Summaries / Resúmenes - Studia Moralia

392 BRIAN JOHNSTONE
Acts which are “secundum se evil”
The term “secundum se evil” was not applied by St. Thomas
to an act solely on the basis of its “object” considered as a separate
entity, but to the act considered as a whole, that is as including
the intention which constitutes the moral meaning of the
act, together with the act (specified by its object) which expresses
that intention. Thus, “homicide” which is secundum se evil,
means not simply killing a man, nor simply the intended killing
of a man, but the intended killing of a man, moved by vice. Thus,
for St. Thomas, the soldier and the executioner, acting as the
agents of duly constituted authority, acting justly, may intend to
kill, but provided that they are not moved by vice (libido) their
acts are not homicide. Thus, for St. Thomas, killing in war and
killing in the carrying out just capital punishment, are not designated
as secundum se evil. The relevant point in the present
argument is that St. Thomas uses the term secundum se evil of
the whole act, not of the separate object of the act.
In the case of the killing the innocent, that is, apart from
such situations as war and capital punishment, the term secundum
se evil would be applied not simply to the act of killing the
innocent person, nor simply to the intending of that killing, but
to both of these together with the malice or vice which moved
the agent to intend such a killing. Nor can it simply be presumed
that the badness of the separate object (killing the innocent)
“causes” the badness in the intention or causes the malice in the
agent. The originative source of the evil is in the prior, interior
bad will of the agent: he is willing to kill the innocent.
It is true that St. Thomas says that the goodness of the will
depends on the object alone. 20 But he does not mean by this that
the object, considered as separate from and prior to the intention,
causes the goodness of that intention. He explains that the
goodness of the act depends of the object as distinct from the
20
St. Thomas, (S. Th., I-II, 19, 2) says that the goodness and badness of
the interior act of the will depends only on the object, and not on the circumstances.
(ad 1) But the end (finis) is the object of the will. Thus, in
respect to the act of the will, the goodness which comes from the object is
not different from the goodness which comes from the end.