Moreland, Michael P.

English

Villanova University School of Law: Digital Repository

Volume 57 Issue 5 Article 10 2012 Response to Candace Vogler, "In Support of Moral Absolutes" Michael P. Moreland Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.villanova.edu/vlr  Part of the Legal History Commons Recommended Citation Michael P. Moreland, Response to Candace Vogler, "In Support of Moral Absolutes", 57 Vill. L. Rev. 907 (2012). Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.villanova.edu/vlr/vol57/iss5/10 This Symposia is brought to you for free and open access by Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Villanova Law Review by an authorized editor of Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law Digital Repository. \\jciprod01\productn\V\VLR\57-5\VLR510.txt unknown Seq: 1 27-DEC-12 11:272012]RESPONSE TO CANDACE VOGLER,“IN SUPPORT OF MORAL ABSOLUTES”MICHAEL P. MORELAND*WE were already in debt to Candace Vogler for her splendid 2002book Reasonably Vicious, which argued for the importance of Eliza-beth Anscombe and Aquinas for an adequate account of practical reason.I say that because, while we are honoring John Finnis today in a law schooland preeminently for his towering achievements in the philosophy of law,he is also the bearer of a tradition in English Catholic philosophy thatbegins with Anscombe’s 1957 paper, Mr. Truman’s Degree, condemning theindiscriminate bombing of innocent civilians during the Second WorldWar, and Anscombe’s 1958 landmark essay, Modern Moral Philosophy.  Cen-tral to Anscombe’s argument in those papers was the topic of ProfessorVogler’s paper here today, namely the importance of exceptionless moralnorms and the rejection of consequentialism.  Anscombe wrote in ModernMoral Philosophy:[I]t has been characteristic of the Hebrew-Christian ethic toteach that there are certain things forbidden whatever conse-quences threaten . . . .  The prohibition of certain things simply invirtue of their description as such-and-such identifiable kinds ofaction, regardless of any further consequences, is certainly notthe whole of the Hebrew-Christian ethic; but it is a noteworthyfeature of it.1Professor Vogler’s stated problem in this paper is whether one canground absolute moral prohibitions without theology.  Suffice to say thatthis is a large question, which neither Professor Vogler’s paper nor mybrief response can hope to address in a comprehensive way.  But let memake two comments in response to her provocative and profound paper.First, it seems to me that there is at least the potential for some confu-sion in the use of the verb “grounded” (or “defended,” “rationally vindi-cated,” “made sense of,” and so on) in the question of whether absolutemoral prohibitions can be “grounded” without, or apart from, theology.Professor Finnis and the New Natural Law theory with which he is associ-ated are often taken to have marginalized the place of God (religion, the-ology, or revelation) in their account of natural law and its requirementsbecause religion is reduced to merely one of the basic goods in the theory.But I wonder if critics—not Professor Vogler, but those looming in thebackground of her paper—sometimes misread Professor Finnis on this* Vice Dean and Professor of Law, Villanova University School of Law.1. G.E.M. Anscombe, Modern Moral Philosophy, PHIL. Jan. 1958, at 33.(907)1Moreland: Response to Candace Vogler, "In Support of Moral Absolutes"Published by Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law Digital Repository, 2012\\jciprod01\productn\V\VLR\57-5\VLR510.txt unknown Seq: 2 27-DEC-12 11:27908 VILLANOVA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 57: p. 907point.  In Natural Law and Natural Rights, for example, Professor Finnisresponds to an objection formulated by Kai Nielsen that (this is Nielsen)“traditional concepts of natural law are completely dependent for theirviability on the soundness of such claims [as that natural theology is intelli-gible, let alone true, and that God exists].”2  Finnis responds that he will,in Part II of the book, refute the Nielsen charge by “offer[ing] a ratherelaborate sketch of a theory of natural law without needing to advert tothe question of God’s existence or nature or will.”3  But Professor Finnisgoes on in the very next paragraph to write:[T]he fact that natural law can be understood, assented to, ap-plied, and reflectively analysed without adverting to the questionof the existence of God does not of itself entail either (i) that nofurther explanation is required for the fact that there are objectivestandards of good and bad and principles of reasonableness(right and wrong), or (ii) that no such further explanation isavailable, or (iii) that the existence and nature of God is not thatexplanation.4And so perhaps the “requirement” of a further explanation for princi-ples of reasonableness (and the place of exceptionless moral norms in anoverall account of practical reason’s demands) shows how the charge ofsetting aside or marginalizing of theology is perhaps something of acaricature.My second comment is simply to highlight the significance of thistopic to the overall importance of the rejection of consequentialism in thework of Professor Finnis.  