CH. 8 The Medieval Period

Question 1

Between Ancient and Modern

Answer 1

Between Ancient and Modern: In general, the tradition of rational inquiry seemed to be fading and with it, Greek philosophy in the rigorous style of Plato and Aristotle—with its commitment to logical argument and the open-ended search for truth.

• The trend was toward the rise of Christianity from a banned cult to the official state religion dominating the political and intellectual life of the Roman Empire.
  
  • In many ways, philosophy then had to answer to religion.
  • When in 476 CE the Goths sacked Rome, the Western empire fell, and civilization itself was in general decline.
    
    • But the Church emerged from the chaos as the supreme power in Europe, becoming philosophy’s master, censor, and —indirectly—its patron.
• Medieval philosophy 500 to 1500 CE – correspond to the virtual takeover of philosophy by Christianity in the first millennium CE and the weakening of Christianity’s grip during the Renaissance in the second millennium.
• Before this time, ancient philosophy (Greek) had flourished;
• After this period, modern philosophy (Rennaisance) arose.

DARK AGES – ​Civilization fell under a shadow of ignorance when the Roman Empire was undone. Progress in everything from astronomy to physics was all but halted, and culture stagnated.

• For good reason, experts label this time the Dark Ages, a period stretching from around 500 to 1000 CE. Almost all of the great works of the ancient philosophers were inaccessible, either because the original texts were lost or because very few people knew how to read Greek or to translate the texts into Latin.
  
  • (Around the same time in the Arab world, the original Greek texts were being rescued from oblivion and studied by Islamic scholars from India to Spain.)
  • Philosophy became a servant of the medieval Church, being relegated mostly to the role of explaining or commenting on Church dogma.
  • Philosophy had to be careful not to directly challenge received doctrine: deviation was officially condemned, and transgressors could be excommunicated or imprisoned.

THOMAS AQUINAS – Perhaps the greatest medieval thinker of all.

Question 2

Augustine

Answer 2

AUGUSTINE (354-430 CE) – Christian philosopher and theologian who had an enormous influence on Christian thought and on the West’s appreciation of Plato and Aristotle.

• He affected Christian theology more than any other early Christian author, introduced Plato to generations of thinkers.
• In his autobiography CONFESSIONS, he describes an idle youth spent in an uninhibited romp through sensuality:
  
  • NOTE – This created immediate conflict with the church, which had not yet fully developed. –TJB
• MANICHEANISM – This held that the world is not ruled by a benevolent God, but by two great competing forces, one good and one evil.
  
  • Augustine thought Manicheanism offered a better explanation of why evil exists than Christianity did.
• ​NEOPLATONISM – This view is a blend of Plato’s metaphysics (primarily concerning the theory of Forms) and other nonmaterialist or religious ideas.
  
  • The Doctrine that seemed to shine new light on Christianity:
  • In the “Platonic books,” Augustine found musings about an immaterial transcendent realm, about high and low levels of reality, about a supreme entity (the One in Plato), and about the possibility of knowledge of all these things.
    
    • Moreover, Augustine thought he saw analogs of these concepts in the Christian worldview.
• After a struggle, he finally converted to Christianity in 386 at age thirty-one and was baptized by St. Ambrose on Easter Day.
• In 388 Augustine returned to Africa, and in 395 or 396 he became the bishop of Hippo he produced writings—about:
  
  • Confessions
  • City of God
  • On the Trinity
  • On Free Will
• Augustine found that in his search for wisdom there was a place for both faith and reason.
• He thought that to attain wisdom belief had to come first, then understanding.
  
  • On this point, a verse from the Bible spoke volumes to him: “Unless you believe, you shall not understand.”
  • So he came to believe in the Christian God, but he wanted more: he wanted to understand God and how he relates to the world and to him.
    
    • Centuries later, Thomas Aquinas and countless other philosopher-theologians would also see faith and reason as partners, not enemies.

