Lesson 1 - MORALITY (DISCUSSION)

PART THREE
LIFE IN CHRIST

THE MORALITY OF HUMAN ACTS

1749 Freedom makes man a moral subject. When he acts deliberately, man is, so to
speak, the father of his acts. Human acts, that is, acts that are freely chosen in
consequence of a judgment of conscience, can be morally evaluated. They are either
good or evil.

I. The Sources of Morality

The morality of human acts depends on: - the object chosen; - the end in view or the
intention; - the circumstances of the action. The object, the intention, and the
circumstances make up the "sources," or constitutive elements, of the morality of
human acts.

The object chosen is a good toward which the will deliberately directs itself. It is the
matter of a human act. the object chosen morally specifies the act of the will, insofar as
reason recognizes 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.

In contrast to the object, the intention resides in the acting subject. Because it lies at the
voluntary source of an action and determines it by its end, intention is an element
essential to the moral evaluation of an action. 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. Intention 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. For example, a service done with the end of
helping one's neighbor can at the same time be inspired by the love of God as the
ultimate end of all our actions. One and the same action can also be inspired by several
intentions, such as performing a service in order to obtain a favor or to boast about it.

A good intention (for example, that of helping one's neighbor) does not make behavior
that is intrinsically disordered, such as lying and calumny, good or just. the end does not
justify the means. Thus the condemnation of an innocent person cannot be justified as a
legitimate means of saving the nation. On the other hand, an added bad intention (such
as vainglory) makes an act evil that, in and of itself, can be good (such as
almsgiving).39

The circumstances, including the consequences, are secondary elements of a moral

act. They contribute to increasing or diminishing the moral goodness or evil of human
acts (for example, the amount of a theft). They can also diminish or increase the agent's
responsibility (such as acting out of a fear of death). Circumstances of themselves
cannot change the moral quality of acts themselves; they can make neither good nor
right an action that is in itself evil.

II. GOOD ACTS AND EVIL ACTS

A morally good act requires the goodness of the object, of the end, and of the circumstances
together. An evil end corrupts the action, even if the object is good in itself (such as praying
and fasting "in order to be seen by men").

The object of the choice can by itself vitiate an act in its entirety. There are some concrete
acts - such as fornication - that it is always wrong to choose, because choosing them entails
a disorder of the will, that is, a moral evil.

It is therefore an error to judge the morality of human acts by considering only the intention
that inspires them or the circumstances (environment, social pressure, duress or
emergency, etc.) which supply their context. There are acts which, in and of themselves,
independently of circumstances and intentions, are always gravely illicit by reason of their
object; such as blasphemy and perjury, murder and adultery. One may not do evil so that
good may result from it.

Article 6 Moral Conscience

MORAL CONSCIENCE

"Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but
which he must obey. Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid
evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment.... For man has in his heart a law inscribed by
God.... His conscience is man's most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with
God whose voice echoes in his depths."47

-----------------------Secular Views on Conscience------------------------

1. Sigmund Freud’s Approach (Father of Psychoanalysis, May 6, 1856, Czechia/

Czech Republic)

Sigmund Freud concluded that the human personality consisted of three areas;

1. The Super-ego: The set of moral controls given to us by outside influences. Our moral
code or “conscience”, often in conflict with the id
2. The Ego: The conscious self, the part seen by the outside world
3. The Id: The unconscious self, the part of the mind containing basic instincts & suppressed
memories. It is amoral & only concerned with itself

* For Freud, conscience is most clearly connected with the sense of guilt we feel after
doing something deemed as “wrong” – doing something which goes against our conscience.
* Conscience is therefore just a construct of the mind, for religious people it comes from
notions about God and the importance of adhering to his rules in order to achieve
salvation

* In non-religious people it is formed from internalized authority, fear of feeling guilt we

have previously felt when told we were doing something wrong by an authority figure

Freud did not believe in moral law & felt that morality is developed person to person
based on their own experiences – it is culturally dependent which therefore explains
relativity across the globe

Children learn moral behavior from their parents, authority figures etc. and the super ego
internalizes the disapproval of others, creating the guilty conscience.

