Reviewer in Ethics

EHICS
• Good thing that we should pursue and the bad thing that we should avoid.
• Right ways in which we could or should act and the wrong ways of acting.
• Acceptable and unacceptable in human behavior.
• Obligations that we are expected to fulfill, prohibitions that we are required to respect, or ideals that we
are encouraged to meet.
• Determining the grounds for the values with particular and special significance to human life.
• Discipline of studying and understanding ideal human behavior and ideal ways of thinking.
• Intellectual discipline belonging to philosophy.

KINDS OF VALUATIONS
• Aesthetics – “sense” or “feeling” and refers to the judgments of personal approval or disapproval that
we make about what we see, hear, smell or taste.
• Etiquette – concerned with right or wrong actions, but those which might be considered not quite grave
enough to belong to a discussion on ethics.
• Technique/Technical – proper way (right way) of doing things.

STUDY OF ETHICS
• Descriptive Study – make their moral valuations without making any judgment either for or against
these valuations.
• Normative Study – what we ought to maintain as our standards or bases for moral valuations.

MORAL VALUATIONS
• Moral Issue – distinguish a situation that calls for moral valuation. It involves the question of respect
for one’s property.
• Moral Decision – confronted by the choice of what act to perform.
• Moral Judgment – makes an assessment on the actions or behavior of someone.
• Moral Dilemma – torn between choosing one of two goods or choosing between the lesser of the two
evils. Can choose only one from a number of possible actions, and there are compelling ethical reasons
for the various choices.

SOURCES OF AUTHORITY
• Law – one’s guide to ethical behavior. It cannot tell us what to pursue, only what to avoid.
Positive Law – different rules and regulations that are posited or put forward by an authority
figure that require compliance.
• Religion – Divine Command Theory – idea that one is obliged to obey his/her God in all things. The
divinity called God, Allah, or Supreme Being commands and one is obliged to obey her Creator. It requires
us to identify the entire sense of right and wrong with what religion dictates.
• Culture – there is in fact a wide diversity of how different people believe it is proper to act.
Cultural Relativism – ethically acceptable or unacceptable is relative to or dependent one
one’s culture.

SENSES OF THE SELF

• Subjectivism – recognition that the individual thinking person is at the heart of all moral valuations.
The individual is the sole determinant of what is morally good or bad, right or wrong.
 • Psychological Egoism – theory that describes the underlying dynamic behind all human actions. It
points out that there is already an underlying basis of how one acts.
Ego or Self – it has its desires and interests, and all our actions are geared toward satisfying
these interests. This action happened in wo/man instinctively and are not within the control of the will.
Simplicity – theory that conveniently identifies a single basis that will somehow account for all
actions.
Plausibility – plausible that self-interest is behind a person’s action
• Ethical Egoism – actions are already inevitably self-serving. We should make our own ends, our own
interests, as the single overriding concern. An act in a way that is beneficial to others, but we should do
it if it ultimately benefits us.

PARTS OF THE SOUL

• Appetitive (Stomach) – biological needs
• Spiritual (Chest/Heart) - affection or emotion
• Rational (Head) – intellectual or thinking

THE PRINCIPLE OF UTILITY

• Argues that our actions are governed by pleasure and pain.
• Pleasure and pain are given to us by nature to help us determine what is good or bad and what is ought
to be done and not.
• Motivation of our actions as guided by avoidance of pain and our desire for pleasure.
• Pleasure as good if, and only if, they produce more happiness than unhappiness.

PHILOSOPHERS
• PLATO – Greek thinker
• ARISTOTLE – Virtue of Ethics
• JEREMEY BENTHAM – Quantitative Model (Number)
- British Philosopher
- wrote about the greatest happiness principle of ethics and was known for a
system of penal management called panopticon.
• JOHN STUART MILL – Qualitative Model (Quality)
• MARTIN HEIDEGGER – Philosophy of Gelassenheit
- “Being and Time”
• MARTIN BUBER – Subject to Subject
- “I” – “Thou” / You
- “I” – “It” / Object
• LUCE IRIGARAY – equality of the man and woman

EXCEPTIONS OF FULL KNOWLEDGE

• Senile
• Insane
• Children below the age of reason

HUMAN ACTS – quality of human actions performed by a responsible agent with:

• Freedom
• Voluntariness
• Full of Knowledge
ACTS OF MAN – this principle suggests that valuation is within the sphere of human actions characterized by
certain gravity concerning well-being or human life.
SYNDERESIS – Natural tendency to do good and avoid what is evil.

