CHAPTER 4

• An experience initiates a process of meaning-making, calling individuals to conduct critical examination of their own conceptions, attitudes, prejudices, decisions, behavior, and feelings.
• Learning Outcomes

  1. Capture and analyse feelings in personal moral experience

  2. Compare reasonable and emotional responses to experiences

  3. Check real-life cases against the 7-step model of moral deliberation

  4. Differentiate between knowing and executing a good moral decision

  5. Judge own moral behavior in terms of planning and execution in important moral experiences
• Every human experience requires understanding, interpretation, and application, making every experience hermeneutical.
• Definition: Moral Experience refers to anything undergone, encounters, and what happens to us. It shapes individuals continuously.
• Chapter 4: The Human Action as a Hermeneutic Response to a Moral Experience
• Hans-Georg Gadamer speaks of experience in two senses: plural form and singular, characterized by continuity as a process where particular experiences are all streamed in.
• Author: Juvy Sapal-Reyes
• Chapter Content

  1. Tackle the element of the act in moral experience

  2. Discuss the hermeneutical nature of moral experience

  3. Clarify what characterizes a truly human action and a good moral decision

  4. Explore how feelings shape moral decisions and why they can hinder reasoned decision-making

  5. Present analysis of cases of moral dilemmas

  6. Adopt a seven-step model for decision making

  7. Differentiate moral knowledge from moral courage

  8. Highlight the need to cultivate the will towards what is right and reasonable
• Introduction: The agent is an important element of moral experience. Culture shapes moral behavior but is not the ultimate determinant of right and wrong. Human persons undergo stages of moral development. Moral dilemmas are a struggle.
• An experienced person in the first sense is knowledgeable about particulars, while in the second sense, one is "taught and corrected" and humbled by experience.
• Call to conduct critical examination


  May originate or be triggered by extraneous factors such as an incident being witnessed, a situation to which one is subjected, or a question posed by another person
• Not all human experiences have a moral dimension as there is something profoundly moral in moral experiences that is not true to all species of experience
• Being summoned to meaning


  Called to conduct critical examination of one's own conceptions, attitude, prejudices, decisions, behaviour, and feelings
• Moral experience


  • Puts our moral consciousness to work
  • Is an experience of moral value
  • Defines us
  • Is an ongoing, continuous process
  • Touches on and brings in one's moral ideals
• Every moral situation calls for rational deliberation and affirmation of our humanity
• Every experience to which we are subjected involves us actively, individually, and personally, touching base on who we truly are at the core of our persons and is considered to have a moral dimension
• Moral ideals


  Pertain to what is believed to constitute a life worthy of humans, shaped via tradition and summoned by experience
• Moral value


  Refers to the quality of something being good or bad, right or wrong, and just or unjust. It demands a response, involves moral responsibility, and defines both the action and the human agent
• Without acknowledging the legitimacy of the call, it holds no power over us
• van Tongeren: '"to make a moral response"'
• Moral experience involves a constant struggle as choosing the good makes one good, but it is an ongoing process that requires consistent choices
• Being summoned to meaning


  Leads one to examine and put to test one's sense of meaning through and by his/her encounters with things
• De Finance (pp. 84-85): '"the demands of morality do not allow for holidays or strategic retreat land in itl no one can take [one's] place in attaining the value that one is] called upon to achieve"'
• We cannot delay choosing what is good nor ask another to make a moral choice for us
• Every moral situation calls for our rational deliberation and affirmation of our humanity
• Van Tongeren (1994, p. 204): 'Moral experience [happens when we are] being addressed by something or someone in such a way that, by inherent authority, we are summoned or obliged to commit ourselves to, or continue in a certain way of acting or relating, or praxis, which is at the same time understood as being part of real or good human life'
• Moral experience touches on and brings in one's moral ideals
• Moral experience is action-oriented, compelling us to respond personally and right away
• The duty to be good begins right here and right now, not tomorrow or elsewhere
• Human acts


  Actions of moral value, proceeding from deliberate free will, conscious, rational, and free human beings
• Moral experience of shame or regret reminds us of how we should conduct ourselves as human beings
• Human actions involve freedom and are carried out voluntarily
• Act of man


  Actions devoid of moral value, driven by instincts or factors other than reason and free will
• We become good by choosing what is good and acting upon it
• Human actions involve knowledge or consciousness and are carried out voluntarily
• Human actions are divided into "acts of man" and "human acts"
• Moral ideals pertain to what are believed to constitute a life that is worthy of humans shaped by tradition and experience
• Human actions proceed from the deliberate free will of man and are proper to man as man
• Emotions in moral decision-making

  • Spontaneously springing into action as dictated by strong emotions towards a moral situation
• Freedom is enjoyed by the human agent and is the highest expression of his/her person