BIOLOGISME IN DE TRADITIONELE ETHIEK?

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size SUMMARY The objection that the views of marriage and sexuality which are found in traditional ethics show a „biologistic” or „physicalistic” tendency is rejected for two reasons. The first is that this objection does not take sufficiently into account the development of biology and natural science. Therefore the objection should be that traditional ethics, in so far as it uses biological arguments, thinks in terms of an antiquated biology and natural science. And this is a quite different matter. The main reason for rejection is, however, another. It is simply not true that the real arguments of traditional ethics are based upon biological considerations. They are based upon anthropologic considerations. And it is mainly the fact that this anthropology is antiquated too, that causes traditional ethics to be unsatisfactory. The interesting point is that it has been precisely the development of natural science that has antiquated medieval anthropology. In order to know what this development has thaught us about man, attention must be paid not only to what natural science says about man insofar as he is its object but also to what it teaches us about man as its subject. It is true, of course, that a consideration of man as the subject of science does not itself belong to science. It belongs to the level of philosophical reflection. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that what such a consideration reveals would never have been discovered without science. What, then, has been revealed in this way? The main points are the progressive and experimental character of both theoria and praxis, a new view of nature and of man as the being that should bring the potentialities of nature to its fulfilment. The natural order could no longer be identified with the order of creation. The new view of the position of man in nature has important consequences for ethics. A minor point is that when the ”condition humaine” is not static, casuistry, which occupied such a predominant place in traditional ethics, loses this predominancy. More important is, however, that the norm of ethics, integral human nature, is not so easy to use as guide as was formerly thought. What”integral human nature” is, will be revealed only in the process of history: in the process of discovering human possibilities. (Progressive and experimental aspects of human knowledge.) On the other hand, this process itself ought to be guided by the same norm. The implications of this dialectic relationship are discussed. One of the consequences in the field of sexual ethics is that the ethical evaluation becomes more dependent upon biological, medical, psychological and other considerations. The ethical evaluation has to be”incorporated” in the judgements of those sciences.