Category Archives: Moral philosophy

Loving God is Loving What God Loves

Contrition, Divine Command Morality, Moral philosophy

The purpose of this post is to sketch out how there might be genuine human feelings of sorrow over the violation of a moral law, viz., moral harm. This would be sorrow over and above any sorrow felt about the consequences of the act violating the moral law. It presupposes the command moral theory which I have been developing over the past few years. Links to crucial posts are provided.

What might it be like to have sorrow over offending God or the source of basic moral rules?

The hypothesis of this post says: To love God is to love what God loves.

This hypothesis is not essentially theological. I am developing a divine command morality; so here it is theological. If I planned to characterize the source of our morality as The Moral Law, my hypothesis might be formulated as: To respect the moral law is to respect what the moral law respects. If I planned to take Rationality as the source of morality, my hypothesis might formulated as: To respect Rationality is to reason in accordance with Rationality. The various hypotheses are attempts to characterize how we can have a relation to the source of morality and, thereby, have contrition for the harm of offending it. I prefer to write of God and love because “love” connotes most clearly that the thinking of the source of morality is a combination of thought and feeling; not from pure theoretical thought.

People can love as God loves without thinking of themselves as loving God. However, as we will see, once one violates a moral law and still loves God, that person in some way recognizes that God has been wronged. This is because of the transparency of morality to the source of morality.

What God loves are the basic human goods aimed at by fundamental moral rules, the virtues or character traits people develop to attain these basic goods, and the freedom of will to accept and apply these basic rules.

For a list of the basic human goods in the New Natural Law Theory, see the end of Duty vs. Love. My moral theory is a revision of the New Natural Law theory.

So, loving what is good for humans and gives them moral dignity is loving God. Our dignity is the freedom to accept and apply the fundamental moral rules.

This can be expanded to say: Loving God is loving the basic human goods aimed at by fundamental moral rules, the virtues or character traits people develop to attain these basic goods, and the freedom of will to accept and apply these basic rules.

Sorrow over violation of a moral law, then, is tripartite
1. Sorrow over the basic human good set aside by the violation
2. Sorrow over the impediment to virtue produced by the violation
3. Sorrow over the requirement that harm be done

For background on the following paragraph see Normative theory of moral harm.

The sorrow over the requirement that harm be done is based on the good of our freedom of will. Our freedom of will brings with it the authority to create many ad hoc norms with moral force. These ad hoc norms come from applying moral rules. The ad hoc norms are eliminated from morality when they are fulfilled. For instance, a promise creates and ad hoc moral rule to keep the promise. When the promise is kept the norm to keep it is eliminated. When they correspond with moral rules they are good. But when they come from violation of a moral law they aim at destruction of good. God has given us the freedom to create these norms and consequently God has given us the freedom to create retributive punishment.

The norms for retributive punishment come solely from humans But God has given us the authority to create them.

These sorrows are exacerbated by shame that those conditions for which we feel sorrow are known by the author of morality who wills only good for us. This shame brings one who had loved God before violation of the moral law to recognition that God has been wronged.

Contrition is a having this tripartite sorrow and its associated shame.

I choose the following illustration because I regularly attend sessions of That Man Is You, (TMIY) which consists of videos and discussion to help Catholic men become better husbands and fathers. One video by Steve Bullman, founder of TMIY highlighted how masturbation with internet porn is corrupting men and dissrupting marriages.

Connsider a married man who has just finished masturbating after viewing internet porn. He feels foolish for choosing this trivial satisfaction over the good of the fundamental moral law for men,viz., the paternal principle . This good is the procreative and unitive conjugal coitus. He is anxious because now he is even further behind in the struggle we men have in controlling sexual desires. He is vaguely fearful that he might seek ever more stimulating porn and ultimately illegal porn. He judges that he deserves some bad things because such as the disgust his wife and children would feel about him if they knew of his behavior. And, although he hides it from his wife and children, he is ashamed because what he has done is there in morality to be known.