Question 3

Truth

Answer 3

TRUTH:

• But could Augustine or anyone else know anything at all?
• He reasons in much the same way that Descartes does in the seventeenth century (Descartes declared, “I think, therefore I am”).
• The SKEPTICS say we can know nothing because we can always be mistaken.
  
  • But Augustine replies, “If I am mistaken, I exist.’ A nonexistent being cannot be mistaken; therefore I must exist, if I am mistaken.”
  • And he asserts that if he has this proof that he exists, he cannot be mistaken in thinking that he exists.
  • He, therefore, knows he exists. And if he is glad of these two facts, he can add a third fact—he knows he is glad. So Augustine knows at least that he exists, he knows it, he is glad. In fact, he can know the contents of his direct experience, his subjective sensory impressions.
  • About these, he cannot be mistaken, just as the man who says “this tastes sweet to me” cannot be mistaken.
  • Augustine says, there is such a thing as truth. But can we trust our senses to give us knowledge about the world (not just our inner subjective experience)?
    
    • Complete skepticism, says Augustine, is not justified. That we are sometimes mistaken about the objects of our sense experience is no reason to be an extreme skeptic.

What is Augustine’s argument against skepticism?

• Augustine thinks he also knows mathematical truths. Seven plus three equals ten, now and forever.
• Likewise, we can know logical truths: for example, that either it is raining or not raining; that the world either exists or it does not exist.
• We can know particular value statements. We know for example that good is better than evil and that the eternal is better than the temporal.
  
  • Is eternal evil better than temporal evil? – TJB
  • Of all these mathematical, logical, and evaluative truths, we can have certain knowledge; they are eternal, changeless, and necessary. They are not truths that we concoct; they are not dependent on our minds for their existence.
    
    • NOTE – Just because you say it is so does not it make it so. – TJB
• Augustine says, truth is available and offers itself to be shared by all who discern things immutably true.”
  
  • Augustine concludes that necessary truth (a truth that could not have been false) is precious—more valuable even than rationality (“superior to our minds,”
    
    • NOTE – How do you know these are objective truths? You may believe that 2+2=4 and that everyone else thinks 2+2=4 and that this is something that is true and objective beyond your mind. But how do you know that your beliefs are true? In a dream, you are equally certain that the objective rules & laws of reality are beyond you, but they are NOT. – TJB
• Necessary truth is valuable precisely because it has the superlative properties of immutability, timelessness, and necessity.
  
  • Necessary truth is a candidate for being the very highest good, the best of things, and the zenith of the intrinsically valuable.
• From this notion of necessary truth, Augustine argues for the existence of God.
  
  • He reasons that:
    
    • if truth is the highest good,
    • then truth must be God,
    • because God is the highest good:
      
      • NOTE – He begins with a conclusion that is not supported by premises, so how can anything that grows from that be valid? – TJB
  • ​If an entity is higher and more excellent than truth, then that entity must be God. Either way, God must exist.
• Augustine reasons that whether God is truth, or God is higher than truth, God is. “Whether there is or is not such a higher thing,” says Augustine, “you cannot deny that God exists.”:
  
  • NOTE – But what if God is neither of those things? He creates a false choice, one other being that truth does not lead to God. – TJB

Question 4

Hierarchy of Being

Answer 4

HIERARCHY OF BEING – Augustine derived a view of the world as an all-encompassing hierarchy of existing things and their value.

• RECALL – that Plato had insisted that reality consists of two worlds: the ordinary world of sense experience (fleeting, physical, and imperfect) and the world of the independently existing Forms, or Ideas (perfect, eternal, nonphysical, and changeless).
  
  • FORMS – we can first come to know through reason and then use to understand the objects of everyday experience.
    
    • The imperfect world is a mere shadow of the world of the Forms: the Forms are more real than physical objects. And greatest of the Forms is the Form of the Good, the ultimate source of all that is.
• For AUGUSTINE, the Good is God – the ultimate reality, the source, and creator of everything that is.
  