MORALS – specific beliefs or attitudes that people have or to describe acts that people perform.
MORAL – quality of human action that portrays conformity to the standard of rightness and goodness.
IMMORAL – quality of human action that portrays non-conformity to the standard of rightness and goodness.
AMORAL – quality of human actions or behaviors that may either portray conformity or non-conformity to the
standard of rightness and goodness.
RIGHT – quality of human acts portray conformity to the standard of the society.
WRONG – quality of human action that portrays non-conformity to the standard of the society.
GOOD – act demands conformity to the goal and requires completion, perfection, or fulfillment of the act.
BAD – quality of human acts that demand non-conformity to the goal of the society.
ETHICAL AND UNETHICAL – acceptable and unacceptable behaviors.
• Professional Ethics – Legal Ethics, Medical Ethics, Media Ethics

MORAL GOOD – happiness, happiness as pleasure

MORAL VALUE – utility and understood it as whatever produced happiness or pleasure and the avoidance of
pain.
MORAL PHILOSOPHY – classical notion of ethics/concepts of ethics using reason to investigate the truth.
MORAL THEOLOGY – classical notion of ethics/concepts of ethics which employs which uses reasons to
understand the divine revelation (Plan of God).
MORAL THEORY – systematic attempt to establish the validity of maintaining certain moral principles.
MORAL RESPONSIBILITY AND ACCOUNTABILITY – this concept is the only true measure of what a
wo/man ought to be.
MORAL AWARENESS – when this human capacity enhances one to distinguish between good and bad, right
and wrong, moral and immoral.

PHILOSOPHY – “Love of Wisdom”

PHILOSOPHICAL STUDY OF ETHICS – recognizing the characteristics of some descriptive theory; also it
does not simply accept as correct any normative theory. It engages in a critical consideration of the strengths
and weaknesses of these theories.

PRINCIPLES – rationally established grounds by which one justifies and maintains her moral decisions and
judgments.
PRINCIPLE OF THE GREATEST NUMBER – pleasure of the greatest number affected by the consequences
of our actions.
UTILITARIANISM – ethical theory that argues for the goodness of pleasure and the determination of right
behavior based on the usefulness of the action’s consequences
FELICIFIC CALCULUS – framework for evaluating pleasure and pain.
FRAMEWORK – a system of thoughts and ideas. Theory of interconnected ideas, and at the same time, a
structure through which we can evaluate our reasons for valuing a certain decision or judgment.
NATURAL
• Seems to be used to refer to some kind of intuition that a person has, one which is so apparently true to
him that is unquestioned.
• Used to as an appeal to something instinctual without it being directed by reason.
• Refers to what seems common to them given their particular environment.
• People justify done something by making the appeal that what they maintain.

UNNATURAL
• Justify a certain way of behaving by seeing its likeness somewhere in the natural world.
• People would judge something as unacceptable.
• Sometimes we might find ourselves astonished or perplexed.

THOMAS AQUINAS
• A medieval thinker
• Founder/Patron of UST
• Catholic Priest
• Aquinas and St. Augustine are both Doctors of the Church.
• Provides the emphasizing the capacity of human nature anchored of our capacity for reason will become
the basis of the natural law theory, a theory which will provide us a unique way of determining the moral
status of our actions.
• In Wisdom 8:19, St. Thomas Aquinas is described as a “witty child” who “had received a good soul”
• Before St. Aquinas was born. A holy hermit shared a prediction with his mother, foretelling that her son
would enter the Order of Friars Preachers, become a great learner and achieve unequaled sanctity.

THE CONTEXT OF THE CHRISTIAN STORY

• The fundamental truth maintained and elaborated by Aquinas in all his works is the promise right at the
center of the Christian faith: that we are created by God in order to ultimately return to Him. SUMMA
THEOLOGIAE (Summa: the greatest, Theo: God) (Summa Theologica)
• Voluminous work: First, Aquinas speaks of God, and although we acknowledge that our limited human
intellect cannot fully grasp Him, we nevertheless are able to say something concerning His goodness, His
might, and His creative power. Second, which deals with man or the dynamic of human life. This
characterized by our pursuit of happiness, which we should realize rests ultimately not on any particular
good thing that is created by God, but in the highest good which is God Himself.
• Salvation is only possible through the presence of God’s grace and that grace has become perfectly
incarnate in the person of Jesus. Third, focuses on Jesus as our Savior.