A Conceptual Path from Moral Harm to Contrition

Book promotion, Moral philosophy

In my book on sexual morality*, I confronted Steven Pinker’s example** of coitus between a brother and sister which had, as the imaginary cases for moral philosophy can stipulate, absolutely no harmful consequences in nature. I propose that there is a type of harm over and above natural harm which is specifically a moral harm. Without much development of the notion, I simply proposed that moral harm is the harm done merely by disobedience to a moral law. In my book, I left this notion of moral harm lie in the background of my argument for traditional sexual morality. My case was mainly that the harm of setting aside the rules of traditional sexual morality was a sense of lawlessness and ultimately a sense that life is pointless, viz., nihilism.

After publication, I realized that the argument of my book needed to be strengthened by clarification and justification of moral harm as the harm of simply disobeying a moral law.

I have religious or theological concerns about understanding the fundamental Christian thesis that Christ suffered and died for our sins. In my religious reflections I reached a stage at which I realized that I could not hope to understand doctrines about our redemption by Christ unless, I understood retributive punishment.

A breakthrough in my thinking about the need for redemption was that retributive punishment is repair of moral harm.

The proposal that retributive punishment is repair of moral harm demands portrayal of moral harm as something which can be repaired. What goes on in the violation of a moral law which is something which can be repaired? I conjectured that in violation of a moral norm the violator adds a new moral norm to morality. This new moral norm is ad hoc for this violation. The ad hoc moral norm specifies that some harm ought to be done. A violation of a moral rule does expose a choice that the good aimed at by the rule ought to be inhibited. Inhibition of good is harm. So, moral harm is a perverse moral norm, i.e., a norm with the force of morality but contrary to the goal of morality. This ad hoc norm with the force of a genuine moral norm is damage or dirt in morality.

See Revision of the Normative Theory of Moral Harm for elaboration of the proposal that violation of a moral norm creates a perverse moral norm

This damage to morality can be repaired by fulfilling the ad hoc moral norm and thereby removing it from morality.

Doing the harm required by the ad hoc rule is retributive punishment.

Besides trying to understand moral harm and retributive punishment, I want to understand a thought that abortion is always a grievous wrong despite the fact that it frequently can be justified by utilitarian considerations. What is it like to have sorrow simply over the breaking of a moral law that innocent human life should not be directly terminated? This question led me to the proposal there might be an analogue to the Catholic notion of perfect contrition. Perfection contrition is sorrow over simply disobeying God. So, perhaps, the genuine moral conviction that abortion is wrong is sorrow over simply disobeying a moral law against it. This would be sorrow over moral harm. This sorrow over moral harm would be sorrow over having the ad hoc moral laws requiring harm in morality.

This is where I am now in my investigations. I have in thought, or “on paper,” specified moral harm and contrition for moral harm. But it needs to be shown that there can be genuine human sentiments connected with what I have called contrition.

*Contronting Sexual Nihilism: Traditional Sexual Morality as an Antidote to Nihilism,, Tulsa, 2014
Email kielkopf.1@osu.edu for a free copy of this book
** p. 63 of my book, Originally in “The Moral Instinct” in the New York Times Magazine,Sun Jan. 13, 2008

Moral Harm and Contrition

Contrition, Moral harm

I write this after the November 8, 2022 elections showed that a majority of the people in the USA do not think abortion is truly immoral. My goal is to make a small contribution to conceptual resources for leading people, including myself, to realize the immorality of abortion despite the fact that utilitarian, cost/benefit reasoning, or however we label moral evaluation by weighing consequences do not clearly show the immorality of abortion.

What I accomplish in this post may seem abstract and lifeless; disconnected from any complex of thought and feeling anyone would call “contrition.” But this post is only a phase in a conversation trying to articulate what it would be like to have contrition for abortion. If I could clearly articulate and communicate having contrition for abortion, I would have something worth saying in efforts to convince people that abortion is truly immoral. Bringing someone to have contrition or realize that contrition is needed for an action is to prove the immorality of the action.

This is conversational development of concepts. What is conversational development of a concept? I write by imagining that it is my turn in a conversation to propose theses and definitions. My line of thought is proposed for modification and correction by others. They are not intended to be the “last word.”

Here I should state a crucial assumption about conceptual development which I did not realize I make until after I had published this post. I have never had perfect contrition for offending God or morality. I believe that I ought to have such contrition. My crucial assumption is that if I can find “just the right words” for characterizing perfect contrition the proper sentiments of perfect contrition will come along with having the right words or thoughts.

See Moral harm for crucial background.on how and why I defined “moral harm” as I have defined it. Contrition here means perfect contrition.

