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VOCABULARY OF PHILOSOPHY – ABILITY and INABILITY— (NATURAL and MORAL)

ABILITY and INABILITY— (NATURAL and MORAL).
       Ability, Natural—power to act, characteristic of a living being, implying possession of vital organ or mental faculty, and presence of conditions requisite. Inability—the negation of either of these, consequent on loss of power or lack of opportunity. The distinction applies equally to organic and to intellectual life.Moral Ability is sufficiency of ethical motive for fulfilment of all ethical law. Moral Inability is deficiency in ethical motive, consequent on want of harmony between personal inclination and personal obligation. The reference to «moral inability» introduces to the relations of Philosophy and Theology. Natural Ethics maintains adequacy of power requisite for personal responsibility notwithstanding moral disorder. Christian Ethics, proceeding from this position, emphasises moral disorder, maintains man’s inability to effect escape from it, and at the same time discovers Divine intervention for deliverance.The moral ability of natural ethics involves these things—knowledge of moral law; power of understanding to decide upon the application of such law in varying circumstances; motive forces impelling to action, thereby giving occasion for self-government; and willpower, or inherent power of rational self-control, by restraint of impulse, reflection on duty, rational determination, and subsequent action. What is here meant by «inability» is persistence of disinclination to act in accordance with moral law, consequent upon disturbed harmony of the moral nature. In Christian ethics this has its counterpart in the doctrine of Grace, or Divine Salvation, by direct action of the moral influence of the Divine Spirit. On its philosophical side, see Principal Shairp on «The Moral Dynamic» (Studies in Poetry and Philosophy, p. 348).
 
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