Philosophy 051-01

The Doctrine of Double Effect and Applications of Natural Law

February 20, 2002

 

1. Applications.  Suicide.  II-II, Q. 64, Art. 5—which you didn’t read, but do read it for next time.  Thomas thinks suicide is always wrong.  The idea is going to be to show that suicide is opposed to at least one of the first principles of natural law.  It is clear which one it is opposed to: self-preservation.  Suicide is against that basic purpose of the existence of everything, namely that it should keep itself in existence.  Moreover, it is opposed to love for oneself.

• Thomas also lists two other reasons.  First of all, the fourth principle tells us about community.  We are a part of community, and cannot rob it of ourselves.  We damage the basic good of the community in this way.
• Finally, Thomas also lists a specifically theistic reason: Life is a gift of God.
• Thomas has to handle some biblical and other cases where people seemed to have killed themselves, like Samson who pulled down the temple around himself and his enemies.  His way is to say in effect that because the good of life comes from God, it is not literally an ultimate good: God is the ultimate good.  The basic value of life comes from God, and so God can in some special circumstances waive it.  And Thomas supposes that God did that in this case. 
• This is of course a very dangerous idea—a madman might think God commanded him to commit suicide.  A better answer in the case of Samson would have been to employ the principle of double effect which we’ll discuss shortly.
• Vis-à-vis euthanasia, Thomas  could say: Avoidance of pain is not a basic good: it is there to protect life.  Thus, to kill oneself to avoid pain is something Thomas, if he considered the question, would call inordinate.  Something is inordinate if it is used for a purpose opposite to its real purpose, and it is wrong if the real purpose (in this case life) is a basic good.  The purpose of avoiding pain is generally to save one’s life—pain is a signal given for our protection.  To avoid pain for the opposite purpose is wrong.
• This will be something we can talk about next class during the discussion

2. On the other hand, we can kill animals and plants.  Thomas can give two reasons for this, even though the life of animals and plants is good.  One is theological: God made animals and plants for us.  The second is the principle that lower kinds of beings are made for higher kinds—the interconnection of purposes of things is such that the purpose of the existence of the lower ones is the good of the higher ones.  (A theological worry: What about us and angels, though?)  Note that he considers the cases of plants and animals parallel.

• This does not mean that one can cause pointless cruelty to animals.  In saying that animals are for our good, Thomas is not saying that we can do whatever we want with them.  For they are for our good—pointless cruelty is not good for us.
• So, Thomas would say that the life of animals and plants is not really a basic good, because it has a further purpose—our good—and hence killing animals and plants does not go against this purpose.
• He could also argue for its being natural for us to eat meat.  Isn’t that why have these nice sharp canine teeth?

3. What about human beings?  A human being’s life is a basic good.  We are naturally directed to preserving our own life, but we see that the life of another is not of any less worth.  So we must preserve the life of another.  Thus, we cannot kill an innocent person.  To do that would be to act directly against a basic good, and this is never acceptable—not even if it would save many lives.  If a healthy person comes to the hospital and his organs could be used to save five lives, it is still wrong to kill him: one would still be acting directly against the basic good of his life.  The action would be wrong according to its object.  According to its end—to save more lives—it may be good, of course.  But an action counts as wrong as long as any one of the three—end, object and circumstance—fails.

4. But human beings are but a part of the whole of society.  Thus, Thomas thinks it is possible to kill them if they are malfunctioning, namely if they are wicked, if this killing is necessary for the protection of society.  This is just as the case of amputation according to Thomas.  Capital punishment.  However, if they are innocent, then the basic good of their life is one that cannot be taken away. 

• But how does this square with Thomas’s idea that one can’t ever kill the innocent, not even for the sake of saving more lives?  Maybe killing the innocent, even to save more lives, would be a failure to recognize them as valuable in themselves and them as properly functioning parts of society.  If one were to kill an innocent person, one would be destroying a properly functioning part of society, and this in itself would strike against society, even though society in the long run might possibly benefit (in the kinds of hard cases we considered in our first class).  So it would be wrong.  And it would be contrary to love: it would be an action against the basic good of the person. 
• So, is it the case that one can kill the malfunctioning parts of society?  But then what about people who are sick and a “burden to society”?  Thomas can answer that they are not malfunctioning as persons.  As long as they are not murderers and the like, they are fine persons. 
• Or maybe Thomas can say that the good functioning of society just is the good functioning of its parts, and if someone is not completely morally corrupt, killing him is directly acting against the proper functioning of society?  Note that we don’t generally amputate healthy limbs.
• But perhaps Thomas cannot square his defense of capital punishment in terms of defending society with his view that life is a basic good that cannot be sacrificed for the sake of any other life.  Perhaps his amputation argument doesn’t work, because the analogy fails: there is still the basic good of life.  If so, then Thomas could give another argument, and maybe this is what is at the back of his mind.  He could argue that God has given the state the authority to kill the guilty when this is necessary for the state’s self-protection.  And God has this authority, because life is not literally a basic good: the fulfillment of God’s plan is the point of life.  Thus, if it is a part of God’s plan that someone’s life be taken away, then it is morally acceptable for this life to be taken away, since the life is sacrificed for the sake of the higher good for which it is ordained, just as when we kill a plant or animal, we sacrifice its good for the sake of the higher good for which it is ordained, namely our good.
• But if this theological defense of capital punishment is all that Thomas is left with—and I am not saying it is—then it is not clear whether an atheist could allow capital punishment.
• Note: You may have heard that the Catholic Church now teaches that capital punishment is wrong, and you might then wonder about Saint Thomas Aquinas teaching otherwise.  Actually, there isn’t a conflict here (and of course the Catholic Church does not say that the saints are infallible).  If we take Thomas’s analogy with amputation, we can only amputate a limb if no less drastic procedure would protect the body’s health.  If I have a cut on my toe that got infected, it’s wrong to cut off my leg—instead, I should just put some antibiotic on the cut.  Only if there is no other way of fixing the problem is amputation considered.  So, if we take Thomas’s argument that you’ve read, capital punishment is justified only when it is necessary for the protection of society.  And this is exactly what the present Pope said in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae.  However, the Pope also thinks that under our present-day conditions, capital punishment is not necessary for the protection of society, though it might have been necessary in the past.  We are a rich society: we can afford to imprison people, and we can imprison them in a humane way that does not end up killing them anyway quickly.  So, John Paul II and Thomas might well agree on the principle that capital punishment is justified if and only if the crime is big enough and no lesser punishment would protect society.