2. Jean Piaget’s Approach (August 9, 1896, Neuchâtel, Switzerland, major figure in

20th-century developmental psychology)

Piaget developed upon Freud’s ideas of the socially constructed conscience by

identifying different stages of conscience

According to Piaget as a child grows so does its capacity to reason & therefore
make moral decisions – morality & conscience depend on cognitive development

Piaget identified two stages of moral development:

1. Heteronomous morality: (between the ages of 5 & 10) conscience is still

immature. Rules are no to be broken & punishment is expected if rules are broken.
The consequence of an action will show if it’s right or wrong

2. Autonomous morality: (approx. ages 10+) children develop their own rules and
understand how rules operate in and help society. The child is less dependent on
the moral authority

3. Erich Fromm’s Approach (March 23, 1900, Frankfurt, Germany, German-born

American psychoanalyst and social philosopher)

The Authoritarian Conscience

Fromm believed that all humans are influenced by external authorities; parents,
teachers, Church leaders, who apply rules and punishments for breaking them

These rules and the consequences as well as the fear of the consequences are internalized
by the person

A guilty conscience is a result of displeasing the authority, God can be that authority,
creating a powerful fear & motivation for people to follow his laws

Disobedience results in guilt due to the internalized rules of the authority, which in turn
weakens our own resolve, making us more submissive to the authority
The authoritarian conscience is an external force, it (generally) should not be followed
or trusted, as it is formed only on the aims of the authority controlling the person.

The Humanistic Conscience

Fromm viewed the humanistic conscience as the internal, self-assessing force in

humans.

The humanistic conscience is much healthier, rather than reviewing actions based upon their
ability to conform and please authority, it reviews human success, flourishing.

We use our own discoveries in life, as well as the teachings and examples of
others, to give us personal integrity and moral honesty.

This is different to the enslavement of the authoritarian conscience, it should be listened to,
and while not founded in God or an absolute moral code, is generally a good way of
assessing the morality of actions.

----------------------Christian View on Conscience-------------------------

St. Thomas Aquinas (1224/25, Italy, Dominican theologian, and Scholastic)

St Thomas Aquinas saw the conscience not as a separate faculty of the mind which was
somehow set apart in the soul, rather, he stressed the fact that conscience is part of the
mind which involves the use of our logical power of reasoning. There is little room for
emotions! Conscience is our judgement of practical reasoning on questions of right and
wrong, a natural ability to understand one from another- reasoning used correctly to find out
what God sees as good!

For Aquinas, it's not a voice giving us commands or an inner knowledge of right and wrong,
it is reason making right decisions. Conscience, therefore, isn't a product of society either.
Unsurprisingly, this is all based on his ideas about Natural Law. He said that conscience is
the "mind of man making moral judgements", the "dictate of reason" and "reason making
right decisions".

Involving the use of reason telling us how to act, conscience is therefore thought, considered
and reasoned. This is a rationalistic account of conscience based around the workings of the
mind and the use of reason, and this view allows it to be influenced and shaped by our lives.
Conscience isn't a product of society, but reason can be influenced by society! Our reason is
a gift from God, so we can't ignore it!

However, Aquinas also says that reason's not enough to tell us what's right and wrong, so
God gives us an innate drive to do what's good and avoid evil, which Aquinas called the
Synderesis Rule.

Aquinas described conscience as having 2 essential parts:

Synderesis entails the repeated use of right reason [recta ratio] by which a person acquires
knowledge of primary moral principles and acknowledges that right is to be done and evil
avoided. It involves an awareness that we should do good and avoid evil.
Conscientia is the actual ethical judgement [distinguishing between right and wrong] a
person makes which leads to a course of action.

Conscience is the ability to distinguish right from wrong and make judgements based on
this.

Getting Things Wrong

Aquinas says it's always right to follow one's conscience, but he recognises that people still
sometimes get things wrong... while we subconsciously seek good, we may still perform bad
actions due to faulty reasoning or weaknesses.

There are problems with just leaving everyone to follow their own conscience- a person's
judgement may be clouded by passions, ignorance or long established habits... reason can
therefore be wrong. These people have followed an apparent good rather than a real good;
conscience was mistaken. [see how this echoes Natural Law?]

