Conscience Flashcards
Secular approach - Eric Fromm (20th century)
‘the laws and sanctions of the externalised authority become part of oneself.’
‘Good conscience is consciousness of pleasing authority; guilty conscience is consciousness of displeasing it.’
‘Paradoxically, authoritarian conscience is a result of feelings of strength, independence, productiveness and pride, while the authoritarian good conscience springs from feelings of obedience, dependance, powerlessness and sinfulness.’
Secular approach - Sigmund Freud (20th century)
‘Conscience is the internal perception of the rejection of a particular wish operating within us.’
Secular approach - Trial
Adolf Eichmann pleaded at his trial for mass murder in 1961 that he was only “following orders”
Augustine
“The requirements of the law are written on [the gentiles] hearts, their conscience also bearing witness…”
“the law written in men’s hearts, which not even ingrained wickedness can erase.”
“If there was no pleasure in what is unlawful, no one would sin. To sin is to indulge this pleasure instead of restraining it.”
St Thomas Aquinas
“Conscience is reason making right decisions and not a voice giving us commands”
“a natural disposition of the human mind by which we instinctively understand the first principles of morality”.
“application of knowledge to activity”.
So for Aquinas conscience is “the mind of man making moral judgements”
Butler
The conscience “magisterially exerts itself … without being consulted”
“There is a principle of reflection in men by which they distinguish between approval and disapproval of their own actions … this principle in men … is conscience”
“Had it strength as it has right; had it power as it had manifest authority, it would absolutely govern the world.”
It is innate (“man by his nature is a law to himself”), placed within us by God – Butler calls it the “law of our nature” - but not God’s law as obligation
“It is our duty to walk in that path, and follow this guide without looking about to see whether we may or may not possibly forsake them with impunity.”
“Conscience does not only offer itself to show us the way we should walk in, but it likewise carries its own authority with it, that it is our natural guide, the guide assigned us by the Author of out nature”
Newman
“I toast the Pope, but I toast the conscience first.”
“Conscience is a law of the mind … a messenger of him, who, both in nature and in grace, speaks to us behind a veil, and teaches and rules us by his representatives. Conscience is the aboriginal vicar of Christ.”
Pope Benedict too said “there still stands one’s own conscience, which must be obeyed before all else”
Newman recommends we should kneel and pray that God “will lead our weak steps and enlighten our fragile minds”.
Dawkins
Dawkins calls this a “lust to be nice” and says we have the capacity to “transcend our selfish genes”
