Category Archives: Moral philosophy

Using Divinity in Divine Command Morality

Divine Command Morality, Moral philosophy, Religious morality

In a post arguing that male masturbation is a grave matter , I explicitly referred to an argument for God’s existence and justification for interpreting moral commands as coming from God. There I talked about God because I was explicitly trying to interpret a teaching of Catholicism was a grave matter. I had made the point earlier that moral gravity was a religious dimension of morality; not purely a moral question.

My treatment of this issue illustrates how, in general, I use the divinity in divine command morality. For purely moral matters, there is no use of the belief that moral laws and the human goods which are the goals of the moral laws are from God. The moral reasoning of someone who holds divine command morality is accessible to an atheist. Not surprisingly, the divine source of morality is invoked only when one is interested in religious matters, viz., that which is connected with divinity.

It may be surprising, though, that one can hold both that masturbation is a grave matter and, though immoral, a trivial matter. It is a grave matter with respect to how one relates to God. For social and legal control, masturbation is a trivial matter in the sense that it is something about which nothing much needs to be done to protect the public from it. I make a similar judgment about male homosexual acts. They are immoral. But if kept “in the closet,” I think they are socially harmless immoralities.

My judgment about the triviality of the immoralities of masturbation and sodomy are factual judgments; not moral judgments. I could very well be in error about their triviality. I am convinced of their immorality and gravity, viz., they are mortally sinful. I have not started a careful sociological investigation of the connection between male masturbation and the vast destructive pornography industry. Pursuit of stimulation for masturbation satisfications might be on of the most destructive social forces.

Nihilistic Eschatology and Soteriology

Moral philosophy

A Sept. 18, 2022 ,New York Times article reported some Canadian experts worrying whether Canada’s legal assisted suicide is too permissive. From 2016 through December of 2021, 31,664 Canadians have received assisted deaths. Of those, 224 who died last year were not terminally ill, taking advantage of last year’s amendment. It is a typical in depth New York Times article with opinions form several points of view. There were serious concerns about gradually permitting elimination of the disabled and frail elderly. I did not detect any explicit objection that it is categorically wrong. But one clear “take away” is that there is strong support for assisted suicide in Canada, the United States and Europe. I am not entering the debate on the morality of various conditions for permitting legal assisted suicide. For there is no moral thinking about assisted suicide beyond pointing out that it is intrinsically evil. The opinions in the article have a tone of moral seriousness which is undercut by the topic about which they speak so seriously.

I have argued that suicide is categorically forbidden.

Trying to think morally about the permissibility of assisted suicide leads to thinking that there is no morality. It leads to thinking that nothing is good and nothing matters: Nihilism. This line of thought develops because thinking about suicide leads to thinking about death, obviously. Thinking of any death as a good because death is annihilation is a poison pill for moral thought. Thinking about death leads to thinking about the point, if any to human life. If there is no point to human life, then there is no point to morality. Pointless morality is no morality at all.

Consider the following line of thought in which I generalize what I think is good for me.

If I think that suicide is permissible for me, then I think that my total annihilation is ultimately a good for me. If I think that total annihilations is ultimately a good for me, then I think that for every human total annihilation is a good. Think about it; ultimately there is a time in any life in which life has gone on too long for any natural satisfactions. There are no obligations to produce human good because ultimately the good for any human is not to have any good.

In theological language the line of thought is as follows. Permissibility of suicide presupposes an eschatology of death as non-being. This eschatology leads to a soteriology as salvation is non-being. No morality is required for this salvation since “All men are mortal” entails that all are saved.

None of this shows that humans ought not be morally serious about alleviating human suffering. It notes only that one of the remedies from a genuinely moral point of view for alleviating misery should not be directly taking human life.

Non-Sexist Morality is Misogynistic

Abortion, Critique of Birth Control, Moral philosophy

I am not digressing from trying to articulate what a morally grave matter might be. I intend to resume with specifying what it might mean to say that male masturbation is a grave matter. Focusing on male masturbation involves using a sexist moral theory. A sexist moral theory presupposes that some sexual obligations and privileges are prefaced with “because you are a woman” and “because you are a man.” I defend using a sexist morality in my book* although I did not there point out the misogyny of a non-sexist morality.

This observation of this post is also a critique of the moral theories used to justify abortion on demand. See Banning Abortions Might Undercut Prolife Goals It also supports a much earlier post that it is the prochoice camp and not the prolife groups that are waging a war on women. See HHS Mandate as a War on Women .