  • Like Plato’s Good, God is eternal, immutable, and perfect. All that exists is God and what he creates out of nothing (ex nihilo).
    
    • Creation out of nothing means that God did not take existing primordial materials and fashion the world; there were no preexisting primordial materials. He brought the world into existence from nonexistence.
      
      • Moreover, since God is all-good, everything he creates is also good. But he is the supreme good, and everything else is less good.
      • All these things fit into a HIERARCHY OF GOODNESS, with God (the highest possible good) at the summit and everything else varying by degrees of value from higher good to lowest good.
  • This ranking of existing things:
    
    • GREAT CHAIN OF BEING – Ranges from:
      
      • Bottom: Material objects (the least good entities), to the
      • Next Level up: simplest living organisms, to
      • Next Level: animals possessing a degree of consciousness, to
      • Next Level: thinking and feeling human souls (with good souls higher than bad ones), to
      • Next Level: angels, and to (at a great distance from everything else)
      • Top Level: God.
• Like Plato, Augustine also ranks things according to degrees of being that is, by how ‘real’ they are.
  
  • And he correlates gradations of being with gradations of goodness: the more real something is, the greater its goodness.
• So God, the supremely good, is the most fully real. Everything else is much less real, with their reality (and goodness) extending from nothingness up to a higher level of reality (and goodness) below God, the supreme reality.

Question 5

Good and Evil

Answer 5

GOOD AND EVIL – If goodness is correlated with being, then anything that exists must be good.

• NOTE: But correlating ‘goodness’ with ‘being’ is unfounded. It is an opinion – which all else in this chain of logic is based. There is no objective premise to lead us to an objective truth. There are only opinions and beliefs that lead to another opinion and belief. – TJB
• If something has zero goodness, then it must have zero being; it must not exist at all.
  
  • So nothing in God’s creation can be absolutely evil. Pure evil is not. That is, evil as a discrete reality does not exist; it is not a thing or an object to be removed or diluted.
• Augustine says that what we typically call evil is a deficiency of goodness, a PRIVATION OF GOOD.​

“If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.”

—Augustine

• This notion of evil allows Augustine to assert, contrary to the Manicheans, that the world is not a battleground in which good and evil struggle against each other in perpetual conflict – there is no evil deity contending against an all-good God.
  
  • Furthermore, God, the creator of all things, is not the source of evil. God creates only good. God created good things and set them in proper order. It is only when this order is upended that we see a privation of the good.
• MORAL EVIL – But what about the evil that comes from human choices and actions?
  
  • According to Augustine, this too is a deprivation of God’s good. It is God who creates human will, and it is God who endows it with the power of free choice. So the will itself can only be good. But through their free choices, humans cause disorder: they turn away from God’s high and immutable good toward the low and fading goods of mortal life.
• Augustine: On Free Will:
  
  • But the will which turns from the unchangeable and common good and turns to its own private good or to anything exterior or inferior, sins.
  • Good things sought by sinners cannot in any way be bad, nor can free will be bad.… What is bad is its turning away from the unchangeable good and its turning to changeable goods.

Question 6

Anselm and Aquinas

Answer 6

ANSELM and AQUINAS:

• Augustine tried to meld Plato to Christianity, but philosophers who came after him (especially Aquinas) thought Aristotle shed more light on Christian beliefs.
• Augustine’s style of doing philosophy—with its heavy emphasis on scripture, church fathers, and creative theorizing—was mostly abandoned by many other thinkers (notably Anselm and Aquinas) who relied more on logic and argumentation.

ANSELM – St. Anselm (1033–1109) was born in northern Italy, became a Benedictine monk and was eventually appointed archbishop of Canterbury. He is most famous (and influential) for an attempted proof of the existence of God – an ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT.

