Summaries / Resúmenes - Studia Moralia

THE SUBJECT-OBJECT RELATION IN CONTEMPORARY MORAL THEOLOGY 27about: the body-soul unity.Johnstone attempts to resolve what he considers to be anontological and anthropological dilemma by recasting theentire discussion in terms of gift-giving. He writes, “A humanperson cannot give except by engaging soul with body, nor canhe or she receive except by soul with body” (113). One couldvalidly ask what happened to the problem he described earlierwith respect to giving the wrong gift (100)? Has he forgotten hisown example?Ultimately, I am inclined to agree with Johnstone’s rejectionof objectivism, but not for the reasons he offers. The idea thatthings or gestures have “meaning” without any constructiveparticipation of the subject remains completely abstract. Thereis no meaning without interpretation. Objectivism or naturalismseparates the object so completely from the subject thatthere does not even seem to be a moral agent necessary to pronounceupon the “morality of acts”. I agree with Aquinas thatthe human, voluntary moral act is a unity and that ends, goalsor purposes belong to the entirety of that unity by virtue ofhuman intention, which in turn demands human freedom.Without freedom, there is no intention. That is the differencebetween an actus humanus and an actus hominis.Linacre Quarterly 60:2 (1993) 86-88 [sic, in fact, 82-89]. This is actually areview of an appendix in David Kelly’s book, Critical Care Ethics: TreatmentDecisions in American Hospitals (Kansas City: Sheed and Ward, 1991, 204-208), in which Kelly discusses the use of a condom to avoid the transmissionof HIV. Johnson claims to defeat Kelly’s “suggestion” that the use of acondom in such an instance is not contraceptive by introducing into theprinciple of double effect a distinction between remote and proximateintention – a distinction that has never before been applied to or within theprinciple. Johnson agrees with Kelly that the “remote intention” of the couplemay be to prevent HIV transmission, but their “proximate intention” is“that the ejaculation that is the immediate goal of the sex act from theman’s perspective not enter the vagina, the ejaculate’s proper receptacle”(86). He states further that, “the disposition of the semen in its properreceptacle [is] in fact the whole purpose of the sex act, as a sex act” (87).Such a statement cannot help but leave one wondering about the meaningof “physicalism”.