In 1974, Alexander Solzhenitsyn conducted his first interview since the publication of his unparalleled work, the Gulag Archipelago.

In this interview, Solzhenitsyn urged his fellow Russians still under the communist dictatorship.

I quote,

everyone should stop cooperating with the lie, capital L,

in the most determined way, he said, for, quote,

the lie is the pillar of the state.

Soldier Shenzhen's exhortation, as all who have read his works know, was no mere exercise in theoretical moral reasoning. He had lived through evil of the greatest sort. His haggard eyes and

scraggly beard, the sloop of his shoulders, and the righteous indignation that he bore,

betokened how irreversibly he had been touched by the cooperation of so many in the evil of the

Soviet Empire. Cooperating with evil is a problem, and grace-guided virtue only can resolve it. Cooperating with evil is a problem. And grace-guided virtue only can resolve it.

Cooperating with evil is a problem in two ways.

It's a puzzle to be resolved, and it is morally problematic most of the time.

James F. Keenan, S.J.

notes that as a puzzle, cooperation with evil has, quote,

generated a considerable discussion among ethicists, bishops, and administrators of Catholic health care facilities.

As morebly problematic, cooperation can change the human soul in significant and lasting ways, whether the issue be sublime or

mundane. Cooperation touches everyone, from Catholic health care administrators to doctors to nurses,

from ordinary families to men overtaken by thieves, from a nation to an individual citizen.

Here, I would like to consider the nature of cooperation, how to morally evaluate it, and what role virtue plays in all this.

So let's begin by considering the act that one agent may bear upon the act of another agent, especially

with respect to cooperation.

According to Aquinas, the term cooperation indicates that there are two operations and therefore

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