Conscience

practica ratio and prudence

• practica ratio

  • moral life = practical

• prudence

  • understanding

  • judge right action

  • good deliberation about how to put into action

• ‘not only the consideration of reason but also the application of action’

• Servais Pinckaers ‘conscience and prudence as two converging lights coming from the same source’

• conscience examined circumstantially

conscience

• =/= power = act

• said to bear witness, to bind, accuse, torment, rebuke

• natural tendency to good

• judges past, determines future

• conscience = fallible

• conscientia surpassed by infallibility of syndersis

synderesis

• inner principle implanted by God in all ppl

  • natural inclination to do good and avoid evil

• infallible, universal desire, never wrong

• conscientia = intellectual process of forming moral judgement (+prudence)

theological account (aquinas)

• ability to do good and avoid evil = god given

• Cardinal Newman

  • feel ashamed = hear voice of God

• Bishop Butler

  • conscience = God-given principle of reflection

  • error = human mistake

vincible and invincible ignorance

• +Aristotle

• vincible = culpable, avoidable

• invincible = cannot be blamed

• Aristotle: can be rid of blame if

  • ignorance

  • lack of choice

• to commit sin, need full knowledge and consent

• degree of responsibility determined case by case

always follow conscience - aquinas

1. naturally seek/ inclined to good (synderesis)

2. reason decides what is good

3. what reason tells us = good

4. must always follow reason/ conscience

have free will = God expects us to use reason to best of our abilities

☹ Aquinas

• overly optimistic

• need emotions + reason (Kant)

• what if conscience goes against divine law

• contradictory to say should always follow conscience if leads to wrong actions

• assumption of 1 right morality (culture?)

• Francis Bacon

• Physicist Sean Carroll

• evolution

• not naturally good? case of Leopold and Loeb

  • “perfect crime” to kidnap and murder

  • upbringing, imprisonment instead of execution

Freud

• super-ego = internalised voice of authority figures, tries to make ego behave morally

• id = primitive self, drives for food, aggression and sex

• ego = idea of rational self capable of exercising some control over id

  • mediates between id and demands of social interaction

ego and superego

• clash = guilt and conscience

• superego → guilty about basic/ fundamental sexual desires

  • tends to oppose id

• > oedipus complex = stricture rule of super-ego over ego and stronger sense of conscience rejecting our urges (creating guilt)

primal horde

• primitive times, there was primal horde, dominated by old man

  • monopolised women and denied younger men sexual access

• men united, killed and ate old man

• but → conflict, 1 woman may be object of desire for >1 man

  • needed discipline to maintain balance

  • began to realise value of Old Man’s rules, leading to regret and guilt

• men’s collective guilt about sexual instincts and behaviour = origin of guilt

  • explains taboo against incest

• guilt from buried memory (collective conscious)

  • constructed oedipus complex from this basis

polytheism

• terrifying nature, human helpless and fearful

• if understand thunder = action of god of underworld, feel > can do to control thunder

  • could appease god with gifts to stop thunder

• reinforced when actions seem to work

  • but just bc storm stopped after prayers and sacrifice, doesn’t logically follow that prayers and sacrifice = cause

monotheism

• childhood experience

• babies depend on father

  • distant but powerful figure

• later project buried memory → God as sustainer of all things

• religion constructed out of needs and desires (wishful thinking)

guilt = conscience

inherited guilt + repression of oedipus thru superego + understanding of authoritative father-figure as allknowing = experience of guilty conscious

🙂 Freud

• notes importance of upbringing in shaping morality (culturally relative)

• in line with what ppl experience

• conscience = non-rational

• understanding of God acceptable in secular society

☹ Freud

• moral responsibility?

  • implications problematic if behaviours and judgements simply result of conflict in subconscious and collective unconscious

• unscientific

  • no evidence for primal horde and oedipus complex

  • Karl Popper: psychology not falsifiable

  • Hitchen’s razor: ‘that which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence’ (Christopher Hitchens)

• unrepresentative sample of pop

  • client base in Vienna self-selecting

  • abusive/absent fathers?

• male centric

  • still little evidence for elektra complex

  • primal horde presents women as passive victims

  • Erich Fromm: Freud = misogynist

• nothign objectively right or wrong