Moral Dilemmas in Medieval Thought from Gratian to Aquinas. BY M.V. DOUGHERTY.

(Cambridge UP, 2011. Pp. x + 226. Price £55.00, $90.00.)

The topic of moral dilemmas – situations ‘in which an agent cannot fulfil allimpending moral obligations’ (p. 3) – is a central issue in modern philosophical eth-ics. But it was subject of significant discussion in the Middle Ages, too, under thegeneral description of moral ‘perplexity’. An agent is perplexed if she is unable toavoid acting against an obligation. Moral perplexity might come in various shapesand forms: perplexity secundum quid (‘an individual experiencing a conflict of obliga-tions arising from the prior commission of some morally impermissible action’ (p.115)), and perplexity simpliciter (‘an individual experiencing a conflict of obligationsgiven no prior misdeed’ (p. 115)); and of the former of these, perplexity such that the‘bad effects of the prior misdeed can. .. be defused’ (p. 142), and perplexity such thatit cannot be. And included among ‘prior misdeeds’ are the dictates of an erroneousconscience. Perplexity in all of these forms is distinct from mere epistemic confusion– merely being unsure about how to behave. Dougherty includes in-depth chapterson Gratian (the canon lawyer), the early thirteenth-century theologians William ofAuxerre and Alexander of Hales, Thomas Aquinas, Raymond Lull, and Capreol,and very brief discussions of the main thinkers between Aquinas and Ockham –thus extending well beyond the scope suggested in his title.

Dougherty argues that the vast majority of medieval thinkers affirm that per-plexity simpliciter is impossible, and affirm too that in all cases of perplexity secun-dum quid the effect of the prior misdeed can be resolved. The last of these pointsis a matter of controversy in the case of Thomas Aquinas, since Alan Donagan, aleading writer on moral dilemmas in both medieval and modern philosophy,maintains that Aquinas denies that in every case the bad effect of the prior mis-deed can be resolved. Dougherty’s argument proceeds by considering the dilem-mas that the medievals themselves discussed, and shows not only that Aquinasnever gives a dilemma without suggesting how it might be resolved (somethingpointed out by Alasdair MacIntyre a few years ago), but also that Aquinas has noplace in his system for the kinds of strategy used by those who believe that theycannot be resolved (typically, the strategy of opting for the lesser of two evils –something I return to below).

Who were the thinkers Aquinas and others oppose? Pope Gregory the Great,Gratian, and (according to Dougherty) William of Auxerre and Alexander ofHales. The cases of Gregory the Great and Gratian are clear enough, and Gra-tian was criticised almost from the moment he wrote the Decretum (second quarterof the twelfth century) for holding to the possibility of genuine insoluble perplex-ity. But I am not at all convinced by Dougherty’s readings of William and Alex-ander. Both of them expressly deny the possibility of perplexity simpliciter in theirtheoretical discussions of the issue. But Dougherty maintains that they introduceit as a possibility in their discussion of concrete cases (e.g., returning money to ausurer, or a sword to someone who has since gone mad). In both cases, Dougher-ty claims, the authors introduce the principle of prioritising the lesser evil as away of deciding the issue one way or the other. The texts will not sustain this

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interpretation. For example, Alexander quotes, in the context of the madman’ssword, Gregory’s principle of preferring the lesser evil – but only to ignore it inhis actual resolution of the case, in which he argues that a promise to returnsomething should always be understood as containing the qualification that thepromise consists in an undertaking ‘to return something if it can be returned salvapietate’. So there is no dilemma, because the person refusing to return the swordis not breaking his promise. Dougherty passes over this decisive evidence insilence – presumably because it does not fit a preconceived, though false, narrative.

So, against Dougherty, I am not convinced that anyone from the thirteenth cen-tury thought of perplexity simpliciter as a genuine possibility. (Raymond of Penafortargues that doing the lesser evil does not count as acting wrongly at all: but for somereason Dougherty does not consider this important thirteenth-century view until hisdiscussion of Capreol at the end of book, and makes no attempt to integrate it intohis wider narrative.) I agree with Dougherty that there is no perplexity simpliciter inAquinas. But the counsel to choose the lesser evil (or avoid the greater evil) belongsto the same family of principles as that of double effect, and this is at least arguablyfound in Aquinas. So the discussion of Aquinas ought perhaps to have includedsomething on it. There are other scholarly lapses too. Dougherty believes hisaccount of perplexity in Aquinas to be confirmed by the fact that it agrees with thepositions of both Capreol and an anonymous addition to one manuscript of Aqui-nas’s Quodlibetal Questions – as though mere the fact that his reading is in accordancewith that of two other commentators on Aquinas in itself has significant confirma-tory value. And it is not clear in any case whether he takes these texts to confirm hisinterpretation of Aquinas or to confirm the general theoretical stance on perplexitylaid out in the chapter on Aquinas.

Dougherty makes one discovery that is, I think, of genuine interest, and correctto boot. The discovery serves to support an aspect of Donagan’s reading of Aqui-nas, against some of his critics. Donagan maintains that the requirement that anethical system be logically consistent drives Aquinas’s rejection of perplexity simpli-citer. Critics point out that Aquinas makes merely being conveniens a requirementof the system – a weaker relation than logical consistency. But Dougherty isolatesa text that has not previously been noted in which Aquinas, in this kind of ethicalcontext, explicitly uses convenientia to talk about syllogistic validity (p. 135) – sug-gesting that Donagan’s reading is indeed correct.

RICHARD CROSSUniversity of Notre Dame

The Species Problem: A Philosophical Analysis. BY RICHARD A. RICHARDS. (Cambridge

UP, 2010. Pp. x + 236. Price £50.00.)

Richard Richards draws a critical historical survey of species thinking togetherwith an examination of a number of associated philosophical concerns and theirimplications for biological practice to form a novel solution to the species problem.

Richards begins by stating the nature of the problem as he sees it. Species arethe basic taxonomic groupings of organisms. They are defined by relying on a

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