CONSCIENCE

Question 1

Aquinas’ Natural moral law

Answer 1

• Natural law theory posits that God has designed humans with moral behaviours, leading us to naturally gravitate towards certain ethical actions.
• Aquinas asserts that reason possesses the ability to discern fundamental judgement known as synderesis.
• “This therefore is the principle of law: that good must be done and evil avoided.”

Question 2

Secondary precepts & conscientia

Answer 2

• The primary precepts are to protect and preserve human life, educate, reproduce, live in an orderly society and worship God.
• It also has a power called conscientia, which allows us to apply the primary precepts to moral actions/situations and figure out what we should do. = know as secondary precpets
• Conscience is the whole process of synderesis and conscientia together.
• Our reason knows which actions are good and which are bad, and causes us to feel guilty if we do something we know to be bad.

Question 3

Aquinas’ view of the conscience

Answer 3

• Conscience is ratio (reason) used to understand and apply God’s natural law and the divine truth.
• Aquinas claims that the features of conscience follow from the application of our knowledge to our moral actions, in three ways:

1. Witness – by knowing whether we have done something or not done.
2. Bind & incite – “through the conscience we judge that something should be done or not done”
3. Accuse, torment & rebuke – “by conscience we judge that something done is well done or ill done

• This is how the conscience causes guilt. Conscience is our ability to know whether we have done something, and if its was done well.

Question 4

Ratio

the ability to discern/make moral judgements

Answer 4

• To understand conscience you must understand ratio (reason)
• ratio is fundamental part on how humans were created (imago dei)
• Humans are special, e.g. imagination, intellect, creative, complex etc
• St Augustine of Hippo said that reason, intellect and the mind were all one power in human beings, yet Aquinas distinguishes ratio as separate.

Question 5

More on Ratio - Zigmunt

Answer 5

• ‘Modernity and the Holocaust’ 1989
• Morality ‘may manifest itself insubordination towards socially upheld principles..’

Question 6

Arendt on Ratio

Answer 6

• Arendt, writing about the Holocaust, argues that when the norms of society become profoundly immoral you must reject them.
• “Human beings to be capable of telling right from wrong even when all they have to guide them is their own moral judgement”

Question 7

Synderesis

Answer 7

-the direction ofdoing good
- but Sensuality within each of us that tempts us towards evil, e.g. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden
* Positive view of human beings capability to lean towards the good
- we should cultivate the habit of synderesis

Question 8

Conscienta

Answer 8

• Some people think of it as a spark of moral wisdom
• Aquinas sees it as an act within a human person arising when the knowledge gained from the application of ratio to synderesis is applied to something we do
• Conscience is ‘reason making right decisions’, Summa Theologica

Question 9

AQUINAS ON IGNORANCE

Answer 9

• Conscience is falliable,(not perfect) even though it gets mistaken (aquinas dis not recognise that)
• To go against reason is always wrong
• ‘Everything that does not come from faith is sin’ Romans 14:23
• Humans are able to discern the correct action through their reason
• Yet humans make mistakes as their ratio involves knowledge
• Whether errors in conscience that lead to sinful acts will be forgiven or pardoned depends on the type of ignorance that caused the error.
  There are two types of ignorance = vincible/invisbible

Question 10

Vincible ignorance

Answer 10

Vincible ignorance:
- Lack of knowledge for which a person is held responsible: they should have known better.
- For example, if a fire breaks out in a building because it wasn’t looked after properly, then the person in charge of that is to blame for their action.
- They were ignorant that the fire would happen, but they should have known better.
- Actions that go against the natural law done out of vincible ignorance are sins because we should have known better.