Arguments for the existence of God:

• ​​COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENTS – Empirical facts about the cosmos.
• TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENTS – Apparent signs of design or purposeful creation in the world. All things have a purpose.
• ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT – Appeal to the concept of God itself. From the definition of God, we prove with logic alone that a supreme deity is a reality.

ANSELM’s ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT – he first posits a **definition of God as the greatest possible being.

• This assertion, Anselm says, implies that God must actually exist, because if he did not exist in reality (and only existed in our minds), he would not be the greatest possible being. (Existing in reality is thought to make something greater than if it exists merely in someone’s mind.) Therefore, God exists.

** He begins with an unsupported assertion so why should we believe anything that follows from that?

ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENTS – Arguments that reason from the concept of God to the existence of God.

• The argument stated more formally:
  
  1. ​​God, by definition, is the greatest being possible. NOTE – 100% made up. – TJB
  2. Suppose the greatest being possible exists only in the understanding (in the mind, as a mental object).
  3. Then a greater being than the greatest being possible can be conceived, one existing not just in the understanding but also in reality (for a being is greater if it exists in reality than if it exists only in the understanding).
  4. But this yields a contradiction, for a being greater than the greatest being possible is impossible.
  5. Therefore, God, the greatest being possible, must exist in reality, not just in the understanding.
• Fault with this line of reasoning. The first major criticism came from an eleventh-century monk named Gaunilo, who thought that Anselm was trying to define God into existence.
  
  • Anselm replied that his reasoning does not pertain to things like Gaunilo’s island, but only to God.
• Anselm makes two assumptions:
  
  1. Existence makes something greater (that is, something is greater if it exists in the world than if it exists only in the mind as an idea).
  2. Existence can be a defining property.
• Critics, on the first count, they contend that there is no good reason to think that existence adds to the value of an entity.
• On the second count, they doubt that existence can be any kind of defining property at all.
  
  • Anselm assumes that one thing can be greater than another thing even though they have exactly the same properties, differing only in that the first thing exists and the second does not.
  • On his view, existence is another defining property—the essential attribute that the one thing has and the other lacks. But is this plausible?
• The weakest link in Anselm’s chain of reasoning is premise 2, the supposition that the greatest being possible exists only in the understanding. (However, this follows Plato’s Forms)
• This claim gives rise to the contradiction that a greater being than the greatest being possible can be conceived (one existing in reality).
  
  • But they argue that the contradiction dissolves if we take premise 2 to mean not that the greatest being possible exists in some sense in the mind (the view that Anselm seems to take), but simply that the concept of the greatest being possible does not refer to any actually existing thing. The latter, they insist, is the more reasonable reading of “exists only in the understanding,” and it does not yield any contradictions about the nature of God.
  • With this reading of premise 2, Anselm’s argument does not go through.

AQUINAS – St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) was born into a noble family in Southern Italy to eventually become the greatest philosopher of the medieval period and, to this day, the official theologian of the Roman Catholic Church.

• Aquinas’s great contribution to both philosophy and Christianity was his fusion of Aristotle’s philosophy with Christian doctrines.
• In theology he distinguished between reason and faith, giving each its own domain of inquiry. Reason can be used to prove the existence of God, he says, but only through faith can we know such mysteries as the incarnation and the trinity.
  
  • NOTE – Aquinas separated the 2 because he knew that reason alone could not explain Christianity (or any religion). He literally required people to take a leap of faith to accept religious doctrine.– TJB
• ​He is most famous for his arguments for the existence of God and for his system of ethics known as Natural Law Theory.

AQUINAS’S FIVE WAYS:

• Cosmological Arguments – Reason from the existence of the universe, or cosmos (or some fundamental feature of it), to the conclusion that God exists.
  