This post, via logic, connects contrition with moral harm.

First premise: Contrition is sorrow over having offended the source of morality by violation of a moral law.

Second premise: moral harm is the harm done simply by violation of a moral law .

These two premises yield a:

First conclusion: Contrition is sorrow over having offended the source of morality by producing moral harm.

My detailed characterization of moral harm is used as the:

Third premise. Moral harm is the occurrence in human moral thought of a prescription that harm ought to occur because of a violation along with a stress in morality’s authority until the harm which ought to occur upon violation of a moral law actually occurs.

This characterization and the first conclusion permit derivation of:

Second conclusion: Contrition is sorrow over having offended the source of morality by producing the occurrence in human moral thought of a prescription that harm ought to occur because of a violation along with a stress in morality’s authority until the harm which ought to occur upon violation of a moral law actually occurs.

Contrition has been logically connected with enough other concepts to write a book about contrition. So conceptual development is now best served by sketching out informally the vision of morality and contrition with which I am working.

Human moral thinking is a creation of God, viz., the moral authority. In moral thinking we produce norms. Correct moral thinking is thinking the norms for human behavior which God knows aim at basic human goods. So, in correct moral thinking we think as God thinks about what ought to be. If no one ever chose against the moral norms which God thinks, there would be a beautiful system of norms all aiming at the production of basic human goods.

However, we do choose wrongly. Unfortunately, in our immoral choices, we produce norms for moral thinking is always normative thinking. But in the case of the norms put into moral thought by immoral choices there are norms that the human goods aimed at by the correct norms ought to be inhibited, viz. evil be brought about. Hence, immoral choices produce ad hoc norms that evil ought to be. These ad hoc norms defile the beautiful system of moral norms the source of morality would have as our moral thought.

I have connected satisfying and thereby removing, these ad hoc norms with retributive punishment .

Here I conclude by noting that contrition is at least sorrow over having defiled the creation of the moral order with norms that some non-moral harm ought to be.

But this post is only a prelude to showing that this abstract definition of contrition can be exemplified in genuine human thoughts and sentiments.

Distinguishing Shame From Contrition

Divine Command Morality, Moral philosophy

Before further explorations of personal, collective and vicarious contrition for abortion it is useful to distinguish shame from contrition. The theme is that our moral shame is of that for which we should have perfect contrition. Shame is a psychological condition* in reaction to what ought not have been while contrition is in part, at least, a moral judgment that a psychological condition of sorrow for being in conflict with the moral law specifying that for which there is shame ought not have been. I am guided somewhat by use of the prepositions “of” and “for.” Shame is of a concrete situation. Contrition is for violation of the abstract moral law. The distinction is made by observations about usage of these terms; not with precise definitions.

I begin with observations of my religious practice since that provides for me the paradigm cases of tallking of contrition.

I receive the Catholic sacrament of Reconciliation (Confession) about every eight weeks. Long ago when I was a child, I was ashamed of what I had to confess, had the so-called imperfect contrition of dreading the loss of heaven and pains of hell and felt ashamed of not having the perfect contrition of sorrow over offending God. I did not have to confess the absence of perfect contrition. I am ashamed to admit that I still lack perfection contrition.

The absence of perfect contrition was not an immoral act or the result of any immoral act. Still, I was ashamed of that lack because it indicated that I was not a very good person, or so I believed. I believed that I ought to have perfect contrition. I did not, of course, think that I ought to feel perfect contrition immediately. I believed having perfect contrition was a condition I should try to develop.

I did not then, and do not now, know clearly what it is like to have perfect contrition. Implicitly, I knew then, and explicitly now, know that I ought not dismiss pursuit of perfect contrition as an important goal. Dismissing perfect contrition as a goal worth pursuing would be tantamount to dismissing love of God as a significant goal. Here, the normative dimension of perfect contrition has emerged. Loving God is an obligatory good .

The commonly used phrases “you ought to be ashamed of that” and “you ought to be ashamed of yourself” does not indicate a similar normative dimension of shame. Shame per se is not a good to be pursued. Contrition because it involves love of God is per se a good to be pursued. Actually, the apparent obligation to have shame is to accept, have respect for, the moral law condemning that for which we should be ashamed.

My previous thoughts on You ought to be ashamed of yourself do not undercut what I have written here that shame is not a good to pursue.