Question 11

Invincible ignorance

Answer 11

• Involves circumstances where a person could not have known better and so are not to blame for their action.
• For example if someone drunkenly jumps in front of your car and there was nothing you could have done, you would not be held responsible for hitting them.
• Aquinas does not believe that God will condemn humans for invincible ignorance

Question 12

Cardinal Newman on Ignorance

Answer 12

“Conscience is the voice of the lawgiver…”
* we know what is right/wrong
* Stressing the importance of obedience to conscience
* conscience is a messenger from God

Question 13

Criticism on Aquinas view on Conscience

Answer 13

• assumes good and evil is the same for everyone
• Shame, guilt, past regrets etc all impact our decision-making
• Aquinas is too optimistic about human nature. If you consider the terrible things that humans have done e.g. slavery and Nazism

Question 14

Freud’s psychological approach to conscience

Answer 14

• Provides an aletrnative account to conscience in his book:An Outline of Psychoanalysis and The Ego and the Id
• Conscience is not based on rational decision-making but is a product of psychological factors that influence human beings in ways that may/may not be healthy
• Freud believed the mind was divided into the 3:

1. Id (our unconscious part = seeks immediate gratification)
2. Ego (Our conscious decision-making self = teachings of parents/society)
3. the Super Ego (dominates the ego, based on behaviourism = leads to a person acting to please authority figures during childhood. It stops us from breaking rules due to the guilt/ fear of punishment) = he saw the suoerego as an aspect of conscience

Question 15

Freud’s theory of psycho-sexual development

Answer 15

• Freud thought children had to learn to control the Id in stages. If self-control is not learned at each stage, it can lead to problems later in life:

1. Oral stage – the stage at which babies learn to interact with the world through putting things in their mouth.
2. Anal stage – children must learn to control going to the toilet – they can control too much or little.
3. Phallic stage – concerned with absence of sexual motivation.
4. Genital stage – Controlled sexual desires result in a desire for love and marriage.

Question 16

Supporting scholars of Frued

Bababra Engler

Answer 16

• Bababra Engler = ‘In disucssing the Id, ego and super ego, we must keep in mind that these are not three seperate entities, but rather that they represent a variety of different processes & functions within a person’ - Personality Theories

Question 17

Frueds dimensions

Answer 17

• conscience has both a mature/immature dimension
• Mature dimension: Healthy, identifies the ego, concerned with right and wrong acts. = looks outward to the future.
• Immature dimension: guilty feelings, little rational importance

Question 18

Evaluation of Freud:

Answer 18

• Freud has been criticised by contemporary psychologists for not being empirical enough.
• Freud is not a proper scientist – he didn’t do any real experiments, he studied a small sample size of people who were not a good cross-section of society.
• Because of this, Popper (inventor of falsificationism theory) said Freud’s theories were ‘unfalsifiable’ – not real science. There was no way to prove them wrong because they were not based on reality.

Question 19

Comparing Freud and Aquinas

(ON GUILT)

Answer 19

• For Aquinas, guilt is a sense of not being in acordance with the devine law
• consequence of sin are damaging as they disrupt a persons relationship with God.
• But guilt is good as it helps us to know about our sin and restore a proper relationship
• God grace helps to forgive us

Frued:
- Guilt is a result of internal conflict: the struggle bewteen what you desire and what you should/shouldnt do.
- Guilt can cause bad things

Question 20

Freud’s critique of religion’s approach to developing the conscience

Answer 20

• Freud argues that the better approach for society would be autonomy.
• Freud claims this is because the religious approach to conscience is external imposition by authority, similar to how children are treated, the result being comparable to a ‘childhood neurosis’.
• Although rules are in place to reduce suffering, they also cause suffering through repression
• People can rationally understand that repressing their instincts is for the good of social order, making them capable of choosing autonomously to follow social rules.
• This makes them more likely to happily accept and follow them.
• Freud concludes that society would be much better off if it could admit that the purpose of its social rules is the maintenance of social order, rather than their “pretended sanctity”.

Question 21

Aquinas’ natural law ethics arguably gets around Freud’s critique

Answer 21

• Aquinas thought that following of the natural law did involve the engagement of a person’s rationality with God’s eternal law in a way that enabled their virtue and flourishing.
• It’s not simply externally imposed and there is a degree of flexibility in the application of the primary precepts and use of the double effect.

Perhaps Freud’s critique only really works against approaches to the conscience like Augustine’s where it simply involves an external imposition of God’s law