  • NOTE – This says that they “reason from the cosmos” and come to the conclusion that God exists, but what they are really doing is beginning with the assumption that God exists and then retrofit dubious premises in order to lead in a concocted fashion to the predetermined conclusion that God exists. – TJB
• The arguments all begin with the empirical fact that the universe, or one of its essential properties, exists—and end with the conclusion that only God could be responsible for this fact. (A False Choice)
• In his masterpiece Summa Theologica, Aquinas offers five “proofs” (his famous “Five Ways”) of God’s existence, the first three of which are cosmological arguments.

Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologica:

• It is certain, and evident to our senses, that in the world some things are in motion.
• Now whatever is in motion is put in motion by another, for nothing can be in motion except it is in potentiality to that towards which it is in motion; whereas a thing moves inasmuch as it is in actuality.
• For motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality.
  
  • But nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality. Thus that which is actually hot, as fire, makes wood, which is potentially hot, to be actually hot.
• Whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another.
  
  • If that by which it is put in motion be itself put in motion, then this also must be put in motion by another, and that by another again. But this cannot go on to infinity, because then there would be no first mover, and, consequently, no other mover; seeing that subsequent movers move only inasmuch as they are put in motion by the first mover; as the staff moves only because it is put in motion by the hand. Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God :
    
    • ​NOTE – All of this reasoning in the 1st proof is both reasonable and sound EXCEPT for the conclusion which he jumps to out of decree and with no other consideration for movement outside the idea of God. – TJB
      
      • NOTE–EX: Maybe our concept of beginning and end are confined to our universe in an infinite array of universes? And so, the need to see things in terms of origin (1st mover) is not necessary because things moving have always been moving. – TJB
  • There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself; for so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible.
  • Now in efficient causes, it is not possible to go on to infinity, because in all efficient causes following in order, the first is the cause of the intermediate cause, and the intermediate is the cause of the ultimate cause, whether the intermediate cause be several, or only one.
    
    • Now to take away the cause is to take away the effect.
      
      • Therefore, if there be no first cause among efficient causes, there will be no ultimate, nor any intermediate cause.
      • But if in efficient causes it is possible to go on to infinity, there will be no first efficient cause, neither will there be an ultimate effect, nor any intermediate efficient causes;
        
        • NOTE – Again, here the assumption is that nothing can go on forever, but is that true?
      • All of which is plainly false. Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God.
• ARGUMENT FROM MOTION (his first way – Cosmological):
  
  • ​It is obvious that some things in the universe are moving (that is, changing), and if they are moving, something else must have caused them to move. And this “something else” must also have been moving, set in motion by yet another thing that was moving, and this thing set in motion by another moving thing, and so on. But this series of things-moving-other-things cannot go on forever, to infinity, because then there would not be something that started all the moving. There must therefore be an initial mover (a first mover), an extraordinary being that started the universe moving but is not itself moved by anything else—and this being we call God.
• Aquinas’s second way is his famous FIRST CAUSE ARGUMENT.
  
  • Everything we can observe has a cause, and it is clear that nothing can cause itself. For something to cause itself, it would have to exist prior to itself, which is impossible. Neither can something be caused by an infinite regress of causes—that is, a series of causes stretching to infinity. In any series of causes, Aquinas says, there must be a first cause, which causes the second, which causes the third, and so on. But in an infinite series of causes, there would be no first cause and thus no subsequent causes, including causes existing now. So infinite regresses make no sense. Therefore, there must be a first cause of everything, and this first cause we call God.
• CRITICISM – Against these two arguments, philosophers have lodged several criticisms.
• One of the strongest takes aim at Aquinas’s claim that an infinite regress is not possible.
  
  • Aquinas thinks that a chain of causes must have a first cause; otherwise, there would be no subsequent causes in the world. In an infinite regress of causes, he contends, there would be no first cause and therefore no subsequent causes. Critics reply that just because an infinite chain of causes has no first cause, that doesn’t mean that the chain of causes has no cause at all: in an infinite chain of causes, every link has a cause. Many philosophers, including David Hume (1711–1776), see no logical contradiction in the idea of an infinite regress. They hold that the universe need not have had a beginning; it may be eternal, without beginning, and without a first cause or a first mover. The universe may have simply always been.

