What is conscience?

People often speak of conscience as an inner 'voice' telling them right from wrong. But is that voice:

• God speaking to us,
• our own reason at work, or
• the internalised rules of our upbringing?

Aquinas and Freud give sharply different answers, with very different implications for how far we should trust our conscience.

Aquinas: conscience as reason

Aquinas denies conscience is a mysterious voice or feeling. For him it is reason making moral judgements. He distinguishes two elements:

• Synderesis — the innate disposition to pursue good and avoid evil; the starting point of moral reasoning.
• Conscientia — the actual act of applying our moral knowledge to a particular situation, reasoning to a judgement about what to do.

Because conscience is God-given reason, we ought to follow it — it is our best guide to the good.

Aquinas on conscience

When conscience errs

Aquinas accepts that conscience can be mistaken — not because reason is bad, but because our reasoning or knowledge can fail:

• We may pursue an apparent good we mistake for a real good.
• Invincible ignorance (which we could not have avoided) does not make us guilty; vincible ignorance (which we could and should have corrected) does.

So we should educate our conscience, but still follow it even when it is honestly mistaken.

Erring conscience

Aquinas or Freud?

Tap a claim, then whose account it belongs to.

Freud: conscience as the super-ego

Sigmund Freud gives a psychological account. The mind has three parts: the id (raw desires), the ego (the realistic self) and the super-ego.

• The super-ego is the internalised voice of authority — the rules of parents and society absorbed in childhood.
• What we call conscience is this super-ego; guilt is the super-ego punishing the ego for falling short.
• So conscience is not the voice of God or pure reason, but a product of upbringing and repression.

Freud on conscience

Weighing the two views

Strengths of Aquinas: takes moral reasoning seriously and explains why we can argue about right and wrong; fits a religious worldview.

Strengths of Freud: explains why consciences differ across cultures and why guilt can be irrational or excessive.

Points to weigh:

• If Freud is right, conscience is not authoritative — just conditioning, so it can be questioned.
• Freud theory is hard to test scientifically and may be too deterministic.
• Some thinkers (e.g. Erich Fromm) combine insights, distinguishing an authoritarian conscience from a humanistic one.

Key terms

Tap a term, then its meaning.

A key implication

The big ideas to take into the exam

How you understand conscience shapes how far you trust it. Press Finish.