HUMAN

ACT
Objectives
What is Human Act?
• The human activity of man as man.
• Actions done consciously and freely by the agent or by
man.
• Act of rationality of man.
• Involves understanding and free will.
• “An act which proceeds from the deliberate free will of
man” (Glenn3)
• The agent becomes responsible of countable and such act.
• An Human act can be morally good or morally evil.
Elements of Human Act

Knowledge – The agent has the intellectual

knowledge, agent has awareness of the means
to employ in performing an act.

Freedom – agent does an act under the control

of his will.

Voluntaries – requires the presence of

knowledge and freedom willfull act.
Classifications of Human Act

ELICITED COMMANDED
ACTS ACTS

• A will act begun • Body mind acts

and completed in which are done to
the will without carry out the
bodily movement. elicited act of the
subject.
Wish – the simple love of anything.
Intention – the purposive tendency of the will towards a thing.
Consent – the acceptance by the will of the means necessary to
carry out intention.
Election – the selection by the will of the precise means to be
employed in carrying out an intention.
Use – the employment by the will of powers to carry out its
intention by the means elected.
Fruition – the enjoyment of a thing willed and done.
Internal – acts done by internal mental powers under command of the will.
External – acts affected by bodily powers under command of the will
Mixed – acts that involve the employment of bodily powers and mental powers.

The Relation of Human Acts to Reason

Good – when they are in harmony with the dictates of right
reason.
Evil – when they are in opposition to these dictates
Indifferent – when they stand in no positive relation to the
dictates of reason.
The object of a human act is that which the one acting sets out to do
as distinguished from his ultimate purpose in doing it.

The circumstances – are the element which are distinct from the act
itself but which change or modify its morality.

The purpose (or end) of a human act – is the intention which prompts
one to perform such an act.
Voluntariness of Human Act
a.) Degrees of Voluntariness

Perfect – it is present in the human act when the performer fully knows and
fully intends the act.
Imperfect – it is present when there is some defect in the agent’s knowledge,
intention, or in both
Simple – it is present in a human act performed, whether the agent likes or
dislikes doing it.
Conditional – is present in the agent’s wish to do something other than
which he is actually doing.
Voluntariness of Human Act

Direct – is present in a human act of doing, performing.

Indirect – is present in that human act which is the
foreseen result of another act directly willed.
Positive – is present in a human act of doing,
performing.
Negative – is present in a human act of omitting, refraining
from doing.

B.) Indirect Voluntariness – is present in that human act

which is an effect, foreseen or foreseeable, of another act
directly willed.
Indirect volunary act
• an act which is not intended for its own sake
but with merely follows as a regrettable
consequence of an action directly willed.

• Refers to an act which is desired not as an end

in itself but as a foreseen effect or
consequences of an act.

• Refers to an act which is the foreseen

consequence of another act directly intended.
Modifiers of Human act

This refers to things that may affect the human acts essential qualities
and thus lessen the moral character of the human act, and
consequently diminish the responsibility of the agent.

There are 5 modifier

• Ignorance
• Passions or Concupiscence
• Fear
• Violence
• Habit
Modifiers of Human act
5 Modifiers of Human act
1. IGNORANCE – the absence of knowledge, lack
of knowledge about thing in a being capable of
knowing.

Ignorance of the law

Absence or lack of knowledge of the existence of a
certain law.
Example: in rushing up to the university, a college
professor does not know that there’s a “ one way”
traffic law along the path that he is traversing.
Classified into:
• Invincible ignorance that ignorance which a man is not able to dispel
by such ordinary diligence and reasonable efforts.
• Vincible ignorance the knowledge CAN be acquired by ordinary
effort, but was not acquired because of negligence or intentionally not
acquire.
• Suppine crash when hardly effort had been used to dispel
ignorance.
• Affective Ignorance occurs when a person positively wants to be
ignorant in order to plead innocent to a charge of guilt.
5 Modifiers of Human act
2. PASSIONS OR CONCUPISCENCE Passions are
strong tendencies towards the possession of
something good or towards the avoidance of
something evil.

The object of somebody’s intense interest or

enthusiasm or overpowering emotions or a sudden
outburst of emotion.

Passions are neither good nor evil, but indiferrent

(without bias or preference for one person, group, or
thing rather than another)
5 Modifiers of Human act
3. FEAR – is a disturbance of the mind
caused by the thought of a threatening evil.

• It is the apprehension by the mind of an

impending evil.

• It is an unpleasant feeling of anxiety or

apprehension caused by the presence or
anticipation of danger.
5 Modifiers of Human act
5 Modifiers of Human act
4. VIOLENCE OR COMPULSION – is the
application of external force on a person by another for
the purpose of compelling him to do something against
his will. It consists in the actual application of physical
force to extort something from a person.

Principle – Violence Human act resulting from violence

are involuntary by themselves. › But we are held
morally responsible for all acts of the will itself even
when the body is suffering violence.
5 Modifiers of Human act

Example: The body of a woman can be violated (rape), but her will
or internal consent may remain inviolate or she may internally
consent. Active resistance should always be offered to an unjust
aggressor.
However, if resistance is impossible or if there is a serious threat to
ones’s life, a person confronted by violence can always offer intrinsic
resistance by witholding consent; that is enough to save his/her
moral integrity.
 5 Modifiers of Human act

5. HABIT – is a constant and easy way of doing

things acquired by the repetition of the same act. It is
an established action or pattern of behavior that is
repeated so often that it becomes typical of
somebody, although he or she may be unaware of it.

• Synonymous to addiction, dependency, fixation,

obsession, weakness, custom, routine, practice,
tradition, convention, pattern
5 Modifiers of Human act
Norms of Human act
Objective norm is the standard for an objective evaluation of the
human acts. The moral criterion presupposes the existence of an
objective moral ‘standard’ or norm with which the particular act can
be compared. With the moral norm, human beings can test the
morality of the act and judge whether it is good or evil.

1.LAW - ordinance of reason promulgated for the common good

one who has charged of a society ( St. Thomas aquinas)
2. CONSCIENCE – practical judgement of reason upon an
individual act as good and to be performed, or as evil and to be
avoided.
Norms of Human act
• Human acts are directed to their true and by LAW and law is
applied by conscience.
• Hence law and conscience are directives or norms of human acts.

The Morality of Human act

The morality of acts is defined by the choices that
one makes in accordance with the authentic good,
which is based on the eternal law that has a desire
for God as our end goal.
The Morality of Human act
A human act is thus morally good when we make choices coherent
to our true good and brings us closer to God.
5 Modifiers of Human act