Actions can be evaluated in various respects. When we evaluate them from the moral point of view, we can do this in two very different ways. We can consider them as morally right or wrong, but we can also judge them morally good or bad. Both evaluations are logically independent of each other and David Ross was certainly right when he emphasized that a clear distinction between the morally right and the morally good ‘will do much to remove some of the perplexities of our moral thought.’ (1) The study of right and wrong action has been dominated by the opposition between teleology (consequentialism) and deontology. According to teleologists, the right–making qualities of actions are only their consequences. This has been denied by deontologists who insist that an action can be right or wrong in itself. If a physician tells a patient the truth about his incurable disease, teleologists will judge the rightness or wrongness of this action by referring only to its consequences. A deontologist, on the other hand, may insist that it was right because truth–telling is intrinsically right, quite independently of its consequences. It is, however, obvious that the physician can tell the patient the truth for different reasons. If he is malicious, he may want to plunge him into despair; but he can inform his patient also out of benevolence, for instance, to give him the opportunity to prepare himself and his family for the worst. Despite their disagreement about the right–making factors, the teleologist and the deontologist will agree that the action is morally bad if done for the former reason, but morally good if done from the latter. (2)
Even though the distinction between the right and the good is philosophers generally recognized among moral, there is a tendency in contemporary ethics either to oversimplify it or to blur it altogether. (3) For this reason, I will in this paper investigate what kinds of factors make actions morally good or bad. Of course, it is not only actions that are good or bad but also motives, intentions, emotions, or personal character, but since I am concerned about the distinction between the morally right and the morally good, I will focus here only on actions.
