Key Words to be happy withSynderesis ruleMature conscience (Freud)Authoritarian conscience (Fromm)Super-egoIntuitive conscience (Butler)Atheistic conscienceAltruism

Key assumptionConscience is a God-given faculty (Aquinas,

Butler).

Conscience is developed from our upbringing (Freud, Piaget, Fromm).

Conscience is a process of reasoning (Aquinas in his second meaning of conscience, conscientia).

Summary diagram

Theories of

conscience

InnateEnviron-mental

Reason

God-givenEvolution

-ary

Newman

Butler

Freud Aquinas

Dawkins

Piaget

Innate theories: ButlerConscience is final arbiter in a struggle to

include others’ interests.We are influenced by two principles: self-love

and benevolence.Conscience moves us to focus on others

(benevolence) rather than just ourselves.Conscience is more like an instinct…we don’t

need to think deeply about it.It’s “our natural guide assigned to us by the

author of nature”.

Conscience as guilt: FreudThe human psyche has three components: ego, id

and superego.The id represents passions and desires.The ego is created in childhood as we learn to

take account of the world and society.The super-ego develops as we internalise the

disapproval and approval of others, particularly our parents, who give us a sense of shame.

Guilty conscience can grow from this, and become pathological (irrational) eg obsessive compulsive tidying.

The mature conscience is the ego’s reflection on the best ways of achieving integrity (wholeness).

Conscience as reason: AquinasAquinas saw synderesis as a capacity to exercise

reason to “do good and avoid evil” and conscientia as “reason making right decisions” or something like practical wisdom or phronesis - a virtue.

Synderesis is an inclination given by God, and phronesis a judgement practised and developed by reason.

So synderesis makes us aware of a moral principle like “thou shalt not kill” and conscientia teaches us how and when to apply it (eg we kill in time of war).

People do evil because they pursue apparent goods believing them to be real goods.

Dawkins: an interesting caseDawkins believes we have self-promoting genes

(the selfish gene) that are programmed for survival.

But…we have also evolved an altruistic (concern for others) gene as part of this survival strategy.

Our ancestors found that co-operation is often more successful than competition (as reflected eg in some ape behaviour today).

He calls this a lust to be nice, and says “we have the capacity to transcend our selfish genes”.

So conscience is biologically programmed into us.

The issuesWhere does conscience come from? God, our

upbringing or our evolved genes?Can we disobey our conscience? Is this a

process of development, as Freud argues, or our God-given reason exerting itself, as Aquinas thought?

What is guilt? As a feeling, is it our enemy (Freud) or our friend (Butler)?

For Eric Fromm’s theory of authoritarian conscience click on this link:

http://www.philosophicalinvestigations.co.uk/index.php?view=article&catid=45%3Acon&id=69%3Athree-theories-of-conscience&option=com_content&Itemid=54&limitstart=7

Evaluating conscienceConscience is either friend or enemy:Friend: guides, prompts, advises (Butler,

Aquinas).Enemy: misleads, orders, causes pain and

irrational guilt (Freud, Fromm).What does it depend on? - God - Reason - Irrational shame feelings - A sense of integrity?