Intrinsic Evil, Truth and Authority
- 1 June 1995
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) in Religious Studies
- Vol. 31 (2) , 209-219
- https://doi.org/10.1017/s0034412500023507
Abstract
This paper responds to Pope John Paul's Veritatis Splendor. It defends one of its claims, that some human acts are intrinsically evil, and relates it to another, that one should live in truth. It outlines two versions of the idea of living in truth and argues that the Thomist position defended in the encyclical is to be preferred. However, the paper rejects the encyclical's authoritarianism. It criticizes not the concept of ‘authoritative teaching’ as such – all teaching presupposes epistemological authority – but the way in which the encyclical's characterization of such authority is incompatible with one of its preconditions – reasoned dialogue.Keywords
This publication has 1 reference indexed in Scilit:
- The Acting PersonPublished by Springer Nature ,1979