Ground and norm of morality : ethics for college students / Ramon Castillo Reyes.

Ground and Norm of Morality is intended to be a college textbook for general ethics. It combines botha historical and a systematic approach makes the student aware that moral philosophy takes place within a context of ongoing tradition of moral life and thought. There are chapters on Siddhartha Gautama, Confucius, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, and the Utilitarians. The systematic part seeks to see the new in the old and the old in the new. First. there is a phenomenological description of the structures of the moral dimension. Then, it proceeds to show how conscience, taken mainly in the sense ofThomas Aquinas's synderesis or practical reason, is the fundamental ground and norm of morality. Subsequently, it is shown how Aquinas, embedding practical reason or synderesis in concrete human nature as he saw it formulated in Aristotle's First Philosophy, is thereby able to draw the main provisions of the Natural Law. Finally, it is shown how the very notion of conscience and synderesis. Closing the theoretical part is a chapter regarding the question of the ultimate ground morality, asking whether in the end morality may be said to be founded on society, on the thrust and drive of the human spirit itself, or on some transcedent principle beyond man and the world. The last chapter on praxis shows how the ground and norm of morality is applied to the various phases of human action to derive thefour moral determinants of action-intention, nature of the act, circumtances, and consequences. (ADMU)