A rational person valuing autonomy could not consistently will that nature should be designed so that half the people seeking to satisfy a extremely strong inclination risk losing their autonomy. I will not digress to any discussion of Kantian moral theory. I want only to note that I need to set aside much of Kantian moral theory which has influenced me greatly. Kantian morality is non-sexist. The brief allusion to Kantian reasoning brings out a “hatred” of a non-sexist morality for the reality that nature has created men and women; more exactly a hatred for human sexual reproduction.

I won’t cite many implicitly misogynistic pleas, many by women, that we cannot have full sexual equality until women have the possibility of the same sexual freedom men allegedly have. I sketch an argument without details of daily between the sexes. The argument expresses opposition to women as they are naturally. With “women as they are naturally,” I refer to the way women were before birth control pills enabled millions, if not billions, of women to be infertile through most of their reproductive years. Implicitly, I think, Paul VI’s 1968 Humanae Vitae condemned use of The Pill because it would be a major step toward suppressing femininity.

(1)If morality is non-sexist, then sexual activity should not place obligations on women which are not placed on men.
(2) If women should stay as they are naturally, then sexual activity places obligations on women which are not placed on men.
Hence,(3) if morality is non-sexist, then women should not stay as they are naturally.

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

Banning All Abortions May Undercut the Pro-Life Cause

Abortion, Moral philosophy

Recently, around Labor Day 2022, I received a letter from the Population Research Institute (PRI) asking me to sign a petition to Governor Mike DeWine to illegalize all abortions in Ohio. There are many reasons why I did not sign the petition; not the least of which is the fact that a generous donation was requested to accompany the signed petition. I have up to $100 for pro-life causes. I donate only to pregnancy care centers.

Here, though, my objection to the petition is that trying to ban all abortions, will misdirect the abortion debate from the rights of the unborn to an abstract moral theory debate about the rights of women in an ideally just society. The pro-life moral vision will not prevail in the debate.

In my opinion, the dominant, although incorrect, moral vision sees a just society as one in which the only features and conditions traditionally linked with biological sex are those an individual chooses to have.

From this perspective, consider a women’s right to choose abortion versus her fetuses’ right to life. For this moral vision, individual autonomy is a supreme value. A life without autonomy is not worth living! Any rational being, or potentially rational being, would not choose to being compelled to provide life support for another. So, a fetus would choose to be born into a society where pregnant women would have unrestricted right to abortion. So, a fetus would choose to be aborted if its mother so chose. For considering how life might go from behind a ” veil of ignorance” on what kind of person one would be, the rational fetus would choose to live in a pro-choice society if born a woman.

Currently, in Ohio, abortions are banned after the detection of cardiac activity. Debate can focus on the rights of fetuses at this stage versus the health needs of the mother. The rights of the fetus are not considered in the realm of purely rational beings making choices about rights. See Abortion as a Save, Legal but Rare Grave Evil for defending lives by continually working to make legal abortions rare. This approach maintains the nastiness of specific types of abortion before the public mind instead of on the rights of women.

I claim that the pro-life moral vision will not prevail because social contract methodology lies deep in contemporary moral thought. What is just is determined by imagining what rational beings would choose if they did not know how their life would go. If autonomy is presupposed as a supreme value, we get the moral vision on abortion I sketched above.

Given that social contract thinking is dominant, and autonomy now is a supreme value, a general moral debate about abortion will leave the pro-choice perspective victorious.

My efforts in these blog posts is to recover from out traditions an alternative moral theory. But if I have anything to add, it will be generations before the social contract methodology and autonomy pass away.

Perhaps, it is not so much the social contract methodology as the emphasis on autonomy which is so corrupting.

Eve’s Eating the Apple is the Paradigmatic Grave Matter

Divine Command Morality

The Gravity of Eating the Apple of Eden

God directly commanded Adam and Eve not to eat fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They disobeyed That disobedience was a grave matter. It was bad enough for humanity to be banished from paradise. We had to struggle with choices of good and evil as a fallen race; always being by our own choices less than what we ought to be.

It is not my intention to develop an interpretation of the Adam and Eve myth. It is my intention to support my interpretation of “grave matter” as disobedience to the divine moral commander. My definition of “grave matter” is not idiosyncratic. In a fundamental myth of our civilization a physical and moral triviality has existential consequences for all of humanity. The only outstanding feature of eating the apple was its relation to God’s command. That relational property made an act of apple eating a grave matter.

