Lesson 2: The Moral Good of Human Acts Flashcards
- Moral values help in improving behavior, instilling respect and enhancing relationships with others.
- Knowing what is right or wrong is an important element in life that shapes the character on an individual.
- Good moral values allows a person to make the right decisions and improve their interactions with other people.
Ethical Framework
He maintains that any account on how to be ethical and virtuous will be inexact, but he does give us something to go by which is known as the doctrine of the mean. This is the idea that any virtue will, “be ruined by excess or deficiency
who is he? starts with A
Aristotle’s Doctrine of the Mean
Virtues in medio stat
Virtue lies in the middle
an ethical person may be emobodied in his concept if the ____
his theory was that a man could become a ____ througg education and by practicing certain values
Confucious’ “Chun Tzu”
He emphasized the 5 virtues namely:
Jen (benelvolence)
Li (propriety)
Yi (righteousness)
Chich (wisdom)
Hsin (sincerity)
Jen
benevolence
Li
Propriety
Yi
righteosness
Chih
wisdom
hsin
sincerity
Most important virtue in Confucianism
Jen/Ren
It is the vital factor bc Gentleman would be worthless without _____
Jen
It is a comprehensive ethical virtue
Jen (Benevolence)
If one practices Jen, there will be no bad side of him
true
____ manifests itself in the inner mind and the compassion towards other people
Jen
Confucious defined humaneness in different ways to different people:
Ran Rong
Yan Yuan
Fan Chi
To Ran Rong, it was ____________ (The Golden Rule)
do unto others as if doing onto yourself
To Yan Yuan he emphasized ____, (Ancestral Worship and FIlial Piety
Rituals
To Fan Chi it was ______ (Reciprocity, Faithfulness, Altruism)
love
Goal — Good Life
Way —> Chun Tzu —> Education
- Virtues, Ancestral Worship, Filial Peity, Reciprocity
Human act which proceeds from the DELIBERATE FREE will of man
HUMAN ACTS
(Actus Humanus)
It is an act that is proper to man as man
HUMAN ACTS
(Actus Humanus)
The HUMAN ACT (actus humanus) is an act of which man is master, one that is consciously controlled and deliberately willed, so that the man who performs it is responsible for it
True
HUMAN ACT are to be distinguished from acts of man (actus hominis).
Acts that are NOT DELIBERATE AND FREE
include man’s animal acts of sensation and appetition
ACTS OF MAN
Man performs but he is not the Master of it for he has not consiously controlled it
ACTS OF MAN
Hea has not deliberately willed it, and is subsequently not responsible for it
ACTS OF MAN
The natural acts of vegetative and sense faculties
Acts of persons who lack the use of reason
Acts of people who are asleep or under the in influence of hypnosis, or other drugs
Quick, nearly automatic reactions, called primo-primi acts
what kind of Act is this?
ACTS OF MAN
2 Classification of Human Acts
Complete or Adequte Cause of Human Acts
Relation to the Dictates of Reason
Complete or Adequate Cause of Human Acts
— acts prefected in the will itself
— the rest begin anf perfected by other faculties under control of the will
What is this called?
Elicited Acts
Complete or Adequate Cause of Human Acts
- humans acts do not finde their adequte cause in the simple will-act
- but are perfected by the action of mental or bodily powers under the control or orders of and from the will
what is thi scalled?
Commandment Acts
There are 6 under Elicited Acts
Wish
Intention
Consent
ELection
Use
Fruition
The simple love of anything
the first tendency of the will towards a thing
whether this thing be realizable or not
Wish
Pusposive tendency of the will towards a thing regarded as realizable, whether this things is actually done or not
Intention
Intention is distinguished as _____, ______, _______ , _____ intention.
