spirit of comradery and fellowship I failed to raise a hand to aid in the upkeep of the home. I would surely think I was being unduly restrained, enslaved from my formerly free state, if they imposed their will upon me. If my parents failed to instruct me that it was their expectation that I care for some aspect of the home while I lived there, they would be unreasonable to be irritated by not meeting expectations that were not communicated.

Even as a son living away from home, my parents expect certain behaviors, even if those behaviors have changed somewhat. If I failed to acknowledge my mothers birthday, for example, I would be in hot water with my father, and rightly so. Obedience, in the family, ensures that all are aligned to the good of the family.

Likewise, with Christendom: Obedience ensures that all are aligned to the good of God, the King of Creation. Obedience can not be ensured without both carrots and sticks. The burden is light, but still a burden. The reward is sharing in the beatific vision. An infinite reward at a modest price.

AMDG

LXXV – Beginners Guide to Philosophy (No. 3) – Revised

Action

Reality is now composed of things, and those things can communicate. What can they do? Lets approach this in a roundabout kind of way.

Perception and Communication can only happen between like objects, i.e. natural things can only perceive and communicate via natural means, supernatural things can only perceive and communicate via supernatural means. You can feel a natural rock by reaching out your physical hand and touching it. You can feel loved only because you have a soul that can perceive it.

But what happens when you reach out and touch a rock? What about other deeds? Well, the first thing we can say for certain is that actions have consequences. This is true in both the natural and the supernatural world. Lets understand the natural world first. Throwing a rock into a pond is a natural deed, governed by the laws of physics. The rock sails only so far, sinks so deep, with such force, as dictated by the force with which you threw it. There are a number of consequences to this, among them being waves in the pond as the water is displaced and subsequently restored to equilibrium. Action and consequence[1].

Another example might be eating candy. As our body metabolizes the sugar, our body has an insulin response and our chemical makeup is altered to give us energy. If we eat too much candy, we store too much energy and gain body fat. The action had a chemical consequence that can last for hours, days, or years after the fact. Likewise with supernatural interactions, they affect our soul. Praying raises our soul to the divine. Good deeds affect our souls positively. Bad deeds (sins) affect our soul negatively.

 

The Essence of Action

Deeds of all kinds have accidents and essences, too. We can logically determine what things are essential to a deed. Consider giving money to the poor. What is the intent of the subject, the person giving money? We have likely all seen the trope of a wealthy man throwing coins disdainfully at a panhandler. We likely all have given money to a street-corner panhandler with the earnest hope that it will be the last dollar they need. Every deed is done with some intent or other–it is impossible for a deed to be done ‘neutrally’ or without intent, because one must intend to do it for it to be done. Intent is essential to action.

The means of effectuating a given deed are also essential to it. consider again our example of giving money to the poor. How do you do it? Do you give cash, check? credit card? Do you give them a table-sized game-show check? Do you employ a destitute soul in your business so that you can give them money in exchange for a days work? Every action takes some form, you can’t give money to the poor without, in fact, giving money to the poor. The means are essential to action.

As stated previously, all actions have consequences. What is the result of your deed? Does a panhandler turn around and walk into a liquor store? Do they finally get enough to get back on their feet? Another way of saying it would be, what are the fruits of your action? Every action has some consequence, so the result is essential to action.

Finally: Do you know all the information required to make a good decision? If a panhandler is sitting amid empty liquor bottles, can you claim ignorance of what he will likely spend his money on? You can’t make a decision you don’t know you need to make; you can’t make a good decision if you don’t know the information required for it. Your knowledge is an essential quality of an action.

Morality of an action, then, is dependent upon these essential qualities: Intent, means, result, and knowledge.

Virtue or Vice?

We turn now to the differentiation of deeds by determining whether they are virtues or vices. The list of traits essential to a deed acts as a sort of checklist for us in this evaluation. The checklist looks something like this:

  1. What did I actually do?
  2. What did I intend to do?
  3. What happened as a result of what I did?
  4. Did I know what would happen before I did it?

Let’s consider this common philosophical dilemma. Is killing morally wrong? A street murderer 1) Kills someone, 2) they intended to kill someone, 3) that person died as a result, 4) which they knew would happen. This is clearly morally wrong.