THE CONTEXT OF AQUINAS ETHICS

• The Christian life, therefore, is about developing the capacities given to us by God into a disposition of
virtue inclined toward good.
• For Aquinas, there is a sense of right and wrong in us that we are obliged to obey (conscience). However,
he also adds that this sense of right and wrong must be informed, guided, and ultimately grounded in
an objective basis for morality. Conscientia (Italian word) – the judge of one self.
• Divine command theory urges a person toward unthinking obedience to religious percepts. Given the
problems of this simplistic approach to ethics, we can contrast how the moral theory of Aquinas requires
the judicious use of reason. In doing so, one’s sense of right and wrong would be grounded on something
stable: human nature itself.
KINDS OF CONSCIENCE
• True or Correct – Good - Good, Bad - Bad; Right – Right, Wrong – Wrong
• False or Erroneous – Good – Bad, Bad – Good; Right – Wrong, Wrong – Right
• Certain – base our judgments to the legality or illegality of acts; Lawfulness or Unlawfulness
• Doubtful – one cannot make a judgment/decision because of uncertainty
• Lax – we are not bothered; indifferent
• Scrupulous – extremely afraid to commit mistakes

THE GREEK HERITAGE

• NEOPLATONIC GOOD – In the hands of the Neoplatonists, Plato’s idea of the good, which is the source
of all beings, becomes identified with the One and the Beautiful. This is the ultimate reality, which is the
oneness that will give rise to the multiplicity of everything else in the cosmos. All these beings have single
goal, which is to return to that unity. Through Neoplatonists like Plotinus, the Platonic idea of the good
would continue well into the Christian Middle Ages, inspiring later thinkers and allowing it to be thought
anew in a more personal way as a creative and loving God.
Dichotomy of the body and the soul (separation)
Adamah (Hebrew) – soil/ground
• ARISTOTELIAN BEING AND BECOMING – Any being, according to Aristotle, can be said to have
four causes: First, we recognize that any being we can see around is corporeal, possessed of a certain
materiality or physical “stuff”. We can refer to this as the Material Cause. The “shape” that makes a
being a particular kind can be called its form. Thus, each being also has a Formal Cause. A being does
not simply “pop up” from nothing, but comes from another being which is prior to it. There is something
which brings about the presence of another being. This referred to as Efficient Cause. A being has an
apparent end or goal referred to as Final Cause.

DUTY AND AGENCY

• Moral theory that evaluates actions that are done because of duty is called Deontology. It comes from
the Greek word deon, which means “being necessary”. Deontology refers to the study of duty and
obligation. The main proponent of deontology is Immanuel Kant (German Enlightenment philosopher).
He brings our attention to the fact that we, human beings, have the faculty called rational will, which
is the capacity to act according to principles that we determine for ourselves.
• Rationality consists of the mental faculty to construct ideas and thoughts that are beyond our immediate
surroundings. This is the capacity for mental abstraction, which arises from the operations of the faculty
of reason. Thus we have the ability to stop and think about what we are doing.
• Hence, to act according to a duty is specifically human experience. Animals, if it is true that they do not
possess the faculty of rational will, cannot conceive of having duties. We may claim that as long as we
have rationality, there will always be the tension between our base impulses and our rational will.
Enlightenment – Sapere Aude – Have the courage to use the right reason. Have to use what is proper in
your life.
Enlightened Person – responsible, mature
Unenlightened Person – immature, lazy, coward, irresponsible
Age of Enlightenment = Act of Reason

AUTONOMY
• Kant claims that the property of the rational will is autonomy, which is the opposite of heteronomy.
These three Greek words are instructive: autos, heteros, and nomos, which mean “self”, “other”, and
 “law”. Hence, we combine autos and nomos, we get autonomy; heteros and nomos to
heteronomy. Autonomy means self-law (or self-legislating) and Heteronomy means other law.
• The choice that can be determined by pure reason is called free choice. That which determinable only
by inclination (sensible impulse, stimulus) would be animal choice (abitrium brutum). Human choice,
in contrast, is a choice that may indeed be affected but not determined by impulses, and is therefore in
itself (without an acquired skill or reason) not pure, but can nevertheless be determined to do actions
from pure will.
• “The human person is not only an animal, but is also rational.” We admit to two possible causes of our
actions: sensible impulses and the faulty reason. Human freedom resides in that distinction.

UNIVERSALIZABILITY
• Kant endorses this formal kind of moral theory. The Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, which
he wrote in 1785, embodies a formal moral theory in what he calls the categorical imperative, which
provides a procedural way of identifying the rightness or wrongness of an action. Kant articulates the
categorical imperative this way: Act only according to such a maxim, by which you can at once will that
it become a universal law.
• There are four key elements in this formulation of the categorical imperative, namely, actions, maxim,
will, and universal law. Kant states that we must formulate an action as a maxim, which he defines
as a “subjective principle of action”. Maxims depict the pattern of our behavior.
• What does it mean to will a maxim that can become a universal law? It means that the maxim must be
universalizable, which is what it means to “will that it become a universal law”
• We reveal the rational permissibility of actions insofar as they cannot be rejected as universalizable
maxims. In contrast, those universalized maxims that are rejected are shown to be impermissible, that
is, they are irrational and thus, in Kant’s mind, immoral. But what does rational permissibility mean?
Simply put, it refers to the intrinsic quality of an action that it is objectively and necessarily rational.

