Conditions for an Act to be Morally Good

Aquinas also asserts that for an action to have moral goodness, three conditions must be
fulfilled, namely, 1) the action is good in itself, 2) the action aims at the good end, 3) and
the action is done in an appropriate circumstance. Let me briefly develop each condition
below.

In the first condition, the action is simply good in itself or neutral. This can be

exemplified, for example, by a person willfully saving another from danger or someone
giving charity to poor people. Such action, according to Aquinas, reflects moral goodness
for it promotes human flourishing both for the actor and the recipient of the act. In
contrast, murder is bad, period. There is no need to consider the end or the circumstances
for the action is bad in itself as it both cuts off the victim and the killer from any human
flourishing. For Aquinas, there are no circumstances under which performing such action
like murder could be considered morally permissible. In fact, as is well known, the right
to life is the most fundamental of all human rights.

In the second condition, actions are moral, according to Aquinas, when it aims at
the good end. For instance, a man, like St. Maximilian Kolbe, who offered his life in
exchange for the life of a stranger during the Nazi regime was considered a moral person.
Such an act of giving up one’s life so that others may live is a moral act with a good end.
But any man who sprays gunfire on a crowd of 22,000 concert-goers for reason of hate,
personal depression, idealistic principles, initiation to a particular association, or even
religious belief are definitely wrong. Going back to the case of the first condition, if a
person save willfully another from danger in order to extort some money from her then
the act of saving becomes immoral because of a bad intention; and, in the same manner,
also giving charity, as one of Aquinas examples, to poor persons becomes bad when it is
done for the sake of vanity. It is in such a situation that an act which is good becomes bad
if we analyze the intention/end of the act.

And lastly, the third condition claims that in order for an action to be considered good, it
must be performed under appropriate circumstances (ST II-First Part q.18, a.3).
Ordinarily, a student may think that helping a classmate from her study like, for instance,
answering some questions on Math subject is a generous act. However, when the help is
done during the class’s periodical exam, the act becomes wrong for under such
circumstance the helping becomes a form of “cheating”. Considering also the perspective
of the other students in the class, who did their best to answer alone, the help becomes an
unjust/unfair act against them. Thus, for Aquinas, in order for an action to be morally
good, it must not only be a good/neutral type of action, but it must be appropriate to the
circumstances, and it must be performed for the sake of a good end. A deficiency in any
one of these conditions renders the action morally wrong. To reiterate, for Aquinas, all of
the three conditions must be satisfied for an action to be considered moral. Hence, if at
least one of them is violated, then the action is immoral.
Aquinas also adds the case of the consequence of an action. Though he does not believe
that consequences could determine the rightness or wrongness of an action, under certain
circumstances, it could add something to the moral appraisal of an action. Let me give
two scenarios to explain Aquinas’s argument.

The first case is a medical scientist who discovers a way to create a virus that would earn
her a lot of money and public recognition but at the expense of wiping out the entire
humanity. Aquinas believes that doing so is immoral. The second case is that of a
medical scientist who discovers a medicine that would solve all kinds of human sickness
without any side effect, except that it strengthens more the immune system. For sure,
Aquinas would have argued that the creation and free distribution of the medicine is
admirable. Hence, the action is morally upright. From these two given cases, we could
realize that consequences can either make the act better or worse. For Aquinas, however,
what ultimately determines the goodness or badness of an action is the extent to which
reason properly orders the action to its end. In the examples above, we learned that both
scientists have the natural ability to create something. The only difference is the
consequences when they perform their abilities. The act of the virus-maker becomes
immoral for the consequence of her act leads to the destruction of human life, while the
medicine-maker is admirable because her act enhances all life including hers.

The Principle of Double Effect 

In line with the consequence of an act is Aquinas’s another moral teaching, that is,
the Principle of Double Effect. He recognized that there are times when our actions
could have good and bad effects. In such an ethical dilemma, Aquinas believes that it is
still permissible to perform an act that could cause bad effects for the following
conditions: first, the act is in itself good; second, the agent does not intend the bad
effect; third, the bad effect is not, in fact, the means to the good effect; and fourth, the
badness of the bad effect does not sufficiently outweigh the goodness of the good
effect. Let’s take the case of self-defense in which Aquinas argues that “by saving one’s
life, one may slay the aggressor” (ST II-Second Part, q. 64, a.7), as the basis for
explanation.

In the first case, to save one’s life or to protect it from the aggressor is a natural
obligation and, thus, it is considered an act that in itself is good. In the second case, for
Aquinas, the intention of self-defense is to save one’s life and not necessarily to slay the
aggressor for the act of slaying is just “accidental” (ST II-Second Part, q. 43, a.3). Here,
the act is moral because the agent intends the good effect and not the bad one. In the
third case in which the bad effect is not the means to the good effect, Aquinas explains
that in a situation when an agent defend herself but, accidentally, slay the aggressor in an
unfortunate circumstance, the act is not considered immoral.  The slaying is not
intentional or even a means but simply an “accidental cause” that happens involuntarily
in a conflict situation (ST II-Second Part, q. 64, a.7). And lastly, the fourth case in
which the badness of the bad effect does not outweigh the goodness of the good
effect, Aquinas argues that it is unlawful for anyone in self-defense to use “more than
necessary violence” if there is a chance to elicit moderate self-defense. Here we find him
arguing that though hurting our aggressor is acceptable, in virtue of self-defense, the
harm done must not outweigh the goodness of the effect.

Now, the main point of all these discussions on moral principles or precepts, for Aquinas,
is simply to give us a guide on how we can establish a “habitual” moral act. His wish is
that, by constantly acting morally, we become virtuous persons. In fact, for Aquinas,
living as virtuous persons, or living according to our nature as rational beings, is an
important condition for the realization of our happiness. But, what exactly is this
happiness in which every human person longs for?” This will be elucidated by the next
section on “Happiness as Man’s Ultimate End”.