I am searching for a purely moral analogue to perfect contrition as the sorrow about the violation of a moral law over and above any dread of the consequences of the violation. As noted above, an element of perfect contrition is having love of God as a significant goal. I propose, then, that an element of the moral analogue to perfect contrition is having love of, respect for**, the moral law as a significant, if not preeminent, obligatory good.

In conclusion, consider a comparison between love of God and respect for the moral law when we identify respect for the moral law as love of God.

To love God is to choose the good of God. The good of God is what God wills. Hence, to love God is to choose what God wills.What God wills is obedience to the moral laws for attainment of human happiness. So, to love God is to choose obedience to the moral laws for attainment of human happiness. If “respect for the moral law” = “love of God,” we get:
To respect the moral law is to choose obedience to the moral laws for attainment of human happiness***.

Added Oct. 31. If we do not have a command morality, which is invariably a divine command morality, we cannot really find a place for contrition. Respect for the moral law is only half of contrition. For full confession we need sorrow for disobeying the source of the moral law. If the source is impersonal as rationality or morality itself, there is nothing which our immoral choice has offended.

* “Pyschological condtion” refers to a combination of cognitive and affective states – combination of thoughts and feelings
** Respect for the moral law is preeminent in Kant’s moral philosophy. I keep returning to Kantian moral thinking in all my thinking about morality. But I am not doing Kantian exegesis.
*** Note that if the moral laws are for attainment of human happiness, the elements of happiness, the basic human goods, are obligatory goods.

Collective Contrition

Abortion, Moral philosophy, Ontology

Collective Contrition

To build an authentic moral barrier to abortion we should cultivate a condition of collective perfect contrition for abortion.

I wondered why we, and I in particular, should care about almost unlimited access to abortion. We, and I in particular, are not threatened with any great harm. The extreme damage to unborn babies might well be outweighed by the social problems solved by their destruction. Some, but not many, might fear the wrath of God.

Yet, there is a deep sorrow that elective abortions are legally permitted and that millions of women have and will use that permission. Explicitly, or implicitly, those of us opposing abortion want having this sorrow about abortion become dominant in society. The goal is to have the dominant thinking be that abortion is immoral with the appropriate thoughts and sentiments that being immoral itself is what makes it horrible.

The effort to understand thoughts and sentiments connected with violating a moral law led to the concept of perfect contrition . Perfect contrition is primarily a religious notion of sorrow over offending God by violating moral laws which are His commands. This religious concept is readily generalized to be a candidate for the thoughts and sentiment, if any, about violation of a moral law over and above sorrow and fear of any consequences of the moral violation.

I write, “if any” to indicate the prospect that psychological analysis of any particular sorrow about violation of a moral law might indicate that it is in fact some fear or grief about the consequences of the violation to society or oneself.

The concept of perfect contrition is not meaningless even if no one came ever be certain that they really have it. The concept is meaningful even if we can never be absolutely certain that it has anything in its extension. The concept is necessary for moral thinking, but it is not necessary that it be exemplified in any individual.

For those who might still be interested in twentieth century concerns over cognitive meaningfulness, note that claims of perfect contrition are empirically falsifiable.

Indeed, there is no authentic moral thought without the thought of immorality being a reason for sorrow regardless of any physical or social harm. Perfect contrition is necessary for morality. Dogmatic claims of psychological egotism that people have only selfish concerns and can make only selfish choices are dogmatic denials of morality. Case by case analyses to raise suspicion about unselfish concerns, as alluded to above, are efforts to show that there is no morality.

As important as it is to be honest about motives etc., unceasing efforts to uncover selfishness are uninteresting. They seem to be based on the dogmatic assumption of psychological egotism that there is always some selfishness to be uncovered. Of course, we are selfish and hypocritical. What is interesting is to show what it is like for a person to be sincere and unselfish.

In any event, we can set aside the whole topic of tortuous psychological analyses of individual motives. Morality is primarily collective thinking. So, if morality requires perfect contrition, then perfect contrition is an element in collective thinking. I admit that contrition seems preeminently a condition of an individual. However, we learn to think from others. So, if we can have perfect contrition, we have acquired it from others.

Upcoming topics are exploration of what collective perfect contrition might be like and the possibility of vicarious contrition.

