Conscience

Overview

Recall questions on Aquinas' ratio, synderesis and conscientia, vincible and invincible ignorance, the apparent good and guilt, Freud's psychosexual development, id, ego and super-ego and his account of guilt and religion, how Aquinas and Freud differ, the criticisms of each, and whether conscience exists.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What is conscience, and why is it philosophically puzzling?

   Model answer

   Conscience is the name given to a person's sense of what they ought to do and to the discomfort that follows doing otherwise. It is puzzling because its authority seems to come from within yet feels binding like a command from outside, and because accounts of it divide sharply over whether it is a faculty of reason, a gift of God, an internalised voice of upbringing or simply a label for several different processes.

2. 2

   In Aquinas' account of conscience, what is ratio?

   Model answer

   Ratio is reason, which Aquinas held is placed in every human being as part of being created in God's image. It is not a special religious endowment restricted to believers; it is the ordinary rational capacity that allows any person to work out what is good. Because reason is God-given on this account, using it well is already a participation in the divine ordering of things.

3. 3

   What does Aquinas mean by synderesis in his account of conscience?

   Model answer

   Synderesis is the inbuilt disposition that inclines a person towards what is good and away from what is evil. It is not a body of knowledge but an orientation, and Aquinas held that it does not err, since it consists in nothing more than the first principle that good is to be sought and evil shunned. It is the fixed point from which moral reasoning starts.

4. 4

   What role does conscientia play in Aquinas' account of conscience?

   Model answer

   Conscientia is the act of reason applying moral knowledge to a particular decision, working out what should be done here and now. Unlike synderesis it is an activity rather than a disposition, and unlike synderesis it can go wrong, because the reasoning may rest on false information or faulty inference. For Aquinas, conscience in the everyday sense is this process of judging.

5. 5

   Did Aquinas think conscience could be mistaken, and what follows if it is?

   Model answer

   Yes. Because conscientia is reasoning, it can reach a wrong conclusion from mistaken premises. Aquinas nevertheless held that a person is bound to follow their conscience, since to act against your own best judgement is to act against reason. Someone who does wrong while sincerely believing it right may be excused, but whether they are excused depends on why they were mistaken, which is where the distinction between the two kinds of ignorance does its work.

6. 6

   What is vincible ignorance?

   Model answer

   Vincible ignorance is a lack of knowledge that the person could and should have removed, by asking, checking or taking reasonable care. Because the ignorance was avoidable, Aquinas held that it does not excuse the wrong done: a doctor who harms a patient through failing to read the notes is culpable, since the information was available. Culpability attaches to the negligence rather than only to the act.

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