The Conscience Flashcards
Different views on the origins of the conscience
Innate (religious) models - Augustine, Butler, Newman
The Rational model (religious) - Aquinas
Acquired (secular/psychological) models - Freud, Piaget and Kohlberg, Fromm
Augustine on source and nature of conscience
Argued that there is one God who is the source of all goodness meaning there can only be one virtue. This virtue can have many aspects, such as justice and goodness, and are all bound together by divine love. Therefore, the conscience comes from this divine love being given to humanity from God revealing his moral virtue. He thought that the conscience appears to be an innate, inner awareness of what is right and wrong, with these rights and wrongs being absolute and existing objectively. He believed the conscience to be a God given tool to observe the law of God in human hearts and the flashes of judgement that what we are about to do is wrong is actually a momentary illumination and proof of our intuition and innate consciousness. This revelation of God’s perfect love and virtue also means that humans become aware of their own imperfection and our inability to how, since the Fall of Adam, humans are unable to do good by themselves making us dependent on God’s direct gift of grace to enable us to act rightly. Many of Augustine’s followers since argued that this deems our conscience as the most important source of moral decision making and more important than the moral teachings of the Church.
Aquinas on the conscience
Was as a Rationalist so believed the conscience to be innate and acquired through reason with experience being used to develop our sense of morality. Stated that conscience is part of an intellectual and rational approach to determine what is right and wrong and therefore tells us what must be done in a particular situation. Aquinas believed that the conscience is reasoning applied correctly in order to discover what God sees as good, therefore to go against our moral conscience is, in his words, “equivalent to condemning the command of God”.
What is Synderesis and Conscientia?
In his ‘Summa Theologica’, Aquinas separated the conscience into two parts. ‘Synderesis’ means an innate knowledge of right and wrong and is associated with ‘recta ratio’ or right reason, meaning that it is a person’s awareness of fundamental moral rules which be gained through practical reason. He saw it as the first part of moral decision making which is using logical reasoning to gain an understanding of what is morally right. He viewed this process of understanding the first principles of morality as instinctive and not a command from God. An example of synderesis is our awareness of the moral principle that ‘stealing is wrong’. ‘Conscientia’ comes after and is the practice of applying this knowledge of right reason to a specific situation and using our judgement to decide the moral quality of what they have done or about to do.
John Henry Newman on the conscience in his writing ‘Grammar of Assent’
Argues that the conscience is separate from any system of authority and that humans have an innate sense of what is right and wrong. Intuitionist approach to the conscience as he believed that the conscience is an innate principle given to us before we have the ability to reason, so is completely distinct from our will or desires. The conscience works in an intuitive manner in that we can sense these Divine laws rather than work them out through reasoning. He stated that the conscience is ‘the voice of God’ but rather than it being a set of rules or commandments for us to follow in order to gain a reward from God, it is a way of detecting moral truth and providing us with a clear indication of what is right and wrong. Believed the conscience to have ultimate authority over scripture and Church teachings when it came to moral decision making. He also stated that humans should play an active role in examining their conscience to become better judges of what is morally good and in turn become a better person. He touches on moral responsibility in that humans feel a sense of guilt and responsibility when we disregard ‘the voice of conscience’ implying that there is someone or something to whom we are responsible, which he argues is evidence for the existence of God.
Joseph Butler on the conscience
Which Christian concept is closely linked w Butler’s concept of conscience?
Heavily influenced by the works of Aristotle and Aquinas, viewing the conscience as what distinguishes humans from other sentient beings. Defines the conscience as a ‘faculty of reflection’, meaning the conscience is part of a process that only humans have in which they are aware of their own situation. From the human being’s reflective nature and ability to try and understand their being that the conscience arises. He believed that morality is the process of following our basic ‘Human Nature’, he also stated that this human nature has various parts with a set hierarchy. At the top of this hierarchy is the conscience and this is what gives humans the ability to judge between the two main parts of human nature: Self-love and Benevolence. Self-love is our desire for our own self-interest and happiness, whereas benevolence is the desire for the happiness of others and conscience used to act as judge to balance these. Butler deemed the conscience to be innate and as the ultimate authority. Agreed with Aquinas as he believed that humans have ability to reason, gifted to us by God and so we should use this reason to weigh up different factors in making a moral decision if we want to be truly happy and as not to deny this God-given aspect of ourselves. Butler’s concept of the conscience is seen to be closely linked with the Christian concept of the Golden rule stated in Matthew 7:12 which says ‘In everything do to others as you would have them do to you’. As an example, in his ‘Rolls Sermons’ Butler argued that criminals have no conscience as they do not have an intuitive sense of self-love or self-worth, meaning that as a result they are unable to respect others and therefore commit crimes.
