Conscience
Michael Lacewing
enquiries@alevelphilosophy.co.uk
Varieties of conscience
 Involving feelings of self-judgment, e.g.
guilt (‘bad conscience’)
 Faculty for discovering moral truths
 Set of moral principles a person holds as a
matter of integrity (conscientious objection)
 Faculty of self-examination (someone who
‘lacks conscience’)
One theory?
 Conscience is the faculty by which we
discover moral truth. We use it to examine
ourselves, which can produce feelings of
guilt. And it supports our adherence to
certain moral principles.
Disagreement
 Different people’s consciences apparently
tell them different things.
 Solutions:
– Morality requires different things of different
people (every conscience is right).
– Some consciences don’t work properly.
– Some people misinterpret their conscience.
– Conscience does not discover moral truth.
Aquinas on conscience
 ‘Synderesis’ discovers very basic moral
principles, e.g. ‘Do good’
– Everyone’s says the same thing.
 ‘Conscientia’ (conscience) = practical
reason which tells us what to do in
particular situations
– Not infallible, can be corrupted
Obeying one’s conscience
 Aquinas: we should always obey our
conscience.
 We can never know that our conscience is
wrong.
 To act against it is to do what we believe to
be wrong, which goes against the nature of
the will (the will naturally aims at the
good).
 The main thing that makes an act right or
wrong is motive.
The voice of God
 Aquinas understands conscience as reason. Other
philosophers understand conscience as the voice
of God.
 Conscience does not feel invented. It feels like a
demand on me from an external source.
– If I think an action is wrong, it is not wrong because I
say so. My conscience must ‘pick up’ on moral truth.
 Moral feelings are personal: guilt, responsibility,
regret, etc.
 Moral values feel personal: commands, duties,
responsibility, etc.
Freud on conscience
 Our sense of morality, esp. conscience as that
which examines us and produces guilt, is a
product of childhood experiences.
 The development of the ‘superego’
– As young children, we all love our parents, we want to
please them, and we want to be like them. We ‘identify’
with them.
– This becomes an unconscious sense of how to be, an
ideal for ourselves.
– Other authority figures add ideas of how to be, and the
superego comes into existence.
The superego
 Comprises ‘you should be like this’ and ‘you
should not be like that’
 Monitors and judges us
 The gap between how it says we should be and
how we are produces guilt and humility
 But it also congratulates us when we do well
(pride) - which conscience isn’t said to do
 It feels personal because it derives from personal
relationships
Deciding what to do
 Freud wants us to make choices because of
we really want to do, not what we feel even unconsciously - we have to do.
 Freud thinks these choices are informed by
reason; Aquinas thinks conscience is reason.
 Freud and Aquinas think integrity is most
important for deciding what to do.
 Does Freud reduce conscience to the
superego?