Manslaughter, however, is when 1) A driver hits someone who runs out in the road 2) but they did not intend to kill them, 3) they died nevertheless, 4) the driver did not know that would happen. The person did not have the intent or the knowledge of those consequences, and so cannot be held fully responsible for the victims death.

What about a soldier? 1) They shoot at enemies, 2) intending to kill them, 3) they do in fact die, 4) and they knew that would happen as a consequence. This is superficially an identical situation to the one we started with. But this might not be considered morally wrong. Why? We have here a person not fully in control, because they are following orders of a commander who ordered them to war.

In the latter two examples, there is this idea of “responsibility” or “control”. This is the concept of culpability. Cuplability is the degree to which you are responsible for the morality of what you have done. A soldier isn’t responsible for being shipped to a war zone; a street murderer is responsible for random killing. A driver who killed a distracted pedestrian isn’t responsible for their death, because they were not trying to kill them.

Consequences

So now that we have a basic framework for determining whether a deed is morally good or morally bad, why must we choose one over the other? Good deeds have the consequence of enriching us spiritually (and sometimes physically). Bad deeds have the consequence of harming us spiritually (and sometimes physically). Our soul, while supernatural, is still an intrinsic part of us. The great struggle of our lives is to unite ourselves with the Divine. A damaged soul is wounded, is made imperfect, because it has chosen a deed contrary to the Divine. A damaged soul is thus separated from the Divine, but there is a means of reparation and reconciliation. Virtue gives vitality to the soul, nourishes it and preserves it. Virtue brings the soul more in union with the Divine. These concepts I will have to expand on later, but the premise is this: Union with the divine is an infinite reward. The Divine has opened for us a means of entering union, and we have a predisposition to break that union. Thus we are tangent to specific theological concepts, which are important to Philosophy but we aren’t there yet.

[1] I know the physicists call this something else, but for our purposes here the wave is a consequence of throwing the rock.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 (Original) | Part 3 (Revised) | Part 4

LXXV – Beginners Guide to Philosophy (No. 3)

THIS POST HAS BEEN REVISED 8/23/2019 (HERE)

Action

Reality is now composed of things, and those things can communicate. What can they do? Lets approach this in a roundabout kind of way.

Perception and Communication can only happen between like objects, i.e. natural things can only perceive and communicate via natural means, supernatural things can only perceive and communicate via supernatural means. You can feel a natural rock by reaching out your physical hand and touching it. You can feel loved only because you have a soul that can perceive it.

But what happens when you reach out and touch a rock? What about other deeds? Well, the first thing we can say for certain is that actions have consequences. This is true in both the natural and the supernatural world. Lets understand the natural world first. Throwing a rock into a pond is a natural deed, governed by the laws of physics. The rock sails only so far, sinks so deep, with such force, as dictated by the force with which you threw it. There are a number of consequences to this, among them being waves in the pond as the water is displaced and subsequently restored to equilibrium. Action and consequence[1].

Another example might be eating candy. As our body metabolizes the sugar, our body has an insulin response and our chemical makeup is altered to give us energy. If we eat too much candy, we store too much energy and gain body fat. The action had a chemical consequence that can last for hours, days, or years after the fact. Likewise with supernatural interactions, they affect our soul. Praying raises our soul to the divine. Good deeds affect our souls positively. Bad deeds (sins) affect our soul negatively.

The Essence of Action

Deeds of all kinds have accidents and essences, too. Lets consider giving money to a pan handler. Giving money to the poor is an essentially good deed. Accidental to the deed is who is involved. Giving money to the pan handler and giving money to your friend can both be considered charitable giving. The essence (charitable giving) is consistent while the accident (to whom you are giving) changes. Charity is a virtue, so it follows that the virtuousness of a deed–it’s morality–is essential to any deed. The accidents include things like culpability or intent[2].

We have established that our actions have consequences that affect us both naturally and supernaturally. So it follows that moral deeds benefit the soul, and immoral deeds damage the soul. The accidents define how much benefit or damage, but for now we are only focused on the binary: Is the soul helped or hindered by certain deeds. Vice is to consistently choose deeds which damage the soul. Virtue is to consistently choose deeds which benefit the soul.