5. Self-defense.  One can kill an evil attacker on behalf of society.  But this has to be a societal decision.  What about private life?  What if you are privately attacked by an assailant, and you have a gun.  Can you shoot the assailant? 

• This is different from capital punishment, because you have not judged the person in a court of law.  You as an individual have no right to decide whether society would be better off without this person.  You don’t represent society.  (You don’t have the authority God has given to the leaders of society, if we take the theological argument from before.)  Thus, Thomas thinks it would be wrong for you to set out to kill him.
• However, Thomas thinks it would be acceptable for you to hit him.  Even hit him in a way that is likely to cause death, as long as you are not intending him to die, but only intending to stop the attack.  In this case, Thomas says you are not promoting or doing bad, but good.  You are doing the good of stopping the attack.  You do not intend the assailant to die.  But he may die as a result of the blow.  Or the gunshot.  But that’s not your intention.
• One way to tell that it’s not your intention is that after you fell him, if he is alive, you should call an ambulance.  If it was your intention to kill him, then after you felled him, you would finish him off.
• This assumes there is no lesser way of protecting yourself.  If you think you can stop the assailant by shooting him the stomach and by shooting him in the head, you should shoot him in the stomach. 
• The Principle of Double Effect:  It can be acceptable to do something that you expect will result in a loss of a basic good, provided:
• (a) The act you do is not intrinsically wrong (i.e., does not have a wrong object).
• (b) You do not intend the destruction of a basic good (either as a means or as an end).
• (c) The basic good lost is smaller than the basic good gained by the act.
• (d) There is no way of gaining the basic good you are gaining with a lesser overall loss.
• The second condition is not always satisfied.  Sometimes it’s clear someone is trying to kill someone else.  For instance, suppose you’re told: Kill this innocent guy, or we’ll kill ten others.  Then, if you kill, it’s clear that you intended the death of the guy.  You intended it as a means to an end, but you still intended it.  The death was something you set out to accomplish.  You set out to accomplish it because it would lead to a good result, but you still set out to accomplish it.  And this is wrong, because you have chosen what is a basic evil, the death of an innocent person, contrary to the first of the first principles of natural law.
• The point of Double Effect is that when one intends an end, one always intends all the means to it—the means to the end are the objects of one’s actions.  If one chooses to kill someone for the sake of saving another’s life, one still intends that the first person die, because that is the object of one’s action. 
• But when one merely foresees that the basic good will be lost, then one is not intending this loss.  Suppose that I run a drug company and I make a vaccine against a deadly disease.  I know that some people will die from the side-effects of taking the vaccine.  So, I foresee a basic evil coming about from the vaccine being sold.  But clearly I don’t intend this basic evil.  It is not something I set out to accomplish, either as an end or as a means.  It’s not something I set my will to.  What I am trying to accomplish is that people’s lives be saved by the vaccine—as in the vast majority of cases there will be.  All conditions for double effect are satisfied. 
• Compare this to the case of a Nazi medical researcher who wanted to see what happens to people when they get typhus in order to develop an anti-typhus vaccine.  He intends that his experimental subjects get typhus, and of course he knows that typhus is directly opposed to the basic good of life.  It’s true, he only intends this as a means to the good end of developing an anti-typhus vaccine.  But he still intends it: if they didn’t get typhus, his plan would fall to pieces.  But in the case of the drug company I mentioned before, if people didn’t die from side-effects, the plan would go even better.
• So one criterion for telling if condition (b) is satisfied is this: If the basic good were not lost, would my plan still succeed?  If not, then the loss is an integral part of the plan, something I am intending.  If yes, then it is not an integral part of the plan.
• One of the objections in Thomas’s article about killing the innocent is this.  The guilty, when they die, go to punishment.  But the innocent when they die go to heaven.  Isn’t it a lesser evil to kill the innocent, then, since one sends them to heaven?  Well, but if one does this, one is intending the death of the innocent person, and this death is a basic evil.  One is intending it as a means to the further good of heaven, but it is still wrong to do it, because it is a basic evil.
• Consider cases of bombing the enemy HQ to kill the guilty enemy leader.  This might be acceptable, if the life of the guilty is not a basic good, even if there are children in the streets around the enemy HQ, as long as more lives are saved overall.  If the children didn’t die, the plan would not be thwarted.  But suppose that we could cow the enemy into surrender by bombing an orphanage.  Then, our plan is such that it would be thwarted if the children did not die.  If the children did not die, the enemy would not be cowed into submission.  So, in this plan, one is intending the deaths of the children, and so the action is wrong.