ETICA

ETHICS. – From the Greek ἠθικώς, moral, pertaining to conduct, to human character: it is the philosophical study of custom, of human conduct.

Summary:

I. Object and Method of Ethics

II. History of Ethics

III. Fundamental Problems: 1. The End; 2. Law as the Way to the End; 3. The Values of Moral Realization.

I. Object and Method of Ethics

The object of ethics is human activity considered in itself and in its intrinsic value: considered in itself, and not in its results, as *practise* and not as *practise*, as *agere* and not as *facere*; this distinguishes ethical and moral consideration from technical consideration, which studies human action in relation to the object produced, the *factum*. Moreover, with the words *its intrinsic value* it is affirmed that ethics is not limited to describing human custom, but seeks the criterion or criteria for evaluating human actions. It is affirmed, that is, that ethics cannot but be normative, in contrast to the positivistic conception of ethics as mere description, “science of customs” in the sense of L. Lévy-Bruhl. Ethics is a normative science because man cannot help but evaluate morally and therefore appeal, as a criterion of evaluation, to a norm. Now either reason is entrusted with the investigation and justification of moral norms, and then a normative ethics is necessarily elaborated, or moral evaluation is left to arbitrariness, taste, caprice, and one truly falls into degenerate dogmatism, that is, into the pretension to pronounce value judgments without justification.

The attempt moreover to escape normative ethics by resorting to mutable criteria of evaluation, namely the history, or the custom of a society in a given epoch, is vain, since such custom is also determined by the action of men (heroes, political innovators) who, in their time, were by no means conformists and precisely aimed to modify existing custom. Thus the historicist is singularly inconsistent when he affirms that the criterion of moral evaluation is history, but then extols the “historical men” who, at least in part, have determined the direction of history.

The need for normative ethics raises the problem of its justification. Two possible approaches present themselves: the intuitionist and the metaphysical. Ethical intuitionism is understood as any theory that entrusts the discovery of moral norms to an immediate apprehension irreducible to rational knowledge (moral sentiment, emotional intuition of values, etc.). But if moral intuition were the apprehension of an objective norm or value, the divergences in moral evaluations would remain unexplained; and if it is a subjective sentiment, it is not a sufficient foundation for a universal norm. The remaining path is thus the metaphysical one. The method of ethics will therefore be deductive, in this sense: it will consist in the application of metaphysical principles to human conduct as attested to us by experience and the phenomenology of moral life.

II. History of Ethics — Ethical speculation in Western culture begins with Socrates. The exercise of an uninhibited rational inquiry, which does not accept as unquestionable presuppositions the positive laws, customs, and religion of the time, but instead asks what their value is, is common to Socrates and the Sophists. Socrates too asks what virtue is, what is just, without taking as a criterion of truth what people think about these problems; indeed, he demonstrates that beneath apparently solid common opinions lies ignorance and uncertainty. Yet the conclusions reached by Socrates are quite different from those of the Sophists. In maintaining this, Socrates concludes his critical investigation positively: affirming the existence of objective moral norms and making virtue consist in the observance of these. The Sophists, including Protagoras in the Platonic dialogue of the same name, presuppose that virtue is a particular technique, an art or a craft. Socrates demonstrates that it is not an art, but the art of being human, and that this art is founded on knowledge. Hence the famous Socratic thesis that identifies virtue with knowledge; this thesis perhaps does not have the excessively and erroneously intellectualistic sense attributed to it by Aristotle (Eth. nicom., VI, 13), but simply affirms that there is no virtue, nor morally good action, if man does not know what the true values are, if he does not know what should orient his life. When man does not let himself be lived, does not allow the ends of his life to be imposed upon him by circumstances or impulses, but instead proposes them for himself, on the basis of exact knowledge of values, and when he ensures that this true knowledge determines him to act, then he acts virtuously. Certainly Socrates did not ask what this “ensuring that true knowledge determines us” is; he did not ask whether it is still knowledge or rather will. That it is will and freedom will be recognized by Aristotle and, above all, by Christianity.

