Tag Archives: Morality

The Myth of Moral Neutrality

Conscience, Freedom, Moralilty, Relativism, Sin, , , ,

There is an ongoing debate among philosophers and ethicists as to whether or not a man is capable of performing a morally neutral act.  Like all of moral philosophy this seemingly theoretical question has practical and, more importantly, eternal consequences for the rest of us.  In performing an impromptu poll among Catholics I know, most of them said “of course there are morally neutral acts” and then proceeded to list off a few, none of which were morally neutral.  In this post then I would like to address this question in hopes of not just solving a problem, but changing the way the reader approaches everything that he does.

In approaching this question there is an important distinction that must be made.  St. Thomas in his treatise on human actions (ST II-I q.6) reminds the reader that there are two “types” of actions in which a human being is the agent.  First there are what he calls “acts of man.”  These are natural acts of man that involve his vegetative and sense faculties such as digestion, growth, heartbeats, sensual perceptions (like seeing and hearing) and so forth.  These acts are performed without any movement of the intellect and will and are in no way voluntary.  Once they do become voluntary (such as when we choose to look at something) they fall into the second category; what St. Thomas calls human acts.  These actions, because they involve deliberation and choice, are voluntary actions.  Morality concerns itself only with human acts.

Just because acts of man are not voluntary does not mean that they are morally neutral.  Just as we would not say actions of an animal are morally neutral because they do not proceed from a voluntary action, so too we would not say that these acts of man are morally neutral.  They are not morally anything because they are not morally evaluable.

Human Acts

Once this distinction is made and we focus only on moral acts, we can begin to see why no action is morally neutral.  In evaluating the moral status of any given human act, St. Thomas suggests that one should look at four particular components; its genus, its species, the circumstances surrounding the act and its end (ST I-II, q.18).

It is the first two components, genus and species, that define the object of the human act.  The object of the act would be how one would define it if they were to witness the act.  These moral objects can be good, evil or indifferent based upon their relationship to reason.  It is the object that determines whether a given act can be ordered to the good or not (Vertiatis Splendor, 79).

Yes, I said that the moral object can be indifferent or neutral, but that does not mean that the action itself is morally neutral.  Because no human act takes place in a vacuum, it is also necessary to examine the circumstances surrounding the act.  In saying that the circumstances “surround” the act one is able to catch a glimpse into their relationship with the exterior action.  Circumstances are related to the exterior action as accidents.  This means that because they are truly exterior to the moral act they are not good or evil in themselves.  However some circumstances are morally relevant and thus add a character of good or evil to the action.  The morally relevant circumstances would be those that affect the relation of the act to man’s ultimate end according to reason.

We can imagine actions that are both indifferent in their object and in their circumstances.  Yet still this does not prove there are morally neutral actions because one needs to evaluate the act from the point of the view of the moral agent in considering the end that is intended.  While the external act and the circumstances may be morally neutral, no voluntary action can be considered neutral from the point of view of intention.  Every voluntary act is done for a purpose.  The purpose is either in accord with right reason and thus is a good act, or it is contrary to right reason and thus considered an evil act (ST II-I, q.18, a.9).

It becomes evident then that one can say there are two ends to each exterior act: the end of the act itself and the end which the agent intends.  How these two ends are related can be understood by relying on St. Thomas’ use of matter and form.  He says “(H)uman activity is defined formally by its goal and materially by its external object” (ibid).  This is an important point that follows from this.

The intention of the agent is more important than the end of the act itself in evaluating the act morally.  However, because the exterior action is the means to carry out the end the agent intends, it must be a good means for accomplishing that end.  That is there are some objects like murder for example that can never be ordered to a good end.  Secondly, although one can separate the two ends in theory, they both form a single act.  In other words for the act to potentially be good, both must be good.  Likewise, while a good intention may lessen the moral gravity of an objectively evil act, it cannot make the act itself good.  However, a bad motive can change the moral quality of an otherwise good action.

The exterior act itself is objective but to only emphasize this component is to fall into legalism.  The intent is subjective, but to only emphasize this principle is to fall into subjectivism.  Finally, the circumstances are relative, but to only emphasize this is to fall into moral relativism.

