2.

The Human Act

Ethics deals with human actions: these are its material object. The fundamental ethical
concepts (goodness, morality, norm, virtue, sin, etc.) refer in one way or another to action, and
can only be correctly understood in relation to it and to the concepts we use to study it. In this
sense, Ethics presupposes a theory of human action.
We noticed that Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics begins with a simple declaration of a fact of
experience: “Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to
aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all
things aim.” “Good” then, is what someone “aims for.” The concept of the good is given through
the experience that in everything we do—art, research, action, choice—we are going after
something. This aim—what we are looking for—we call good. The concept of the good is
therefore identical with the concept of “the goal of striving.” Goods—and this means practical
goods—are goals of striving, of appetition, of aiming at. And whatever we do, we strive after a
good, we aim at something.
Some clarification is needed about the concept of “practical good.” A car or a computer are
“things.” And as things they are “good” in several respects. But only to the extent that appetition
or striving meets with these objects in a practical way (to want to get one, to want to steal one)
does a car or a computer become a practical good. This kind of goodness is not founded in the
thing-ness of these objects, but rather in their relationship toward a willing. The practical good in
this case is no longer the car or the computer as such but rather their possession. The practical
good is not “car” but “having a car.” And the corresponding actions that can be formed within
the perspective of such a practical good would be “buying a car” or “stealing a car.” Something
analogous holds for persons: they become practical goods insofar as they are objects of acts of
appetition and actions (as, e.g., objects of goodwill, love, respect, contractual obligations, or
even of actions such as “get information from someone,” or “bribe someone,” or “use someone
for one’s own purpose,” etc.).
We should now look more closely and clarify the interconnection between rationality and
the purposefulness of actions. Let us imagine a man who deposits money into a bank account.
We could ask him “what” he is doing. And we have the answer to this question when we have
information about the “why” or “what for” of this action: “I’m putting some money away.” Or:
“I’m saving some money.” Or: “I’m engaged in laundering some dirty money.” Or: “I’m paying
a bill.” And so on. This is intentionality: a relationship between a doing and a “why” or “what
for” of this doing, where the “why” is what specifies “what” someone is really doing.
That in this case the “why someone does something” is actually the “what someone does”
may also be illustrated another way. If we see someone lying on a bed in the middle of the day
and ask him, “What are you doing?” and he answers us, “I’m lying on my bed,” we would
probably consider his answer evasive. What we really meant when we posed the question was,
“Why are you lying on your bed?” The answer should then be something like, “I’m just resting”
or “I’m doing yoga.” This would mean: “What I am doing is the following: I am lying on my bed
to get some rest.” or “I am lying here to focus my attention.” This answer is a clarification of
intention, or the expression of an intention. That is exactly what the questioner wanted when he
asked his question.

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 We are not yet including here intentions in the sense of purposes, like “to steal a car, in
order to bring an injured person to a hospital,” or “putting money away, in order to finance my
children’s education.” We mean instead the intention that constitutes a definite action in the first
place as a meaningful “human action,” and therewith as an action that can be morally qualified.
This is the intention that forms as it were the lowest threshold for even speaking about a human
action. “To steal a car” is already an action that can be so defined. But not, however, “To open a
car door with a wire,” because in this case it is not at all clear what someone is doing (it could be
my own car, because I have accidentally locked my keys in it, or it could simply be car theft). In
order to know what action is going on, only an answer to the question “what for” will bring
clarification: “He is stealing a car.” This is the kind of intentionality that concerns us.
The expression “lowest threshold” can be explained as follows: “human actions” are always
chosen, willed actions. For an action to be willed or chosen at all, it requires a fundamental or
primary intentional structuring. “To lie on a bed” cannot be “willed” or carried out at all in this
rudimentary (nonintentional) form. If someone chooses to lie on a bed, he does so “under a
description,” which is the description of a basic intention; for example, “to get some rest.” We
are speaking here of basic intentional actions whose intentional content is identical with what is
referred to as the “object” of an action.
Intentionality implies practical reason. Birds, for example, do not have reason, and
consequently they do not know what they are doing when they bring together twigs and moss
and such to build a nest. Intentionality characterizes that kind of appetition or striving that
includes a twofold work of reason: knowledge of a goal and knowledge of the connection
between “that which one does” (in the purely physical sense, e.g., “opening a car door” or
“collecting twigs”) and the goal of this, the “what for” (“stealing a car” or “building a nest”).
Only both together form what we can call a “human action,” and allows us to identify the real
content, the object, that is to say, the “what” that is relevant to praxis. Such action is called
voluntary action. Human action is therefore in essence (1) voluntary action, (2) intentional
action, and (3) action based on practical reason. These are all coterminous.
Kantian Ethics

The perspective we are adopting in studying the human act is the perspective of our actions:
it is the perspective of the “first person.” Aristotelian ethics and the ethics of Thomas Aquinas
adopt this perspective. I am considering my own acts. I try to find out what goes on within me as
I do a human act. It is necessary to emphasize this because the entire tradition of modern ethics
and especially its major types—Kantian duty-ethics and Utilitarianism—are ethics of the “third
person.” As surprising as this may sound, these are ethics of absolute objectivity.
Kant believed that the goodness or evil of a human act does not depend on the object of the
action or on its consequences but on whether or not it conforms to a maxim that can be
universalized and so following it we fulfill what is for us a duty.