A consequence of the Socratic thesis that virtue is knowledge is the affirmation that no one does evil voluntarily, that is, no one does evil when he knows it to be evil (Protag., 353 ff.), which is demonstrated through the identification of good and pleasure. This much-debated Socratic thesis does not seem to be interpretable in an utilitarian sense, given the nobility of Socrates’ moral figure; the identity between good and pleasure established by Socrates should rather be understood in the sense that man always tends toward the good, and only the true good is that which procures true pleasure. From the Socratic identification of good and pleasure, two theories could arise, which indeed distinguished two Socratic schools: one, the Cynic school (v. CINICI), affirmed that virtue alone suffices to procure true pleasure, and thus that nothing outside of virtue is necessary to procure man’s good; the other, the Cyrenaic school (Aristippus, V. CIRENIACI; HEDONISM), instead affirms that pleasure is the supreme good of man.

PLATO, together with Socrates, conceives the supreme good as the unity of virtue and happiness, of intelligence and pleasure (Phil., 65–67 and passim), but he gives this ethical conception a metaphysical foundation. The good is hypostasized in the Idea of the Good, which stands at the summit of the world of Ideas. The true good of man is the good of the soul, which is distinct from the body and akin to the world of Ideas. To Plato’s metaphysical and anthropological dualism corresponds an ethics of detachment from sensible pleasures. Philosophy is conceived as meditation, as the care of death (Phaedo, 64 a, 67 e), because only death frees the soul from the body and renders it capable of perfect wisdom. In the Gorgias it is said that it is better to suffer injustice than to commit it, since committing injustice brings harm to the soul, that is, to what is highest in man (475 c). For Plato, therefore, the good and the useful are identified, but the useful is only what benefits the soul. Despite this primacy of spiritual life and contemplation, Plato attaches great importance to political life (Rep., Polit., Laws), yet politics too must be oriented toward the spiritual life of man, not toward economic well-being.

The assertion that the supreme end, the supreme good, the beatitude of man consists in contemplation remains also in ARISTOTLE, from the Protrepticus to the Eudemian Ethics—up to the most mature expression of his ethical thought, the Nicomachean Ethics (cf., for the theory of beatitude, Book X). Yet for the attainment of this beatitude, which is realized by few men in few moments of their lives, all those goods are necessary that can render life tranquil—permitting the exercise of contemplation. Some of these goods fall to one’s lot, such as good health and a sufficient quantity of wealth (Eth. nic., I, 8); others are obtained through the exercise of virtue. Virtue is a habit (ἕξις) that man procures by the repetition of good acts (loc. cit., II, 1). For an act to be virtuous, it must be performed knowingly and with deliberate will. Aristotle therefore emphasizes, beyond the intellectual element, the volitional element in virtue (loc. cit., III, 3) and for this reason he departs from what he interprets as the intellectualism of Socrates. He affirms that virtue is not reducible to knowledge, to φρόνησις, but demands a volitional element (loc. cit., VI, 13). Virtue is not suppressed, as he says, by the sensible impulse, by affect, by τὸ πάθος; yet it is not merely a sensible impulse, but rather a habit formed by the repetition of good acts.

stoicism) finds its foundation in the concept that all men are children of God and equal before Him. Hence the first commandment of evangelical morality, which unites love of God and love of neighbour and is given the greatest emphasis (Mt 22:37; Mk 12:29). Moral perfection is not the prerogative of any group (Pharisees) or class, but is open to all, even the poor, indeed especially to the poor, to the persecuted, to those who “count for nothing” in society (Mt 5:3). From God men have received, as a gift, their natural qualities and their external goods, which they must make bear fruit (parable of the talents, ibid., 25:14; Lk 19:12) with a view to obtaining the one thing that matters: the salvation of the soul, eternal life (parable of the hidden treasure and the pearl of great price, Mt 13:44). 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Hegel reacts by identifying moral perfection with Sittlichkeit, that is, with the firm insertion of the individual into the social structure of his time, with the “overcoming” of individual personality in the life of the State (it is significant that Hegel considers morality as a part of law, in a broad sense). Cf. especially, for Hegel, *Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts*.

