Chapter 6

The powers involved in moral acts

182. As we have seen, there are two kinds of moral powers: those moral in themselves and those moral by participation. The former direct the practical judgment, the latter regulate affections and external acts. External moral acts presuppose the power of acting externally, which becomes a moral power when it is moved by moral affectivity. Moral affectivity presupposes the power of affectivity, which becomes a moral power when moved by practical esteem. But the power of practical esteem or judgment does not become moral because it is itself the moral power. We must now see which powers are involved with the power regulating the practical judgment.

183. The spirit is endowed with intellect in so far as it sees being. When being is used as moral law, the intellect is appropriately called moral intellect. Moral intellect is therefore the faculty of intellect dependent on the first moral law.

184. Reason is the faculty enabling us to apply being, to render perceptions intellective, to separate ideas from these perceptions, and to integrate and unite the ideas in judgments and reasonings. The power to apply being as moral law can be called moral reason. Moral reason is the power to form perceptions and ideas as moral laws, to deduce secondary laws from the first, universal law, and to define just and unjust actions. In other words, it is the faculty for making moral judgments.

185. Reason is called eudaimonological when it is concerned with human happiness. It is the power to apply being as a rule for judging our own subjective good.

186. Practical reason is the capacity of voluntary reflection to form decisive esteem of an object, and consequently, of an action concerning it; an esteem followed immediately by decisive love, which itself is followed by the external act(60).

The power of forming the decisive esteem or practical judgment, in which the affection is rooted, vacillates in its preference between moral and eudaimonological reasons. After considering them both, it makes the practical judgment or esteem, which activates the affection.

187. Practical reason acts as a kind of arbiter between the utility and the probity of actions. It judges what is better for us to do here and now, and is based on moral as well as eudaimonological reasons. Hence both ethical and eudaimonological reason are included in practical reason. Both are theoretical and speculative and reduced to practice by an appropriate function of the spirit. Properly speaking it is this function of the spirit that constitutes practical reason, and it produces its effect when a human being is about to act. He compares the moral and eudaimonological motives, weighs their importance, and finally pronounces his interior operative judgment. Affection and action follow immediately. This final judgment, immediately preceding human action, is called 'practical' to distinguish it from 'speculative' judgment. 'Practical reason' is the faculty controlling it.

188. The judgments made by moral reason are secondary laws contained in the first, supreme law as species in the genus. For example, I make a judgment of moral reason when I judge that an intelligent nature is worthy of such respect that I cannot consider it as a means to my own end without offending its dignity, as a being having its own end. In making this judgment moral reason uses the idea of being as its rule to measure subsistent beings and determine the degree, mode and quantity of their being. It sees that intellective being is of such a mode and nature that it contains the excellence of 'end'. This excellence places the intellective being above all non-intellective beings, which are ordered to it as means, and not it to them.

189. If we consider the obligatory force manifested in this judgment of moral reason, the judgment becomes a decree or moral law. The truth of this is seen in the following formula: 'Intelligent being has in itself the nature of end, and therefore must be acknowledged as such'.

190. If I make a practical judgment based on eudaimonological, non-moral motives, I sin, and certain affections and immoral actions follow. When I sin, I am conscious of sinning, and experience an interior bitterness. What is this consciousness or conscience, and where does it come from?

I am conscious of sinning because I feel the force of the law, that is, of direct knowledge, which is law in me. Instead of assenting to it as I should, I violate it; I judge myself, declaring my practical judgment evil and immoral.

191. I call this judgment of self moral conscience, and I agree with popular opinion that it is not a practical judgment. It is in fact 'a speculative judgment on the morality of my practical judgment and its consequences'.
We say we must act according to our conscience. This can only mean that we must appreciate and judge things for what they are worth, love them proportionately, and then act according to this well ordered love. Conscience, therefore, is not a practical judgment; it is a speculative, moral judgment determining how the practical judgment must be made.

192. It not only accompanies but even precedes the practical judgment, indicating how it must be made. And when the practical judgment has been made, conscience approves or disapproves of it. This explains the traditional distinction between antecedent, concomitant and consequent conscience.
This clear definition of conscience could help, I believe, to remove much of the obscurity and uncertainty found in writings on ethics.

Notes

(60) The faculties of intellect and reason are unique, but have different functions. For the sake of brevity and simplicity, these two general faculties are commonly divided according to their different functions into subordinate, special faculties. Thus instead of using the awkward phrase 'reason in so far as it makes judgments about moral things', we abbreviate it simply to 'moral reason'. [. . .]