Ontology, theories about what is real, are inseparable from my pursuit of truth in moral theory. I close with an argument for the truth of one of my major ontological assumptions.

There is no doubt that I assume that there is collective thinking in what I have written. But of more significance for the reality of collective thinking my act of writing and the act of anyone writing in reaction to what I write assumes and presents the reality of collective thinking. More generally any discussion, written or verbal, of the reality of collective thinking exhibits the reality of collective thinking.

Famous Relatives of Perfect Contrition

Divine Command Morality, Moral philosophy

The title “Famous Relatives of Perfect Contrition” signals the influence of Ludwig Wittgenstein. In his 1953 Philosophical Investigations, he introduced the concept of family resemblance amongst concepts. The concept of family concept is vague. It is introduced with examples. Wittgenstein illustrated it with games. “Game” is not well-defined but we identify activities such as hop-scotch, bridge and baseball as games. In an effort to understand what it is to play a game, those three along with many others might be part of the discussion.

So, when I identify a concept as having a family resemblance to the concept of perfect contrition, I am thinking of it as a concept which very likely would come up in a conversation aimed at understanding perfect contrition. Or, conversely, a common concept which someone might help clarify by introducing the more rarely used concept of perfect contrition.

The main purpose of this post is to establish the intellectual respectability of the concept of perfect contrition for use in moral theory and moral theology. It is not a special concept for Catholic moral and sacramental theology. It is closely related to widely used theological and philosophical concepts. Perfection contrition comes from a distinguished conceptual family!

Begin with love of God. For Judeo-Christian religions, the Hebrew Shema expresses a fundamental belief. Central in the Shema we read

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all you mind and with all your might.”

Personally, I am more perplexed by love of God than I am by perfection contrition. But if I had perfect contrition, I would have love of God. For in professing perfection contrition I profess love of God. If I happened to fall and loved God, I would have perfect contrition. For a sinner, there is perfect contrition if and only if there is love of God. Sinners need to discuss something like perfect contrition to understand love of God.

My phrase “something like” means that the words “perfection contrition might never be used.

Sinless angels might love God apart from any contrition. A dimension of the notion of original sin is that for humans love of God is inseperable from notions of contrition and pleas for mercy. Perfection contrition is related to the concepts of angel, original sin and even immaculate conception.

Claims that God loves us no matter what we do or think, threaten theistic belief with vacuity. What we do must matter to God and we must respond to what matters to God. Again, discussion of a significanct Divine Love will use some notion like perfect contrition – sorrow for improperly responding to God’s love.

Reformation notions of redemption and salvation involve something like the concept of perfect contrition. What is that faith which guarantees salvation? Perhaps, it is God’s gift of sorrow for being a sinner because we were offensive to God whom we love. Reception of this gift is one’s salvation by being a person who loves God. I only hint at these subtle Reformation notions. I want only to suggest that something like perfect contrition would be used in serious discussion to clarify them.

In general, I think that any discussion to clarify concepts of the theological virtues: faith, hope and charity, will introduce something like the concept of “perfect contrition.”

Perfection contrition has distinguished philosophical brothers and sisters. We cannot meet her without getting introduced to the whole family of moral philosophy.

In Gorgias, Plato has Socrates reply that it is better to suffer a wrong than to do a wrong. Figuring out what one ought to suffer in doing a wrong would help figuring out what perfect contrition might be.

In The Republic, Socrates tries to appreciate why someone who had the ring of Gyges making him invisible so that he could get away with any crime would not be happy. This might have been the earliest written account of the problem of identifying an especially horrible sentiment and condition based simply on an intention to do what is immoral. It continues up to our time with efforts to understand egotism, altruism et al.

Indeed, rationality would be on the list, started above. All attempts to show the rationality of morality face the question “Why be rational?” Any morality, worthy of the name, requires some inclination frustration. What is the sorrow connected with intending to do the irrational which makes such a choice worse than any sacrifice of our inclinations? The whole Aristotelian tradition holds that showing the rationality of an action guiding principle suffices for showing it is a morally valid principle.

I doubt that attempts to identify morality with rationality can answer “Why be rational?” Rationality is abstracted from anything which cares about what we do or what is good for us. One reason why I now work on a theory of morality as the commands of a moral commander is that if there is a personal relationship between the source of morality and us, we can realize why we desire to be moral.

