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published on September 5, 2015
Charles F. Capps
Formal and Material Cooperation with Evil
The categories of formal and material cooperation with evil have shifted in meaning since they were employed by St. Alphonsus Liguori in the eighteenth century. I attempt to recover their original meanings by showing how Liguori’s choice of terms reflects a Thomist conception of human action. Relying on the work of Elizabeth Anscombe to elaborate that conception, I advance two theses about the distinction between formal and material cooperation with evil that I believe are not generally accepted, even among Catholic philosophers and theologians. The first concerns when acting intentionally under the description “doing what the other intends” constitutes formal cooperation with evil. The second concerns when material cooperation with evil is justified by the principle of double effect.