ETHICS 1st lesson

• Fr. Coppens (2017)

  “Human acts are those of which a man is master, which he has the power of doing or not doing as he pleases.”

   
• Panizo (1964)

  “Human acts are those acts which proceed from man as a rational being.”
• Actions committed by unconscious and insane persons, infants, or by those who are physically forced to do something, are not considered as human acts but acts of man.
• Actions which merely happen in the body or through the body without the awareness of the mind or the control of the will are not human acts but merely acts of man.
• •  Three things to consider to know whether an individual human act is morally good according to Rev. Coppens S.J. are:

  a.  the object of the act;

  b.  the end or purpose; and

  c.  its circumstances.
• The object of an act is the thing done.
• The purpose intended by the agent.
• No matter how good the object of an act may be, if the end intended is bad, the act is thereby vitiated, spoiled, or impaired.
• •  The guiding rule is the end does not justify the means.
• •  The circumstances of time, place, and persons have their part in determining the morality of an individual act.
• The circumstances, including the consequences, refer to the time, place, person, and conditions surrounding the moral act.
• •  according to the received axiom: “Bonum ex integra causa, malum ex quocumque defectu” – “A thing to be good must be wholly so; it is not vitiated by any defect.”