Clearing Up Any Confusion

A few examples may help to make all that has been said clear.  Suppose a man sees an older woman carrying a large heavy bag and looks like she is preparing to cross the street.  He decides to carry the bag for her (the object).  She really is going to cross the street (circumstances).  He wants to perform a kind act (intention).  This is a morally good act because all three components are good.  Now take the same object and intention, but now the woman tell him she does not want to cross the street.  This becomes a morally bad act because it is contrary to reason to carry a bag for someone across the street who is not going to cross the street.  Finally suppose that the object and the circumstances are the same as the original example but now the intention is to impress the woman’s daughter.  Now the act becomes morally bad because it is done with a bad intention.

That exercise is clear but what about something like eating lunch, or more specifically eating a sandwich for lunch?  The object is good—providing nourishment to your body, but the other two components are what determine whether it is a morally good act or not.  Have you already eaten enough?  Is it the last sandwich?  Are there other people that need to eat?  All of these circumstances have bearing on the moral evaluation of it.  What about the intention?  Are you eating because you are nervous or because you are hungry?  Are you eating because you want to keep someone else from eating or are you leaving half the sandwich because someone else needs to eat as well?  Each of the circumstances and intentions will determine whether it is a morally good or bad act, but none of them will make it morally neutral.  To eat when you are hungry is in accord with right reason and therefore a good action.  Eating a sandwich for lunch can be a morally good act!

Herein, I think, lay the confusion.  We think of morality in terms of breaking rules and not primarily as acting in accord with right reason.  There is no moral law against eating a sandwich for lunch therefore it is permissible.  Permissibility implies neutrality.  But once we slide into the realm of thinking in terms of permissibility and not in terms of right reason we only try to avoid doing anything wrong and lose our desire to do good all the time.  And this is why this question is completely practical.  Once we see right and wrong in this light and not necessarily as not breaking a rule, we begin to thrive as persons.  When we recognize that the good is always an option for us, we develop all the virtues at a faster pace.  When we begin to taste the sweetness of the fruit of virtue, we desire to have our reason rightly formed so that conscience may judge the good to be done at all times.  There are no morally neutral acts, indeed.

Music and Morality

Culture, Moralilty, Music, Virtue, , ,

When Plato set out to write the Republic, he was attempting to present a blueprint for a just society filled with just men.  You might be surprised then to find several sections in which he discusses music.  Plato, like many of the ancients, thought music was not invented but discovered; a sacrament that made the order and rhythm of the universe felt.  “Rhythm and harmony,” he thought, “find their way into the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly educated graceful.”   In other words, music, because of its power to captivate us and bring us pleasure, also has to be evaluated morally.  And in this, we moderns would think him entirely backward.  Maybe the lyrics matter a little, but music itself is entirely neutral.  Good music is in the ear of the listener.  Plato himself would group us moderns with the fools of his day who “[I]n their mindlessness [they] involuntarily falsified music itself when they asserted that there was no such thing as correct music, and that it was quite correct to judge music by the standard of the pleasure it gives to whoever enjoys it, whether he be better or worse” (The Laws 700e).

This is not an attempt to empirically verify what Plato thought as true, but only to set the table by asking a simple question—what caused the sexual revolution?  Put more precisely, why did things change so drastically in the mid-60s and 70s?  It would be hard not to connect it to the revolution in music that preceded it.  In fact we can do this for many periods of recent and not-so recent history; from the nihilism of the late 19th Century and its connection to the denial of tonality in music to the denial of tradition in the Romantic composers, Plato seems particular prescient—“ [A]s Damon says, and I am convinced, the musical modes are never changed without change in the most important of a city’s laws” (Republic 424c).

The Moral Aspect of Music

Although we could continue to trace the music-cultural connection, it is more instructive to examine the nature of music and its effects on morality to show why this will always be the case.  What makes this particular topic difficult to discuss is that most of us have a fundamental misunderstanding regarding morality.  We have come to see it mainly as following rules, that is, as a training exercise of the intellect.  But the moral man is one who trains his will such that he learns to take pleasure in the right things.  It is no unlike the man with a healthy diet in that he learns to like the taste of food that is healthy for him.  When driven by pleasure alone he will consume only those foods that are sweet to his palate, treating health as, at best, a secondary concern.  When he is concerned with his health and sees food as necessary to maintaining it, he will develop his palate such that he finds pleasure in foods that are truly good for him.

