What you’re saying here, JT, isn’t really an problem.

I couldn’t disagree more with you Halden. A “good” gift given to another with utterly selfish motivations ceases to be a good gift. I’m not sure the action itself could even be called good anymore. Good and honest motivations are what make otherwise inanimate actions/gifts good.

Therefore, intentions do matter.

Grace and peace,

JT.

However, it would seem that Jesus is more interested in the intentions of a person than the actions:

“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment.”

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

I don’t think we should ignore actions and their effects on others. But it does seem upon cursory glance that the deeds are only the fruit of the heart; and indeed, if the heart is different from the deeds, then this is very significant.
Thoughts?

That may be more muddled. Either way, point taken.

If you stop being “intentionally provocative”, Halden – now that would be “unhelpfully so”! In any case, in a long-winded way my comment was basically in agreement with you. Especially when it comes to politics, hell is indeed paved with good intentions, and to appeal to them in exoneration of a catastrophe like Iraq – or in justification of the bottomless pit of Afghanistan – is the last refuge of the moral scoundrel.

On the other hand, bad intentions, it seems to me, are not irrelevant when it comes to moral reasoning. For example, to switch playwrights (from Shaw to Eliot): “The last temptation is the greatest treason: / To do the right thing for the wrong reason.”

The ethicist James Rachels claims that “A pure heart cannot make a wrong act right; neither can an impure heart make a right act wrong.” I think Rachels is right in what he affirms (his first statement), but wrong in what he denies (his second statement). The same outcome may have its origins in either a good will or an evil will – but can anyone but a monster just shrug his shoulders and say that the result is all that matters? Such a utilitarian moral calculus frightens me.

Put it like this: in moral reasoning, while it is not sufficient to appeal to intentions, I do think it is sometimes necesary. At least it is if we care about the cure of corrupt souls.

I have a follow up post to all this that’ll be out tomorrow, which will hopefully get at more of the substance of this important issue.

I want to agree with what you’re saying but then it seems that my intentions and the intentions of those around me matter but those in greater positions of power it doesn’t apply to. I’m always suspicious when philosophy justifies myself greater than others.
Perhaps it’s simply easier to understand that intentions don’t matter when it’s costing thousands of lives. Maybe my intentions don’t really matter either but it’s easier to justify my “minor evils” by stating my intentions but much harder for those intentions to justify thousands of deaths.

I think you’re right, but it seems as if you give into the temptation that so many other Christians and opponents modeled leading up to Iraq: namely, arguing about intentions, goals, interior feelings, psychological conjectures, etc. The point Christians had to make, and must continue to make, is that it matters not one bit what Bush’s (or his administration’s) intentions were, or whether he lied even once knowingly. What matters is what happened, and that what happened was wrong. Even to give one inch on the question of whether he was sincere, or meant what he said, or meant well, or still thinks it was the right thing to do, is beside the point: he shouldn’t have done it. End of story.

I guess I’m finding myself shifting a bit more toward Halden’s side now, though of course not totally. This sort of thing seems to apply especially in drastic cases, or in cases of leadership; the greater the responsibility, the less intentions matter. Or some such better aphorism.

…but we Americans elect our presidents to be wizards, then, shoot them when they can’t do magic. (See Obama’s latest problems…)

First, Bacevich’s expresseions “American motives”, “America’s benign intentions” (“America means well”) – these personifications are ethically vacuous. How can a nation-state have motives and intentions? Only an agent can have motives and intentions. So we must talk, not about “America”, but about Bush and his cronies – they had motives and intentions.

So: what were these motives and intentions? Wittgenstein remarks: “Only you can know if you had that intention.” Does that mean that we must take Bush at his word, that he engineered the invasion of Iraq to avert the deployment of WMD, or to prevent the spread of terrorism, or to lay the table for democracy in the Islamic Middle East? Absolutely not, because (a) good Augustinian that he was, Wittgenstein knew that we can be deceived about our intentions, and (b), enemy of of Cartesian interiority that he was, he also knew that we can see another’s soul in his face, his words, his actions, and that these readings are more than mere inferences.

Now, what did you see when you looked in Bush’s face? Check out the political cartoons. And when you heard Bush’s words? Check out Harry Frankfurt’s little book On Bullshit (2005). And as for the conduct of the war, check out the reports on civilian casualties and deaths – the term is “collateral damage” – and the use of torture, justified at source. To speak of “good” intentions here becomes outrageouly Orwellian.

The fact of the matter is that Bush knew that Saddam had no WMD, nor any alliance with Osama, and, like all his predecessors, he couldn’t give a damn about democracy in Iraq. No, Iraq was all about the geopolitics of American imperial interests and control, not to forget the oil, driven by the morally pernicious myth of American exceptionalism and manifest destiny.

Personally, I think Bush was a liar and knew he was lying about his intentions. However, Peter Berger observes that “deliberate deception requires a degree of psychological self-control that few people are capable of. That is why insincerity is a rather rare phenomenon.” But even if we allow that Bush might have been sincere, sincerity, as Berger continues, is but “the consciousness of the man who is taken in by his own act… who beleives in his own propaganda,” and we are back with self-deception at best gnawing at the heart of Bush’s “good” intentions.

However, I suggest that it is an over-reaction to say that, ethically speaking, “intentions don’t matter”. The principle of double effect, for example, which has its roots in the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas – yes, it can be used to rationalise irresponsible, even abominable behaviour, but the distinction between intended and foreseen results is not an obviously empty one. More to the point, isn’t it rather reductive to declare that ethics is only about actions, not character, about rightness and wrongness but not about goodness?

Sorry to go on so long. I’ll end with one more quote from Wittgenstein: “Why do I want to tell him about an intention, too, as well as telling him waht I did? … because I want to tell him something about myself, which goes beyond what happened at the time.”

I simply think that the gospel speaks directly to both realms, however we qualify the relative importance or truthfulness of the “inner.” Put another way, time spent in solitude and silence praying is not “action” toward or with other human beings, but can and ought to be construed ethically to the extent that it directs our selves, our thoughts, our feelings, our futures (and our “hearts”) toward love for God and neighbor. In hope and faith, upon leaving the prayer of solitude one will be better oriented “innerly” to serving and loving, in word and deed, one’s neighbors, friends, and enemies.

“(i)t is worse for a liar to tell the truth than for a lover of truth to lie” (Ethics, p.67). …

isn’t intent part of the full description of an ethical act ?