I cannot close without mentioning Kant’s concepts of moral worth and respect for the moral law. Kant tells us that a choice has moral worth if and only if it is made out of respect for the moral law. We might begin to interpret this, perhaps unattainable, standard for moral worth by imagining of what we think and feel if we ignore the moral law in a choice. To what have we failed to pay attention and what do we feel about ignoring it.

Is Perfect Contrition Possible?

Moral Harm and Moral Worth, Moral philosophy

I closed my previous post Why Do I Care About Abortion? with a promise to connect my notion of moral harm with caring about it. However, I did not want to reduce the concern to an emotional state; it had to be a distinctly moral sentiment. Feeling a need for repentance or deserving pain as punishment might be marks of a distinctively moral sentiment. In this post, I begin to characterize the problem of finding a sentiment of sorrow about moral harm.

It is a deep problem which might, unfortunately, be raised by asking “Why be moral?” I write “unfortunately” because the question “Why be moral?” was dismissed in the early 20th century* as the trivial question “Why ought I do what I ought to do?” The question is at least “Why should I care about a moral law being violated by me or someone else?” Even if I have conceptually characterized the moral harm of violation of a moral law as willing that harm ought to be done, there remains the question of why care about this ad hoc norm that some harm ought to be done.

The question may be a mistake in the sense that there is no answer because there is no sentiment of regret conceptually and emotionally uniquely brought about by and directed to violation of a moral law. Such a sentiment may be illusory. However, I move forward under an assumption that the nature of the sorrow about violation of moral laws is only elusive; not illusive.

I began by recollecting my childhood efforts to capture this elusive sentiment. Then I wondered. Now, I explicitly ask “How is perfect contrition possible?” When I was seven or eight preparing for my First Confession in the second grade of Nativity Catholic school in St. Paul, Minnesota, I memorized an Act of Contrition which I would recite before the priest gave me Absolution for the sins I confessed. I remember and still recite in confession:

“ Oh, my God, I am heartly sorry for having offended you because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell. But most of all because they offend you, my God, who are all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve with the help of your grace to confess my sins, do penance, and amend my life. Amen”

We were taught that contrition is bipartite. First, there is the imperfect contrition of sorrow about losing heaven and suffering the pains of hell. Second, there is the perfect contrition expressed as sorrow about offending God who is deserves all of my love. I definitely had imperfection contrition. I worried about lying in the confessional id I said that I cared about offending God; let alone caring most of all about offending God.

The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet wisely taught that if we did not feel perfect contrition, our expression of it meant that we were praying that we could get as we continued to practice our faith. If we could attain perfect contrition all our sins would be forgiven without Absolution. However, we should plan on going to confession throughout our lives because we could never be certain that we felt perfect contrition. I recall one suggestion in discussion was that after death, in purgatory, those of us who did not become saints would learn to have perfect contrition. We would never get to heaven without perfect contrition!

I cannot help but note that for me memorization and study of the Baltimore Catechism was never rote memorization. Catechism study was my introduction to philosophy.

In the context, where Divine Command morality is taken seriously, the question about the special sorrow for violation of moral laws can be expressed as “What is it like to feel sorrow about offending God?” and how is it possible to have such sorrow in this life. If perfect contrition is only possible in purgatory, it is an illusion, at least for moral theologians in this life. If saints attain it, it is not an illusion. But we have to understand sainthood to attain some sense of what it is.

In any event, characterizing the question about the unique sorrow over violation of moral as a question about the possibility of perfect contrition is a start towards appreciating what we are trying to understand moral harm to be. Subsequent posts bring out that holding a divine command morality does not raise a problem only for morality so understood. Secular understandings of morality still need an understanding of repentance for moral violations for which the penitents dread no harm to themselves. Think of middle-class Americans who feel deep sorrow for violation of moral laws inflicting injustices on ancestors of say, contemporary Indigenous peoples. What is the harm we now regret to what do we offer apologies?

* H.A. Prichard, “Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?” Mind (Jan. 1912)

Why Do I Care About Abortion?

