Conscience A01

• Examine differing ideas about the nature of the conscience A01

  1. Freud: conscience as the super-ego: inner parent
  2. Augustine: conscience as the voice of God
  3. Aquinas: conscience as a God given faculty
  4. Fletcher: conscience is something we do
• Examine different religious ideas about the nature of the conscience A01

  1. Augustine: the innate voice of God
  2. Schleiermacher: direct revelation from God
  3. Aquinas: God given faculty of reason
  4. Fletcher: something we do, agape love
• Examine different non-religious ideas about the nature of the conscience A01

  1. Freud: super-ego, result of what we are taught by authority figures
  2. Durkheim: sanctions or social conditioning
  3. Kohlberg: individualised conscience
  4. Fromm: authoritarian and humanistic consciences
• Examine the role of the conscience in making moral decision making with reference to telling lies and breaking promises A01

  1. Fletcher: lying can be acceptable if it brings the most agape love. example of axe murderer
  2. Freud: feelings of guilt due to breaking the command. Some people’s super-egos stay quiet though
  3. Aquinas: breaks syndresis rule. Violates the primary precept of ordered society. Evasive truths
• Examine the role of the conscience in making moral decision making with reference to adultery A01

  1. Fletcher: usually not acceptable because it causes unhappiness. But in exceptional cases, such as the family captured, it would be acceptable under situation ethics
  2. Freud: laws were created to stop our instinctive drives. this causes unhappiness
  3. Aquinas: adultery is wrong eg double effect would show the bad effect disproportionate to the good effect. however the conscience can be mistaken
• Examine the value of conscience as a moral guide A01

  1. The voice of God - considered not valuable to some
  2. Conscience cannot guide
  3. The subjectivity of conscience
  4. Value of the conscience as the internalised values of society or inner parent
• For Augustine, the conscience is the innate voice of God. This closely follows Paul’s arguments in Romans 2:15 where he describes it as a witness to the requirements of the law. Augustine goes beyond this and says that he has seen conscience literally as the voice of God, as documented in his work On the Sermon on the Mount.
• Protestant theologian Schleiermacher holds similar beliefs. Schleiermacher argues that conscience is a direct revelation from God and to go against it is a sin - not because it is shown to go against moral principles but because it would be a hindrance to Christian life. Conscience is a part of what God does, guiding people from within. Therefore, conscience is what is spoken by God.
• Aquinas 1/2

  Aquinas holds the view that conscience is the God given faculty of reason. His argument is based on the premise of the synderesis rule which states to pursue good and avoid evil. Aquinas argues that it is not the voice of God which guides our conscience but our practical reasoning provided by him, our ability to reflect on human nature and to act in accordance with the primary precepts.
• Aquinas 2/2

  The conscience is fallible, it can be mistaken; if one is ignorant of the moral law and if the person does not know all the facts of the case. Nonetheless, the person must still follow their conscience because what the conscience dictates to the individual is true and truth comes from God, so to go against your conscience is to go against God.
• Fletcher presents the idea of the conscience as agape-love making decisions situationally. For Fletcher, the conscience is not something we have, it is something we do. It is choosing what agape love demands in that particular situation and is what we actively calculate to determine how love is best served in a situation. Therefore, according to Fletcher, your conscience acts there and then. 
• Butler 1/2

  Joseph Butler believes that the conscience is in human nature: it is a reflective principle placed within us by God as a natural guide. As a reflective principle, it means that we are able to reflect morally on what we have done in the past and what we are about to do in the future. All humans have a reflective sense of right or wrong.
• Butler 2/2

  There are two governing principles of human behaviour - prudence and benevolence. Prudence is necessary to the benevolent self in order to reflect and grow because it is unrealistic to expect an individual to be entirely benevolent. Therefore, conscience is part of that hierarchy of the self which intuitively judges between prudence and benevolence.