Dlaczego pewnych rodzajów rzeczy nigdy nie wolno robić? Malum ex genere i bytowość uczynku ludzkiego

Abstrakt

Why Are There Kinds of Things That Must Never Be Done? Malum ex genere and the Entity of Human Action

The paper is an outline of an argument in favour of a thesis of the classical ethics that there are some kinds of things like murder, including abortion and euthanasia that must never be done are absolutely forbidden; or that there are absolute and exceptionless negative moral norms. First, I show that moral properties like being morally good or bad, being obligatory or forbidden, are properties specific to some kind of entity which is human action; accordingly, the nature of moral properties is determined by ontological properties of human action. Then I present some of these ontological properties: the distinction of human actions from human artifacts, technical procedures, states of aff airs, events and processes; the nature of distinction of kinds of human actions; and the criteria of succeeding in human action as opposed to technical succeeding. Finally, I contrast kinds of technical procedures which are always technically bad but can be undertaken in a good human action and kinds of human action which are always morally bad, and therefore must never be done.