Abortion, Character Morality

On Wednesday, October 5, 2022, I participated in the Ohio Right to Life rally and march at the Ohio Statehouse. What did that amount to? I came alone; not as a member of any group such as Knights of Columbus. During the rally, I stood around listening to speakers, other people and read signs. I did not feel like an outsider. Nonetheless, I did not feel as someone committed to a cause. I walked six blocks through some downtown streets doing more listening and looking. I estimated that about 4,000 people participated in this peaceful event. There was no specific legislative program promoted. What was it about? Why was I there?

The signs were generic anti-abortion and prolife. After the June 24 overturn of Roe v. Wade, the prolife movement cannot focus on the overturn of a supreme court decision. What is the focus or, rather, what should my focus be?

I admit that I never cared about Roe v. Wade being overturned. I have never been concerned with any anti-abortion legislation. I have joined Catholic groups praying outside abortion clinics. I have run marathons wearing a “Democrats for Life” tee shirt. I was surprised at how many women runners would shout out “That’s what I am.” That’s not exactly what I am. I am too libertarian to be any kind of Democrat. I have contributed generously to pregnancy care centers. Why?

Abortion is the direct intentional stopping a human life innocent of any wrong. The act of aborting is morally wrong. Abortionists commit a serious moral wrong. Nonetheless, I have not cared greatly about the millions of morally wrong acts of abortion. There are so many immoral acts. I cannot honestly say that I care very much about the deaths of the millions of aborted babies. Death is simply part of life and sometimes death is a blessing. A baby whose mother wants to kill him or her might be a situation where death is a blessing. However, it is obvious that many, especially women, in the prolife movement grieve over aborted babies

I should care about the aborted and to be aborted babies. This lack of concern for the lives of the unborn may be a moral blind spot afflicting me and billions of others. We tend not to see the unborn as really human until we see it kicking and screaming after birth. In terms of John Henry Newman, we let ourselves have only a notional (theoretical) knowledge of the unborn baby as human. The birth forces us to have real knowledge of the baby’s humanity. This blind spot is a significant causal factor in the toleration of abortion.

There is a positive factor, though, in my moral insensitivity about the death of so many. The positive factor is that I do not try to give utilitarian arguments against abortion. It is far from clear that a compelling utilitarian case can be made against abortion. I am confident that a cost/benefit weighing non-moral goods justifies some abortions.

One sign read: Make Abortion Unthinkable. That sign led to a line of thought bringing into focus why I care about preventing choice of abortion. Yes, my philosophy projects are always in the back of my mind. . During the parade up Front St., the thought struck me that my notion of moral harm is what I need to develop to articulate what I care about on the abortion issue. What’s the connection?

Not being able to think of abortion means that we cannot think of it as morally permissible regardless of how we feel about it or regardless of the consequences of not having it. In short, the hope expressed with “Make abortion unthinkable” is transform the culture so that the dominant thought in public opinion is that abortion is genuinely morally wrong.

Why, though, care about people thinking abortion is morally wrong? Moral laws, as I am maintaining, are commands from God. Sooner or later, all except the most foolish, hear those commands. I care that billions of women are vulnerable to suffering the dread that some awful harm ought to happen to them. Once they realize too late that they have chosen that annihilation – never being at all- ought to be. Ought it be any better for them if they have chosen for their unborn child that it is best never to be born?

I care about abortion because I care about the moral harm, the harm that ought to be , inflicting women who make the foolish choice of abortion.

This calls for subsequent posts reconsidering my notion of moral harm to connect it with caring without reducing it to a natural emotional state.

Choosing Not to Live vs Choosing to be Killed

Moral philosophy, Religious morality

Added comment: This post brings out that opposition to assisted suicide presupposes a soul seperable from the body, a God who sets a destiny for humans and holds the soul in existence for that destiny to be attained. With these presuppositions, opposition to assisted suicide is religious. Because of the immense amount of suffering in illnesses and aging, utilitarian considerations would justify assisted suicides.

I have argued that choosing assisted suicide presupposes the nihilistic outlook that human life has no purpose. At biological death the individual vanishes. Moral nihilism is part of this nihilistic stance. Since morality has no point, it really does not matter what we do. The good and the bad meet the same fate of simply vanishing into atoms in the void. I intended the argument to be strong in the sense that this nihilism was a logical consequence of choosing suicide or to be killed. Necessarily someone choosing suicide,who thought clearly and in depth, would think nihilism is correct.

