Moral Dilemmas in Medieval Thought: From Gratian to Aquinas by M. V. Dougherty

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 303 historical. Perhaps this will provide some impetus to make available more of his essays, surely worthy to be communicated to as wide an audience as possible. WILLIAM DESMOND Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Belgium Villanova University Villanova, Pennsylvania Moral Dilemmas in Medieval Thought: From Gratian to Aquinas. By M. V. Dougherty. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Pp. 236. $99.00 (cloth). ISBN: 978-1-107-00707-9. The question of whether moral wrongdoing is ever genuinely unavoidable has been a longstanding concern of Western ethical thought. The mediaeval moral theorists examined this question with a great deal of sophistication, and came up with answers that have a surprisingly modern ring to them. Michael V. Dougherty has given us a full and engagingly written presentation of the mediaeval contributions to this debate. He begins, understandably (although somewhat arbitrarily) with the Concordia Concordantium Canonum, commonly referred to as the Decretum, attributed to the Bolognese canonist Gratian (composed in stages beginning around 1140), and follows a line of development over three hundred years through William of Auxerre and Raymond Lull (somewhat out of order here) to Aquinas and later Thomists such as Johannes Capreolus (obit 1444). Gratian, in some preliminary distinctions of the Decretum, presents a hierarchy of laws, with natural law standing at the highest point. In a dictum in distinction 13 of the first part, he states that “no dispensation is permitted from natural law except perhaps when one is compelled to choose between two evils” (d. 13, dictum a. c. 1). The issue is thus whether moral dilemmas exist, that is, whether one is ever unable to avoid wrongdoing because of irreconcilable obligations. While dispensation from secular or ecclesiastical law is always possible within the legal systems of the Middle Ages, or else appeal can be made to higher legal authority, these options are not available in the case of the natural law—yet a basic principle is that it must always be possible to avoid moral wrongdoing. Gratian appears to indicate that when moral wrongdoing is inescapable, the lesser evil is always to be chosen, based on a text from the Council of Toledo and a long and somewhat difficult passage from Gregory the Great’s Moralia in Job. Dougherty points out that various commentators on Gratian rejected the “lesser evil” escape, so that by the time of the Glossa ordinaria on the Decretum (late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries), the BOOK REVIEWS 304 majority of commentators identify every instance of perplexitas as “simply a subjective epistemic condition rather than real moral entanglement” (33). While the appeal to the choice of the “lesser evil” has a pedigree going back to Plato and Cicero, Dougherty presents the subjective perplexity of foolish agents as the first of the standard mediaeval ways of resolving moral dilemmas: moral dilemmas are not caused by the order of things (res), but simply occur in a mind that holds an opinion that is foolish or erroneous. Minds that are not thus deceived will therefore always be able to discern a course that is morally permissible in any given set of circumstances without committing sin. This is developed by Aquinas in his presentations on the failure of practical reasoning, particularly through the malformed conscience. A second escape route is presented in the rollicking and swashbuckling Vita coaetanea of Raymond Lull, the Catalan philosopher and adventurer of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Here, Raymond turns to prayer upon recognizing his inability to escape wrongdoing, and God provides a way of escape (through, for example, the suicide of Raymond’s accuser). The dilemmas presented are quite real, but the agent is delivered by a species of “moral luck.” The third, and by far the most common solution, appears to be the way of clarification. In these dilemmas, the simple bifurcation of options is shown to be illusory—there is a third option, which is not immoral. In a sense, the dilemma is more apparent than real because of the misleading way in which it is phrased, suggesting the unavoidability of the dilemma. Kant’s homicidal maniac asking about the whereabouts of a (presumably) intended victim can be met with silence, it is suggested, so that...