“To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.”

—Aquinas

Science and the Uncaused Universe:

• The notion that some events in the universe are entirely uncaused is now widely accepted among quantum physicists,
  
  • According to quantum physics, subatomic particles frequently pop in and out of existence randomly—that is, they appear and disappear uncaused out of a perfect vacuum. From these findings, some scientists have speculated that the universe itself may have arisen uncaused.
• Does this show that the universe is uncaused?
  
  • NOTE – It shows that being “uncaused” is possible in our universe, which opens the possibility that the entire universe was uncaused debunking one of Aquinas’ premises must have a cause.
• Some claim that the worst problem with Aquinas’s arguments is that at best they prove only that the universe had a first-mover or first cause—but not that the first-mover or first cause is God.
• Aquinas’s fifth way is a teleological argument (an argument from design - PURPOSE).
  
  • He contends that since the world shows signs of order and purposeful design—since things in nature act toward ends even though they lack intelligence or awareness—the world must be purposefully designed by an intelligent being, which we call God.
    
    • NOTE – This is used as the basis for “Intelligent Design” which can be used by the religions to try and argue against.– TJB
• ​We see that things which lack knowledge, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result. Hence it is plain that they achieve their end, not fortuitously, but designedly. Now whatever lacks knowledge cannot move towards an end, unless it is directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence; as the arrow is directed by the archer. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.
  
  • NOTE – The error here is that he perceives “natural bodies” as having a purpose inherent within them – as though they exist for the purpose of serving the function that they do. TJB
    
    • NOTE– EX: Mountains exist for the purpose of affecting weather patterns, when really weather patterns just happen to be affected by the existence of the mountains. What he fails to understand is that such natural processes appear to have a purpose only because life (and the environment) has developed around these processes and appear to exist only because of (as a result of, or caused by) the processes that the mountains help produce. – TJB
    • NOTE: Whenever life exists only then is it able to ponder the processes that made life possible and wonder how everything could be “just right” to produce life. The reality is, however, that among a universe of a ‘hundred’ billion, billion stars, there will be an unimaginable number and variety of environments. Some of these environments will allow for the rise of life. And it is only the sentiant, thinking life that will wonder how such a perfect environment was made for them. It wasn’t – TJB
    • NOTE – The environment is NOT** suited to us (as though suiting us is its purpose). Rather, we are suited to our environment. In other words, we’ve evolved to use our surroundings. Our surroundings were **NOT created for us. – TJB
• This sort of design argument as an inference to the best explanation, an argument form that says the best explanation for a state of affairs is most likely to be true.
• So Aquinas’s argument can be expressed like this:
  
  • The universe exhibits order and purposeful design; the best explanation for this order and purposeful design is that the universe was designed by God (opinion); therefore, it is probably true that the universe was designed by God.
• Philosophers deny this conclusion. They argue that naturalistic (nontheistic) explanations are better. For one thing, such explanations are simpler—that is, they are based on fewer assumptions.
• The God explanation, however, assumes an unknown entity (God) with unknown powers and unknown properties. Naturalistic explanations do not leap to such assumptions.

Aquinas’s Moral Philosophy:

Natural Law Theory – The view that right actions are those that conform to moral standards discerned in nature through human reason.

• Undergirding this doctrine is the belief that all of nature (including humankind) is teleological, that it is somehow directed toward particular goals or ends, and that humans achieve their highest good when they follow their true, natural inclinations leading to these goals or ends. (Recall that this was also Aristotle’s view.)
• According to natural law theory, humans are rational beings empowered by reason to perceive the workings of nature, determine the natural inclinations of humans, and recognize the implications therein for morally permissible actions.
  
