Discuss critically the belief that conscience is the voice of God.

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Rosa Lenders

Discuss critically the belief that conscience is the voice of God.

In this essay, I shall firstly give a definition and brief explanation of what conscience is, followed by considering the views of philosophers in a discussion of the nature of the conscience and its significance for ethical decision-making.  Thirdly, I shall mention those who appear to have no conscience at all in comparison with those who claim to hear the ‘voice of God’ or those who conscientiously arrive at completely different decisions.  To conclude, I shall give my opinion together with the views of others to whether conscience is the voice of God.

The Greek word for conscience is ‘synderessi’, which appears in the Book of Wisdom 17:11.  Conscience is defined as ‘the sense of right and wrong that governs a person’s thoughts and actions, a feeling of guilt or anxiety, causing feelings of guilt or remorse’ in The New Collins Concise Dictionary.  People are often advised to follow their conscience.  When they feel guilty, they sometimes say that their conscience is telling them that they shouldn’t have done it.  Conscience isn’t a bag of reliable rules and principles to tell you what to do.  Thus it in no way guides human action.

There are many philosophical theories about conscience and its connection with moral decision-making.  For the situationist, conscience describes the weighing up of the possible action before it’s taken.  For believers and nonbelievers alike, making a moral judgement is a matter of listening to one’s reason.  Even St Thomas Aquinas, Natural Law theory’s most famous exponent, believed that ultimately the moral life is the life ‘according to reason’, and in Summa Theologica argued that acting reasonably and acting as a Christian are the same thing: ‘To disparage the dictate of reason is equivalent to condemning the word of God… Conscience is the dictate of reason… he who acts against his conscience always sins’.  He thought that people basically tended towards the good and away from evil (the ‘synderesis rule’).  Aquinas thought that the reason people sometimes did evil deeds was because they had made a mistake.  They had pursued an apparent good and not a real good, thus their consciences were mistaken.  Rather than being a voice that commands one thing or another, conscience is ‘reason making right decisions.’  He said there were two parts to making moral decisions; ‘synderesis’ is right reason, an awareness of the moral principle to do good and evil and ‘conscientia’, which distinguishes between right and wrong and makes moral decisions.

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So what is the reliability of this moral faculty called conscience?  While Joseph Butler saw conscience as a universal moral faculty, ‘the final decision-maker’: ‘There is a principle of reflection in men by which they distinguish between approval and disapproval of their own actions… this principle in man… is conscience’ and that humans are influenced by two basic principles; self-love and benevolence.  He believed conscience determines and judges the rightness and wrongness of actions without introspection; ‘had it strength as it has right; had it power as it had manifest authority, it would absolutely govern the world.’  He said ...

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