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 As Kant puts it, “Practical good is… that which determines the will by means of
representations of reason, hence not by subjective causes but objectively, that is, from grounds
that are valid for every rational being as such.” Kant looked down on subjectivity and wanted to
ground ethics on something objective, something universal. The starting point for Kantian ethics
is in fact just the exclusion of the perspective of the “interested” acting subject for the sake of the
“disinterested” and objective commands of reason. Only the universally valid can ever be
morally valid. Only a maxim of action capable of being willed as a universal law is moral, but
not what corresponds to the inclinations, appetition, or strivings of the acting subject. Kant
thought that this will make ethics subjective. Duty is the command of reason, which is different
compared to the good that is conditioned by one’s inclinations. The former is objective, the latter
subjective.
Again, Kantian-inspired discourse-ethics only recognizes intersubjectively communicative
and consensus-oriented action as sufficient for moral significance. Discourse-ethics is the type of
ethics that concedes normative validity only to such claims of value that can be accepted without
coercion by all concerned. It claims to subordinate merely subjective interest to the objectivity of
a consensus that has been reached by discussion (and so the adjective discourse) and with certain
qualifications this makes very good sense for ethics at a political level.
Utilitarian Ethics

Utilitarianism is the philosophy that thinks that an action is right or good if it promotes
happiness. But it equates happiness with pleasure. It gets its name from the concept of utility
proposed by Jeremy Bentham: utility is that property in any object, whereby it tends to produce
benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness or to prevent the happening of mischief, pain,
evil, or unhappiness to the party whose interest is considered.
Utilitarianism, too, in all its varieties, is an ethics of objectivity: in this case the objectivity
of the “calculation” (or “weighing”) of advantages, consequences, and goods. This theory treats
the acting person, in a way, from the outside, as the disinterested producer of the best possible
world situation. It approaches the person—to use the expression of an American philosopher,
Thomas Nagel—by a “view from nowhere.” For example: even if it utterly repels me—on the
basis, say, of my upbringing and the convictions and feelings I might have—I might be obliged
to kill a human being, according to utilitarian standards if I could thereby save the lives of ten
others. I might be justified in doing so if, according to my estimation, the overall balance of
consequences would optimize the world situation.
The Intentionality of Human Acts

In every action, whether it be producing or another kind of action such as knowing,

scientific research, political activity, raising children, teaching, eating, playing tennis, and so on
we pursue something that is not simply “this action,” but something that gives the action its
practical meaning.
We can describe such goals as “bringing human capacities to fulfillment,” “learning the
truth,” “earning one’s livelihood,” “resting,” “getting richer,” “exercising power,” “serving
justice,” and so on. Goals like these, which we can actually call practical goals and practical
goods, have the peculiar characteristic that the result of their being attained remains in the agent
because they are not a product or a condition outside of the one who acts, but instead fulfill (or
degrade) the doer himself.

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The Self-referential Character of Free Acts

In fact, even the mere striving as such changes the one who strives. This is precisely the
perspective of praxis, and consequently the perspective of morality: “moral action” is not “one’s
attitude to objects” or “affecting something outside of ourselves,” “producing,” but rather, the
realization of what we can be, to realize one’s own human nature. Good action makes a person a
good person; through just actions we become just men. In moral action we change first and
foremost the little part of the world that we are.
The Inner Structure of the Human Act