SYNTHESIS
• The idea of a transcendent good prior to all being resurfaces in Aquinas in the form of the good and
loving God, who is Himself the fullness of being and of goodness; as Aquinas puts it, God is that which
essentially is and is essentially good. (Perfect Good, Absolute Good, Imperfect Good)
• However, while beings are good because they are created by God, the goodness possessed by being
remains imperfect.
• The particular form determines the materiality which makes a being a certain kind of being; the unique
way that we have been created can be called our nature.

RATIONALISM (Immanuel Kant) – is any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification.
In more technical terms, it is a method or a theory in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual
and deductive reasoning. Kant was a rationalist.

ETERNAL LAW – is the plan of God in creating the universe and in assigning to each creature therein their
specific nature. For St. Aquinas, the “exemplar of divine wisdom as directing all actions and movements.” For
St. Augustine, it is the “divine reason or the will of God commanding that the natural order of things be preserved
and forbidding that it be disturbed.”
• Eternal – It governs all the creatures of God from the beginning until the end of time
• Immutable/Unchangeable – not subject to change and it always governs all creature in accordance
with God’s plans.
• Absolutely Universal – applicable to all creatures. No one is exempted.
NATURAL LAW – contends that human acts are derived from human nature, thus binding upon human society.
In contrast and understood by people with the aid of reason. It asserts that moral standards that governs human
behavior are objectively derived from the nature of human beings and the nature of the worlds.
• Universal - it is a constitutive element of human nature and is applicable to all precisely because of
shared human nature.
• Obligatory – The natural law is human nature, calling everyone to actualize, to live according to its
basic demands (for Kant: this natural urge is the categorical imperative – duty that ought to be fulfilled).
• Recognizable – it is imprinted in human nature and human beings have the light of reason to know.
“Synderesis” – “Do good and avoid evil, honor your father and mother, Be honest!” etc. There is no
excuse on the part of human person by not following the Natural Law since s/he has the capacity to
recognize and realize with his/her interaction with other creatures.
• Immutable/Unchangeable – Since Natural Law is in accordance with the divine plan or the Eternal
Law, it will never be change or is not subject to change.

HUMAN LAWS
• Conformity to the Divine Laws - this is because all legitimate authority emanates from God. Thus,
no human authority may willfully contradict God’s will as manifest in the Natural Law or the Divine Positive
Laws.
• Promotion for the Common Good – The common good is the aggregate of goods, spiritual and
material necessary for the promotion of life.
• Must be Just and Not Discriminate of Certain Individuals or Groups – all laws must apply
proportionately to all members of the society so that the needs and requirements of each are served.
• Practicable – must be simple to provide easy compliance. Impossible laws are not just.
• Regulate External Action Only – no human authority has the power to bind the mind and the hearts
of men. Thus, laws are made for men and not men made for the laws. Laws must serve human’s best
intentions and not stifle his/her creativity.
• Fallible – Human legislators are liable to commit error. It is the capacity of the human being to commit
mistakes. Besides, laws must be dynamic, allowing for adjustments in accordance with emergent ideas
for development.
Infallible – capacity to any error (God)

LAWS – an ordinances of reason, promulgated for the common good by one who has change of society (St.
Aquinas)
• Divine Positive Law - promulgated or made known to us by special command of God e.g. The
Decalogue of Moses
• Human Positive Laws- promulgated by a legitimate human authority e.g. Constitution, Code of Civil
Laws, The Laws of the Church, the Catholic Church are found in the Canon Law.
• Both Divine and Human Laws originated from the Eternal Law.

KINDS OF HAPPINESS
• Natural Happiness – is attained through the use of our natural powers, potentials, and skills. This is
just temporary forms of happiness. All earthly goods are temporarily for the happiness of Man.
• Supernatural Happiness – is not only the use of natural powers, potentials and skills but with the aid
of God’s grace. This is absolute as it can totally suffice all human belongings. Absolute goods comes from
God is permanent.
Natural Powers: Intellects
Intellect: Logical, Skills, Crafts
ARISTOTLE’S LEVELS OF HAPPINESS
• Level 1: Laetus (Happiness from material objects) – This kind of happiness can be intense but it
is short-lived. There is a limit to the pleasure you get from the materials.
• Level 2: Felix/Ego gratification (Happiness from comparison: being better, more admired
than others etc.) – It is attained when we won a competition. For some it’s everything, for others it’s
just a very minor and very short-lived pleasure.
• Level 3: Beatitudo (Happiness from doing good for others and making the world a better
place) – It is based on the human desire for connection, goodness, meaning, compassion, friendship
and unity. It is more lasting and provides a deeper feeling of meaning. The limit is that it can be said to
be human imperfections.
• Level 4: Sublime Beatitudo (Ultimate, Perfect Happiness) - it is the most difficult to describe. It
involves a search for fullness and perfection. It has to do with finding the right balance between other
levels.