Summaries / Resúmenes - Studia Moralia

478 REVIEWS / RECENSIONESHis evaluation is positive. However, he is not uncritical. For example,there remains the question of what are the goods to which humansare directed? How should the fundamental option be expressed inparticular actions?; how should the disposal of the self before Christ,be expressed in “categorical” that is concrete, describable actions?(244) Fuchs sought to maintain a teleological order of nature, with,however, a central focus on personhood, and at the same time incorporatean awareness of historicity.There is a difficulty, frequently noted by critics, especially Grisezand Finnis, namely that Fuchs’s methodology requires that one comparequalitatively different goods, but fails to explain how this is tobe done. These critics uphold the “incommensurability” thesis,namely that we simply cannot make such comparisons, in such away as to make intelligible our preferences for some goods over others.(246)Those who favour Fuchs’s approach would reply that we donevertheless make such comparisons. The author agrees that furtherthought is necessary of this point, but maintains his positive evaluationof Fuchs’s work.This reviewer would argue that what we need to do is situateboth the Neo-Thomistic approach and the Rahnerian turn to the subject,followed by Fuchs, in the moral theological tradition and thusrespect the historicity of the theories themselves. The modern period,(sixteenth century and after) both in philosophy and theologywas characterised by a dissociation or separation of subject andobject. Catholic moral theology tended to concentrate its attention ofthe object, the given “out there” and tended to objectivise all its conceptsaccordingly. We can see this clearly, I suggest, in the pre-conversionwork of Fuchs. The Rahnerian turn to the subject, representsa turn to the other pole of the separation. There are many philosopherswho argue that the “turn to the subject” was not an altogetherpositive development. Now theological concepts are interpreted interms of the subject, and the kind of intractable problems mentionedby Graham emerge. For example, how are we to relate the fundamentaloption to particular, “categorical” acts. In the view of thisreviewer, these problems cannot be answered so long as one maintainsthe turn to the (separated) subject. Thus, the future of moraltheology does not lie in a simple advance along the lines proposed byFuchs. It must be granted, however, that he, with others, brought anecessary corrective to the objectivist moral theology of Neo-Thomism. Graham has given us a perceptive and stimulating