Actual
Virtual
Habitual
Interpretative
Intention that a person freely makes to perform a given action
influences him at the time he is doing the action
Actual Intention
Intention that was once made and continous to influence
Not present to the peron;s consciousness at the moment of performing the act
It is sufficient for a human act to be voluntary and therefore morally responsible
Virtual Intention
a person has previously intended to do something and has not retracted his intention
the act he now performs is not done in virtue of that intention
a decision of the will to attain a given end, but the decision does not influence a particular act
Habitual Intention
An Intention that has not been made but presumably would have been made if the person had been aware of the circusmatances
Interpretative Intention
It is an Elicited Act
The acceptance by the will of means necessary to carry out intention
COnsent
The selection by the will of the precise means to be employed in carrying out an intention
ELection
The employment by the will of powers (of body, mind, or both) to carry out its intention by the means elected
USE
The enjoyment of a thing willed and done; the will’s act of satisfaction in intention fulfilled
Fruition
3 Under Commanded Acts
Internal
External
Mixed
It is the acts done by internal mental powers under command of will
ex. efforts to remember, consoius reasoning, effort to control anger, deliberate use of the imagination in visualizing a scene
Internal
It is an act affected by bodily powers under command of will
ex. Deliberate walking, eating, writing, speaking
External
It is an acts that involved the employment of bodily powers and metal powers
ex. study which involves use of intellect, and use of eyes in reading the lesson
Mixed
The Relation of Human Acts to Reason
- Human acts are eitiher in agreement or in disagreement with the dictates of reson, and this relation with reason constitutes their morality
Good
Evil
Indifferent
When they are in harmony with the dictates of RIGHT REASON
The Relation of Human Acts to Reason:
GOOD
When they are in opposition of these dicated
The Relation of Human Acts to Reason:
EVIL
When they stand in no positive relation to the dictated of reason
A human act is indifferent in itself becomes good or evil acc. to the circumstances which affect performance, especially the end in view of the agent
The Relation of Human Acts to Reason:
INDIFFERENT
Constituents of the Human Act
— In order ofr an act to be a human act it must possess 3 essential elements or constituents
Knowledge
Freedom
Voluntariness
No human act is possible without ______. The will itself is a blind faculty that cannot act unless enlightened by the intellect
Knowledge
deliberation here not meaning a slow and painstaking effort, but rather, _______ or ______ in the mind of what one is about and what this means.
Thus an action can happen in a split second and still be a deliberate human act.
advertence, or knowledge
In ethics, deliberation means knowledge.
A human act is by definition a DELIBERATE ACT, that is, a ___________.
Knowing Act.
Human act that is determined (elicited or commanded) by th ehuman will and by nothing else.
Act controlled by the will
Act that will, can or refuse to perform
Freedom
therefore, every human act must be free; freedom is ans essential element of it
Human acts are voluntary acts, that is, they are will-acts.
It must not only be guided by knowledge or deliberation but must also be WILLED.
An Act that is not forced upon a person
Voluntariness
the agent must know not merely the circumstances of the act, but also the end to which it leads
The agent knows what hes is about to do, and WILLS to do
ex. He sees a injured woman, he is aware to aid, he is free to help or run away. In the end, he wills to do his duty
4 Kinds of Voluntariness
Perfect and Imperfect
SImple and Conditional
Direct and Indirect
Postive and Negative
present in the human act when the agent fully knows and fully intends the act
Perfect
present when there is some defect in the agent’s knowledge, intention, or in both
Imperfect
present in a human act performed, whether the agent likes or dislikes doing it
Simple
present in the agent’s wihs to do something other than that which he is actually doing, but doing with repugnance or dislike
parang napipilitan lang
Conditional
present in the human act willed in itself
Voluntary in se
Direct
present in that human act which is the seen result of another act directly willed
Indirect
present in a human act of doing, performing
Positive
present in a human act of omitting, refraining from doing
Negative
Determinants of Morality
The morality of human acts depends on 3 elements that make up the sources orc constitutive elements of the morailty of human acts:
what are those?
The object of the Act (Finis Operis)
Intention (Finis Operantis)
Circumstances
It is the matter of a human act
It morally specifies the act of the will, and judges it to be or not to be in conformity with the true good
Objective norms of morality express the rational order of good and evil, attested to by conscience
Object
In contrast to the obejct, this resides in the ACTING subject.
It lies at the voluntary source of an action and determines it by its end
It is an element essential to the moral evaluation of an action
Intention
The end is the first goal of the intention and indicates the purpose pursued in the action
The intention is a movement of the will toward the end:
It is concerned with the goal of the activity
It aims at the good anticipated from the action undertaken
it is not limited to directing individual actions, but can guide several actions toward one and the same purpose;
it can orient one’s whole life toward its ultimate end
Intentions
It is the secondary elements of moral act
Circumstances and Consequences
Contributes to increasing our diminishing the moral goodness or evil of human acts
Circumstances
______ can diminish or increase the agent’s responsibility
Circumsatnces
It cannot change the moral quality of acts themselves
they can make neither good nor right an action that is in evil itself
Circumstances
Circumstances:
Person (Who?)
Includes the othe rperson involved in the decision
Circumstances:
Quantity or Quality (What?)
What is the human situation of this moral reality?
Circumstances:
Place (?)
Time (?)
Where
When
Circumstances:
End (Why)
is the critical question of motivation of motivation that sends us back to clarify our values
Circumstances:
Means (?)
By what means
Circumstances:
Matter (?)
