Section Two - Parental Society
Chapter 4
The jural rights and purely moral rights of parents
1514. The things impossible to patria potestas (which we have enumerated) constitute the jural rights of the father relative to the children. Because they harm the children, these things detract from the children's activity.(272) Moreover, they are not required, but excluded by the end of domestic society. On the other hand, the duty of parents to give their children a good physical, intellectual, technical, moral and religious education, while extremely serious, is only of a moral character (cf. RI, 795-803).
1515. It follows that children abandoned by their parents, and accepted and educated by other people, cannot, according to rational Right, take any jural action against the parents. These children are simply free not to recognise patria potestas in the parents, or in the one who abandoned them, although there is still a duty of never offending persons who have given them life, and of giving the bare honour which is always part of blood-right. The father or the parents who, having what is necessary to nourish their children, do not acknowledge them and leave them exposed, deprive them by that action of the life they have given and, by showing their unworthiness and incapacity, deprive themselves of the sacred rights springing from paternity.
1516. But why is it that authors are normally inclined to attribute a jural character to the parents' duty of rearing and educating their children? If we leave aside their reasons, explained elsewhere (cf. RI, 797-802), we still have to indicate the feeling that secretly moves them to embrace this opinion. I think we can find its origin in the special character of the previously mentioned duty of parents.
1517. Purely moral, human duties are divided into two classes. Both have as their object the respect due to human feeling. The first includes those duties intended to produce something pleasing to human feeling, that is, to increase this feeling in a satisfying manner, and perfect it. The second includes duties which require that nothing should be done to injure or harm this feeling in any way.
1518. Jural duties also have the object of not injuring or harming human feeling. How are they distinguished from purely moral duties? To uncover this distinction, it is sufficient to recall the definition already given of jural duty: we defined it as `that which obliges a person to leave intact and free any activity proper TO ANOTHER PERSON'.(273)
`To leave an activity intact and free' is exactly the same as not injuring or harming `human feeling'. Every human activity is in the feeling, and is a feeling. The specific difference is found only in the words: TO ANOTHER PERSON.
1519. Therefore, purely moral duties of the second class (that is, negative duties), as well as jural duties, oblige human beings not to harm human feeling. This feeling, however, can be in the person who has the duty or in a different person. In the first case, it is not a jural, but simply a moral duty; in the second case, it is also jural. It is characteristic of jural duty to regard other persons, not the person who has the obligation.(274)
1520. Let us apply this teaching to the parents' duty of rearing and educating their children. There is no doubt that rearing and educating them is pleasing to the natural feeling of the children. If, however, parents do not rear their children, they are not actually doing anything to harm the natural feeling of the children; they are simply leaving this as it is, as nature has made it (cf. RI, 802). If therefore we consider this duty of parents towards the feeling and activity proper to their children, we see that it is simply a moral duty pertaining to the first class.
1521. We must also consider the parents' duty relative to the feeling of the parents themselves. This feeling is active, and requires that the parents perfect through education the work they have begun with generation.(275) If they do the opposite, they oppose their paternal and maternal feeling and thus, by their inactivity, harm human nature, of which the feeling is such a noble part.(276) But the prohibition on harming or opposing a human feeling is precisely what the duty of educating one's children has in common with jural duties. What separates one from the other is the seat of the contradicted, opposed feeling. In jural duties, as we have said, feelings are involved that have their seat in a person different from the one who is the subject of duty; in paternal and maternal love, the feeling has its seat in the parents who themselves are the subjects of the duty of which we are speaking. The duty of education is, therefore, a moral duty pertaining to the second class.
The equality between the element indicated in both jural and purely moral duties pertaining to the second class may have led authors to attribute a jural quality to the duty of rearing and educating one's children.(277)
Notes
(272) ER, 274-292.
(273) ER, 294.
(274) ER, 299.
(275) The obligation of education can also be deduced from the principle that `every rational being must, according to his capacity, produce perfect works'. This is logical. But operating logically is a duty that people have towards the impersonal truth and towards themselves. It is also a moral duty towards others if the action regards intelligent beings, but it is never a jural duty.
(276) Parents who refuse to satisfy the natural feeling urging them to rear their children do not leave the feeling in the state it has according to nature, but actually oppose it. They have to make an effort to resist their natural love, if indeed they have not already extinguished it in their own souls through prolonged wickedness, which is always contrary to what is naturally good.
(277) Cf. on this duty, PE, 215-217.