Conscience

Conscience, in modern usage, term denoting various factors in moral experience. Thus, the recognition and acceptance of a principle of conduct as binding is called conscience. In theology and ethics, the term refers to the inner sense of right and wrong in moral choices, as well as to the satisfaction that follows action regarded as right and the dissatisfaction and remorse resulting from conduct that is considered wrong. In earlier ethical theories, conscience was regarded as a separate faculty of the mind having moral jurisdiction, either absolute or as a representative of God in the human soul.

In the Hebrew scriptures there is little theoretical interest in the conscience. God scrutinizes the human heart (Psalm 139:23-24), but it is fear of God—not self-knowledge—that is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 1:7; 9:10). In the classical world, the notion of conscience first appeared in the works of Greek philosopher Democritus, an older contemporary of Plato. Democritus used the Greek word suneidesis to refer to consciousness of wrongdoing. Roman philosopher Cicero translated suneidesis as conscientia, from which the English conscience is derived. According to Cicero, conscientia is an inner voice that speaks with greater authority than any form of public approval. In his work Tusculan Disputations, he used the metaphor of a bite (Latin remorsus, from which the English remorse is derived) to describe the feeling aroused by a troubled conscience.

Saint Paul referred to conscience as the law written on the human heart (Romans 2:15; see Saint Paul). For Paul, the scrupulous conscience brings not only illumination but also agony: It relentlessly exposes the inner battle that human beings must wage against their own impulses (Romans 7:15-20). The Fathers of the Church—and Saint Augustine in particular—maintained Paul's view that conscience is an inner witness to divine law and that it is common to all human beings.

According to theologians of the Middle Ages (5th century to 15th century), the conscience is divided into two parts. Synderesis (probably a misreading of suneidesis) is the faculty in human beings that knows God's moral law; this faculty remained unaffected by the Fall and the expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Conscientia is the faculty by which human beings apply the moral to concrete cases; it dictates what should or should not be done under particular circumstances. Whereas synderesis cannot err, conscientia is fallible, but according to Italian theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas, even erroneous dictates of conscience are binding and must be followed even if they contradict the orders of a superior. At the Fourth Lateran Council, held in 1215, it was decreed that all Christians must make confession and receive the Sacrament once a year, a practice known as the tribunal of conscience.

In the view of the Protestant reformers of the 16th century, the conscience had been oppressed under the Roman Catholic system during the medieval period. German theologian Martin Luther, for example, identified strongly with the sense of anguish described by Saint Paul and Saint Augustine over every action and impulse. The reformers rejected the notion of trying to please God through actions, or “works,” thereby rejecting the tribunal of conscience. In their view, Christians are liberated by divine grace and are given a clean conscience by God; they are in a position to gain subjective certainty of their spiritual condition by reading the Bible. In place of the medieval notion that conscience was a faculty of which a person could have more or less, the Protestant reformers tended to view the conscience as a psychological organ, infallible and inviolate. These views were upheld by French philosophers René Descartes and Michel de Montaigne.

Whereas 18th-century philosophers Jean Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant believed that the conscience could provide a basis for deliberate, autonomous moral action, in the 19th century conscience was widely disparaged. In his work “Annotations to Watson,” English poet William Blake wrote that “Conscience in those that have it is unequivocal.” German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe portrayed his character Faust as laboring to purge himself of conscience. German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche held that conscience merely imitates pre-existing values. In the works of Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard and Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky, conscience is obsessively inward and leads to deep despair.