How
REMEMBER:
To be morally good, all the constitutive elements:
- the object
- the end or intention
- the circumstances
must be? good or bad?
good ofc duh
There are acts which, in and of themselves, independently of circumstances and intentions, are always gravely illicit by reason of their object; such as ______ and _____, _______ and ________.
blasphemy and prejury
murder and adultery
The Principle of Double-effect
The act itself must be good and morally NEUTRAL
The GOOD effect must COME FIRST before the bad effect or SIMULTANEOUSLY
The good effect must be EQUAL or GREATER than the bad effect
The Intention must be good FROM THE START
By this, we mean the things that affect human acts in the essential qualities of knowledge, freedom, volutariness, and so make them less perfectly human
Modifiers of Human Acts
Modifiers of Human Acts
Ignorance
Concupiscence
Fear
Violence
Habit
it is the absence of knowledge
defined in Ethics as the ABSENCE of intellectual knowledge in man
Ignorance
Negation of knowledge
i think type of ignorance?
Negative Thing
Absence of knowledge that ought to be present
so it’s not merely negative but ______.
i think type of ignorance?
Privative
Has a positive aspect when it consists not merely in the absence of knowledge, but in the presence of what is falsely supposed to be knowledge
Such positive ignorance is called ______ or ______.
Mistake or error
Consideration in Ignorance
In its Object
In its Subject
In its Result
The thing of which a person may be ignorant
Its Object
The person in whom ognorance exists
Its Subject
Reference to the acts that are performed in ignorance
Its Result
3 Ignorance in its Object
Ignorance of Law
Ignorance of Fact
Ignorance of Penalty
Ignorance of the existence of a duty, rule, or regulation.
What ignorance?
Ignorance of Law
Ignorance of the nature or circumstance of an act as forbidden
What ignorance?
Ignorance of Fact
Lack of knowledge of the precise sanction affixed to the law
What ignorance?
Ignorance of Penalty
3 Ignorance in its SUBJECT
Vincible Ignorance
Invicible Ignorance
ignorance that should be supplanted by knowledge
can be dispelled by th use of ordinary diligence
due to lack of proper diligence on the part of the ignorant person
It is in consequence, CULPABLE IGNORANCE
Vincible Ignorance
Ignorance that ordinary and proper diligence cannot dispel
Attributable to one or two causes:
- either th person in whom the ignorance exists has no realizaation whatever of his lack of knowledge
- or the person who relaized his ignorance ffinds ineffective his effort to dispel it
called INCULPABLE IGNORANCE
Invicible Ignorance
3 Degrees of Vincible Ignorance
- Crass or Supine
- Simply VIncible
- Affected
result of total or nearly total lack of effort to dispel it
Crass or Supine Degree
if some effort worthy the name, but not persevering and whole hearted effort, be unsuccessfully employed to dispel it
Simply Vincible Degree
If positive effort is made to retain it
Affected Degree
Degrees of Invincible Ignorance
- Physically Invicible
- Morally Invincible
If no human effort can dispel it
Physically Invincible
If such effort as good and prudent men would expend to dispel it taking into account the character and importance of the matter about which ignorance exists is found to be ineffective
Morally Invincible
3 under Ignorance in its Result
- Antecedent Ignorance
- Concomitant Ignorance
- Consequent Ignorance
That which proceeds all consent of the will. It does not differ from invincible ignorance.
Antecedent Ignorance
Ignorance that accompanies an act that would have been performed even if the ignorance did not exist.
Concomitant Ignorance
follows an act of the will. The will may directly affect it or supinely neglect to dispel it. It does not differ from vincible ignorance.
Consequent Ignorance
- It arises from deficient education, bad company or misleading information
- One is not responsible for the consequences of error made in good faith.
Error, False Judgment or Conviction
Starts with C
- The term is often used to signify the frailty, or proneness to evil, which is consequent in human nature upon original sin. However, in Ethics, it refers to those bodily appetites or tendencies which are called the passions
- Movement of the sensitive appetite that precedes the free decision of the will.
- Movement of the sensitive appetite which is moved by the good or evil apprehended by imagination
Concupiscence
when they spring into action unstimulated by any act of the will.
A
Antecedent
when the will directly or indirectly stirs them up or fosters them.
consequent
2 Divisions of Passions
- Concupiscible
- Irascible
Passion through which the soul is simply inclined to seek what is suitable according to the senses and to fly away from what is hurtful.
C
Concupiscible
Its object is something arduous because its tendency is to overcome and rise above obstacles.
I
Irascible
3 Attraction Toward object (Good Object)
Concupiscible
- Love
- Joy
- Desire
3 Attraction Toward object (Bad Object)
Concupiscible
- Hatred
- Sadness
- Aversion
