Summaries / Resúmenes - Studia Moralia

402 BRIAN JOHNSTONE
moral meaning of the act already constituted in the basic or fundamental
intention.
The encyclical Veritatis Splendor itself does not take an
exclusively “objectivist” position, by which I mean a moral
analysis which claims to find moral meaning “in” the object considered
as separate and prior to the subject. 37 In particular, it
states: “In order to be able to grasp the object of an act which
specifies that act morally, it is therefore necessary to place oneself
in the perspective of the acting person.” 38 This formulation
clearly gives a key place to the subject. This notion of perspective
may be developed further. It is not sufficient to interpret the
perspective of the person as if this related only to the person’s
apprehension of the separate object of the intended act.
Adopting the perspective of the acting person must also include
the intending person and the interior factors mentioned above,
in particular the intentions of that person. Only in this integrated
view can the moral meaning of the act be adequately understood.
A further proposal.
In conclusion, I propose that the basic concern of the tradition
was that morality, while rooted in the subject, must include
a relationship to the other and that both the subject element or
intention and the object element enter into the constitution of
moral meaning. These elements, I suggest, could be better
accounted for if we adopted a new overall framework. The fundamental
problem behind the objectivist theory was an ontology
which separated subject and object and thus made possible the
consideration of the object of the act as separate from the intention
of the subject. The “whole act” moral theory of St. Thomas,
in which subject and object are inherently related makes sense
within his vision of the world as a united whole. Objectivist theories
presuppose the framework which separates subject and
37
Cf.,Vidal, La Proposta, 128.
38
Veritatis Splendor, #78.