Human Acts/Virtue Ethics

• An act that is performed only by a human being and thus is proper to man. Not every act that a human being does is a distinctively human act. Some acts that human beings do are performed also by animals, e.g., vegetative acts and acts of perception and emotion.
• When a human being does such acts, they are called acts of man but not human acts. Acts of man are actions shared by humans and other animals while human acts refer to the appropriate actions of human beings. What makes an act performed by a human being distinctively a human at is that is voluntary, will, which is proper to man. One can therefore identify the human activity with the voluntary act.
• A voluntary act continues either by the will - like an act of love or choice - or from another human power that may be motivated by the will, either by an act of intellect or by the sense of reasoning or emotion; even a gesture commanded by the will can be a voluntary act.
• these are acts originating from the individual performing the act using knowledge about the situations of the act.

  Voluntary Actions
• actions are performed from will and reason. 


  Voluntary
• It is considered a mixed of voluntary and involuntary. It is more voluntary if the desire and choice have been performed and involuntary if it has considered preferences or alternatives.

  Related Compulsion
• involuntary actions are acts done for 2 possible reasons.

  a.) force or coercion; and

  b.) ignorance where the doer failed to understand the effect and feels sorry on the result
• Non-voluntary Actions


  actions that are done out of ignorance without a sense of regret.
• Aquinas argued that God created the world according to natural laws - predictable, goal-driven systems whereby life is sustained, and everything functions smoothly.
• Natural Laws

  1. Life
  2. Reproduction
  3. Educate one's offspring
  4. Seek God
  5. Live in society
  6. Avoid offense
  7. Shun ignorance
• Commands you must follow, regardless of your desires. Moral obligations are derived from pure reason.
• It doesn't matter whether you want to be moral or not - the moral law is binding on all of us.
• "Act only according to the maxim which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law without contradiction."

  Formulation 1: The Universalizability Principle
• "Acts so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end, and never as a mere means."

  Formulation 2: The Formula of Humanity
• Moral Theory focuses on the results, or consequences, of our actions, and treats intentions as irrelevant.


  Utilitarianism
• Principle of Utilitarianism: Actions should be measured in terms of the happiness, or pleasure, that they produce.
• Like Kant, Utilitarians agree that a moral theory should apply equally to everyone. But they thought the way to do that was to ground it in something that's really intuitive - and there's really nothing more basic than the primal desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain.
• Intellectual Choice is a choice that is deliberately selected based on a moral standpoint. They are normative answers about what we ought to do from a moral system that we uphold and its moral principles. These normative answers would take into consideration the behavior which the society will accept.
• Practical Choice is borne out of psychological and emotional considerations. Practical choices are made when confronted with the actual situation and are usually affected by the psychological aspect of the person embroiled in the moral situation or dilemma.
• Who is known to be the father of Existentialism?

  Søren Kierkegaard
• What makes an act voluntary?

  acts originating from the individual performing the act using knowledge about the situations of the act
• pursuit of happiness

  Eudaemonia