Mark Adrian Franz M.

Ureta THEO 13-C3

Individual Reflection Paper No.1 Fr. Dacanay

After the lectures, what struck me the most was the moral implications Conscience 2
has in making judgments. O’Connell describes it as a process of moral reasoning with the
effort to achieve a specific perception of values, concrete, individual values. The lectures
\show that although we desire to do good, the concrete good is not always clear; and that our
conscience must adapt to our changing circumstances. Reflecting on these facts made me
realize there are many philosophical underpinnings in the struggle to find “the good to be
done”; it is prone to disagreement and error. It is not universal since our judgments adapt to
the norms and circumstances of our time. While we have the best intentions in our
decision-making, we do not always reap the desired results. I found this important since in
doing good, we cannot have a disinterested conscience. Our judgments must be based on
facts and sincerity, not on bias and pride if we are to help others do the same. It raised a
personal curiosity about the existence of an objective good. This reflection paper aims to dive
deeper into my experience of familial division and how it changed my outlook on the “good
to be done”.

An experience I’ve reflected on was the familial division we had with some of our
family and friends during the elections. The majority of us voted for Leni and we participated
in numerous outreach and educational activities during the campaign. Voting for her felt like
a no-brainer for us while some of our family and friends chose to vote for BBM despite the
negative evidence against him. This led most of us to quarrel and cut each other off entirely.
In our group chats, people were slandering each other, calling them either stupid or
uneducated while aggressively “educating” each other on who to vote for. In this scenario,
each party had their strong claims on what the good to be done was. The problem was that in
this stubbornness to defend one’s stance on the “objective good”, we lost relationships just
because no one wanted to listen to one another. The underpinning I realized was the “good to
be done” was determined by one’s own subjective experiences and norms.

Through these experiences, I realized that while we may claim that our judgments are
correct and others are wrong. Everyone makes these decisions through sincere discernment
and reflection despite our varying conclusions. What makes our pursuit for a correct
conscience/judgment wrong is if we are not willing to either (1) amend them or (2) listen to
how others achieved theirs. It made me realize that the dignity of the human person lies
within his unique and complex ability to reason, reflect, and create judgments based on it.
Unless we engage in sincere dialogue with one another, it will not matter whether our
judgments are more “right” than others. Conscience 2 necessitates sincere dialogue,
preserving human dignity through mutual understanding and respect while not compromising
the objective good.