In the second half of the 19th century there occurs: 1) a revival of utilitarianism (already affirmed by Bentham at the beginning of the century) in positivism (Stuart-Mill, Spencer); 2) an affirmation of naturalism or vitalism, with Nietzsche; 3) an affirmation on the part of Marxism of the primacy of economic values, from which one seeks to deduce, instead of an individualistic utilitarianism, an idea of solidarity, in which the individual must sacrifice himself to the prosperity of the group.

In the 20th century the idealist revival in Italy has assumed, with regard to the idea, a different form: one of Hegelian inspiration, with a historicist character, the other represented by P. ANTITRINITARI (v.), who affirms the primacy of moral and religious values. In the *Filosofia della pratica* B. Croce distinguishes action from ethical knowledge, and within the sphere of action (which he identifies with violation) he distinguishes the violation of the particular (economy) from the violation of the universal (ethics). Applying to “ethics” the central theory of his *Logica*, namely the identification of definitive judgment and individual judgment, which means the identification of necessary truths and truths of fact, he affirms that the practical judgment is not a judgment about values or ideals, but a historical judgment, and that history is the supreme criterion of value. Indeed, what comes to pass in history is the work not of the individual, but of the Whole. The facts that occur are the work of God: and God is not judged (*Filosofia della pratica*, 3rd ed., Bari 1923, p. 61). For Gentile, practical activity and theoretical activity are one and the same, and good is everything that is realized: evil is the fact, the past.

In the idealism of transcendence of P. Nattrnetri (cf. *Il regno dello spirito* [1908]; *La libertà* [1928]; *Ragione e fede* [1934]), moral good is not what is realized and affirmed in history, but rather the duty that manifests itself in the interiority of conscience as the exigency to live according to reason. Here we are dealing with reason understood in a Kantian sense, as the faculty of the Absolute. To live according to reason means to rise to the intelligible world, of which our spirit is a part and which finds its highest unity in God.

Among the most vital currents of contemporary thought, the "material of values" of M. Scheler (*Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik*, Halle 1916) must be recalled. He maintains that it is possible to elaborate a "material" (in contrast to the formalism of Kantian morality) and yet purely a priori, that is, expressing rigorously universal laws. This "material" is founded upon an intuition of values considered as such, in their essentiality, abstracting from the concrete goods in which they are incarnated. The "material" of values of M. Scheler presupposes Husserl’s theory of the intuition of essences. However, according to M. Scheler, the intuition of values is of an a-theoretical, emotional nature. Besides his systematic work, Scheler wrote admirable essays on the phenomenology of moral life.

A position akin to that of M. Scheler is taken by N. Nattrnetri in his extensive, rich, and systematic treatise (*Ethik*, Berlin 1926).

Even contemporary French philosophy, when it does not wish to be purely descriptive and does not resolve itself into sociology (Durkheim, Lévy-Bruhl), inclines toward intuitionism (Rauh, Bergson).

III. FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS

It has been said that “moral philosophy” must rationally justify moral evaluations, that is, the judgments by which we qualify certain actions as good and others as bad. Now, if, for the reasons given, ethical intuitionism is excluded, an ethical evaluation can only be justified by appealing to a moral norm and deducing that norm from metaphysics. The moral norm presents two characteristics: that of being absolutely valid and that of expressing not a necessity but a duty (not a *Müssen*, but a *Sollen*), that is, a command that can also be disobeyed, an ideal that can also be betrayed. The first characteristic is justified in a metaphysics of finality, in a teleological conception of the real; the second is justified by the recognition of human freedom.

