Conscience: Lying and Adultery

• Application of Freud to lying

  - Feelings of guilt, anxiety and remorse surface from the subconscious mind of the individual. These would be the result of parental commands not to lie or break one's promises, where the influence of that authority is so great that the individual cannot escape its psychological command

  - Telling lies is common in modern society so this would explain why some people's super-egos stay quiet; if their parents had no problem with lying and taught their child the same
• Application of Aquinas to lying

  - Conscience would inform the individual that lying is wrong because it breaks synderesis rule

  - Violates the primary precept of living in an ordered society, since if everyone lied our society would not operate. If people broke their marriage promises, no marriage would ever be safe. If people lied in business arrangements, no business would operate

  - In exceptional circumstances, such as if yourself or another is in danger, Aquinas allows evasive truths. You deceive one by stating a true statement that is irrelevant or leads to a false conclusion
• Application of Fletcher to lying

  Depends on the consequences. If it brings the most agapeic love then it is acceptable
• Application of Freud to adultery

  - Freud theorised that humanity had invented civilisation in order to control its instinctive drives (Thanatos and Eros). To keep those drives in check, laws were made prohibiting certain acts. Since having created civilisation to protect ourselves from unhappiness, this has actually become our greatest source of unhappiness

  - the conscience amounts to a deep-rooted psychological compulsion from an incalculable number of sources
• Application of Aquinas to adultery

  - Adultery is wrong. However the conscience can make mistakes

  - For example, a man who marries a widow and has sex with her, only to discover that her husband was still alive, has still had a clear conscience. According to him there was nothing wrong with it but was mistaken. Even though the conscience was mistaken, there was no intention to do wrong and no fault in following the conscience in that situation.
• Application of Fletcher to adultery

  - Adultery is usually wrong. However in exceptional circumstances, it can be acceptable

  - For example, a family were captured and taken to different camps. The mother's whereabouts remained a mystery but the rest of the family never stopped looking for her. The rules only released the mother for two reasons:

  1) illness needing medical facilities

  2) pregnancy

  So she asked a Volga German camp guard to impregnate her which he did. Her condition was medically verified and she was sent back to Berlin to reunite with her family