The food analogy is a helpful aid to understanding music.  Music naturally has a capacity to move us and bring us pleasure.  It is able to target specific emotions or evoke certain images.  Military men were able to cover much greater distances when marching to music.  They were able to go bravely into battle on the heels of the otherwise unarmed military drummers and buglers.  Movies add to the suspense of the scenes by playing music.  Try watching the shower scene in Psycho without the music and see if it elicits the same response from you.  Music clearly feeds the soul and therefore we should ask how to separate the healthy music from junk food.

This inherent capacity of music to move us is where music takes on a moral component.  Emotions are part of the constitution of man and are meant to be bodily responses to good and evil.  They can be stirred up (or permitted to endure) interiorly through reflection or they can be stirred from contact with something exterior to us.  When they are stirred up from the outside prior to any moral reflection, there is no moral aspect per se.  But once we choose the particular emotion, then it becomes subject to moral evaluation.  The morality of emotions is something most of us already grasp.  What we may not realize however is that when we choose a thing because it will stir up an emotion, this too is subject to moral norms.

When we choose a song that we “like” what we are really saying is that “I like the emotion this music causes me to feel.”  Fallen as we are, without reflection we tend towards those things that stir up base emotions.  To continue to feed certain emotions develops in us a habit for those emotions to arise on their own with ever greater frequency.  These unbridled emotions then dispose us towards vice, making it easier and more pleasurable.  Music that is rhythm-heavy with a syncopated beat (like modern popular music and rock) for example, tends to stir up the base emotions associated with anger and lust.  Train the body enough in these emotions and acts will follow.  The angry teenager who only wants to listen to his music (he is addicted to the pleasure of feeling angry) and the “bumping and grinding” that sets the scene of the dance club are both caused by the accompanying music.

Evaluating Music

Because of the melody, harmony and rhythm, music has the capacity to bring us pleasure; and not just bodily pleasure.  The melody and harmony can bring pleasure to our souls while the pleasure of rhythm can be felt bodily.  Music that respects this ordering, placing rhythm at the service of the other two, will bring us spiritual pleasure.  This gives us a way in which we might evaluate the quality of the music.  Music that corresponds to the ordering of the soul, when the artistic primacy of melody and harmony above rhythm is respected, is objectively good music.  Classical, folk and liturgical music are all examples of genres in which this hierarchy is respected.

Notice that I have said nothing about the lyrics.  In truth, lyrics serve only, at best, a secondary role.  To say “you don’t listen to the lyrics” doesn’t really change anything.  Even if you don’t understand German, you know that Beethoven’s Ninth is an Ode to Joy.  Much of the music in vogue today, you can’t understand the lyrics anyway.  Regardless, lyrics are meant to serve the other aspects of the music.  They are meant to make clearer the artist’s intent.  In rhythm heavy rock and pop music, the lyrics are supporting the beat and the song would have the same effect (maybe not as deeply) without the lyrics.  This is why Christian rock is an absurdity.  The rhythm is saying one thing and the words another.  There is no due proportion and the result is ugly in the truest sense of the word.

In a world where arguments are ignored(especially when someone might be addicted to the thing you are arguing about), there is value in personal experience.  The easiest way for us to evaluate our own musical choices is to simply observe ourselves when we listen to a particular song.  Where does your mind go and what emotions are stirred in you?  What is it that you like specifically about the song?  Conversely when you think of the “anti-one hit wonders” like Mozart, Bach, Palestrina and the like, what is it you don’t like about their music?  Is it boring?  That might be because you have been feeding on junk food for so long that you need to refresh your musical palate.  With a steady diet of only music that uplifts your soul, you will come to draw pleasure from objectively good music.  Trust me, if I, with the steady diet of crappy music I used to listen to, can do it then so can you.  And you will be that much the better for it.  In fact, society as a whole will be that much better for it.