IV. End

If indeed one asks what moral law is, what it expresses, one must reply that it indicates the path to be followed so that man may attain his perfection, his end as a man. But in order that the law may have an absolute value, be, to use a Kantian term, a categorical imperative, it is necessary that there exist an end of man as such; it is necessary, that is, that the end to be attained not be arbitrarily chosen by each individual, a goal which in fact men may or may not propose to themselves, but otherwise there would be no duty, no norm with absolute value, but each could choose his own law. It is therefore necessary that the end to be attained be a rightful end, an end toward which man is oriented by nature, by virtue of his essence. The concept of a rightful end or end of human nature corresponds in a certain sense to the concept of value, as understood, for example, by M. Scheler: in the sense that the end of human nature is not a fact felt _hic et nunc_ as good, but is a good known in its nature or essence as good, known in its _ratio boni._ One cannot therefore object (as Kant objects) to an “end” understood in this sense that it suspends our moral will to the sensible impulse toward an object, since that end which underlies moral law is a perfection toward which man is oriented by an exigency inherent in his nature. But it is impossible to justify such a concept of a rightful end or value unless one reduces value to being, unless one conceives value as the object of the intelligence and will of the Creator. And in this, in reducing the being of value to real being, the “Christian” view departs from most contemporary philosophies of value. For an end exists only in an intelligence, and therefore if there are ends in nature, if there is an end of human nature independently of what individual men may or may not propose, it means that there is an intelligence at the foundation of nature, at the foundation of man’s very being, which gives _a meaning to the activity of every thing and thus also to the activity of man._ Values are nothing other than the ends which creative intelligence posits, in creating them, for diverse beings. As every thing is according to an idea of the Creator, so _it must be_ in conformity with what God, in creating it, wills it to be.

Reaching the end of its nature, a being capable of sensation will also obtain the greatest joy of which it is capable: in the traditional concept of beatitude, in fact, the idea of objective perfection is implied along with that of the greatest possible joy. In a finalistic conception of reality, pleasure—in the broadest sense of delectatio—is the subjective resonance of an attained objective perfection; for it is unnatural to separate pleasure from value. And the separation can follow two paths: that of rigorism and that of hedonism. By rigorism we mean an ethical doctrine that commands the exclusion of pleasure. In this sense, Christian morality is not rigoristic, as has sometimes been objected: it only inculcates the necessity of not being guided by the pleasure of the moment, which may not correspond to the greater objective value. And since man often neglects the objective good in order to follow pleasure, Christian morality affirms the value of renunciation and ascetic exercise—not as a value in itself, but as a means to obtain that freedom from sensible impulses which allows him to choose the greater objective good. Hedonism, on the other hand, is the theory that places pleasure as the goal of human action. This theory too is excluded by the finalistic conception of reality, according to which every being has an objective perfection to be attained, which is the end of its nature. Logically, hedonism is the consequence of a pessimistic conception of reality, in which, since nothing is held to have meaning and nothing is thought to be made for anything, nothing remains but to entrust oneself to the pleasure of the moment.

2. Law as the way to the end

It must however be borne in mind that finality is given to every being with its very nature, before it, since the Creator (of nature) and the Finalizer are the same Being. Therefore the law that expresses orientation toward the end expresses the deepest exigencies of human nature. Natural moral law is understood in Christian thought as the reflection in human nature of the intelligible order that presides over creation (the lex aeterna).

Natural law has two characteristics that distinguish it from other natural laws: it must be known in order to be followed, and it is followed freely. Man is a self-aware, free being; therefore he not only lives the law of his nature but knows it, and he could not follow it if he did not know II. It must be noted, however, that this knowledge of natural law, like all human knowledge, is immediate only with respect to the most universal truths, and is mediated for more determinate truths. Man knows that he must pursue his end as a man, that he must be fully himself, but in order to know what his end as a man is and how he will be fully himself, he must reason: he must reflect on his nature to conclude what values he must realize and in what order.

