DOUBLE EFFECTS, PRINCIPLE OF69birthplace in France was threatened
greatly during the French Revolution, but
around the same time the Order started
a strong presence in America. In more
recent times the order has continued its
strong academic tradition with the foun-
dation and continuation of numerous
schools throughout the world, including
École Biblique et Archéologique française
de Jérusalem founded in 1890 which
published both editions of the Jerusalem
Bible. The Order of Preachers focuses
much more on community involvement,
a trait that distinguishes it quiet markedly
from Augstan orders. The order is also
known as the the Blackfriars (England),
Jacobins (France), and followers often use
the abbreviation O.P. after their names.
Many people believe that St. Dominic
was the originator of the practice of
saying the rosary, a practice which uses
a necklace-like string of prayer beads to
guide one through a series of 68 prayers
and allows one to focus on five mysteries
of the life of Jesus.
DOSTOEVSKY, FYODOR (1821–1881).
A Russian novelist, short story writer,
and journalist, whose work has been
influential in philosophy of religion. His
Notes from the Underground (1864) wres-
tles with determinism, freedom, and indi-
vidual agency. Crime and Punishment
(1866) involves trenchant themes of
guilt, confession, punishment, grace, and
redemption. The Idiot (1868–69) raises
questions about goodness and the person
of Jesus. The Brothers Karamazov (1879–
1880) is rife with arguments and counter-
arguments about atheism, the problem
of evil and redemption, and its narrative
contains important developments that
portray the mystical Christian life, as
articulated in the context of the Russian
Orthodox Church.DOUBLE EFFECTS, PRINCIPLE OF.
A principle of medieval theology that is
still used to warrant acts that have ill as
well as good effects. An act like giving a
large dose of morphine to a patient may
be permissible if it is intended to control
or eliminate pain even if it has the fore-
seen consequence of suppressing the
patient’s breathing and thus causing her
death. Stringent conditions in biomedical
ethics would have to be met for this to
be unproblematic: the patient must be
terminally ill, the use of morphine is in
accord with the consent of the patient,
and so on.
Formally, the principle condones
action with ill effects under four condi-
tions: (1) The action from which ill is
caused must be either good itself or
neutral. (2) The agent’s intention must be
to do good. (3) The good and evil or ill is
causally immediate so that the evil is
not a means for the good. (4) There must
be grave, good reasons for permitting
the evil or ill. The principle is designed
to block a straightforward utilitarianism
calculation in which the end justifies the
means, but it is difficult to rule out some