The Adam and Eve myths are well worth taking seriously by all of us whether religious or irreligious, atheists or theists, educated or uneducated and young or old. The myths are clear and interesting shared stories for a wide variety of discussions of the human condition. Probably, the only uninteresting discussion of the myths is whether or not they report literally true facts of human history. To learn from a myth requires putting yourself, imaging yourself, in the story. One blessing we did not lose in the “fall” is our capacity to live vicariously in stories.

For uses of Adam and Eve myth see Moral Gravity and Forgiveness of Original Sin and the last paragraph of The Supernatural Origin of Humanity

Moral Gravity as Degrees of Disobedience to a Moral Authority

Divine Command Morality, Moral philosophy

It is inconsistent to use “moral gravity” to specify degrees of immorality. However, my Church uses a concept of moral gravity to mark out some acts as morally grave. If the “matter of the act” – what the act is- is morally grave and done with full consent of the will after sufficient reflection the act is a mortal sin. For the Church, “morally grave” has the negative connotation of morally wrong. I intend to follow the Catholic Church’s usage.

(Added Sept. 1, 2022: Perhaps I should not write of “morally grave matter” but write simply “grave matter. For when I transition from command moral theory to divine command moral theory, I should allow for direct commands of God to do more than what is morally required. But I do not need to allow for the prospect of the divine moral commanded directly commanding an act contrary to morality. For in development of this moral theory we move up from being a moral commander to being a divine moral commander.)

The question remaining for me is, “What do I intend to say about acts when I follow the Church in labelling them “grave matters?” I am developing an intension -definition- to cover the extension picked out by the Church’s use of “grave matter.”

Here is how the Church specifies “grave matter” in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

1858 Grave matter is specified by the Ten Commandments, corresponding to the answer of Jesus to the rich young man: “Do not kill, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and your mother.”132 The gravity of sins is more or less great: murder is graver than theft. One must also take into account who is wronged: violence against parents is in itself graver than violence against a stranger.

For one, I intend to use it with the negative connotation of being wrong. To say that a type of act is a grave matter is to say that it ought not be done.

But of most importance, I intend to use it as a moral concept in command moral theory and then as a religious morality concept in divine command moral theory. Because I intend to use the concept of “grave moral matter” in divine command moral thinking, I wrote of grave matter as generally “something which ought not be done” instead of as specifically “something which ought not morally be done.”

There are no degrees of immorality. But there can be degrees of the disobedience in the disobeying of a moral command. Disobeying a moral command places an agent in confrontation with the moral commander. This confrontation need not be total confrontation which puts the agent at enmity with the moral commander.

So, I propose to use “moral gravity” to measure the degree of disobedience in disobeying a moral command. An act is a grave moral matter if its performance is the highest degree of disobedience to the moral commander.

There is a critical point in the gravity of acts at which they become grave. Below this point grievousness is not grave. At this critical point acts are grave. Above this critical point acts become more and more grave.

How might we decide that an act is a grave matter? If we stay at the level of command moral theory, brevity of the argument to show that the act violates a moral command might measure degree of disobedience. Acts whose wrongness is almost axiomatic would be grave matters. If we move to religious command theory, resources of the religion such as scriptures, tradition and teaching authority are available to specify what comes directly from the religious moral commander.

Note, though, neither the intentions of the agent, the circumstances of the act and consequences of the act are used to determine its gravity. The gravity of an act, thus, seems similar to intrinsic immorality of acts. Gravity, though, is a concept of a relation between the act and the moral commander; thus, not only about features intrinsic to the act. Independently of the performance of an act, there is a degree of command relation between the moral commander and the act. There is a varying degree of directness of command. That relation prior to performance is measured by moral gravity. There is a declining scale of directness of command by the moral authority of immoral acts.

For instance, Killing someone is directly forbidden by the Fifth Commandment. But punching someone in the face is only a distant implication of this commandment.

Call the performance of an act an “action.” The sinfulness of an action is not an intrinsic feature of the act performed. Sinfulness is a relation between the agent of an action and the moral commander. Sinfulness comes in degrees and it depends upon the intention of the agent and the agent’s circumstances as well as what is done, viz., the matter of the action.

Inconsistency of Using “Moral Gravity” to Specify Degrees of Morality

Moral philosophy

In intelligent usage, “moral” and “immoral” do not admit of gradations. Acts are immoral or not.