A person's conscience can err [go wrong] vincibly, through their own fault, or invincibly
through no fault of their own.

The process can go wrong in 2 ways:

1- a person may be unaware of a relevant moral principle, so for conscience to work we

need to have some background information about what's considered right and wrong.

2- a person might be aware of a general moral principle, but not know that it applies in this
particular situation.

Following Your Conscience

Aquinas says we must always follow our consciences, but by this he means we must apply
our moral principles to a situation- it doesn't mean we'll always be right by following our
conscience! If your principles are wrong, your conscience will make wrong moral decisions.

He did therefore stress the importance of informing your conscience with the aid of
revelation and natural law & so on... and so long as your conscience is informed, it's right to
follow it even if it contradicts a public law! If church teaching and conscience contradict, you
should follow your conscience. It's better to be excommunicated or martyred than to violate
your conscience!

Links with Natural Law

Aquinas account of conscience is derived from Natural Law... "what is right is what
contributes to our common human nature" "we find out what contributes to our common
human nature by reason". Roman Catholics still teach that conscience derives its standards
from Natural Law.

Aquinas said you should follow your conscience because it relates to your end/purpose as a
person. He believed that, by nature, people would avoid evil and seek good.

In Romans [1:18 & 2:15], Paul argues that man naturally has a perception of what's right
and wrong, and so God's wrath will be aimed against anyone who goes against his Natural
Laws- there is no excuse as he's revealed his eternal power and divine power in nature.
Conscience is part of natural law theory in that the recognition of basic religious principles
and moral principles is built into the structure of the universe and human nature.

In Summary

+ Everyone can have a view of conscience based on this, whether they're Christian or not.
+ He allows for consciences to be wrong or different from each other depending on their
education.
- His approach doesn't sit well with belief in divine revelation so isn't popular with all
Christians.
- He ignores the fact we don't all follow the same objective moral law.

- For Thomas Aquinas, the human is a paradox. As "rational animals", we are the only
species that straddles the divide between matter and spirit. We do not just inhabit the
material world – we interpret it, discern order within it, derive meaning from it
and act decisively upon it. Our intellects transcend their material confines with a unique
freedom and imagination.

We absorb knowledge first through our senses (a posteriori), and the intellect gradually
develops through our bodily experiences and desires. In this, Aquinas is closer to David
Hume than to Kant. Beautiful things arouse our desire, which leads to the formation of
concepts, the awakening of understanding and the attribution of meaning. Enriched with a
deeper appreciation of the source of beauty and goodness, understanding is
transformed into love and our desire pivots back towards objects in order to
express this love. Love, knowledge and goodness are inseparable. The goodness we
perceive derives from the fact that created beings participate in the goodness and love of
God. This explains the order and beauty of nature and our response to it.

For Aquinas, our desire for God is the link between consciousness and matter. God
is the living, intelligent medium in which bodies and souls are drawn to one another in a
coherent and orderly universe. We could say desire is the current that creates
invisible connections among beings within the being of God. Matter acquires form
and flows towards God in all the diversity of creation as different life forms emerge. This
means that to be good is to flourish and fulfil one's potential as a particular kind of
being. Just as a washing machine is good when it does what it was designed to do, so a
human is good when he or she lives as humans are created to live. This is a more inclusive
concept of the good than morality alone. Morality plays a significant part, but for Aquinas
there is more to the good life than being moral.

Aquinas uses Aristotle to explain all this philosophically, but from a doctrinal perspective the
human made in the image of God relates to the Christian understanding of the
Trinity. All desire is orientated towards the Trinitarian God, in whose image we are
made and to whom we are attracted as the ultimate purpose and meaning of our lives. God
is a unity of three persons in an inexpressible relationship of generative, communicative and
creative love, and the human soul manifests that in its capacity to understand, interpret and
love the world. Rational reflection assists us in this task, but reason alone cannot make us
act. Our reason must inform our will, which in turn enables us to materialize our desires by
directing our actions towards their intended effects. So, in our understanding, loving and
communicating we express something of the life of the Trinity.
Ignorance

Reason is a cognitive faculty that makes us human. Humans make mistakes and Aquinas
recognized this.

