Summaries / Resúmenes - Studia Moralia

THE SUBJECT-OBJECT RELATION IN CONTEMPORARY CATHOLIC MORAL THEOLOGY 47with a unified vision of reality. In particular, the unity of the actconsists in its ratio or meaning, and this meaning is a manifestationof or participation in the reason of God. The reason inthe agent participates in the divine reason; the ratio or reasonof the object-act participates also in the divine reason. Both areinterpreted teleologically in terms of the divine guiding reason.It is in this framework, unified by reason, that Thomas’s unifiedvision of the world is constructed.I am somewhat puzzled by this later turn to St. Thomas inSelling’s argument (on the unity of the moral act). He seemsnow to be assuming that St. Thomas’s account is the ideal towhich we ought return. But it was for making such an assumption,as he thought I had done, that he criticized me in theopening section of his article.2. The Separation of Subject and ObjectIn respect to this issue, Selling refers to the “so called” separation.This separation, or if one prefers, detachment, hasbeen a major problem in western philosophy at least for the lastfour centuries and is recognized a such. 11I nowhere say that the separation of subject and object wasa “corruption” of some ideal form of thought. This word seemsto suggest that there was some kind of moral fault involved or,at least, that there was a falling away from an ideal to which weought to return. I have not suggested this. I do not contrastideal and corruption. That something like this separation ordetachment happened in Western philosophy is accepted byinterpreters of the history of philosophy such as Charles Taylor.I have followed him on this point. Some might regard this separationas a positive gain; others may see it as a loss. I did nottake a position on this issue.But that there was a problem to be solved with respect tothe relation of subject and object is amply attested by the whole“modern” tradition of Western philosophy. 12 My contention is11Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: the Making of the Modern Identity(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989) 188.12Cf. Kevin Hart, Postmodernism: A Beginners Guide (Oxford:Oneworld, 2004) 49.