Justice and Ethics: Human Dignity and Catholic Social Thought

This set of vocabulary flashcards covers key concepts from the lecture including the definitions of human dignity, theories of value and reality, the distinctions between different types of goods, and the foundations of Catholic social ethics.

dignity / human dignity

• Worth or value beyond price

• human life is sacred and all people are made in the image and likeness of God

• intrinsic - due to species membership and as we have reason and free choice

• acquired - through recognising our self-world and social status in relationships with others

Ontological Dignity

The dignity belonging to the person simply because he or she exists and is willed, created, and loved by God - intrinsic dignity

Theory of Value

• A framework (conscious or unconscious) used to answer the question "what is good?" which is linked to an underlying understanding of reality.

• Your anthropology (i.e. how you think about what it means to be human) affects how you think about morality and ethics and what is good

louis janssens

• belgian theological ethicist

• argues ethical reflection must begin with “the human person understood fully and as a whole”

• talked about ‘openness to God’ as a fundamental feature of human beings

self-transcendence

when you have experienced losing a sense of your own presence and subjectivity in the world only to find yourself coming back to yourself

aspects of every human

• A subject, embodied, being-in-the-world

• in relationship to others

• in relationship to institutions

• in relationship to time and history

• open to God

• equal and original

Instrumental Good

A good that is used for achieving some other good.

Intrinsic Good

A good that is considered good in itself.

Materialism

The theory that all reality is reducible to matter and physical processes, implying there is nothing but matter.

Idealism

The theory that all reality is reducible to mind or spirit, and the physical world is an illusion.

Catholic Christian Value Theory

• both material and spiritual are good

• goods can be both instrumentally good and intrinsically good

• subjective experience is important and there are objectively right/wrong answers to moral questions

• both the individual and the community are good - includes human society and natural world

The Greater Good

The greatest net positive outcome from a rational calculus of goods and bads, characteristic of Utilitarianism or consequentialist reasoning.

The Common Good

• Second Vatican Council as "the sum of those conditions of social life which allow social groups and their individual members relatively thorough and ready access to their own fulfilment."

• human life is social, all ppl should have their basic needs for wellbeing met

Ethics

the formal study of moral life and what it means to be a and become fully human

Morality

A response to the intrinsic goodness of the world, especially of other human beings, distinct from legality or immediate self-interest.

Faith

seeks to answer basic questions of life, quest for meaning purpose and fulfilment (who am i? what should i desire?) - the answer decides the direction which people seek to give to their lives

Catholic Social Ethics

A moral framework grounded in God’s love made present in Jesus, based on both faith and reason, that gives rise to concepts like human dignity and rights

moral behaviour

• actions that are freely chosen in pursuit of goods

• In a Catholic Christian value theory, the highest good is God, followed by the good of the human person adequately and integrally considered

desire for dignity

• we engage in moral behaviours to actualise a sense of our dignity as self-worth in response to experiences of being in relationship, especially when those relationships challenge or frustrate that realisation of one’s own dignity as self-worth

• can be descriptive (why we subjectively choose the moral action) and normative (if it is objectively morally acceptable - can be chosen and be not acceptable)