Conscience

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To have a conscience involves being conscious of the moral quality of what one has done, or intends to do. Thereare several elements under the idea of conscience. First, conscience can signify those very moral convictionspersons cleave to most firmly and judge themselves by. Second, the notion may cover the faculty by which we cometo know moral truths (assuming there to be such) and apply them to ourselves. Third, conscience can be said toconcern the examination by a person of the morality of their desires, actions and so on. Finally, conscience caninvolve guilt: one can suffer from a ‘bad conscience'. In the Christian tradition, conscience can be viewed as ‘thevoice of God within' each of us. Several of these aspects of conscience are expressed in Milton's lines fromParadise Lost, when God says: ‘And I will place within them as a guide/My umpire Conscience' (III: 194-5).There are many elements comprehended under the idea of conscience, and it is sensible to consider theseseparately since they do not always occur together. First, someone's conscience may be considered to comprisethose fundamental moral convictions by keeping to which they retain a sense of their moral integrity and decencyas people. In this sense something is ‘a matter of conscience', or raises ‘questions of conscience', if it touches onsuch central personal principles. According to this signification, different people can have markedly differentconsciences, but, it would be argued, we should still respect each person's conscience since to force them toviolate the demands of their conscience is to force them to give up their sense of their own integrity. This line ofargument may be resisted, however. We are told that some Nazis saw carrying out the extermination programme asa matter of conscience. To force them not to do this does not seem to involve a moral problem. In reply, it can besaid that only consciences which are ‘enlightened' require respect. The question whether conscience can beenlightened, or fallible and perverted, leads on to a second strand in thinking about conscience.According to this strand, a person's conscience comprises their capacity to come to acquire moral standards fortheir own conduct; or, more specifically, their capacity to come to know moral truths (see Moral knowledge §1).This sense, strictly more basic than conscientia itself, is referred to as synderesis or synteresis by Aquinas (Summatheologiae), by which he means the power to grasp fundamental moral principles, a power supposedly common toall persons and one which, if functioning appropriately, results in our all knowing the same basic principles.However these very basic principles (such as ‘Do good' and ‘Eschew evil') are too general to help us know how toact in particular circumstances. We require also a capacity to derive more concrete principles which will give usmoral guidance, and a capacity to apply these appropriately to our own circumstances. These two secondaryfunctions are the province of conscience strictly understood, according to Aquinas. Errors in conscience can arisein deriving these more specific rules of conduct or in their application even if synderesis is held to be infallible.Questions can arise, analogous to those referred to earlier, about whether it is better to follow one's conscienceeven though it may prove to be fallible or to violate one's conscience which, if it is erroneous, may then mean oneends up doing the right thing. Talk of a ‘perverted' conscience may mean that a person's ultimate convictions arejudged to be perverse, as in the first strand identified; or that their capacity to know good from evil, in general or inthe particular case, has been distorted or corrupted.Building on the above, we may note a third emphasis in the idea of conscience, to do with the care, intensity andfrequency with which someone examines the moral credentials of their desires, feelings, actions and omissions.Someone may have an ‘overworked' or ‘oversensitive' conscience, by making too much a matter of moralself-scrutiny or by being too scrupulous about any and every moral doubt which may arise (if one can beoverscrupulous about such things). On the other hand, a person's conscience may be ‘fast asleep' and need‘awakening' or ‘quickening', as in the famous painting by Holman Hunt, ‘The Awakening Conscience' (1852).They do not lack a conscience, but rather the will or disposition to use it. Joseph Butler (1726), in a sensitive andimportant discussion of the moral significance of conscience, emphasized that conscience sometimes ‘withoutbeing consulted, without being advised with, magisterially exerts itself' (Sermon II) (see Butler, J. §§2-4). I takethis to mean that sometimes without, or against, our will or deliberate intention we find ourselves judging our ownintentions and deeds critically and in condemnation. This thought leads on to the last aspect of conscience to beconsidered.A person may first become aware that they have done something they feel to be wrong or wicked throughexperiencing feelings of uneasiness, guilt, or a vague sense of oppression. It may take some thought to discoverwhat deed these feelings attach to, but they can be regarded as central manifestations of having a ‘badconscience' about it. Feelings of remorse, shame, dismay, torment and guilt, all forms of self-punishmentfollowing from self-condemnation, are major elements in the functioning of conscience. A clear, easy or happyconscience does not usually bring self-congratulatory feelings with it (that would be more like self-righteousness),merely the absence of the pains of a troubled conscience. Popular morality likes to believe that no-one can escapefrom the toils of a guilty conscience in the end if they commit some terrible deed, however hard they try.The self-punitive strand in conscience has particularly attracted the attention of psychoanalysts including Freud(1930). Some people can be crippled in their capacity for active life by the savagery and relentlessness ofself-punitive guilt incident to, say, feeling aggressive or sexual impulses. Freud held that children ‘internalize'powerful parental figures as part of their development and, in doing so, can subject themselves to very severejudgments felt to be emanating from these figures. The ‘super-ego' thus conceived can confront and harangue thechild's ego, and inhibit its expression (see Freud, S. §8; Psychoanalysis, post-Freudian §2). To gain relief fromsuch savage self-censure is not, of course, to become amoral or conscienceless; it is simply to adopt a less punitiveattitude to moral endeavour.It has been argued that moral regulation via the medium of an inner witness, self-judgment and self-punishment, isnot so central to all cultures as it has been to our own. Some anthropologists contrast ‘guilt' cultures with ‘shame'cultures; in the latter it is fear of public exposure and loss of ‘face' which is the principal vehicle of moralregulation.It is inappropriate to ask which of the above four aspects of conscience comprises its essence or makes up what it‘really' is. In different contexts one or more of these aspects may be in view and it is more important to appreciatethe variety of elements here than it is to determine which of them is definitive of conscience.