When people jokingly profess that everything, they like is illegal, fattening or immoral, they do not really mean “immoral.” They do not think that their little vices are really immoral practices. They mean that what they are referring to as immoral has been erroneously thought to be immoral.

For people who speak carefully about morality, calling an an act already labeled “immoral” seriously immoral is a confusing redundancy. It is like saying the act is seriously a serious matter. I do not want to revise this feature of moral thought because it rests upon a fundamental feature of moral thought. This fundamental feature can be called the “over riding “ or “dominating” feature of morality. If an act A is obligatory, it ought to be done regardless of the consequences of doing A. If an act A is forbidden A ought not be done regardless of the consequences of refraining from A.

People who hold a consequentialist theory of morality accept the dominance of morality. Consequentialists accept that if act A has the best overall consequences, then A is to be done regardless of the consequences of not doing alternatives to A.

To appreciate the overriding implications of the concept of immoral, imagine someone saying, “I know it is immoral but what are the other reasons for not doing it?” We can rightly suspect that person of not understanding what is implied by admitting that an act is immoral. Admitting that an act is immoral is admitting that there is a sufficient reason for not doing it. Imagine further you ask, “What else do you want to know about doing it?” He replies, “I want to know how refraining from this act promotes my happiness.” Now, our proper response is, “If promoting your happiness is a standard you use in deciding on morality, you made a conceptual mistake in not considering promotion of your happiness before admitting that the act was immoral.”

So, it is inconsistent to talk of degrees of morality. Hence, if “moral gravity” is to be used consistently, it should not be used to speak of degrees of being immoral.

Abortion As a Safe, Legal but Rare Grave Evil

Abortion, Moral philosophy

Note added 10-29-2022: Instead of “legal” I should have used “legally regulated.” I am opposed to abortion being made legal in the sense of legally permitted as a right beyond further legal control. I want abortion to be legally regulated as are many dangerous and harmful practices which might in some cases provide what many consider benefits.

In so far as I am able to influence public opinion, I hope to avoid a time when a large minority think abortion is totally permissible and most other people think that it is morally wrong but not gravely wrong. It’s naughty but nice as long as safe and legal.

Reflection on the notion of moral gravity have helped me to articulate my support for President Clinton’s 1992 campaign proposal that abortion should be safe, legal and rare. The widespread and unabashed endorsement of abortion in reaction to the US Supreme Court’s decision, Dobbs, June 24, 2022, that abortion is not a US constitutional right has vindicated opponents of abortion who nonetheless expressed tolerance of legal abortion with the formula “safe, legal and rare.” We dreaded the moral corruption of our fellow citizens that develops when there is widespread enthusiastic support for unlimited access to abortion.

The formula refers to elective abortions. These are abortions simply on the basis of the pregnant woman’s choice. The formula can be used to express toleration of the legality of some elective abortions. The formula does not specify which are to be legally tolerated. Certainly, not all are to be legal. The rarity requirement emphasizes that many elective abortions are to be illegal. Legislative action is needed to fulfill the rarity requirement.

Why did I support the formula”

Abortions should be safe. We should not wish ill health or death for anyone. There are at least two reasons why abortions should be legal. Legal abortions can controlled by legal statutes. Furthermore, a complete ban on abortions at this state of human culture perverts human attention to the temporary goods attainable by abortions. This is attested to by the current unabashed endorsement of abortion because of fears of abolition of abortion. Abortion should be rare because it is from the moment of conception always morally wrong. It is always the intentional stopping of a human life. We should promote the good of human life and oppose the evil of immoral choices to stop the good of human life. Abortion is intrinsically wrong even in cases of pregnancies due to forcible rape and incest.

In 2022 and several years after, there is no basis for believing that legal abolition of abortions would lessen the evils of abortion and promote the good of human life. In the US abolition of abortion might lead to glorification of abortions as prohibition led to romanticizing excess drinking. At this time, mere fear of the highly unlikely abolition of abortion has corrupted the public to turn away from the ugly evil of abortion to focus on the temporary good of solving “hard cases” where abortion seems to be the best solution.

