In Defence of the Pauline Principle

The so‐called ‘Pauline Principle’ holds that ‘one may not do evil that good may come’. I take this to mean that it is immoral to intend intrinsically evil states of affairs as a means to good. I offer an argument in favour of this principle. My argument takes the immorality of malevolent attitudes as its starting point, and contends that these attitudes typically (and perhaps exclusively) involve what Aquinas calls the ‘accidental’ willing of evil. It is inferred from this that willing evil as a means to good shares the wrong‐making features of malevolence, and is thus immoral for the same reason that malevolence is immoral.