MAN AS A MORAL
AGENT
LESSON 2
MAN AS A MORAL AGENT
A moral agent is a being that is “capable of acting with
reference to right and wrong”. A moral agent is anything that can
be held responsible for behavior or decisions. It is moral agents
who have rights and responsibilities, because it is moral agents
whom we take to have choices and the power to choose”. If you
do not believe that anything or anyone should ever be blamed or
deemed responsible, then you are going against the idea of moral
agency, and denying the concept of responsibilities and rights.
A moral agent is an intelligent being who has the power of
choosing, and scope to act according to his choice; one to whom
the supreme Governor has given a cognizable law, with its proper
sanction, by which to regulate his volitions and actions. And who
is placed in circumtances which present no physical obstruction,
either to obedience or disobedience.
Moral action, therefore, is action which springs from choice, and
is not necessitated either by mental prupolsions or external
circumtances: intelligent, free,and account able, it is distinguished
on the one hand from instinctive action, which is the result of an
underviating and unfailing but blind prupolsion, and on the other
from divine action, which though certain as instinct, is yet in the
fullest sense intelligent and free.
When something or someone is deemed a moral agent, it
does not necessarily mean that they are succesfully making
moral decision. It means that they are in a category that enables
them to be blamed. If someone is unable to be blamed, then they
do not have rights. Being a moral agent means that they can be
held responsible for their decisions and behaviors, whether they
are good or bad.
A moral agent must be a living creature, as they must be
able to comprehend abstract moral principles and apply them
to decisions making. They must have “self – consciousness,
memory, moral principles, other values, and the reasoning
faculty which allows him to devise plans for achieving his
objectives, to weigh alternatives and so on”. Also in order to
weigh the options in decision making, a moral agent must
“attach a positive value to acts that conform to his moral
principles and a positive value to some of the results that he
can achieve by violating his moral principles”. This means that
in order to be a moral agent “you must live in a world of
scarcity rather than paradise”. If all of your values could be
easily and immediately be achieved, you wouldn’t have to pick
between your moral and non-moral goals, and you couldn’t
practice moral agency
In order to be a moral agent who makes decisions
about justice and takes action based on those
decisions, one must live in a society with others who
they consider to have moral rights. If one lives alone or
with others who do not have moral rights, then they are
unable to make decisions regarding others rights in
order to act morally, one must be free to act. If one is
unable to act, then they do not have moral
responsibility. As long as each person does not violate
the rights of other moral agent, then each moral agent
has the right to make decision and take action on these
decisions
A being capable of moral agency is one who
posseses the means of judging rightly, and power to act
accordingly, but whether he will do so or not, depends
on the voluntary exercise of his faculties.
ARISTOTLE AND MORAL
RESPONSIBILITY
Aristotle was the first to discuss moral responsibility.
He stated that it is sometimes appropriate to respond
to an agent with praise or blame on the basis of his/her
actions and/or dispositional traits of character. He
discusses that “only a certain kind of agent qualifies as
a moral agent and is thus properly subject to
ascriptions of reponsibility, namely, one who posseses
a capacity for decision”. From Aristotle’s perspective,
“a decision is a particular kind of desire resulting from
deliberation, one that expresses the agent’s
conception of what is good”.
In reference to modern ethical theories,
which separate actions and question about
them, Aristotle would not agree.
“Praiseworthy and blameworthy actions are
not those which match up to a particular
template of rules or principles. Rather, they
are ones which flow from, and reveal a
certain type of character”. Moral agency is
not just about which rules to follow, it comes
from a way of life which Aristotle called the
virtuous life, which necessitates a unison of
thought and feeling.