St. Augustine of Hippo (November 13, 354, Tagaste, Numidia [now Algeria])

For Augustine, conscience was to be identified with the voice of God speaking to us.

Conscience is the voice of God within us, when we listen to it we're really listening to God
whispering what's right and wrong, and it cannot be questioned. In this way, it is both an
outpouring of God's love, and an innate capacity to know the difference between good and
bad. Augustine therefore urged Christians to consider conscience most seriously, telling
them to return to their consciences.

"Men see the moral rules written in the book of light which is called the truth, from which all
laws are copied".

God gives every person a conscience, but this doesn't in itself make them virtuous. A person
needs the grace of God in order to be able to do the right thing- a conscience can't be used
without God's grace! This is because it's through God's grace that the will is directed to do
the right thing, indeed, an act is only right if it's done though grace and if it has the right
motivation [to love God].

So then,

- Does this mean that only a Christian believer can do a morally good act, since the
conscience can only work though the grace of the Christian God, and since an act's only
right if the motivation is to love God?
- To what extent can a Christian be said to be making a free moral decision? Are we free to
make the decision if we have God whispering in our ear?

Augustine inherited the concept of conscience from the Latin tradition. His uses of the term
conscientia, which appears at least ten times in Confessions, are consistent. Augustine
enriched and deepened the meaning of conscientia by discovering the concept of
introspective conscience (Interiority). Understanding this discovery requires an analysis of
the basic structure of Augustine’s philosophy of will. Augustine’s philosophy of will sits within
a divinely created order: the all-good God created a good world, in which evil is not a
physical entity but a “privation of good” (privatio boni)

----------------------------------Article 7 The Virtues---------------------------------------

THE VIRTUES

1803 "Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever
is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of
praise, think about these things." A virtue is a habitual and firm disposition to do the good. It
allows the person not only to perform good acts, but to give the best of himself. The virtuous
person tends toward the good with all his sensory and spiritual powers; he pursues the good
and chooses it in concrete actions.

The goal of a virtuous life is to become like God.

Five Ways to Prove God’s Existence (St. Thomas Aquinas)

The First Way: Motion

1. All bodies are either potentially in motion or actually in motion.

2. "But nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state
of actuality" (419).

3. Nothing can be at once in both actuality and potentiality in the same respect.

4. Therefore nothing can be at once in both actuality and potentiality with respect to motion

5. Therefore nothing can move itself; it must be put into motion by something else.

6. If there were no "first mover, moved by no other" there would be no motion.

7. But there is motion.

8. Therefore there is a first mover, God.

The Second Way: Efficient Cause

1. Nothing is the efficient cause of itself.

2. If A is the efficient cause of B, then if A is absent, so is B.

3. Efficient causes are ordered from first cause, through intermediate cause(s), to ultimate
effect.

4. By (2) and (3), if there is no first cause, there cannot be any ultimate effect.

5. But there are effects.

6. Therefore there must be a first cause for all of them: God.

The Third Way: Possibility and Necessity

1. "We find in nature things that are possible to be and not to be:" contingent beings.

2. Everything is either necessary or contingent.

3. Assume that everything is contingent.

4. "It is impossible for [contingent beings] always to exist, for that which can not-be at some
time is not."
5. Therefore, by (3) and (4), at one time there was nothing.

6. "That which does not exist begins to exist only through something already existing."

7. Therefore, by (5) and (6), there is nothing now.

8. But there is something now!

9. Therefore (3) is false.

10. Therefore, by (2), there is a necessary being: God.

The Fourth Way: Gradation

1. There is a gradation to be found in things: some are better (hotter, colder, etc.) than
others.

2. Things are X in proportion to how closely the resemble that which is most X.

3. Therefore, if there is nothing which is most X, there can be nothing which is good.

4. It follows that if anything is good, there must be something that is most good.

5. "Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being,
goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God" (420).

The Fifth Way: Design

1. We observe that natural bodies act toward ends.

2. Anything that acts toward an end either acts out of knowledge, or under the direction of
something with knowledge, "as the arrow is directed by the archer."

3. But many natural beings lack knowledge.

4. "Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their
end; and this being we call God" (420).