Selected Questions

Here I answer a few select questions that arise based on what we’re talking about.

How do we distinguish between virtue and vice?

In other words, how can we discern the essence of deeds before we do them, that we might avoid or pursue certain kinds of deeds? The answer is similar to discerning the essence of things. We can tell that a pure gold ingot is indeed a pure gold ingot by perceiving it with our senses, picking it up and turning it over and really considering what it is. We can discern for example that a pure gold ingot is not edible through this process. We can look at a watermelon with the very same senses, the very same perception activities, and discern that not only is it essentially not gold but it is also edible to us. This tells us that perception is a key component of distinguishing essences. Perception is only as good as our knowledge of things. If we had never seen gold before, we may still be able to tell that it is not edible, but we won’t know that the ingot is essentially gold. We may be able to tell that it is essentially ‘metal’ or has certain accidents that coincide with precious metals. Likewise if we had never seen or heard of a watermelon before, we might be cautious before we take the first bite, concerned as we might be that this is an accidental form of Gold. So knowledge is another key component of distinguishing essences. Therefore, we can assert that the moral character of deeds, whether they be virtuous or vicious, can be determined by perceiving them. Because this is a function of the soul, we feel inherently some knowledge about the morality of a deed. If I am faced with a choice between giving money to a panhandler or murdering a panhandler, I know in my soul that these are not identical deeds: one is essentially virtuous, the other essentially vicious. This perception is aided by knowledge. Faith formation should be a priority to aid this discernment.

Is saying that the moral character of a deed is essential to a deed saying that morality is objective? What about…

Here’s a common stumper that I like to bring up when discussing moral absolutism vs. moral relativism. Killing: is killing objectively wrong? A murder on the street is, but a soldier in a war zone might be a good thing. What about self defense? This is where we need to lean on the accidents while understanding the essences. Catholic teaching tells us that human life is sacred and that any unnatural end of a human life is wrong[3]. The essence of the deed is that it is immoral, and so damages the soul. I mentioned previously that culpability and intent are accidents of a deed. Lets first take the example of manslaughter: unintentionally taking a human life. The intent was not to kill. They are responsible for taking a human life, insofar as they did in fact take a human life. They would not bear as much responsibility as someone who took that life in the same way with full intent. This is where culpability comes in: Culpability is the degree to which a person is responsible for their deeds. A person who does something out of duress is not fully culpable, but they still did a deed. Lets consider the soldier in a warzone: They have been hired or volunteered to serve the defense of their country, and to obey their commander to achieve that end. If the Commander sends them to war and they kill enemies in achieving their objective: The accidents of the killing, the intent behind it and the soldiers culpability for it, may be reduced if it is a just war or the soldier is trying to accomplish the objective with minimum loss of life, just for a couple examples. Similarly with self defense, another person is violently assailing you, your intent was not evil but now you are fighting for your life. If you kill your assailant in defense, you still killed them, but your intent was not to assail them, you were yourself assailed. Culpability and intent are diminished.

What is the consequence of damaging our soul? What benefit is virtue to the soul?

Our soul is an intrinsic part of us, and the great struggle of our lives is to shed our mortal coil and be in union with the Divine. A damaged soul is wounded, is imperfected, because it has chosen a deed contrary to the Divine. A damaged soul is thus separated from the Divine, but there is a means of reparation and reconciliation. Virtue gives vitality to the soul, nourishes it and preserves it. Virtue brings the soul more in union with the Divine. These concepts I will have to expand on later, but the premise is this: Union with the divine is an infinite reward. The Divine has opened for us a means of entering union, and we have a predisposition to break that union. Thus we are tangent to specific theological concepts, which are important to Philosophy but we aren’t there yet.

[1] I know the physicists call this something else, but for our purposes here the wave is a consequence of throwing the rock.

[2] I’ve written about culpability HERE, but plan to expand on both of these ideas in future essays.

[3] Consult the Catechism for detailed explanations of morality of specific things. My goal here is not to go into a moral structure, just to explain concepts for beginners.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3