“The only way you can tell whether an intention would be good is by looking at whether performing the corresponding deed would be good, in which case the appeal to intentions isn 't really necessary.” This argument made by Peter Abelard is a bit confusing because, it begs the question, “how can a deed be named good or bad if the intention isn’t necessary? While attempting to answer this question, I became conflicted by many of my own moral and ethical ideals. Often I found myself questioning if the deeds that I did were the result of my wanting to please God, or from the wanting to fulfill my own selfish desires. Sometimes my deeds did not have best of intentions, but they would be merited as good deeds because of the ending result. Peter Abelard chooses to take a stance in which he argues that “unless intentions are the key ingredient in assessing moral value it is hard to see why coercion, in which one is forced to do something against his or her will, should exculpate the agent?” (Eth 106-109). The conflict results from Abelard’s contradiction to the “appeal to intentions isn 't really necessary,” and “unless intentions are the key ingredient in assessing moral value it is hard to see why coercion.” Regardless of this contradiction, Abelard concludes that an intention is necessary in assessing the merit of a deed. In this paper I will be defending Abelard’s claim by further elaborating on the necessity of an intention in order to determine whether or not someone’s actions can be classified as sins, and that the ultimate judge of someone’s actions is God. Abelard goes to extreme lengths to prove that Intentions do value deeds, and he does this by recounting Christ’s crucifixion.
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This explanation is a perfect way to defend Abelard’s claim because it renders the final act as a good deed, which is the actual crucifixion of Christ. According to the Stanford encyclopedia, Abelard concluded that the guard’s intentions in crucifying Christ were not considered a sin because, the guards ' act in accordance with a command that they were given. This makes the guards actions be based on ignorance, or negligence. If the guards intended on murdering Christ, but did not follow through with the act they would then be sinning. An objection to Abelard’s claim, could be made by asking why deeds are punished or rewarded but intentions aren’t? Abelard refutes this question with the example of the impoverished mother, who smothers her baby to death. The mother is going to be punished by a priest/judge on the necessity of social example. Even if it was not the mother’s intention to kill her baby, social she committed murder and will be punished by the result of her deeds and not her intentions (Eth 79-86). As a result, Abelard concludes that the ultimate judge of one’s actions is God and no mortal can truly judge the actions of another mortal. The mother’s actions are deemed as bad because, another mortal does not understand the intention of another mortal, the way in which God does. We seek to obtain God’s love, which is why this intention is not selfish on its own, if it’s the reason behind our actions. Any action made with the intent not to please God otherwise, would be deemed as a sinful act because it would be done out of a selfish desire. Aside from the small contradiction at the beginning of his argument, Abelard’s clarifies his
This explanation is a perfect way to defend Abelard’s claim because it renders the final act as a good deed, which is the actual crucifixion of Christ. According to the Stanford encyclopedia, Abelard concluded that the guard’s intentions in crucifying Christ were not considered a sin because, the guards ' act in accordance with a command that they were given. This makes the guards actions be based on ignorance, or negligence. If the guards intended on murdering Christ, but did not follow through with the act they would then be sinning. An objection to Abelard’s claim, could be made by asking why deeds are punished or rewarded but intentions aren’t? Abelard refutes this question with the example of the impoverished mother, who smothers her baby to death. The mother is going to be punished by a priest/judge on the necessity of social example. Even if it was not the mother’s intention to kill her baby, social she committed murder and will be punished by the result of her deeds and not her intentions (Eth 79-86). As a result, Abelard concludes that the ultimate judge of one’s actions is God and no mortal can truly judge the actions of another mortal. The mother’s actions are deemed as bad because, another mortal does not understand the intention of another mortal, the way in which God does. We seek to obtain God’s love, which is why this intention is not selfish on its own, if it’s the reason behind our actions. Any action made with the intent not to please God otherwise, would be deemed as a sinful act because it would be done out of a selfish desire. Aside from the small contradiction at the beginning of his argument, Abelard’s clarifies his