Chapter

HUMAN ACTS

1:
Rev. Fr. Anthony George Bergonio
 Chapter 1:
Chapter Description:
This chapter studies the
human act itself, defines it,
classifies its varieties,
discerns its essential
elements, and discusses the
things that may modify the
human act and make it less
human
 Chapter 1:
Article 1. The human act
itself.
Article 2. The Voluntariness
of Human Act.
Article 3. The Modifiers of
Human Acts.
 Chapter 1:
Article 1. The human
act itself.
a. Definition
b. Classification
c. Constituents
 Definition of
Human Act
A human act is an act which proceeds from the
deliberate free will of man. In a wide sense, the term
Human Act means any sort of activity, internal or
external, bodily or spiritual, performed by a human being.
Ethics, however, employs the term in a stricter sense, and
calls human only those acts that are proper to man as man.
DISTINCTION
BETWEEN
Human Act
and
Acts of Man
Distinction
A human act is an act which proceeds from the deliberate free
will of man. In a wide sense, the term Human Act means any
sort of activity, internal or external, bodily or spiritual,
performed by a human being. Ethics, however, employs the term
in a stricter sense, and calls human only those acts that are
proper to man as man.
Human acts only those acts that proceed from deliberate (i.e.,
advertent, knowing) and freely willing human being
Distinction
Man is an animal, and he has many activities in
common with brutes. Thus, man feels, hears, sees,
employs the senses of taste and smell, is influenced by
bodily tendencies or appetites. Man's animal acts of
sensation (i. e., use of the senses) and appetition (i. e.,
bodily tendencies), as well as acts that man performs
indeliberately or with- out advertence and the exercise of
free choice, are called acts of man.
Classification of Human
Human acts may be classified under the following
heads: i. Acts
• Their complete or adequate cause; and ii.
• Their relation to the dictates of reason.
 The Adequate Cause of
Human Acts
While all human acts have their source in man's free
rational nature, there are some acts that begin and are
perfected in the will itself, and the rest begin in the will
and are perfected by other faculties under control of the
will.
The Adequacy of Human
Thus, some human acts find their adequate cause in the
Acts that we speak of the will
will alone (always remembering
of advertent, knowing man, i. e., of the deliberate will);
and these are called elicited acts. Other human acts do
not find their adequate cause in the simple will-act, but
are perfected by the action of mental or bodily powers
under the control of the will, or, so to speak, under orders
from the will and these acts are called commanded acts.
 Elicited Acts are the
• Wish
• Intention following
• Consent
• Election
• Use
• Fruition
 Wish
The simple love of anything; the first tendency of the
will towards a thing, whether this thing be reliable or not.

E.g. “I wish it would rain.”

“I do so long to see you.”
“I should like to go to Europe next summer.”
 Intention
The purposive tendency of the will towards the thing
regarded as reliable, whether the thing is actually done or
not. Intention is distinguished as actual, virtual, habitual,
and interpretative intention.

E.g. “I am going to Europe next summer.”

 Consent
The selection of the will of the precise means to be
employed (consented to) in carrying out an intention.

E.g. “I may go to Europe either by ship or by airplane,

I cannot go by both simultaneously but must elect one of
the means. By election I choose to sail on a certain day,
from a certain port.”
 Election
The employment by the will of powers (of body, mind,
or both) to carry out its intention by means elected

E.g. “If I intend to go to a neighboring town, and elect

to walk thither, I exercise the will act of use by putting my
body in motion.”
 Fruition
The enjoyment of a thing willed and done; the will’s act
of satisfaction in intention fulfilled.
Commanded Acts are the
• External following
• Internal

• Mixed
 Internal
Acts done by internal mental powers under command of
the will.

E.g. Effort to remember,

Conscious reasoning,
Nerving oneself to meet an issue,
Effort to control anger,
Deliberate use of imagination in visualizing a scene.
 External
Acts effected by bodily powers under command of the
will.

E.g. deliberate walking.

eating, writing, speaking
Such acts as walking and
eating are very often acts of man, but they become
human acts when done with advertence and intention.
 Mixed
Acts that involve the employment of bodily powers and
mental powers.

E.g. study, which involves use of intellect, and

use of eyes in reading the lesson.
 Note:
Of course, all human acts are internal inasmuch as all
originate in the will which elicits or commands them. Again, all
external acts are mixed inasmuch as the outer activity which
perfects them is but the expression and fulfilment of the interior
act of will. But, for sake of simplicity, we call those human acts
external which are perfected or completed by the exterior
powers of body; and we call mixed only those acts which
involve the use of bodily powers as well as internal powers
distinct from the will..
 The Relation of Human Act to
Human acts are Reason
either in agreement or in
disagreement with the dictates of reason, and this
relation (agreement or disagreement) with reason
constitutes their morality. On the score of their
morality, or relation to reason, human acts are:
 The Relation of Human Act to
•
right reason ;
Reason
Good, when they are in harmony with the dictates of

• Evil, when they are in opposition to these dictates;

• Indifferent, when-they stand in no positive relation to
the dictates of reason. A human act that is indifferent in
itself becomes good or evil according to the
circumstances which affect its performance, especially
the end in view (or motive or purpose) of the agent.
 Constituents of
Human Act the
In order that an act be Human, it must possess three
essential qualities: it must be knowing, free, and
voluntary. Hence we list the essential elements, or
constituents, of the human act as : 1. Knowledge; ii.
Freedom; iii. Voluntariness.
 Knowledge
Knowledge-A human act proceeds from
the deliberate will; it requires deliberation.
Now "deliberation" does not mean quiet,
slow, painstaking action. It means merely
advertence, or knowledge in intellect of
what one is about and what this means.
 Freedom
A human act is an act determined (elicited or
commanded) by the will and by nothing else. It is an
act, therefore, that is under control of the will, an act
that the will can do or leave undone. Such an act is
called a free act. Thus every human act must be
free. In other words, freedom is an essential element
of the human act element of the human act.
 Voluntariness
The Latin word for will is “voluntas”, and from this
word we derive the English terms, voluntary and
voluntariness. To say, therefore, that a human act must be
voluntary, or must have voluntariness, is simply to say
that it must be a will-act. This we already know by the
very definition of the human act. Voluntariness is the
formal essential quality of the human act, and for it to be
present, there must ordinarily be both knowledge and
freedom in the agent.
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