Conscience
Conscience
• The first quality describing the human act is the object. It is like the
basic factor of morality, the substance of the moral act. According to
St. Thomas, the primary and specific goodness or badness of an act
is derived from the object which the act naturally and directly tends
as to its term.
• The object is not the matter of which the thing is made but the
matter about which something is DONE; and it stands in relation to
the act as the form, as it were, giving it the species.
The Teaching of St. Thomas on the essence of morality centers on
the object as proved by this summary:
• The purpose or intention is that for the sake of which something is done. It
is reason behind our acting. Man usually puts an act as a means to
accomplish an end, different from the act itself. Since, the end or intention
is ordinarily present in all human acts, it becomes part of morality. “THE
END”, says Aristotle, “is the object of internal act of the will.”
• Before we put the will and the external senses in motion, we must have a
motive present in our minds or an objective prompting our faculties to act
and achieve the proposed objective. Hence, the importance of the motive
as the second source of morality.
The End or intention of an agent can modify
human actions in four ways:
• A. An indifferent act may become morally
good or evil.
• Example:
• To kill one’s parents is not only a crime but
patricide.
• To kill a working animal from a poor farmer is
a worse act than to steal it from a rich man.
• B. Circumstance may change a good or
indifferent act into a punishable one.
• Example:
• A soldier sleeping at his post during war time
will be sentenced by a military court to capital
punishment, where sleeping ( an indifferent
act) is concerned here.
• In summary, human acts in order
to be morally good, must be perfect
according to the three elements:
object, end, and circumstance. Any
deficiency will make a human act
evil.
Money in the Christian Morality
• Example:
• Actions done by infants, insane, embeciles, morons,
and among others.
• In contrast to human acts, ACTS OF MAN do
not make man responsible for his actions. We
have to make it clear that man is responsible
only for his action if he does the act out
knowledge, freedom and voluntariness. These
are human acts. On the Contrary, actions that
are done without knowledge, freedom, and
voluntariness do not make man responsible.
These are acts acts of man.
B. Three fold Elements
of Human Acts
• KNOWLEDGE:
• A human Act is done with knowledge.
• Doing an act with knowledge makes the act
deliberate. This means that the agent has
intellectual knowledge of the act.
• Further, in performing an act with knowledge,
the agent has awareness about the means to
employ as he performs the act. And the agent
has also the awareness of the end to achieve
his actions.
• FREEDOM:
• A human act is an act done with freedom.
• An act done with freedom means that the agent
does an act under the control of his will.
• This suggests that when the agent performs an
act with freedom, his will is not affected or
influenced by any constraint either within
himself or outside himself.
• In simple terms, the agent is not forced to do or
not do a particular action. Therefore, a human act
is an act which is determined solely by the will.
• VOLUNTARINESS
• Of the three constituents of human acts, it is
voluntariness that requires the presence of the
two other constituents (knowledge and
freedom). This means that the voluntary act is
synonymous with human act. For the purpose
of clarification, it must be always remembered
that an action can be qualified a human act if it
has the three constituents.
• Voluntariness requires the presence of knowledge
and freedom in the agent because for the agent to
will the act, he must have the knowledge of what
the act is and he must also have freedom to
perform or not to perform the act. Thus, a
voluntary act is a willful act.
Classification of Human Acts
• Relation to REASON
• Human Acts in relation to the will refer to
those actions which are started, performed,
and completed, by the will either by will alone
or through other faculties which are under the
control of the will.
• Elicited Acts
• Commanded Acts
• Elicited Acts are those which are started
by the will, performed by the will, and are
completed by the will as the sole agent.