Moral responsibility is the status of a decision that deserves praise, blame, reward, or punishment for one’s actions on an event that occurred in either voluntary and involuntary action. A voluntary action describes a person who actively chooses to commit something with their own mind, whether it be virtuous or base. An involuntary action is more complicated as it includes different sets in order for someone to say their actions were not done of their own choice and they did it without knowing what they had done. An act is considered involuntary “provided it brings also sorrow and regret in its train” 1 once the person learns of what they had done, if there is no sorrow or pain than it would be a voluntary act. Which leads to two types of ignorance in the world: ignorance of the universal is not knowing the universal laws that all people must know and ignorance of the particular is not knowing a specific knowledge that is something that they did not intend. If a person committed an act in the “ignorance of the universal” they are still responsible for the act as its their own fault for lacking the knowledge in the first place. But if they act in the “ignorance of the particular” then it would be involuntary if they are missing even one of these six variables: who the agent is, what they are doing, what thing or person is affected, the means used, the result intended, and the manner in which one acts. Some actions performed in the ignorance of the particular are due to lack of self-control, extreme emotions, or intoxication, this type of actions would be considered voluntary as the person should have better self-control and it would be their own fault for not having enough control. A combination of voluntary and involuntary is called a mixed act is where an agent is responsible for the deed they committed but external circumstances had compelled them to commit it. Such as if a criminal was holding man’s family hostage and forced him to commit
crimes or else the criminal would kill them. The man chose to commit those crimes but was forced to choose on the threat that he would lose his family, both voluntary and involuntary.
A person’s actions have a great effect on their moral strength that shows whether they have a virtuous or base character. A virtuous man or a person of moral strength would have knowledge of the universal and the particular and have their own self-control will commit the right actions and have no regret or inner struggle in what they do voluntarily. Moral strength is something that is to be achieved and to be praised for one’s dedication and will power to achieve self-control in order to do honorable things in the world that will lead to a long happy life. On the other hand, a man of moral weakness is someone who has universal knowledge but lacks self-control and lacks particular knowledge will do the wrong thing, which will lead to Regret and inner struggle. Moral weakness is a characteristic that is something that should be avoided and is worthy of blame for its insidious actions or inactions that occur from those with this personality. These two characteristics affect the thinking process as “the acts of a morally weak person are accompanied by appetite, but not by choice, while a morally strong person acts from choice, but not from appetite” 2. A man of moral strength would be able to resist the baser urges and be able to choose to do the noble deed while a man of moral weakness would fall to their desires and instincts which would lead them to commit wickedness. Self-control and moral strength are a characteristic born of habit and work; it is something of choice to achieve as a man chooses to work hard to achieve a level of self-control, which is the same for a morally weak person to actively not choose to work for a level of self-control, making the actions that they would later regret their own choice as it was born of their own weakness. A person of strength would follow the knowledge that they have learned and use it to choose the right decisions while “A morally weak person either does not have the knowledge or does not exercise it” 3 in how they fail to follow what they know and commit the wrong decision.
In the crime scene of Matthew Poncelet from the movie “Dead Man Walking” Moral Responsibility would pay heavily in how his actions have affected him and the type of personality that he
had. His actions were the murder and rape of two teenagers which committed him to prison for six years on death row. His defense to this was that he was never committed these acts as he was just a witness as his conspirator Charlie was the one who raped and murdered the couple. It was later revealed that Matthew did indeed take part in the crime and was lying in order to save his own life and avoid death row. These actions would make him a morally weak character in that he did have universal knowledge of what the laws are but lacked the particular knowledge of what his action would do to him and those around and the self-control to stop himself or Charlie from causing pain to others, which later caused him regret and inner struggle during the events of the film. His reasoning is that he wanted to be tough and to impress Charlie, who he looked up too, which caused him to do this immoral deed for his own gain as “a morally weak man acts under the influence of some kind of reasoning and opinion, an opinion which is not intrinsically but only incidentally opposed to the right reason” 4. That the morally weak will try to justify the wrong thing they did with their own reasoning, even though they know that they made the wrong decision but still try to defend themselves. His actions were voluntary in that he chose to follow Charlie and do those horrible things, and even if he didn’t do the crime he would still be guilty of inaction as Charlie would have raped and killed the couple even without Matthew. He knew what he did was wrong and that he deserved to be punished as when he was on his day of execution he gives his last words “I just wanna say I think killin' is wrong, no matter who does it, whether it's me or y'all or your government” 5, showing that he had the knowledge of what he should have done in the situation but he chose to ignore it as he followed his appetites that made him do the horrible crime. His behavior was also born out of habit as it was described in the film how he and Charlie were harassing people for weeks until it all culminated in the crime he was condemned for. Instead of doing all that he could have achieve self-control to where he would have done something noble with his life and might have been able to
achieve a virtuous habit and even stopped the crime but instead he actively chose to engage in his baser desires which lead to become habit. His first excuse of intoxication would also been his own fault as he had no self-control to stop himself from losing his senses to the drugs and alcohol. All of his actions were of voluntary actions as “if we have the power to act where it is noble to act, we also have the power not to act where not to act is base” 6. In the end Matthew would be considered a morally weak person as he is responsible for his own actions for not having the moral strength to resist his baser urges and instead of doing the right thing, chose the wrong way instead which condemned him to death.