Excerpted from The Roots of Moral Evil by Dietrich von Hildebrand and edited by Martin Cajthaml. ©2024 (Hildebrand Press). Reprinted with the permission of the publisher and in cooperation with the Hildebrand Project.
The Roots of Immorality: Pride and Concupiscence
After refuting the different theories about the roots of immorality in the sphere of action, we turn now to a detailed analysis of our problem. In order to understand the specific elements that determine immorality in the sphere of action, we have first to examine the roots of immorality in general.
One’s position toward morally relevant values—in the last analysis toward God himself—decides whether a human attitude is morally good or bad. St. Augustine has formulated this fundamental truth, saying: moral goodness or badness depends upon whether someone’s life is centered in God or in himself, whether he lives according to God or to the flesh, whereby flesh need not be understood in the strict sense but as pars pro toto, embracing pride as well as concupiscence. We would say: just as the ultimate root of moral goodness derives from our interest in the morally relevant values for their own sake and our conforming to their call, so moral badness results from our disrespect of the morally relevant values. In every genuine response to a morally relevant value, a response to the important-in-itself is implied and implicitly a response to God. In every act of disrespect for a morally relevant value, a disrespect of the important-in-itself is implied and implicitly a disrespect for God. But whence comes the disrespect for the morally relevant values in man? How is it possible that someone consents with his will to a deed that disrespects a morally relevant value, or to a deed that realizes a morally relevant evil? There must be some motive for this attitude, something that has the power to motivate our will. The negative value as such could never motivate our will, nor the positive value as such motivate our dis-respect, our negation. We have seen in the chapter about the freedom of will that there must always be a bonum, in the widest analogous sense of the term, on the object side in order to motivate our will.[1]
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And indeed, we see that it is always something subjectively satisfying that motivates our will whenever it consents to disrespect a good possessing an authentic value. Any response that contradicts the important-in-itself is motivated by something subjectively satisfying. But an interest in the subjectively satisfying is not as such something morally negative. If someone plays bridge because it gives him pleasure, fully aware that there is no objective value in it, that he is in no way morally called to do so, he does no moral wrong. Rather, his playing bridge is morally neutral, belonging to the vast sphere of the morally allowed. However, as soon as something subjectively satisfying is connected with disrespect for a good possessing a morally relevant value, or with the realization of a morally relevant negative value, his action becomes morally bad.
If we are to understand how it is possible for someone to pursue the subjectively satisfying in such a way as to disrespect a good possessing a morally relevant value, we have to realize that in man live two mighty tendencies that are incompatible with value-response: pride and concupiscence.
As soon as someone’s interest in the subjectively satisfying begins to become preponderant in the attitude of the person, the immanent readiness to yield to the importance of the morally relevant values is lost. In this situation, it is no longer the legitimate center, to which the subjectively satisfying appeals. Pride and concupiscence have intervened and even in some way replaced this center. Or as we may say, as soon as someone’s interest in the merely subjectively satisfying detaches itself from the immanent religio to the reign of values, as soon as the value-response attitude no longer has the predominant role in the person, pride and concupiscence have penetrated the person’s interest in the merely subjec-tively satisfying and replaced the legitimate center of susceptibility to the agreeable. Similarly, the merely subjectively satisfying on the object side assumes another character: it too is in some way perverted or poisoned, as we shall see later.
What matters for the moment is to understand that the center to which the morally neutral subjectively satisfying or subjectively important appeals remains intact and legitimate only as long as the person is superactually primarily directed toward the reign of values. It belongs to the very nature of this center to be restricted to a subordinate sphere and to coexist with the value-response attitude as its master. This must not be understood only in the sense that the dethroning of this direction toward the reign of values is illegitimate, which would be merely a repetition of that which has been stated already. It means that as soon as the primacy of the value-response attitude no longer subsists, the center to which merely subjectively satisfying goods appeal—for instance good food, a warm bath, a bridge party—is immediately replaced by concupiscence or pride. The unity of the human soul and its God-given order is such that the qualitative character of this center, though it is not directly linked to the value-response attitude, is completely changed as soon as interest in the subjectively satisfying is no longer tamed by the value-response attitude, as soon as it is no longer in the frame of a subservient role, so that it only actualizes itself with an immanent placet or nihil obstat given by the value-response attitude. The dethroning of the value-response attitude in its primary role is inevitably linked to the actualization of pride and concupiscence. Or as we may put it, pride and concupiscence are always the cause of this dethroning. What causes the apostasy from the reign of values in our soul, the turning away from the attitude of religio towards it, is not just a matter of the harmless and innocuous interest in the merely subjectively satisfying becoming too strong. Rather, instead of the legitimate center to which the satisfying appeals, pride and concupiscence intervene and become the center to which the subjectively satisfying goods appeal; interest in them now assumes a completely new and different character.
Certainly, the merely subjectively satisfying potentially entails the possibility of this perversion for man’s fallen nature. It is proper to this category of importance to imply the danger of appealing to concupiscence or pride. But the difference between the legitimate center, to which it appeals when the person is primarily directed to the reign of values, when it lives under the influence of their call, and the center of pride and concupiscence must be clearly seen.
The morally legitimate interest in the merely subjectively satisfying, on the one hand, and the interest in it that derives from concupiscence or pride, on the other hand, differ not only by degree but also in their very nature. The disorder, which consists in a formal independence of the interest in the merely subjectively satisfying and entails immanently the dethroning of the value-response attitude, is never only of a formal nature but always includes immediately a complete qualitative change, that is to say, the replacement of this legitimate center by pride or concupiscence. After we have examined concupiscence and pride as the roots of immorality the character of the legitimate center for the subjectively satisfying will become even clearer. For the moment, it suffices to state that it is not this center that is responsible for our disrespect of the values and that when we say that interest in the merely subjectively satisfying is the cause of our indifference or hostility toward the reign of relevant values, we always refer to pride and concupiscence, that is to say, to an interest in the subjectively satisfying that derives from these centers and that thus has a completely different character from the legitimate one.
Photo courtesy of the Hildebrand Project. Used with permission.