Rational knowledge involves a discourse, the spiritual movement from one term to another.
We get to know things by steps, from one fact to another, from premises to conclusions.
Speculative progress consists in acquiring new truths from those that are already known. In the
practical order, an analogous relationship is established between different moments of the
workings of practical reason and the will: from the act of wanting not to gain weight we go on to
deliberate how to reach this goal and we decide to exercise and to follow a diet.
St. Thomas Aquinas, assuming and completing the analyzes of Aristotle, St. Augustine, and
St. John Damascene, developed a general picture of the various levels of acts of the will.
After the first apprehension of an end there follows a complacency of will that is called love.
After this there is a judgment that evaluates the possibility and the way to reach it, and then
follows a firm decision to obtain it through certain actions. This decision is called intention.
Moved by this intention, the intelligence deliberates about the means (ordaining actions
regarding useful goods) suitable to achieve or perform that end, to which the will may or may not
give its consent. The intelligence specifies which of these actions are the most appropriate and
the ones that can be put into practice immediately (the judgment of choice), and the inner
decision is made to do so (the choice, electio).
When the person has decided what will be done here and now, the intelligence has to
organize and coordinate the activity of the various operative faculties (rational imperium), and
according to this plan the will moves the other faculties (usus activus, active use of the will and
usus passivus, passive use of the other faculties).
Then follows achievement of the end and there is joy when the end is possessed. The first
apprehension, love, the intention, and the judgment that precedes it, as well as joy or enjoyment
at the end are acts that have as their object the end, what is desirable in and of itself. Among
these acts: love, intention and fruition are elicited acts of the will. The consent, the choice and
active use are elicited acts of the will that have as their object the ordered actions, that is, the
actions that are ordered to the end, ad finem.
Freedom and the Human Act

The human act is characterized by freedom. Because man is intelligent, he can understand
the ends of his actions and the means to obtain them. He is not constrained to choose one means
or way of obtaining his ends and so he is free. His freedom arises from praxis which is the
striving man undertakes to obtain practical goods.

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 In the freedom of the human will, we can distinguish two dimensions: self-determination and
intentionality. Let’s start with the first one. The idea of self-determination faithfully expresses
the essence of the human act or the free act. We say that in every free action it’s me (and not
another person or an internal need) who decides or makes a determination, and that, in addition, I
decide, or I determine myself. The first aspect (“I am the one who decides and not another in my
place”) it is spontaneously evoked by the idea of freedom. But the second is not less important:
in any free action, also if the action that falls on another person or on an external matter, I also
decide about myself, I modify or I forge my moral being, my “ethos.”
He who deprives a fellow man of his life makes himself a murderer; he who tells a lie makes
himself a liar and he who steals, a thief. The free act always has as its “object” the person who
acts (the activity of the will is self-referential) not in the same sense as “what is willed,” “what is
done” or “what is hated” is the intentional object of the will, but in the sense that free action falls
on the agent and modifies the doer of the act somehow.
The free act actuates the personal structure of self-possession and self-control: to the same
degree that being a person implies self-possession and self-control, personal action is the
disposing of oneself. This happens whenever there is a truly free action (a truly completely
involuntary action does not affect the agent’s ethos), which shows that the second aspect (“I
decide on myself”) it has its root in the first (“I am the one who decides”). The will is the faculty
of personal self-determination. If there is no true act of the will (involuntary action) there is no
self-determination.
The second dimension of free will goes in the line of its intentionality. We already know that
intentionality is the opening or the direction of the will towards its object. From the intentional
point of view, the will is the faculty which the person uses to achieve his goal and, in that
perspective, freedom implies that the objects presented by the intelligence does not determine the
act of the will with necessity.
If now we consider the unity of these two dimensions, we will say that the human person
decides about himself (self-determination) by deliberately orienting himself towards certain
objects (intentionality). Since these objects are known and willed by reason of their goodness,
because what is willed is what has been previously known as good and fitting, the person, when
he works, determines himself according to certain values, identifying himself with them, and
appropriating them. The person “becomes” what he wills: when he practices justice, he becomes
just. When he practices injustice, he becomes unjust.
Freedom, Truth, Goodness and Responsibility

And so, freedom is intrinsically related to the truth and goodness. The good that a person
pursues will be a true good and not just an apparent one when that good is based on the truth
about the human person, about respect for his dignity and what is reasonable for him to seek,
what is rational.
To impute is to attribute an action to a man, as its author. Imputation is the judgment by
which we attribute something to someone. Responsibility is the imputable quality of an action or,
perhaps more exactly, the state of man as the subject of the action, by virtue of which that action
may be attributed to him as its author.

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 If the action can be attributed as meritorious or as a moral fault, we have moral
responsibility. There is also a legal responsibility, to which sometimes moral responsibility may
not correspond: someone may be obliged, under the civil law or the judgment of a judge, to
compensate for harm caused by him in a non-voluntary way, and yet he may have not committed
a moral fault.
According to what we know, we can say directly that only free actions are morally
imputable: man can only respond (give reason), before himself and before others, of those
actions and only those that have been planned and organized by himself, that is, he feels
responsible only for the actions of which he himself is the author. We can further study some
conditions and circumstances of the subject that modify or can modify the freedom of action, and
therefore its moral responsibility. These are conditions or circumstances from different sources
that directly or indirectly affect at least one of the essential elements of the free act, which are
formal knowledge of the end and voluntariness. These can decrease or even nullifying freedom
and responsibility.