Midterm 2 Flashcards
Definitions of Conscience:
“A personal, self-conscious activity, integrating reason, emotion, and will in self-committed decisions about right and wrong, good and evil”
Erroneous Conscience
Prudence: seeing rightly
“The truth precedes the good”: you must have an accurate sense of the situation if you are going to make sound moral judgements
Doing good actions requires a truthful grasp of the way things are around us (this takes us to Natural Law, which deals with the way things are)
According to Natural Law tradition, even amidst our sin, humans have access through the use of reason to the world as it is
But it takes time and education to flourish it
Vincible Ignorance
Ignorance is vincible; it could be/have been conquered.
We are blameworthy for our erroneous conscience when our ignorance is vincible
Example: If I did not stop at a stop sign because I didn’t know I needed to stop, since I was not paying attention to the road signs.
Invincible Ignorance
Ignorance is invincible; it could not have been conquered.
Actions are not blameworthy, since there is no way I could have known better.
Example: if I did not stop at a stop sign because I didn’t know I had to stop, since the sign was knocked over by the wind the night before.
Prudence (and conscience)
Aquinas calls prudence “right reason in action”
It does not merely consist of making good/right practical decisions, but acting well on those decisions. Decisions need corresponding action, and both are equally important.
Right/Wrong vs. Good/Bad
and
Objective vs. Subjective Morality
(Conscience and Character)
There is a difference between judging an action that is right/wrong and an action that is good/bad
Objective Morality: Right/Wrong
Subjective Morality: Good/Bad
We can apply an action to character
Sometimes, in the case of an erroneous conscience, an action can be objectively wrong, but that does not necessarily mean that they, or that person, is bad.
Example: starving one’s self is wrong because it is not oriented toward the good because it harmful to you as a person, however, this does not necessarily mean a
We are dealing with a restriction of freedom (freedom and knowledge are required for an act to be a moral act)
When somebody has limited freedom, who is not seeing accurately (e.g. alcoholic, anorexic), they are not entirely responsible for their actions
They are not morally culpable because there is such limited freedom to act
There may be a lack of virtue, but not necessarily a vice.
Seeing poorly can lead to acting poorly.
3 Kinds of Justice
- Commutative
- Distributive
- Social (Contributive)
Commutative Justice
About the relationship between individual members.
Individual Parties
- Among individuals or specific groups; identifiable parties
- Regards what we owe other persons or what they owe us
- It is about exchange, reciprocity, honouring agreements/contracts/promises
Example: fair payment by an employer, and on the employee doing the work - Commutative justice requires honesty in a relationship
- Offenses: Lying, Cheating, Biasy, Gossip, Slander
- Courtesy within the public sphere
- We are not isolated individuals in isolated relationships; we are situated in social contexts
- Example: my relationship with Lana is not separate from my relationship with others
Distributive Justice
About the relationships between individual members and their communities
Community → Members
- How a community or society distributes goods justly
- How are the goods distributed amongst a community?
- Is each person given a fair share of the common goods? Of the basic goods a part of the common good?
- Example: If a school’s funding is determined by the property taxes where it is located, it is a lack of distributive justice
- Fair share does not always mean a mathematically equal share
- Distributed to individual members
Social Justice (Contributive Justice)
How individual members contribute to the Common Good
Members → Community
- How individuals feed into the common good
- Responsibilities of citizens
- Example: Jury Duty, Volunteering, Voting
- What are the frameworks, structures and institutions that lead to injustice or ground our community in common good?
Justice as a Virtue
To speak about justice as a virtue gets us away from simply talking about legal justice. We need more than a legal understanding of justice.
Justice is a matter of seeing rightly; it is an exercise of the moral imagination (injustice is a failure of accurate perception).
Seeing rightly is seeing the human person as relational, rather than as an isolated unit (so that means the good life is a life in community; communities are inseparable)
Justice is grounded in Natural Law and Inner Worldly activities.
We are setting ourselves up for a distinctively Christian understanding. When Christians talk about persons as relational, we can think about how God is relational (Father, Son, Holy Spirit). When addressing Common Good, it takes Christians to solidarity.
Common Good
The sum total of social conditions which allow people either as groups or as individuals to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily
Common Good deals with the question: What allows for equality, full agency and participation?
The Common Good is not just the base-level platform for the personal good, rather, it is part of/constitutive of my personal good, and the personal good of all individuals goes together
Common Good is not accepted by the libertarian
Some people say there is no such thing as the common good, but the Catholic tradition (taking its lead from Aristotle and Aquinas) is focused with the common good
Aristotle: ordering a society toward the good of all of its members, talks about politics as a kind of art
Aquinas: takes up politics and the common good
Ius ad bellum (if a war can be just and when it is just)
- Right Intention: the consequences of the war must be outweighed by the good it intends to achieve
- Just Cause the aims must be for a just cause (e.g. restoring peace)
- Proportionality: measured response; excessive force must not be used
- Legitimate Authority: only legitimate authorities can wage war
- Probability of Success: success of war at restoring peace must be probable, so that the war is not an unnecessary waste of damage
- Last Resort: going to war must be the last resort, and used only after any and all peaceful alternatives have been tried (have we exhausted all of the means?)