Apparently, many, many people do not think abortion is a grave matter even if they think it is not quite right.
The political means for educating ourselves and others about the moral gravity of abortion is to use laws to marginalize and stigmatize abortion in public perception along with reducing abortions. As the saying goes promote laws which have “a chilling effect” on abortions. Keep abortions difficult to attain and perceived as morally dubious, if not outright wrong. But do not go far enough to raise fear of abolition. Keep the extreme pro-choice people focused on combatting specific anti-abortion legislation. We want them defending some type of dubious abortion; but not cheer leaders for all abortions.

But in the US and EU the situation has deteriorated to the point where there may be abolition of any legal restrictions on abortions. Abortions will be safe and legal. Rarity will be sought only in the sense that in general people prefer avoiding medical procedures.

With abortion the public perception of its moral gravity has degenerated from a grave evil to a trivial matter.

The struggle to re-establish a culture in which abortion is dark and dirty, i.e., gravely wrong, is to lead popular imagination* to contain images of particular abortions as gravely wrong. Debating the merits of kinds of abortions is more effective for this end than debates in political theory about rights of women and their unborn children.

* Philosophic tasks keep multipling, and not without necessity. Now I owe an account of collective imagination as well as collective thoughts.

Moral Gravity is Not an Intrinsic Feature of Immoral Acts

Moral philosophy

Moral Gravity is Not an Intrinsic Feature of Immoral Acts

Masturbation is intrinsically immoral. The purpose of male orgasm is procreation and the unitive bond of male and female. These basic human goods are never to be directly inhibited. Male masturbation and homosexual acts directly inhibit the procreative and unitive goods of sexuality. This moral judgment was reached independently of any consideration of the intention of the actors, the circumstances of the action or consequences of the action. So, they are always on the wrong side of being right. That takes care of intrinsic wrongness.

But how wrong? How grave? My Church, The Roman Catholic Church, teaches that they are always gravely wrong. I accept that teaching because I accept the teaching authority of the Church. But Church teaching about the gravity of an act is an extrinsic characterization of the act. So, the moral gravity of masturbation in Church morality is not intrinsic as is masturbation’s moral wrongness.

These observations about masturbation can be generalized to cover all of the Church’s judgments of gravity.
A major significance of a judgment of moral gravity for the Church is providing a mark of a mortal sin. In general, a mortal sin must be forgiven with sacramental absolution after confessing the sin in a sacrament of reconciliation. Judgment of how an act makes a person ritually impure is a judgment made apart from the characterization of the act for moral judgment. Ritual impurity is decided by reference to features about the ritual which are not part of the act.

So, Church teaching about moral gravity does not allow for intrinsic moral gravity. We have seen that in law and daily practice gravity is an extrinsic feature of immoral acts. See Gravely wrong So, it is safe to conclude that judgments of moral gravity are separate from judgments of rightness or wrongness.

This seems like a straightforward result. But it is has tremendous implications for moral theorizing.
Some, not me, may conclude that it shows that we should not distinguish gravity from immorality. That line of thought leads to consequentialist moral theories.

Here I want only to note for fellow Catholics that all immoral acts are sins. If the immorality is not grave, the sin is venial. However, a corruption of Catholic morality is to belief, perhaps unconsciously, that if an act is only a venial sin, it is permissible.

Intrinsic Wrong vs. Formal Wrong

Moral philosophy

This post justifies use of the terms “intrinsically wrong” and “intrinsically grave” instead of “formally wrong” and “formally grave.”

There is some plausibility behind a proposal to use “formally.” The intrinsic wrongness is said to be based on a characterization of the act. For instance, the description of masturbation is allegedly sufficient for showing its wrongness and gravity. The description could be called presenting the form of the act. From a proper description of what masturbation is, it can be determined that masturbation is wrong regardless of any circumstances, intentions or consequences of the act. From the form of the act we can deduce, in the proper moral theory, that masturbation is immoral regardless of anything else. So, why not say that masturbation is formally wrong? What is added by labelling masturbation intrinsically wrong? And, does not “intrinsic” obscure the fact that the wrongness is derived from the form?

“Intrinsic” adds that the wrongness is not in the form itself but in the reality of the act with the form. Use of “formally” can mislead us to think that an act is only formally wrong but perhaps in actuality not seriously wrong on not wrong at all. We might hear :It’s formally wrong but is it actually wrong?” For instance, saying that masturbation is formally wrong can mislead one to think that in reality some acts may not be wrong. “intrinsic” leads us to think of the wrongness as being in the particular acts. So, there is wrongness -evil- in each and every act of masturbation. We want more than a belief that masturbation is an act of a wrong type as suggested by use of “formally”.