Summaries / Resúmenes - Studia Moralia

THE SUBJECT-OBJECT RELATION IN CONTEMPORARY MORAL THEOLOGY 37cised by a banker is not the same as that exercised by a journalist,a psychotherapist or someone working in the area of publicsecurity. All of these persons could be striving to be honest, butthe commitments they make (the intentions they formulate) intheir particular life situation could look very different.One would like to think that in the majority of our moraldecision-making, we bring this accumulated (pre-moral) knowledgeand understanding to bear on concrete situations as theypresent themselves. The mature person probably makes themajority of their moral decisions in what looks like a smooth,effortless gesture, even though the assessments that are beingmade can be quite complex. The exercise of these skills constitutesthe majority of the work that we call conscience. Life,however, is not always predictable, and we can sometimes bepresented with scenarios in which our accumulated knowledgeis insufficient, or in which the presenting case does not resemblethings that we have experienced in the past. Sometimes“standard” responses do not seem appropriate, and at othertimes, “drastic” measures might be called for. In such instances,one needs to summon the entire process of assessment to theconscious level, which entails making distinctions between thedifferent aspects of the moral event to be judged, applying ourworking knowledge to each of these aspects and assessing howthe different aspects contribute to the whole, unified picture ofthis, real life, situation.The reasoning that is used in this process of moral assessmentof real life human situations seeks to clarify not onlycontent but also relation. As far as the content is concerned,one will look at ends or goals and the circumstantial commitmentto these that we call intention, and query whether it isvirtuous. As far as content is concerned, one will look at variousactivities in combination with circumstances that constitutebehavioral options in order to assess real or potential benefitor harm to persons in the short or long term and on themany dimensions within which persons function. 19 The differ-19A crucial presupposition here is that one performs this assessmenton the basis of a sound anthropology, what Gaudium et spes indicated to be