Summaries / Resúmenes - Studia Moralia

THE SUBJECT-OBJECT RELATION IN CONTEMPORARY MORAL THEOLOGY 29fulfilled and fulfilling human life, aimed at what is now commonlycalled “human flourishing”, a phrase he may have introducedinto the vocabulary of moral theology.I can personally appreciate what Grisez was trying to do,although I disagree both with the idea that what one might designateas “basic” human good can be reduced to such a shortlist and with the proposal that these goods can never be “violated”.Such a radical position, in my opinion, is not compatiblewith Catholic tradition. Nevertheless, the point he attempts tomake is that there are real, objective points of reference towhich moral reasoning can appeal. I do not understand howJohnstone can claim that Grisez’s theory leads to the “exclusionof the objective other” (116) or that “it seeks to find a foundationfor ethics in the structures of the practical reason of theseparated subject” (117). Such statements do not seem to exhibitvery much familiarity with the very concrete conclusions thatGrisez puts forth.If Johnstone wished to provide an example of some ethicaltheories that radically separate the subject from the object, creatinga consistently ‘subjectivist’ approach, one wonders why hedid not choose some of the more obvious candidates: hedonism,situation ethics or some forms of (act-) utilitarianism.Anyone who reads Grisez thoroughly, and to a lesser extentFinnis who tends to be more philosophical and abstract, wouldhave a hard time placing him as a defender of the ‘separatedsubject’.ProportionalismThe final ethical approach that Johnstone singles out forcriticism is what he understands to be called proportionalism.A number of people have been labeled proportionalists and anumber of critics of proportionate thinking presume to knowwhat this “theory” stands for. However, most of those who seemto have problems with proportionate thinking also have problemswith providing a clear definition of how such an approachworks. They usually start off by equating it with consequentialism.If it were the case that there is little or no difference