Thomas Aquinas Moral Objectivism

Imagine if you or a loved one has been severely injured and needed blood. Chances are you would be rushed to the emergency room of your local hospital and receive the blood you need. However, the blood you receive can cost you up to $600 per pint. When people voluntarily and graciously donate blood they do not receive any compensation. That’s why they call it donating. But the issue is that people give the blood and do not receive anything but the people who so desperately need the blood have to pay such a steep price. Many volunteers do not realize that the recipients of their blood have to pay such a large price for something that was donated. The blood banks do not inform the donors that they will sell their blood instead of donating it.
Moral objectivism is the concept that there are objective universal moral principles that are set as a standard for all people and all social environments. Moral absolutism dictates that there are moral principles that should never be violated. In the situation I have described lying and deception would be against the moral principles that our society dictates. Some objectivists believe that in certain scenarios where telling the truth could cause more harm than good, one should withhold the truth no matter the case. One of the most influential theorists would be Thomas Aquinas. He followed the natural law theory and developed the Doctrine of Double Effect. According to Pojman and Fieser, the Doctrine of Double Effect can solve all moral disputes in an act that will have a good and bad outcome. The doctrine states that it is always wrong to do a bad act intentionally to bring about good consequences but it is sometimes allowed to do a good act despite knowing it will bring bad consequences. There are four conditions that the DDE covers. The nature of the act condition, the means end condition, and the right intention condition, and the proportionality condition. The nature of the act condition states that the act must be either morally good or indifferent. This means that lying is never allowed. Even if the companies do not lie to the donors, they are still misinforming them by withholding information. The means end condition says that the bad effect should not be used to gain the good. The right intention condition states that the intention should be good with the bad being an unintended side effect. The proportionality conditions say that the good effect must be at least equivalent as the bad effect. An example in this case would be that the hospitals and blood banks make money and the donors receive nothing but the money that is made helps to fund the usage of equipment to test and screen the blood for any