Summaries / Resúmenes - Studia Moralia

42 BRIAN V. JOHNSTONEmake it possible to explain some of the disagreements in contemporarymoral theology and, perhaps, transcend them.I would welcome a reasoned critique of any of these claims.Unfortunately, Selling’s article is weakened in that he repeatedlyfails to report accurately what I wrote and instead intrudeshis own interpretations. He then refutes what are, in fact, hisown constructions. Since, in many instances I simply did notsay what he alleges that I said, his critique is often not to thepoint. He dismisses some of my suggestions as “curious.” I suggestthat he might have found them less curious if he had paidattention to what I actually wrote.There is a difficulty, I concede, with the word “subject.”Selling claims that I shift from such terms as “subject-orientation”to “subjective” and “subjectivist.” The word “subjective”often has a pejorative sense: to call a moral theory “subjective”could carry negative implications, simply because of the word.For that reason, I used the expression “subject-orientation.” Myintention was to avoid a pre-judgment on those forms of moraltheology which begin in some way with a reflection on the subject.I did use the term “subjective” but as a way of identifyingcertain moral theories. I did not use the term to express an a-priori negative judgment on those theories. When I do make ajudgment on certain theories, that judgment is based on argument,not mere words.I used the term “subjectivist” once to describe the objectionsof those who criticize the theory of the fundamentaloption. I did not adopt those objections myself. The objections,however, are intelligible if we understand that those who madethem were coming from an “objectivist” mode of thinking. Theyare worried that the fundamental option theory separates thechoice of the subject from the object and the objective normand so opens the way to subjectivism.When I used the phrase “contemporary ethical theories,” Imeant precisely what I said, “ethical theories,” not moral theologicaltheories. Among contemporary ethical theories, thereare some which are identified as “objectivist.” 2 “Objectivism” is2See John Cottingham, The Spiritual Dimension: Religion, Philosophyand Human Value (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) 54, on“neo-objectivism.”