Fr. Austin Fagothey - Right And Reason: Ethics Based on the Teachings of Aristotle & St. Thomas Aquinas

Right and Reason

Ethics in Theory and Practice

Fr. Austin Fagothey, S.J.

Imprimi Potest:	Carroll OSullivan, S.J. Provincial
Nihil Obstat:	Benedict M. Blank, O.P Censor Deputatus
Imprimatur:	John J. Mitty
Archbishop of San Francisco May 3, 1958

Second Edition copyright 1959 by The C. V. Mosby Company, St. Louis.

Previous edition copyrighted 1953.

Library of Congress Control No.: 00-131559

TAN Books
Charlotte, North Carolina
www.TANBooks.com
2000

PREFACE

The point of view adopted in this book is that of the Aristotelian-Thomistic synthesis, the living tradition of the perennial philosophy, that applies the wisdom of the ancients, tried and proved in the crucible of historical experience, to the discoveries and problems of modern life. However, the author does not regard the Aristotelian-Thomistic system as such an historical crystallization that all thinking must henceforth cease. He has incorporated whatever seems worth while in later speculations, not in a spirit of irresponsible eclecticism, but as a genuine development, extension, clarification, or application of Aristotelian-Thomistic principles.

Because ethics is not the logical place to begin the study of philosophy, it will be presupposed that the student has already had some training in the basic concepts of the Aristotelian-Thomistic system. For this reason no effort has been made to explain or demonstrate the presuppositions of ethics. To do this adequately would require the inclusion of almost the whole of philosophy in this one volume; to do it inadequately would be worse than useless. However, the student lacking previous philosophical training may be able to accept these presuppositions provisionally and to await their demonstration in another course.

Ethics is a part of philosophy, and an effort has been made to preserve the philosophical approach throughout. Because ethics is practical philosophy, some excursion into the domains of sociology, economics, and political science is inevitable, especially in applied ethics, but the author believes that even the most concrete problems can be viewed in the true spirit of philosophical inquiry.

As a rule the problem method has been used. This consists in introducing one of the major problems of ethics, explaining how it arose and why it is a problem, giving the main schools of thought on the subject with sufficient historical background, stating the arguments for and against each proposed solution, weighing the arguments against one another, and finally resolving the problem in the light of the evidence and reasoning involved. Of course, each problem will result in a thesis to be maintained, but the author thinks that the questioning approach is a better instance of the philosophical attitude than an immediate launching into the demonstration of a set thesis. For this reason a syllogistic argument is not first stated and then explained and defended, but is used rather as a summary of the whole investigation.

Fairly numerous quotations from the classical philosophers are interspersed for the purpose of letting each philosopher explain his own position as well as of encouraging the student to explore some of these sources for himself. Reading lists at the end of each chapter are meant by way of suggestion both to teacher and student and make no pretense of being exhaustive. As a rule, textbooks are omitted from these lists, not because they are unimportant, but because they are so obvious.

An endeavor has been made to keep the language as nontechnical as possible. Ethics deals with the everyday activities of human life and should be expressible in commonly current terms. But no science (and ethics is one) can wholly dispense with terminology. The author has tried to avoid long classifications and enumerations, distinctions and subdistinctions, whose application is not immediately apparent, and to defer the explanation of technical terms to the moment when their use is necessary. Since so many college students of today lack the classical training of former generations, the teacher is often faced with the dilemma of achieving technical exactness in his words at the cost of being totally incomprehensible to the class or of using familiar language with some sacrifice of terminological precision. The author has tried to steer between these two pitfalls.

No textbook can take the place of the living teacher, whose personal inspiration is a stimulus to learning, but his fleeting words need to be supplemented by a more lasting record than the hasty notes the student can scribble during class. No textbook can take the place of solid reading in the great masters, a task which this text supposes and encourages, but unfortunately the great masters did not usually write with a clientele of college undergraduates in mind, and at least the older among them had no prophetic vision of the specific problems facing the modern world. So it seems that there is still place for a textbook.

This second edition is a very changed book. Many rearrangements have been made for a better pedagogical sequence. The topics of happiness and the end of man have been re-expressed to clarify the philosophical approach and distinguish it from the theological. Reflections on some modern schools of thought, such as logical positivism, relativism, and existentialism, have been introduced. The norm of morality has been rewritten and given what the author thinks an original presentation. The nature of obligation has been re-examined and made more consistent with the general intellectualist approach adopted throughout. A unique feature is the treatment of society and its chief forms, the family and the state, before considering property and economic life. The chapter on Society has been enlarged, and a new chapter on Social Order has been introduced. The treatment of positive law has been postponed until the state has been studied. The consideration of justice has been expanded and that of merit omitted. When possible, the terminology has been simplified to put more emphasis on the problem than on the language. Many verbal changes, some of them seemingly trivial, have been made where experience in the classroom has uncovered general student misunderstanding. The reading lists and bibliography have been brought up to date. Though the book bulks a little larger, there should be a saving rather than an increase in teaching time, since the book can be read more easily out of class and more class time can be used for discussion.

The author wishes to express his thanks to the many who have assisted him with the first and second editions of this work, especially to his colleagues in the Philosophy Department at the University of Santa Clara. He owes a particular debt to the late Father William Donnelly, S.J., without whose help the first edition could not have been written, and also to Father Joseph Farraher, S.J., and Father Robert Dailey, S.J., professors of moral theology at neighboring Alma College, Los Gatos, California. He is grateful to Father John Mootz, S.J., Father Andrew Boss, S.J., Father Richard Mulcahy, S.J., Father Robert McMahon, S.J., and Father Cornelius Lynch, S.J., of the University of San Francisco; to Father Stephen Earley, S.J., Father George Lucy, S.J., and Father Robert Taylor, S.J., of Loyola University of Los Angeles; to Father William Gaffney, S.J., and Father Clifford Kossel, S.J., of Mount St. Michael's, Spokane; and to many others for their criticisms, advice, and encouragement. He is grateful also to all his students, whose questions and answers, discussions and difficulties, insights and gropings contributed more than they knew.