This theory of traditional ethics, that the knowledge of our duties is obtained by reasoning, often meets with opposition. Frequently the objections arise from confusion between moral knowledge, the knowledge of duty—what E. Juvalta (I limiti del razionalismo etico, Torino 1945, p. 4) calls the justificatory exigency and the executive exigency. Now when traditional ethics affirms that the knowledge of moral law is the work of reason, it does not at all mean that following that law, moral action, is the fruit of reason, of logical necessity, which would be equivalent to denying freedom.

The affirmation of freedom is, rather, together with the finalistic conception of reality, a fundamental presupposition of Christian ethics. If freedom is denied (as, for example, in Spinoza’s pantheism), every command, every moral duty loses its meaning, since it makes no sense to command one who is already determined. The freedom affirmed by Christian philosophy, from St. Augustine to St. Anselm to St. Thomas, is not mere spiritual spontaneity; it is freedom as risk, as choice, as self-determination.

The affirmation that the knowledge of our duties is the fruit of reasoning is the only theory that can reconcile ethical objectivism (the affirmation of objective values and norms) with the fact of variations in moral conscience, its progress and its regressions. If moral conscience were the fruit of intuition, divergences in moral judgments could not exist: divergences do exist because, starting from certain universal premises on which all agree (no one denies that good must be done, that man’s perfection must be attained), it remains to determine what good and perfection consist in. And when it comes to concluding with more determinate norms, to specifying what is good, one always appeals, consciously or unconsciously, to a conception of man.

It is not in fact true that, even starting from very different philosophical conceptions, one arrives at the same conclusions regarding moral precepts, as Schopenhauer would have it when he asserts that, if it is difficult to found morality, it is easy to preach II. In reality, Schopenhauer’s observation is not always valid, since there are divergences even in special ethics. One need only think of the oppositions that Christian ethics has always encountered—and continues to encounter—even on the theoretical plane; or of the difference between, for instance, the ethics preached by Kant and that preached by Nietzsche. In the second place, it must be observed that philosophers are not always consistent, and that they often derive their moral judgments not from the metaphysics they profess in words, but from a latent metaphysics in their spirit, which may perhaps be what Bergson called “the natural metaphysics of the human intelligence.”

3. The values of moral realization

A framework for determining what man ought to be is offered by St. Thomas in the Summa Theologiae, 1a2ae, q. 94, art. 2, where, after stating that the supreme principle of morality is that which commands us to do good and avoid evil, he observes that the good of man involves the realization of a plurality of values, in conformity with the complexity of human nature. Man has three kinds of goods to attain: those inherent in his preservation as a being, those inherent in his animal life, and those characteristic of his spiritual nature. By striving to preserve his being, man realizes those values which, in a broad sense, might be called economic; by aiming at the fullness of his animal life, he realizes vital values, those which have as their poles health and unhealth; by aiming at the perfection of his rational nature, he realizes spiritual values which culminate in contemplation. Two are the fundamental requirements of a fully human ethics: 1) to respect the hierarchy of values, 2) to sacrifice as little as possible of the lower values.

Against the first requirement are ranged all those ethics which in some way invert the hierarchy of values. Utilitarianism, for instance, places economic values at the summit, making the supreme good the sensible well-being of the individual. Utilitarianism differs from hedonism in that, from the experience of the harm often brought by the pursuit of momentary pleasure, it draws the conclusion that pleasure must be measured out and sometimes renounced in order to obtain a greater and more lasting good. And since the pre-eminent means of procuring well-being is money, utilitarian ethics leads to a type of civilization in which money holds supreme importance. Now history attests to the evils that spring from the accursed hunger for gold. Christian ethics, on the other hand, which commands that the pursuit of well-being be subordinated to other values, is also the one that demands that all be given that measure of well-being which permits a human level of life, precisely because it recognizes that the realization of lower values is a condition for the realization of higher values.

