Conscience

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Conscience

• Miss Barnett

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Meaning

• There are a variety of philosophical definitions-
• An inner feeling of right or wrong
• Some people believe that it is the voice of God

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Theories

• There are three different theories
• Christian
• Humanist
• Authoritarian

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Christian

• St Paul described conscience as an awareness of
  what is good and bad
• First century Christians developed this to a
  moral decision maker
• St Augustine called it the voice of God
• St Aquinas called it a device for distinguishing
  right actions from wrong ones

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St Aquinas

• Conscience is the power of reason
• reason making right decisions
• Conscience deliberates between good and bad
• Synderesis- right reason
• Conscientia- distinguishes between right and
  wrong and makes a moral decision

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Friedrich Schleiermacher

• Conscience is the voice of god within a soul
• Linking conscience to a persons awareness of God
• Thus going against a conscience is a sin
• Conscience is linked to revelation rather than
  reason
• conscience also is very markedly traced to
  divine causality, and, as the voice of God
  within, is held to be an original revelation of
  God

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Intuitive Conscience

• Joseph Butler came up with this theory
• Conscience- the final decision maker
• Humans are influenced by two basic principles-
• Self love
• Love of others

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Secular Conscience

• Conscience depends on two things-
• 1) Freedom- as without it conscience makes no
  sense
• 2) Knowledge of good- conscience implies an
  innate knowledge of the good
• Where does conscience come from if not the voice
  of God?

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• 1) moral views are socially and culturaly
  conditioned
• Hegels spirit of the age
• If utilitarian, you will consider the greatest
  happiness
• 2) Conscience is related to our sense of guilt
• 3) Humans have an innate sense of right and wrong
• Conscience is universal, so is not due to
  upbringing.
• An assumption is made that every normal person
  has a conscience, as part of our nature we are
  away of right and wrong

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Conscience as Guilt

• Sigmund Freud came up with this theory
• Conscience is pre-rational
• This theory undermines both the theories of
  Aquinas and Butler
• It suggests that perhaps God has no involvement
  with conscience
• Conscience can be described in psychological
  terms
• Through our upbringing humans take on certain
  values and ideas

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Do we always obey our conscience?

• This is hard to measure as it is impossible to be
  objective
• People may know what they should do but not have
  the strength to do it
• St Paul highlighted this in Romans ch.7

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Conscience- voice of God

• This is a problem as many religions claim to hold
  the truth and therefore there is a possibility
  of conflicting consciences
• Butler gives conscience ultimate authority but
  Aquinas notes that conscience can be misled
• People often feel torn when making a moral
  decision, if conscience is the voice of God then
  surely it should be clear cut?
• Atheists and those who are not religious also say
  they have a conscience, this is a great challenge
  to the claim that it is the voice of God

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Conscience as a source of authority