Sigmund Freud:
3 main areas of human psyche
2 parts of the Id
Thought of as the founder of modern psychoanalysis and constructed a model of the psyche which consists of three main areas: First is the Id, the unconscious self which is amoral and entirely self-interested. These desires are formed at birth and consist of two broad categories: Eros, meaning life-instinct such as desire for food and self-preservation, and Thanatos, meaning death-instinct, the desire for domination and aggression. These two categories are constantly conflicting and need to be managed by our conscience. Next area is the Superego, the ethical part of our psyche conditioned within us at young age by outside influences such as religion and society. Often conflicts with the id giving us a sense of order and a feeling of guilt when we carry out actions that the superego forbids. The ego is the last area, the conscious self which is seen by other people. It interacts with and evaluates the other two areas in order to balance them by restricting the desires of the id and being advised by the superego.
Piaget and child development
How does our moral conscience develop?
2 types of conscience
Who’s concepts of conscience does this undermine?
Does this concept completely rule out God’s existence/ involvement in conscience?
Piaget was a developmental psychologist who believed that we could observe how the conscience developed over time by studying human behaviour. Believed that we aren’t born with an innate sense of morality, yet our conscience is continually developing with no guarantee that we will ever reach moral maturity. Also believed that every human being has a slightly different conscience depending on how morally developed they are, with this moral development growing from their cognitive development and social interaction. Piaget described two types of conscience, the heteronomous morality and the autonomous morality. The heteronomous develops in our early years and consists of a sense of guilt from disobeying the set of rules laid out by parents and society and our desire to obey precise rules and not be punished, individual does not have their own internal rational sense of what is right and wrong. The autonomous morality comes after when a person is mature enough to distinguish for themselves between right and wrong.
This concept undermines both Aquinas’ and Butler’s theories of consciousness as suggests that the conscience isn’t innate but instead is both naturally occurring and formed from external influences outside of our subconscious minds. Theory doesn’t entirely rule out the possibility that God is involved in some way with the conscience, yet it emphasises that a child’s environment has much more of an influence on a person’s conscience than religious theories suggest.
Erich Fromm
Who/What was he influenced by?
What did he name his conscience
Benefit of a good form of this conscience and example of a negative form
Fromm formed his own theory on authoritarian conscience influenced by Freud and his own Marxist views. Believed that our sense of free will is an illusion and that from birth we are reduced to a ‘state of obedience’ to external authorities, so ultimately humans don’t have control over their own life. Called the ‘Authoritarian conscience’ and comes from external authorities’ ability to punish us for breaking their rules which are then internalised over time to become central to our internal understanding of morality. Humans also gain a guilty conscience which arises when we are disobedient, causing us to become more submissive to authority. Fromm argued that a good authoritarian conscience can provide us with a sense of security as it provides us with a structure and order which can result in a moral society. Nazi Germany can be used as an example of a negative authoritarian conscience in which the voice of the conscience is obeyed not because it is good but because the individual feels that they have no choice not to.
What did Sigmund Freud not believe in the existence of?
How did his concept of soul contrast w Teleological views?
Freud did not believe in the existence of the soul and viewed the conscience as a sort of guilt complex. He argued that the conscience is a thought process by which humans decide to undertake a certain action due to a sense of guilt that they felt from an action or feeling that they have experienced in the past.
In contrast with teleological views, he saw the conscience as acquired rather than an innate part of human nature and refuted the existence of absolute moral laws by stating that all moral codes are empirical constructs, formed through experience. This explains the variation in moral codes found between different societies. Freud was a non-believer and so saw the conscience as a product of the laws and traditions set out by a male-dominated society rather than by God, so the conscience embodies the sense of guilt that humans feel when they disobey these laws..
Criticism of Augustine
ideas of right and wrong clearly not universal as even within the church there is massive debate over morality of actions e.g. abortion.
Doesn’t account for external influences and other sources of authority e.g. parents that would explain variation of moral codes between different societies and individuals and cultures
Some people appear to act w no conscience at all or conscience can be seen to develop w age
people faced w same dilemma come to different conclusions or act differently which should prove impossible if source of conscience absolute and objective divine law.