Vitalism, which places at the summit the vital values, the values of human animality (eros, boldness, pride), represents another type of reversal in the hierarchy of values. A typical example of this is found in the philosophy of Nietzsche. The elevation of these values logically leads to the exaltation of the superman, the will to power, the legitimization of the slavery of the weak in general and of women in particular, and the glorification of war. In this regard, the Christian philosophy, which is sometimes accused of depressing life, is instead the one that recognizes the right to life not only for some, but for all, and, by subordinating vital impulses to spiritual values, guarantees to women the respect of their dignity as persons and does not reduce them to mere instruments for the propagation of the species.

Certainly, the subordination of economic and vital values to spiritual values often demands a choice, an option, and this implies sacrifice; yet the necessity of sacrifice is imposed by the very complexity of human nature and is not an arbitrary imposition of Christian philosophy, which, moreover, is the one that least sacrifices what is authentically human.

The primacy of spiritual values must be understood in a twofold sense: in the sense that reason must in a certain way be the form of morality, that is, it must regulate the realization of all values, and in the sense that at the summit of all values stand those of the contemplative life. In the first sense, reason must affirm its primacy especially in social life, which is a characteristic manifestation of human nature—being both corporeal and spiritual—because, while rooted in the exigencies of man as an animal, it is also the condition for the realization of spiritual values. This is already realized in the first and most elementary form of human society, the family, which, oriented as it is toward generation, presupposes man’s corporeal being, but is also the environment in which man receives his first form of culture and learns to rise to God. It is likewise realized in civil society, which is organized as the State. For, as St. Thomas observes (*De regimine principum*, ch. 1), man must live in society in order to obtain those means of defense and preservation that other animals already possess in their organism and instinctive activities; yet in civil society and through relations with other men he finds the indispensable conditions for his very spiritual life. And it is precisely for this reason that society is not the supreme end of man, but the means by which man attains the supreme value of his nature, which is contemplation, as Plato and Aristotle had already seen. For if one does not admit that the end of man is the contemplative activity, human individuals are inevitably reduced to a link in the chain of generations and to a cog in the machinery of the State; in other words, the value of man as a person is denied.

But what contemplation? Not the philosophical contemplation that never fully satisfies man’s desire to know and is granted only to a few individuals and not for the whole of their lives, whereas the supreme good of human nature must be accessible to all men. If one does not wish to deny man the possibility of attaining an end consonant with his nature, one must admit the existence of a future life in which the supreme value of human nature—the most perfect knowledge accessible to man of the most perfect intelligible object, which is God—is fully realized for all who have merited it by following the moral law (C. Gent., III, cap. 25).

The Lorsch anthology has transcribed the following inscription:
«In trona sancti Chrisgoni, in Trastevere: «Sedes
celas Dei praefert insignia Christi - quod Patris et Filii
creditur honor unus» (G. B. De Rossi, *Inscriptiones
Christianae urbis Romae*, II, 1, Rome 1888, p. 152, no. 27).
We thus have a theophany of the Apocalypse and the elevation of the Son to the right hand of the Father. At Ravenna in the 6th century, in the Orthodox Baptistery, four jeweled thrones are depicted in the cupola with the Cross, the purple, and the diadem (insignia Christi); in the Arian Baptistery the jeweled throne with cross and purple has on either side the apostles Peter and Paul (Wilpert, *Mosaiken*, pl. 101).
In Byzantine art the throne appears with the insignia of the Passion, namely the Cross, the lance, the crown of thorns, the sponge, and the book. Thus in the mosaic of Torcello (Venice) and in the apse mosaic of S. Paolo in Rome.
There is also a theophany of the Lamb, as, for example, in the triumphal arch of the basilica of SS. Cosmas and Damian erected by Felix IV (626–30) in the Roman Forum. On the throne sits the Lamb, while behind rises the Cross and on the footstool is placed the scroll with the seven seals (G. Matthiae, *SS. Cosma e Damiano e S. Teodoro*, Rome 1948, photo 18). It is found again on the front face of the ivory casket of Samagher (now in the Museum of Parenzo); later, in the page of the *Beatus* of Gerona with the reliquary of the Cross of Oviedo.