Summaries / Resúmenes - Studia Moralia

58 BRIAN V. JOHNSTONEterms of an object-based theory, is yet another aspect of thepervasiveness in moral theology of the problem that I am seekingto solve, namely the separation of subject and object andthe consequent emergence of opposing moral theories, onebased on the object, the other on the subject. Because of theirdiffering presuppositions, followers of these two approachesfind it difficult, if not impossible, to understand one another.Selling, in note 3 of his article, remarks that my descriptionof the approach of the Salmanticenses sounds remarkably similarto some statements in the encyclical Veritatis Splendor. Ibelieve that one could read the document in this way; there areindications of “objectivist” moral theory in the encyclical. Thisis what one would expect, since that theory is still influential inmoral theology. However, as I have written elsewhere: “Theencyclical itself does not take a purely ‘objectivist’ position, bywhich I mean a moral analysis which claims to find moralmeaning and value ‘in’ the object considered as separate fromand prior to the subject. In particular, the encyclical states: “Inorder to be able to grasp the object of an act which specifiesthat act morally, it is therefore necessary to place oneself in theperspective of the acting person.” 29 That is to say, the documentincludes a subject-oriented perspective. However, as far as I cansee, the text does not provide a theory to explain how the perspectiveof the person and the object are to be related.But the same split between subject-oriented and objectiveelements is also clearly evident in proportionalist and revisionisttheories. According to Salzman, we should not confuse the“aretaic” goodness of an agent with the deontological judgmentof a right or wrong act. 30 It would seem to me that this distinctionis a clear manifestation of the fundamental problem towhich I am seeking a solution. “Aretaic goodness” wouldappear to refer to the subject, while the right or wrong designationpertains to the “object.” But the problem is, how are thetwo aspects related? The same problem is evident in Selling’sown writing. He distinguishes between “[C]onsidering morality‘subjectively’” and “[C]onsidering the ‘objective’ perspective of29Veritatis Splendor, #78. See my article, ““Intrinsically Evil Acts,”Studia Moralia 43 (2005) 402.30Salzman, Deontology , 510-512.