As Philippa Foot once noted, “No decision ismore important for practical ethics than that by which we come to em-brace or reject utilitarianism.”  The frustration that Anscombe voiced inModern Moral Philosophy with the morass of post-Sidgwickian English moralphilosophy has been continued, deepened, and clarified in Professor Fin-nis’s work, notable in the McGivney Lectures that were the focus of Profes-sor Vogler’s paper and were published as the book Moral Absolutes but also,say, in the sections of Natural Law and Natural Rights on the incommensu-rability of the basic goods.  More recently, in a 1997 lecture at Notre Dameon secularism, published as Secularism’s Practical Meaning in Volume III ofthe Collected Essays of John Finnis, Professor Finnis writes that:[W]hen one reflects on the phenomenon of consequentialism,one comes, I think, to see it as, wittingly or otherwise, an attemptto replace divine with human providence, not in retail (as withthe differentiation of secular from sacred that comes with all par-2. KAI NIELSON, GOD AND THE GROUNDING OF MORALITY 75 (1991).3. JOHN FINNIS, NATURAL LAW AND NATURAL RIGHTS 49 (1980).4. Id. (emphasis added).2Villanova Law Review, Vol. 57, Iss. 5 [2012], Art. 10https://digitalcommons.law.villanova.edu/vlr/vol57/iss5/10\\jciprod01\productn\V\VLR\57-5\VLR510.txt unknown Seq: 3 27-DEC-12 11:272012] COMMENT 909ticular technical competences, as in agriculture, sewerage, ormedicine) but wholesale, across the board.5So also Bernard Williams, not otherwise concerned with the denial ofdivine providence or the defense of absolute moral norms but similarlyscathing about the costs and the sly appeal of consequentialism in his fa-mous reply to Professor Finnis’s countryman J.J.C. Smart, wrote:If people do not regard certain things as “absolutely out,” thenthey are prepared to start thinking about extreme situations inwhich what would otherwise be out might, exceptionally, be justi-fied.  They will, if they are to get clear about what they believe, beprepared to compare different extreme situations and ask whataction would be justified in them.  But once they have got used tothat, their inhibitions about thinking of everything in conse-quential terms disappear: the difference between the extreme sit-uations and the less extreme, presents itself no longer as adifference between the exceptional and the usual, but betweenthe greater and the less—and the consequential thoughts onewas prepared to deploy in the greater it may seem quite irrationalto deploy in the less.6In conclusion, Professor Vogler has given us a provocative and in-sightful paper about merely one aspect of the moral philosophical work ofJohn Finnis and has artfully raised the importance of the common An-scombian project that animates much of the work both of Professor Finnisand Professor Vogler.  Writing just two years ago in 2009 about ElizabethAnscombe in the context of a review of two books of Anscombe’s collectedessays and relevant here to the topic of Professor Vogler’s paper on therelation of theology to moral philosophy, Professor Finnis wrote:Since the faith has realities, not myth, for its object, and sinceeverything that can be inquired into is what it is by virtue ofGod’s actuality, one’s inquiries and every other element in one’sintellectual life—whether elements on which faith bears or ele-ments remote from the faith—can be pursued with confidencethat they will not contradict faith and if successful will havebrought one a little closer to understanding what is really so.That is the free and diligent way in which Anscombe carried out5. 5 John Finnis, Secularism’s Practical Meaning, in RELIGION AND PUBLIC REA-SONS, COLLECTED ESSAYS 56, 76–77 (2011).6. J.J.C. & BERNARD WILLIAMS, UTILITARIANISM: FOR & AGAINST 91 (1973).3Moreland: Response to Candace Vogler, "In Support of Moral Absolutes"Published by Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law Digital Repository, 2012\\jciprod01\productn\V\VLR\57-5\VLR510.txt unknown Seq: 4 27-DEC-12 11:27910 VILLANOVA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 57: p. 907the work that is widely and reasonably judged the twentieth cen-tury’s outstanding English Catholic philosophical achievement.7So also that is the free and diligent way in which John Finnis has car-ried out his work, which we rightly gather to celebrate today.7. 2 JOHN FINNIS, Anscombe on Spirit and Intention, in INTENTION AND IDENTITY,COLLECTED ESSAYS 69 (2011).4Villanova Law Review, Vol. 57, Iss. 5 [2012], Art. 10https://digitalcommons.law.villanova.edu/vlr/vol57/iss5/10

Response to Candace Vogler,  In Support of Moral Absolutes

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Response to Candace Vogler, In Support of Moral Absolutes

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