Added October 3, 2022: See Philosophical Arguments as Guides to Reality for an important correction to what I intend to accomplish with philosophical arguments.

In fact, though, people might choose assisted suicide without thinking through the issues. Such people might very likely neither think nor feel nihilistic despite choosing to be killed.

I have also argued that a choice of assisted suicide is immoral. Can I consistently make a living will specifying that no extra ordinary means be used to keep me alive? Can I consistently choose not to live without presupposing nihilism?

In preparation for this post, I worked through an on-line living will form. I specified that I wanted no ventilators, feeding tubes or dialysis. I allowed transfusions and medication because I thought they were ordinary means for keeping some alive. My thought was to avoid any restriction on medical treatment which seemed too close to directly stopping my life.

Reflection on my thinking reveals that I distinguish my biological life from my being a moral agent. A moral agent has obligations; and most importantly, a way he or she ought to be. From the moment of conception, a human has a way he or she ought to be. The crucial premise in my argument against suicide, referenced above, holds: Under no conditions am I permitted to choose not to be a morally correct human being.

Admittedly, I did not aim at keeping my biological life at all costs. So, I did not aim at the good of biological life. Neither, did I aim at stopping the good of biological life. I refused to stop the good of biological life, because I aimed at maintaining my moral being a morally correct human being.

I have given a Kantian argument for imperishability of the soul.This soul is our moral being – the way we ought to be.

The purpose of these posts on choosing death is to uncover presuppositions on letting oneself die without immorality or nihilism. The way sketched above brings out that in this instance the divinity dimension of divine command morality is used. I assume a soul distinct from the body which is the way one ought to be. To let oneself die without aiming at destroying ones soul, which is nihilism, one needs to assume that God keeps the soul in existence to become what it ought to be.

Male Masturbation is a Grave Matter

Divine Command Morality, Moral philosophy, Sexual morality

Why do I sincerely belief that male masturbation is a grave matter? I realize that from the currently popular utilitarian moralities masturbation is a paradigm of triviality.

I wrote in Moral Gravity as Degrees of Disobedience to a Moral Authorityy: An act is a grave moral matter if its performance is the highest degree of disobedience to the moral commander. I proposed further that logical distance from basic moral principle measured degree of disobedience to commands. Acts whose wrongness is almost axiomatic are grave matters.

“Logical distance” refers to the number of theoretical assumptions and factual claims added to basic moral principles to show that an act is wrong. It is really common sense. For instance, the notion of logical distance explains the frequent discussions in my high school religion classes on how far a boy could go with a girl before it became a mortal sin. If much imaginative details needed to be added to show how the conduct led to the boy and girl physically stimulating each other sexually the conduct was not gravely wrong – not a mortal sin.

Back to the question: Why hold that male masturbation is immoral and from a Catholic perspective a grave matter, a mortal sin?

Strong cases can be made for the following claims. Making these cases was writing to convince myself that the claims are correct. I intend my writings help others do the same. Of course, the details cannot be repeated here.

1.There are basic moral laws and they are best understood as commands of a supernatural moral authority.

A case for a moral theory based on rules commanding pursuit of basic human goods is developed in several posts over two or three years. A post with which to start is Core Concepts of Authoritarian Morality . “Authoritarian” was a bad label. I now call it “command moral theory.”

2. The Paternal Principle, used below, is one of these basic moral commands. See Chapter IV of my book* for an extended discussion in favor of taking the Paternal Principle as axiomatic or properly basic principle of even purely secular morality.

3. There is a reality upon which all other realities depend for their existence , viz. God.
See A Proof of the Existence of God for one of several posts on the Transcendent.

4. The moral commander can be understood as that God upon which all realities depend,
See Moral Authority as God .

These four claims entail that the Paternal Principle is a direct command of God.

What is this Paternal Principle?

The Paternal Principle tells us that a man should intentionally seek an orgasm only in coitus open to conception with a woman to whom he has a life-long commitment to care for her and any conception resulting from their coitus.

A condemnation of male masturbation, and incidentally male homosexuality, is an immediate corollary of the Paternal Principle.

Hence, male masturbation and homosexual acts are contrary to morality and, from a Catholic perspective properly regarded as grave matters.

* My book is Confronting Sexual Nihilism, Oklahoma City, 2014. A free copy of my book is available by emailing kielkopf.1@osu.edu