Ius in bello (justly fighting in war)
- Right Intention (in the grand scheme): the aim of the people engaging in conflict must be restoring peace and justice
- Non Combatant Immunity: innocent civilians may not be the object of a direct attack and must be avoided
- Proportionality: measured response; excessive force must not be used
Sin
a violation of the inherent relationship between God and humanity
Is sin a useful term? (contrast Christian belief with common belief)
Christianity: humans are intrinsically faithful to God, and can only find happiness and fulfillment in Him
Common belief held by the majority: humans choose to accept God into our lives, and participating in a relationship with Him is something we must deliberately pursue
The language of “sin” applies only to the former, as “sin” does not simply describe a law violation, but a violation of the inherent relationship between God and humanity
Thus “sin” is a useless term since only a small number of people perceive the relationship between faith and human nature in that way
Sin is Contrary to Nature
Sin is not just a violation of external laws, but a violation of myself and my integrity
Sin is “contrary to nature” because it works against our own inherent self-interest, opposing our inclinations for that which is good for us
Sin is a violation against ourselves; who we are and who we are meant to be
Example: sexual sins are focused on our biological drives, and any violation is viewed to be contrary to nature (any misuse of those faculties and organs is against nature)
However, this narrowed nature forgets the third dimension (the personal dimension that humans have by being rational; being rational is being relational). For example, we must also talk about sexual persons, not just sexual acts
Sin is Contrary to Reason
Sin is “contrary to reason” because it is irrational to pursue actions and lives which restricts our freedom and bring disorder to our lives
The Language of Sin
Sin in Scripture
Sin is
- Hamartia (Greek): missing the mark; error
- Anomia (Paul): lawlessness; transgression of the law
- Connection of sin with the law
- Iniquity (uncleanliness) and guilt
- Universality of Sin
The Hebrew Bible gives us stories of how sin enters the world; it was not willed by God as part of original creation but enters the world as a result of human freedom and is related to the hardships and Earth that humans face, and it is universal:
How does God deal with sin?
- Through the covenant, God elects a people to see what He is doing with sin
- So sin is always understood with fidelity to the Covenant and the law
- But the law is not the final object of Israel’s fidelity, it is actually the person of God
- It could be said that any form of sin is idolatry
Transgression and Debt
- Trespassing “Our Father”: cancel our debts as we cancel the debts against us
- Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world; sin is a condition, the word has turned against God
- Paul talks about the reign of sin, and sin as having a dominion, sin enters the world
The Language of Sin
Sin in the Tradition
- Seriousness of sin
- Sin was viewed as relational; it hurts the community
- It damages the whole body, not just an individual relationship with God
- Reconciliation with not just God, but whole body of the Church
- There was a clearer notion of who sin affects
- In the Manualist tradition, sin was act-centred
- The moral life is avoidance of sin, sin violates virtue
Is there a loss of the sense of sin today?
- Many feel there is a loss of the sense of sin in Christian community
- However, we can see ways in which we are actually viewing that our perceptions of sin are progressive, and were delusions in the past
- Our views with regards to sin have repositioned with regards to Ecology, Effects of the Church in Colonization on Indigenous peoples, Gender Identity
- Thus, there is a REPOSITIONING, rather than a LOSS
Categories of Sin
- Social
- Mortal
- Venial
- Original
Social Sin
Social sin expands beyond the narrow sense of sin as an individual behaviour by dealing with how sin is embedded in our relations with others on a much larger scale. Social sin is “manifested in structures, policies, and practices that privilege the prosperous at the expense of the poor”
Particular groups of people are unjustly oppressed by the structures of society, from which other groups of people prosper.
Social sin consists of ignoring the principle axiom of universal benevolence by neglecting to recognize the interests of others in society as a means of fulfilling and focusing on our own self-interests.
Mortal Sin
Mortal sins are actions, habits and ways of being that bring death to our relationship with God, death to relationships with others and death to our own souls and spirits.
Mortal sins are destructive evils because they are damaging to human goods and corrupt relationships and opt against God.
They are serious evils deliberately embraced and acted from full knowledge
When actions that are mortally sinful express who a person wants to be, they accurately represent a person’s character.
Criteria
(1) Grave matter
(2) Full knowledge and participation
(3) Full consent
Distinction between form and matter
Matter: the basic material
Form: what gives something shape
- Matter alone cannot tell you what something is, we need the form and the matter
- A grave matter has the potential to be a sin, but we must know the form of the sin (three font principle; intention and circumstances)
Fundamental Option: within each human there is a fundamental orientation toward God; and we can assist this orientation or not, so there is a negative fundamental option which entails choosing against God
Venial Sin
Venial sins are acts that “fall short of the good, and indeed are wrong” but the magnitude of their wrongness measures quite low.
They are described as small failures acted from non-malicious intentions. We do not intend to represent our character through these actions, rather, they consist more in human weakness (e.g. inclinations, ignorance, etc.).
If there is grave matter but limited knowledge or lack of consent, an act may simply be a venial sin
Habit (vice) tends to make sinning easier.
Original Sin
Original sin deals with the impartial world we are born into that is “unscathed by evil” as well as our inherent human weakness, both of which bound humans to sin
This is why babies are baptized; we exist into a world that is sinful.
The Bible presents sin as a universal human condition that qualifies our freedom, a pervasive and tragic fact of our creaturely existence.
It is a distortion of our lens on the world and leads to human rivalry (we set each other up as rivals/competitors)
The beginning to human history in the Hebrew Bible depicts the inherent sinful nature of humans through the story of Adam and Eve, whom were given a perfect paradise from God, though nonetheless disobeyed Him
Upon their violation of their relationship with God, Adam and Eve represent the nature of humans as both imperfect and subject to God.
Criteria for a Mortal Sin
Criteria
(1) Grave matter
(2) Full knowledge and participation
(3) Full consent
Distinction between form and matter
Matter: the basic material
Form: what gives something shape
- Matter alone cannot tell you what something is, we need the form and the matter
- A grave matter has the potential to be a sin, but we must know the form of the sin (three font principle; intention and circumstances)