  • That is, reason enables human beings to ascertain the moral law implicit in nature and to apply that objective, universal standard to their lives.
• Aquinas’s theistic formulation has been the theory’s dominant version. It is not only the official moral outlook of the Roman Catholic Church,
• For Aquinas, God is the author of the natural law who gave humans the gift of reason to discern the law for themselves and live accordingly.
  
  • Aquinas argues that human beings naturally tend toward—and therefore have a duty of—preserving human life and health (and so must not kill the innocent), producing and raising children, seeking knowledge (including knowledge of God), and cultivating cooperative social relationships.
  • Aquinas says, the overarching aim is to do and promote good and avoid evil.
• Among these principles are absolutist prohibitions against directly killing the innocent, lying, and using contraceptives.
• In his list of acts considered wrong no matter what, Aquinas includes adultery, blasphemy, and sodomy. NOTE – How are these natural? – TJB
• Of course, moral principles or rules often conflict, demanding that we fulfill two or more incompatible duties.
• We may be forced, for example, to either tell a lie and save people’s lives or tell the truth and cause their death—but we cannot do both.
• Some moral theories address these problems by saying that all duties are prima facie: when duties conflict, we must decide which ones override the others. Theories that posit absolute duties—natural law theory being a prime example—often do not have this option. How does the natural law tradition resolve such dilemmas? Among other resources, it uses the Doctrine of double effect, a principle derived partly from Aquinas’s discussion of the morality of self-defense. Now a cornerstone of Roman Catholic ethics, affirms that performing a bad action to bring about a good effect is never morally acceptable but that performing a good action may sometimes be acceptable even if it produces a bad effect.
• More precisely, the principle says it is always wrong to intentionally perform a bad action to produce a good effect, but doing a good action that results in a bad effect may be permissible if the bad effect is not intended although foreseen. In the former case, a bad thing is said to be directly intended; in the latter, a bad thing is not directly intended.
• These requirements have been detailed in Four “tests” that an action must pass to be judged morally permissible:
  
  1. The action itself must be morally permissible.
  2. Causing a bad effect must not be used to obtain a good effect (the end does not justify the means).
  3. Whatever the outcome of an action, the intention must be to cause only a good effect. (The bad effect can be foreseen but never intended.)
  4. The bad effect of an action must not be greater in importance than the good effect.
• Is it morally permissible to grant her request (either by giving a lethal injection or ending all ordinary life-sustaining measures)? If we apply the doctrine of double effect as outlined earlier, we must conclude that the answer is no: euthanasia—either active or passive—is not a morally permissible.
• Let us run through all four as a natural law theorist might:
  
  1. ​​Taking steps to terminate someone’s life is a clear violation of test 1. Whatever its effects, the action of taking a life is in itself immoral, a violation of the cardinal duty to preserve innocent life.
  2. Ending the woman’s life to save her from terrible suffering is an instance of causing a bad effect (the woman’s death) as a means of achieving a good effect (cessation of pain)—a failure of test 2.
  3. The death of the woman is intended; it is not merely a tragic side effect of the attempt solely to ease her pain. So the action fails test 3.
  4. Causing the death of an innocent person is a great evil that cannot be counterbalanced by the good of pain relief. So the action does not pass test 4.
• The verdict in such a case would be different, however, if the patient’s death were not intentionally caused but unintentionally brought about. Suppose, for example, that the physician sees that the woman is in agony and gives her a large injection of morphine to minimize her suffering—knowing full well that the dose will also probably speed her death. In this scenario, the act of easing the woman’s pain is itself morally permissible (test 1). Her death is not a means to achieve some greater good; the goal is to ease her suffering (test 2). Her death is not intended; the intention is to alleviate her pain, though the unintended (but foreseen) side effect is her hastened death (test 3). Finally, the good effect of an easier death seems more or less equivalent in importance to the bad effect of a hastened death. Therefore, unintentionally but knowingly bringing about the woman’s death in this way is morally permissible.